E089 - 3 Signs You're Still Healing from Narcissistic Abuse (Even If You Think You're Over It)

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[00:00:00] In this episode, you will discover the three signs that you are not over your narcissistic ex and how to break free.

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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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Welcome back to the podcast. Alright ladies, have you ever found yourself stalking your ex's social media? Wondering If he's changed, wondering if he's finally treating this new woman, right? Or have you ever found yourself lying awake at night, replaying every fight, trying to figure out why he did what he did and whether or not it was your fault?

If that's you, I want you to know this. You are not broken, you are not obsessed. You are healing. In this episode, we are talking about the subtle [00:01:00] signs that you are still in recovery from your narcissistic ex, especially the ones that make you feel ashamed or crazy.

So by the end of today's episode, you are going to understand why you feel unable to stop checking your ex's social media. You are gonna learn how to stop spiraling in mental loops, trying to figure out how your ex was so cruel,

and you're gonna recognize how blame has been weaponized against you to make you feel like everything is your fault.

We'll unpack why your brain is still stuck on him, why you are still ruminating, and how to stop believing that you are the problem.

Because you aren't, and if you're doubting that this episode is exactly where you need to be, and be sure to stick around to the very, very end where I will pull an Oracle card that will offer you a message that you can use this week to stay more anchored in your healing.

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I know how infuriating it is to be on some level, not over your ex, who has given you every reason to be over him. Maybe your ex [00:02:00] cheated on you. Maybe your ex stole money from you. Maybe your ex had a whole other fucking double life, and despite it all. You are still finding yourself feeling obsessed with this person, feeling like you can't make sense of what happened, feeling very focused on them.

So I wanna talk about why. Why is that? And what are the signs that you aren't quite through the healing process? What are the signs that you may still have little pieces that you need to acknowledge or work on or move through or be with in some way in order for you to find true freedom from this person?

Physically, energetically, all the all the ways. If you are experiencing some of these things, is just information for you to be able to assess, am I doing this? Am I feeling this way? And from there,

we can help you actually detach from this person and move on, which is what you ultimately want, right? We want to move on from these unhealthy relationships so that you can move [00:03:00] on. Okay, so the first sign that you are still healing is that you are very focused on him.

Maybe you are stalking his social media. Maybe you are asking mutual friends. Hey, is so and so dating again? Maybe you're looking on WhatsApp to see when the last time was that he was online. In any of, in all of those cases, you are focused on him and what he is doing.

And by the way, if you're doing this, there's nothing wrong with you. There's, this is a very normal part of the healing process. It just means that you are still in the healing process and the first thing that comes up from clients when they're doing this is a fear that they are obsessed with the person that they're never gonna be able to let go of what he's doing.

And what I want you to know is that you are not obsessed. You are just searching for answers. You are trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense. So let's take the example of him cheating [00:04:00] on you. If he, if you were cheated on, it's first of all a very jarring experience to believe that your partner was in love with you.

That they told you that you are their everything. That you were building a life together, you lived together. Maybe you have kids together. And then to find out that they had another relationship. Another sexual relationship with a woman It is horrifying. It's so painful. And so if you have experienced that part of, you might be looking for the answer, why?

Like where did the thing go wrong? And is he even capable of love? So by searching on his social media and you're looking and you're seeing that he's in a new relationship, part of what might be happening is that you are trying to figure out if he is going to be the same person with her as he was with you, or were you the problem?

Right. You're looking for the answer to what happened in the relationship and what starts to happen when we look on social media specifically is we see the highlight reel, we [00:05:00] know this. We know that people only post the good stuff and then we make stories about what that means.

For example, let's say that he's posting a picture of him and his new girlfriend on a boat. And let's say that you always wanted him to take you out on a boat, and you always wanted to sail away into the sunset and drink your champagne and eat strawberries on this boat.

And you had talked about doing that. You'd wanted to do that. He'd promised that for you. And you see that, you see that picture on social media. It's infuriating. Fucking through the roof, right? You're infuriated, rightfully so. But what also happens is you start to make up the story that, oh, he's capable of doing this with another woman.

He must love that woman more. She must be better, more enough, more worthy, more lovable. Insert whatever quality that you wish you had, and he's finally found true love. He's finally treating her the way that I always wanted to be treated. What is wrong with me?

Is he actually able to be in a healthy [00:06:00] relationship? It looks like they're really happy. How come I didn't get that happy version of him? Where did that happy version go? And we go in spirals, creating the story around the picture that we're seeing.

And we really think that this is going to help, that this is going to help give us the answer if we can like create an answer. Human beings love stories. We are always searching for the meaning behind an experience to make it make sense.

So it's normal that you're searching for a meaning when we're early in our healing experience, we think we can still get the answers from them.

If this is you, if you are stuck on him of seeking answers from what he's doing of trying to find the answer externally, I want you to know that your answers are gonna come when you fold your attention back inward to yourself.

When I work with clients, the majority of our work is turning that attention inward and finding clarity about what [00:07:00] they're feeling, finding clarity about what their experience was, not focusing on him? The healing work comes from focusing on you and what you experience as a consequence of their actions.

So that's number one, focusing on them.

Number two is ruminating on why or how they did what they did. So this is subtly different from number one, because we can ruminate without seeking answers. We can be stewing late at night about how could he have betrayed me? How could he have cheated on me? What type of person does this?

I thought that I was in love with somebody and that I was spending my life with somebody, and in reality, I was sleeping next to this person who is leading this whole other double life, we're ruminating in the why and how without maybe actually looking on social media or trying to figure out what they're doing.

So it's that loop. It's the loop in your head trying to figure out how somebody could have treated you that way when they said that they [00:08:00] loved you. And the loop is not giving you peace. The loop is keeping you stuck. We know that. And we think by trying to figure out why, by intaking all of this information about narcissists and why they do what they do and how they manipulate and what that means. We think that if we understand that logically, that it will help us process what we're feeling emotionally.

I did this in my last relationship where I was cheated on. I was betrayed by my ex and I was trying to understand how people were capable of betraying someone that they said they loved. And as I went further down, like the analytical rabbit hole, then I was trying to figure out, well, how does a narcissist do those things and why?

And was my partner a narcissist? And trying to gather information again to make it make sense. And I really believed that if I just learned about betrayal and learned why somebody would betray [00:09:00] someone that I would heal the part of me that was betrayed. I. But unfortunately that's not how we process our experience, and that's the place where so many of us get stuck is we think we're just learning and learning and learning.

And somehow that's going to translate to us letting this person go and finding relief from the relationship, but it doesn't. So what we need to do to actually heal our experience is to feel the weight of the experience.

To feel all of the emotions that come up because you were portrayed. For me, I had to really sit with that deep guttural sadness of not feeling like I was enough to keep him from straying, I had to sit in that feeling, sit in that sadness, sit in that lack, sit in that feeling of being alone.

And not that those things were true, but I was feeling that because of what happened. So when I was able to shift from. Taking in information about betrayal to feeling [00:10:00] what the consequence was for me after being betrayed. That was how I was able to untangle that experience and release the emotional and energetic charge around that to be able to move forward.

Where now I can talk about being betrayed and I still remember what it felt like, but it doesn't have control over my life. Presently, that wound is not still oozing and really sore. It's more of a scar. Right? It's still noticeable. I know it's there, but it's not as painful as it was.

So if you are stuck in the rumination and the why, could he And how did he, I want you to hear that healing is possible, that if you're feeling hopeless, that this is something possible to heal from, and it just takes having the right space and the right safety to be able to move through those feelings and process those emotions, which is something that when I watch a client do, brings me so much joy and I feel so honored to be able to hold that space [00:11:00] because

I know that she's not just releasing painful experience. I know That she's finding trust in herself to journey into these places, and she's feeling trust in another person, which are all building blocks to her eventual healthy relationship.

So it's possible, it's possible to get through the number three sign that you are still in healing from this narcissistic ex of yours is the belief that it's all your fault. So you see them with this new woman on the sailboat and you believe that he had to find her because you were not enough, because you couldn't provide him with the love or the life that he wanted because you were the one that was always bringing up problems,

and you really start to believe that his decision to cheat was in part because of you, or maybe you're trying to fall back into nostalgia. You are looking back on your past memories and wondering if you even made the right choice by leaving or wondering if the relationship could have still been [00:12:00] fixed if you had just tried something different.

If you had just done more therapy, if you had just stopped bringing things up all of the time that were the problem, quote unquote. You believe on some level that it was your fault and there may have been something that you could have still done to save the relationship, or maybe you're stuck blaming yourself and being at fault for not ending it sooner. Maybe you're out of the relationship now and you can look back and say, oh my God, I saw all the red flags. Why didn't I leave? And you start to blame yourself. You start to to think that the reason that the relationship went to the length that it did was somehow all because it was your fault and didn't see it, didn't fix it, or didn't leave soon enough.

So why do we go here? Why do we go to this place of thinking that it's all our fault because I did too. When you are in a relationship that is narcissistic, there was often gaslighting happening. There was often manipulation on some level where they were trying to make all of the [00:13:00] problems your fault so that they didn't have to take accountability for their part in the problem.

If you think about it, it's very convenient for everything to always be. Your fault because then they don't have to step up. They don't have to actually solve the problem.

It's just blame shifted back to you. You are the problem. You are the problem. You are the bad guy. When you are being told that over and over and over again in a relationship, often very convincingly by a person who says they love you, you of course start to wonder if what they're saying is true. Gaslighting very slowly dismantles the trust you have in yourself. It dismantles your reality. Your inner compass, gaslighting, spins you around, confuses you, tells you you're not enough, and you're the problem, and you start to believe it.

And I'm meaning like the whole relationship was my fault, the ending was my fault, right? These very big catastrophic beliefs of, of fault. [00:14:00] Not like this is something I can take accountability for because that's a very healthy place to be as you're recovering, but if you're still in that catastrophic, it's all my fault.

That's a sign that you are still in recovery. What we do is we heal from these relationships is we start to take that catastrophic, this is all my fault, piece it out, untangle, and see the places where you can actually take accountability and see the places where you need to hold the other person accountable for their choices and their behavior.

If you were like me in this toxic relationship that I had, I was taking all of the responsibility. And so we wanna give some of that back to them. When you have that safe place, that safe person that can help validate your experiences and really piece out like what went on here, where would, what clarity do I need to find about my behavior or his behavior in order for this to make sense on why this relationship happened this way?

And how do and how for you to make sense, [00:15:00] not to bring your patterns into your future relationships. It just takes some and time and intentionality and a whole fuck ton of clarity to move to that place where some things were my fault, not everything was my fault.

So those are the signs that I want you to be aware of. And if any part of this episode has hit close to home, I want you to know that you don't have to navigate this by yourself.

Healing from a narcissistic relationship is complex, and if you're realizing that you're still carrying some weight, some energetic connection to this person, it's not a failure. You're not doing it wrong. It's just a sign that you're ready for deeper support. You're ready to take your journey to the place where it will actually give you relief, where you will actually find freedom.

Because now you know why you're stuck. Now you know why you feel unable to stop checking your ex's social media. You know what you need to do in order to stop ruminating and getting stuck into these mental loops, trying to [00:16:00] understand why your ex was so cruel.

And you understand now why blame was weaponized against you and how that's keeping you thinking that the relationship is your fault. So if you're looking for space to process all of this, to rebuild that safety, to rebuild that trust with yourself, first and foremost, please click the link in the show notes.

I have an interest form that you can fill out that will lead you to a free session that we can have to talk through everything you're going through and how I can better support you to really finally let go of this person so that you can move the fuck on with your life so that you can experience a healthy relationship at some point in your life because you deserve that.

You deserve healthy love, you deserve support that centers on you and helps you become the woman that you want to be. You're listening to this podcast, you're in a perfect place. So you are already on your way, and if you're ready for that next step, even if it's small, I am here for you.

Okay? So let's end this episode by pulling an Oracle [00:17:00] card to see what the message is that wants to come through for you today. So I'm starting to shuffle the deck and just asking what is the message that the listener needs to hear? We got Body Vision and it's a picture of an electric eel.

So let me find Body Vision in the book and it says, body Vision calls you to be fully present in the moment to experience life with all five of your senses. Imagine the information you could collect if in every interaction you had you consciously sensed into your vision, skin, hearing, eyesight, and even the taste of a moment.

Your full body is always working for you to enrich the experiences of your life. Body Vision is a vibe meant to encourage you to slow down, get present, and soak up the riches of the moment. Body vision is the antenna that tunes you to the unspoken, the unseen, the unheard UNM smelled and uncosted live presently in your whole self.

You are receiving this message because you have gone unconscious in some area of your [00:18:00] life, and body vision is like the finger poking you to wake up, get your senses online, tune in, tune in, tune in. The invitation is there. Tune into your life. Tune into your healing. Know that this process is challenging, that it is painful, but it's doable and I have been there.

I understand where you are so, so, so deeply, and I want you to know that you are not alone. I'll see you in the next episode.