When You're STUCK in the Recovery After Narcissistic Abuse

I recently saw a comment on YouTube that inspired this episode of the podcast. The viewer wrote, “17 days out and I’m still stuck. How have I not begun to heal?”

 

Now this is a question I often hear from people who say they’re x amount of days, months or even years out of an abusive relationship yet they still feel stuck, like they’re not really healing. It could also happen that you feel like you’ve made some progress in your healing process yet you've reached another plateau where you feel stuck again and don’t know how to move past that point. 

 

In this episode I’m going to explain the top 4 areas where people get stuck in the recovery, in order to help you figure out where you’re stuck right now. I’ll give you some tips and insights and I’ll also point you toward some additional resources that will help you get unstuck from each of these 4 points. 

 

So here are the 4 most common things going on when you feel stuck somewhere in your recovery after narcissistic abuse. I’m also going to let you know what you can do about each of those points to get unstuck. You can come back to this list anytime you find yourself stuck at a new point in your recovery journey. It happens. It’s normal to get stuck along the way. All you need is to shift your perspective about why you’re stuck there and then put into practice the next steps to help yourself start moving forward again. 

 

The incredible thing is there are usually some very predictable places that people tend to get stuck and you’re never truly stuck anywhere in life unless you decide to give up. Never give up! There is always a way forward as long as you’re wiling to do the work. Now I’m not saying it’s easy, but it’s definitely worth it! 

 

 

If you’re not No Contact with the abuser/s, then you’re still re-exposing yourself to abuse. You’re constantly being retraumatized so it feels like your efforts are in vain. Maybe you feel like you’re doing a lot of work but you’re not getting anywhere. Maybe it feels like you’re taking 2 steps forward and 3 steps back, so you keep getting set further back. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of No Contact with abusers. This is the boundary that protects your healing. No Contact isn’t healing by itself, it simply stops you from receiving more abuse from the same abusers, which is what inevitably causes the setbacks. 

 

Now, maybe you’re in a situation where you can’t or won’t go No Contact with the abusers. Can’t and won’t are two different things. The only situation where you truly can’t be 100% No Contact is if you are co-parenting with an abuser and bound by law to a custody agreement. This is very unfortunate to be forced to have some contact with an abuser in order to exchange your kids or to work out expenses and other issues that may come up around their schooling, health, activities and other things. But, if you’re in that situation, it is what it is so you’ve got to make the best of it. That means having the absolute most minimum contact possible with the abuser. It means no longer having a personal relationship where you discuss any personal matters whatsoever, you simply communicate like a business relationship to work out details about the kids. It’s best to keep that in email or text, written form, so there is a paper trail that may be helpful in court cases. That also eliminates the gaslighting issue where they pretend a conversation didn’t happen or it didn’t happen the way it did. I did a podcast episode on Respond vs. React a month or 2 ago that will help you manage the boundaries of communication with your ex with as much empowerment as possible while you guys are sharing the responsibility of raising your kids. 

 

Won’t is another situation. This isn’t about co-parenting. Many people say I can’t just cut off my family member or I can’t totally cut off my ex even though we don’t have kids, I’ll just keep them as a friend. These situations aren’t about not being able to, they’re about not being willing to, yet. 

 

I know, it’s really really hard to cut people out of your life but when you are dealing with abusers, No Contact is the ideal way to protect yourself. When you’re dealing with abusive family members, especially a parent or someone really close to you, this process of going No Contact might take time. It took me a year and a half after the point I fully realized and accepted who my mother is, until I finally set that definite boundary of No Contact. During that 1.5 year process in between, I kept setting more and more boundaries with her so things were getting better, but I was still getting set back even with a few text messages each month. At that point I was taking 3 steps forward and 2 steps back, which was a better ratio than being in completely open contact with her but I was still wasting a lot of emotional energy and facing a lot of unnecessary setbacks in my life. If you currently find yourself in this situation where you just aren’t ready to go No Contact yet with your abuser, I did a podcast episode a few months ago on Is It Possible to Have a Relationship with a Narcissist? I highly recommend you listen to that. 

 

Now, keep in mind there are many ways you might not be No Contact even though you think you are. You might have blocked the person and no longer have direct contact with them, yet you might still be stalking their social media, doing drive-bys past their house or workplace, going places you know you might run into them. You might be asking other people for information on them. You might be scrolling through old photos, emails or letters. These are some ways you’re still in indirect contact with the abuser and this will also keep you stuck and unable to move forward. 

 

Check out a podcast episode I did on No Contact several months ago if you really want to set this boundary to protect yourself from more abuse. Also if you’re at this point, get a free copy of my mini eBook, the Quick Start Guide to Recovery After Narcissistic Abuse, available when you opt in with your name and email on my website www.innerintegration.com 

 

 

This is the next place you could be stuck in your recovery journey. I have a couple podcast episodes that teach you about Cognitive Dissonance and how to get out of that mental confusion where part of you wants to believe in the good in the abuser and another part of you realizes they’re abusive and this is unacceptable for you. Your brain can’t reconcile these two opposing beliefs so it short circuits and redirects you back into the denial and brain fog. 

 

This is a dangerous place to be because this is what often leads a victim to return to the abuser. If they hoover you and catch you in a moment of denial, you could end up taking them back before you even realize it. It’s like how an alcoholic might decide to go out for one drink, but before they know it they’re blacked out drunk and they don’t remember what happened between that first drink and the blackout. Please don’t underestimate the power of the primal parts of your brain that will hijack your rational, thinking brain when it comes to abuse.

 

The day after this podcast episode posts, I have a new YouTube video coming out about a specific dangerous perspective that might be keeping you stuck in the Cognitive Dissonance. 

 

While some people break free from the CD before leaving the abuser, most will work through this step after leaving. The most important first step to break through the CD is to relentlessly face the truth about the abuse and the abuser. This means you’re educating yourself and putting terminology or labels on abusive behaviors and every time you have memories or flashbacks, you label those with the new knowledge you have about narcissistic abuse. This process helps your mind break free from the confusion and that’s how you’ll inevitably dissolve the Cognitive Dissonance. It’s ugly, but you’ve got to force yourself to face the truth so you can break free from this point and move forward, not backward. 

 

You’ll also find information about facing the truth in order to break free from the CD in that free eBook I mentioned, the Quick Start Guide to Recovery After Narcissistic Abuse. 

 

 

The next place people get stuck, and this is one of the biggest hurdles you’ll face in the recovery process, is grabbing the reins of self-responsibility. Before this point is where people discover about narcissistic abuse and learn a lot of helpful new information and terminology. They might break free from the Cognitive Dissonance, yet often they don’t do the important work to move forward after that point because it requires self-responsibility. 

 

While the discovery of information about narcissistic abuse is incredibly relieving at first, it’s not the same as healing. Without owning this important piece of self-responsibility, you’ll eventually find yourself stuck again and unable to move forward. I see many people confusing the discovery of important information with thinking they’re all healed now that they know what narcissistic abuse is. You’ll notice that in overcompensations, acting tough to hide deep insecurities and fears that it will happen again or even in the way some people seek status through being a victim or a victim advocate. Healing and personal growth isn’t as easy as understanding what narcissistic abuse is, unfortunately. It requires work. It’s messy, uncomfortable and difficult. If it were easy, everyone would do it. 

 

Self-Responsibility is the first piece of inner work that you take on in order to move into Stage 2 of the recovery journey. Stage 2 is the Survivor Stage. Stage 1 is the Victim Stage. Sadly, most people stay in the Victim Stage for years or even a lifetime because they don’t realize the importance of self-responsibility, which is the only way out of the Victim Stage. 

 

Survivor is a title that’s earned, not given. I often see people misusing this word when they’re actually still in the Victim Stage. I even see some experts award the term survivor to anyone who has lived through an abusive experience. While it’s true anyone who lived through it physically survived, those who are actually survivors have taken 100% ownership of the responsibility for their lives. Survivors have empowered themselves by doing the hard work of looking within, and realizing that we too need to work on personal growth so we don’t repeat the same mistakes of the past. Until a person fully steps into self-responsibility, they’re still a victim. 

 

It is not comfortable to recognize the things we need to change about ourselves. It’s so much easier to just focus everything on the outside, on the abuser. While the abuse was never your fault, it is your responsibility now to work on healing. Your self-healing work is what changes the internal patterns that used to tolerate abuse. This is much more than discovering information and awareness about abuse. This means actually doing the inner work to develop immunity to abuse. Information alone is not immunity because that’s just the cognitive part of the brain. The primal part of the brain, where your subconscious habits and patterns come from, this is the part of the brain that causes you to keep tolerating new or old abusers until you change those habits of self-care. You can know everything about narcissistic abuse. You can even be an expert in the topic. But if you’re not doing the work, you will continue to be a disempowered victim.   

 

This isn’t to say that survivors never meet more abusers. There are a lot of abusers in the world and you’re bound to run into them in various areas of your life. Some of them are very covert and hidden at first. The difference between a victim and a survivor is how you handle those encounters, whether you continue to minimize the abuse and tolerate the abuser while people-pleasing and self-sacrificing or whether you quickly make empowered decisions and take action to unwind yourself from that situation ASAP as soon as an abuser reveals him or herself. 

 

Now, we’ve all been victims and there’s no shame or blame in that. However, you don’t want to stay stuck there because that is a life of misery, disempowerment, frustration and retraumatization. I’m speaking from personal experience. I stayed stuck in the Victim Stage for years, getting sucked into new abusers and going back for more from my mother and other family members. I didn’t cross that First Threshold of self-responsibility until the end of 2015 and at the age of 37 years old. 

 

I wrote about this in my book The Journey: A Roadmap for Self-Healing After Narcissistic Abuse. Here’s a brief excerpt:

 

"You cross the first threshold when you take 100% self-responsibility for your life and the reigns of your destiny back in your hands. At this point you’re starting to feel Committed to living your truth and healing your life. How will you know you’ve crossed this threshold? There is a tangible difference in the way you’ll feel when you’ve taken back the steering wheel of self-control. It’s almost indescribable yet you will know something shifted. That is the feeling of self-empowerment, and this is the key to entering Stage Two.

 

"This might even be the first time you’ve ever felt empowered in your life. Before crossing this threshold, you likely felt incredibly helpless and powerless in life or at least one area of your life. As you cross this threshold, a new sense of self-control over your life leads to a growing sense of empowerment and upgraded self-esteem. When you take 100% self-responsibility for your life, you start to experience how your attitudes and actions affect the world around you. You realize you’re not a helpless and powerless victim of life anymore. 

 

"This is the point of no return. At this moment, you’re crossing the threshold between the old, familiar world and that which is unknown. Essentially you’re setting out to do what you were scared to do but you know you have to do. 

 

"You may not know exactly how yet, but you now believe in your ability to figure it out.”

 

 

Once you’ve made that massive jump over the First Threshold from the Victim Stage of disempowerment to the Survivor Stage of empowerment, now comes the deep work of radical self-care. 

 

In Stage 2, you’ll need to focus on the 4 Pillars of Recovery after abuse. These 4 pillars are the keys areas of your life that you’ll need to work on. While there are other areas to work on as well, I call these the pillars because they are what sustain your recovery, the qualities that hold you up through the ups and downs of the process as you’re working through some deep stuff. There will inevitably be ups and downs. That’s normal and okay. If you find yourself stuck somewhere in this part of the recovery, it likely means you need to re-evaluate yourself in each of these 4 areas of your life to see where the chaos is getting in and which of these areas need to be strengthened. 

 

You might’ve seen a YouTube video I did a while back on this topic. I’ve just created a new PDF for you on The 4 Pillars of Recovery with some updated information. If you want to get that free PDF report, you’ll find that link in the show notes. 

 

The PDF report on the 4 pillars is going to help you understand what each of those pillars is about, how to recognize when one or more are lacking in your life, and it gives you some tips and insights on how to strengthen each pillar. 

 

Once you figure out which pillars you need to strengthen, and if you’re ready to do more expanded work, on my website and in the show notes you’ll find links to powerful training sessions that will help you master these areas of your life.

 

Ending Self-Sabotage is the course that will help you rebuild your self-esteem by recognizing your primitive defense mechanisms and learning how to upgrade them into more mature, constructive ones. 

 

Raising Self-Worth is the course that will help you strengthen that pillar by identifying your values, then setting new standards and boundaries to protect them. 

 

Restoring Self-Trust is one of the most powerful trainings I’ve created. It will help you reconcile your relationship with your intuition and eradicate your self-doubts. 

 

Finally, self-love is restored naturally through the work of radical self-care. I have an advanced course on that topic that guides you through 5 areas of self-care that will help you return to self-love. That's the Self-Care Mastery Course. 

 

Keep working on strengthening these 4 areas of your life so you never have to hit rock bottom again. 

 

So remember you can come back to this episode anytime you feel stuck, to figure out at which point you’re stuck and what you need to work on in order to start moving forward again. Be patient with yourself in the healing process. It takes time, it requires work and it’s totally worth it because you can create an entirely different life for yourself.