What’s Good About No Contact?
It’s natural when you have to go no contact, to focus on the things you think you’ll miss.
However, the truth is that often the things that you think you’ll miss weren’t the truth about that person or about your relationship.
Holidays and celebrations are particularly difficult times. The images of the happy couple or family uniting for fun and laughter seem to be everywhere.
There is also great social pressure, or lack of understanding, about people who are forced to go no contact. This is a huge burden to those who already have faced abuse.
It’s hard.
And it takes time.
In this blog, I’m going to write about the good things that have come out of no contact for me.
I hope that wherever you are in your journey, you find hope in this blog.
Banging your head against a brick wall
No matter what you do, or say, repeatedly, it makes no difference with a narcissist. Nothing changes.
As much effort as you put in, they put in less, nothing, or they sabotage it all to make it worse. They relish how much energy you put into them and the relationship and trying to make it work.
It gives them a great opportunity to cause maximum drama, getting them the attention and energy, they desperately need from other people.
No matter how much you talk to them, or talk to anyone else trying to understand them, it makes no difference.
You get to the stage where you have nothing left, no ideas, and no energy.
This is the point when you are forced to make a decision because you realise that nothing you do will ever make any difference. And their treatment of you is no longer acceptable.
You’re exhausted.
Their behaviour is not acceptable. And they’ve made it clear that they will never change.
You’ve got to decide to continue trying, investing energy, and time in someone and a relationship that will never improve.
So, you go no contact.
Not because it’s an actual choice, but because you’re tried everything else and got nowhere. You realise that it’s all a lost cause.
At the beginning it’s normal to be overwhelmed with self-doubt and guilt.
Perhaps you struggle so much with this that you make contact with them again. Or the guilt trips from the flying monkeys (those recruited to do the narcissist’s dirty work) successfully manipulate you into contact again.
The biggest victory of going no contact is that their treatment of you, their abuse, stops.
Time and space
Going no contact gives you peace from time and space, and in that peace lies healing.
You need to be away from the toxic influences to see their treatment of you for what it was: abuse. This isn’t just away from the narcissist themselves, but also from other toxic influences.
When you are in it, your vision is clouded, but in going no contact, it gives you clarity.
That’s not to say that this realisation is immediate, or easy to make. It takes time, patience and understanding.
The peace that you get from your no contact becomes more and more precious to you over time.
At the beginning it feels strange, your life with the narcissist was never peaceful. It was full of never-ending rows, drama and chaos. You were one of the main actors in the dramatic life movie of the narcissist.
It feels boring.
A part of you, even though you may not be aware, became so used to the drama that you thought it was normal.
It’s like living in a real-life soap-opera. But unlike a soap-opera you had real feelings and felt pain.
So, when you make that choice to break away, that soap-opera life ends.
The narcissist won’t like it, they’ll do all they can to smear you to other people, or to try to reel you back into their chaos. They have to ‘win’, to either get you back, or do all they can to try to destroy your life or reputation by painting themselves as the victim.
They don’t want you to have peace.
The more you experience this peace, the more precious you realise it is.
It may mean that you make some big changes in your life, losing friends or relationships.
Your priority becomes about preserving your peace.
The peace you experience, flows out of you. It affects everything that you do, and your relationships with loved ones.
Often when you are involved with a narcissist, the other people you love and care about become second place.
A narcissist will isolate you from friends and family.
Narcissistic parents will expect to be your priority over your spouse or your children. The chances are that you will put your spouse and kids second place, without even realising it.
Partners with narcissistic personality disorder will expect to be the one and only. Bit by bit, other relationships will fizzle out, as the narcissist slowly takes over.
Going no contact, results in peace, but it’s mixed with self-doubt, guilt, sadness, anger whatever you feel.
It’s very intense at the beginning and doesn’t feel like peace at all!
Far from it.
But you are getting peace from the narcissist’s abuse, it stopped the moment you made the decision to go no contact.
It’s the peace that allows the realisation of the abuse, and the inevitable grief it brings up. It all comes out, because you’ve the time and space you need to let it come out.
Over time, as those feelings that come up about the realisation and the grief are processed, your peace gets stronger.
It becomes a priority in your life to maintain that peace.
This might mean that you distance yourself in existing relationships or be wary in new relationships. It all becomes about the peace that you feel about that person, or the relationship.
You realise that peace is essential, not just for you, but for harmony in your relationships.
Those relationships you neglected or dropped completely when you were involved with the narcissist become a priority for you. Hopefully they love you enough to forgive you, but there may be some casualties which in turn you have to process and grieve.
Your home feels the peace you feel and all aspects of your life will be affected by this.
That’s not to say that there may be struggles as you are triggered, or something comes up to be processed. But the foundation of your life becomes about that peace.
Freedom
Without you knowing it, the narcissist takes over your mind.
There will be the obvious ways they do this, especially when your fear of them takes over and you think before you speak or do something.
But there are also less obvious ways that they do this.
It’s those little voices in your head that hold you back. The voices that tell you you’re not good enough, you won’t get that job, or that a friend doesn’t really like you.
Any voice in your head that makes you feel bad or holds you back THAT IS THE NARCISSIST.
They may never have said those things to you, but they made you feel it. And then it’s remembered.
Maybe they told you you were those things, or else it’s hinted at or couched in concern for you.
It goes so deep; you don’t even know it.
Every time that little voice makes you feel bad, or anxious or holds you back then the narcissist is winning over you.
Of course, you know with time that they are no longer your priority, nor do you worry about what they may think of what you say or do. That liberation is obvious, gained from no contact.
The peace that you gain in no contact, with the healing that you do in that peace, allows your headspace to be liberated.
Those voices fade, until they reach a point when they’re no longer there.
YOU’RE FREE.
It won’t feel like it, it’ll feel strange. This is especially if you were raised by narcissists, those voices have been there for your entire lifetime.
That emptiness feels like depression but without the sadness.
It’s space.
Space for you to fill with whatever you want to, any hobbies you enjoyed you were denied, or any career you considered but were talked out of.
The possibilities feel endless, all those opportunities for you to grasp.
Maybe whatever it is will work out, or maybe not, but it’s about trying.
It’s about those voices being rooted out during your healing. Those voices that held you back, denied you opportunity, love, peace, and freedom.
NOW is YOUR TIME.
Life is an adventure.
Go enjoy it!
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Originally published at https://comebackbrighter.com on January 18, 2023.