Ending a relationship with a narcissist is one of the hardest things any survivor should have to endure. Whether you left the narcissist or they discarded you, it matters not. The trauma that you’re left with is equally intense, and the aftermath is always a shit-storm.
Narcissists never let their victims go easily and will often perpetuate the abuse long after the relationship has ended. To them, if you were once a valuable source of supply, you will always be expected to hand over your life force energy whenever they demand it.
No doubt you’ve experienced some or all of the following:
- The narcissist trying to hoover you back into their abusive cycle
- Further gaslighting, baiting, word salads and manipulations
- Devastating smear campaigns and having your good name dragged through the mud
- Damaging lies
- Having to watch the narcissist move on with their new supply, while totally nullifying your very existence
- Turning your friends and family against you
The real damage of narcissistic abuse actually hits after you’ve been discarded or have to flee for your own safety and survival.
Every single day, you find yourself battling with anxiety and C-PTSD from the relationship itself. Then there’s the lack of closure, being totally disregarded, realising that they never actually loved you and a million other unanswered questions.
To rub further salt into the wound, which is the narcissist’s specialty, they will continue to harass, threaten, coerce and manipulate you even after the relationship has ended.
They’ll be sending you messages, ringing your phone, driving by or showing up at your house unannounced. They will be using social media to effortlessly trigger you, while still coming across as a ‘nice guy/ girl’ or ‘the poor victim’ to keep up their public image.
The triggers will be coming thick and fast.
It’s all you can do to hold your shit together and survive the bare minimum of what is required of each day.
Then, all of a sudden, the narcissist leaves you alone.
Just like that, they’ve gone from an all-consuming, obsessed ex, in the most toxic of ways, to radio silence.
Where does that leave you?
You would think you’d be jumping for joy and clinking cocktails with your friends in celebration of your newfound freedom. However, when there is deep trauma and abuse involved, things aren’t so black and white.
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When the Narcissist Leaves You Alone
It’s totally normal, when a narcissist leaves you alone, to yearn for them and feel extremely empty once they are gone. Even though it’s exactly what you’ve been wishing for, when it finally happens, it can come as a blow.
This is when you can easily forget about all of the abuse that the narcissist inflicted upon you, while your mind selectively highlights many of the good times that you had instead.
It’s easy to slip into thoughts of, “Were they really that bad? Maybe I’ve overreacted and made half of this stuff up.”
It’s easy to mistake this empty feeling for ‘love’ or think that you miss the narcissist. However, I’m here to tell you that love has nothing to do with it.
The Narcissist Has Left You With Their Empty Black Hole
During the relationship with the narcissist, they actively dumped all of their unhealed wounds onto you. They presented them to you in such a way that you genuinely thought they must have been your own wounds, so you willingly accepted them.
You see, long ago, the narcissist experienced some type of trauma, which caused them to feel unworthy, shameful and broken. However, they did not want to feel any of those things, so they cast out their True Self to self-avoid in the most severe way.
Without their True Self, their ego was left to reign. But, since there is nothing real or authentic about the ego, it had to create a False Self in order to get its needs met.
For the ego to stay in full control, it needs to keep the narcissist from the truth – that they are in fact a flawed human being, just like the rest of us. However, the narcissist’s False Self utterly refuses to see that truth.
Now the narcissist is left with a gaping black hole inside, where their True Self used to reside. What that empty void feels like to the narcissist is self-loathing, disgust, resentment, despair and hatred.
To avoid having to acknowledge the truth of who they really are, the narcissist is on a constant hunt for supply. Life force energy is the only thing that will grant the narcissist a temporary reprieve from their own darkness.
Of course, no one in their right mind is going to just hand over their own precious life force to an empty, dark soul. So, the narcissist needs to manipulate, coerce, bully and force it from others for them to get their hands on it.
Narcissists are energetic vampires without a conscience. They need to suck life force energy from whole beings in order to survive.
Since the narcissist cut off access to the divine creator of all that is, their ego is now their master. The narcissist now believes that they are a God because there is nothing else that sits above them.
Their ego has created an entire false universe, whereby they are the centre. Therefore, they believe that everyone and everything else in their world is placed there for them to use as they see fit.
The narcissist’s whole life purpose now is to consume the life force energy of others to psychologically survive. Consequently, they can only ever see other people as tools to help them obtain that supply.
Narcissists treat other people horrendously and can justify their behaviour until they’re blue in the face. Their gaslighting, guilt trips, word salads, blame-shifting and projections are relentless.
Throughout your relationship with the narcissist, your self-worth was attacked, and you were psychologically manipulated until you were too exhausted to keep fighting.
Energetically, the narcissist was not only sucking out your life force energy through every exchange, but they were also dumping their garbage onto you so that they didn’t have to carry it.
Even though you were not consciously aware of it, when you took on the unhealed wounds of the narcissist, they were able to go off and be free of them. However, you were left standing there with a backpack full of their bricks, which you then had to carry around all by yourself.
Have you ever wondered why you’d often feel drained after an exchange with the narcissist, yet they’d be skipping off into their day feeling great? It’s because they’d just unloaded their wounds onto you.
When we take on the energy that the narcissist is throwing at us, we end up carrying their black hole for them. The craziest thing is, when we continue to ruminate and feel the pain of all the terrible things that they’ve done, we are actually protecting them from their own karma.
Think of it like this. Everything in the universe is energy.
If someone (a narcissist) doesn’t want to feel their own negative energy (wounds), they may choose to project that energy onto somebody else.
That person can either accept or reject that energy. If they accept it, then the narcissist is no longer burdened by that energy.
However, if the person rejects it, the energy goes back to the narcissist for them to deal with.
Sure, the narcissist will just find another empathetic sucker who they can prey on to dump their black hole onto. But that will be that person’s lesson to learn, which is none of your business.
We can never control what someone else does or doesn’t do. We can only ever control ourselves. The ultimate in self-worth is being 100% responsible for yourself and allowing others to be 100% responsible for themselves, while lovingly allowing them to take their own journey.
If you feel an empty black hole inside of you once the narcissist leaves you alone, you are most likely still carrying the narcissist’s emptiness.
The solution is to take all of your energy and attention off the narcissist and fully focus on healing your own wounds and traumas. From there, the narcissist will naturally become irrelevant, and their psychic connection to your life force will be severed.
All of the narcissist’s unhealed wounds that you were still carrying will be energetically sent back to themselves to deal with.
| QUIZ: Do You Have Narc Abuse Syndrome? → |
The Trauma Bond
One of the main reasons for that feeling of yearning, when the narcissist leaves you alone for good, is due to the trauma bond.
A trauma bond is where a victim of abuse feels connected to their abuser on an emotional level. They will feel a sense of loyalty to the very person who exploited them.
The trauma bond is created intentionally and slowly over time through intermittent punishments and rewards.
Intermittent Reinforcement
The narcissist will berate, devalue, gaslight, rage and stonewall their victim when they are unhappy with their behaviour. Then they will often issue a heavy, silent treatment.
Their victim is left in a heightened state of anxiety, and their nervous system is fried. They’re walking on eggshells because the precarious position that the narcissist has left them in feels torturous.
Then the narcissist will come in and randomly deliver a ‘reward.’ This could be simply the ending of the silent treatment, or it could come as attention, flattery, generosity or gifts.
The victim will feel such immense relief at the punishment being over that they will be flooded with a rush of the body’s feel-good chemicals (dopamine, serotonin, etc.).
The narcissist purposely keeps their victim hanging out and waiting to receive the reprieve that they are so desperately seeking. By this point, the narcissist well and truly knows how to control you on an emotional level, and they love it!
The Addiction
Being in a relationship with an abuser who randomly punishes and rewards ends up keeping you in a perpetual state of wanting to please the narcissist.
You’re constantly in the anxious energy of not wanting to cause the narcissist to aimlessly punish you. Plus, you’re always hanging onto the hope of receiving random acts of ‘kindness,’ which are actually withheld from you as a form of control and manipulation.
The issuing of intermittent punishments, which are then backed up by spontaneous rewards, creates an addiction.
The narcissist intentionally got you addicted to their behaviour without you ever realising what was happening.
Your body becomes addicted to the rollercoaster of a relationship where you are riding the chemical highs and lows. Heartbreakingly, as time goes on, the lows get lower, and you don’t end up needing so much to gain relief.
At the beginning of the relationship, you may have been receiving flowers or intoxicating affection as the reward. But as time wore on, the reward was just that the narcissist started talking to you again and pretended as if nothing had happened. You feel so incredibly relieved at being granted communication by them, that your body releases the feel-good chemicals and you gain your relief.
As a knock-on effect, you don’t want to approach the narcissist about their cruel behaviour, because you’re fearful of being thrown straight back down into the punishment dungeon. So, you go along and pretend like everything’s okay, just to keep the peace for as long as you can. Which means that the narcissist just got away with their abuse.
After it’s all said and done, the narcissist actually needed you, not the other way around.
That’s why they had to fabricate an inverted relationship dynamic with the illusion of you needing them, all so that you’d never cotton on to the truth.
And they resent you for that!
The narcissist needed to keep you in that cycle so that they could control you and hold you in place to be a steady source of supply for them.
The Trauma Bond Beyond the Relationship
Unfortunately, most people never even find out about trauma bonds until after they’ve left the narcissistic relationship. Usually, when trying to find the answer as to why they still feel the narcissist’s hooks so strongly, they’ll stumble upon the phrase and then dig deeper.
The trauma bond that was created by the narcissist throughout the relationship, doesn’t just disappear when you (or they) walk out the door. It’s a deep program that needs to be released.
How the trauma bond can manifest when the narcissist leaves you alone for good:
- Guilt – You may feel guilty for not chasing them or extending yourself to them
- Fear – You will probably be afraid of what the narcissist will say or do next
- Yearning – You might even yearn for the narcissist and feel like you miss them
The most important thing at this stage in the game is not to reach out to the narcissist!
Your body will be craving the relief that it was so used to receiving every time the narcissist went cold towards you throughout the relationship.
Whether you feel like ringing them crying, sending a heartfelt message or demanding some closure, please realise that all of those things will just further feed the narcissist with supply.
They will not sympathise with you because they simply do not care. But your attention towards them will make them feel extremely important and validate for them that they can still control your emotions.
It’s time for you now to unhook yourself and heal.
Like any addiction, the initial shock of losing the ‘drug’ will be uncomfortable. Go easy on yourself and remember that it will only be a short while until the initial intense pain subsides. Go into your cave, cry, howl, hide under the blankets and allow the despair, sadness and pain to flow out of your body.
Realise Your Freedom
By now you may be having some fantastic moments where you are recognising how free you are without the narcissist in your life.
‣ No longer do you have to live in an endless state of anxiety.
‣ No longer do you have to hand your life force energy over to a dark soul.
‣ No longer do you have to sacrifice your own needs and desires for someone who can only ever love themselves.
‣ No longer do you have someone breathing down your neck or completely devaluing your existence.
However, you’ll probably also find that the C-PTSD and triggers will often increase as more time passes if you’re not doing the healing work.
You might get to the point where you think, “Why do I feel like I’m getting worse rather than better?”
| READ: 15 Common PTSD Symptoms → |
The Spiritual Lesson of the Narcissistic Relationship
More than anything, the spiritual lesson behind narcissistic relationships is for us to see in this manifest world just how dangerous it is to hand our power away to others.
What the narcissist preyed on was the fact that you were seeking love, validation, security and/ or survival outside of yourself.
As you heal up your traumas from this lifetime and past lifetimes, you will materialise stronger and clearer into your true, authentic sovereign self.
It’s all about learning that the true, authentic sources of love, validation, security and survival can only ever come from within. They can only be found through your connection with your higher self and the divine.
The next stage in your evolution is to walk your healing journey, shift out the old wounds and programming and come home to your true self. Throughout the process, you will level up throughout your life, from the small things to the large, as your self-worth increases.
Your light will shine so bright that you will never be a narcissist magnet again for two reasons:
- Firstly, you will spot their inauthenticity a mile away!
- Secondly, you will be vibrating at a frequency higher than where any narcissist is able to live because their energy simply cannot tolerate it.
This journey may be arduous, but it’s so worth it. You’ve got this! So, give yourself all the time that you need to heal and find your way home because ascension doesn’t happen in a day.
▶️ VIDEO: What to Expect When the Narcissist Leaves You Alone
Give Yourself the Closure You Need
I know how devastating it can be when the narcissist leaves you alone, only to have to face a whole host of harsh truths.
The reality is that the narcissist is not the person they always pretended to be, nor are they the person who you so desperately wanted and needed them to be.
Coming to terms with this truth can feel soul-crushing; however, once you can accept it, you will be able to speed up your healing.
Here are the answers to some bitter truths that we need to acknowledge to give ourselves the closure that we’ll never receive from a self-serving narcissist.
Why the Narcissist is Ignoring You
Narcissists can ignore for multiple reasons, but it’s always strategic.
Ignoring someone is a very passive-aggressive way to punish someone by withholding communication. If the narcissist ghosts you, it’s often another show of their emotional immaturity and inability to engage in healthy conflict resolution.
Reasons a Narcissist Ignores You:
- To regain their position of power
- To strengthen the trauma bond
- To devalue your existence
- They want you to chase them
- They’ve got a new source of supply
- Final discard (they’re done with you for good)
When the narcissist leaves you alone and ignores you, take it as a universal blessing to let them bugger off once and for all.
The real test is to not allow them back in should they decide to come kicking back around when they’re low on supply in the future.
The Narcissist Will Never Give You Closure
The narcissist will never give you closure because that would involve taking some level of responsibility for the breakdown of the relationship, which we know they are incapable of.
Beyond that, they want to make sure that the door is always ajar for them to come back in and extract some more supply from you in the future.
I mean, it’s way easier to tap into old supply, which you already know how to manipulate, than it is to start again with someone else, right? Especially if times get lean and they need a quick fix.
The narcissist also doesn’t want you to move on. They don’t like to share, and they don’t want to see their old toy being played with by someone else (yep, that’s their level of emotional maturity).
And while you’re still hung up on trying to get them to acknowledge you or give you some answers, you’re still feeding them attention, significance and supply.
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The Narcissist Will Never Accept Accountability for the Abuse
There is no benefit, in the narcissist’s eyes, to accept any accountability for their atrocious behaviour towards you or anyone else. And they’re certainly not interested in evolving as human beings or creating healthy, reciprocal relationships.
All the narcissist cares about is surrounding themselves with people who will validate and go along with their false illusion without question.
If you hang around, expecting the narcissist to take responsibility for their words and actions, you’ll be dead in your grave and still waiting.
For the narcissist to accept accountability would be to admit that their whole False Self is a complete fabrication, which is something they refuse to acknowledge.
A much healthier way to approach the issue is to accept within yourself that the narcissist is a defective person who lives in a delusional reality. You can’t change them, but you can stop enabling their warped illusion.
The Narcissist Will Never Feel Guilty or Remorseful for How They Treated You
As much as we want more than anything for the narcissist to see how much they’ve hurt us and simply say, “I’m sorry,” it just isn’t going to happen, my friend.
Without the resources to feel empathy and compassion towards you, they will never feel guilty for their behaviour. They don’t have a moral compass or conscience to gauge good behaviour from bad behaviour.
To them, it’s not about good or bad, it’s merely, “What can this person give me?”
When it comes to remorse, well that would involve the narcissist taking responsibility for their actions, so we might as well take that off the table.
When the narcissist leaves you alone, don’t waste your energy trying to make them feel guilty for all that they’ve done to you. Instead, learn how to funnel that energy into your self-care and healing. You’ve spent the entire relationship filling them up with energy, now it’s time to take it away from them and give it to yourself.
The Narcissist May Miss You, But Not Authentically
If the narcissist is all wrapped up in new supply, they won’t be missing you one bit. In their reality, the new person is giving them way more than what you could right now, so that makes them more valuable. Take it as a compliment!
On the other hand, if the narcissist’s new supply is non-existent or not working out as they’d hoped, they may be missing you. But… it’s not because they miss you as a person.
They never truly saw you as an autonomous person in the first place, so they’re not about to start doing so now.
If they miss you, it’s because they miss what you did for them and gave to them. They miss seeing the love and care in your eyes that you had towards them. And that’s where it ends.
Keep Your Tears to Yourself
As tempting as it is to show the narcissist your tears to really drive home how much they’ve hurt you, I would heavily advise against it.
When a narcissist sees you cry, they will actually gain more supply as it further enhances how much they can affect you. Your tears will validate to them that they must be so incredibly powerful and important to elicit such a heavy reaction from you.
As we’ve just covered, the narcissist cannot feel remorse or guilt, so not only are your tears wasted, but they will give them more fuel.
When the narcissist leaves you alone, there may be tears for sure. But use them to release your pain, rather than to try and get any kind of sympathy from the narcissist.
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That was an incredible read, painful but truthful. I do not want my narc back EVER! I’m just plugging away at self improvement and I do miss her terribly with all the future dreams we had in common. We are good musicians starting up a great band and she was the one who really got things rolling, I was definitely grade A supply with a large house to myself and the band in the basement. I am afraid she will be back when supply is low, 4 months no contact and still working on getting better daily. Thank You for the eye opening read. Trevor
Ending a relationship with a narcissist is one of the toughest things to have to endure on an emotional level. Especially if they decide to make it all the more difficult and not ‘allow’ you to go. Good on you for 4 months no contact. It’ll get easier as more time passes because you’re worthy of so much more than the bottom of the barrel!