How No Contact supports narcissistic abuse recovery

10 minute read

Are you thinking of going No Contact with the abusive narcissist in your life, but feel unsure about it? Maybe you feel torn, and are hoping to find a way to continue having them in your life in some way?

If this is how you feel, I get it. Facing such a monumental decision agitates all sorts of conflicting, icky, emotions.

It means entertaining severing an attachment with someone who has played a significant role in your life such as a partner, parent, sibling, or friend. Adding to the complexity of your decision and power of these ties, is the trauma bonding that takes place with an abusive narcissist.

It is an understatement to say that contemplating No Contact is extremely painful. It can in fact feel like you are ripping out your very heart.

Yet pushing you to this point, is the realisation that this just may be your only way to save yourself from any further abuse and reclaim your life.

Going No Contact is not always possible and other measures must be implemented for protection. However, in most instances it is, and I urge you to give serious consideration to making it happen. The single most compelling reason for this is: your recovery.

So gorgeous ones, this piece aims to help you find clarity and peace in making your decision by checking out why No Contact precipitates healing.

What is No Contact?

First up, let’s define the intent of No Contact. It means precisely what the words imply. No contact, no communication, no interaction at all.

No reaching out to the narc in any way, and no responding to their attempts to hoover or bait you (see Glossary to check out terminology).

For the sake of clarity, it entails:

• Not answering the phone when they call (blocking their number is the way to go).
• Not reading/responding to any texts messages or emails (block, block, block! If one gets through delete unread).
• Not reading/responding to any cards, letters etc.
• BLOCKing them on ALL your social media accounts (getting the picture regarding the importance of blocking?).
• Not answering the door when they rock up uninvited to your home/workplace etc.
• Refusing to engage with flying monkeys information gathering for the narc.
• Adding any unsafe mutual relationships who are not able to be there for you without donning the flying monkey hat to the ‘No Contact’ list.

No Contact is about preventing exposure to any further abuse, whether this be directly or via third parties (a.k.a. flying monkeys).

How No Contact supports narcissistic abuse recovery

In addition to protecting you from ongoing abuse, removing the source of toxicity accelerates your healing exponentially.

Here’s how…

1. Acceptance

When hope sabotages

To save yourself, you must remove yourself from the abusive situation. It sounds so simple, so obvious, right?

Yet, for victims of narcissistic abuse, it is anything but easy. In fact, it can be one of the very hardest things you will ever have to do.

Relationships are inextricably linked to your sense of identity. This is normal in that the significant people in your life, also contribute to shaping your life. When this is healthy, those relationships strengthen your sense of self. They are a place of safety where your true self is honoured.

However, in the narcissistic relationship, the opposite takes place. The abusive narcissist undertakes a deliberate campaign to erode your identity. After all, when you lose your sense of self, your dependence on them and their power over you strengthens.

In handing over your power to the narcissist as a consequence of the abuse, capacity to self-validate is hijacked. The narc becomes your sole source of validation for your identity, your worthiness, and your reality (for more on this check out Why narcissistic abuse and trauma bonding is so powerful for codependents).

This establishes a powerful need for the narcissist, you therefore cling to any hope that they will change (specifically stop abusing you) so that you can stay in the relationship. In your mind, holding out hope becomes a matter of survival. In reality, hope is sabotaging you and supporting your destruction.

So how do you get to a place internally where you can release yourself from the nightmare?

You must accept the reality of the situation and that they will not change.

Letting hope go

The abusive narcissist repeats a relationship pattern of idealise, devalue, and discard. Without deviation, the narc will cycle through this loop, ad infinitum. With you, and with all other sources of supply.

Even upon discard, do not assume the cycle is broken. The narcissist will return and recommence the cycle (when they have exhausted other targets), if you still hold the possibility of supply.

The point here is that because of the predictability of their pattern of behaviour, you can be 100% sure they will never change. Need more convincing? Read Proof the narcissist abuses you intentionally and will never change now.

In other words, the abuse will continue until you break the cycle.

Any residual hope you still hold in your heart, you must relinquish it. It is sadly, the falsest of hopes.

In this instance, hope is doing you a disservice. Conversely, letting it go, gifts you with acceptance.

And in this moment, you turn the corner.

In accepting what is, you begin to reclaim your lost self.

2. Addiction

The narc as a narcotic

There is a second thing you must accept.

Your addiction.

It is imperative that you wrap your head around the fact you are addicted to the narcissist as powerfully as any drug would have you bound.

This is not hyperbole.

Let me ask you. How much time do you spend thinking about the narc each day? Honestly, how much? And how do you feel when being punished? Let’s use the silent treatment or disappearing act, or discard as examples.

Are you in a level of pain that takes your breath away? Physically ill? Perhaps even demented?

Would you quite literally do anything to have them engage with you, come back, make the pain go away?

This sweet pea, is addiction.

It happens through trauma bonding. The narcissist cements your dependence on the highs of love bombing in the idealisation phase. Once hooked, they shift you into devaluation where you come face to face with the malevolence they are capable of.

To keep you hooked, the narc mindfully sprinkles intermittent doses of love bombing amongst the cruelty. This reinforces your addiction to them and the relationship (read Why is it so hard leave an abusive relationship with a narcissist for more on this).

Just like recovery from any other addiction, the only way to beat your need for the narcissist, is to abstain.

Behavioural conditioning

At some level, you understand that your purpose is to continuously feed the narc’s addiction. You also come to realise the transactional nature of the relationship, and that it is entirely based on either punishment or reward depending on your capacity to meet their needs for supply.

Because you crave being rewarded with the narc’s validation of your worth through love bombing, you continue chasing the next hit, despite the abuse.

The narc chases their hits of supply from you by hoovering and baiting you. And you bite. Every time. With each bite, the conditioning to think and behave in a way consistent with narcissistic abuse becomes ever more entrenched.

Very deliberately, you are programmed to react on cue to the narc. Because of this, and the predictability of the narc’s behaviour, contact and recovery are not compatible. Ongoing exposure only invites regular relapses.

Breaking this cycle with No Contact allows you space to reprogram your behaviours making your decision to rescue your lost self entirely doable.

3. Heart, mind & soul first aid

The thing with behaviours is that they are driven by what you think and feel. Consequently, reprogramming is about giving your heart, mind & soul some serious first aid.

At the crux of the devastation of your heart, mind & soul in narcissistic abuse is cognitive dissonance and denial.

Cognitive dissonance occurs when you hold conflicting beliefs at the same time. This causes confusion and distress and motivates the need to resolve the contradiction in any way necessary.

This is evidenced in gaslighting for example, where you question your grasp on reality because what you believe is being countered by the narcissist in some way.

Fundamental to your capacity to cope with the cognitive dissonance is denial.

On the one hand, this gets you by as a band aid measure for single occurrences of abuse. On the other, constant use of denial means you are suppressing your overall truth and reality which only exacerbates cognitive dissonance further.

This gorgeous one, makes you sick. The pain of sustaining this as a survival mode causes a host of symptoms. These might be depression, anxiety, panic attacks, restlessness, inability to trust, paranoia, nausea, confusion, fear, hypervigilance, social isolation, obsessive thoughts and compulsions, rage, muscle aches, intrusive and obsessive thoughts, suicidal ideation, insomnia, night terrors, and numbness.

The sum effect of whatever symptoms of narcissistic abuse are present for you, and the denial, leaves you unable to fully recognise them while still in contact with the narcissist.

As a result of the abuse, your cognitive clarity, and emotional awareness to what’s really happening for you are necessarily blunted. You cannot heal, until you work through your hurts, and this cannot happen while emotions and thoughts are being suppressed & denied.

No Contact allows you to set aside these defence mechanisms.

Abstinence from your addiction, slowly dissipates the fog so deliberately crafted by the narcissist. From the point of No Contact, you gain increasing clarity about the situation, the narcissist, and the damage you have suffered.

The ugly truths will hit you like a freight train. But as with letting hope go that things will change, you must embrace this naturally unwelcome experience of negativity.

Trust me gorgeous ones, the nuggets of yuck, the truths, are really your friends. When you wrap your head around your pain, and that what happened to you is unforgiveable, acceptance is taken a step further.

You can begin to grieve. And healing begins.

A note on the reality of limitations

In some circumstances, No Contact is not possible. For instance, you may hold shared parenting responsibilities with the narcissist in your life. This does not mean there are no measures of recovery if you are in this situation.

There are ways of taking care of you, such as combining Low Contact (limited interaction) with the grey rock method, and/or supported contact through intermediaries to minimise interaction even further.

Having said this, when an inability to detach emotionally within the confines of a Low Contact arrangement exists, No Contact is ideally the way to go. Quite simply because we cannot heal a wound that is continuously being exposed to the cause of injury.

Before I go…

In writing this article, words from C.S. Lewis have been circling in my mind: ‘Courage, dear heart’.

You may paradoxically feel anguish, panic, or even pure terror at the thought of cutting the narcissist out of your life. Know that there is light beyond this darkness. This severing, in reality, is about cutting yourself free.

‘Courage, dear heart’.

As always, please do share your insights, tips or questions below on healing through No Contact. Sharing and encouraging others is so very necessary to help all of us on our journey of recovery – so thank you!

For more tools & knowledge building pieces on the issues in this article read:

• Proof the narcissist abuses you intentionally and will never change
• Emotionally unhook yourself & starve the narcissist of supply: Here’s how
• When hope is killing you: Narcissistic abuse
• No Contact vs. the narcissist’s silent treatment & ghosting: The differences
• Stop feeling sorry for the narcissist now
• Invalidation and narcissism: Why they slowly erase you
• Narcissistic Invalidation: How to stop them erasing you
• Blueprint for recovery from narcissistic abuse
• Personal Bill of Rights for Narcissistic Abuse Recovery

With gratitude,

Maggie x

Hungry to know more?

Good. Your hunger to heal is half the battle! The books that jolted me into understanding my patterns and unhealthy needs that fed into that addicted feeling in narc relationships are Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood, and Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody. These titles were so helpful in expanding my understanding beyond how the cycle of narcissistic abuse was binding me through trauma, to get me to look at what was going on inside me that was contributing to feeling stuck.

Also, one of the reasons I loved Psychopath Free by Jackson Mackenzie so much, was because  he describes so honestly and with great kindness the pain of addiction and withdrawal, and the treasures that are ours to claim throughout this journey of detoxing and healing. He definitely applies a lens of gratitude to these very difficult lessons faced in cutting ourselves free. Very uplifiting and who doesn’t love a bit of that when things feel insurmountable!

(Note – if using link/s provided to purchase, you’ll receive free shipping and title heavily discounted. You’ll also be supporting my work in providing you free resources on this site, by earning a very small commission, at no extra cost to you – thank you 😊)

Bibliography

• Keller, P.S., Blincoe, S., Gilbert, L.R., Dewall, C.N., Haak, E.A., & Widiger, T. (2014). Narcissism in romantic relationships: A dyadic perspective. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 33(1), 25-50.
• Mellody, P. (2003). Facing love addiction: Giving yourself the power to change the way you love. New York, US: Harper Collins.
• Norwood, R. (2009). Women who love too much: When you keep wishing and hoping he’ll change. London, UK: Arrow.
• Roark, S.V. (2013). Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Effect on relationships. Alabama Nurse, 39(4), 12-14.