3 Steps to Quickly Heal from Narcissistic Abuse

What if I told you that there's a three step method that can help you permanently recover from narcissistic abuse and that you're already familiar with how this method works. You just have to learn how to apply this technique to a new way of seeing the world. For the past 20 years, I've dedicated my life to teaching and researching the complexities of narcissistic abuse. I'm not only a coach, author and teacher in this field, I'm also a survivor myself. Today I'm going to share how I recovered from narcissistic abuse and the three step method that I've used to help thousands of others take back their power, find their voice and reclaim their life. I want you to imagine sitting at a slot machine and maybe right away you're already saying, meadow, I hate gambling, I don't play slots. But stay with me because if you have a narcissist in your life, you're actively playing slots every day. So back to Vegas. You're sitting at the slot machine and you're putting the coins in and you're pulling the lever and you're watching the reel spin and you wait for them to lock into place. No jackpot. So you put more coins in, you pull the lever and you wait. Then no jackpot. And then you do it again and again and again. And every so often you hear the bells and the lights start flashing and you realize you finally won something and out comes a few coins and now you're really hooked. So you keep playing and most of the time you lose. But every so often you've win a few coins back. You never know when it's going to happen or how much you're going to win. But you've got your eye on that mega jackpot. You want a big payout and you're not going to give up. Eventually you run out of money, but you feel like you're so close, so you can't give up now. So you take out your credit card and you start playing on credit. And instantly you win bigger than before. And now you're even more hooked. And now you're trying to make back all that money that you've already spent, but you're slowly going more and more into debt. So you take out your next credit card and you max that one out too. Eventually. Keep going like this. You're all out of credit cards, all around you. You keep seeing people win. And so you're thinking, I can't give this up now. I've worked so hard for this. So you Keep pulling that lever. You're lost in the game now and you can't stop yourself. So you play until you hit rock bottom, where there's money to play and nothing else to do but walk away. And you never did hit that jackpot. And you're not just at zero, you've also racked up an enormous amount of debt. And that's exactly how it works when you've been in a narcissistic relationship. But in these relationships, you end up paying with your time, attention, energy, and sometimes even real money. Pulling that lever and trying to get a small payout, hoping that this time you win something, like anything. Maybe you get a little bit of connection, or maybe you get a little bit of their time, or maybe you feel a little bit wanted or loved or cared for. The intermittent abuse is what keeps you on that hook. Every so often, it does really seem like they care. And every so often, it actually seems like they love you. So you keep dishing over your time, your attention, your energy, your hope, your care, your love. So the first step to recovery is to stop gambling. Period. This means that you have to stop spending your time, attention, energy and care on anyone who's a gamble. I can hear you already, but Meadow, I don't know who's a gamble. That's my problem. I hear ya. So let's start with this. A gamble is any action that risks danger, harm or loss for the possibility of a hopeful outcome. The key words here are risks, danger, harm or loss. This means that you have to stop spending your time, attention and energy on anyone that puts you at risk. And yes, this is major. This is some of the most difficult work I do with my clients, helping them navigate who is a gamble and who isn't. But here's the deal. When you've hit rock bottom after abuse, you can't afford to spend a single shred of yourself for a while. Yes, this is hard because it might take your social life down to zero for a while. And that's normal and it's part of the process. But this is only the first step of recovery. The gambler who's in debt literally cann afford to put one more coin in a slot machine. Does that mean that all the slot machines are losers? No, it just means that the gambler is in debt and has no more resources to squander. Until there are enough resources, no more playing slots. So for this step, I want you to think of yourself, your sense of self as the currency that you're putting into a slot machine every time you Give more of yourself. You're depleting your resources and over time, you've gone into debt. And this isn't just metaphorical debt. You've created mental habits that have to be retrained. You've created emotional habits that have harmed you over time. You've endured chronic stress, which has created a slew of physical body based issues that you have to repair. You might also have a trauma bond that has to be broken mentally, physically, emotionally, even spiritually. You might have also put yourself into actual financial debt or time debt, or any other aspect of debt by giving too much of yourself to someone who was willing to harm you. So to stop gambling, that often means going no contact, or at least gray. Rocking or strengthening your boundaries so that you're no longer shoveling your time, energy, attention, finances, everything to that other person. I'll go deeper into these techniques in future episodes, but for now, I just want you to try out this new concept of thinking of yourself as currency that you can spend. So onto the second step. Once you stop gambling, you need to pay off the debt. And this works exactly the same as paying off the financial debt. To get out of financial debt, you have to spend your money paying off what you owe. To get out of narcissistic debt, you have to spend your time, energy, attention and care paying off what you owe. So that means that for every moment of attention, every worry, every stomach ache, every time you walked on eggshells, every time you discounted yourself, you now have to spend that much time, attention and energy on yourself just to get back to zero. You pay off the narcissistic debt by investing in yourself, investing in your mental health, your emotional health, your boundaries, your physical health and your financial health. And this means that you give yourself time, attention, energy, care, love, finances, everything. If you've ever been in financial debt and paid it off, you know how hard this is. You don't pay off your debt by continuing to use your credit cards. You don't pay off your debt by continuing to gamble. You get out of debt through discipline and intentional action. You cut up your credit cards, you stop buying things you can't afford. You give everything you can to paying down those loans. And you do this until you're back to zero. In the future, I'll share more about the details about how to pay off narcissistic debt. But for now, I just want you to think of this in the same way that you think about paying off money debt. To pay off the debt, you pay back what you've already spent until you hit zero. Once you're back at zero, you finally move into that last phase of healing. And that is where you start to actually build self worth again. This works exactly like money. If you spend more than you earn, your financial worth goes down. To build financial worth, you have to keep more than you spend. In the realm of self worth, you deplete self worth by spending more of yourself than you keep. To build self worth, you have to invest in yourself. Keep more of yourself than you give away. If you want a jumpstart on this, my bestselling book, the Worthy Project covers this in detail. I'll link it below. But for now, I want you to just think of this as the third step. Once you've stopped gambling and you've paid off the debt. Only at that point can you truly start to build self worth. And you do this only by giving what you can afford to give. And this means that you only spend the amount of time, attention and energy on what you can afford. In return, you require back fair compensation. This means that you receive back enough time, attention and energy to sustain you. And over time, this builds your sense of self, it increases your value, and it creates a sustainable system of strong self worth. You do this by being intentional with your actions, staying aware of your inner compass and your power. This is the bulk of the work that I do with my clients, and it's what I practice daily. And it hasn't just helped me recover from narcissistic abuse, but also is how I actively repel narcissists from my orbit to this day. To really put this into practice, you need one more crucial piece of the puzzle, and that's to understand how to set boundaries. To hear more about boundary red flags and my own embarrassing story about how not to set boundaries, watch this next.