In an abusive relationship your heart is systematically trashed and vilified. You walk, or limp away feeling that your heart is worthless because that is the way it has been treated.
And so you put your trust in your head. Because your head must be clear and rational, must it not? That is what heads are meant to be, after all.
Yet your head will not lead you out of the impasse. Such wisdom as you hold in your head stops at the jaw bone or the neck.
The dire predictions my abusive partner made for and about me were all completely wrong. (Somehow it took me the longest time to realize that he had no talent at all for predicting the future.) As a general rule, people who make a point of predicting your future are utterly useless at it.
The dire predictions I made proved wrong. We base our predictions for the future on the past. If you choose to stay in an abusive relationship, then of course all you can expect is more of the same. But once you start the process of change by leaving it, you create a climate in which everything can change, generally for the better.
It’s a myth that you need courage before you can make big changes in your life. You don’t need courage at all. You just need to heed that small inner voice and take the small steps that you can, bearing in mind that all roads will lead you somewhere other than where you are stuck right now.
Many women, including me at one time, carry a map of their journey that goes something like this: there was – or should have been a time – of peace and joy, a kind of earthly paradise. You were cast out of it by a bad relationship, or a whole series of them. The journey is actually time spent wandering directionless through the wilderness.
I am well aware that for some people it may sound daft to enter into a dialogue with yourself, and ask yourself questions to which the habitual, emotionally battered you does not have good answers. But that is only one part of you, the part that has been shaped by your negative experiences. It is by no means the only part of you. You too are endowed with the human spirit that has miraculous powers of healing and regeneration.
Abused women are so anxious to get their needs and wants met that they fall over themselves backwards to meet all of their partner’s needs and wants. (There is no point in suggesting that they try to get boundaries respected, because they don’t even know where they might like to put a boundary.) Underpinning this anxiety to please is the misguided hope that it is their partner’s turn first and then it will be theirs. Unfortunately, it’s like giving a small child a much desired toy ahead of his or her little friends and hoping that after a reasonable period of time he, or she will say: “Ok, I’ve had my turn. You can have it now.” It just doesn’t work like that.
We become fixated on our partner’s potential – and of course he has potential, whatever we mean by that word. If he hadn’t had potential why on earth would we have bothered in the first place. Few of us have a robust enough sense of self, or are that crazy that we choose to have a relationship with someone we feel has less to recommend him than the average cockroach.
The ‘l’ word – love – sanctions everything. ‘Love conquers everything’; ‘love means never having to say you’re sorry’; love gives rise to any number of justifications, feeble excuses, lame hopes. I’ve certainly been there, done that and worn the T shirt. Then one day I got the point and burned the T shirt.
Love is… a feeling you have for and about another person. That other person may say that they love you too. Does that mean that your love is reciprocated?
What you believe is what you get. It’s the old story that what you focus on increases or becomes more present. It’s like the way you really notice teenage boys when you are a teenage girl and then when you get older and have different interests, they become invisible. I believed my entitlement was a bad relationship, and I got it.
Not everyone who experiences fear, inadequacy and rage goes on to perpetrate acts of violence. It is a choice. In the area of mass psychology issues may become blurred. But certainly in the individual sphere it is always a choice.
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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