5 Things To Help You Move On After Going No-Contact With A Narcissist

Once you have gone no-contact with the narcissist in your life, no matter how much you wanted to do it, it may still feel like you have ripped out a part of your own body and you can do nothing but wait for the bleeding to dry up.

What was even harder for me, however, was feeling like the narcissist had left a part of himself with me. I could see him everywhere I turned, especially in the places we had spent time together. I could feel him with me at all times, in my mind and body, as if he was telepathically reaching out to me. I would sometimes have the thought that the fact that we were both on the earth meant we would never be far enough away from each other for me to truly be free of him. Despite everything he had done to me, I feared that a part of me would always be in love with that undefined piece of him that he had left with me for the rest of my life.

I did not want this to happen, so I took conscious actions to force myself to start letting him go. These were things that I did after I went no-contact in order to help myself move on. They didn’t work overnight, but they did work for me pretty quickly.

If you’re struggling to let your narcissist ex go and to remove him or her from you’re sphere even if you’re in no-contact, here are five things you can try to purge him or her from your heart and move on.

1. Write a List of Everything The Narcissist Ever Did to You That Was Damaging.

Make it as detailed as possible. What insults did he or she hurl at you? How many times did he or she cheat? Write it all down. Nothing is too small. The invalidation, the smears, the lies, the gaslighting, the double standards, the verbal abuse, the physical abuse, the things they used against you, the silent treatments… it all goes on the list. And then, read the list every single day, or more than once if you start to get nostalgic. The caveat here for me was that sometimes I’d get so angry, I’d feel like telling him off. Do not do this. Instead, write all the letters you want to write telling him or her what a jerk he or she is and do not send the letters. Write, write, write until you can’t write anymore. And keep reading your lists and your letters until you can no longer deny all of those things you may have put out of your head or repressed.

2. Avoid People Who Are Victim-Blamers.

You’re trying to make a major life change by recovering and letting go of the narcissist so you can move on. The last thing you need right now is someone judging you for having been in the relationship, or even judging whatever emotions you may still be having even though you’re no longer in it. Victim-blamers make it harder for you to make the changes you need to make because they have an image of you as someone who somehow invited the abuse. The pre-conceived role they have defined for you in their minds colors their interactions with you. You don’t need that negativity and lack of support holding you back while you’re trying to break out of an old mindset and take the next steps to move forward.

3. Keep Reading About Narcissism and Narcissistic Abuse.

The influence the narcissist had over your thoughts will fade away the longer you’re in no-contact, but continuing to read about narcissistic abuse will validate your experience when you start to have doubts. It will remind you that nothing about what happened was normal or acceptable. You will see your own story reflected in other people’s stories over and over again. The similarities between what you read and what happened to you will start to drain what the narcissist left behind out of your sphere. It will start to sink in that we are all feeling the same thing, that there is nothing to miss because all of our stories are carbon copies of one another; we are missing ghosts.

4. Think Like a Narcissist.

Seek out the videos, books and articles created by narcissists themselves that explain their own behavior. When you start to see the world as they do and understand how very differently they think from you, it will begin to erode your own desire for the narcissist. You will be so disgusted by the narcissist’s manner of viewing people and relationships, that you will want no part of it. You can start applying what you read generically about how they think to your own situation, and start giving yourself pep talks, especially if you start to get nostalgic or miss the narcissist: Why do you want to hear from someone who seeks to use and control you like this? If it actually worked, he would be secretly laughing at you for falling for it. He doesn’t even miss you. Do you really want someone controlling you like this, and so blatantly, now that you know what’s going on? You will, maybe for the first time, be able in your own mind to start rejecting the narcissist (instead of the other way around) as you reject the narcissist’s way of thinking.

5. Take Yourself and Your Life Back.

Were there things you changed or hid about your life just to keep the peace and keep him or her from questioning you?  Change them back. Now. Do what you need to do to that is in your power to do to purge the narcissist from your sight or your psychic influence. If there are things in your home environment that remind you of him or her, get rid of them. Get new sheets. Redecorate.  Do it in colors you love, maybe ones that the narcissist would not have approved. Move furniture around. Stock up on food the narcissist didn’t like that you love. Watch some television shows or a movie that the narcissist never liked or wasn’t interested in. Do some things you had put on hold because he or she was dominating your life and you never had time for, or you shied away from because he or she mocked them. Take up a new interest that had always looked appealing. Invite a friend out that you haven’t talked to in a long time, especially if it’s someone the narcissist had isolated you from in some way. Anything you put on hold, left behind, put off, ignored, didn’t explore, felt bad about, or changed to appease the narcissist, drag it out and let it shine. These are the things that are going to take the space that the narcissist was squatting in. That space belongs to you and you can and should put in it whatever you want to without guilt, without fear.

These are five things I engaged in to keep my narcissist ex from having any more power over my life. I had made a deliberate decision that I did not want to be in love with someone who had only not really loved me as I had loved him, but who had lied to me about the nature of his love and had repeatedly and intentionally done things to hurt me.