It’s quite possible that you have heard the term cognitive dissonance, because it’s a term that is used a lot in narcissistic abuse circles.
It’s those times when your mind plays tricks on you; when it is in opposition to how you really feel about something. I’m going to explain this in more detail to you shortly.
So, what role does cognitive dissonance play in narcissistic abuse and how does it keep you trapped in narcissistic abuse?
This is a very important question and the answer even more so, because within that is the key for you to escape from the abuse, into the truth that does set you free.
Let’s investigate this deeply.
Maybe more deeply than you have ever understood cognitive dissonance before. I highly recommend that you take your time with this article. Give it your full attention – because you may need to in order to FULLY understand it.
Before we get started, I just want to reach out to all of you who are still struggling with your recovery from narcissistic abuse. Maybe you are finding it difficult to stay motivated with your healing? Maybe you are not seeing a way out of your PTSD, and all the other symptoms that go with narcissistic abuse?
And … importantly, maybe you are sick and tired of being sick and tired?
If so, I am so excited to announce that starting on April 3rd I have a global highly interactive Healing Bootcamp starting up, which is called “Thrive”.
It’s the MOST hands-on supportive program I have ever offered.
Myself, together with the incredible MTE Thriver Team, and your Global Thriver Tribe, we will hold your hand and heart to help you get free of the trauma of narcissistic abuse, so that you can claim the life that you were born to live.
Find out more about this 10-week super-boost healing journey HERE.
All right, let’s start this deep dive into cognitive dissonance and the role it plays in narcissistic abuse.
How Narcissists Act As Parasites
Narcissists are not True Selves. They are entities that have manufactured the creation of a False Self, creating an egoic narrative regarding the person they would like to be, rather than how they truly feel about themselves.
How do they continue the charade? By grandstanding, manipulating, controlling and gas lighting other people to get them to hand over the attention, energy, resources and Life Force that a False Self cannot provide for themselves.
How do we stay hooked as prey to narcissists? Why do we continue to hand over our power, energy and resources even though our emotional, mental, physical, spiritual and usually financial bodies are self-destructing?
The answer is simple as well as deadly.
By lying to ourselves.
This is what cognitive dissonance is.
I know this may feel like a bucket of cold water being thrown in your face, but please let me explain. I SO know that this is not your fault – and that you are not even consciously aware of it.
I wasn’t either!
Those of us who were susceptible to a narcissist and also rolled around with them, even though we logically knew that we were being destroyed by them, were programmed into cognitive dissonance.
I was personally stuck in it for a few years – many people stay there for life.
Meaning remaining stuck in the logical reasons why we should stay with these people, keep trying, keep throwing good resources in after bad, and keep suffering horrific breakdowns without any real reprieve.
The Surface Level Of Cognitive Dissonance
Let’s look at the surface level of how cognitive dissonance plays out with narcissistic abuse.
Your emotional being is screaming at you (from the inside of you) this message …“I am being abused, terrorised, treated disgustingly, accused of all sorts of things that are not my fault, and my health and sanity is disintegrating by the minute.”
Yet, (and it’s a really big “yet”) your mind keeps granting you all of the reasons to STAY with this person.
Things like …
“It’s because of their horrific childhood that they behave like this. It’s not their fault.”
“No one is perfect. I know that I’m not perfect either and a lot of this is probably my stuff.”
“The connection between us is so powerful, I know that this is my one and only and I’m supposed to stay with this person.”
Or …
“If I don’t stay and help this person, who will? It’s my obligation to do this.”
“If I leave this person, what will other people say? They will think I’m a bad person.”
“They will blame me for all of this if I end it. I can’t stand the thought of that.”
Or …
“If I end this relationship, I’m going to lose all my resources and how will this affect the children? Maybe I will lose custody.”
“If I leave, I’m scared of what this person will do.”
“If I leave, I don’t know how I will survive on my own.”
“I can’t live without this person.”
Or …
“I may never meet anybody again, and I don’t want to be alone.”
“It’s too late for me to start all over again.”
And so on and so forth – there are countless “excuses” we can use.
The Truth About These “Excuses” (That You May Not Be Able To Embody Just Yet!)
Before I get to the deeper spiritual Quantum basis as to why having reasons and justifications in our head and ignoring our inner emotional truth doesn’t serve us – and is in fact diabolical for your life – just let me dispute a few of the “reasons” we grant ourselves.
I totally feel qualified to present you the truth about these – because I lived these truths in my own life. Also, I have had the humble joy of seeing thousands of people break through into these truths consistently within the last ten plus years that I have been working with this mission to help people heal for real from narcissistic abuse.
Let’s start working with some REAL truths regarding the following common cognitive dissonance “justifications” we can use.
“It’s because of their horrific childhood that they behave like this. It’s not their fault.”
Virtually everybody who has the capacity to be abusive suffered a terrible childhood. It doesn’t excuse the abuse; the abuse just is what it is – abuse.
Getting out of abuse is never about making excuses for an abusive person’s behaviour, it’s about examining the reasons WHY we stayed attached, allowing it to continue in our own life.
And it is more than likely because of our own childhood wounds, in regard to being able to grow up empowered, healthy and safe as a self-generative source of our own experience, that we have been choosing and staying with people who are abusive.
The focus and rectification need to be on our own inner wounds to break free from these cycles.
“No one is perfect. I know that I’m not perfect either and a lot of this is probably my stuff.”
Many of us realise that our relationships with other people bear no resemblance to the ones that we have with narcissistic people. Therefore, we are not the common denominator, rather we are justifying and continuing a relationship with somebody who is toxic and who does not have the capacity to be healthy. And of course, we have become sick by being connected to them!
“The connection between us is so powerful, I know that this is my ‘one and only’ and I’m supposed to stay with this person.”
I completely and utterly believe that the narcissistic love experience is intense, but is not a soul mate love experience (which is much kinder, healthier and grows and improves after time).
Intense narcissistic relationships don’t improve. They disintegrate further with no solution, and teach the ultimate Soul lesson, which is to let go and love ourselves, not to try to create an impossible deal.
“If I don’t stay and help this person, who will? It’s my obligation to do this.”
It was never your obligation to assist another adult who will not help themselves, and is abusing you while you’re trying to do so. Your only responsibility is to be true to your own Soul and responsible for your own growth and well-being.
You can’t help others who refuse to take responsibility. Rather, you simply enable them to stay stuck and continue being an abuser, while you continually suffer.
“If I leave this person, what will other people say? They will think I’m a bad person.”
And …
“They will blame me for all of this if I end it. I can’t stand the thought of that.”
Your life is never determined by what other people think of you unless you make it so. Your true free, expansive, healthy life has to do what you think of you. Period.
“If I end this relationship, I’m going to lose all my resources and how will this affect the children? Maybe I will lose custody.”
Yes, absolutely, people who leave narcissistic relationships usually pay a heavy price. It costs money and resources to have your garbage removed. However, by letting go, turning inwards and healing you, what you will receive is the sanctity and connection to the value, generation and truth of your Soul.
Then watch your life take off in incredible True Self ways – filled with rejuvenation, regeneration and compensation on every level you could imagine, including financial.
When you heal, the Thriver Way, not only will you retain and gain an incredible relationship with your children (regardless of what the narcissist does and doesn’t try to do) you will also teach them by example not to hand away their power and tolerate abuse.
Where we GO our children FOLLOW.
“If I leave, I’m scared of what this person will do.”
When you leave a narcissist, and do the deep inner healing to release the fear from inside of you and stand true in your light and power, narcissists in your life experience dissolve into oblivion.
As a False Self a narcissist needs to use your triggers and your traumas against you to be able to control you. When you arise from that, it’s all over for them.
“If I leave, I don’t know how I will survive on my own.”
And …
“I can’t live without this person.”
When you heal the trauma bonds within you that have been keeping you attached to somebody that is hurting you, not only will you be able to emotionally live without this person, you will barely be able imagine how you were attracted to and tolerated them in the first place.
Your entire mission as a functional, self-generative adult is to heal yourself up, to be able to be connected to True Source (meaning your Higher Power and All Of Life), so that you can create your own Love, Approval and Security. Then not only will you survive in life, you will be flourished and nourished in your capacity to generate your True Life beyond your wildest dreams.
Then absolutely you will receive incredible blessings, by living without this person, and you will never risk being abused again.
“I may never meet anybody again, and I don’t want to be alone.”
And …
“It’s too late for me to start all over again.”
I have met beautiful people in their eighties, in our wonderful Thriver Community, who even after multiple marriages to narcissists, and coming from families of narcissists, healed their inner abuse programs, freed themselves emotionally and energetically and spiritually, and have moved on into their dream lives.
Including developing new hobbies, missions and, once they felt fulfilled in their own bodies and life, also met the love of their lives!
Your soul is ageless – it just wants you to be free.
Easier Said Than Done
I know that the trauma bonds to a narcissist are beyond powerful. It doesn’t matter how much logic someone uses regarding the truth about cognitive dissonance “reasons to stay attached”, because when you are caught in the trauma bonds, it may feel like it is impossible to let go.
This is why the “remedies” and “truths” that I have given you above may fall on your deaf ears – initially. No matter how much you would like to try to get this through your head.
This is the entire problem with cognitive dissonance – you know you shouldn’t be thinking these things, and other people tell you that this is no reason to stay – but you can’t stop yourself from thinking them.
I understand this.
This also happened to me to – all the time.
Why?
Because of the inner programmed trauma bonds that our head is following. Meaning whatever is going on inside us is exactly the way that our mind is organising itself in order to validate and co-generate the experience that exactly matches the trauma bonds.
What Cognitive Dissonance REALLY Is
Now it’s time to understand the REAL role cognitive dissonance plays in narcissistic abuse.
Let me explain …
All of us have had emotional interpersonal experiences – good and bad. Many of these were formed pre-cognitive, long before we even had the ability to think, decipher and discern these messages.
Neuroscientists now know that we take on the emotional predispositions – belief systems about ourselves, life and others – of our ancestors as well.
What I want you to understand is that, our previous experiences set us up for beliefs and inner programs that are running our life. These are powerful forces, fuelled by emotional energy literally stuck in our bodies.
How we feel about certain topics in our life is what continues to play out for us – until we meet and reprogram these Inner Identity beliefs that are shaping our lives.
I want to go through our list of the usual cognitive dissonance “reasons” to stay attached to abusers, as they relate to the inner trauma bonds that are matching us up with the exact people who deliver these traumas.
“It’s because of the horrific childhood that they behave like this. It’s not their fault.”
“No one is perfect. I know that I’m not perfect either and a lot of this is probably me.”
And …
“The connection between us is so powerful, I know that this is my twin flame and I’m supposed to stay with this person.”
What has been happening here is an ATTACHMENT to someone that is hurting you.
The trauma bonds responsible for this are beliefs such as, “The people I love are unstable, if I don’t grant them what they want, and try to fix them I can’t be safe and loved. I may not survive.”
“If I don’t stay and help this person, who will? It’s my obligation to do this.”
“If I leave this person, what will other people say? They will think I’m a bad person.”
And …
“They will blame me for all of this if I end it. I can’t stand the thought of that.”
These “excuses” are because of traumas of over-responsibility and the fear of persecution. That’s the real issues here.
Your trauma bonding program, that was embedded in your Inner Being from long ago is …
“It’s all up to me. If I don’t do the fixing, I’ll be blamed, exiled or persecuted.”
“If I end this relationship, I’m going to lose all of my resources and how will this affect the children? Maybe I will lose custody.”
And …
“If I leave, I’m scared of what this person will do.”
The trauma bonding program that continues to keep you stuck in powerlessness and connected to people who represent this program is, “The people I love threaten me, create me as the enemy, and take what is mine away from me.”
“If I leave, I don’t know how I will survive on my own.”
And …
“I can’t live without this person.”
These relate to a huge survival trauma bonding program of, “If the people I love leave me, I will die.”
“I may never meet anybody again, and I don’t want to be alone.”
And …
“It’s too late for me to start all over again.”
This often relates to the trauma bonding programs of things such as,“No one is coming, and I have no support. I’m all alone.”
Getting To The Root Cause, Instead Of Just Looking At The Symptoms
I hope you understand from all of this that the real issue isn’t the cognitive dissonance, the cognitive dissonance is a symptom of something so much deeper. And, like all symptoms, the symptom is not going to go away until you actually heal it at the root, at the causation level.
The cause is the trauma bonding program.
I promise you with all my heart that I was, like every other single person abused by a toxic person, hooked and addicted to a narcissist who was ripping me apart piece by piece, whilst trapped in masses of cognitive dissonance.
My excuses and justifications were things like, “I know he is the love of my life”, “I can’t live without him”, “I feel like I’m dying without him and therefore this must be real love”, “I have to fix him and save him from himself; it’s my duty.”
These cognitive dissonance “reasons” nearly took me to my death – literally.
It wasn’t until I turned inwards and met my trauma programs, loaded up, released, and replaced them with Quanta Freedom Healing that I became completely and utterly free.
The healing happened very quickly, and for so long now, I have zero obsessions about what happened to me, zero trauma symptoms, zero regret, zero longing and absolutely no connections on any level – including psychic or spiritual – to him whatsoever.
And even better than all of this, the parts of myself that I healed within allowed me to start Thriving spectacularly in every area of my life. Facing these trauma bonds and releasing myself from them is the greatest gift I have ever given myself.
I hope that this long and intense article makes sense to you. And, rather than complicate matters, I don’t want you to now go into logical overload try to work out what your trauma bonds are. That also equals how to lose. A way to win, in your recovery, is to stop thinking and instead start doing the work inside your being, directly on your trauma bonds.
That’s what all my work is about. I show you how to DO this, and when you start healing yourself in this way you will realise exactly what I mean.
Again, I want to remind you of my brand-new Thrive 10-week healing boot camp that shows you exactly how to get to the bottom of these trauma bonds, be released from them and go free to be a generative source of your own power, joy, love and prosperity – to a level where you will never again need to roll around in toxic relationships!
Can you imagine what that would feel like?
I want you to not just imagine it, but also LIVE it, as I do, EVERY day.
I can’t wait to have a discussion about this article in the comments and questions below.
And please, feel free to ask any questions you need to, in order to clarify any of the above!
Another spot on read.Your words are so exact. I have removed the narcissist from my life,but the battle continues.The scares of violence and aggression,at the moment are etched so deep in my sole. I was so programmed to except my life as it was.My wife of 35 years who I just wanted to help and remove alcohol from,spent the last 6 years of our marriage manipulating our financial situation to leave me with nothing.Also she set her and her new supplier up with my life’s hard work.This is so hard to overcome,mentally,but I keep trying to find my true self.
One day I will live again.
Thankyou so much Melanie you help me every day.
Regards
Cameron Williams
Hi Cameron,
please know how welcome you are.
I want you to know Dear Man, there is true soul resurrection after this.
You just have to do the inner work to get it.
Much love and blessings to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Melanie,
After spending a really lovely day tending my garden and planting bulbs and flowers I came in the house and found this from you! My spirits were pretty good after aligning myself with mother nature today and then after reading this my spirits soared even higher! ✨ Thank you so much for this! I’ve been trying my best to no longer make all kinds of excuses that end uo “crippling” my inner being….I know for certain that the cognitive dissonance that I have experienced in the past has somewhat subsided…. I hopefully understood a lot of what you were telling us today! I think I was helped in the morning because I did three different modules which set up a good pattern for the day!
I’m always surprised when I see things “lineup” after doing the right and sincere inner work! I’m pretty sure that that happened today! 🙏
Your explanations were, today, so very helpful to me! I continue to be amazed at how this NARP system works! 🙌
So, thank you for this today and thank you so much for NARP….❤️🦋❤️
Peter@44&lil’P ❤️
That’s awesome Peter that this added positive energy to your day.
Alignment these days is SO powerful – I totally agree!
It’s my pleasure and much love
Mel 🙏💕💚
GOLD: Intense narcissistic relationships don’t improve. They disintegrate further with no solution, and teach the ultimate Soul lesson, which is to let go and love ourselves, not to try to create an impossible deal.
Yes Bridie!
THAT is everything – right there!
Mel 🙏💕💚
I am so happy I have found you. Your abuse experiences and recovery wisdom reverberate through my being. The subconscious is indeed the real battleground that holds the key for our true creative selves to be set free. Thankyou.
That’s awesome Steve that my work speaks to you!
You have nailed it – what you posted is the absolute truth.
Mel 🙏💕💚
Would like to do the 16 day recovery course. Currently in a relationship with a narc where I am trauma bonded.
That’s great Abbe, it will help you a lot!
Sending blessings and healing
Mel 🙏💕💚
My inner being KNEW it was never going to work, but I ignored it. Why? I really WANTED it to work so I wouldn’t be alone again and so I wouldn’t have yet another failed relationship. I finally realized that the relationship with MYSELF was far more important and left for good. Mel’s resources and NARP have been so helpful in my recovery. I have come to understand that my unhealed wounds are what need my attention and care – not the ex. I wish him no ill will, but I no longer pity him or feel the need to take care of him while feeling let-down and neglected by him… And I also no longer believe in that fairy tale that someone is meant to come along and rescue me from my dragons. That is and always has been my job! Thank you Mel for continuing to spread your message of healing and thriving! 🙂
You’ve done so beautifully Melissa!
Please know how welcome you are
Mel 🙏💕💚
Not only do I see the cognitive dissonance with the narcissist; I see representations of cognitive dissonance in movies and all around me, with all sorts of people. What an amazing awakening you have given me. My life is changing so quickly – it’s an exhilarating adventure that I am learning to trust and to enjoy immensely. Thank you for all you do, Mel. ❤ Keep that light shining!
I adore that you love this journey Sophia,
This is what Thriving is all about!
Thank you and many blessings to you!
Mel 🙏💕💚
Wow. Just wow. Time to do the work and finally be free. I pray so!
Bless Melissa,
It’s your time to heal!
Mel 🙏💕💚
Incredible. There isn’t a single word here that doesn’t chime with familiar shame and recognition. The shame factor is really powerful. I am realising that it has been my starting point… so if someone expressed an interest (and went into full scale love bombing mode) I would be grateful to be seen! Even though I was clocking red flags all over the place. I’d make up reasons and excuses! I also had a powerful disbelief that healthy relationships were false and that my troubled, violent, ugly and exhausting one was the genuine authentic article. Anyway your words never miss a beat and help me so much, to feel less alone.
I’m so pleased that this resonated with you Catho,
Much Love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
The Most importent core Believe is so deeply rootend in my early life and is The biggest cause that have led me away from my true self. This sentense you wrote above is so true: “The people I love are unstable, if I don’t grant them what they want, and try to fix them I can’t be safe and loved. I may not survive.”
Thank you! I need to work in this! 💪
I’m so pleased that this has helped you identify this Lotta,
Sending you love and healing breakthroughs
Mel 🙏💕💚
Thank you for sharing this. Do you go through the trauma bondings in more detail in your 10 week course?
Hi BLossom,
yes – we absolutely do!
Much love
Mel 🙏💕💚
You are helping me so much. Thank you.
It’s my pleasure Amy!
Mel 🙏💞🦋
How can this work with a narcissistic parent who lives under your care?
Hi Bing,
if you google my name plus “elderly narcissist” I have some information which I help can help you.
Mel 🙏💞🦋
Dear Melanie, I am so grateful that I found you. I moved away from Narcc…..Doctors order. I was on ground Zero. Stayed married for 45 years always blaming my self that I could make him happier if I obey all his wants. I have been alone for 3years and finding you has set me free from all the trauma. Thank you so so much. Sending you all the Love and gratefulness. LINA FERRARI.
Hi Lina,
I am so pleased that you found your way to this incredible community.
Please know how welcome you are.
Much love and many blessings to you!
Mel 🙏💕💚
I have the NARP programme.
My personal cognitive dissonance is not knowing how I will survive financially if I leave. (Compounded by serious physical health conditions that genuinely affect my practical ability to get from A to B and a whole range of activites, and therefore to earn a living.)
So that makes my personal trauma bond “if the people I love leave me I will die”.
Please can you suggest which module (and any other pointers/advice) to use to get rid of this trauma bond.
With gratitude.
Hi Butterfly,
please know the NARP Forum is the best place for guidance because there, there can be a detailed conversation backwards and forwards to help support you.
Are you a Gold Member, if so go to melanietoniaevans.com/member and if not please email [email protected] for further details.
I hope that this helps you, and you will find the Forum incredible!
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
This is probably one of the best articles on narcissistic relationships that l have ever read. I have known about cognitive dissonance for 40 years but still needed it spelled out to me just how it works in this situation. You are doing work Mel – thank you 🙏🏻
How very true! Melanie, your ability to “spell” it out is incredible!
Thank you so much for your words that have carried me on my journey of recovery and rebuilding.
Thank you for your lovely comment JoAnn,
Much Love to you!
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Trish,
I am so pleased this spoke to you!
Much Love
Mel 🙏💞🦋
This is a very real struggle. Excellent truths and resources here to help begin to explain the things that feel unexplainable. Thank you for reminding us that there is no reason to carry guilt as it is something I didn’t know had a name and community until I saw the terminology for the first time. There is such a comfort in seeing not only empathy to my experience but also such care in breaking it down & sharing the steps to recognize it so we’re able to start to pull out of the soul sucking experience of emotional abuse. An aspect of being in a relationship with a narcissist, in my experience, is also fighting the fact that their need for supply keeps you under a cloud of “you won’t leave me, until I leave you”. Even then, they’re really not gone. My narc did the full on discard, cheated and then got caught after months of lies and misdirects. I am grateful I moved away but of course now the love bombing is in full force. The best thing he did for me was to tell me to get out. Many, many times over 10 years I told myself I needed to leave and for reasons outlined here (as well as some medical issues) I stayed. The fears of leaving are real. I am hoping that all who struggle find the resources and strength they need to be released from insidious narcissistic abuse.
I’m so pleased Lynn that this helped bring you clarity.
Sending you love, healing and breakthrough, and thank you for sending your well wishes to all.
Mel 🙏💕💚
Melanie, thank you for listing soooo many possibilities! Mine is: If I don’t help him, who will? Your followed sentence of “It was never your obligation to do so …” – struck a note within me. I did love him and care that he had a happy life. I bought your program & have been “busy”… today I will dive in and make time to take care of MYSELF. Thank you for being so warm & talking with us, like a friend.
Idea: a graduation reunion of all us Thrivers! To meet new people, that know how to treat people 😎
Hi Christine,
that is so great that you are turning inwards to heal you.
When you change, those hooks will be gone.
I’d love a BIG reunion one day!
Mel 🙏💕💚
This is a powerful article and make my exit closer than ever before. I’ve been married for 18 years and his toxic behavior started when our kids was born. Then he had new supply and I was left with nothing literally. Except for the kids of course. Now he is lovebombing the kids, so they can’t be themselves and have a natural childhood. He has no job, because he can of course not have someone in authority to tell him what to do. So his mission is now that the kids are going to be no.1 in tennis. It’s allll he talks about. They train every single day to boost his ego. The funny thing is my love for him stopped 13 years ago when our first child was born…But I stayed. I understand now that this transfers to my childhood and not being thought to be self reliant and feel strong on my own.
Still to leave, but I feel in the core of my inner self, after reading most of your articles I am preparing the best I can for the tsunami of accusations coming.
I thank you from the other side of the world for your wisdom and reasoning, it speaks to my spirit. 🙏🏻🧡
That’s so great Inger,
I’m really pleased that this helps you.
Please know how welcome you are.
Mel 🙏💕💚
A few years ago, I found out that I am an empath and since childhood, I had to tolerate the destructive relationship with a relative for many years. Although we are not in touch with each other, there will always be some past painful memories of the terrible treatment towards me during that time. Unfortunately I did not get support from family circle because the narcissist was considered to be more capable (high IQ, have good general health, strong willed) whereas I am the opposite so there were a lot of comparisons between us. But recently I had come across many help available for narcissist abuse so it is never too late to regain back my authentic self, the person I am meant to be as the issue have raise more awareness now.
Please know Pei, it is never too late
Your True Self and Life await you.
Mel 🙏💕💚
O am waiting and eager to start the program I ordered. It’s great that I don’t need to pay forr any official hypnosis to identify where the source of all this was. I’m already gradually remembering some of it understanding it in New ways. I recently heard from someone from before I was 8 which for a long time , until recently I had blocked. I’m hoping that what I ordered from you can help me heal and understand more completely the cause of how I began to attach to the wrong people for me and why some of them were nearly impossible, as I look back to starch from. I was shamed by friends for this as ” having too much lust” at the time. Now I sort of know, Thank You
You are very welcome Susan,
And I am very much looking forward to helping you heal.
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
“Your soul is ageless. It just wants you to be free.” I love this statement.
Is this a private chat?
No D,
it is a public forum
Mel 🙏💕💚
I’m so grateful for the NARP program and have subscribed for over 2 years since ending an abusive relationship with a narcissist. Cognitive dissonance is still mystifying to me. I’m hoping to sign up for THRIVE as I’ve been in such a complete fog since that time I’ve only done a few of the modules. What keeps me in such a fog is that since learning about narcissism (there is sooooo much information out there now) I’ve been able to understand what makes me a target. I’ve also been able to unlock the mystery to what I previously considered my failure and inability to attract a healthy, loving, kind, and loyal life partner. I am 74 now, and finally realize that all those relationships I thought I failed at, I actually succeeded at discarding, but then just kept attracting the same kind of person. There are so many people in my past that I have suffered the effects of narcissistic abuse from that I can’t get my mind around how to process it all. I now know the abuse began from infancy and probably before (ancestral) and the shear magnitude of it is completely overwhelming to me. I just don’t know how I can possibly address all the instances of this pattern in what little time I have left on this earth. I am exhausted and still haunted by PTSD and flashbacks that seem to be coming out of thin air-perhaps presenting themselves to be dissolved by your sessions. I hold out hope for the will and energy to face all this grief of a life predominantly lived in absence of genuine love and affection with a significant other. Thank you Melanie for taking on this utterly daunting exercise in exorcising the narcissists from our lives. I hope to join you in THRIVE.
I am so thrilled Flora that you are joining Thrive!
It will help you so much, and I’m looking very forward to helping hold your hand and heart as you heal.
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
This exactly describes why I stayed in my marriage for so long. Not only are your explanations wonderful in helping me to discover how to move forward, but I am a therapist and this knowledge enables me to understand what is happening to people with similar experiences. I can hear the relief in clients’ voices when I can empathize with their emotions amd their realities. Thank you, Melanie xx
It’s my pleasure L,
I love that you are going to pave this forward lovingly to your clients.
Keep up the beautiful work
Mel 🙏💕💚
I can relate to everything you wrote. Although the marriage ended, I don’t think I’m recovered from the trauma. I am interested in improving myself. How much is the NARP course? How long does it last? and is it on a certain day and time or can it be viewed when i’m available?
I’m so glad I connected to you.
Hi Lora,
I’m so pleased this all resonated deeply with you.
The truth does set you free!
All the details are there on the pages – for NARP and Thrive
http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp and http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/thrive
NARP you can do at any time, at your pace, and Thrive if you miss any of the sessions you get the full recordings for life.
I hope that this helps!
Mel 🙏💕💚
Dear Melanie.
Thank you. Your NARP has helped me so much. I hope this, my story, encourages others to embrace NARP not simply as a release from their current pain, which it surely is, but also as a persistent practice, a habit, to sustain a happy and fulfilling life for them…as it is becoming for me.
My marriage of 23 years ended a year ago. Like so many others, I was sustained in our marriage by every one of the excuses you enumerate in your article on Cognitive Dissonance as well as by my belief that I was smart enough and that if I cared enough and tried hard enough, I might discover and overcome whatever it was that was causing what I can now best describe as the persistent “death by a thousand cuts”, verbal and physical abuse I was experiencing, and that I could at long last find a way to make my wife happy.
The abuse became apparent a couple of years after the wedding; it came on slowly, but as the abuse evolved I, assuming she was right, increasingly blamed myself for somehow failing her and I would then redouble my efforts to be a still better husband.
I tried couples counseling, which she promptly left. I consumed articles on relationships, mental health, family of origin issues, the physiology of happiness, anything that might provide insight and understanding to expose a solution and transform our marriage. But nothing I did was ever “right’”, no information or affection I offered her was ever welcomed.
Sadly, the result of all that effort was just an increase in the amount and severity of the abuse. Short and simple verbal cuts and physical distancing gestures eventually became an amalgam of heated insult and threat, “If you can’t afford to buy/do…, I’ll get a lawyer take half of everything and buy/do it myself.”
I took those spears with quiet resignation. Until one day, to both of our surprise and shock, there came a final spear of insult and threat to which I suddenly blurted out that what she was saying “hurt terribly and that she was being a lousy wife”. I could not believe I had just said such a hurtful thing and apologized instantly. She began the legal separation process within the week, and the divorce was final a year later.
In a bit of irony, I wonder now if my “blurt” that triggered the divorce was perhaps the voice of the neglected little child in me that had been suffering unseen and unloved for so long in some lonely, dark forgotten corner of my heart. I suspect that in the moment that last painful spear arrived he was more of a man that I had been. He had drawn a line, stood up and screamed, “Enough!”; he had refused to validate her narcissist ego and that instantly drove her away. “Out of the Mouths of Babes”? Who knows for sure…
I learned from NARP and from that moment that I needed to love and care for that young child within me and give to him the acceptance, the affection, that “validation” of his own worth so long denied. Caring for him was healing me.
As I look back now across the years, many painful and unexplainable events have become “understandable” as Narcissistic Abuse. Via NARP I have also learned that “understanding” is NOT the source of the “Cure”; “understanding “is a rational process, it can inform and solve rational problems. “Understanding” by itself cannot fix emotional pain; “rationale” does not work in that part of the brain where emotions reside. To relieve emotional pain, we need to use emotional tools that the emotional part of our brain can respond to. That is what NARP does for us…NARP provides the emotional tools and techniques that we can use ourselves to remove the sources of emotional pain within us and replace them with love, confidence and connection to the larger, loving universe to which we each belong and are a such an important loving piece.
With love and my deepest appreciation,
Vince
Oh gosh Vince,
SO SO true – the rationale is not the answer.
Spoken by someone who completely now knows and actualises the truth.
I love everything you wrote.
Much love and thank you for being an inspiration
Mel 🙏💕💚
This article is “Spot on!” So much of what you share Mel, is and was part of my life.
Divorce Trial is adjourned for the 3rd time. I so need to join your “Thrive” 10 week program, as I do not seem to be able to allow myself the motivation of doing NARP of which I am a member.
My finances are limited.
Thank you for your gracious gift.
Hi Melody,
Thrive will definitely get you on track!
Love, healing and blessings to you in this challenging time.
Mel 🙏💕💚
Thank God you are offering this. We can learn forever, and we all deserve kindness and respect. Give it to ourselves.
Bless you Roz!
Much love
Mel 🙏💕💚
I echo Melody’s thoughts and message: you have a knack of being so ‘spot on’ and also so timely with every article you write. Its uncanny! I know you’ve been there and understand, as do the members of your community, and this makes me feel less alone. I confess I am equal parts looking forward to your 10 week program and feeling scared too: I know I need to turn inwards and heal but I also now recognise I need help to do this; it feels too big and daunting to attempt it alone. Thanks so much Mel, you are a lifesaver – literally.
Hi Jo,
I am so pleased that I can be in synch with you.
That’s great that you are coming into Thrive http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/thrive !
Sending you healing and love, and it’s not long to go to really help you break through!
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Mel,
I am reading this article and it is hitting me like a ton of bricks. I don’t just have one trauma bond, there are several playing out here. I see it. I feel it. But still, when I read the paragraph about you having all those “zeros”, it hurts. It hurts because to say good-bye to this person that I love, (for whatever reason) just plain feels like too much right now. He is not a full on narcissist but I am experiencing abuse like this nevertheless. Question: His friends do not experience any of what I am experiencing in this relationship with him. I know that is typical. He is genuinely warm, kind, generous, and will do anything for his friends. But something is very different about his relationship with the person he has chosen as his life partner – me. I am good friends with his now best woman friend (a former lover). She loves that she was able to change the status of the relationship from partner to best friend. She says that he so desperately wants a life long partner, – but subconsciously there is blockage, resistance, and he doesn’t see it. There is so much resistance in that realm but none as his friend. I see and feel all this too. They now enjoy a wonderful uplifting best friend relationship on both sides. But, ironically, me, as his life partner, I get the crumbs. The last to be considered and the first to go when given priority as to where his time and energy go. I am so sad because I want the unencumbered man that I see when he is outside of his primary relationship, I want THAT man as my partner. He is his true self there. So all this to say, that the pain is too great right now to see him go. I know that I will be too broken hearted to be friends with him. And I will always be resentful of the best woman friend he has now in his former partner. To me, that is my chair and she will always be sitting in it. Where do I start?? How do I get to a place to where it really is ok for me to let him go? How do I even begin to be ok with being ok about that? Right now I am not. I admit that. I acknowledge that that is where I am right now. I know I am trapped. How do I move, even one little step towards releasing myself?
Hi Megan,
I totally understand what you are feeling – this journey is NOT easy … believe me nearly all of us felt like this.
Where do you start? In the knowing, YOU deserve better than crumbs. Standing for your worth and value regardless of what someone else is doing.
Otherwise, you have to say “I have accepted crumbs.”
With what I know now – and I would do it a million times over again, I would state what I need and want, let go if it’s not forthcoming and then turn deeply inwards to heal myself with NARP http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp – every bit of me that feels triggered, anxious and unloved.
Because I know there is nothing else to do other than continue suffering if I don’t heal up into a solid inner place, those parts of me that put up with crumbs.
At some point you will need to take this stand of self-healing – the real question is “what state will you be in and how much time would you have lost when you do?”
Sending you love and strength and hope
Mel 🙏💕💚
I am still dealing with myself and trying to break free to feel free. It is very hard when you are in your seventies and your grown children are the Narcissists. That is so hard at my age. I have no real friends that I can cry with or even talk to. But now I have found you. You have given me hope. I listen to you everyday without you I would be lost. I am a work in progress. I do get depressed but I am trying to take a good long look at myself with your help. And make some changes. God Bless. And thank you for saving so many of us…Audrey