If there’s one question that will linger in the back of your mind after you’ve been in an abusive relationship is, “How long will it take to heal from narcissistic abuse?” It’s one of those dangerous questions which carries a lot of bias (we’re all biased to some extent) and if you’re not treading carefully or consciously you may find yourself getting stuck in your own mind.

I would like to explore this question logically and with my own bias as well. There’s no right or wrong here, it’s just exploration that may help you have some insight on the cunning nature of the mind and even the mental health space at large.

There’s only one thing which cuts across all forms of personal development or healing and that things is your ego or your current worldview or how you view yourself or the self or your mind.

Disclaimer: It may be slightly provoking and needs an open-mind.

So, the first advice you will get after leaving a narcissistic relationship is to educate yourself about NPD, personality disorders, red flags and all those other fancy terminologies. Learning and studying is really amazing because you want to understand them, to understand why they do what they do or just educating yourself about some of their manipulative ways.

There’s no problem with this, it’s really amazing and even sheds some light on what you were going through but it soon transitions into a rabbit hole. You find yourself binging content across the internet, waiting for new weekly videos from your favorite experts and stacking more and more books.

You find yourself in this new world of psychology as you try to understand your narcissistic ex. All this will of course take your time because you’ll be focusing on the evilness of narcissist instead of focusing on the one who is in pain.

The more you learn the more you’re empowered on the logical space but you’ll also be getting more and more angry at yourself for falling for their deception. You’re also be replaying scenarios of some abusive ways which you didn’t know about before e.g. gaslighting. The more you replay, the more you feel bad about yourself or even pity yourself for what you went through.

The more you wallow in your own self-pity, the more you dissipate the energy you’ve have rechanneled to working on yourself. You keep digging and digging for answers and more questions about narcissist which of course consumes most of your time. So, one questions will lead to another question and the list goes on and on as days go by.

On the other hand, the narcissist will not even be bothered and will be moving on without their lives.

You innocently followed the ‘good’ advice of learning about NPD but they forgot to tell you that you need to look at the clock and learning has its own limitations. You may feel slightly better, of course, but the clock will always be running and you have a busy schedule.

Let’s do a small calculation: –

· There are over 3000 books with title narcissist and thousands of articles on the web about narcissism or trauma or inner child. So, if you decide to study, you will not really exhaust all of them in a lifetime. But your mind will feed you with this idea that you need another and another book.

Challenge

Be honest with yourself and look at the clock when you’re studying these things. Ask yourself questions like: –

· How long since you read your first article on narcissism or abuse? (5 years? 10 years? 1 years?) Then…

· What else do you want to study? (different terminologies? Or you’re simply stuck and you don’t know what to do?)

What you will find out is that you really know a lot about them and if you are deeply honest, there’s nothing new you can learn from a new weekly video from your expert.

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The thing is your mind or your ego has now latched onto studying and learning about mental abuse as a defensive mechanism or as an escape from looking at what’s lurking deep inside. If you keep going on this path, of course, your healing journey will take years and years and you may never really see the light.

You will always think that you need another book and another article and another video but time will still be flowing. Studying turns into an obsession and accumulation instead of it being a tool that helps us unlearn or understand ourselves better. Remember all this started with a simple innocent advice of “understand personality disorders.”

The mind will then choose to focus on studying and that’s the path of least resistance and it’s the longest path to getting to the root of the problem.

Studying is not healing!!

Another thing is as you study, your mind may deceive you that you’re beyond manipulation and that you’ve even healed. Then you jump into another relationship or the dating scene with your educated self only to find yourself in another toxic relationship. You then ask yourself a question like, “I thought I had healed?” You start experiencing the same emotional pain and you are now convinced that it takes forever to heal from abuse and you’re the evidence that.

Brief Google Search!!

The next step you will take if you’d not already done before is to do a brief Google Search asking the question in the lines of “how long does it take to heal from abuse?”

That’s the first answer from the first page of a Google Search, an interesting one. From 2 months to 2 years to 20 years to never recovering.

Now here’s is the tricky part, do you think your traumatized self will take the best-case scenario of 2 months or the worst-case scenario of never recovering?

I know you know the answer here, it will take the worst-case scenario because that’s where your unhealed wounds want you to be. Remember, you mind will always choose the most comfortable path which is the worst-case scenario, it’s not used to defying the odds. You’ve also been gaslighted and manipulated by the narcissist to always see the worst in you.

The moment it picks that worst-case scenario is the moment you start developing this attitude of, “Therapy does not work, so why bother?” or getting stuck with, “I will be with my problems forever.”

Key: — When you’re traumatized, you mind will always pick the worst-case for you.

So, instead of information empowering you, it’s now disempowering you.

Online Forums and Facebook Groups

Another aspect of why your healing may take a long time is when you’re part of an online forum like Reddit or Facebook or just any other social media platform. While those platforms are great for validating your experiences and even learning from other survivors, they are also filled with another form of toxicity.

You will read a lot of negativities and attacks on the narcissist or abusers. In fact, I once read a post in the lines of, “Empaths are from God and narcissists are from the devil.” Those groups were meant to be validating but they turn out to be us (survivors of abuse) vs them (narcissists). The moment your fragile mind latches onto that, you lose the plot of what healing is all about.

You will also read comments of how other survivors have been living with their traumas for 20 years or how they’ve tried all form of therapy but nothing is working for them.

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So, when you’re naïve and starting your healing journey, you will believe what other survivors are feeding you with (after all you’ve been through ‘similar’ experiences).

The thing is you will hardly get those who’ve completely healed from abuse hanging out in those Facebook groups for 24 hours a day.

This is simply because spending most of your time in social media is just another compulsive behavior that is mostly a symptom of unhealed trauma. I will write an article in future on toxicity of online forums and link it up with how we pull each other down (more of collective ego). They were validating your experiences but they now turn out to be “the blind helping the blind.”

So, all your beliefs will be now in the lines of “You will never heal from narcissistic abuse and you just have to stay with it.” That’s how the ego or your pain has ‘won’ as you now believe no healing modality will work for you or “time is the healer of all wounds” (so you choose to do nothing) or if you hear about something you’ve never heard of before your mind will be like, “it’s just another new age bullshit.”

Challenge: –

· If you feel that you can’t really stay off social media and you’re turning out to be a keyboard warrior. Minimize or even cut off social media and also stop giving advice.

· Then work on those painful emotions before going back there.

· If you’re new to online forums, stick to the positives (not the negatives) but don’t spend all your days there. If you can afford therapy, go for therapy.

Conclusion

So, if I am to answer this question of how long it takes to heal from abuse, I will just say don’t look at “How long it takes” but look at “What are you doing each day to help you heal?”

You can sit down and ask yourself those questions (I know your mind will not let you do so but at times we force ourselves without putting so much thought onto it): –

Part A

· Are you just focusing on demonizing the narcissists?

· Are you waiting for the next article or video from your experts?

· Are you spending too much time on social media or online forums without any clear objective?

· Are you looking for another relationship and you think there’s nothing to heal?

· Are you thinking that your knowledge is enough?

· Do you think that once you understand them, you will be okay?

Or

· Are you taking full responsibility of your current life?

· Are you spending more time with yourself, your self-care and learning about yourself?

· Are you focusing on how you can love yourself more?

· Are you working on your vulnerabilities and what made you susceptible?

If you’re sticking to the former, then I am sorry to say this but it will take forever for you to heal but if you’re working on the latter and pour all your energy to it then you’re healing. Healing is a unique journey but if your focus more on the narc, you’re taking the wrong direction or as I said in the past, you’re taking the wrong turn (pun intended) and it will keep you stuck way longer in the pits of ‘hell.’

One last thing is, if your some sort of therapy or help or counselling has ‘not worked’ for you, that doesn’t mean that other forms of therapy will not work for you. Just look at it as just part of the journey and don’t let your mind or your ego throw you some generalizations on things based on your experiences. You true nature is love and authenticity and that’s where you’ve got to work towards.

I’ve been in this space for close to 2 years now and I am learning and unlearning every day, I’ve seen survivors of abuse transform right in front of my eyes in a month to 3 months. They had the passion and commitment to really work on themselves and I had the right tools for the job. I’ve also seen other great therapists do this, so it doesn’t have to take years and years if you’re committed and have the right tools.

Also, just because an expert in this field has said you won’t heal or it will take forever, that doesn’t mean that you (the one who’s reading this) has to be part of the statistics. Challenge yourself and don’t be a statistic or don’t focus on the statistics of how other survivors of abuse have taken a longtime to heal but instead look at yourself. You are not a statistic and you have to know that healing even for someone like you is a possibility. Love and light!! 💙💙.

Note from the Author

If you’re ready and you’d like my help with healing, finding peace in life and breaking free from these toxic patterns, then you can book a FREE BREAKTHROUGH CALL with me HERE. Happy healing 💙💙. Feel free to share and comment! Use this information with caution, it comes from my own thoughts & bias, experiences and research😊.