E088 - The Hardest Truth About Recovering From A Manipulative Narcissisitc Relationship

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[00:00:00] In this episode, I'm going to give you the truth that you need to hear in order to finally find freedom from your narcissistic relationship.

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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 the podcast. Today I have been thinking a lot about the number one, one of the number one hardest parts about healing from a narcissistic relationship. And I'm talking about the maddening quest for answers for closure. The late night Google searches. The rabbit holes, the endless, What did I miss? Spirals. I've been there, And I'm sharing today one of the truths that finally set me free. And if you've heard that term like the truth, the truth may set you free, but first it may piss you [00:01:00] off, right? This is very much one of those truths, but it helped me find freedom, and I hope that it might just do the same for you. So stick with me because that freedom that you're craving, the ability to move on from this bullshit that you're craving isn't gonna come from them.

In this episode, you are going to understand the surprising reason why you feel so stuck. You're going to discover what is actually draining your energy and really mirroring that same dynamic that you had in the relationship. And you're gonna learn this radical mindset shift that will finally give you peace.

Power control and allow you to finally close that door for good. Remember to stick around to the very end of the episode where I always pull an Oracle card. These cards offer a message and you can use this message to hold on this week to stay anchored in your healing.

Okay, so maybe you are in the middle of the mind fuck, and you are realizing that you have been with a narcissistic person and maybe you have been binging [00:02:00] my content and other podcasts around the narcissistic experience, trying to find some clarity about narcissistic people.

And maybe you're still just unable to find yourself understanding what actually happened to you, understanding the lies that they told, understanding the deception, and maybe the betrayal that you experienced, understanding the verbal abuse or physical abuse or financial abuse or spiritual abuse or sexual abuse, or other kinds of mistreatment that you might have endured in this relationship.

But you keep searching. You keep going down the Google searches, you keep trying to find information, searching harder and harder to try to understand what the hell happened, how things went from so good to so bad, and how you didn't see it, or maybe how you saw it and decided to ignore all of the red flags. Really, really questioning and asking yourself, was this love? Was any of this real? I.

If you are, you are in the [00:03:00] same position as so many of my clients when we start working together, who really find me in those moments of, I can't be in this pain anymore. Please help me figure out how to make this pain go away. Please help me try to make this make sense.

So if you're here in this place, along with many other women who are in this place, I want you to hear this truth.

You'll never understand why I want that to sink in for a minute. You will never understand why. You're not gonna understand why they can be so cruel, why they lied to you, why they put on a facade in the beginning of the relationship, why they love bombed you, right? You're never gonna understand what that motivation is, because you. And this person are from different planets. Okay? We think about one planet being the planet of empathetic people. People on this planet understand [00:04:00] emotion. They understand how their behavior affects other people. They care about how their behavior affects other people, and they're really seeking relationships in order to feel connection, in order to experience reciprocal love, in order to deepen a bond, in order to be vulnerable with somebody else.

Even though those things might be scary, and we might still be learning lessons around all of those things, that is the drive. That is the drive for the relationship, this relational closeness,

and then you have this other planet. This other planet is a planet of non-empathetic people. Which sometimes we use the term narcissistic people who fit into that planet. People there are not seeking relationships for connection. They're seeking relationships to gain something. Relationships to them are very.

Are very take energy. So they're trying to exert their power, their control, to take validation from you. They need the [00:05:00] relationship in order to exert their power and dominance so that they feel that sense of, I'm in control of this person, therefore I am worthy enough, powerful, almighty, whatever it is that's feeding their sense of self.

And what's happening after we've been in relationship with somebody from the non-empathetic planet is that we still are flying our little spaceship over to that planet. We're flying around the planet, we're hovering around the planet. We are trying to observe the behavior of the non-empathetic people trying to understand.

What they're doing right? We're like, how can you, how can you show up in relationships this way? This is so counterintuitive to the way that I show up in relationships and wanting to understand them, is coming from a really sincere place, we wanna understand their behavior so we can understand what happened to us.

But what happens is that we are spending all of our energy and all of our resources [00:06:00] flying from our planet to their planet. Observing their behavior and by the time we're done and fly back, we're fucking exhausted. We are so tired trying to make sense of it all, that when we get back to our planet where we should be taking care of ourselves and healing from the experience that happened,

We are just too burnt out to do anything revolving around our own healing.

Does this feel familiar? This is the same type of energy exertion that you had in the relationship. This is the same hypervigilance on them and their behavior and trying to understand their needs and their moods and what you are doing wrong to have caused them to have a reaction. It's so much energy, .

It's like mental gymnastics all of the time,

and that really leaves you drained. It left you drained in the relationship. It leaves you drained when you come back from your mission observing them on their planet, and it leaves you with more questions than answers.

[00:07:00] Have you felt that you are like, I'm learning all this information about narcissists. Why am I still so confused? And now I have a thousand other questions that are coming up and it's a place that we stay in that analytical mind, which again takes all of our energy from actually doing the healing work we need to do.

So coming to some acceptance around this will never make sense to you. Because you didn't grow up on that planet, you are not a non-empathetic being who lives in this this way, who operates in this way. So inherently it's not gonna make sense to you. And I know that you're resisting me saying that to you because I did.

I resisted that so hard. I fought back on that so hard when I was trying to heal from my toxic relationship. I'm like, no. If I just understand betrayal, then I can heal from this betrayal. If I just understand why they need control, then I can heal from being under this person's thumb for several years and not even knowing that I was there.

So if you're [00:08:00] resisting, I want you to receive this next piece of information as why it is relieving to actually find that acceptance that you will never understand why it is relieving, because it finally gives you permission to stop seeking. And likely you have been seeking long enough that you know enough about narcissistic people to have an understanding that they operate differently.

It was about manipulation and control. You, it was not really personal to you. You can insert you for another woman and they're gonna do the same thing. And not that that doesn't make it hurt, but at least you have the, the knowledge base. The knowledge base is important. We just don't wanna get stuck there.

So when we can find this acceptance that we're never gonna understand fully, why you can stop seeking and you can start healing. You can save all of that energy, you can bring all of your resources back into [00:09:00] yourself so that you can have the capacity and the strength to do the healing work that you need to do because of their actions.

It doesn't matter why they did it, because it's the consequence is still in you. You're still living the trauma. You're still living with that anxiety, that hypervigilance. So you need all of your energy to be able to move through that healing journey.

And another way that this will be relieving for you to finally find that acceptance that you'll never understand. Why

is that will, it will help bring you out of that fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response in order for your nervous system to start to heal. Again, instead of exerting all of your energy outward, we're bringing all of the energy back in because you need so much of that to be able to reprogram the nervous system, to understand that and unpack the trauma and really heal this gaping wound that they left inside of you.

I remember when I was in this, in this. Frantic [00:10:00] searching place. My therapist asked me, she's like, what do you really want? I was like, I want him to apologize. I want him to understand the magnitude of what he's done and how none of this is acceptable behavior for an adult person.

And she just stopped me and she said, would you even believe that if he gave you an apology? And I was like, no, I wouldn't because I couldn't believe anything that came out of his mouth. So I want you to stop and think about what you're actually wanting by understanding all this information.

Are you wanting the apology? Are you wanting the confirmation that you were actually lovable? The kicker is that the apology will never come. A sincere, heartfelt, empathetic, introspective apology is never gonna come from a narcissistic person.

They will never come to you and say, I was really seeking your validation and needed to control you so that I could maintain myself image, because without that, it would threaten my sense of self, and I would [00:11:00] crumble because of my fragile self-esteem. We're we're never gonna get that answer.

We're never gonna get that. That level of self-awareness and that apology from this person. Clarity doesn't come from them. Closure doesn't come from them. It comes from you

so expending any energy on them is actually continuing to strengthen their control and weaken you. What I help my clients do, what I help women do is to recollect all of this energy, redirect it inward and go full force into their healing. It's closing the circuit. So if you think about a circuit, when you, when it's open, the energy is flowing out and when we can close the circuit, the energy flows within, right?

And it gets brighter, it gets stronger, it gets healthier. And you'll have this experience as you close the circuit and do that healing work well, people will say to you, you look brighter. Wow, you look like the woman that I knew in college. Wow, your [00:12:00] smile is back. And that is because you have brought all of your energy back in and you're using it to heal.

When we move from the intellectual spiral of energy going outward, trying to find and grasp information, we bring it inward. We can actually process what happened. We can actually untangle all of the shit from all of the experience and process what just happened to you.

It is such a radical act of self love to finally put your needs first. If you think about the relationship, how much you put them first, how much they were front of mind, how much energy they took from you. It is a radical act of self-care and even defiance from that relationship to be like, I'm done with that.

I'm done trying to figure you out. I'm focusing on me

and that will help you to close the door for good, find freedom,

and move on from this person who has stolen so many years of your life because you have been controlled long enough, you don't need their [00:13:00] apology. You don't need their explanation of their behavior in order to heal. You just need you. You need you, and you need a safe person.

To be able to hold that really non-judgmental, safe space for you to get honest about everything that you felt, everything that happened, everything that you felt because of what happened,

So that we can heal those parts of you that were so deeply hurt by them.

And when you can start to heal these parts, you heal these, these wounded parts from the inside out. This is what happens. You stop choosing the same type of person.

You close the door, you find the freedom from this relationship. You stop allowing chaotic people in your life, period. Be it from friends, coworkers, job situations, family members. Chaos suddenly becomes a huge deterrent for you and a huge red flag in relationships,

and you build the foundation of self love that you will need in order to be in a healthy relationship moving forward. We cannot show up [00:14:00] healthfully in a relationship if we have not shown up healthfully for ourselves.

So this is really how you do the work to build that sense of confidence, and move forward as that woman that you want to become. It is possible.

I've been there and at the same time that I was feeling these intense, like rejections to what all this, all this information that I'm sharing with you right now, I also felt in my bones that that was the way forward.

Word. It just felt unfamiliar and I needed someone to guide me. I needed someone to hold that safe space to help teach me these new patterns of how to put my needs first, and really prioritize myself first and foremost. And they were all just skills, skills that I had to learn.

So the way that I hold space for women now for my clients now is very much what I received and what I needed. When I was moving through healing from my toxic relationship and being able to show you that there is an end, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. [00:15:00] Even if right now you're still in the part of the tunnel where everything is pitch black rats are running over your feet, water's dripping on your head, and you're scared as shit and you don't wanna be there.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it just takes putting one foot in front of the other. As you continue to move forward in the new patterns, the new way of being and your overall healing, you can do this.

You can do this. It's possible. There is hope.

If this is resonating for you and you're having that tinge of, Ugh, I don't wanna do this, but I know I need to, please click through the interest form in the show notes. It'll start a conversation and and if you feel aligned with the way that I hold space in order for me to guide you through this process.

Okay, so to end these episodes, I always pull an Oracle card. The Oracle card is a message that you can use this week to just come back to and find some solace from. So I'm starting to shuffle the deck and asking the deck what is the message that needs to come through today for [00:16:00] you?

We got down, slap. So I'm going to find down, slap in the book, and I will read to you what it says.

The universe is sending you a cosmic downs slap, telling you to cut it out. This is a firm and loving message letting you know that it's time for you to stop doing the things that hurt your body, your heart, your soul, and anything that interferes with your higher purpose downs. SLAP may feel like unwanted change, loss, or loss of control, and guess what?

This is a blessing, not in disguise, but a straight up message to change your ways. The universe whispered and you didn't listen. So now Downs. Slapp is here to put you on notice that it's time to radically love yourself and cut the other shit out. I just can't make the shit up. I do not pull these, I do not pre pull them.

I really do shuffle and that. That's just what came out. But how perfect is that? So remember that message. Remember that it is time to shift your ways even though it feels painful, even though it feels scary. Even though it might [00:17:00] feel totally counterintuitive to take off of trying to figure out why and putting your energy back on healing what happened because of whatever they did

And come back to this episode, re-listen to it as you start to go down those same rabbit holes to remind yourself of what you're doing. Because from this episode, you now better understand why.

Trying to figure out why they did what they did is not going to heal your pain. You understand how obsessing over this, this why keep flying over to their planet is actually enforcing the same behavior that you had in the relationship, the same energy drain that you had in the relationship, and you have the mindset shift now that is going to help you come back to yourself so that you can find your peace, so that you can find the control within your own healing and really take the power back into your hands.

This process of healing from these relationships is not linear, and it's not easy. It's at least a two person job to be able to make sense of all of the things that are [00:18:00] conflicting in your brain, all of the confusion swirling that's happening. So know that you're not alone in this and you are strong enough to move through it.

I'm here with you. Until next time, I'll see you in the next episode.