Asking Myself the Miracle Question Healed Me of Crippling Guilt
This priceless advice from psychologists helped me recover from narcissistic abuse.
For the thousandth time, my best friend tried to convince me-
‘It was not your fault.’
A part of me knew it wasn’t my fault. A part of me knew what I did was the best I could do in the given situation. A part of me knew that any kind of relationship with a narcissist was bound to come to an ugly end.
When you are an empath, and the narcissist convinces you that you are the villain in the story, you tend to believe it. But knowing that I was an empath and the other person a narcissist didn’t help me overcome feelings of guilt. I spiraled so down into the alley of self-loathing that it started affecting my daily life. I felt guilty and unworthy of happiness.
No matter how much I tried to remind myself that I deserved to treat myself better, it offered no help. I repeated the story on my head over and over again and rationalized my decision to let go of the toxic cycle. I gave myself countless advice on why I should move on. I started venting about what had happened to my loved ones every time I met them. I thought hearing them tell me that it wasn’t my fault would relieve my anxiety.
It didn’t.
My friends told me over and over again that I was burdened with guilt for no reason. They exclaimed how the relationship with the narcissist was always one-sided. They tried to show me how the narcissist had actually gaslit me and manipulated the entire story to escape blame.
Nothing helped. Day after day, I felt worse. I felt bad that the other person was now lonely and had no friends left. I felt guilty that few decisions on my part had now isolated the other person. My guilt started getting the better of me. I started vomiting every day. I was trapped in the past and no matter how much I tried to convince myself, I still felt terrible.
The Miracle Question and The Road To Healing
Though I was anxiety stricken and remorseful, I often envisioned what the other side would look like. I knew that I was trapped in a pit and believed that one day, I would get out of it.
A year had passed by and I was still on that pit. There was clearly no progress. I hadn’t stopped feeling blue and I hadn’t yet forgiven myself. I had postponed all my dreams for the day when I would be free of this baggage of guilt and self-loathing. And one fine morning, I stumbled across what psychologists call- ‘The Miracle Question’:
Suppose that while you were sleeping tonight and the entire house is quiet, a miracle happens and your problem is solved. So, when you wake up tomorrow morning, what will be different that will tell you a miracle has happened and the problem which bought you here is solved?
When psychologists ask the miracle question to their clients, they ask them to visualize what life would be like if the problem that currently was holding them back never existed.
If a miracle were to occur in my life, it would occur in the form of closure. The reason I wasn’t able to move on was I never really received closure from the narcissist. I wanted to hear that it was okay for me to move on from the person who would never at my cost say it to me.
I wanted to have a final parting conversation with that person. But the sad truth was- it was never going to happen!!!
So, I decided to go against the monster in my head that told me my life should remain stagnant forever. I chose to envision that I was already free of guilt. I chose to envision a life where I wasn’t burdened with negative self-talk. I chose to be free. Finally, I gifted myself that miracle of a guilt-free existence.
Life After The Miracle Experiment
Healing wasn’t just about forgetting that I felt guilty and unworthy. Healing also meant reconnecting to the person I was before the mess happened. It meant remembering all the beautiful possibilities inside me that shame and guilt had caused me to forget. I started letting the miracle unfold in every walk of my life and allowed my life to change for the better.
I started reconnecting with my old friends
I so much relied on the validations from the narcissist that I completely forgot that I had made some great friends in high-school. For a year, I had lost touch with everyone. I had gone underground.
But now, I started being the same jolly person I was before I met the narcissist. I started cracking frivolous jokes as if I carried no pain inside me. I started laughing like crazy. Reconnecting to my old friends helped me realize that I was worthy of friendship and there wasn’t any inherent flaw in me.
I started setting goals in life and dreaming big
The constant manipulation and gaslighting by the narcissist had almost made me believe that nothing good should ever happen to me. I waited for the narcissist to move on before I gave myself that opportunity. Honestly, before the miracle question, I wasn’t able to dream big. I thought I should punish myself by succumbing to a lousy life forever.
I was always an ambitious person and I was always known for getting things done. But I had become listless and lost touch with my purpose. After the miracle, I started realizing that downplaying myself to make other people feel better about themselves is sheer injustice to me. I started realigning my goals and this made me feel more fulfilled in life.
I started showing up and letting myself be seen
In order to get validation from the narcissist, I always seemed to hide from the spotlight. The people-pleaser in me feared rejection more than anything else. On top of that, I was in the constant company of someone who would shower me with criticism every time I dared to show up.
The miracle allowed me to write what I felt. It allowed me to express my opinions unapologetically. Gradually I started realizing that silencing myself to gain favor from negative people was always wrong. After years and years of validation seeking, I dared to be my authentic self and started using my voice for good. People started reaching out to me on the basis of what I had to say. My world grew larger than it ever was. I started living freely in a true sense and honestly, after I’ve recovered from abuse, every day feels like a blessing.
Ironically, once I started moving on, once I refused to dwell on my wounds forever, my perception of what happened started to change. I don’t have to remind myself any more than it wasn’t my fault. I am able to see clearly that it wasn’t. I am able to realize what my loved ones wanted me to. I no more feel guilty.
Guilt is an emotion. Sometimes, it exists even though we know that it shouldn’t. Especially when we’re talking about narcissistic abuse, victims face guilt they know they don’t deserve facing. It is because eliciting guilt in us was how the narcissist was controlling us all along.
When we are a victim of narcissistic abuse, we aren’t able to see that we are being abused. But after we get out of that cycle and allow ourselves to heal, we are able to recognize the malice in the narcissist. We become furious at ourselves for not recognizing these monsters earlier. We become angry at ourselves for taking blame unnecessarily.
Sometimes, the reason we remain stuck isn’t that we don't know the way out. Sometimes, it is because we are reluctant in letting go. It is because we believe that justice lies in punishing ourselves. We hold ourselves back even when we know the way forward. We remain in that rut until we compel ourselves to get out. We postpone life, we postpone happiness as a way of dealing with guilt.
No matter what the consequences of our actions were, if we made the right decision for the given circumstances, we should stop taking responsibility for other people’s reactions. I didn’t choose to hurt the narcissist intentionally. In fact, I had been emotionally abused and bullied for years until I recognized it. A narcissist is always going to choose martyrdom but I shouldn’t let that change my narrative. Realizing this gave me peace.
Opening to miracles meant letting go of the past. It meant forgiving myself. It also meant forgiving the other person. No matter what the other person had done, harboring hard feelings forever would disrupt my mental peace. If I wanted to be happy, I needed to accept that the other person was not going to change because they don’t know any alternate way of being. I had to accept that meeting them was an unfortunate and unchangeable reality that somehow made me a stronger version of myself.
The miracle question enabled me to accept what had happened yesterday without letting it ruin my present. It enabled me to tell my story without harboring feelings of vengeance. It enabled me to untangle myself from chains of past and offered me a priceless taste of freedom I’d been denying myself for so long. It delivered me from the rut of misery. In a way, it gave me a new life and imparted me freedom in the truest sense.
