Closure Letter to a Narcissist + Burn & Release Ceremony

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The reality, when you’re dealing with a narcissist, is that they have zero capacity to self-reflect and take responsibility for their behaviour.

What this amounts to is someone who will masterfully project their own shortcomings and unhealed wounds straight back onto you, without even breaking eye contact.

When you break up with a narcissist or walk away from them in any capacity, you will never get any closure. It’s the nature of the beast.

However, you can still say all of the things to the narcissist that you wish you could verbalise to their face. The only difference is that you’ll be writing it down instead of speaking to them for real.

What you decide to do with your goodbye letter to a narcissist is totally up to you. You might want to scrunch it up and throw it in the trash or tuck it away in a long-forgotten box.

My personal favourite is to do a burn and release ceremony. Whichever way you go, it’s extremely healing to give yourself the closure, which you’ll never, ever receive from a narcissist.

Here’s my closure letter to a narcissist ex.

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My Closure Letter to a Narcissist

To the Narcissist Who Shattered Me into a Million Pieces,

You came into my young life when I was in such a low place. We had loads of fun together and it was amazing to finally have someone who truly saw me. We’d while the nights away having sex and talking into the wee hours of the morning. It felt like we were really connecting on a deeper level. Then when we weren’t together, you were messaging or calling me for more conversation.

Little did I know that you were studying me as I spilled all of my deepest darkest secrets, insecurities, hopes and disappointments. In hindsight, you were very quiet, not really saying too much and letting me do most of the talking. I now know that you were cataloguing my precious wounds for later use and abuse.

“What I mistook for attentiveness was merely data collection.”

Being raised by a narcissistic parent meant that I was already a codependent people-pleaser with low self-worth. I was pre-primed to accept gaslighting, devaluation, silent treatment and other forms of narcissistic abuse as though they were a regular part of any relationship.

You must have been rubbing your hands together in glee!

Not only did I spend twenty years accepting your emotional battery, but I even defended it to myself and to others who noticed it along the way. It’s not that I enjoyed your behaviour, it’s just that it was so familiar to me.

It breaks my heart to think that I actually believed many of your put-downs and harsh words. Whenever there was a problem within the relationship, you would project your own unhealed wounds onto me and I would take them on as my own. You actually had me believing that I was the one who had issues with intimacy and control!

As the years rolled on, I took on more and more of your trauma, thinking that I was a broken person who should be so lucky to have anyone at all.

Every time you flew into a rage about something not going your way, I’d stand beside you and funnel copious amounts of energy into you. Yet not once did you ever acknowledge how much relief you gained. It just became the expected norm that when you had a tantrum I was required to come running and make you feel better. Heaven forbid if I didn’t respond to your outbursts!

Yet, I’d still rationalise your behaviour because the reality was that I wasn’t ready to see the truth myself. The truth, which I’d known deep inside for the longest time and wasn’t yet ready to acknowledge. That you were an abusive husband who sucked me dry and who at times I actually hated.

I knew it wasn’t just me experiencing the shutdown as a result of your narcissistic ways. It became evident within the kids as they grew from babies to toddlers and then into their school years.

The way they’d stop talking when you walked into the room or how they’d dim their light, just to stay small and remain unnoticed in order to stay safe.

Things really hit home when our youngest child angrily said to me one day, “Dad’s a bully!”

As a mum, I knew that by staying with you, I was teaching our kids that your abuse was okay. My biggest fear was that they would go on to either become abusive themselves or get stuck with their own abusive partners, further perpetuating the cycle.

I remember our first anniversary as a couple was treated as a complete non-event to you since the love bombing phase had well and truly ceased. However, you did manage to belittle me in front of your friend and slip in a brag about a girl you used to sleep with, just to drive home how unimportant I was to you.

So, why did I stay beyond that first year when I was already so miserable and unhappy with you? The answer is simple. I had nowhere else to go and my self-worth was so dismally low that I actually thought my life consisted of you or no one.

“Might as well make the best of a crappy situation,” I’d tell myself.

Oh, how I wish I could go back to my 22-year-old self and have a great, big, loving chat with her!

Beyond the shitty first anniversary, which was a waving red flag, there were all of the other special occasions that you totally ruined. I’ll never forget how devastated I was on my first Mother’s Day, which you ‘forgot’ and ignored even though the birth wounds were literally still fresh! Any other day that wasn’t about you was always destroyed by you with rage, devaluation, cruelty and disregard.

Slowly, as the years crept on, I knew I wasn’t happy inside, yet I still stayed.

By that point the trauma bond was so deep, not that I even knew of that term until after I’d finally escaped you. But I was fully aware of how loyal I felt to someone who I actually despised half the time. I’d known for the entirety of the relationship that I’d settled too soon and too young with someone who I wasn’t even attracted to, much less loved with all of my heart.

I knew that you were more than happy with the workings of our relationship, whereby I always acquiesced to your needs, while totally forgoing my own.

I knew you’d never leave me because you had it too easy. Plus, with your laziness and disowned low self-worth, you couldn’t be bothered looking for a new supply (typical covert narcissist).

All along I thought your behaviour was unconscious. It’s incredible how often I would reason away your despicable words and actions.

“He doesn’t mean it.”

“He’s just had a bad day.”

“I won’t poke the bear and hopefully he’ll calm down.”

“Maybe when we achieve [insert future goal], he’ll be less stressed and more caring and affectionate.”

So, dear narcissist, I know that you’re never actually going to read my closure letter and if you did you’d just deny, gaslight and then turn around and accuse me of being the narcissist.

Because that’s what you do. You spew your garbage onto those around you in order to protect yourself from the fact that you’re just as flawed as the rest of us. In fact, I’d even go as far as to say you’re even more fucked up than the rest of us.

And that’s okay. Because you don’t exist in my world any more. I’m finally free of you plugging into me and helping yourself to my life force energy.

In fact, I could even thank you for highlighting all of my deepest wounds. It has allowed me to acknowledge and shift them out of my own consciousness so that I can transcend your lower realm. But I won’t, because that would just feed you more supply.

The icing on the cake is that you are completely irrelevant to me now. If I was still playing your game, that would mean that I’ve won. But the real winning comes in stepping off your game board and following my own true path filled with authenticity, unconditional love and being my own source of all the things.

My light effectively extinguishes you because you love to sit in the darkness.

Goodbye narcissist and good riddance.

From,

~ The Ex Who Eclipsed You and Set Themselves Free

READ: Letter From a Narcissist →

Write Your Own Goodbye Letter to a Narcissist

The thing is, you will never, ever get closure from a narcissist. They will withhold it from you, much like they withheld everything else that meant anything to you in the relationship.

If you were to put any of these questions to the narcissist or plead with them to give you some sense of closure, you’d only be playing into their hands.

Your attention and need for them would only serve to make them feel extremely important and powerful at being able to control your emotions in such a heavy way.

The narcissist lacks empathy and a conscience, so seeing you crying or suffering will never pull at their heartstrings. It will simply inflate their ego and give them more control over you.

READ: Zero Closure with a Narcissist →

However, closure is an important part of the healing process. When it comes to closure from a narcissist, we need to stop waiting to obtain it from them and give it to ourselves instead.

One very healing way to help cut the tie is to write your own closure letter to a narcissist.

I understand that there could be a lot of fear about someone else reading your letter. You may even be worried that the narcissist may actually stumble across your letter, which could be catastrophic!

That’s why I recommend writing a closure letter to a narcissist and then performing a burn and release ceremony.

This way, you can be as emotional, raw and brutally honest as your heart needs to be, then you can burn the letter so that it remains confidential.

Perform a Burn and Release Ceremony

Writing an honest letter to someone and burning it (rather than mailing it to them) is not only remedial, it actually has a metaphysical purpose as well.

When we set the intention to release the pain as we burn the letter, we allow all of the associated energy within ourselves to be released back to the universe for evaporation.

You can tailor the ceremony to whatever best resonates with you. Feel free to add in extra elements as you wish.

A burn and release is even more powerful on a full moon for clearing what no longer serves you. As more wounds arise, you might even decide to do a burn and release on every full moon until the trauma shifts for good.

If you’re ready to energetically say all of the things to the narcissist, which you know you can never safely do in reality, it might be time to write a closure letter to the narcissist.

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