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If you are healing from a trauma or emotional abuse, welcome to my blog today. This blog post is about what to expect the first three months after going no contact or getting away from an emotionally abusive person, group, or situation. If you missed the first few posts about the first day, first week, and first month, you can find them under the Wellbeing with Live Lovely category of my blog under the Lifestyle tab at the top of this page. I am not a professional therapist, nor can I give out advice that will work or be relatable to everyone. I’m sharing these posts as a way to bring attention to emotional abuse, specifically narcissistic abuse, and to help others like myself find the resources to heal and to thrive after leaving a toxic situation or person. When we own our stores and share them with others, it feels very raw, but our stories have the power to help others in similar situations. It is my hope that by sharing my experience I can help someone else in their healing journey. The first section of this post is a repeat of information featured in my first few posts of the series, so if you have read it all already, please skip over to the start of the post below.
I’m hoping that by sharing my own experiences that others in my shoes may feel less alone and know that there is healing moving forward. I cannot tell you what to do for yourself or what will heal you, but I can share resources that will point you in the right direction. If you are here after reading my first two posts, I hope that the beginning of your healing journey is giving you peace and clarity. We’re well on our way to living happier and healthier lives again. It is in reach. Before we begin, I will restate a few key points. If you have read this all before, skip ahead to the post below.
I hope that you’re feeling safe and secure right now and that this blog serves as an emotionally safe place for you. This post is written for anyone who has had to or is planning to go no contact with an emotionally abusive family, family member, co-worker, boss, friend, or partner, however, it is written from the perspective of someone who has been scapegoated by a narcissistic family unit and has had to walk away. No matter the emotional abuse, our bodies react in similar ways with adrenal fatigue, anxiety, and depression. Some of us may even experience complex post traumatic stress. Every person’s experience is different and your feelings are valid. I hope that this blog post can bring you some peace during your first few months away.
If you need help, please speak to a professional therapist, social worker, or the police if you are in psychical danger. I am not a trained professional, simply someone who has been through numerous complex traumas in childhood and early adulthood. Because I am not a professional, I am not giving out professional advice and my posts are not a replacement for real therapy or help. I have had therapy myself and highly recommend it. Instead, I am here to offer my own personal experience and share the wisdom I have learned after escaping an emotionally abusive situation.
Healing Steps for the first three months:
Day One
Remove yourself from the toxic person/situation.
Find a safe place.
The first week
Stay no contact.
Practice self-care.
Come up with a plan for your next month.
Research what emotional and narcissistic abuse and personalities are.
Cut out toxic flying monkeys.
The first month
Practice self-care.
Stay no contact.
Practice acceptance.
Practice self-compassion.
Stop ruminating over the past.
Take care of your grief.
Begin to re-build your self-esteem.
Create better boundaries.
This is a recap of what the first day, week, and month looks like and the healing work that goes into it. The first three months are much the same. You might still be feeling intense emotions or a roller coaster of grief, sadness, anger, and anxiety. Maybe you’re still ruminating or maybe you’re feeling better at this stage. Although many people are on their way to recovering from emotional abuse at this stage of no contact, just as many are still suffering from depression, anxiety, and so much more. And that is ok too. Everyone’s trauma and reaction to their trauma is going to be different. You need to be self-compassionate at this stage and recognize that you are in a lot of pain, that it is natural to feel what you are feeling after what you have been through, and that there is no deadline on a healing journey. Please do not ignore your feelings or lock them away. You need to be able to process your experience in order to heal.
Depending on the nature and duration of your relationship healing your inner wounds will look different for each person. In my experience, going no contact with someone who was at least in the past, a step-mother and like a mother to me and who I knew most of my life, the healing journey is ongoing. The situation also involved other family members including siblings. When I went no contact, it brought out the darker sides to other family members who wanted to enable and continue the abuse. When the toxic and abusive person in your life was a family member who should have loved you unconditionally and treated you with respect and kindness, it may harm you in different ways than the loss of a childhood friend, a co-worker, or a romantic partner. When the toxic abuse begins in childhood it shapes us differently and grooms us for more toxic abuse in adulthood. It is possible that the toxic relationships from you r family have created a cycle where you have gotten into toxic situations as an adult with your job, friendships, or romantic partners.
Identify and Heal Your Inner Wounds
Your task for the first three months will be to continue all of the healing work you have already started, but to now delve deeper into healing the wounds that made us so easy to harm in the first place. This is not your fault. However, knowing the reasons to why we react to abusive behavior the way that we do can empower us to prevent being ensnared by these toxic people in the future. It will also help us learn to stand up for ourselves. We want to break the cycle of abuse. First, you need to identify what in you needs to be healed to break this cycle. When someone is emotionally abusive and you have endured their abuse, there is a deeper reason why you let it continue instead of leaving earlier. You may have felt that you are unlovable, deserved the mistreatment, or felt inadequate in some way. An abusive person will study your weaknesses so that they can use them against you. With family we are often told we should always forgive and forget, but this actually teaches us that our feelings are not important and that our mental health and lives are not important. It normalizes and excuses abuse. When we grow up this way, we are taught to push back our feelings and endure it. This makes us too tolerant to abuse by other people in adulthood. What in your past has made you so tolerant of abusive behavior now?
There are two types of unhealthy people; those who take advantage and harm others and those who have learned to be helpless and endure abuse. A healthy person would not seek to emotionally or physically harm anyone else. Likewise, an emotionally healthy person would also not allow another person to mistreat them continuously. So our goal the first three months after going no contact is to heal this part of ourselves so that we can feel better again and so that we can prevent a repeat of finding attachment with a toxic person in the future. There is a lot of self-esteem building that goes into this. You want to be healthy so that you attract more healthy people in your life, but most importantly so that we can feel strong and healthy on our own without being dependent on others for our happiness. This will be your ultimate shield against narcissists and other toxic people.
Healing Your Inner Child
This part of the blog post is for those who have suffered emotional wounds as children. When we’re growing up we are vulnerable to those around us. Bullying at school can cause many wounds, but it is even worse when the bully is at home, especially coming from the people that are supposed to love, support, and encourage us. Abuse in any form from neglect to verbal abuse to physical abuse will leave a lasting mark.
A note from my personal experience; I believed that I was fine. I managed to graduate from high school and put myself through college. I “got away,” and was doing ok. I didn’t know how to do most adulting tasks like get a car loan or cook a holiday meal, but I felt I was doing ok. Sure, I knew I was behind on a few things and I recognized that I was a little behind in certain areas, but everyone who knew where I was coming from was always amazed by how well spoken I was, by the fact that I had a college degree and started my own business out of school, and that I managed to live a healthy drug and alcohol-free life. To the outside world, I was an outlier. I recognize that I am actually doing much better in some ways, but I didn’t realize how much my mother wound ran deep. I normalized the abuse I endured as “not being that bad.” I gaslighted myself into believing that it wasn’t as bad as it could have been because to recognize the truth was just too painful. And others in the family unit would diminish it to absolve guilt. When bringing up the past, I learned that most people pretended nothing happened or that I was just exaggerating.
I love my mom, but she was not a healthy parent. She was an alcoholic and allowed her abusive boyfriend to harm me and my brother as a child. She was drunk every day and said cruel things. She even tried to kill herself in front of me several times. I often parented my mother and my younger sibling. When I did really well in something she would put it down to me, but brag about it to anyone who would listen. She triangulated my brother and I. But there was someone who I thought was the ideal mother. She was my half-sibling’s mother and I knew her from a very young age. In comparison to my mother, she seemed like a mother from a Hallmark movie. She was highly educated and very active in the community. She appeared perfect in every way from the way she looked and presented herself to her job and her always knowing better. Even though she was my father’s ex-girlfriend, I referred to her as my stop-mom. She gave me a lot of positive attention when I was there, but I also now realize that I was ignored most of the time, but given attention at times to draw my adoration. When I was in college I was homeless the summer before senior year and she let me stay at her home. The entire time she received adoration from acquaintances for taking me in. It was all a part of her public persona as the compassionate activist that does so much for everyone else. It was all fake and I fell for it. When someone showed me kindness, I tended to believe them, not understand how people could use kind actions or words to manipulate someone.
Looking back I now know that having my adoration gave her what she needed, that I was just another pawn in her game. I had become narcissistic supply. We actually weren’t close when I was a kid and she wasn’t there for me in any way, but I fooled myself into thinking I belonged there and that she cared for me. Maybe when I was very small she did in some way. As a kid, her quiet and peaceful home seemed like a movie and it was a break from a crazy home life with my mom and her boyfriend. Compared to the chaos I grew up with, her cool exterior was easy to fall for. As an adult I tried to feel like I was a part of her family. She played the part very well. I wanted her approval and to be included in family events and holidays, but she was always too busy or I was being too needy when wanting to visit her and my sibling. But sometimes I was invited along and it felt amazing. In order to see my younger sibling I had to play by her rules. She was the gatekeeper and all communication to my sister was through her terms. After moving closer to home in my mid twenties, a real relationship started to form. Her and my father were not together, but she wanted them to be. Our relationship grew extremely close. All of a sudden she was introducing me to people as her “oldest daughter” and I was invited over for other events than just Christmas Eve dinner. The fact that none of her friends had ever heard of me was telling. The fact that most of my younger sister’s friends had never heard of me was telling too. She took me to the theater in the city for my birthday. She started texting me that she loved me. I felt like I had a parent that really cared for me. And then my father became single again and she asked him out. But he rejected her.
The craziness that happened could fill up hundreds of blog posts so I’ll keep it brief at this point. Things started to change. Suddenly, she told my younger sibling that she didn’t have to speak with our father ever again. And this is exactly what she said, as the three of us were together in a Starbucks that day. I started to notice how she always used my younger sibling as a pawn to make my dad do what she wanted. He was punished when he disagreed. She tried turning me against him. All of a sudden I was either with her or against her. She made crazy accusations against my father, things that had never actually happened. I suddenly became accused of “betraying the family” and much worse when I didn’t believe her ever changing story. When I started questioning the wild accusations she started to throw, I became a family enemy. I went from being narcissistic supply to being the family scapegoat. I was constantly love bombed, blamed, mobbed, then hovered and baited back just to be blamed and accused all over again. Her stories about other family members kept changing and growing. I was being blamed for every bad decision my sibling made and being accused of wild things myself. I found myself in the new role as the family scapegoat, a role that I hadn’t realized she had assigned to my brother many years before me. She actually made a trip across the country uninvited to befriend my brother after not speaking to him for many years to get him on her side after I started questioning her motives. My brother has always seen through her and he stood up for me.
She became excessively controlling. She would ignore me for months at a time, just as she used to, but this time as punishment. I accepted the silent treatment painfully, but when I stopped trying I started to receive weekly then daily harassing text messages and voicemails. I endured this abuse for two very long and desperate years doing everything in my power to “fix things” and re-win her love and approval, most often by constantly apologizing for things I didn’t even do. Truthfully, the abuse had started small when I was just a kid, but as a kid I was more useful and easily manipulated, I just hadn’t realized it until I saw a therapist and discovered what narcissism personality disorder was. I realized that the reason why I was feeling bad all the time and less than after visiting her was because she was manipulating me to feel that way. She was putting me down with “helpful” criticism. My intelligence, hobbies, and interests were always being put down and called into question.
My inner wounds in this case are numerous; my inner child wound the biggest of all. I wanted so desperately to have a “healthy” and loving parent relationship that I allowed myself to be mistreated by someone who presented herself as the perfect parent in my adulthood, but ended up being the most abusive of all. I unmasked a covert narcissist and at the time I had no idea what that even was or what it meant for me. My own mother, for all of her failings as a parent, did something this fake mother never could; she loves me unconditionally. And while I’m still hurt over the events of my childhood with my alcoholic mother, I know that my mother does love me no matter what. And that is a healing realization to have. We have managed to keep a peaceful relationship in my adulthood and I am thankful to have her.
The Impact of Emotional Abuse and Gaslighting
This fake toxic step-mother in my life was always putting me down, even from a very young age. I would share about something I was interested in and it was questioned, doubted, and put down every single time. Every opinion was ripped apart. One small example; one time I was asked to help my sibling interpret a poem for school. I explained the meaning just as she had asked. but she immediately told me that I didn’t know enough about poetry to understand the poem. I told her that I did in fact study poetry and that poetry was one of my favorite things to read and that I knew the poem well. Why ask me in the first place if she actually thought I knew nothing of poetry? She kept insisting that I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to understand the poem until I stopped defending myself. I accepted that I was wrong because I gave up standing up for myself. I didn’t want to be in a silly disagreement over the interpretation of a poem. I researched the poem later that night and my analysis had been correct. How easily I gave up every time my opinions or thoughts were shared, even when I was right. How easily I let her convince me I was wrong. It sounds silly and small, but every conversation went this way. Take for example, my love of the movie Singing In The Rain.
I once mentioned how amazing I thought it was that a musical was made using classic songs. The entire musical was made of a collection of classic songs from older films. She told me I was wrong and that all the songs were written just for the movie. I know that is not true because I know classic films and the history of this film in particular, but she kept telling me I was wrong with so much conviction that I started questioning if I was wrong. (That is the gaslighting coming into effect.) But I did know that the song Singing in the Rain appeared many years earlier and was sung by Judy Garland, one of my favorite actresses. She told me that I was wrong, Debbie Reynolds was the first to sing it. I insisted that Judy Garland sang it years before with Mickey Rooney. She kept telling me that I was wrong and did not know what I was talking about until I gave in. And that wasn’t enough. I had to agree with her and tell her I was wrong to end the conversation. She almost convinced me that I was misguided. But I was right. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney had sung it together in a film many years before. These are small every day examples, but can you imagine a lifetime of having all of your conversations end this way? I stopped speaking up about anything. When I was planning my own wedding I was constantly told I knew nothing about the wedding industry, even though I happen to be a professional wedding photographer. I had to always give up because I was never allowed to be right. So when the big things came up, such as horrendous accusations against myself, I didn’t stand a chance.
My inner child wound of not feeling smart enough let me be constantly put down and questioned by her. I let go most of these moments because they seemed insignificant, but when everything you say is constantly rebuffed and questioned, especially when you are in the right, you learn to question yourself and to stop speaking up. I had to identify this inner wound in order to heal it. The inner wound was feeling insignificant, not feeling very bright, and not trusting myself. It was low self-esteem. I had to put in the work to recognize that I am smarter than I believed and trust myself enough to know that I do know what I am talking about.
She was emboldened by years of getting away with this behavior and it escalated in adulthood. In her vindictiveness to get back at my father she even tried to gaslight me into believing that my father abused me as a small child when he did not. When I told her that he didn’t, she said that I was just too young to remember, which is especially crazy because she did not know me or my father when I was very young. The more I disagreed and actually stood my ground, the more she kept trying to manipulate me and became angry when I told her she was wrong. She continued to try to manipulate my reality of my own life. That was one of the final straws.
And that is the power of gaslighting. It makes us question our now beliefs and our own experiences. Gaslighting makes us question our own reality. Sometimes to the point where we find ourselves believing their version of events that are so off from reality. I realized in that moment how far it had escalated and I wasn’t going to allow it to continue. In the first three months of going no contact, overcoming gaslighting has been one of the largest obstacles I have encountered and it may be the same for you. If you find yourself doubting your reactions or decision to go no contact, if you feel strong feelings of guilt or shame, or find yourself thinking “maybe it wasn’t that bad,” then you have been the victim of gaslighting. It is now your job to accept your reality, especially the things we wish had not happened or that we could change. We need to accept it head on and recognize all that has happened in order to heal from it. It is hard to believe that the people we loved or cared about could harm us in this way. It is hard to think of these people as being manipulative or calculative because we ourselves do not think this way. It is time to stop projecting our goodness onto these toxic people and allow them to project their cruelty onto us.
To do this, I highly recommend writing down everything that has happened. You need to tell your side of the story, the entire story. Don’t leave out any of the details. This isn’t to share with anyone. You don’t even have to keep it. In fact, it may even feel good destroying it when you are done. But you have to face the facts straight on. Until you do, you will constantly be questioning your choice to go no contact and feel guilt about it. You might also waver on your decision and go back to the abuse.
Learning To Love Yourself
Now that you have identified what you need to heal, you need to learn to love yourself. With self-acceptance and compassion, we can learn to love ourself and to heal our self-esteem. The first three months are the most difficult, and we may find ourselves putting in the work for another three months or even a year or more. The important part is to keep up your inner work and to remain no contact so you can heal your life.
To recap, the first three months your focus should now be on:
Identify your inner wounds.
Work on healing your inner wounds to break the cycle from repeating.
Understand what gaslighting is and how it has been used against you.
Overcome gaslighting and manipulation by reasserting your reality.
Recognize that this was not your fault.
Accept yourself and what happened so you can grown your self-esteem.
Learn to love yourself.
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