today we're talking about what narcissist hope happens to you after the relationship ends this could be your narcissistic family or a significant other in a normal relationship if things don't work out you go through your normal processing you have maybe hurt feelings anger normal emotions you process them you go through a grieving period and then you kind of hope the best for the other person right you hope they move on and you hope you move on as well or you might hope that maybe they wake up maybe they feel bad maybe they realize what they
did or what they had and it maybe creates a change in the other person those are two scenarios that are pretty common well narcissistic people don't fall into either of those categories they don't feel bad for what they did they don't want to change unless it's to become better narcissists and they certainly don't want what's best for you when the relationship ends that being said let's dive into this topic for those that don't know me my name is Michelle I'm a Certified trauma-informed Recovery coach I specialize in helping people overcome narcissistic abuse as well as
cptsd recovery I do this by combining coaching with somatic experiencing so what is a narcissist hoping happens to you when the relationship ends well the first thing they're hoping the first thing that they are hoping is that they did such a good job in destroying the foundation of who you are that you stay stuck if you destroy the foundation of a building it crumbles down narcissists destroy your foundation they destroy your self-image they destroy your belief system the sad part too the sad part is is that they've been doing this from day one most people
look up to the person that they choose to be in a relationship with while narcissists they always in their desperate need to one up they always have to be putting you down and so they've been chipping at your self-esteem for very long time nothing makes a narcissist more happy than if their target is now out of the relationship and stays in that negative disempowered state so what would that look like in the relationship with the narcissist in the beginning they slowly stole the things that were you right they either took them on as their own
personality or they stamped them out in You by creating such chaos around the things you loved to do so who you were at the end of the relationship is not who you were at the beginning if this is a significant other I can't tell you how many times people in my coaching practice they'll tell me I'm not the real me and I'm like well who is the real you and they always say well I can tell you the who I became and the who I was like it's so clear in their mind that there are
two different personalities the one before the narcissist and the one after now if you grew up with narcissistic parents you don't have that distinction that before and after you just have this sense that you've never been allowed to be you and so when the relationship ends if you were to start becoming empowered creating agency in yourself living in alignment with more empowering beliefs like I am worthy I am enough I am lovable I am amazing instead of the beliefs that they put in you which were I'm not enough I'm unworthy I don't deserve I'm a
failure all negative things that's a huge blow to their way of seeing themselves because if you thrive that means that they are powerless over you and nothing makes them more happy then sadly destroying you while they're in the relationship with you and then watching you continue the job of destroying self by staying living in those limiting disempowered beliefs they don't want you to move on they don't want you to get happy the second thing that they would love is for you to be stuck living the way they live malignant narcissists live life through a false
core they are not authentic beings they are not living from a place of authenticity they have a false self and when they want to impress people instead of becoming a good person they polish their false self and they live life through that false self well they know that their targets have the potential to be authentic human beings sometimes the target doesn't even realize that they have that potential but the narcissist knows that and so there's nothing that they would like more than to make you live in a false self the way they live in a
false cell and one of the ways they go about this is by slowly removing your free will your right to be yourself your right to have your own feelings your right to have your own thoughts and they do this by every time you have your own perspective every time you disagree simply because you're two separate people and you see things differently and they shame you what happens is your nervous system no longer feels safe being you you don't feel safe giving your perspective you don't feel safe showing people who you really are you just lose
touch with that felt sense of inner safety and as a result when we don't feel safe inside when we don't feel safe being ourselves we stop being ourselves we stop living in the realm of authenticity and we begin living life as a false self now it's different than the narcissist it's not a mirage to pretend to be something although in a way we are pretending when we are in that false core but it's a false core that is really what in the cptsd community we call a protective self so rather than an authentic self we
are living in a protective cell The Narcissist doesn't have an authentic self they live in a false self our protective self is a false self it's not who we really are and the protective things that we do when we're stuck in our fight flight freezer Fawn we think our personality traits no they are trauma responses but they tend to happen over a long period of time and so we begin identifying with that as that is who we are oh I'm a people pleaser you may be acting like a people pleaser but it's coming from a
trauma response of not feeling safe being me I'm gonna stop being me to be someone else that makes you happy so I can feel safe so it all goes back to no longer living in authenticity but living in a protective self narcissists would love to keep you living in a false self a protective self rather than who you are because if they can't be authentic why should you the third thing they would love for you to do they would love love for you to waste time trying to prove to everybody who the real abuser is
you see because they're an expert manipulator and so they have way longer than you realize it they have been laying the foundation for people to believe that you are the problem and they're a victim of you and so when you finally wake up and either they discard or you leave the toxic relationship they've already had a long time setting the freight the groundwork for people to view you as the problem and now you're going to come and try to prove your truth they love when you do this because they know that you cannot stand up
against them in a manipulation battle you are a honest person a real person and they are an expert manipulator and so they twist and turn things and so the reason they would love for you to do this after the relationship is because it continues to distract you from your life guess what you're focusing on whether it's positive or negative supply to the narcissist it is still Supply when you are focused on them when your energy is being given out because of them or to them or for them and so you're not focusing on you you're
focusing on trying to prove to people that don't believe you most of the time because again you were set up and this keeps you from living your life and it further invalidates you it further gaslights you it further confuses you and makes you feel isolated and alone they would love for that to happen so what are you supposed to do do you play into those three things hopefully not to help you to not fall into any of those three things here are just a few suggestions when it comes to what the narcissist did was breaking
apart your foundation of who you are that does not get rebuilt by time just like if somebody hits me with their car and breaks my legs and I don't go to the hospital and I don't get my legs put in cast and I don't get them fixed with time I may not feel the same intensity of pain that I felt when I first had the accident but I won't be able to walk normal either there will be a definite distinction with how I walked before and after the accident if I don't get healed well it's
the same thing with our life we were in a way our soul right our inner self our authentic self our self-image was all distorted because of the gaslighting and the manipulation if you just remove the toxic person which is helpful right to not have people in your life that are trying to destroy you that's helpful but if that's all you do and you just let time go on you will always feel that distinction of who you were before the relationship and who you became after because just like with my legs they need attention from a
doctor to be healed our inner self needs attention time is not going to heal trauma wounds the wounds that are in the nervous system that have affected the brain that have affected subconscious they need help they don't go away with time so you need to be willing to do the inner work which by the way just to throw out there we meet live on zoom in thriver school of transformation each month we have a different theme where we talk about working through narcissistic abuse and cptsd we talk about it through the lens of coaching and
somatic experiencing so that we're using our mind and our body on this recovery Journey so I'll leave the link there for anyone that might want to check it out when it comes to deconstructing a false self that's the cptsd recovery work that's challenging because it's not just about learning we can know what we should do what we shouldn't do after narcissistic abuse how we should see things what the correct mindset is we can have all that logic and yet feel unable to implement it right let me know in the comment section if you've ever learned
what you want to do and how you want to do it and yet you go to do it and it's almost like your body will let you that's because when we are in a protective self our own body now does the work for the narcissist in a way our own body keeps us from doing things that consciously we would love to do but because they were met with such shame insults abandonment from people we expected to love us our own body starts freaking out when we go to do things that we were formally shamed and
abandoned for and so it freaks out in the sense that we start getting discomfort in the body we start we call it procrastination but it's really just our body's way of saying I don't feel safe to do that and so we stay stuck in that protective self until we do the inner work and again deconstructing a protective self takes time it's not a I'm gonna watch this video and tomorrow my protective self is gone it's a gradual shrinking of the trauma wounds and a gradual increasing of your own inner agency that takes place so I
think the one thing that I see a lot of people do is they give up too fast or they they get help from One symptom and then they just stop giving attention to themselves and then sure enough because they didn't do all the inner work to get to their authentic self they wind up either stuck staying stuck or in another relationship that only reveals those wounds are still there so I want to encourage you when you find a program when you find something that resonates with you to overcome narcissistic abuse stay with it long enough
long enough that it penetrates your subconscious so that the shifts that you're making last and the last thing when it comes to the smear campaign when it comes to trying to prove your truth the reality the secret that the narcissist does not want you to realize is that you don't have to prove anything to anyone your belief in you is way more powerful than 50 people believing in you because once those 50 people are gone if your validation is only dependent on how they see you the second they're gone you're going to feel that insecurity
again what are people thinking do people think this of me am I the abuser what's going on how are people seeing me once you learn what it's like to feel the strength of your own inner validation it won't matter for if people believe you it'll be wonderful be like the icing on the cake right it'll be bonus if they don't believe you it won't touch you because you believe you so part of the recovery is learning how to trust yourself again so that's kind of the rewiring parts that we have to do as well with
our nervous system and with our belief system so those are some things to help in a nutshell the narcissist wants one thing from you after after the discard they want you to stay stuck by you getting you back it's the most empowering thing you can do for yourself
