7 Ways to Rebuild Your Life After A Relationship With A Narcissist

Information abounds on the topic of how to recognize a narcissist or deal with them when you’ve discovered them. Such information is essential, but also increasingly commonplace.

Not as much information exists on how to rebuild your world after getting out of a situation with a narcissist. This is essential information to have.

This article wasn’t written to negate the aforementioned info, though; it was written to complete it. You can’t heal unless you have clear ideas on how to heal.

Recovery after narcissistic abuse is a critical time in your life when it’s more important than ever to understand up from down. You can’t be fully yourself if you haven’t processed the negative elements of your experience and identified positive future outcomes.

It’s common — and completely normal — to feel disoriented, angry, discouraged, bitter, and even numb. Don’t push these emotions away, but also recognize that they no longer narrate your story.

You are a survivor.

Survivors don’t see themselves as victims. They also don’t play out the past in the present. They enjoy the present and work towards the future.

Here are seven practical recommendations on how to rebuild your life after narcissistic abuse.

Take A Breather

After exiting your relationship with a narcissist, you’re likely feeling tempted to go back to “regular life.” This means returning to friendships in the same ways, living in the same patterns, thinking the same thoughts, and spending time the same ways as before.

While this is a normal instinct to have, I hate to break it to you — life isn’t going to go back to normal. (There’s both a positive and negative side of this, but we’ll get to that later.)

You need a breather first.

So, what does a breather look like when you’re recovering from a narcissist? It looks like the following:

• A literal deep breath. If you haven’t already, get somewhere by yourself. Take a deep breath in, and then out. Truly feel that breath. Allow it to permeate not just your lungs, but your mind and soul. Exhale the trauma, stress, and heartache. Inhale hope, rest, and joy.
• Taking time to be by yourself. Being alone may not feel like the most enjoyable thing after narcissistic abuse, but it’s necessary. You need time to acknowledge what happened and accept the impact of it. You also need enough space and quiet to hear your own thoughts. Enjoying space by yourself helps you get centered again — for your existing relationships and future ones.
• Doing something fun, relaxing, or both. One of the signs you’ve experienced narcissistic abuse is that you don’t enjoy activities to the same degree that you did previously. To counteract this you need to embrace fun activities again. It may feel weird at first — and that’s okay. If you normally like to draw or read, you might feel guilty engaging in it. If you do feel that way, pause for a moment and remind yourself that this is what people who have healthy love for themselves do. They feed, grow, and take time for themselves so they can give their best to others.

These moments give your mind and body the space to recover. What happened to you is largely internal, but that doesn’t mean you won’t experience physical symptoms.

Practice these as often as you need to. They’ll help you redevelop sustainable rhythms in your life ahead.

Speak With A Qualified Professional

The next step to take is speaking with a qualified professional. This is a mental health counselor who is what they would call trauma informed, or someone who has experience helping people recover from narcissistic abuse.

Research counseling offices and counselors until you find someone who you feel confident about. Remember that counselors are human, too — so don’t expect perfection. But don’t let that negate your standards, either.

When your first session is booked, bear in mind that the first session usually involves personal and family history. Though you’re eager to share everything that happened, remember that your counselor is new to you, and needs to get a baseline understanding of who you are.

When the second or third session’s time has come, share as much as you feel comfortable with. Tell your counselor what happened and how it impacted you.

Share the patterns you noticed — not just in your former abuser, but in yourself. It takes courage to identify how you can be smarter and better, not just the person who did you wrong.

Also, if you end up having rough experiences with your counselor — or simply don’t feel like it’s a mutual fit — it’s okay to look for someone different. Counseling is designed to point you in the right direction for healing — not become an unexpected toll for your mental and emotional life.

Journal Your Thoughts and Feelings

It sounds sappy, I know. Journaling your feelings? Isn’t that what kids do in grade school when they’re dealing with something negative in life? Yes, that can certainly be true.

It’s also true of adults. Emotions and inner experiences don’t disappear simply because you become an adult. They reveal new dimensions in your heart and mind, produce new experiences, and get mixed with other emotions — but they’re still there.

That’s why they’re so important to document. The process of writing about a negative or traumatic experience is proven to help your mind process it.

One of the most difficult parts of living life after abuse is keeping it in its correct mental place. In other words, allowing it to teach you but not rule over you.

Emotions based on negative experiences often produce (or are the results of) flashbacks, worrying about the future, feeling paralyzed, or noticing a decrease in your self-esteem. All of these are normal to experience, but you don’t want to let them dictate your healing process.

You aren’t going to get away from your emotions — especially because they’re a key part of your story. Did you feel hopeless? Write about it. Did you feel like no one understood what you’re going through? Put your thoughts down on paper about it.

Your emotions are one element of what validate your experiences. I’m not going to support the argument that if you felt something, that it must be true — because that alone is not enough to identify the truth.

But if your emotions are one factor across a landscape of verifiable events and experiences, then they must be included in how you live life beyond the narcissist. Writing them down makes them tangible and can help you add a beginning, middle, and ending (of sorts) to them.

Journaling your thoughts and feelings can be particularly tough if you’re a guy. I would know, because I am one.

All too often, men aren’t taught how to address their emotional life — if they acknowledge that emotions exist at all. That’s why it’s just as important for men to acknowledge their emotional experiences as anyone else.

No matter what emotions you’ve dealt with, get them all down on paper. Don’t feel pressure to write perfect paragraphs or make sense of every last thought.

Simply get it down and out in the open. It’s an unburdening process that can’t be accomplished through other means.

Document The Factual Timeline

While this tip may sound exactly like the previous one, there are real differences between the two. When you’re journaling feelings, you’re writing about your own inner experiences (some of which are subjective).

When you’re documenting events that occurred between two people, you’re capturing the facts of the matter. This is objective.

Earlier in life, I was married to someone with clear narcissistic tendencies. While some of my counselor friends advised me to be cautious about using the narcissist label from a DSM perspective (and they’re right), my ex displayed factually narcissistic behavior that’s simply not explainable as a result of any other personality pattern.

What’s more, increasing numbers of mental health professionals are acknowledging that 1) narcissism isn’t always easy to spot, 2) there are real-world differences between overt and covert narcissists, and 3) your average counselor can grow in their recognition of and approaches for narcissists of all kinds.

These details are important. What someone says about another may be subjective, but when you hold that person’s behavior up to a third party definition and it matches, that’s objective. That’s why focusing on facts is essential; people can’t ignore it (if they’re looking for the truth).

A close friend encouraged me to document all of the factual occurrences in my prior abusive marriage. It helped me not only remember my own past, but demonstrate to others the specific times her true nature began revealing itself.

Here are some tips on putting together your own factual timeline:

• Write down events that happened in the material world. For example, a first date, moving to a new place, or going to a movie. Anyone can make up just about anything, but you can’t make up events that demonstrably took place. They either occurred or they didn’t. If you can point to a conversation or shift in behavior that took place at an evidenced time or location, people will know they can trust you.
• Document events that other people were present for. This includes weddings, birthdays, conversations, counseling sessions, and anything else that someone else can verify. When you show family and friends where your abuser’s behavior became increasingly clear, they’ll start to see it too. It offers you peace of mind knowing that others can essentially read a “book” or “movie” about how things happened.
• Include proven abusive behaviors alongside the events. When you write down a conversation that happened with your abuser, include their specific abusive behavior. This gives language to the invisible and makes it easier for counselors to help you through what is happening. It also shows that you’ve done your research and are making statements based on fact.

Remove All Signs of Them

One of the most critical actions to take in moving on from the narc is removing all signs of them from your life. Social media photos, gifts, emails, and memorabilia all count.

Sadly, the longer you were together, the more stuff there likely is to get rid of. This takes time — so give yourself the time that’s necessary.

It’s easier if you do it in chunks. Don’t try to scour all of your social profiles for every last photo in one sitting. Trust me; I’ve tried.

At the same time, try to be consistent about it. If you get rid of a bunch of stuff one weekend and then forget about it for five months, it won’t be fun rediscovering how much is left. There isn’t a system that works perfectly for everyone, but getting rid of items at least once a week is feasible.

Create An Elevator Pitch for What Happened

Another action you must take is developing an elevator pitch for your story. After leaving an abusive situation, both individuals’ sides want to know what happened. Naturally, the narc you were with is going to smear you at all costs. It’s the only tactic they’re capable of that may convince some of the people in their sphere to support them.

Unfortunately, on your side, it’s a lot more complex. Since you’re someone who lives an upstanding life, you have to tell the truth graciously. This may sound simple on the surface but it’s surprisingly difficult.

There are three objectives when creating a survivor elevator pitch:

• Stick to the facts from your timeline. Most people aren’t going to be swayed by your opinion. That’s harsh but true. In order to be not just truthful, but convincing, you need to share facts. A fact is anything about your experience that can be independently verified or that a neutral third party was directly involved in. Third party examples include a licensed counselor documenting a diagnosis, email or text conversations that were saved, and written statements from pastors or community leaders. These are hard proofs that a narcissist can’t eliminate and other people can’t ascribe to opinion.
• Keep it four to five sentences or less. If you start sharing the nuances of your story, a couple bad things can happen. One, the person you’re talking with may think you’re the narcissist. You definitely don’t want that. Two, you’ll lose them in the details. People recall information most easily when it’s concise.
• Refer people to your third parties if they’re still in disbelief. Some people aren’t willing to believe things they don’t want to hear — even if you’re trustworthy. If that’s the case with someone who really should understand the situation, put them in touch with one or more of your third parties. Sadly, some people aren’t willing to change their minds until they speak with a third party. Such people tend to be hard to convince anyways, so don’t take their unbelief personally.

If you’re a kind, trustworthy person, crafting an elevator pitch is even harder. You likely want to explain each part of how hard you tried to do the right thing, how many chances you gave them, and so on.

While such detailed explanations aren’t always bad, they usually do more harm than good. This is because people have to comprehend how you took action based on boundaries, not just your personal preferences.

That’s also exactly why survivor elevator pitches are so effective. Let’s look at an example for a previously married couple. The first case is based heavily on the speaker’s opinion, making it difficult for the listener to discern opinion from boundaries:

“Throughout our marriage, my ex-wife became really annoying and I got tired of dealing with it. We went to counseling but nothing really came of it. We spent a lot of money and felt like it all went nowhere. I talked with a few people about our situation and it seemed like divorce was the only choice left.”

Do you see how it’s unclear who caused what, and also who is taking responsibility for what? Or even why divorce would be considered so casually? It’s a problematic explanation from start to finish.

The second case is concise, factual, and proves that the speaker took action based on healthy standards for any relationship:

“Over the course of our marriage, I discovered that my ex-wife’s behavior was emotionally abusive with noticeable narcissistic patterns. We had already tried couples’ counseling on several occasions. After I spoke with trusted professionals, individual counseling looked like the right next step. After I started and she refused, her behavior proved she didn’t want to work on the marriage or take responsibility for her actions. Because her abuse continued I needed to separate for my safety, and she later called for divorce.”

Notice how fact-based this version is? Nothing that’s essential to the story is left to the imagination. It also shows that you took appropriate actions based on the circumstances and that in the end, it was your narcissistic partner — not you — who wanted to end the marriage.

When sharing critical life information like this, perception is everything. Unless you stick to the facts and nothing more, people will fill in the gaps of what you’re telling them with their opinions.

Since it’s impossible to live every experience that is existentially possible as a human, most people apply lessons from their own life experiences to new information. In other words, people will take their own circumstances in relationships and apply it to your story — even if they’ve never experienced abuse before.

Narcissistic abuse is extremely challenging to explain to someone unless they’ve lived it or studied it thoroughly. So, it isn’t your fault people don’t understand — but you still need to share the story in a way they can mostly understand.

Start Dreaming Again

One of the hardest — and best — things to do when living life after the narcissist is to start pursuing dreams again.

In the beginning it may feel like you’re stepping into a world that’s bound to fail. After all, you put your heart and trust in the hands of someone who did nothing but wound and malign you.

Dreaming after that can feel like a farce.

Trust me, it’s not.

Taking steps towards your dreams isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s more meaningful than ever before.

Here are some tips on dreaming again after narcissistic abuse:

• Write your ideas down. There’s nothing like the clarity that comes from writing down your dreams. Write freely and don’t judge yourself; simply write down anything that comes to mind. Make shorthand notes or write in full sentences. Whatever helps your mind run wild is what you should do here.
• Freely spend time on them. Building your dreams is such an enriching process and they need time in order to flourish. Set aside a full afternoon or day just to do what you love. It’s incredible how powerfully joy can return to your personal world.

The Positive and Negative Side of Life After The Narcissist

Walking away from a narcissist isn’t an easy or simple thing. Even if you got out quickly and relatively unscathed, their attacks leave a mark.

Because of how you were treated, parts of life will never feel the same. This is both a bad and good thing.

It’s bad because narcissists are so insidious that they leave scars that often aren’t found until much later. It’s good because once you kick the narcissist to the curb, the life you were already living seems to overflow with joy, authenticity, and presence.

Discovering you were with a narcissist also (virtually) ensures you’ll never deal with one again. Here are some positive aspects of living life after the narcissist:

• Everything feels fuller — skies are brighter, music is deeper, laughter is richer.
• You appreciate your real friendships and relationships that much more.
• You feel like you need to defend or explain yourself — only to realize you don’t need to defend yourself from anyone.
• Those who know you are even more in your corner than they were before.
• You start thinking about the romantic relationship you always wanted, realizing that you’ll get there someday.

Here are some negative parts of life after a narcissist:

• You’ll be sharing your story with some people at specific times for the rest of your life.
• You’ll experience flashbacks — some of which will be easy to get past, others which won’t be.
• It may cause (temporary) misunderstandings, tension, or mistrust in the next relationship you’re in.
• Some people will judge you (or leave your life) without ever having taken the time to get to know what really happened.

Having read this entire article, you’re now thoroughly equipped to live life beyond narcissistic abuse. You’re brave simply for deciding to heal, and committing to every dimension of that process.

It won’t be easy. It will definitely take time. And it sure as heck will turn you into a new version of yourself.

But it’s always worth it.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional counselor or mental health expert. The contents of this article are based on my real life experiences, as well as hours of conversations with licensed counselors, pastors, reading, and academic research. While this information is intended to help those dealing with an emotionally abusive or narcissistic situation, it should not be used as a substitute for qualified conversations with licensed professionals and trustworthy pastors. Please reach out to the aforementioned type of individual and/or call the domestic abuse hotline at 1.800.799.SAFE (7233) if you’re facing immediate danger.