What To Expect From Yourself After Going No Contact

Going no contact with a narcissist is an incredibly challenging thing to go through.  As if the agonizing over whether or not to do it wasn’t enough, there is also the likelihood of the narcissist refusing to accept your boundary, & making your life miserable.

Once the narcissist has gotten bored with trying to lure a victim back into the relationship, the victim is left to move on with their life.  Although in a way that life is so much simpler without the constant influx of narcissistic abuse, that doesn’t mean all the victim’s problems are over.

After severing ties with my parents,  I had more nightmares & flashbacks than usual for quite some time.  I believe this is because when there is a narcissist in your life, that person basically takes up all the room in the relationship.  You’re so focused on keeping them happy & avoiding their abuse that you have little time to think of anything else.  When the narcissist is out of your life, your brain finally has time to think of other things.  Since it constantly processes everything in life, it naturally wants to make sense of what happened with the narcissist.  It tries to make sense out of the nonsensical.  When it happened to me, I realized this was going to happen, like it or not, so I tried to make it work in my favor.  I coped with whatever came up as it came up.  It ended up being a time of quite a bit of healing for me.

After experiencing stalking & harassment, even after it stops, you still may experience a feeling like, “What’s next?”  When your day is filled with constant messages that you don’t want, it can really shake you up!  Plus, with many narcissists, they stop but start up again, which puts a person in a state of being on high alert.  Even if the narcissist hasn’t contacted you in months, that doesn’t mean he or she won’t start up again.  How can you relax knowing that is possible?  The best you can do is block all access the narcissist has to you, & save all evidence in case you need it to pursue legal charges against him or her.

Even if the narcissist in your life hasn’t stalked or harassed you, he or she may still send you Christmas or birthday cards as a way of attempting to keep their foot in the door with you.  These little reminders can be surprisingly upsetting to a victim.  They can make you start to wonder if you made the right decision by going no contact, make you feel guilty for not spending this holiday with the narcissist & bring up a plethora of conflicting, confusing feelings.  Unfortunately this is very normal.  When it happens, I urge you not to make any rash decisions.  Just because the narcissist sent it to you & expects you to read it doesn’t mean you have to read it.  Put it aside & pray.  If you then believe in your heart you need to read it, & have no doubts, then read it.  Otherwise, it is most likely best not to read it.  You can throw it out, return it to the sender or even save it if you feel you want to read it in the future.  Also, just because it is a special day, doesn’t mean the narcissist has changed.  The narcissist is simply using an opportunity to attempt to hoover you back into the relationship.

Even if the narcissist doesn’t try to contact you, doubts after no contact are very normal.  Ending a relationship is always hard.  Never forget what made you decide to go no contact.  Writing it out can help tremendously.

Remember, if you are considering going no contact with a narcissist or have recently done so, don’t expect no contact to mean your problems are over.  Yes, many of them will be, but there are some new ones that will come up.  You can get through them!  A bad day without a narcissist in your life is still better than any day with a narcissist in your life!