I’ve always found that misery begets more misery. Focusing on what you don’t want has an unfortunate but predictable habit of drawing more of the same into your orbit. Focusing on something different, however modest that something may be, has the effect of producing a different, and better, result.
The greatest, possibly the only real power we have in life is over what goes on in our own head. My Inner Sh**bag behaviour, I realised, was once upon a time the best – if not the only – strategy available to a very disempowered woman. I am not that woman any more. Nor do I wish to resort to those behaviours again. Ever.
in the last couple of weeks I have done two things differently. First, I have stayed with my fears – not just my fears regarding the house – and I have accepted the worst case scenario. Strange to say, it’s a curiously liberating process. Second, I visualized the house selling, and the buyers have turned up and the whole process is going ahead very much in the way that I visualized it happening.
Never underestimate the abusive intelligence. It is geared to break your spirit and your dreams. An abuser carefully programs into you the belief that you cannot have the things that are available to others – except through him. We all know that script. Reduced to its essence it goes essentially: ‘without me, you will be an outcast. You’ll eke out a wretched existence in a cave somewhere, coated in mud, dressed in rags, scratching around in the dry earth for roots to eat.”
What holds most people back is that they do not have a clear, irresistible picture of what they want for themselves. Everybody, pretty much, knows they should have goals and dreams and they do their level best to come up with some. But maybe nobody ever told them that they have the right to explore and choose what makes their heart sing.
If you focus on our capacity for unhappiness and pain, then that is what you will experience most in your life. If you focus on your strength, your courage, your capacity for love, your humanity and your potential, then that is what you will register. These things may be driven underground in an abusive relationship, but they are never lost. They remain as seeds beneath the snow.
The truth is that for many of us compromising on the partner we truly want and need has been all but soul-destroying.
We all make the best decisions we can at the time, for the best reasons we have at the time. Whatever decision we make requires tremendous courage. There are no easy options in an abusive relationship. The question is: how can you best protect yourself from further psychological damage?
Yvette is desperate to manage a dysfunctional situation and remain in control of her life. Her dilemma is this: if her partner’s behaviours are unacceptable then she is vindicated… but powerless. Because they are not going to change. If her attitude is to blame, then she is, clearly, losing her grip on the situation but, theoretically at least, she has the power to improve things.
Women in an abusive relationship don’t lose all hope, they just invest it in the wrong place. Actually, hope is one of the great motivators. It’s only misplaced hope that is futile.
Over the next 5 days, I'll send you some lessons and tips that I've found have really helped women to heal from narcissistic abuse. Starting with the basics.
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