I’d long since stopped caring too much about my own disappointment, yet I’ve been almost pathologically concerned with not disappointing other people. That was what I had learned to do. That is what you do learn to do when you are in an abusive relationship and you get disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. Since you can’t stop the disappointments happening, you learn not to feel the pain. You make yourself go numb to it. That was what I had done.
Our children don’t need us to be perfect. Yes, they need us to be good enough, but they are generally prepared to set the bar far lower than we might do for ourselves. They are more likely to judge us by our intentions than our results, provided we are honest and respectful with them.
We’d all like to be the ultimate authority on how best to live our own life. All too often we’re not; either because we have no ‘surrogates’ – by which I mean useful examples of people in successful relationships whom we can learn from – or because we have moronic surrogates, like Hollywood movies. It’s all too easy to get disoriented by feelings, emotions and self-doubt. ‘Life’ can be complicated sometimes.
Most times when we find life too complicated it is because we overlook the obvious, unpalatable truths.
The one simple law that holds for everyone is this: it can be as easy for you as it is for anyone else. You just have to believe it.
Characteristics translate into behaviours. They are learned and can be unlearned. The essence of the individual, their character or nature in other words, may be eclipsed by those characteristics for months, years or even decades, but it endures.
Clear the characteristics – and let there be no doubt, you can clear away those characteristics – and your true character and nature will emerge, tempered, refined and strengthened by your experience.
Negative feelings are invisible and intangible so their power cannot be proved. In fact, the sole proof of their existence lies in our response to them; which is, of course, the only thing that we have the power to change. Because we have the power to choose our reaction.
I don’t know where most of you are on your journey to wholeness and self-worth. I do know, from my own experience, that recovery is a cocktail that you mix for yourself. The basic ingredients remain constant. The rest are a ‘mix and match’ selection that you add yourself.
Once you start to realize that you can always get a lot of what you want – if you only ask in the right place – you’ll begin to want more and ask for more. So your vision will expand and when your vision expands your life will also.
Whenever I talk to abused women I invariably hear two versions of who they are. There is the negative one, which has become as familiar, as much a part of them, as an old smelly trainer. And there is the realistic one; the account of their qualities that they recite, but don’t dare to internalize and believe.
‘They’ never told you, because they didn’t know. It is the degree of widespread ignorance in our society about mental abuse that allows it to go on happening. Not only do they not know, but they don’t have an inkling that they don’t know.
F. was understandably devastated by the breakdown of her relationship. She also felt incredibly foolish. In fact, she had never been stupid, or blind. She had not seen and had not known what made her partner a bad choice, because she had not been taught what to look for.
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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