E117 - (LAYUP LBG) He Was A Narcissist. Now You’re Scared to Trust Again — Here’s How To Feel Safe Dating

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[00:00:00] Your ex was a narcissist and now you are scared to trust again.

Here is how you can feel safe dating.

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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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Hello and welcome back to Heartbreak to Wholeness. This episode is for you. If you have gotten out of a narcissistic relationship, you have survived the manipulation, you can see the gaslighting. You understand that you have been on a really, really jacked up emotional rollercoaster for a long time. You see your ex for who he is.

He has a narcissistic person painted all over him. But now. You are wondering, how in the hell am I ever going to start dating again? Every connection feels suspicious and you're terrified of falling into the [00:01:00] narcissistic trap. Again, we're very close to Valentine's Day, and everywhere you look, it's like V Valentine's Day has vomited all over.

Every single store or ad that you're seeing.

And maybe you're wondering, how am I ever going to open the door to dating again without also opening the door to love bombing? So you're really feeling this fear of not just being manipulated again, but of not trusting yourself to see it coming.

So today we're covering all the bases. In this episode, you will learn how to find that middle ground to trusting other people after the narcissistic trauma, like swung you from overtrusting to over guarding.

You are going to know how to spot these red flags early before you get emotionally invested in the relationship and you're gonna understand how to start to rebuild the self-trust that is vital in order to be able to feel like dating is fun and not something that you're threatened by or on guard for.

And be sure to stick around to the end of the [00:02:00] episode where we'll pull an Oracle card. This will offer you a message that you can use this week to stay more conscious in your healing.

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You are here because of this fear, and I see you, I see you so deeply in this sphere, because I have felt the same exact fear while I was healing from my narcissistic relationship.

I was like, so dead set, clear on. I don't ever want another relationship, ever. I couldn't even fathom the idea of what that would look like or wanting that at any point in my future. And then as I moved through the processing of the trauma, the understanding of what was happening, really coming back home to myself, rebuilding that self-confidence, then it started to seem a little bit more fathomable that I could do it from a.

A more solid place,

but I had some anxiety around how would I meet this person, so anxiety around the apps. And then I was on the apps, and then I had some anxiety around, okay, am I gonna be able to [00:03:00] suss out people's behavior? Am I gonna be able to see those red flags and not just see them, but follow through with, you know, whatever needed to happen, whether it was a conversation or, or walking away from that person

and could I really trust myself to not fall into another shit show. It was sort of that moment in healing where it's like, okay, I gotta take everything that I've learned and implemented. And there was a lot of trepidation there for me.

So I think I, I mean, I honestly, I truthfully very much swung into. Into the, a little bit far, the other side of like being very clear about who I was and what I was looking for. And if somebody responded back with some snarky comment, I was kind of just like, I'm not even giving this a time of day. Um, which is good.

It's good to be aware in dating that way. But I very much kind of had that energy of like, I don't have time for any mistakes given. And that might have swung a little, little far the other way, but it made sense because I had been through such [00:04:00] horrific narcissistic abuse, post-separation abuse that I could not go back there.

There was no way that I was gonna let my parts experience that again. So you might be feeling this too, in thinking about dating. Are you finding yourself really wanting love, wanting to experience a person and connection in a relationship, but your anxiety is high and the fear of repeating your past is really loud?

Or maybe you're actually emotionally shutting down because it feels like too big of a problem to solve.

So maybe you're avoiding the apps or you, your best friend is trying to get you to go on this blind date. And before she could even finish her sentence, you were like, I'm not doing it. And maybe it's even going so far as you are second guessing the motive of like the cashier at Whole Foods because he was too nice, quote unquote, your red flag radar is very, very [00:05:00] sensitive and

you're finding yourself just being very drawn to like, is that bad behavior? Is that a red flag? What is that? Is that person a narcissist? And you're kind of on this new type of hyper vigilance, different than what you felt in the relationship, but that same sort of anxious energy.

It makes sense. It makes sense that you are swinging to that place of being really, really hyper aware and protective of yourself. I have had a lot of clients come to me with the literal disclaimer of. Brie, I don't wanna be in a relationship.

I'm not looking to get in a relationship. I wanna do this work to clear up the past relationship. And I love that. I love that the intention is on healing because that's such a necessary part, but, usually what happens when they get farther into their healing is they do want that, that healthy love at some point.

But A, they aren't ready right now to date because they haven't fully processed the shit show that just happened, and B, they feel like it's just safer to be guarded because they actually don't trust [00:06:00] themselves,

which again makes sense. You just went through something horrendously painful and you can see it, and you can see your behavior in it, and you can see when you didn't walk away, when you saw the red flags in the relationship. So I understand the loss of self-trust first and foremost.

That happens in these relationships, and I understand not feeling ready, which makes sense. Of course, you don't want to feel that pain again.

Trauma really makes us swing from this overtrusting where we are giving benefit of the doubt and divulging all of our information really early in relationships. Thinking that there's no way that people could actually hurt us in the way that we see in the movies. That overtrusting energy to over guarding, right?

I got burned now I'm never going close to a, a stove again. And both of those extremes are really based in fear. Not discernment or self trust.

So the overprotecting comes from a place of wanting to feel safe, right? The good news is that [00:07:00] we don't have to avoid connection in order to feel that safety. Healing is not about. Never getting into another relationship in order to stay pain-free. It's about building a new radar that's, that's sensitive but not oversensitive.

It's about shifting how you show up to dating and in relationships, and it's about trusting that you can navigate hard things.

You can learn to recognize green flags and spot those subtle red ones early.

In relationships. You can build back the trust in yourself so that when you see something that doesn't quite feel right, you're able to ask a question about it, bring up a conversation about it, confront the issue in some way, set a boundary if you need to, or walk away. And if you do need to walk away, you trust yourself to be able to manage the disappointment, the sadness, the grief,

that comes from having to end something that maybe you didn't want to end.

I had a client [00:08:00] recently who we were doing some parts work while we were doing our, our EFT tapping, and it came to a place where we were, we were acknowledging this part of her that was. In pain, right? She, she just was having a hard time letting go of the idea of what it should have looked like with her partner.

And so I asked her, what does this part need to hear? And the client said that it'll be okay. And she sort of hesitated at the end of that, that sentence. And so I asked her, what else is there? What else is coming up when you say that to this part that it'll be okay?

She's like, the part isn't believing me. I was like, okay, what? What does the part need to hear instead? And she's like, that we can get through it even if it hurts, even if it sucks. And that felt more true for her. That felt relieving to this part of her because it was almost like she was giving this false, like it'll be okay sweeping statement, but when she said that it'll we'll be able to get through it even if it sucks, even if it hurts. That [00:09:00] felt real for her and she had proven that to this part of her because she had really held this part while they processed through a lot of things that sucked, a lot of things that hurt so that part of her could trust her that okay,

even if we go into dating and we get hurt somehow, I've experienced you being able to process this hurt, to be able to find the right support, to be able to keep us safe, while you navigate something challenging. The competency there really builds our confidence to be able to do that.

So she didn't have to trust the other person to not hurt her. She just had to trust herself to be able to remove herself from the situation and to be able to navigate what was happening emotionally because of it.

So that's a beautiful skill. You also can learn to date in a way that doesn't have you divulging your deepest traumas over the first drink and hearing his whole life story by dessert.

So when we think about entering [00:10:00] dating again. It's not about learning to date perfectly. There's no perfect in this. It's about recognizing when something is off and trusting yourself to take the next right action.

When you do this, you can feel safe and in control of yourself, which allows you to let go and not be so hypervigilant and have fun.

It allows you to build that real connection without losing yourself, and it helps you to stop attracting men who really weaponize vulnerability and affection.

Part of this whole switcheroo around dating and learning to trust yourself again is the knowledge of what love bombing looks like.

So if you have just gotten out of a narcissistic relationship and now you're terrified of getting into another one, but you do really wanna be able to date with confidence. I have a free guide called Three Ways to Recognize Love Bombing, and the link is in the show notes. You guys,

this is such a powerful guide because it gives you the knowledge of the red flag. It also gives you the [00:11:00] example of what a green flag would look like in the opposite situation,

so you can have your eyes kind of open in both ways,

which really helps you to practice this discernment of gathering data while you are dating again. So it's a free guide. It's for you. The link is in the show notes. Please, please, please go and grab that resource because it can really change the whole way that you approach dating again, when you have that confidence of knowing what to look for and you're starting to build that trust back in yourself, okay, so let's pull an Oracle card. Let's see what, what the message is for today. And what came out is effervescent, which is just freaking perfect like they always are. Okay, I'm finding it in the book. Here's what it says. Effervescent, is sending you a message of permission to lighten up.

Now is the time for effervescence. Be light, bubbly, and unpredictable. Pop your cork, spray your message spit into the wind. Free yourself from the canister. [00:12:00] Effervescence is calling you to rise up the parts of yourself that are joyful, quirky, transient, delightful, and refreshing. If you found yourself flat, it's time to shake it up.

We cannot be playful if we are on guard. Those two things don't exist at the same time. So to have the knowledge, to have the self trusts so that you can relax in a dating atmosphere, not be terrified to death, that you're gonna fall into something, but really have that like rooted confidence so that you can be your fun self, your quirky self, your real self.

I know you are working really hard on finding that woman again. On rebuilding what was really stolen from you in that last relationship. So this is the next step to be able to move into the next evolution of your life. The next chapter from that, that place of alignment that you are working so hard to find again, three ways to recognize love bombing guide is in the show notes.

And until I see you in the next [00:13:00] episode, please, please, please remember that you are not alone.