I’ve taken a few weeks to consider what's next. The best way I can describe what I felt: emotional constipation. Something within felt stuck. I was forced to answer the lingering question many other survivors face, “Now what?". I was beginning to feel the expectations of my family to do something. In post-narcissistic abuse, I seriously doubt my decisions. I question my judgment. I am struggling to put trust in others. I spent a week in Nashville exploring without an agenda, except to see my favorite band. That trip and concert created an opening to feeling like me again. It was healing to sit seven rows back and absorb the music and the energy of the Ryman Theatre. I felt more comfortable in my skin than I have since Sept ‘18. I left asking myself, how can I leave this show and keep this same feeling?
It’s not just me who feels this way. It’s not just the survivors in this story. I am in a support group of over 34K women surviving narcissistic abuse symptoms. That number represents only the ones that have identified narcissistic abuse. So many others carry the load of shame without ever identifying what it is they feel. After your hopes, dreams, families, and visions have been weaponized and destroyed in front of you, there comes a day when you ask yourself, "Now what?". Socially generic labels of crazy, jealous, unstable, jerk, etc, do not offer the survivor any path to identify what symptoms they are experiencing. So, "Now what?"
Getting back to myself hasn’t been easy and it’s not been on others' timelines or expectations of how I should be living without the narc. Family & friends have said they want the pre-narc me back that they once knew. Confident, creative, adventurous, and driven. The reality is, I’m not the same person. Bouncing back from narcissistic abuse has been full-time work. My life, as I had built it, was masterfully stripped away piece by piece. I had a front-row seat to his covert narcissism abuse. It’s absolutely maddening to reflect back and know he coerced me, manipulated me, used my dreams to bait me, and skillfully decimated what I had built. It’s unfathomable to the logical, compassionate mind that someone could have such evil intentions. I can’t imagine navigating this with kids, an office job, or even in the same community where I might see him. I was able to escape and in a relatively quick timeline realized what he was and what he did was abuse. But not before the damage was done.
Getting back on my feet has been a process. He decimated my businesses, he cut me off financially during the nearly 8 months it took for the divorce to process, I found myself without a job, a place to live, and intense fear, and shame, and was energetically depleted.
While still with him, I had begun to apply for jobs in late July 2022. After 8 years of entrepreneurial projects and businesses, I had no desire to work for someone else or go to an office. Although I knew I had to do something to get back on my feet. Each opportunity I shared with him, he would ask “Will that require you to travel?”. Knowing he had stalked the small grocer I was consulting for and had followed me to the market I helped my friend with her business, it became increasingly clear, holding a job was going to come with jealousy and innocent bystanders becoming collateral damage to his narcissistic abuse.
In Aug '22, I spoke to a recruiter that helps to place executives. I shared my conversation with the recruiter with him to which he responded “Does she really think you are worth that much?” referring to the salary range she had shared with me based on my experience. My self-doubt swirled. I realized any shot I had to get back on my feet professionally was going to be torn down. It was 3 weeks after that conversation that I left.
I found inspiration for this shoot in January. It took me 6 months of healing conversations and a lot of reflection to embody this version of myself. I had worked in building my own businesses in yoga clothes for 8 years, leaving behind a fashion career where I walked the streets of London, Paris, NYC, Shanghai, and Mexico City in heels. The narc hated when I wore heels. I'm nearly 5' 8" tall and became taller than him in my heels. He would stand next to me in the mirror and puff up his chest as if that was going to make him physically taller. In my effort to prop up his confidence, I would change into flats. Another piece of me slowly negotiated away.
Covert narcissistic abuse insidiously pulls a person away from themself. It is our fatal attempt to people please the narcissist, in order to keep the peace. Eventually, we forget our way back to the core of who we are. There are countless hours of healing in this version of myself. The shadow represents that work. The narc tried, and nearly succeeded, to destroy this person. However, the difference between me and the narc, I believe in myself to do the work and confront my shame, standing tall in 4" heels. He will forever project his shame and destroy people, places, and things and tear them down to his level in his attempt to control and boost his confidence. I'll never wear flats again for anyone, except myself.
As for the "Now what?", my trauma response is to hurry up and do something to rush past the ability to feel my way through this version of me. Slowing things down and learning to feel and unlearn the survival coping mechanisms I learned while being married to a covert narc. That's my answer to that pressurizing question. I'm slowly coming out of my protective robotic shell and allowing myself to feel the flow and the music, just as I did in the Ryman Theater. Only when I slow down to feel my way through do the doors open. I purchased a house just days after I came back from Nashville. For now, that's enough of an answer to "Now what?".
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