Today, I’ll be answering questions from those who have lost interest in life due to being in a toxic relationship.

Actually, one of the common occurrences for people who have been through abuse, let’s say emotional, narcissistic, or any kind of abuse, is that they really feel they have lost interest in life. You’re not interested in working, you’re not interested in your friends, not interested in almost anything in life, even the things you used to enjoy before.

Maybe you had some great hobbies in the past. Let’s say you loved playing golf, going out with your friends, studying, reading, but after leaving that abusive relationship or being with that person for a long time, you realize that you are losing interest.

By losing interest, I’m talking about not enjoying the things you used to or finding pleasure in them. So how does this really happen?

The Nature of an Abusive Relationship

Let’s first examine the nature of an abusive relationship. In an abusive relationship, it’s more like a survival game. It’s a place where each day you want to survive, or each day your mind seeks to keep you safe from harm.

One of the things that normally happens is the mind will numb your feelings, blunt your emotions. It will do this because if you really feel all those emotions in the relationship, you will feel a lot of pain. When you are in an environment where you are being constantly mistreated, called names, one of the strategies the mind develops is to numb out your emotions, to make you feel emotionless or as if you’re not feeling anything. That’s something people normally do. People might say, “Nowadays, I don’t feel anything. They can call me all those names, but I don’t feel anything.”

So yes, when you don’t feel anything can keep you safe because you’re not feeling any pain. They might also be physically abusing you, calling you names, or emotionally abusing you, gaslighting you, blaming you, but because you’ve numbed out your emotions, it’s like you’ve disconnected from yourself.

When you disconnect from yourself, you lose the ability to feel anything — no joy, no sadness, nothing. You’re just there, like a zombie. Living life in that state becomes familiar, where numbness and being emotionally blunt are the norm.

https://biiedwin.gumroad.com/l/NavigatingtheStormofNarcissisticAbuse

When it becomes unknown to you, it means that you will not find interest in life. Because in life, sometimes, without feeling anything, without feeling joy or happiness, you’ll just be living there. Let’s say you might be going out with your friends, but you just sit there, not really enjoying it.

You might be working on a big project, but you don’t really find joy. You’re just not interested. You’re just doing it to pay your bills. But if you really sit down and try to examine if you enjoy it, you don’t even enjoy it anymore.

So you’re losing interest in life, not because there are no interesting things in life. Everything in life can be interesting if you are in the present moment, if you’re rooted in the present moment, not carrying a lot of things from the past. Anything can be enjoyable — washing your utensils, listening to a song — but when you’ve numbed your emotions, when the mind has gotten used to numbing all your emotions, you’ll find that you’re not interested in life again.

Because it doesn’t ignite you, it doesn’t ignite anything. There’s nothing to be ignited. It’s like the fire inside you has been put out. A very good metaphor to explain this is that when there’s no fire inside you, nothing from the outside can light up the fire inside you. You might try a lot of things, like traveling, joining groups, retreats, helping people, or volunteer work, but you still feel that you’re not interested in all those things.

People may suggest things like, “Hey, try dating, try dating apps, try going to church,” but even then, you’re not interested. This disinterest is normal because your mind sees it as a way to keep you safe, something you’ve grown accustomed to. The best starting point is to address and process the emotions and experiences you’ve kept hidden deep within you, buried in the subconscious.

By processing all these things, it’s like communicating to the mind that, “Hey, you are safe now and you can face negative emotions and you can also enjoy positive emotions.” There’s no such thing as just wanting to enjoy positive emotions. No, we just have to be ready to feel sad and feel happy.

And it’s okay. That’s part of life. But you can’t find interest in life by looking for things outside you. You find interest in life by working on the things inside you that are keeping you stuck in the past, processing those traumatic emotions or those wounds from the past. Those wounds which have not healed in you.

Once you really work on processing those wounds inside you, you’ll get to the point where you are okay with yourself. You are okay with who you are and you are okay with feeling your emotions. Once you are okay with feeling your emotions, then everything in life will be interesting. It can be washing that cup in your sink, having that cup of tea, just doing the simple things. You will find interest in them. So, find the joy inside you, and you will find that most things in life are actually joyful. You don’t need anything extra. You don’t need to travel the world. You don’t need to have a lot of money. No. Just work on your stuff, and you’ll find that the simple things in life will be very joyful.

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😊.