What are The Stages of Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse?

9 min readMay 24, 2022

Making the discovery about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a massive shock.

Whoever is in your life that is suffering from NPD, will be someone that you love and care about. Someone that you have tried, perhaps for decades, to have a loving and reciprocal relationship with.

Somehow, nothing you ever did made any difference.

All energy you used in trying to make it work was wasted, things never got any better and you never understood why.

Then you make the realisation about narcissistic personality disorder and everything suddenly makes sense.

It’s like the light goes on.

However, that doesn’t mean that it is an easy thing to process.

The emotional attachment you have to the person with narcissistic personality disorder makes things more difficult to work through. You still love them, and care about them, and still want a decent relationship with them.

But things will never be the same again.

Even without you being aware, you will start to distance yourself from the narcissist. Just asking questions about their behaviour, even if you don’t understand it, will be enough to create a slight barrier between you.

The narcissist will be very aware of the shift in the dynamic. They are very finely tuned into it, they depend on the situation remaining the same.

During this time, while you try to understand the true dynamic, the narcissist may well start to escalate their abuse. They want to try to claw you back into the old dynamic.

Once your eyes are open to it, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to ignore.

Sometimes it may take just what appears to be a small incident for you to be forced to distance yourself from the narcissist.

However, it isn’t just this small incident, it is years, maybe decades, of abusive incidents, and the narcissist never taking responsibility, apologising, and changing their behaviour.

Each time there were issues or difficulties, it was up to you to ignore their behaviour, if not apologise to the narcissist.

There comes a time, I believe, when enough is enough.

It is never a real choice to go no contact, up to this point you will have tried everything to try to make things work.

But, sadly, often you get to the point when you realise that it’s a waste of your time and energy, especially as the narcissist doesn’t appear to want to make any effort.

I believe that the only way to truly heal from narcissistic abuse, is from going no contact.

The time, space and freedom from toxicity is essential. Without these things, you cannot see clearly.

Grieving process

Going no contact is the beginning of the grieving process.

The narcissist may not be dead, but it is the death of the relationship and everything that you hoped that it could be.

These stages are not linear, you could find yourself in the different stages at different time.

Self-doubt

This is a constant struggle during the grieving process.

It is something, always there, no matter what stage you are in.

Perhaps you have moments when you are sure of your realisation, and of your decisions.

However, these times will be counteracted by periods of utter uncertainty when you not only question your relationship with the narcissist, but all your relationships.

This self-doubt is a curse, because it could be because of this doubt that you break your no contact. This in turn leads to more heartbreak and delay in the healing process.

The narcissist, and their flying monkey minions, will do all they can to exploit your self-doubt. They do this by manipulating you back into contact with guilt, reminding you of your obligation and/or making you feel afraid.

Over-thinking

Ruminating is also something that occurs during all the stages of grief.

You think that the answer lies in thinking, not just in waking hours but in the middle of the night.

This is normal and natural when you are trying to process what you have been through.

However, it can be exhausting and never get you anywhere.

The more you understand that this is a normal state to be in considering the circumstances, the quicker you can move through it.

Numbness and denial

The first stage is often quite a long stage.

This is the time when you are in shock, which means that you feel numb, distracted, unable to concentrate or make little decisions.

You need time to process what you’ve been through.

This is a big stage to work through, because for a long time you believed that a loving and caring relationship with the narcissist was possible.

You believed that they loved you, and this is a struggle with cognitive dissonance as your old beliefs do battle with the truth of the situation you find yourself in.

Perhaps there is a little bit of denial, as your mind struggles to come to terms with the truth. This is the beginning of the end of the numb stage.

It means that you are processing enough to deny, you are no longer numb to it.

It is deeply uncomfortable coming to terms with narcissistic abuse, much easier to deny it as it hurts so much.

Bargaining

In this stage, you will suffer from self-blame, imagining different scenarios and stalling in order to gain more time.

Through this stage, there may be a tiny bit of hope that the relationship could be salvaged or could have been repaired. However, sadly, this hope is not sustainable because it is not founded in the reality of the situation.

If you feel responsible for the situation, then it’s in your control to ‘fix’ it.

It is an attempt to relieve the pain and to try to take back control.

During this time, you may even defend the narcissist’s actions in another attempt to find relief. If the narcissist ‘wasn’t that bad’ then you don’t have to consider no contact and the consequences.

You may find yourself finding more and more ‘evidence’ to refute your conclusion that they are a narcissist.

If they are not a narcissist, then they do care. And the issues with them and the relationship are surmountable.

However, an important thing to realise is that a symptom of narcissistic abuse is that you blame yourself. You also accept too much responsibility for the state of the relationship.

The narcissist would have also systematically destroyed your confidence in yourself and your decisions.

So, the very things that they did that made you vulnerable to their abuse, are the things that cause bigger issues in the grieving process.

If you can understand how you’ve also been manipulated into blaming yourself it gives you greater understanding that this is a process, and not necessarily indicative that you should get back in contact.

Bargaining is a natural stage of the grieving process, it’s all a part of processing the pain that you’ve been through.

Validation

Throughout all stages you will be remembering incidents from your relationship and trying to make sense of them. This is all a part of the healing process, although it may feel like torture.

Over time you will start to see things more clearly.

Incidents will make sense because instead of seeing the other person as being a loving person, you start to understand the true dynamic.

This is the time when you will seek answers, confirmation that they are a narcissist. It could result in months, or even years, of researching articles, blogs, forums, videos and podcasts. All in an effort to find the ‘proof’ of a loved one being a narcissist.

This is the time when you are truly beginning to process what you’ve been through. The time when you understand that you have been abused.

One thing, that is very important to understand, is that you will never find anyone to confirm what you believe.

It is rare that a health professional will confirm your loved one’s narcissistic personality disorder. The very nature of narcissistic personality disorder is that they don’t seek the help they need, so they aren’t formally diagnosed.

If you approach family members for validation, understand that their experiences were different to yours. And, most importantly, that they are tied in with the toxic dynamic themselves. Instead of supporting you, they will rally around the narcissist.

This stage can be very lengthy, please understand that it is really a time of building up confidence in yourself, your diagnosis and your decision. After years of being having your confidence crushed it can take a while to get it back.

Anger

As you are processing and gradually validating yourself, then you will begin to feel angry.

This is a normal reaction to how unjustly you have been treated, not just by the narcissist, but by family members too.

All the unfairness of it, will come up, and will be expressed as anger.

However, it can be difficult because in narcissistic households, your emotions had to be stuffed down because all that mattered was the narcissist and how they felt. It was a matter of survival.

These stuffed emotions don’t go away, instead they can manifest as depression, self-sabotage, coping mechanisms, addictions etc etc.

It can feel dangerous or unsafe to express your anger, because there’s a lot of it to work through. There could be an entire lifetime of anger to release.

It is very important to process this, to let it out and to work through it.

Often, clients tell me that they feel very uncomfortable about their anger. That it makes them a bad person, and they are not like that.

Being angry, is a part of being human. If you feel angry, then it is what it is. It is not right or wrong, bad or good.

If you feel any differently about it, then this is probably what the narcissist told you or made you feel. It was about their control over you, not the best thing for you.

Revenge

The anger that you may feel could manifest as a desire for revenge.

This, again, is a normal reaction to how you’ve been treated.

Once you’ve truly started to process the abuse that you’ve experienced, then I believe that anger and revenge are completely healthy.

It may feel extreme or uncomfortable because it is not what you are used to.

However, it is very important to not act on this desire for revenge. Things will not turn out as you desire and it could go very badly for you.

Again, like with the anger, work your way through it. Be patient and understanding with yourself. Be kind to yourself and understand that it will pass.

Sadness/depression

Throughout the stages of processing your grief, sadness will come up.

However, there may be a stage when you feel sad, which may lead to depression.

This is an important stage because it means that you are truly working through what you’ve been through and understanding the end of the relationship.

It’s like a stage of acceptance, because the sadness results from the loss of hope for the relationship and the narcissist.

In some ways, it’s like the death of what you hoped the relationship and narcissist could be.

Narcissists can act like good parents or partners. And it is this act that keeps you with them for so long.

The sadness comes because you realise the truth about the narcissist.

Once again, like with anger and revenge, process it, let it out and work through it.

Understand that processing what you’ve been through is huge and traumatic in itself.

Acceptance

This is the last stage.

You come to this stage once you’ve worked through all the other stages.

This is the time when you truly come to accept what you’ve been through, all the abuse and all it brings up for you.

For me, I felt empty, I think it was because I was finally liberated of my parents and their treatment of me and it freed up my mind.

In some ways it felt like depression, the emptiness of it, but what was different was that I had the energy and inclination to start new things to create the life I wanted.

Conclusion

Working through the stages of grief takes time, takes as long as it takes.

It is complicated because the person is still alive and you could consider getting back in contact to stop your pain. However, it doesn’t change anything, they are still the same.

What complicates it further is the attitude and actions of other members of the family, or friends, and societal ignorance (or denial) of narcissistic abuse.

People in general don’t understand, not even some mental health professionals. This can make the healing process much more complex and challenging.

However, I can say after having been through this myself, that it is worth working through it. However long it takes, is miniscule compared to how long you endured the abuse.

You have the rest of your life to enjoy.

The best thing, all the healing you do, makes you grow. As you heal those parts of you bruised by narcissistic abuse, you piece yourself back together.

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