Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

Excerpted from Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips and Tools for Abuse Survivors.

How will your recovery and healing after narcissistic abuse look and feel to you? Everyone’s road to recovery is different. We all learn, process information, and cope differently. But how will real recovery look? The survivors and thrivers say it is wonderful, but if we have never experienced it, what do we aspire to?

I would like to provide a different level of encouragement and assurance to you with a look into the future of your recovery. After all, we are working so hard to get there. We increase the chances of success if we have a goal and can envision and assert that in our affirmations. So here is a look into your new life and the benefits you will reap and DESERVE from all your hard work. Here is your personal vision statement! Here is a look to not only how it will feel to recover but also to thrive.

You are no longer a victim or a survivor but you are now a victor and feel like one. You have progressed to becoming a thriver: someone who finds joy and satisfaction in many aspects of life. You are confident in your abilities and focus on pursuing goals that serve you and bring you pride and respect. You show on the outside how you feel on the inside. You feel deserving of success and a high quality life and are confident in your personal power.
You recognize yourself as the most important and interesting person in the world – a unique and precious part of life and that there will never be another you in the history of creation. You take the time and effort to nurture yourself and care for your own needs. By now, you have created a new family or support system for yourself that banishes the isolation and shame you felt in the past.

You can readily give of yourself to others and accept nurturance and consideration in return. This is the step in which your new self comes together into a personality that expresses your full essence in the world. It feels awesome and you embrace your new life and truth with gratitude and feeling loved and appreciated. Intimate relationships are now infused with trust, sexual sharing and mutual self-reliance. You freely communicate your needs, allow healthy mutual dependency and resolve conflicts, free of the concerns, pain, shame, fears, and self-doubt of the past.

Your new self-acceptance allows you to be less critical of yourself and others, while your new self-awareness helps you to use your compassion for yourself and others responsibly. You can readily identify hurtful situations and exploitive people BEFORE they cause harm to you. You can gauge situations accurately and share your feelings assertively, as appropriate, without losing control of them.

You give care responsibly and look into your self with confidence for validation of your worth. You balance self-care and self-compassion with giving care and compassion to others. You feel emotionally strong and wake invigorated every day because you know what makes you happy and know you deserve it. You set goals and take action to achieve them because you are confident you can achieve them and deserve the outcomes of your efforts.

By now, you are able to avoid exploitative job situations and can identify and pursue appropriate promotion opportunities. You are no longer mired in office politics or oppressed by bosses or authority figures because you no longer release your power or compassion to them or take on their brokenness. You can develop your career in a way that fosters your interests and talents and accept the financial and emotional rewards that follow. If you find yourself facing a dead end in your career, you know as truth that you can make the necessary changes to keep yourself vital and interested in your work. Instead of experiencing your work and life as a strain, you now feel challenged and satisfied by both.

If you have children, your new sense of self has brought you a new identity as a loving, caring parent. Your children are happy and healthy and have healed through you. You provide them an excellent role model of emotional health and reciprocal unconditional love. You accept your children as separate unique individuals and raise them to respect and honor themselves and others. You foster their self-esteem by giving them appropriate amounts of power and control and protect them from harm by setting clear and consistent limits. You are able to discipline them by using the positive elements of your relationship with them to hold them accountable when they fall short of the values you have set for your family.

This is the time to acknowledge that your family’s intergenerational chain of abuse has ended with you. You and your children are living testimony to this formidable accomplishment. You can continue to grow together, allowing your relationship to mature into a seasoned, adult-to-adult friendship that can provide joy and affiliation for the rest of your lives.

Finally, your new self begins to express itself in one area that may have always been difficult: play. You probably have neglected this area of expression, but the newly-confident you may now be ready to explore this exciting domain. Hobbies, sports, creative arts, traveling and music are just some of the many ways you can play as an adult. Playing keeps you in touch with your own inner child and affords you an opportunity to share another experience with your children. Playing revives us and recharges our emotional batteries. It improves our outlook on life and rewards us for our hard work. Don’t deprive yourself of this important element of life. Find new ways of playing that fill you up and charge your active participation in life.

Many survivors wonder how they will know that they have completed their recovery. That moment is very personal and may or may not be related to an external event in your life. It occurs at the moment when healing on the inside and change on the outside merge into a unified sense of self. It occurs when you become your authentic self, when your beliefs, thoughts, and actions align and you are confident that whatever life brings you, your authenticity and truth will carry you through it. You are clear on your self-worth, rights and authorities and use them independently and routinely to pursue and achieve your goals.

This moment may be a “mystical experience,” one in which you feel at one with the world. It may be the moment in which you realize you have attained an achievement that symbolizes success to you. It will be different things to different people, and you are the best judge of the moment for yourself. Whichever the case, it will be beautiful!

May your spiritual source guide and protect you in your search for truth and becoming the authentic and best version of yourself that you were put on this earth to be and creating magic with others whose truth aligns with yours.