Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

The legitimate healers as well as influencers and authors, the real game changers on social media like Kristin Walker, Melanie Tonia Evans, Dr. Lynne Namka, Glynis Sherwood, Dr. Judith Orloff, Christine Louis de Canonville, Kim Saeed, etc. know that ours are not necessarily the most popular websites and Facebook pages. We understand this because most of us are empaths and truth seekers (and mostly women I may add) who share truth. We know well that truth is painful and what is painful and uncomfortable is not the most, well, “enticing” or “appealing.”

We know that abuse survivors have been conditioned in their lives to be comfortable in their pain and especially in early stages of healing, are frequently trauma bonded, actually pain addicted due to brain peptides (the same that cause all addictions).

Healing for abuse survivors brings a new and unfamiliar level of despair and discomfort we must rescue our own selves from. This can trigger immense fear since in the past, we were never encouraged and even punished for even taking care of our own basic human needs. Do the “not so legitimate” but popular healing pages and websites on narcissism know this? Of course they do! And in spite of it, they continue to inundate suffering abuse victims with information on the narcissists (frequently plagiarized or copied, cut and pasted) that does you continued harm by keeping you in pain and in a traumatized (yet familiar) state of peptide addiction, keeping you focused on your abuser and revenge rather than yourself, enticing you to remain with or return to him or her, and preventing your emotional healing. Read more here.

Folks, validating your pain is affirming and relieving and even ego boosting in the short term but not effective to recovery and sustaining long-term emotional health. I cannot speak for others, however, I can easily understand how abuse victims could establish Facebook pages to heal cathartically by sharing experiences and lessons learned with others who validate them, however there are many sites owned by those who claim to be “recovered narcissists” which is totally misleading since there is no cure for narcissism.

Others claim to be healed when they have been actively seeking revenge on their abusers for years. Narcissists posing as healers? What a novel idea, right? Well, it is not so novel. It may be pretty new to social media but narcissists infiltrated the medical and psychological professions a long long time ago like pedophiles infiltrated and corrupted the priesthood. Read more here. There are even professional therapists with PhD’s writing books filled with inaccurate and outdated information that are shockingly becoming best sellers.

“I strongly recommend in your healing journeys, to be discerning in your selection of truth-based information and to choose the company of truth-seekers like yourself whose healing goals align with yours.”

The point is this! Do we need to know about narcissism to heal? Absolutely, we do. But we must remember to be wise and selective of the quality and accuracy of the information and aware of our stage of healing and the stage of healing of the company we choose to keep. We must be mindful that we cannot heal at the same level of thinking that creates our pain. I strongly recommend in your healing journeys, to be discerning in your selection of truth-based information and to choose the company of truth-seekers like yourself whose healing goals align with yours. Most important to understand, as I write about very frequently and in fact is Lesson Number 2 in Chapter 2 in my book, Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips and Tools for Abuse Survivors that healing has nothing to do with your abusers. It is all about YOU. You CAN heal. They cannot.

Read more here on why learning all about narcissists is not the answer.

Let’s explore this.

 

I can tell you all you need to know about narcissists and narcissism to facilitate your healing in about 15 minutes. For example, we need to understand that they are aggressive but powerless and weak, they are not capable of loving anyone and prey on the vulnerable even their own children and that they manipulate us because we are the best of the best, they want all the benefits we can provide them without any of the work and to provide an illusion of normalcy to the world, there is no cure for narcissism, after us, they quickly move on to their next target, and we are vulnerable because we carry unhealed childhood wounds and trauma. So that’s it. That is, in a nutshell, pretty much all you need to know about narcissists. They are THAT boring and predictable.

 

So healing truths (e.g. tools, tips, strategies, inspiration, lessons) address the root causes to abuse along with the obstacles we deal with that can prevent us from healing, even though they are precisely what narcissistic abuse survivors or for that matter all abuse survivors need to recover, are nonexistent at many and I will go out on a limb and say most of the dozens of Facebook pages with narcissist, narcissism, or something close in their titles that I have frequented over the past several years. In fact, this is why I created the Yourlifelifter Facebook page, website, and Blog with the specific and unique mission “to provide truth-based healing information to narcissistic abuse survivors and to those seeking emotional freedom” and more so, why I wrote Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips, and Tools for Abuse Survivors.

Unfortunately, the “newbies” as Allyson, one of the Yourlifelifter community members affectionately refers to folks in early healing stages, would not have a clue about this. That is unless folks in latter stages of healing tell them or they just so happen to fall upon a Facebook page like Yourlifelifter, Melanie Tonia’s, Kim’s etc. So what happens to the “newbies” who are emotionally fatigued, traumatized, depressed, and desperately looking for answers? (I know. I was one of them.) Well, their story goes something like this.

They do a word search on abuse and this word narcissist pops up that sounds familiar cuz they heard it on Dr. Phil or saw it in a magazine at the nail salon and then word search on that and then it takes them to the Facebook and Web pages that have gazillion followers and they think they found gold. Now, I am not claiming that these sites have no value. Of course they do, however, I am cautioning you that their value to your legitimate and timely healing (if that is your goal and I hope it is) is extremely limited and actually can do you harm. I, at one time, followed these sites, myself, and still intermittently scan posts at some of them, and there is one main thing that stood out then and still stands out like a sore thumb to me and many other healers have confirmed.

They do not focus on solutions. 

What they actually do is draw the focus to the narcissists and post all about the depravity of the consequences of having a relationship with someone with the disorder. In response, the community members post all about the narcissistic drama in their lives including this is what he or she or their proxies said and did and/or how they want to pay them back or how fearful they are of them. With reach to people to 45 countries, I hear and compassionately witness the horror stories daily and I am not proud to say I can pull from a portfolio of my own. Yes. Is it important to grieve our losses and tell our stories. They are part of the fabric of who we are. This is absolutely critical to healing. But focusing too much on them will prevent you from healing by keeping you pain addicted and trauma bonded and stuck in toxic shame, grief, self-blame, and inaction. This is indisputable!

The legitimate healers, who, by the way, actively work together towards a common goal and who support one another, know this very well and know that the souls of abuse survivors are starving for truth. In fact, when you find a Page that shares healing “truth,” not only will you heal, you will heal very very quickly. You will soak it up like a sponge and it will empower you to seek more and more truth. We also know that we all benefit from the positivity of other’s healing energy not their pain and life’s drama. Legitimate Facebook pages and websites also do not post information that has not been well researched and validated by the professional abuse recovery community, our Facebook community members and our own selves. Yes. We are survivors ourselves and, speaking for my own self, of decades of abuse. In fact, narcissistic abuse recovery experts and professional abuse and addiction therapists endorse and follow each other’s Pages. We do not (like we see in the illegitimate pages developed by those claiming to be healers but in reality are not) cut and paste others people’s work, ideas and plagiarize other people’s work and put our names on it.

Here is an important yet not so obvious point related to the characters of the “legit” healers. We can comfortably claim the title of “healer” not only because we survived the abuse but also because we are qualified to and earned those titles. We, like all professionals, have earned the respect and credibility through establishing and maintaining our competence through our hard work, education, credentials, and peer reviewed publications. We turned our suffering into wisdom. We are proficient and competent at what we do and work with “peers” who recognize, challenge, enhance, and validate each other’s competence. We also uniquely possess a quality that makes what we do all so much more valuable than the numbers of our Facebook followers…. Integrity of Character.

We have maintained through our suffering and strengthened through our healing the integrity of character, courage, wisdom, and personal truth that sustained us through our suffering ….the divine ability chiseled in our being to simply do the right thing and compassionately have others’ and, for me personally, humanity’s rather than solely our own best interests at heart.

Remember, folks. This is not a hobby. This is our job, our passion, our life’s work. We invest our hearts, souls, time and money to do this. This is who we are. This is who I am. Members in our community are like our own, my own children, my own family, and we take our leadership and healing roles and our competence very seriously. Like any effective and loving parent, we can readily put our egos aside and use our wisdom, knowledge, empathy, compassion and unselfish spirits to inspire and do what is best for our “families” rather than exploit them for our personal gain. We have broken the cycle of abuse in our lives and are helping you to do the same and are grateful to be able to do so.

And so to all of you….. it is humbling and an honor and privilege to walk the earth with you at this time in your growth and evolution.

Thank you for allowing me to do so.