you're accepting that their behavior is not going to change and nothing you do can change it you're no longer wasting psychological time or effort on changing it you're not accepting like signing off on their behavior you're accepting it won't change that's what radical acceptance is no contact is a big topic but what we often don't talk about is how to prepare for it so let's take that on no matter what no matter how many people say just come out contact it's actually a really big big man manver it's a life-changing one especially when it involves
your family few people ever come to this decision lightly even though there is this conception that people just blly go into no contact right so again like I said the the some of the seeds of this idea were reinforced by emails and you know emails where people were sharing that if you are going to go no contact and the person who would written the emails had gone no contact you said you almost need to prepare for it and the proposition that this person was laying out was that you need to be ready for the no
longer having a place you belong of it all right it's a big big heaviness to that because no contact can often have ramifications that last a life time not just when you do the no contact but for all of your life and as you get older that lack of a family can have a range of impacts on you and can contribute to a sense of isolation it may result to having a smaller social network who can help you things like that and again things that might happen as you do get older this person who's reached
out their assertion was that as you think about the larger picture of no contact as part of this process many years before even even before you go no contact that you need to start building up other supports that building out networks of friends social and Community groups choosing places to live where that kind of connection is available support groups therapy any type of support you can imagine and then really really cultivate those sources of support by showing up being a good friend being an active member of a healthy community that all becomes important because otherwise
without that you go no contact you could be left out in the cold of the many things that being from a narcissistic family system steals from a person for among some of the foremost are the capacities and abilities and ways of being in a family system when you grow up in a narcissistic family system you learn to you learn mistrust you learn to silence your needs you adjust to a lack of psychological safety you don't get to learn and watch reciprocity and the mutuality of a healthy relationship you lose out on those lessons and in
many ways these are family systems where everyone often has to coales around and give in to the narcissistic person so all the energy goes to that one person usually a parent or caregiver just to to stay safe and there is no give and take it's simply really just survival in this way lots of folks who have come through narcissistic family systems have to learn the dance of healthy relationships when they're already in adulthood you have to slowly learn to trust to break out of the cycle of believing that if we don't give all of ourselves
then it won't work to understand that relationships are not only two-way streets but also that they are worth the effort for people from narcissistic family systems relationships can feel like eternally unsolvable problems problems where no matter how much effort we put in it never gets better that can remove the incentive to put in the effort when a healthy relationship comes our way so even creating these healthier networks systems of support chosen family is also going to be more of a challenge if you are from a narciss nistic family system and if no contact feels like
something that may potentially be looming in your future as part of the Arc of a long life you need to do this work and it is a complex elegant dance working on building those supports while you're still experiencing the narcissistic relationships and simultaneously enduring the abuse and invalidation of a narcissistic family system or relationship then when you hit the wall and you do go no contact you have built the Healthy Home as it were of healthy people none of this is easy and many folks who come from narcissistic family systems will report feeling lifelong Shame
about the emptiness of their family system and how it is it's why many survivors often try to sell themselves and others on that false narrative that they are from a healthy family it absolutely makes sense most of us simply just want to belong to something so amongst these people who emailed me they share sentiments that have been echoed by so many other people the idea that going no contact can become a rather lonely cautionary tale if you are not careful and as time goes on no contact can mean tremendous loneliness later in life that while
going no contact can protect you from the ongoing cruelty of a narcissistic family or partner that blocking yourself from abuse through no contact is only part of it the other part of it is that you need soft caring places to land relationships where you are seen and where you see others places where your long-term commitment to supportive spaces are reciprocal and it means that there will be people there for you and you will will be there for them in the long term we are often sold a bad bill of goods that you have to give
all of the best of yourself in into a family if you had the genetic bad luck of coming from a family that is not emotionally and psychologically healthy giving the best of yourself to that system as you especially as you enter into childhood while it's a tough cycle to break it could mean that you're throwing the proverbial good money after bad I always forget is it good money after bad bad money after good I always forget anyhow learn from what others have experienced no contact isn't just no contact it's a multi-pronged process that is more
than just about protecting yourself from the narcissistic person it's also about clearing out space in which you will build absolutely essential supports so that you have the very crucial Human Experience of seeing people and being seen as you were trying to make sense of narcissistic abuse did you feel that you had anyone who was a validating voice in your life or no just say yes or no get a sense of that because that's what I want to understand I want all of you to understand before we get into this topic about thinking about how we
heal from narcissistic abuse and very simply it just takes one person so let's talk about this idea that it just takes one person when people go through narcissistic abuse the patterns of loneliness isolation and confusion are definitely some of the most problematic and all of these patterns are magnified by a lack of support and a lack of people who can hear what you are going through and actually understanding what you're going through trauma informed therapies generally have a central tenant to them which is validation a willingness to acknowledge that something did happen to you and
that it was harmful to you the majority of narcissistic abuse survivors don't get this from the world at one level there is the lack of acknowledgement that any of this any of this narcissist abuse stuff is a thing no recognition that being in the regular presence of someone narcissistic is harmful to our mental health people are told that they're making too big a deal of the bumps and grinds of a relationship any relationship or that they're too sensitive or that they can learn to think differently about the situation and that if they do that that
that will alleviate their anxiety or there is an overall unwillingness to acknowledge how toxic the pattern of the narcissistic person are the enablers keep you stuck and if you are surrounded by them it can be difficult to access help so it would then stand to reason that the main tenants of treatment for people experiencing narcissistic abuse would be things like validation an acknowledgement that these personality styles do take a toll on people that it is actually quite normal to feel confused and angry and Powerless and helpless instead of wanting to just slap a diagnosis on
you that you're depressed or anxious without hearing more about the narcissistic relationship and having a willingness to call the relationship what it is as well but let's be honest too many people too many people do not have access to psychotherapeutic treatment least of all with someone who has an expertise in narcissism and narcissistic abuse so people are often quite unlikely to get this kind of support professionally but how many people does it take to give you the validation to keep you from really getting severely damaged about around narcissistic abuse it just takes one it takes
one person one person who sees it who gets it who is willing to acknowledge it to let you know you are seeing it clearly to help you feel more sane to push back on the gas lights the best analogy I can give you is if you saw a UFO you would feel much better if there was another person there with you and they were sober but there's another person there with you and even if the whole world doubted you there was someone else to say yep that was real we saw a UFO even if the
world says it was not it just takes one person it can take one person saying not okay I'm watching you and with this person this person's invalidating you this person's gaslighting you you did what you said you you did you did what you said you would do or what that person I'm seeing you with is aggressive or cruel or manipulative or mean or what this other person's doing to you is not okay no matter what kind of blam shifting justifying BS they are engaging in it just takes one person to know Noti that stuff and
armed with that mirror you are in a better place to make decisions and to just keep yourself and leave yourself feeling intact we lose a lot of our bandwidth in narcissistic relationships by doubting ourselves did I say that am I the bad one am I overreacting what do I do about this how do I survive this am I good enough what did I miss this am I the dumb one all this rumination takes up a lot of energy it's like running 20 computers on your home internet the whole thing is going to slow way down
and with that lost bandwidth it is even harder to advocate for ourselves make decisions do the things we need to do to get out of a situation to get the help we need or to even begin to think about healing so if one person validates you and is able to give you a clear mirror we get that bandwidth back right we stop feeling crazy some of the rumination abates if somebody does that for us we have more strength more courage we have more belief in ourselves and have access to our own truth to actually think
about doing what needs to be done whatever that may be having one person validate us can help lift the helplessness and the powerlessness it never ceases to amaze me how many enablers there are out there the folks who are invested in the status quo who have warm and fuzzy woo woo visions of the world who believe everyone can change and as a result those folks can really make the invalidation worse but it only takes one sometimes this one may be a therapy IST sometimes a friend sometimes someone in a support group and if you are
really lucky you have more than one keep this in mind if it only takes one for you then you may be able to be that one for another person listen when people tell you if they're experiencing patterns of a toxic relationship it isn't easy to listen right because it punctures holes in our world view about love and relationships and it hurts to see someone we care about hurt and sometimes for us to be that one person for another person can mean that we have to shift our own status quo our own lives may become more
complicated by calling out gaslighting when we see it or letting people know something didn't look right or feel right or respectful by just pointing that out we may become that person for someone does it only requires one it doesn't require 25 people all validating you it only takes one and once that happens a person may actually feel as though the curtain in front of their eyes has been lifted and finally give themselves permission to do what they need to do for their own healing or self-rescue remember a narcissistic relationship is a place where the law
of human nature kind of don't apply but I understand the concern people have that does my not reacting mean that I'm okay with it so let's unpack it so good old radical acceptance right as I have often said when radical acceptance is done right it means that you're no longer surprised it doesn't mean that you're okay with it it doesn't mean that you aren't hurt and it doesn't mean that you aren't incensed it means you aren't surprised it's like plan an outdoor party in New England and it rains that's expectable but you wouldn't be surprised
if it rained maybe disappointed but surprised no radical acceptance once you get to radical acceptance means no more surprise but it also means that it doesn't doesn't but it doesn't mean that it feels good right you're not good with it you just not surprised by it now not everyone can leave a narcissistic relationship so that means that people end up having to stick it out maybe disengaging and this isn't just about a breakup right because the narcissistic person in your life maybe a family member that can and and in those situations that can become even
more complicated so that means that you learn the workarounds as well as the realistic expectations it also means that you may not get into the mud with them and you don't take the bait if you are in an relationship with a very sort of bity narcissistic person then you may find that arguments escalate for a little while because they almost need the fight in other cases you may not take the fight because it just isn't worth it anymore so you just may go along to get along which can be experienced as though the narcissistic person
is getting their way all the time because you aren't fighting back now that you get it because You' radically accepted you know there's no point you may have carved out more of a life for yourself separate from the relationship but then not pushing back open eyed see it clearly go at the flow radical acceptance can start feeling like the narcissistic person is getting away with it like they just do what they want and I'm not saying anything cuz I've radically accepted and some survivors of these relationships kind of feel awful about that and feel like
am I just accepting what they are doing am I allowing them to be like a toddler who feels no faces no consequences am I just making them worse nope you're accepting that their behavior is not going to change and nothing you do can change it you're no longer wasting psychological time or effort on changing it you're not accepting like signing off on their behavior you're accepting it won't change that's what radical acceptance is yes to the world around you if anyone ever spies the narcissistic person's behavior and they're being terrible and they may wonder why
you maybe as their partner a family member aren't addressing it maybe you not always fixing it means other people are finally noticing the narcissistic person's Behavior because you were no longer or because you are no longer acting like a rodeo clown and running around and trying to make excuses for it or get ahead of it or explain it the one thing that does happen once you disengage as a part of radical acceptance is that their behavior the narcissistic person's Behavior persists as always and sometimes the other people who may not have spied it before because
you were running interference now see it they may then wonder why you are putting up with their be with the narcissistic person's Behavior and letting it go and frankly you don't owe anyone an explanation but the simple answer would be that they the narcissistic person is responsible for their behavior and if you have an issue with it take it up with them and not me and then let that person deal with the Wrath of the narcissistic person for a long time your hard work you're acting as a human shield is what blocked everyone else from
seeing their narcissistic behavior if people see it let them deal with it the idea that if you don't make the narcissistic person accountable you're just sort of going with it is that they're getting away with something is not true let me put it to you as a question how did it work out for you when you tried to make them accountable I'm guessing not so good so whether you go along say nothing say something it's all the same the narcissistic person isn't accountable and never will be and no you are not enabling them by saying
nothing there is no point enabling would have been if you were really saying their behavior is not a problem it's perfectly fine and stop talking about it that's not what you're doing sometimes you need a radical acceptance recalibration to recognize that you're so-called in action is an action of sorts it's no longer engaging it's pulling your psychological energy out it's a sort of divestment enabling like I said enabling a narcissistic person is making excuses disengaging is not getting into it with them but many people will say there's a bit of a sour taste in their
mouth at feeling like again the narcissistic person faces no consequences and seems to still be getting away with something obviously if you're interacting with a narcissist and your true north gets pinged you may take the argument but whatever your reasons are for not being able to fully leave the relationship as long as your reason for staying is not that you think they're going to change but whatever your reasons are don't try to change them but by and large if you've radically acceptance they're accepted they're no longer getting your supply and from a Justice perspective it
feels awful to think that the narcissistic person just gets to be a oneperson wrecking crew but that's not your responsibility and life is not fair honestly you made your life a little fairer when you stopped engaging with a narcissistic person so no you are not partly to blame because you don't engage because you don't stop them because you couldn't leave the narcissistic person is responsible for their behavior nobody else and there is really no making it better so it's so important that you stop your blame your blaming of yourself and that not reacting to their
behavior actually shows that you are finally getting it it can feel like am I just rolling over and letting them get away with it no back in the day when you made excuses for it Justified it tried to get ahead of it and tried to understand it that was something different but not reacting to it because you know it won't change that is self-preservation let me go ahead and read this question that somebody asked um and I think it might be meaningful for a lot of you so there's a person who's actually going through recovering
from narcissistic abuse and this person said you know my goal is to feel indifference about the narcissist nist in this person's life and and to feel indifferent about the abuse I'm not so sure you'll ever get there but to feel indifferent to The Narcissist how do I get there I've been out of this relationship for a year and I haven't had any contact with the with this person um but I'm still struggling with negative emotions including anger anxiety depression and fear okay I think this is a fantastic question and a really important one CU it
goes back to another video I had made about the concept of indifference now in Prior videos I have talked about indifference as sort of being the top of the mountain right where if you can get to this sort of mindset of indifference where you may have released the narcissist great but I need to be clear with you okay it doesn't mean that you're going to be free of all negative emotions and it also doesn't mean that you'll ever become indifferent to somebody's cruelty to towards you indifference is really about no longer caring about the narcissist
themselves you don't care if they're happy you don't care if they're sad you don't care if they're in a new relationship you don't care if they're alone you don't care if they're rich you don't care if they're poor you don't care if they're dead you don't care if they're alive you just don't care that said if you ran into them I can guarantee that you would be uncomfortable probably feel like that really awful sympathetic nervous system build up inside of you your heart racing feeling sick to your stomach maybe even feeling a little short of
breath even if you feel those that strong kind of physiological response it doesn't mean that you aren't over them but they were once an uncomfortable perhaps even threatening stimulus in your life so obviously it would make sense that seeing them would be unsettling but you may see still be indifferent to them you may have no desire for example to hear what's going on in their lives to see their social media you don't even want to hear from a third party what's going on with them you just don't care having symptoms though the negative kinds of
symptoms and thoughts like anger anxiety depression and fear may not necessarily mean though that you have not gotten to indifference these narcissistic relationships change you most pronounced they fill you with self-doubt but also confusion anxiety these relationships negatively impact your self-esteem you may still have those feelings again but you still Also may not give a damn about the narcissist rarely very rarely does a person have just one episode of narcissistic abuse in their life these are often lifelong cycles that started in childhood and your most recent narcissistic relationship may have activated those old those old
sorts of feelings and struggles that still rattle you but this may be the top of a very big lifetime Iceberg some of the classical techniques I've talked about on this channel before radical acceptance realistic expectations not engaging not personalizing building up your own life again finding meaning and strength from surviving the suffering these are all techniques that can help you certainly move forward so it's not just about indifference but even when you feel these negative emotions like I said the anger the depression the fear that was raised in the question which is normal to also
be able for you to take a step back and witness the strength that it took you to get out of that relationship and still keep getting up every day and taking on another day despite having your sense of reality and self undercut like this you really can't force this journey to indifference but simply reflecting on how limited your life would have been if you stayed can sometimes be the jump start that reminds you that there's obviously going to be a brighter future because if you compare your life now to a year ago it's better life
lessons take time and they often hurt when they're good life lessons ideally you learn the life lessons after the first just hurt and no one can take on this lesson for you it's like someone else learning 2 plus two for you you have to do it for yourself and for some people their narcissistic relationship was simply a very tragic Master Class don't feel rushed and like I've got to feel indifferent you're probably more indifferent than you think it is a process and these emotional reactions are normal and for this reason survivors of narciss istic abuse
are strongly encouraged to work with therapist who gets who gets narcissistic abuse or to participate in a support group or group therapy in which these issues are a appropriately managed and discussed so it's many of you might be thinking yeah I'm I don't feel indifferent because I'm still having strong emotions yeah you may feel more indifferent than you think however however if you if you do still find yourself really upset that the about the narcissist life about the narcissist as a person then yeah there's still a little ways to go you will get there and
it'll happen in such a subtle way your own life will move on you'll figure it out and you'll really feel free after that but it definitely definitely takes a minute lots of people talk about all meaning purpose and it's great it's not magic but the fact is that surviv feels hard enough when you're in one of these relationships or coming out of one of them so this idea of meaning and purpose oriented work can really feel like a very heavy lift meaning and purpose are about making sense of what is happening to you what has
happened to you to create a more coherent narrative to feel more significant in the world and there are things that you are meant to do and again that you matter so trying to make sense of the confusion of the narcissistic relationship is completely overwhelming because it doesn't make sense someone who proclaims to love you is willing to manipulate you shame you for who you are or how you feel how are you supposed to make sense of that you don't it it's it doesn't make sense unfortunately this is how this personality works and shows up in
relationships now finding meaning and purpose when you feel confused the way you do in a narcissistic relationship can feel even more confusing so then a lot of lot of people give up like forget meaning and purpose I can't do this now after we have been through narcissistic relationships the mistake is when we try to find the meaning and purpose in the relationship and we can get caught and lost in this process of trying to make sense of the relationship finding lessons in the relationship you might get lost into digging deep into these thoughts of what
did you what were you taught in this relationship what did you learn about yourself what did they teach you what did you learn about life you dig deep and I understand I've done the same and you so you can think that it wasn't a waste of all these years in that relationship that there was some meaning and purpose that can be derived from the relationship but I'm not sure that that's always the correct approach I was recently listening to my dear friend and colleague David Kessler the grief expert speaking recently and he said something that
stuck with me he said the meaning is never in the death it is in us afterwards now obviously David's work is very focused on death and he was talking about the loss of death but his words struck me so hard as I thought about people any of us surviving from narcissistic relationships the meaning is never in the death he said to me that jumped out out as the idea that the meaning is not in the relationship especially when it's an abusive relationship the meaning is in us afterwards and that can be a way to do
the very important work of meaning making and purpose as we heal from narcissistic relationships the meaning is in us afterwards think about that despite all that happened to you the invalidation if if you were lucky the conditional love the manipulation the gaslighting the subjugation the feeling guilty for having a need a want a feeling the being shamed for wanting to follow your own interests and dreams the Betrayal despite all of that you still get up every day and do things in the world maybe you care for children maybe you go to work maybe you're a
good friend maybe you care for others but you keep on keeping on despite what happened to you despite all that happened to you you remain empathic and compassionate and I guessing very empathic and compassionate despite for years in significant relationships getting none of that back despite all that happened to you you may still believe in love despite all that happened to you you may explore new interests in your your work in your life Hobbies despite all that happened to you you find beauty and you feel awe and joy when you see or feel something that's
inspiring or even just simply beautiful despite all of it you still enjoy talking with people and hearing their stories so despite what happened to you many of you and it's still happening to you many of you are finding meaning and purpose you get up you live life you may care for others you may feel deeply you may connect to other people you engage in human activities that matter to you you you feed your dog all of that is a big deal and as you become more clear about the relationship the patterns radical acceptance realistic expectations
the grief the choices you may or may not stay in the relationship it may or may not ostensibly end but because you are now seeing it clearly and interacting with it differently I think it's fair to almost characterize it as a sort of death it's not the relationship you thought you were in before but you do keep living and moving forward and the you after you fully understand the narcissistic relationship whether you're still in it or not that's the meaning in you afterwards meaning and purpose don't mean some big existential jump into the abyss it
means simply that you are more present in your life getting Joy from from some of the moments enjoying you in those Mo yourself in those moments allowing you to show up as yourself allowing yourself to be in a life at times without always wondering if the narcissistic person would approve or whether they get angry all of that qualifies as meaning and purpose but this isn't about you having to engage in what can feel like the inauthentic and uncomfortable exercise of what did I learn at the end of the day it's unfortunate that the narcissistic relationship
happened to you and it's not your role or your job to figure out what you got out of it well maybe you did get things out of it but that's not the core of meaning and purpose because when you do that once again you're trying to make sense of something that really doesn't make sense or run the risk of even rationalizing the relationship the more important work is to focus on you on the you who was able to keep on keeping on love children for example despite co-parenting with a narcissistic person or to keep living
life and laughing out loud at times being a good friend despite the chronic narcissistic abuse that's the meaning and purpose that you were able to keep going the meaning and purpose is embedded in that you are learning that you are resilient strong persistent patient and that these skills and strengths will generalize into other spaces in your life work creativity caregiving relationships and perhaps those things you learned about yourself are what will Foster your meaning making as you go forward if you can still live and laugh and even love after one of these relationships let me
tell you this you have one hell of a deep capacity for making sense and finding purpose it's so easy to get lost in the current of let me figure out what I learned from the relationship n yeah you learn something but it would have been easier to have learned that in a much simpler way right this is really about looking at yourself afterwards and reflecting on your capacities your compassion your empathy the things that may have meant that during the relationship you made lots of rationalizations and excuses those best parts of you that yeah they
did those things but those best part parts of you still remain the answers the meaning the purpose were always in you and as you heal healing is about slowly learning to trust them thanks again
