Growing

Every time I think of something or talk about something I write it down in my phone and it becomes the topic of my next blog. The main things I have been talking about this week have been assertiveness, toxic people, manipulation, lust versus love, God’s plan, and forgiveness.

At my abuse class and with my coach this week I worked on assertiveness. When you are in an abusive relationship it’s very hard to be assertive. It’s so much easier to be a passive because you don’t want to start an argument over nothing. In a relationship with a narcissist it doesn’t matter if you are right or not, they will fight you until they are blue in the face about the fact that they know you are wrong for some reason or another. They will also just make up reasons to be mad or take something super small and simple and turn it into something huge. They LOVE to fight. For example, I’ve said this before, but my ex use to get mad if I was texting him “too much” throughout the day because it messed up his mindset for work. Something so simple could be turned into a full blown fight, so you learn to become passive so the issues don’t escalate into something more.

It is very important to know that you have the right to stand up for yourself and discuss your feelings without being made to feel guilty or like your feelings are wrong. You also have the right to say no to things that aren’t beneficial to you without feeling guilty or ashamed! This is something I am still working on and I’m sure a lot of other abuse survivors are, but it’s very important to become assertive to step away from toxic people and so you don’t get walked all over. If you don’t want to go on a date or watch that certain TV show, you don’t have to! You have the right to say “NO!” You have the right to say “NO” to ANYTHING that isn’t right for you mentally or physically. If you say “NO” and someone gets mad then realize they don’t respect your boundaries and it was a good thing you did say “No.”

Toxic people no longer have a spot in your life, which is something else I want to mention quickly! If you are friends with or associate more than needs be with someone you know is either toxic or abusive, then you are also toxic. No, it doesn’t make you abusive, but yes, it definitely makes you toxic. I can say this from experience. My ex was abusive towards me, but I enabled his behavior by denying it and not sharing what he was doing behind closed doors. By denying it, it was only allowing the abuse to get worse and for it to happen towards others. I had to realize that I was not healthy and needed to get help because denying abuse only prolongs what the abuser is doing to others. I cannot think of any healthy person that knows of an abusive person and is either friends with them or deals with them on a higher level. They aren’t toxic and they don’t want to deal with toxic. It doesn’t matter if these people are family or not, you can still love them, but you have to know when it’s time to distance yourself from toxic people. For example, I had to cut out off of my abusers family from my life, not because I don’t love them, but because specific people were denying/ being enablers for my abuser, which is toxic.

The next thing I want to talk a little bit about is manipulation. Manipulation is a very, very confusing thing. To this day I can still look back at parts of my past relationship and be like, “shit that was definitely manipulation.” Manipulation is one of the things I believe makes it so hard for abuse survivors to actually comprehend/understand everything that has happened. The love-bombing stage is the beginning of manipulation. A narcissist mirrors you image and character for a short time to make you believe they are everything you wanted, just to break you down. That is their way to suck a victim in. Once the victim has fallen for the bullshit love-bombing manipulation stage then the narcissist knows he has his new victims and their mask can come down. Then you start to see who they really are, which is NOTHING like what they made you believe they were in the beginning stages. The victims then keep holding on to the hope that the person they once knew would come back. That person is long gone! It’s manipulation at is finest. I could go on for days about manipulation, but it’s very confusing to get the thoughts onto paper or typed.

A lot of people are fooled by lust and love especially a victim of narcissistic abuse. We are fooled to believe that its love because of the love-bombing stage which I explain above. The thing is that a narcissist will NEVER be able to love. If someone is only concerned about sexual desires, high physical contact, and doesn’t develop feelings or an emotional connection than that would be considered lust. Love is so much more than sex. If someone is in love with you they accept someone for everything they are and are not. You create an emotional connection that could never be broken and you’re basically just best friends. I have had both lust and love types of relationships. I strongly believe if you are truly in love with someone you would never be able to cheat on them. Another example of how narcissists are incapable of loving. They will ALWAYS cheat and no matter who you are you will NEVER be an exception. Stroking their ego and getting attention with always be more important than they true love they could get from someone. If you are with a narcissist, sociopath, or psychopath and you believe they aren’t cheating on you, I would rethink it! Someone can fool you to make you believe they love you when in reality it’s only lust, so be careful and do your research. If you don’t have an emotional connection with your partner then I would start rethinking the relationship!

My friend and I have been talking a lot about God’s plan and why things like this happened. When I came out of my relationship people always told me to look at the positive in the situation and I thought, “What the fuck are you talking about, how is there a positive to getting abused?” I thought about it more and more though at the beginning of my healing journey and I started to find positives. It was a positive that my ex cheated on me and the new supply came in to get me out of the situation. It was also a positive that I was abused because now I have found a career path that I am very interested in. I can now help people through the abusive situations that I have been through. The other positive I thought about last night was how I have done so much research on the topic of narcissism that I can now help a close friend that is struggling with a crazy situation. I can see the positives that have from the situation and I believe there is a positive in ever hard situation you just have to look for them!

The last thing I want to talk about is forgiveness. I have heard tons of people talk about forgiveness and unless you have been in a situation like this you have no room to tell someone to forgive, sorry, but you just don’t. However, my mentor told me that eventually I will forgive and I said, “I don’t know if I will ever forgive and I don’t really know if I care to. I hate him and I hate what he did to me.” She said, “You can still hate them and what they did, but forgive for your own peace.” I replied, “I don’t hold anger towards him much anymore and I really don’t think about him that much anymore. I feel as if I am at peace with the situation. “She thought that was great and that’s basically I really only needed to forgive for my own peace which is already had. I talked to another friend that has worked on fogginess though a situation and I said something similar to hating what they have done. She said, “I think you have forgiven when you can help the person that has hurt you. You can help someone and still hate what they have done or even them.” It’s true, if I knew my abuser was truly sincerely sorry and his actions and behaviors had changed and he came to me for real psychological help I can’t say that I wouldn’t help. I will help anyone that is in need of help and actually sincerely needs help even if they have hurt me. However, my abuser is incapable of changing and nothing will ever be sincere from him. I also do not feel you need to forgive if it’s not good for your mental health. Sometimes people can’t forgive because they know if they do they might go back to what hurt them. If you are one of those people I suggest you find peace, but don’t do something that isn’t right for you. Only you will know what’s right for you! As for me, I don’t forgive him for the abuse or the shitty person he is, but I am at peace.