We’re encouraged and pushed to “move on”.
People give us a look and say,
“Omg, you’re still talking about that guy?”
Don’t let others shove us into thinking
we’re better before we really are.
People ask me, how long will it take before I feel normal again… And my answer is: it takes as long as it takes. And: it’s up to you.
I want to tell you, what you feel is perfect. Whatever you think about them and about what the “relationship” was – is okay. Checking up to see where they live now, or if they moved is cool… If they still take up space in your head, that’s okay.
The scenarios of what you should-have-said-instead-of-what-you-did-say and the replays of what they said… Those are okay as well. They do indicate healing is still in progress. You need all of that because it’s the material that you can combine, mix, and reposition with other key ingredients to reach full recovery.
You get to decide what winning is for you.
The Depth of Restoration We Take Ourselves To Is Up to Us
We’re all different. Each of you had your own history and mind, hopes, experiences, and beliefs in place when you fell into this hell – and so the very same to use to climb back out. What you believe is the root of how and when you restore your life.
Is there a place of understanding and knowledge and certainty that represents more fully recovered than another? Yes. Does everyone get there? Maybe. It’s deliberate and it’s up to you how far you go into recovered and restored.
Finding The Road to Recovered
As you start Googling and searching and Tweeting and hopping into Reddit and Quora and FB groups you might find solace, validation, some partial answers, and maybe even a comrade in the madness.
There are those of you who glean a somewhat decent recovery in those platforms and chatrooms. Some continue into a maze of settling-for answers that point the finger at you as the cause of your narcissistic abuse. There’s another bunch who walks on further and finds more.
Where you conclude your trial in the search for answers to the confusion is different for lots of reasons; reasons based on who you each are. Where you, land – when you stop searching for answers that fit and calm the mess – is up to you. You can each and all restore your lives fully. The possibility is there. Not everyone goes that far. It’s up to you.
So What Is Full Restoration and Recovery?
Recovery happens in a state of seeing and knowing the truth. The lies, so far, are what made the mess. You’ve got to clean things up. There’s something about me that makes it impossible not to call out the truth regarding these hideous, revolting, gut-wrenching, soul-breaking encounters with people of coercive control. Excavating the truth is where I began. How will you start? Where will you end?
You can take one snip of truth and follow it… Trust your gut… then add a new truth and another and another, building your own road that takes you deeper and deeper into recovery. Truth is the cornerstone and the benchmark. Stands to reason, yes..? Since all this mess is founded on lies and deception, confusion, and misunderstanding?
Breaking Up WIth Evil
Breaking Up With Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
“If you only buy one book this year…buy this one.” ~ A.P.
The Key Ingredient: Recovery Requires Truth
Most of the time the truth of what we’ve experienced flies in the face of what has become conventional thinking about narcissistic abuse or doesn’t fit your friend’s ideas about what happened and why.
You cannot reach recovered by believing inaccuracies or nods of placation or misconceptions. Stretching to new understandings, and a new point of view is required to see the truth and to see more and more of it. This odyssey is pebbled with pain. It’s full of shock, tears of both sadness and relief and even laughter. Winding your way out of the maze is a path to freedom.
What We Believe Directs The Journey
In my moment of breaking away and the subsequent odyssey to recovered and freedom, I forged definite ideas about what a full recovery is. There were no websites or chat rooms or Facebook pages, there was me, on my own. Making up my mind. Being firmly resolved and depending upon no one: does not mean that no one came to support me.
Our ideas and beliefs about this life jacking formulate the foundation of where it is that full recovery is found. Recovering is tied to your beliefs about the phenomenon of predator and prey – pathological user and used. I had my ideas about what this is and why it happens, and these ideas have proven to be accurate like no others.
Here’s a list of what I discovered as absolutes:
- This did not happen because you lack boundaries; predators do not heed boundaries
- Sociopaths don’t hunt down people with low self-esteem; we do feel low after it
- Codependence – or not – has nothing to do with why this life-thief invaded ours
- These hijackings do not occur because of past abuse; a challenging past lets us see through them sooner; a rosy childhood renders us 100% unaware of evil
- We do not attract these demons; they’re wired to know how to find dinner just as any predator is
- These are crimes of fraud and deliberate deception vs. relationships
- Absolutely any person on earth can potentially be made use of by a pathological user
There’s Only One Way To Be User Proof
A psychology degree, a clerical collar, a Master’s of Jurisprudence, being a MENSA member… nothing, nothing, nothing makes someone user-proof or forms a basis for true recovery other than understanding the sociopath-brain, and accepting that this kind of person who is entirely without humanity, truly exists combined with realizing and feeling in our bones how amazing we are as neuro-typical humans and knowing…
We’re normal people, doing what normal does in circumstances that are abnormal on an American Horror Story level. Embrace being fully human and humanistic. This is how the power of the user weakens.
Reaching Recovered: Takes Longer Than We Want It To
Restoration, recovery, and healing take longer than we want them to. It takes as long as it takes. The thing I wish for each of you is that you don’t stop seeking the real core of this until you are free.
While parts of your life may be buzzing along or in-place-in-part or in some version of fixed, there can be shadows and shimmers of unresolved, unhealed, and unanswered.
Narcissistic Abuse Unwound: The Podcast
Signs We Aren’t As Recovered As Our Friends Want Us To Be
Here are some feelings and thinking that you may be experiencing that quite simply signal that full recovery and restoration has not yet blossomed.
- Thinking we never want to date again
- This is a natural distrust factor that signals we’re not yet healed
- Feeling and hurting in thoughts of: they love her, why didn’t they love me?
- This is a sign that we haven’t absorbed what they are and their motivation
- Weighing in our minds and – wondering if…
- Now that they’ve left, this shows up in that internal discussion in our head about how they could or couldn’t be married again, dating again, living in a new home, at a different job, or whatever “good” thing it could be
- Being “triggered” – tapping unresolved pain
- Feeling good some days and then not good other days depending on a song we hear, a car like there’s driving by, catching a whiff of the cologne they wore, someone talking about abuse, or other things that send us spinning
- Isolating and staying in our own world
- Recovered equates with freedom; to go and do and be wherever we please
- Feeling uninspired
- A flat and numb kind of disinterest in things; not feeling passionate about things
Emotions Bring Thinking That Reveals The State of Not Recovered
All of these things are okay. They aren’t intrinsic flaws or things to beat ourselves up about: they simply and only indicate we aren’t done restoring and recovering in my vision of what recovered looks like. They might be recovered for you. That’s okay. I’m not the boss of you – you are and you get to decide what winning is for yourself.
No One Else Gets To Tell Us Get Over It
The well-meaning people in our lives who have no idea what this means have no agency over our journey through to ourselves again. They just don’t know. Unless they’ve had it happen to them they can’t possibly have a clue.
The bottom line is we determine our recovery. Where we land after these rides in hell is founded on our decision to reach a specific point of recovery, in our philosophy, our beliefs, and in what we accept as true and possible.
The critical thinking needed for restoration doesn’t come from others who don’t know this experience but want us to shuttle through and “get better” and “move on” nor do we reach a state of “recovered” by putting this expectation upon ourselves either. What we believe is the determining factor in all things in life, and critically so in getting to “recovered”.
Recovery and the state of “recovered”
often includes a sense of humor, even dark humor
about the Tilt-o-Whirl ride-in-hell, we lived through
within their bizarre reality.
Renewed joy and gratitude prevail within “recovered”.
Recovered? Question, Seek, Challenge, Trust Your Gut
Without new thoughts, realizations, and new information, challenging the concepts and ideas about what this all is are a requirement to really break free. Because after all, we didn’t know a thing about this beforehand either, did we?
In fact, when you think about it, we didn’t know, and – so – is it true that maybe we don’t know the full reach of what a complete state of recovery could be? Is it true that this could be so unless you keep on challenging what full recovery is and keep looking into how to get there?
Do you reach recovered if you don’t keep on until every whisper of loss is quieted? Until the chatter in your mind about them is silenced? And until that lump-in-the-chest dissolves? – I think no.
And that’s okay. It takes as long as it takes. The question is, how far will you go to get to recovered?
Here’s to REAL True Love and Happiness!
Time to Thrive!
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