Unsubscribing from the Narcissist's Reality & OWNING Your Reality

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1) The Narcissist’s Reality & Its Effects On The Target

We all live in a certain reality paradigm where we tell ourselves stories about what’s real, who we are, what world is like, etc. Your reality is based on your perceptions (of self and the world) and your perceptions are formed by your beliefs. So essentially the beliefs that you hold of yourself and the world, create your perspective, which then determines your reality. For the most part this all happens on a subconscious level.

The narcissist (or other manipulator) lives in a twisted, distorted reality paradigm that the target ends up subscribing to. They accomplish this through gaslighting and a strong conviction in everything they say, which causes the target to self-doubt and give the manipulator the benefit of the doubt. So the target slides slowly into the manipulator’s reality, and usually without even realizing what’s happening.  

It’s like a virus of the mind that causes you to completely lose yourself. This is exactly what you need to reprogram after narcissistic abuse.

If you’ve been in a relationship with a narcissist, you were indoctrinated into a false reality paradigm and you were taught to see yourself, others and life in distorted ways. This indoctrination distorts your reality perception about who you are and what’s possible for you in life.

Messages you might have received from the narcissist:

“You can’t” messages:
You can’t do that.
You can’t go there.
You can’t accomplish that.

“You’re not good enough” messages:
What makes you think that school/job will take you?
Who do you think you are to do…?
You’ll never make it if you start your own business, no one will pay you for that. Go get a job at the mall!

“No one wants you” messages:
You’ll never find anyone like me.
You’re too old to find someone now.
No one wants a man/woman with kids.

“You can’t trust anyone but me” messages:
Your friends/family don’t care about you or aren’t good enough for you.
I’m the only one who really loves you.
(Even telling you someone was talking badly about you, which didn’t happen at all.)

These sorts of belief systems get internalized by the target and this distorted reality begins to affect the target’s life poorly. It affects your health, sanity, wellbeing, success, relationships, self-esteem, self-worth, self-trust, self-love, sense of self, and so much more.

You’ll know you’re still living in the narcissist’s reality when you’re still talking to yourself as the narcissist talked to you, or when you’re still arguing with the narcissist in your head long after they’re gone, or when you’re still concerned about what they’re saying to others and what others think of you because of them.

2) Why is it so important to unsubscribe from the narcissist’s reality?

The most dangerous thing about the narcissist is their reality paradigm because it can keep affecting you and holding you back in life long after going No Contact with the narcissist or even after the abuser is dead.

What happens when we aren’t conscious of unsubscribing from the narc’s reality is this process: first a negative thought comes by, then a heavy emotion comes up to meet it, then it becomes a downward spiral into the abyss where it’s like you’re caught in the undercurrent, you don’t know which way is up or down, and you don’t know how to get out of that cycle and the funk for hours or days. 

It’s dangerous to every aspect of your life to keep living in the narcissist’s reality. It’s like they keep tormenting you even though they’re long gone. At some point you realize it’s no longer the narcissist, now it’s time for YOU to grab the reins of your mind and overwrite the programming.

I say “unsubscribe” from their reality because it’s like unsubscribing from unwanted spam mail. 

What happens if you don’t unsubscribe?

You have to purge the narcissist’s perspectives and beliefs from yours to truly be free. Otherwise you’ll keep tormenting yourself thinking about what the narc is saying about you to your friends or family or community, you’ll want to defend yourself and spend hours of a day justifying yourself in your mind as if you were defending yourself on public trial. This is incredibly draining and distracting from living your life’s purpose.

Until you unsubscribe, you’ll keep working at creating your dreams and at every obstacle and challenge you come across, you’ll find a way to sabotage it all for yourself much like the abuser did to you. You’ll start telling yourself how you’re not good enough, how you can’t this or that, how it’s just not possible for you, how no one will believe you, support you, or buy your thing that you’re selling, that there won’t be enough money or time or energy to create your goals, or love isn’t possible for you… you’ll find some way to talk yourself out of going for your dream… and it could be the little things too, little decisions or indecisions that you make at the supermarket or running errands that make you feel less than, unworthy, and a passive victim of your life. 

It also greatly affects how you socialize with others… the narcissist maybe made you suspicious of everyone, which makes you feel insecure and socially anxious. You’ll likely have insecure, needy, approval-seeking behavior, which turns off healthy people and magnetizes manipulators. Maybe you feel really awkward always thinking people are making fun of you when they’re laughing at something else or maybe you fear people are putting you down behind your back while praising you to your face because your narc parent did this all your life and so you expect others do it too. Maybe you just can’t see your beauty or sexiness because your ex narc was so critical of your body or the way you moved, did your makeup, your hair, the way you ate, what you wore, etc. and other people pick up on this subconsciously.

It’s important to shift out of this life-sucking reality into a life-affirming reality based on what’s real.

What’s real is you are worthy. You are enough. You are loveable. You are not alone. You can accomplish your dreams. You can do it! You got this! These are the kinds of belief systems that you want to work to internalize so you can live the life you dream of. 

3) How do you unsubscribe from the narcissist’s reality?

Recognize all the ways other people have influenced the way you see yourself, others, the world, your place in the world and what’s possible for you in life. Take an inventory of these belief systems by noticing your thoughts and write them down. ie: “you can’t” “you’re not good enough” etc.

Journal these and then weave the pieces together when flashbacks and insights come, helping you understand the reality paradigm of the narcissist and how that became yours. ie: “ahh okay so when s/he did… it was because s/he believed … and wanted… from me”

So you really start to see the landscape of the reality that you’ve been conditioned to believe in and internalize as if it were your own.

Then you begin the work of Stalking the Inner Dialogue. Reprogramming the Self-talk, which is where these beliefs show up, in your thoughts. Your Inner Dialogue is a constant inventory of your beliefs (Carlos Castaneda) so become like a mental ninja observing your thoughts instead of just allowing your mind to run amok. Notice what you’re telling yourself all day long. That’s the stuff that’s creating your reality! That’s where you’re gonna identify these false belief systems. And that’s where you have the power to overwrite them. 

Notice how some of these thoughts probably sound a lot like what narcissists have told you. This might have started in childhood for many of you, and those are the deepest core beliefs that you want to work on reprogramming. 

The technique I teach came from ThetaHealing (however someone later told me that it's also from the book Psychocybernetics so I'm not sure who came up with it). It might sound woo woo or cliche, but it’s very powerful when you put this into consistent, daily practice. It’s a way of reverse engineering that process I mentioned earlier of thought >> heavy emotion >> downward spiral abyss >> funk for hours or days at a time.

Technique:

Here’s how it goes:

1. A negative thought comes by.
2. Interrupt the pattern:  say “CANCEL” 3x (or use a different safeword).
3. Reframe the thought with something positive/the truth.
   

Example:

1. "People only want me for my physical body" (tends to be women) / People only want me for my money" (tends to be men)
2. CANCEL 3x
3. (woman) “I am worth so much more than my physical body. Any man who can’t see my true worth and only sees me as an interchangeable object is not worthy of a place in my life.”
   (man) “I am worth so much more than what I provide financially. Any woman who can’t see my true worth and only sees me as an ATM machine is not worthy of a place in my life.”    

Remember you need to do this consistently, that means all day long you’re working on it. Inconsistent action leads to inconsistent results so if you want to see the difference, consistency is KEY.

What you’ll notice is a reduction in these negative thoughts after a couple weeks and then a big reduction after a month. After 2-3 months what happens is your subconscious gets on board with this new program and you’ll notice how you don’t always have to consciously do the practice, that your subconscious is now trained to be on alert for negative thoughts and before you even notice the thought, your subconscious already is reframing it.

You’re going to realize in the process how your mind is either your greatest ally or your worst enemy.

First interrupt the thoughts and then reprogram them. That starts to upgrade your belief systems, and that shifts your perspective of self/world, which then shifts your reality. This is how to unsubscribe from the narcissist’s reality.

4) How can you work on owning your reality in order to create the life you want?

The practice of owning your reality starts with unsubscribing from the narc’s reality and then creating a new reality for yourself based on self-love, self-respect, self-worth, self-trust and self-confidence.

Take responsibility for what you allow into your world. This means consciously choosing what kinds of information and media you expose yourself to. If you’re doing all this work to transform your life but you keep ingesting celebrity gossip, family gossip, reality TV, the (gaslighting) news and other fear-propaganda, or stalking your ex and their new supply online… you’re going to keep feeding your mind garbage and that’s going to have a negative effect on your life because what you ingest becomes part of your reality. Pause and ask yourself in what ways you’re allowing yourself to ingest garbage, and where in your life do you need to take more responsibility for what you’re allowing in?

This skill isn’t just about healing after narcissistic abuse, it’s also a valuable life skill that can help you become the person you were born to be and live the life of purpose that you dream of.

High Performance Coach, Brendon Burchard taught me that owning your reality is the definition of being assertive.

Assertive is confident, steady, centered, grounded and based on a sense of “I know.”

Becoming assertive is an important part of healing after narcissistic abuse. Previously you probably had a tendency to be passive and then when it was too much to handle you might have flipped into aggression. What you’ll notice is when you first start setting boundaries, it often comes across as anger and aggression because there’s all this built up anger from the past when people violated your boundaries and because maybe no one ever taught you how to set boundaries assertively.

When you’re assertive, you know who you are, what you’re worth, what’s OK for you and what’s not, and you’re willing to show people that through your actions. When you’re assertive you also know how to walk away from people when they aren’t honoring your boundaries or appreciating you for who you are and you’ll be able to do this without the anger and aggression because you know yourself, you trust yourself, you believe in yourself and so you don’t feel like you have to prove anything to anyone or defend your life choices and who you are.

When working on Owning Your Reality, I find it’s helpful to ask yourself, “Is that belief in alignment with who I want to be and what I want to grow in my life?” If not, change it.

3 Levels of Owning Your Reality — not overnight, a process

Level 1: “It’s not my fault. Someone else taught me, conditioned me, to believe in a lie.” Victim consciousness.

Level 2: “Enough of that! I can change my reality.” (This is where the reprogramming work goes on, the self-responsibility and empowerment. That comes through struggle and challenge through working on balancing the extremes of passivity and aggression.) Survivor consciousness.

Level 3: “I own my reality!” (This is where you are owning your reality and manifesting your dreams in an assertive way, no more defensiveness, self-doubt, self-abandonment or aggression and this is where you really start to thrive in life.) Thriver consciousness.

5) How can you measure the change from the old reality to the new one?

Through the reprogramming self-talk practice, eventually you stop your mind from running on autopilot. What you’ll notice is that the automaton behaviors that used to sabotage your life stop, and things change. You now have a lot more self-control over your emotions, you’ve let go of the defensiveness, and shifted your behavior into more mature actions that reflect the person you actually want to be and how you want to show up. That’s what creates an update in your character. You grow out of the old people-pleasing, self-abandoning habits and into self-love.

You’ll feel a much greater sense of control over your life when you get control over your mind. You won’t allow people to emotionally provoke you into reacting or to give them what they want at the sacrifice of what’s okay for you. You won’t allow people to pull you into their self-serving agendas because you’ll be self-directed and not looking outside yourself for approval and direction. Self-control is one of the greatest indicators of success in life. This is a valuable skill that will serve you in many ways. 

To measure the change, you just need to look at the results. The results speak for themselves. 1-2 weeks, noticeably lighter self-talk. One month, WOW how different. 2-3 months, the subconscious is on board and automatically reprogramming the mind more positively and overriding old negative beliefs when they show up. Earlier in the process you had to do all the hunting consciously and now you’ve taught your subconscious how to hunt down those negative thoughts.

Keep in mind, this process works in layers and layers as you uncover more beliefs that you didn’t even know were in there until they suddenly pop up (usually through life experiences and new relationships) to call your attention. So you keep working at it and growing.

When you take action in the world you will notice the feedback and response is very different. It’s more receptive, less hostile, more effortless, more flow, more ease, less struggle, less fight, more competency, more success, greater quality of people in your life, increased self-esteem, self-worth, self-confidence and less exhaustion. 

By the way, if you’re feeling exhausted this is where you need to look. Food and water affect our energy levels but what I find to be the most impactful upon our energy, is our mind, our perspective, the reality we live in. Most of our energy is lost to our thoughts. In Chinese Medicine they say where the yi goes the qi follows. Where your mind goes that’s where you’re sending your energy, so be sure that’s really what you want to invest in, what you want to grow in your life. When you take back control over your mind you will see how much more energy you have. It’s like night and day!

This is one of the most powerful practices to transform yourself and live the life you dream of after narcissistic abuse and in general. Why don’t more people do this? It requires WORK. Hard work.

It’s a struggle at first because you’ve spent years and maybe decades living in that old reality. Especially when you got indoctrinated into a negative reality paradigm since childhood. It’s much easier to just let the mind run amok and blame external circumstances and people while complaining about it but that only keeps you stuck in the victim stage and that’s not quality of life.

As you work to take back control over your mind and your reality, you are empowering yourself and you will look back at how far you’ve come, you’ll realize that you’re living the life you may have never thought you could. You just have to work for it, and it’s totally worth it!

Take the reins of your destiny back in your hands. It wasn’t your fault but you can change it, and you’re the only one who can change it for you. Stop waiting for someone to rescue you from your life. Empower yourself by accepting 100% self-responsibly over your life now and moving forward.

This is the shift from the victim stage into the survivor stage of the recovery process after narcissistic abuse. If you want guidance through this process, check out the 12-Week SANA Series, my intermediate course to help you move from the Victim Stage into the Survivor Stage. This pivot into empowerment changes everything, it’s like the beginning of the rest of your life!