E124 - (value) Making Sense Of How It Went From So Good to So Bad (And Why You Stayed With Your Narcissitic Ex Despite It All

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Speaker 14: [00:00:00] This episode is gonna help you make sense of how your last relationship went from so good to so bad, and why you stayed with your narcissistic ex, despite it all.

Speaker: Welcome to Heartbreak to Wholeness, the podcast helping you heal from the mindfuck of narcissistic relationships and move towards the secure, peaceful woman you want to become. I am your host, Bre Wolta, Relationship Clarity Coach and EFT Certified Practitioner. Let's dive in.

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Speaker 15: How did something that began feeling so right turn into something that hurt so deeply, and if it got that bad in the relationship, why was it so hard to leave?

If you've ever asked yourself those questions, this episode is for you because the truth is that this didn't happen because you were stupid or because it was your fault.

It happened because you were caught in a cycle that was designed to keep you hooked, keep you attached, even when things took a turn. So after this episode, you are really going to understand why the [00:01:00] good times felt so real and why they made it harder to let go.

You are gonna learn exactly how the narcissistic cycle conditions your brain to help you stay attached. And you're gonna start to release some shame by understanding the deeper reasons why you stayed. And remember to stick around to the end of the episode where I will always pull an Oracle card.

This will offer you a message that you can noodle on this week as you move forward in your healing.

Speaker 16: ​okay. So I wanna start this by just naming the part that nobody is talking about in that the beginning of your relationship felt really fucking good.

I wanna validate that even though now potentially you can see that it was love bombing and that it maybe wasn't real, and that he was operating from a different motive when you were in the place of entering into the relationship with him, when you were in that love bombing phase, it felt real to you. There was likely a really intense connection. There was really [00:02:00] fast bonding. Maybe you felt something like, wow, finally somebody sees me. Finally, somebody is taking the time to understand who I am, to care about me, to love me, to want to give me all the things that I've been wanting.

It likely felt like desire that you have never felt before and when you were finally receiving desire after maybe a lifetime of a role in your family system or romantic relationships where you are the giver, where you are the one who's taking care of everybody else.

When you're finally receiving it is like satisfying a person stuck in the desert who hasn't had water for a week. It is so satisfying, and I wanna really just normalize that, that it felt good because it was too good.

I know in the beginning of my past narcissistic relationship, I had never felt that way before and I had never had somebody chase [00:03:00] after me in that way before or show me the attention that he was showing me. And I remember thinking. Oh, this is, this is what love is. This is, this is me finally experiencing real love.

Everything else in the past was not real love, and this, this is what I've been missing. So I completely convinced myself early, early, early in that interaction and that dynamic that he was the one. That this was the love I was waiting for and that this was what it was supposed to feel like.

So It really secured that intense bond with my ex, and that is the purpose of love bombing phase. We're gonna go into all the phases of the narcissistic cycle here in a moment, but the love bombing phase specifically is really designed to hook you fast, hard, and early.

Okay?

This emotional intensity is an attachment accelerator, and you pair that with maybe future faking. That's also happening where the person is talking about really important [00:04:00] long-term plans, really early in the relationship, like moving, like getting married, like wanting kids.

All of these things to really paint the picture of the dream that they are going to create for you.

And it can feel really good to again, finally have that person who's showing you attention, who's giving to you, who's caring about you, and who's helping you build this life, and is promising to make it happen.

This part is really, really vital in the narcissistic cycle, which eventually creates a trauma bond because it really exemplifies in your mind what this person is capable of. We get in our head this idea of, oh, how he showed up in the beginning is how he is.

And then when things start to change, we come back to convincing ourselves that, well, I saw him be this way in the beginning, therefore I can get him to be that way again. And we get really stuck on Because I saw it, because I experienced it.

That means it's possible and there's more that I can do to help [00:05:00] him get there. And we kind of go into fix it mode or go into, you know, holding onto the hope of that potential for way too long when all signs are showing otherwise.

So this love bombing phase is really, really important for the narcissistic cycle to work

because it's what makes it hard to let go for good.

So that's how it starts. It starts in the love bombing idealization phase, and then inevitably things start to shift, right? Things start to start feeling off, and the hallmark feeling of that shift is confusion. If you have ever felt confusion for a prolonged period of time with no clarity, with no repair, just more confusion on top of confusion,

That is a sign that you are potentially in a narcissistic cycle because they thrive, because narcissistic people thrive on confusion.

They know that they have created this really deep connection with you through the love bombing face, and then these mixed signals start to come in. So [00:06:00] maybe it looks like small put downs. Maybe it looks like criticism that's sort of disguised as a joke. Maybe it looks like emotional withdrawal or unpredictability.

Like they used to always respond to your text messages and now they're going hours or even days between responding to you. Maybe they start drinking too much. Maybe they start using too many drugs. Maybe they start accidentally going to strip clubs. It might look like a lot of things, but it doesn't, it doesn't equate in your mind with the person that they presented as they were in the beginning.

Hence the confusion. And because this is so confusing and because you have already really confirmed in your brain that this person is the one and they're the one you've been looking for, we start going into all of these defensive reasoning justifications when we start to see the red flag.

I am sure you can relate to this in thinking like, oh, he's just having a bad day. Or a bad week or a [00:07:00] bad month, or he is going through something really hard. Maybe he just lost a friend or a family member and you're like, well, of course he's acting this way because he's grieving, but I know he's a good person.

Again, I saw him show up this way during the really good part in the beginning of the relationship. I believe that's who he is. That's what he's capable of. And of course you wanna believe in like the benefit of the doubt for people. You want to give people some, some slack.

You wanna be able to let them be human.

And so you start to justify all of these things that aren't fitting into the person that he presented as is the beginning. And you start to actually doubt yourself. Like, what did I do to create this behavior in him?

What did I do that MA is making him drink so heavily? What did I do that's making him not respond to my text message or not like my friends anymore? Am I spending too much time with my friends or my family? And this is actually my fault. We do that to try to [00:08:00] find something that we can control.

If it's our fault, it's easier to change, it's easier to fix instead of staying in that really confusing place. So again, when things start to shift, the hallmark feeling of that is confusion.

This doesn't make sense. I'm doubting myself. I'm questioning myself. I feel confused.

So the love bombing and the devaluation, which is what I just described, when things start to start to shift, those are the first two phases of the narcissistic cycle. It's called a narcissistic cycle because it's circular. So after the devaluation stage, where things start to feel really confusing. And then you start to feel the intermittent reinforcement piece of the cycle that is really, really addictive because it doesn't just go from super good to tank into super bad. As you start to decline into the, into having more bad moments than good moments, there are little like sparks of good, right? He comes home with flowers.

He sends [00:09:00] the apology text. He tells you how much he loves you in the middle of doing all these other things that are feeling really confusing, and those small things like reignite your hope. They reignite your preoccupation with helping him reach his potential.

They reignite this love for him or what feels like love for him, and it keeps you hooked. Intermittent reinforcement is one of the most addictive types of rewards. When you don't know when the good thing is coming, when it comes intermittently, we seek it more and more, and every time we get it, we get a little hit of dopamine and it keeps us seeking again, seeking again.

You are continuing to try to change yourself. You're continuing to try to change him in order to make more of those good moments, right? You start working on overdrive during that devaluation part of the relationship where things are feeling confusing because you wanna fix it and you wanna get to that next little hit of hope.

But if you've been in the cycle, you know that nothing that you do is ever [00:10:00] enough. And after the devaluation phase, you move into the discard. This is where there's an actual pulling away. So he is, he is trying to make you break up with him.

You are really starting to consider breaking up with him. There's a pulling away of some kind. There's breakup threats. There's, there's some sort of emotional abandonment you feel in your body. This, this abandonment, whether you are making the decision or not. There's this, there's this abandonment, this loss of this really important person in your life and this emotional pain.

Can feel as intense as physical pain. This is not just sadness. This is not just like I missed the person. These are feelings of panic, of anxiety, of feeling alone and unlovable and like you're never gonna meet someone else in the world that will love you the way that he did. It's feeling worthless because you guys are not in partnership anymore.

There's a deep panic around not feeling [00:11:00] okay without him. This is where I draw the parallel to a withdrawal, because in the narcissistic cycle, we'll talk about why you get hooked again here just in a moment. But when you go through this cycle enough times, your body learns that there's going to be this period of time where he comes back and solves the pain.

He takes that pain away. He takes the com, the. The feelings that feel unbearable, this panic, this anxiety, this. Who am I without him, I'm never gonna find somebody else. When he comes back. All of that vanishes. So when you're in the discard phase, it can feel like you're itching out of your fucking skin.

You know, on one hand maybe that you shouldn't be with this person, but you also kind of secretly want him to come back and change and you guys to restart so that he can take away this pain that you're feeling and you can finally have the life that he promised. The discard phase is so painful. It's so, so, so painful, and that cannot be overstated [00:12:00] because that's often why we will reach out to them or we will unblock them, or we will somehow let our emotional guard down and let them back in paired with what happens next is typically some sort of hoovering from the narcissistic person

which looks like them, reappearing them, giving promises, them saying, you're right, I was wrong. They're saying all the right things. They're using all the right vocabulary. Maybe they're even talking about their traumas and how they wanna go to therapy, or if they do have an addiction of some kind, they wanna go to treatment.

Right. They, they seemingly. Have self-awareness, have empathy, and are taking accountability. And I say seemingly because it's not genuine. It's coming from a place of them knowing how to, how to hook you back in knowing how to say the right thing, but there's not a follow through. When you get hooked back in, you have this, this, again, this flood of hope.

Actually in your brain, dopamine and [00:13:00] oxytocin are being released. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that that we get when we get something that feels good, that reminds our body that this thing feels good, keep searching for this thing. And then oxytocin is the neurotransmitter that's released, that's called the cuddle hormone, you probably know that most from like after you have sex, oxytocin is released and it's like, bond with this person, connect with this person. Keep this person close. So him coming back is actually flooding you with all of these neurotransmitters that are telling your brain that he is a good person for you because he just took away all of this pain that you were feeling and he's just promising all of this hope that he's gonna change and things are gonna be different. So it's sparking again, this reigniting of I can, I can help him do it. I'm gonna help him do it. He wants to do it. This is what I wanted. And you really believed that? I really believed that when my ex came back and during this hoovering phase, my God, I thought.

The world had [00:14:00] shifted and like turned upside down because he seemingly was a completely different person in what he was saying, how he was presenting, like he was so sorry. He again was saying all the right things, all the right psychological terminology that I wanted to hear. All of the accountability that I'd been waiting years for him to take.

It was like, okay, we're back. We're back to how it was in the beginning and how it will now be. Yeah, but what happens after the hoovering is you go back to the love bomb phase for a while. Things are really juicy and awesome for days or weeks, and then the cycle starts again.

So you move through this cycle.

And the cycle creates an addiction level attachment because what you're experiencing physiologically, again, when when their separation happens, the pain is unbearable. The panic, the anxiety is unbearable, is you don't have the right [00:15:00] resourcing tools if you don't have the right nervous system regulation tools.

If you don't have the right support system. It's just like somebody who's trying to withdraw off of heroin. That doesn't have a support community. If you take away the thing that is numbing the pain, you're left with the pain. And what are you gonna do when you're in pain? You're gonna go back to the thing, you know, if you don't have other tools.

So we stay in the cycle, it becomes an addiction because we learn he's gonna come back and he's gonna take the pain away. He's gonna come back, he's gonna take the pain away, and it gets really fucked up in our brain because he's the one that caused the pain, but he's also the one that can take the pain away, and that is the trauma bond.

This isn't a normal relationship pattern. Normal relationships don't go from super good to super bad with moments of good. This is

a cycle of emotional conditioning where love and pain got really intertwined and your brain learned to hold on tighter, not to let go,

Which leads us nicely into the next part of [00:16:00] this episode, which is why did I stay? We've talked about this a little bit. So far, this trauma bonding is one reason. The highs and the lows really create these unstable feelings in your body.

These really intense emotions that if you don't have other coping mechanisms, you learn to have a dependency on him to make you feel better. Right? If we are okay, then I'm okay. I remember thinking that. So clearly in my last relationship, if we are okay, I am okay. I couldn't regulate outside of the relationship not being okay.

So again, this trauma bond feels like love, but it's actually a survival based attachment.

The second part that we've touched on a bit here is the hope and the potential , that really keeps us motivated to move through this cycle. To help him change, to help him actualize back into the person that we know they can be back into the person that we literally experienced them being in [00:17:00] the beginning.

The third part of why we stay, we haven't touched on yet in this episode, and that is because of self-blame conditioning. So in this relationship in emotionally abusive relationships, which is any relationship where you are being consistently gaslit or manipulated, where one person is gaining power or validation or control over the other,

you are being told explicitly or implicitly that everything is your fault, that you are nothing without him. That you are way too much like nobody else is gonna love you if you get out of this relationship, that you are nothing without this person. And when you're told that over and over and over again in small ways or big ways, you start to adapt that as a belief.

And maybe those beliefs are compounding already on top of some childhood patterns of being the one who gives, who Overgive being the one who's used to fixing things. Maybe you had some codependent tendencies before you got into this [00:18:00] relationship and now they're exacerbated.

So again, it's really easy for you to adopt that, that self-blame understanding of why things are happening. It's because of me. And then you go into that fix it mode that maybe, you know so well.

And this is tangential to self-blame conditioning, but as a woman who is growth oriented and successful and self-aware, you also have some qualities that really, really make you susceptible for narcissistic relationships and that keep you in the cycle because. You're wired to solve problems. You move, you're, you're taught to move through hard things, right?

To accomplish your goals. You achieve your potential. You help maybe other people or teams also achieve their potential. And when you commit to something. You're committed, like you give it your 1010%. And so it takes a lot. It takes a lot of trying for you to finally get to the point where you're like, fuck, this isn't [00:19:00] working.

Nothing that I'm doing is working. And so that's another thing that can keep you really hooked for a long term in the narcissistic cycle. And then lastly, the fourth thing that really keeps us tied in to these relationships for longer than maybe we want to, looking back in hindsight, is the investment, right?

You've spent a number of years with this person. You have already done couples therapy, you've already done individual therapy, you've already bought a house, you've have these future plans. Maybe you have kids together.

We have the sunk cost fallacy. Of, I already put in this much, I have to stay forever. Whether that's monetarily or energetic or, or other ways that you've already invested in this person and that keeps us really in that motor of I'm gonna keep trying, I'm gonna keep trying, I'm gonna keep trying.

And then we wake up one day and we've been trying for 10 fucking years and we're like. Well, now I've just wasted another five years on top of the first five years where I came to this understanding that [00:20:00] this was not changing, but I felt like because I was already with him for five years, I had to keep going.

And that's a painful realization to have.

So I really hope that by piecing this out, giving you some more clarity around the narcissistic cycle and the reasons that you stayed on top of the narcissistic cycle that created a trauma bond.

It really helps you to reframe your story. I really encourage you when you're having the thought of, God, I was so naive, or I was so stupid to reframe that to, I was human. I was looking for love. I really wanna spend my life with someone, and at that time in my life, I just didn't know what to look for. And maybe I was more susceptible to this targeting that narcissistic people have. What I don't want you to think is that your capacity to love is the problem

because it wasn't you loving him. That was the problem. The [00:21:00] problem was his motive of being in the relationship and that the cycle, the narcissistic cycle, was designed to hook you on a neurobiological level. Of course we can take accountability if, for our parts in these relationships where we showed up in ways that, you know, weren't congruent with the woman that we want to be, of course,

but we're not gonna discount the fact that a narcissistic cycle is a very intentionally manipulative and controlling way to be in a relationship with somebody, and that was out of your control. I want you to see that it makes sense that you stayed. If you take anything from this episode, please take that, that it makes sense that you stayed. And now it makes sense that you're ready to understand it more deeply so that you can do the work required to never get into that type of dynamic, to never get into that type of dynamic again.

And it's a process. It's a process to untangle this shit. So if you're still [00:22:00] in that mode of untangling how it went from so good to so bad. You're still trying to figure out exactly why you stayed for so long. You're not behind. You are exactly in the right place of starting to become aware, and it's exactly that awareness that breaks the cycle.

It's not the shame that you can beat yourself up. It's not the self-criticism that you can tell yourself all X, Y, and Z. It was your fault, how dumb I am. It's not trying to force yourself to move on and try to sidestep all of these really yucky feelings.

It's by finding clarity. It's by finding understanding. You didn't fail. You were caught in something super powerful. Super powerful on a, on every level, and you're starting to find your way out. Okay? Compassion, compassion, compassion.

One exercise that I wanna give you that I help walk my clients through in my programs is starting to look backwards at the relationship and identify the moments that you now [00:23:00] know are red flag. So writing out all of the times that didn't feel right, where you felt confused where he'd said this, but did this, where he actually hurt you physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, financially, all the ways.

Write it down, write it down, write it down, write it down, and look back at the moments where you knew, right, your, your intuition was saying, look, this doesn't feel good. You're gonna have so much confirmation that your intuition was working. It's just now a matter of retuning in to be able to hear it and to listen to it and to believe it, which again, is part of the untangling and part of the deeper work that comes in healing from these types of relationships.

But this is a good first step. So start with that. Also go back to episode one 12, because that really pieces out how to actually release a trauma bond if this episode is really resonating and you're like, fuck, that's exactly what I was in. Go listen to episode one 12. It's called How to Actually Release the Trauma Bond.

And finally, to complete [00:24:00] this episode, we always pull an Oracle card. So the one that came out was flat on your back. I'm gonna find this in the book and I'll read to you what it says when you find yourself flat on your back, the universe is sending you a message of surrender.

Maybe you are unaware that you are pushing too hard, clamping down too much. Needing to control flat on your back brings the divine message that it's time to release, to surrender, to let go of control and trust. The universe has your back trust that things will work out as they are meant to. All you have to do is allow your heart to open and trust that all will be well.

In fact, all is well without pushing. Grasping. Grabbing. Clamping, or clawing. Open your hands to the heavens. Release the grip. Allow yourself to be held by the power and expansive. Love that the universe always offers you. Hmm. Love it, love it, love it, love it. When something's not working, we can, we give ourselves permission to stop trying and trying and trying and trying and trying.

Give [00:25:00] yourself that white flag. Raise it, raise it. And until I see you in the next episode, please remember that you are not alone.