E073 - The Shocking Reasons Narcissistic Heartbreak Is Harder Than Other Breakups & How To Heal

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Speaker 6: In this episode, you will discover the shocking reason narcissistic heartbreak is harder than other breakups and how to heal.

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Speaker 6: 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. Welcome back to the show. In today's episode, you will discover why narcissistic breakups are harder to heal from than other heartbreak. You're going to discover the impact that a narcissistic relationship has on your emotional, psychological, and physiological well being, and you're going to discover what you can do absolutely starting today to begin your healing.

And remember to stick around to the end of the episode because I'm going to pull an oracle card that will offer you a message that you can use this week [00:01:00] to stay more conscious in your healing. So let's dive right on in. There's no easy way to cut this. I mean, breakups suck. Breakups are hard. Breakups are painful.

Breakups bring emotions. Breakups are really a loss. And if you've been through a narcissistic relationship, you might be getting stuck in why this breakup from the narcissistic person is feeling so much harder. than potentially other breakups that you've been in with people who have not had narcissistic tendencies or have been narcissistic or had other personality disorders.

And so I want to break it down. I want to break down what, what we go through in a breakup in general, and then what we go through in a narcissistic [00:02:00] breakup. So we'll start with a breakup in general. One of the biggest Components of a breakup that hurts like hell is a shift in your familiar routine. So you have been with this person for X amount of time living together or not living together.

And you have created all of these patterns. Together, around your day, around your weeks, around your holidays, around your special occasions, you have really created a flow together. And your brain has created all of these little neural pathways that associate you with him, with the thing, with the place, with the song, with the making him coffee in the morning, or whatever the thing was that was really special for the two of you.

So, the longer that we've been together, the more of those neural pathways, the more of those associations, the more of those memories that we have together. So when you wake up as a single person, and your immediate [00:03:00] reaction is to roll over and give them a kiss, and nobody's there, you feel the stab of that loss.

Or, you go downstairs to make yourself coffee, and maybe you had always made both of you coffee at the same time. You realize you're only making one cup of coffee, you get another stab of that loss. Or maybe you're, you were really used to having that, like, meme exchange in the middle of your day, when you were feeling overwhelmed, or when work was sucking, and you go to send the meme, you realize you can't send the meme because that's, It's going to be weird now that you're broken up and would start a whole bunch of stuff.

And another step of that pain. So you are literally, like, removing this person and all of these associations and connections with this person all at one time. So when people say that it feels like death, it kind of is, right? That relationship has been broken. And I know that's a morbid way to put it, but we cannot go [00:04:00] along in the same manner as we did before, which is similar to when we lose somebody, we can't go along in the same manner because that person is no longer there.

So, Complete overhaul, complete shift in your familiar routine. You go from like being on flow on the highway going 65 to an immediate stop, and it is jarring for your system. Which leads me into the next big component of breakups in general. And this is what happens to us emotionally, Psychologically and physiologically, and I want to start with the physiological piece because this is one piece of the breakups that isn't as talked about until recently, really, and as these studies are coming out around how our brain and our body are impacted by events that happened to us and the importance of involving the body in our healing.

So they have done studies where they have shown that the same part of your brain that [00:05:00] lights up when you're in physical pain will light up when you're in emotional pain. I want you to think about that for a second. Physical pain is equal to emotional pain and how our mind responds to the importance of that.

And one theory here is evolutionarily, we needed to be in connection in order to survive. So social rejection, which is a version of a breakup, right? Somebody is rejecting wanting to be with you, even if it's your decision to no longer be in that connection. It feels like a social rejection. And evolutionarily, that was a threat to our literal survival.

So part of this is hardwire in our brain to light up with, hey, this is significant. This is really important to pay attention to because if you no longer have this person. then you're not going to be as okay because you will be alone, therefore you won't have your [00:06:00] tribe or the people around you to help keep you alive.

Now, we're no longer living in those circumstances, but that is a very real part of our ancestry and our, the way that our brains are wired for survival. So not discounting that. That's a real, real, real pain that we're feeling. Also, physiologically, we feel impacts in our nervous system. So, our nervous system finds safety in predictability.

You have been moving about your life with this person for X amount of months or years in a predictable fashion, more or less, right? And you have this flow, you have your patterns, you know what to expect in the morning, you know what to expect around birthdays, you know how you like to spend holidays together.

You have all this predictability around the situation. Even if you're in unhealthy patterns, those too become predictable, which is familiar, which is [00:07:00] safe for that part of our brain that's seeking safety. So when you take away predictability, what do you have? You have unpredictability. You have a whole bunch of things that feel new, that feel overwhelming, that feel like you have no control over, and it's almost like we're exposed.

We're exposed to who we are in the world without this protective, predictable bubble around us. Everything feels harder, everything feels new. We are really just resisting having to go to the movies by ourself or having to go to the restaurant by ourself, or having to show up to the party by ourselves.

We just don't want to do it. Our nervous system gets agitated. We feel anxiety. We get thrown out of our, our comfy place. And we're kind of living in this survival spot, which is why it's so important in a breakup to Work with the nervous [00:08:00] system also to be able to learn how to regulate the system. And then we have the emotional piece.

This is the piece that we're most familiar with because it's in our face and there's, there's no real pretty way to get through grief. So emotionally we're feeling a lot, right? We're grieving the person, we're grieving what we had. We are feeling sadness. Maybe we're feeling anger. Maybe we're moving through bargaining.

We're moving through the stages of grief. Emotionally, it's like we are in the middle of the fucking ocean and we're just getting tossed about and we're like, where's the person with my life raft? They disappeared. And we feel very alone in trying to navigate all of those emotions. So on top of the physiological piece.

Our brain literally telling us that we're fucked because we're alone, on top of the nervous system dysregulation, on top of the emotional waves that we're moving through. Then we also have the psychological part of this. We're moving through [00:09:00] nostalgia. Our mind is taking us back into all of the most perfect memories, or maybe the version of the memory that we remember as perfect, and painting this person to be the most amazing person in the world that we let go of, or that let go of us.

It's exacerbating the emotional piece, and it hurts. We're also feeling, like, cravings for the person. Right? When we start to go down that nostalgic place, it's like they were so great and I don't know why we broke up and I'm forgetting every reason that led me to the here and now. And we're ruminating on what we did or didn't do or could have done.

We are actually eliciting dopamine in our brain. They have done studies where they've shown that people who are stuck in rumination around a breakup, in this way are activating the same centers in the brain that are associated with reward and motivation. It's like, there's a problem. I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to get the dopamine dump [00:10:00] as the reward.

And so the rumination, the cravings, the wanting to reach out to just get that hit of the person because having the no contact or not speaking is too painful is part of this process. on a very psychological level. Also, psychologically, we can go through kind of a, like, identity crisis. Maybe, and again, depending on the length of the relationship, if you've been with somebody for several years, part of your identity is kind of tied into being that person's partner, or what you used to do with that person, or the social status that you had with that person.

So, it's a little bit of Coming back to basics and figuring out who we are again without that person. So breakups in general, in a nutshell, hurt. In a nutshell, they suck. In a nutshell, they're painful. Okay. So now that we have a basic understanding [00:11:00] of why relationships hurt, let's take that information and I'll show you how each component is amplified when you are coming through a narcissistic heartbreak.

So the first piece of breakups where you're shifting your entire familiar, familiar routine and your flow together is still true in a narcissistic breakup, but you also have this complete loss. of the person who was validating or invalidating you. You no longer have this ability to self validate because of what you've gone through in the relationship, because of the manipulation, because of the gaslighting.

So we have turned externally to typically the person that we're with looking for validation. If I do this, then I'm a good person. If I do this, then I'm lovable. This person has really very skillfully shifted the power dynamics so that [00:12:00] they were in control of how we felt about ourselves. So when you no longer have that person.

That's like your backboard to, am I lovable? Am I a good person? Am I doing it right? It can be very confusing on if you are lovable or if you are a good person, or if you are doing it right. When we're going through the narcissistic heartbreak, there's a real need for us to rebuild our ability to self validate our ability to feel like a self in the world, independent of other people that we might be in relationship to.

And that is really hard when you have been through months or years of, again, gaslighting and manipulation where you've had your sense of self and your confidence really chipped away from the outside. The second piece of breakups, right, is the emotional, psychological, and physiological components. Those all still [00:13:00] exist here as well.

Let's start with the physiological amplification. So, we know that physical pain and emotional pain are connected in our brain. We know that it is very big in our brain because it was associated with social rejection. And we know that there's nervous system dysregulation there when we remove things that are predictable and things that we know how to be with.

What happens in a narcissistic relationship? is that we are living on a rollercoaster. We are going up and having highs, we are coming down and we're having lows. And these are not just like bumps in the road, these are like high highs and low lows. So when things are going well, Physiologically in our body, we have dopamine just continuously dumping that this feels good, this feels good, keep doing that.

And we have oxytocin that's coming on board. That's this, [00:14:00] this love chemical that's creating this bond with this person. So when things are going well, there's a lot of dopamine and there's a lot of oxytocin. And we like that feeling because that feels good, right? That's at the high, that's at the top of the roller coaster.

And then we start to feel them pull away a little bit. We start to maybe feel this fear of abandonment, of, oh my god, did I do something wrong? This, this removal. of the dopamine and the oxytocin, this lack. We're going from real high levels of it to starting to feel it decline and we don't like that feeling, right?

So then what happens? We go into panic because we feel it declining, we don't like the feeling, And we're like, what do I need to do to fix this? When we go into panic, we elicit cortisol. Cortisol is the stress hormone and it's pumping. And we're living [00:15:00] in the sympathetic nervous system state. So we are again in survival.

Our threat to self feels very real. So our cortisol is very high. In this stage of the cycle, we can also feel a lot of anxiety. We can feel depression. We can feel self doubt. We can feel low self esteem. We're in this place of, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, I need to fix it. So cortisol is pumping through our body.

Like, Oh my God, bitch, we got to figure this out because I can't be here. This doesn't feel good. This is going downhill. Ah, everybody panic. And from there we move into the seeking of the high again. So we're at the lowest point. We have come down the rollercoaster. We have hit the bottom and we're like, I got to get back up there.

How do I do it? And the seeking behavior, how do I fix it? What did I do wrong? Let me apologize again. Let me try to word it in a different way. All of these things that we try to do to fix it, to get that [00:16:00] person back, puts us back into, maybe this will work this time. And even the seeking behavior starts that dopamine rise in our, in our body, in our brain.

So physiologically, our body is going through all of these ups and downs. It's on the fucking rollercoaster. This specific cocktail of hormones. and chemicals is predictable in relation to this person. So your body almost knows how to anticipate the ups and the downs, and we create this imprint of that familiarity in our body.

Our body gets used to living in those extreme, extreme highs, extreme lows. Our nervous system likes the dysregulation because it's predictable. So when you remove that, what happens? Your body freaks out because it's no longer in the predictable cycle. When we take that away, we are coming [00:17:00] into unpredictability.

And we're removing the thing that took the pain away. For example, in one of my last podcast episodes, I was talking with the woman who I was interviewing, her name's Hillary, about how she came to understand that sex was the way to get them back. Up on the roller coaster. So when they would hit a low, she would use sex as a way to bring back connection, as a way to try to fix it, as a way to apologize, or whatever she was using it for, so that they could just get out of this uncomfortable Place of feeling him pull away and feeling the devaluing and the discarding and she knew that sex was the answer in that situation.

That was the drug. And when the relationship was no longer there, when the sex could no longer be used to numb the feeling, to sidestep the feelings that she was in, then she was left stuck with all the feelings. You take that away and you're left with yourself. [00:18:00] And that period fucking hurts. It hurts like you're going through a detox.

And so just knowing that physiologically your body is actually changing is helpful for you to have some compassion around why it hurts so bad and to bring in some nervous system regulation to help bring your nervous system back into a normal baseline when your baseline has just been this rollercoaster over and over again.

Physiologically, it's going to take time for your body to readjust. So that's the additional added component physiologically. Emotionally, we're still feeling all the feels. We're still moving through the sadness and the anger and the grief. But the additional component in a narcissistic breakup is that you're not just grieving the relationship.

You are grieving that the [00:19:00] relationship is no longer there, of course. But you're also grieving who they were. Who did they present to be? Part of a narcissistic healing experience is having to deal with the deception of being duped in the beginning with this person who presented as one way and then turned out to be a totally different person, right?

We go through that in the love bomb phase. And so we're like, who the fuck was that guy? And how was I with this person for so many years and didn't see? So you're grieving, ahem, you're grieving the promises. that they had made for the future. This ever present hope place, I call it potential land, where we live because reality is not really working, but we've heard them say that they're going to do X, Y, and Z, and then we're going to get back into this really good place, or we're going to start traveling again, or he's going to start writing me love letters again, and we're going to get back to this really good place, [00:20:00] and we live in potential land.

And if I'm there, There's still potential for the relationship to work out. When I leave a relationship, a narcissistic relationship, then there's no more potential and I have to let go of that dream and that reality and grieve that dream and that reality on top of the actual reality that I was in. And oftentimes, it really highlights how painful.

Or how real the actual relationship was and why I was disassociating to that place. So we're grieving them. We're grieving the hope. We're grieving the promises. And we're grieving who we were in that relationship. So I know for me, looking back, I was like, how did I not see this, eh? How did I allow this?

How? I thought I was more confident. I thought I was a stronger woman. I went through so much anger with myself. And really didn't understand [00:21:00] how I got into this place in the beginning. So there's grief around that version of you who stayed, who didn't have the boundaries, who was manipulated. And there can be a lot of self blame there, which will need a lot of compassion to come out of that place.

There are layers to the grief in a narcissistic breakup that don't really exist in a normal breakup. Which can add to the time, which can add to the intensity, which can add to the importance of having somebody to help you work through this, especially if there was a big component of deception and you're trying to get your reality back in line.

You need somebody to help you do that because you have been living kind of siloed in the fog by yourself and you just need that outside support. So, so far we have the loss of your patterns together, the loss of your familiarity, on top of [00:22:00] This loss of your ability to self validate. We have the physiological components of what your body is going through when you lose somebody or you feel rejected.

And then with the narcissistic relationship, we have the rollercoaster of the highs and lows of the cocktail of the hormones and the chemicals that are released. We have the detox that we have to go through, and we have the nervous system re regulation that we have to do. Emotionally, we're dealing with the layers of the grief.

And finally, psychologically. We're still going through the bouts of nostalgia, we're still going through those cravings and rumination, and we're still going through this, like, who am I without this person? But what's amplified here in a narcissistic breakup is having been gaslit. Being gaslit adds a whole nother level to trying to figure out who you are again.

Because your self esteem and your confidence and [00:23:00] your entire understanding of reality has been. Chipped away. You have been told that you're wrong, that you're misremembering, that you're too emotional, that you are too needy, that you are creating all the problems, that you are at fault for everything, and your reality is skewed.

You don't know what's right anymore, which means that your understanding of yourself is fucked up and your understanding of reality is fucked up. So we have to reconstruct what is real. We have to reconstruct our entire identity. We have to rebuild our intuition because we've been told over and over that we can't trust ourselves, that what we're feeling wasn't right, wasn't real, wasn't valid.

When you're gaslit, there's so many more layers of this to find, to rebuild, to make sense of. It's such a mindfuck. Trying to understand how a narcissist could do what they do, how they could be so [00:24:00] cruel, how you didn't see it. All of it. We are trying to find information in order for it to make sense. And sometimes we stay in that information gathering place for a really long time.

Right? We're going down the rabbit holes on YouTube, we are listening to all the podcasts about the psychology of a narcissist. And there is a place for that. Absolutely. Absolutely. We have to make sense of this thing that we just came out of. This experience, this total, like, world shaking understanding that we weren't actually in the relationship that we thought we were in.

But sometimes we get stuck. We get stuck thinking that if I understand narcissism, then I will heal from being with a narcissist and those are different things. So the heartbreak in a narcissistic relationship, the ending of that can feel harder because we're resisting the feeling piece [00:25:00] for a longer period of time while we're gathering that information.

We're trying to make sense of, instead of feeling, how it felt to be in that relationship. So. Again, to come back to that importance of having someone to help you move through it, to make sense of it, to help you integrate that experience is so, so, so vital. So healing from narcissistic heartbreak is layered.

It's complex. And I want you to hear from me right now that you are not crazy. You are not crazy for missing them. You're not crazy for wanting them back. You're not crazy for just wanting them to come back with an apology so that you could kick them out the door again. You're not insane because you still cry over what happened and you are not broken and you are not damaged beyond repair.

Even if it feels like you won't be able to trust yourself again, healing from these [00:26:00] relationships is. More than possible. I'm walking proof. It is hard. It is more painful than a normal breakup, as we've just broken down, but all for good reason. It all makes perfect sense. So it's not a you problem. It's an experience that you're going through and the experience happens to be a big one.

So what can you do today? If you're listening to this and you're like, fuck, this is why it's so painful. More of this makes sense now, but what do I do? First, I want you to find your safe people. I will say this in every episode until I'm blue in the face, because having support is so vital to heal this, this wound, these several wounds that come from narcissistic relationships.

We need healthy connection. So whether that's a friend, whether that's a family member, whether that's a therapist or a coach, you have to [00:27:00] find somebody who can give you those reality checks. who can validate your feelings, validate your experience, and hold you in that experience as you try to sift through and make sense of what was happening.

I want you to also clear out reminders of them. I know going no contact is hard, but I want you to think about Can you commit to not reaching out to them, not responding to them, not looking at them on social media, not looking at pictures on your phone, putting away all of the objects in your house that remind you of them for 30 days.

You don't have to burn everything unless that feels good. You don't have to delete their contact, right? I just want you to take a pause from all of it for 30 days at least. You And then ideally you check in with yourself after 30 days and you're safe people and you make another plan, but the first 30 days are [00:28:00] going to be the hardest.

I also want you to pick up some nervous system regulation tools. So this can be one of my favorite tools, EFT tapping. That's what I teach. That's what I use with all my clients. I'll link an episode in the show notes so that you can get more acquainted with that if you don't know what that is. Nervous system regulation can look like incorporating walks throughout your day, incorporating A five minute breathing exercise or a five minute meditation or just stopping for five minutes and letting yourself cry.

There are a lot of ways for us to find more regulation in our system, but it's especially important coming out of these narcissistic relationships to bring yourself back into more of a baseline to more of that familiarity of what feeling regulated feels like in your body. Not that you need to stay there all the time, because life happens and we come in and out of that baseline, but being able to come back in that baseline is a skill.

Especially when you've been living [00:29:00] in very high highs and very low lows, very outside of that baseline. Another thing that you can do is begin to get really curious and familiar with who you are. So doing values exercise. Identifying your needs and your wants. I have a full self guided course that will walk you through how to do all of that with meditations and homework.

It's under a hundred dollars. So it's super, super accessible. I'll link that in the show notes. It's called Find Yourself Again. But if you need a little bit of a direction on how to start to figure out who you are without this person from a very baseline level, that's going to be perfect for you. And then start to find that professional that can help you to process your feelings around what happened, that can help you integrate the complexity of this type of relationship, that can be that really safe support for you.

Of course, I would love to be that person. That's why I do what I do. [00:30:00] And the most important thing is that you feel connected and you feel safe with whoever you are choosing to hold that space. So if that happens to be me, there's an interest form in the show notes also that you can fill out and we can talk about what that journey would look like together.

But having a professional is so important to help you move through this more quickly and more easefully. Not that it will be pain free, but you will at least have a direction and. a goal to move towards in something that feels so unpredictable and scary and chaotic and full of emotions. So start there.

And remember, again, this is possible. This is so, so possible for you with the right support and the right intention. Okay, we covered a lot of shit today. So let's just recap what you have learned from today's episode. You now know why the [00:31:00] narcissistic heartbreak hurts more and it's harder to heal from than other types of heartbreak.

You now understand the depth of the damage that happens emotionally, psychologically, and physiologically from these relationships and how to begin to repair those. And you've gotten some steps that you can start taking today to help yourself move through that healing process. Okay, so let's pull a card as, oh man, that came out quick.

So, I always pull an oracle card at the end of these episodes, and as I picked up the deck and started to shuffle, this card came flying out, and it is Gut, is the name of the card. It is a picture of intestines. So let me find this in the book, and I will read to you the message of Gut. Gut brings an invitation to hop on the superhighway to your own wisdom.

Gut will not and should not be ignored. You are being [00:32:00] urged to check that you are in alignment. Gut is where all the answers live. What messages are you receiving? Are you stuck? Are you absorbing what nourishes you? Trust yourself. Listen deeply to your intuition. Perhaps you are experiencing some discomfort in the gut.

Know that this is a cue that there are certain things in your life that you are not metabolizing. When your gut rejects something, it is for your own protection. So heed the warning and don't continue to ingest the things, people, relationships, and energy that are toxic to your system. Stop tolerating things you shouldn't.

Gut balancing is a mix of listening to yourself, Trusting your intuition and honoring what is right and nourishing for you. When you care for gut, it will give you a deep sense of alignment and flow. Your system allows for what is sustaining you to move through it with a sense of ease and vitality. Love that message.

It couldn't be more perfect from what we talked about today. I know this is some challenging [00:33:00] stuff. I know this can be a lot to sit with and to hold. As always, this podcast is for you. You are in exactly the right place. You are not alone moving through this, and I am so proud of you for listening fully to this episode and allowing yourself to see the places and the things that can be more helpful for you on your journey, and I will see you in the next episode.