E075 - Why Did I Stay So Long? Moving Beyond Self-Blame To Heal From A Narcissistic Relationship

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[00:00:00] In this episode, you will discover why you stayed so long with your narcissistic ex and how to move past self blame so that you can heal.

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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 Heartbreak to Wholeness. Are you kicking yourself with the question of, why did I stay so long? Are you out of a narcissistic relationship and are looking back like, what the hell was that and how did I not see it sooner? Well,

today's episode is for you. In this episode, you are going to understand why you kept giving your ex second chances. You're going to learn why narcissistic relationships feel like an addiction, that you just can't quit, and you're gonna get a simple exercise that you can do today to move beyond self.

Blame [00:01:00] and remember to stick around to the end of the episode. I always pull an Oracle card, which will offer you a message that you can use this week to stay more anchored and centered in your healing.

So here we go. Why did I stay so long? This question is something that I get from clients all of the time. It's something that I asked myself when I had finally left my narcissistic relationship. And honestly, when we're looking back in hindsight, we can be pretty mean to ourself. In my course for my clients, there's a module called Hindsight is a Bitch, because It is.

And in that course or in that module, I talk about why it's so easy. To look back on our past with all of the information that we have now and really beat ourself up for the decisions that we made. Hindsight can be riddled with self blame. And one of the first places that we can go when we're trying to make sense of why we didn't leave sooner is just assuming that we have no willpower

[00:02:00] or assuming that we were diluted and stupid, and both of those things are not true. So the good news about narcissistic relationships in kind of a twisted way, is that leaving them is not solely a cognitive decision. There are a myriad of neurochemical, psychological and emotional anchors that really keep us stuck.

In these types of relationships. So just because you think you should leave doesn't always equal you leaving. In this episode, I really wanna piece out those other pieces and help you understand why it was so hard to leave in the first place, why it's so hard to not go back, and why that often takes a long time.

If you've been listening to me for any period of time, you've probably heard me talk about potential land. This is a concept that I came up with when I was thinking about how we can actually dissociate from the relationship that we're in and kind of live [00:03:00] in this fantastical place of hope because in potential land, all of our dreams are coming true.

All of our. Hopes all of our desires are finally coming true. So he is going to therapy. You guys are learning how to communicate better. You, you're fighting less, right? There's, there is peace, there's cohesion. And if I'm living in that place, I can still hold onto hope that those things will actually come true and I don't have to be in my reality in the same way and not acknowledging.

The stress and anxiety and walking on eggshells and not being able to speak my emotions without getting yelled at or being told it's all my fault. We're able to hold out hope that things will change. And potential land is somewhere that we can get stuck in. We sometimes stay there for months. We sometimes stay there for years waiting for things to get better.

And you really have to hit a rock bottom, I believe, to come out of potential [00:04:00] land. And, and a little bit, I'm going to talk a little more about how these relationships mirror. Addiction and the addictive cycle, but the rock bottom is a key piece here because you're not going to be able to see the relationship for what it is until you're ready to see the relationship for what it is.

If you're looking back and you're asking yourself, why did I stay so long? Why did I stay so long in potential land in the first place? Give yourself a little bit of grace because you came to your rock bottom moment in exactly the specific time that you were supposed to.

I really believe that. I really believe that sometimes it takes us a long time to be able to see what's actually right in front of us, and that doesn't make you. Anything that doesn't make you stupid, that doesn't make you ignorant, it just makes you ready when you are ready to see that thing. I would also go out on a limb and say that you are most likely a woman that wants to help people reach their potential, right?

[00:05:00] And especially when that person is saying that they want to reach a certain potential, whether that be, you know, fixing their anger issues or going to therapy. You wanna help them, you wanna help them get to that place because you wanna see the best for people. And it can be convincing the narcissistic ex specifically, can be really convincing and charismatic.

And manipulative and making you believe that. When they never really have any real desire or motive to move towards that thing. So again, sometimes we have to try to help people try to assume the best and believe them for as long as it takes for us to then see that they aren't actually interested in making that change.

There's a lot of benefit of the doubt that goes into these relationships or into these conversations that happen cyclically where. The promise is made. We wanna give them the benefit of the doubt that they are. Not blowing smoke up our ass. Um, [00:06:00] and so just, just holding all of that, those pieces, the potential land you're holding onto, hope, you really wanna help people actualize what they want in their life, and you're really good at giving benefit of the doubt. And those are not bad qualities. There are ways that we can learn boundaries and learn our own constrictions around how far we're willing to go and bend in those different categories.

But nothing is inherently wrong with you because you may have been experiencing those things. So that's the first part. Understanding why we give so many second chances. The second part here that I wanna touch on is the addiction piece. So I spent, prior to being a relationship clarity coach, um, almost a decade in the addiction world.

And in sitting in on different clinical trainings and talking with professionals and observing the clients that were in the treatment programs, it's, it just became so clear that the addictive cycle spans much more than just substances, right? [00:07:00] We know this about work addiction or eating disorders or other behavioral addictions, and really it comes down to this cycle of dopamine. That same neurocircuitry of dependence and so. In a narcissistic relationship, you are getting thrown up and down from really intense feelings of idealization to abandonment. And we talk about these types of relationships like being on a rollercoaster, which is really the perfect metaphor. So I'm gonna use that to help explain how dopamine and oxytocin plays into this

to actually keep your body physiologically addicted to that cycle. Part of this rollercoaster experience is intermittent reinforcement, and we know from gambling, we know from social media that that is one of the most addictive types of reinforcement.

Because it really fucks with your dopamine and your oxytocin levels. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter and a hormone [00:08:00] that is part of our dopamine reward system. So essentially when we get something that we like, we get a flood of dopamine, and that keeps us moving towards that thing.

So let's say that you just had a huge fight with your partner and they are promising that they are going to change. They say they see the issue in the relationship. They are taking what seems to be responsibility and pulling you closer back to them. And you of course, like we talked about. In the first part of this episode, you want that to be true.

You wanna hold onto the hope that things are gonna get better, and you're sort of in this euphoric wave that things are gonna be good. Things are actually gonna change this time. So we can think about this part of the rollercoaster, like we are just starting to go down, right? The down part of a rollercoaster is really exciting.

We're losing our stomach, we're throwing our hands in the air, And it's pleasurable. That's, that's a fun part of this rollercoaster ride. So when [00:09:00] things are good, we're moving down and then inevitably we come to the bottom of that drop, and here is where things start to kind of go south again,

where the, the excitement of the promises start to fade, where we start to see some of those behaviors again from our partner that don't feel good, and we start to feel this withdrawal of dopamine and oxytocin, so things aren't feeling as good and we're not moving as close to the person. Right. Oxytocin is really released, it's called.

The cuddle hormones. So it's really released when we are in close proximity to the person.

So we get to the bottom, we get to kind of the wall. And then things start to feel a lot like they did before that last fight. So maybe the, maybe your partner is pulling away, maybe they're yelling, maybe they're giving you the silent treatment and kind of abandoning you mentally or emotionally. Maybe they are [00:10:00] going out and not telling you where they are and not coming home,

they're, they're doing those behaviors that were causing the fights in the first place. And I think about this as then you're starting to rise again. We're kind of in this working mode of this is not feeling. Good. And I need, I'm seeking, I'm seeking the dopamine. I'm seeking how to fix the relationship.

I'm seeking how to have that conversation to see that he needs to change or make him see that he needs to change. Right? How am I gonna get back to the top, back to the things that, or back to the relationship. Feeling good. So we're climbing, we're climbing the slope, we're seeking the dopamine, we're seeking the oxytocin, and our body is driving a lot of this.

This is why sometimes

you feel a, pole, or you feel that reflex almost to move toward the person to fix it. We're, we're seeking the dopamine. We're seeking the oxytocin. And then

you are climbing, you're climbing, you're exhausted. You've put in so much effort. Your dopamine levels are really, really [00:11:00] low. You really need it. You really are in that seeking place. And then you have another big crescendo of something, right? Another big fight. Which puts you at the very top of the rollercoaster, ready for the apology that takes you back down.

Narcissistic relationships really depend on these cycles, and because it's not all good or all bad, we're really. Again, able to give people the benefit of the doubt. We're able to kind of, when the apology comes, sort of erase everything that brought us up to that point of he didn't mean it. He's having a stressful time at work.

He really just doesn't like my family. I'm the trigger, whatever the justification is. We're quick to do that, to kind of, because the dopamine feels so good, it's so overwhelming.

So it is in part this dysregulation of our dopamine and oxytocin levels that really causes us to feel that that [00:12:00] addiction, I. We are not meant to go into such extremes in relationships, relationships in a healthy dynamic are more predictable. It's less of a rollercoaster and more of a road trip.

So you still have your exciting scenery, you're, still going over small hills and maybe having some twists and turns, but it's not the intense up and the intense down that can really, really dysregulate our nervous system and keep us dependent on that external thing.

So in this case, the person in drug addiction, it's the drug or the drink. We're dependent on that thing to make us feel better, to make, to make us regulated. That's why it feels like an addiction. And like addiction. It's hard to come out of that with just willpower,

there's physiological pieces. We have to tend to, there's mental, there's emotional, there's spiritual pieces, and the same goes for these types of relationships. So knowing that, knowing that there's a lot that went [00:13:00] into you being in this relationship, you being sucked into it, and then you being able to see that potential land is not a place that you can sustainably live in.

How do you, how do you hold all of that and heal and drop the self blame? When we're looking backwards again, we have to be so compassionate with ourselves because hindsight is always 2020. It's always gonna be clearer looking back than it is when you're in it or trying to predict what it's gonna be moving forward.

So when we're in self blame, we cannot be in self care, and self-care can look a lot of different ways, I think often we talk about like the massage or the bubble bath or um, going for a walk and those things are wonderful. But when you are coming out of.

These types of dysregulating relationships. Self-care first has to look like regulating your nervous system, and we have to have an [00:14:00] absence from the stimulus that causes the, the big reactions that causes the up and down in order to be to find a new equilibrium. The absence piece is really hard,

thinking about actual thinking about drug and alcohol addiction. People can't continue to drink if they're trying to change their relationship with alcohol. And the same with these relationships. It's really hard to heal from a narcissistic relationship when you're still texting them, when you're still checking on them on social media, when you're still emailing them, when you're still trying to get them to understand whatever they did to you by writing a really nice letter or again, reaching out in any way.

It's keeping that. It's keeping that energy line open, so we need an absence of that person in order to heal from that person, especially because that person, again, causes the spikes in the dips, in our dopamine, in our [00:15:00] oxytocin levels, and in our nervous system in general. We really need a calm environment to be able to recalibrate our nervous system.

And what's not talked about enough, I think, is how uncomfortable it is to go from chaos to calm. And so in that transition you might get really uncomfortable, even though you know you want calm, even though you know calm is more healthy. You might be really fucking uncomfortable sitting with yourself in stillness and not.

Being in the midst of the tornado or being on the rollercoaster, which is why it's so imperative that you have support during this time, that you have somebody who can hold space for you to a process. What the hell just happened in that relationship? Because there's a lot tied into narcissistic relationships.

And B, to be able to, to help you not reflexively pick up the phone or not reflexively [00:16:00] apologize or not reflexively do whatever the behavior is to establish the relationship again, to get back in the cycle. It's really hard to do that alone. And when we're trying to heal relational wounds, it's really hard to do that in isolation.

So having a professional that understands these types of relationships and that you feel comfortable and safe with is number one, is priority all ways.

My job is to hold that safe space to give you the safety that you haven't felt. To be that person that you can come and be emotionally vulnerable with and not be judged, not be ridiculed, not be criticized, but actually be able to share what's happened and be able to process that so that this experience becomes an experience that you had and not one that you continue to carry forward into all of your future experiences or your future relationships.

So nervous system [00:17:00] regulation, absence from the person that causes your nervous system to freak out. Finding a professional that can hold safe space that you can be 1000% honest with in order to really purge out everything that's happened to you and then. What you can also do is something that brings you joy.

So a lot of times we focus on our work, right? Being the, the therapy being the coaching, being the trauma work, being this heavy sludge. And, and that's true in a lot of parts of this work. Absolutely. But can you also find moments of joy because joy can help to offset stress, and when you've been in these relationships, you've been living in stress.

So what is something that brings you joy? I want you to actually think about that right now because it might be hard to find that answer, especially if you are fresh out of this relationship where you [00:18:00] haven't felt joy in a long time. When I was healing, it was really hard for me to answer this question, and I had to start super, super small. Like down to, I enjoy dark chocolate. I enjoy eating a piece of dark chocolate. I enjoy drinking a nice cup of coffee. And that moment holding the mug, that's piping hot. Smelling the coffee.

Tasting the coffee for in that moment of stillness in the morning, that brings me joy. So this can be really, really small and I want you to think about that. What can you start incorporating in small ways into your every day to help offset that stress?

It is really gonna help you move out of self blame and into self-care because when you're in self-care mode, you have more capacity to be curious and compassionate with yourself, which is going to help you heal.

And I know you might be sitting there really in the middle of the darkness, really in the, the [00:19:00] very center of this tunnel that you don't see light at either end. And this might feel like a very hard moment for you. And I see you in that and I understand that place. And what I want you to know as somebody who's been through that tunnel, is that.

You keep putting one foot in front of the other and you will eventually see that light, you'll eventually move through this dark place. You absolutely can, and it's absolutely possible. Okay, so that was a lot of information in this episode. So just a quick recap of what we talked about

We talked about why you were giving your ex so many chances, so many second chances, third, fourth, fifth, chances. We talked a little bit about the addictive cycle and why narcissistic relationships can feel like something that you're addicted to and don't want, but can't get out of.

And you got a nice little exercise to use to help enhance your self care and help you move past self. [00:20:00] Blame.

As a final little gift from this episode, I'm going to pull an Oracle card. This is one of my favorite parts of these episodes because it offers you a message that you can use this week and really come back to, to stay anchored in what you were meant to hear today.

So a card just came out

and the card that we got today is touch your stuff. So I'm gonna find this in the deck.

And touch your stuff. Says, touch your stuff is calling you home. You've been away too long. It's time to take inventory and reconnect with what is yours. You have what you need right now at your fingertips. Touch your stuff, invites you to call in. That which brings you back to yourself. The unique connection to your inner and outer worlds.

It's okay to check in. This is your safe space here, surrounded by the ones you love. You have traveled far and need to feel your home base, that place of belonging. Call a friend. Look at old pictures, clean the house, [00:21:00] reminisce. Find yourself here. Touch what you love, touch your stuff. Hmm, perfect message.

Because these relationships also make us totally lose our sense of self, of who we are. And so finding that touch point again for yourself is so beautiful to be able to really lean into who you are, really celebrate who you are. That's all I've got for you for this episode, and if you enjoyed this one, I'm going to point you back to episode 74.

It's called Did He Ever Love Me? The number one question we ask after narcissistic relationships end because if you're listening to this and wondering why you stayed so long, you're also probably wondering if he actually loved you and what happened from the beginning to the end of that relationship.

So check out that episode and if you're ready to start unpacking the stuff and you're looking for that person that can hold the space, I have a link to an interest form in the show [00:22:00] notes, and that will be your first step in getting to know me we'll set up a free call, talk all about your situation, where you are and how I can help.

I would love to meet you and as always, you are not alone, and I'll see you in the next episode.