It is the life experiences of my readers and clients that led me to speak directly to their suffering and the process of healing and restoration in my new book: Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist: Discovering Your True Self. I specifically write to those who have experienced multiple cruelties, deprivations, and humiliation and offer a program to those who live in the aftermath of the narcissistic cataclysm—spouses, ex-spouses, mothers, fathers, siblings. Those who live under these horrific conditions suffer deep pain. They are desperate, confused, suffer from self blame, are exhausted, feel lost and at times even crazy.
The narcissist took so much of your life—You deserve to get it all back and then some.
For those who have experienced narcissistic abuse in its innumerable cruel forms, know that you deserve to recover in every aspect of your life, to thrive and use your many creative gifts and discover your true self. Throughout life we are in a process of separating and individuating from our families of origin. This is your psychological, emotional and spiritual birthright as a precious individual.
Your healing and recovery involve breaking destructive survival patterns.
“The survival tactics we develop become ingrained into us. Like a familiar song that spontaneously reprises in our minds, distinct patterns of thoughts, feelings memories, fantasies and wishes emerge…Most people continue to listen and respond to the old family life song first heard in childhood.” (From: Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist: Discovering your True Self)
“The destructive life repetitions that we engage in are innumerable and particular to each individual. They are found in a repeated cycle of returning to narcissistic individuals who injure us emotionally and psychologically. It is surprising, but often the child that was raised in a narcissistic family with narcissistic parents and siblings returns to this environment that created his greatest suffering by marring a narcissist.” (From Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist:Discovering Your True Self)
Your healing begins with a deep understanding that: There is a center within us that is always seeking the truth about ourselves…Cracking the code of psychological repetition begins with waking up…When we are awake we see things as they are, without delusion. There is no veil, wall or barrier that separates us from what is true.” (From: Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist: Discovering Your True Self).
Full access to your true self occurs with a specific, consistent practice of self care and the full use of your many creative gifts. As you heal in the aftermath of sharing your life with a narcissist, writing is one of the most powerful methods for loosening up, expressing your thoughts and emotions and igniting your imagination. All you have to do is open yourself up to writing..The practice of spontaneous writing is a gift that never wears out, has no restrictions or boundaries, and is always available. (From: Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist: Discovering Your True Self) Writing regularly is a significant part of your personal transformation.
Nurturing deep friendships where trust and comfort are part of your life,are an essential part of your healing process. We only need a couple of individuals with whom we can communicate, let down and be completely ourselves. These relationships are pure gold.
Rediscovering your creative self is an essential part of your life journey toward recovery. Creativity is occurring ever moment we are alive, whether we are awake, asleep or dreaming or in joy, sorrow or doubt..It is a transpersonal experience that redeems us from our life histories, .We jump into the roaring, ecstatic stream, swept up in the current that created the cosmos…(From: Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist: Discovering Your True Self)
Learning to meditate your way with consistency heals with the gift of inner stillness. Be patient and kind with yourself in starting a meditation practice. Remember, this is your unique experience that belongs to no one else. Meditation is the key to insight, healing and breaking unproductive and destructive cycles of repetition…With meditation we reach the mind beyond mind, thought beyond thought–the source of knowing. In deep meditation we experience a vibration of peace…Meditation creates a spaciousness of mind. When we are at peace, even for a few moments, we expand and deepen. (From: Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist: Discovering Your True Self)
Tapping into the healing restorative part of the nervous system, the parasympathetic is a key toward healing and recovering your true self. “All Healing begins by consistently accessing the parasympathetic nervous system. This is a state of letting go as you bathe in physical and psychological security, peace and body and mind grounding. This calm waking state is natural and built into your being. In the parasympathetic you float down a gentle river, letting the waters take you in a direction of their own. You feel receptive to the freedom and ease you’re experiencing. As you consistently visit this state of calm, the healing of psyche, body and mind accumulates and moves forward at a steady pace.” (From: Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist: Discovering Your True Self)
Becoming open to the souls of other individuals is a profound experience of healing and transformation. Meeting a soul, you attune yourself to that person on a spiritual and psychological level. They feel your empathy In this interchange, the souls meet and healing takes place. (From: Recovering and Healing After the Narcissist: Discovering Your True Self)
You deserve to heal, recover, transform your life, manifest your unique creative gifts, develop psychologically and spiritually to the fullest and to live in the beauty, peace, comfort and strength of the true self.
You can read portions of my new book and purchase it at amazon.com
Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D.
Linda always has a way of swooping down at the most critical moments, especially this Father’s Day.
This Father’s Day, when I am so tempted to send the “old man” a clever card with quotes that might jolt his conscience, as he allows his “chosen one” to take him to the cleaners:
“It is easy for a man to seem happy with a woman he doesn’t love.” – Oscar Wilde
“The best way for a woman to keep a man is to bring out the worst in him.” – Oscar Wilde
“Folly is joy to him who lacks sense, But a man of understanding walks straight.” – Proverbs, 15:20.
For over a year I have gone “no contact,” not just with him, but with the sister stricken with Stockholm Syndrome and the “bridezilla” niece who is the narcissist extraordinaire, not being able to decide whether to marry (as she proceeds with her extravagant “wedding” plans) the poor bloat she’s been living with since graduating from college, or —- her lesbian girlfriend. How apolitically correct of me to remove myself from such a situation, or, to be so forthright and honest as to tell the bridezilla niece I am sorry for her “confusion.” Who cares that this guy has given her his heart on his sleeve, the poor fool? She, after all, is the favored one who is in the position of dictating not her morality, but her sexual preference, on the world, not just the poor jerk to whom she may or may not, depending upon her “preference” become espoused.
I, on the other hand, am nothing but ignorant because I do not patronize the liberal Marxist rectitude the “academy” hands down from generation to generation in order to annihilate any religion that defies the supremacy of the academy and science itself. (If Darwin after all, is the answer, from which side of the apes do you descend). Still shoveling myself out from underneath decade upon decade of narcissistic abuse, in which the manure, the compost, the fertilizer, steamed and composted my very being, yet out of its depth the seed still sprouted, and no matter the exigent poverty, while they (father, girlfriend, sister, niece) dine on Prosecco, lobster, martinis, Aruba, England, and lands exotic to satisfy their hunger for fulfillment, off the money my father raked in having played tidily winks with my mother’s will (he filed the one she drew up in 1980, not the one she drew up in 1999) after she died in 2007, leaving me penniless, against her wishes, well, so be it.
I find my way, little by little, step by step, and in the process trust that I will be divinely protected, will not be sent to the gallows by my government as a single, middle aged woman struggling to make a life for myself, and that eventually, the narcissists in our lives will realize their just desserts, full measure, pressed down, and overflowing. If there was nothing else to rely upon, it would be very easy to go completely mad. Yet as the saying goes, “mercy will triumph over justice,” so eventually, the narcissistic perpetrators may be the ones to enter the gates before we do, since that may be the way the cookie crumbles. There are no definite answers, only our own intuition that, we can all only hope, is our inner compass and guiding star. Or as Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their dead. Come with me.” (Matthew 8:22)
I’m really looking forward to ordering Linda’s new book. Each night I find solace in reading the last chapters of her book “Freeing Yourself From The Narcissist In Your Life,” especially in the last chapters where she illustrates the tenacity of the hummingbird whose little wings never tire of the journey.
How blessed we all are, no matter how difficult the journey, even though we’re left with no choice but to weaken and overdraw our checking accounts to buy some food and a little bit of chocolate and a beer! — that the darkness has caused us to search for the light. Sometimes I feel like Lily Bart! (Ever read “The House Of Mirth” by Edith Wharton?)
P.S. Hi to Stan!
Dear STAF
Whatever you have been through or are going through, you have emerged as an excellent writer!! I will keep watching this space for your input.
Dr Linda has remarkable insight and I am going to purchase her book asap.
Does it ever get better on this journey of healing and self discovery, I often ask myself. Just last night I received a sms just before midnight. My NM has forgotten my birthday. No apologies or
sorry she woke me up at that hour. Only all about herself. I have taken the NC route for two years now. I sometimes feel guilty for doing so. But that is the only answer.
All the best and keep on writing.
Carla J
Another great article Linda. You’re doing a great thing here.
J11
Carla,
Blessings to you. And good for you for going NC and staying with it. Not easy, but the longer we hold to our inner truth the healthier we feel. And we are especially vulnerable when we hope to celebrate our birthdays with loved ones who just can’t deliver.
The “journey of self discovery” as you so aptly put it causes us to trod the road less travelled, and that road is full of ups and downs along the way. It becomes so rugged at times that we can’t help but stop in our tracks and wonder where we will find the strength to keep going, and once we find that strength, if we will at last reach that place in the road where the dawn from on high breaks upon us. But we will.
We can’t help but wonder why, as we keep searching for ways to heal and to do things differently, the same issues keep surfacing, most often challenging us to look within at our own self worth. How healing it is to come to understand that no matter who we are, right here and now everything is perfect as it is and we are loved much more than we know.
Ultimately, it is becoming more clear all the time that what is most important is to keep on finding our way back to God — our Higher Power, the source of our strength and true love. This means healing the fear and anxiety our inner child carries with her and learning how to become our own best friend in spite of the damage the narcissists in our lives have caused us. We eventually rethink our capacity for forgiveness, which needs to be on our own terms and when we are ready. That does not mean we go back to our old ways of relating. On the other hand, there is joyful relief when we the day comes that we can wave our hand, say the hell with it, bless those who persecuted us, decide whether or not we need or want to ever see them again, and most importantly, move on with our lives in a way that brings us not just joy, but a divine sense of peace, come what may.
Here is a poem by Victor Hugo that I love to recite when I am feeling too brittle:
“Let us learn like a bird who is ready to take,
sweet rest on a branch that is ready to break.
She feels the branch tremble, yet gaily she sings,
What is it to me? I have wings, I have wings!”