When you are experiencing this abuse, or living in it you can’t clearly see or understand the truth because the abuse distracts/disables you from living in a healthy reality! It also changes or distorts your perspective of life.

From my Book – From Charm to Harm and Everything else in Between with a Narcissist! @http://www.amazon.com

It is almost impossible to list the many damaging effects of emotional and psychological abuse and what it does to a normal, good, and loving person. Among some of the most common reactions to this abuse are overwhelming feelings of loss, helplessness, hopelessness, feeling worthless, confusion, anxiety, depression, exhaustion, fear, isolation, and fear of the here and now. These are extremely overpowering responses to emotional/psychological abuse. When you are experiencing abuse, or living in it you can’t clearly see or understand the truth because the abuse distracts/disables you from living in a healthy reality! It also changes or distorts your perspective of life. I couldn’t see what was happening to me because the abuse distracted me from seeing the truth and the reality of my situation.

 

Abuse, at its very core, is really a horrific and powerful lie, but the sad reality of this abuse is that the lie is the REAL truth, and the truth we believed is the lie. That manipulation of the truth is a revolving and constant thought process directly related to the agenda of the abuser! But once you recognize and accept that there is abuse in your relationship the first powerful transformation takes place and healing begins. But beyond a doubt, it is easier to heal from the abuse if the relationship ends and no/minimal contact begins. I wouldn’t be where I am today as a survivor if I still carried my abuser’s daily manipulative words and sadistic actions on my shoulders and in my mind. Think of recovery as empowering yourself with the REAL truth to now make healthier choices for your well-being and becoming a viable individual again. The world is yours to conquer without all of those horrible monkeys on your back from the abuse.

 

So, the biggest and most distorted lie starts with the Narcissist being profoundly charming, caring and loving. They are doing this because it serves them or you have something they want which can lead to the huge ‘love bombing’ lie. The rest of the lies appear quite openly when the Narcissist’s mask slips and suddenly, they become totally unreliable and negative about everything YOU. Promises mean nothing, that amazing love means nothing, friendship means nothing AND all because there was NOTHING there to begin with! That is the basis of this abuse or the disabling lies at every level of the relationship as well as the Narcissist’s phony façade! EVERYTHING is a lie to support that façade!

 

Through the course of the abuse you were targeted by many ‘attacks’ be it blatant and ugly assertions or accusations about you that completely made you lose your balance (like you are having an affair) or simpler ones to just consistently rattle you or undermine your well-being and catch you off guard. Then there can be the accusations designed to make you feel guilty not for something you are doing, but something you are NOT doing. These arguments make you feel obligated and reduce you to feeling GUILTY. That is the Narcissist being a martyr with embellishments that insist you don’t love them anymore, etc. These can be used to cover their backsides when accountability comes into question like where they were the night before. They guilt you to divert from the truth by saying that they can’t believe you would accuse them of something so horrific. You feel the desperate need to reassure them that you do love them, and you are so sorry and then try to make the Narcissist feel good. The Narcissist killed two birds with one stone, got away with some horrendous betrayal and had YOU apologizing to them. The bottom line is that you are always explaining yourself and reacting to the Narcissists many attempts to keep you under their control.

 

All of these situations are just variations of manipulative lies that distort your reality. When it comes to the raging attacks, that is angry projection though or the bully Narcissist. The Narcissist is deliberately attacking you with the objective of achieving CONTROL through fear and anger or basically maneuvering you into a conflict situation. The Narcissist wants to create an argument but also wants to be able to blame you for it afterwards. None of this is based on any sort of reality as it concerns you or something you have done and usually something the Narcissist has done to dump their shame onto you through projection. Again, the agenda is always about managing you down in some form or fashion!

 

After this relationship ends there will be psychological, emotional, as well as personal issues that you will have to deal with. This abuse is not just about the horrendous things your abuser did to you because that is now the past and the abusive aspect. What you are having to face are the things that you unfortunately allowed to happen that have changed many of your perspectives concerning your belief system, thought processes, your worth, your mind and your heart. Now hear me out that this is not saying you accepted the abuse, you adapted in a damaging way to become functional where there was no real function for you in this relationship because it was a desperate love that you were conditioned into believing you didn’t deserve because there was something wrong with YOU! The abuse manipulated you and managed you down in such a manner that it basically brain-washed you as well as traumatized you in the process of trying to achieve a cohesive or loving relationship. You were reacting to the fear of loss that was imposed on you to conform or be forced out by the Narcissist. It doesn’t define you as weak, a fool, dumb or any of the above it is just a fact of what this abuse does. With all of that said what we are left with is a deep inner introspection we have to deal with or the process of becoming healthy again. The important thing here is what you will come to realize is that you have the ability to change and move forward after this abuse. Please trust me on this.

 

There are many internal messages that the abuse has imprinted on your mind and those messages are what are making you feel worthless, the problem, perhaps believing you have mental health issues, and many more things that are basically disabling your perception or the healthy reality you once had. These certain changes that took take place over the course of the abuse must be undone so you can become the person that you want to be, or the person you were before the abuse. The journey HAS to start with no/minimal contact. Greg