The Legacy of Narcissist Abuse: PTSD and Filling the Void Left in Your Life No matter how hard a person tries to move on from Narc Abuse, it refuses to let go of the victim. You grab the bull by the horns and take the pain full force, rather than denying there is a problem. You get every possible answer as to what went on in the fake relationship with your fake narc partner, with absolutely zero help from the narc. You inform yourself of what a narc is and educate yourself how to understand, cope with, and heal from the encounter with these inhuman beasts. You work on the anger and resentment and in my case, you give it to God. So you should now be in a pretty good situation 6 months away from ground zero, otherwise known as your discard. All issues have been addressed and you are experiencing healing and have increasingly longer periods of joy. But then the slightest thing goes wrong in your life and you are back in the doldrums, as if you just experienced the discard yesterday. That's the PTSD kicking in when least expected. You have done all that you can do and you are once again an empty shell and the full force of negative emotions wash through you and decide to stay. You are nearly brought to your knees and this happens out of nowhere. So that is the first problem and you try to get a reading of what is going on in your life. You thought you had made progress, were you just kidding yourself and did the minor glitch in your life shed light on your real internal state of mind and heart? Then you notice the second problem, something that wasn't even obvious- you are totally devoid of any thoughts, almost like a computer that had it's hard drive erased and had the operating system restored. Only the basic programs are left. You avoided loading any unnecessary software to your life, and now you are a clean slate and you are trying to be careful about what programs or software you put (or install to continue the metaphor) into your life and that is where you realize there is much more work for you to do. Let's get away from the metaphor and make an assessment of what is going on. You have spent 6 months where literally every aspect of your life, your whole world, all of your hopes, aspirations, dreams, and plans were torn away from you and this situation was so bizarre and unexpected that you couldn't believe it was true. You couldn't comprehend it. So now you are a man, or woman without a country you have no past, it is clear your past was really just a smoke and mirror fantasy creation, you clearly have no present- you are still pulling yourself together, and you have absolutely no vision of your future. You are disoriented and life almost seems meaningless , but you are determined to take advantage of this moment in your life and recreate yourself. This is your pivotal moment. Could you go back to all of the comfortable distractions that were in your life before you encountered the narc? Absolutely. But now that you have just gotten out of a fantasy existence, you realize that you want to rebuild your life and live your life honestly and truly. Meaning that you want to be honest and true to yourself. No more kidding yourself that life is fine and more importantly, you need to really search deeply into your psyche and find out what your real values and priorities are and what type of life you need to lead going forward. A life that at least acknowledges your needs and values. You don't want to live someone else's life anymore. Let's be clear, we aren't talking about becoming a narcissist, but this is a good time for really digging deep and looking at what has been missing in your life. You have responsibilities to other people in your life, family members and possibly close friends and those responsibilities should be honored, provided that those people aren't also taking advantage of you and draining you of huge amounts of energy and provided they aren't holding you back from achieving happiness and joy and success. Yes, it now seems there are more narcs in your life, but maybe those people aren't narcs at all, and you are being overly sensitive. Tread carefully. You are now in the position to recreate yourself and deal with the emptiness as you carefully forge ahead, or you can go back to the life you had before the narc and pretend everything is OK. I, for one, am not doing that. That means emptiness, lack of direction, and intense inner turmoil because there is no comfort in being an empty slate. People weren't designed to be that way. I will pray to God to give me direction as I slowly and carefully redesign and re-engineer who I am and how I respond to the world. The narc was my world, they were my soul mate and life's purpose. The narc was my future and inside that person was every good thing that ever meant anything to me. I invested everything I had, all of the good and positive things inside of me, into that person. It is all gone, and now it feels like I am drifting in outer space. I refuse to grab onto the things of the past that were comfortable, but just weighed me down. Does it mean I have had a setback? No. It just means I am now ready to deal with the next step in the healing process. Mercifully, I was unaware of this step until now. I have no idea how many steps are left until fully healed, but my confidence in declaring myself “healed” and “over it” and “ready to move on” has received a strong dose of reality. Thank you for watching. 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