Having spent a lot of time trying to find the answers on various emotional abuse recovery sites and blogs, the key features boil down to going No Contact with your narcissist ex, and dealing with the childhood trauma that is subconsciously attracting you to people that keep you trapped in the past, and in the trauma. It has not been until recently, around six months following the split, that my inner-child work truly began.Â
I had initially thought that maybe it had not applied to me, and I was just unfortunate and naive in falling in love with the wrong person, so I took the advice I found with a pinch of salt. I attended therapy, and the regular ghosts from the past were discussed, and I had no trouble in talking about my family life, and the struggles I had had with growing up in an environment where my feelings were subordinate to those of everyone else, due to mental illness within the family. I was taught that I did not have the right to feel or express sadness, because everybody had it worse than me. And Iâve been quite open with those close to me about the ways in which this has affected me - and though it was relatively difficult at times, I struggled to identify any incidents that I felt were truly traumatic, or pivotal in my life.
I searched and searched and searched to try and uncover childhood experiences that had really affected me, and I couldnât pick a single thing. It had started to dawn on me that there was something there, an outline, indistinct - and I knew not to dig any further. It wasnât until I was high with some close friends, that it suddenly came back to me in full colour, as though it had just happened. I turned to my friend closest to me, and emotionless, I told her what had happened. I had survived the most dehumanising experience over 10 years ago at the hands of 2 people I considered friends, and whether consciously or not, I had buried the incident, not told a single person, and moved on with my life, unaffected. Or so I thought.
For the first time since it had happened, I had allowed myself to think about it, and I had acknowledged it for what it was, and I had spoken the words for the first time: I was raped.
I have since experienced all the emotions that I had refused to access 10 years ago. I was a child when it happened, and I couldnât fully comprehend the ramifications. It was easier for me to just not call it what it was, blame myself in an effort to take control of a situation that was otherwise debilitating, and never say the words or deal with the trauma. I forced myself to carry on without facing it, and I remember feeling that I could only escape it by not giving it any time or thought. Approaching it now, 10 years on, with 10 years more life experience, including a relationship that has taught me so much about myself, I can face it with the strength I didnât have back then. I can understand it, and I can now recognise the ways in which it has altered so much of my behaviour that I didnât before understand.
So when I met the person who would become my boyfriend, my future, then suddenly my past, itâs no wonder that I was attracted to a person who clearly wanted to diminish and destroy my identity; this was what I had been unknowingly doing for the best part of a decade. We were the perfect match. But as he held up a mirror to my project of self-annihilation, subconsciously my childhood wounds opened and manifested in so many ways. I needed to reach the darkest place in order to recover from an incident that had been preserved and untouched since it had happened 10 years ago. Ultimately, the person who I was before the trauma didnât deserve to die - it wasnât her fault. It wasnât my fault.
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