Write it Out
My therapist and other knowledgeable people suggest writing as part of the recovery from emotional abuse. It’s definitely been important for my healing. With considerable time spent studying narcissistic abuse, I found that writing about it is nearly universal with victims, as though it is an instinctive healing behavior.
Putting order to my thoughts and memories is the primary use of writing out the story of my tumultuous and destructive relationship with Tina. It’s an aid to finding the objective truth after having my entire perception of reality warped by a constant campaign of gaslighting. Reasserting objective reality and injecting it into the world is re-empowering. My perception matters. My experience and truth matters.
Tina’s behavior could be so outrageous as to be nearly unbelievable. When I’d make certain observations, I’d stop and think along the lines of “It can’t be what it looks like. Nobody would do that!” But, Tina would and did do that. Writing out the details has been necessary to avoid glossing over just how bad things were. Setting the story down in an ordered manner helps lift the mental fog that Tina brought about with her constant deception.
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I’ve found that writing everything out has the added benefit of depersonalizing the story. It decouples or at least diminishes the emotions connected to the memories, like I step outside of myself.
My writings are also an effort to explain myself. If I seem different to some people, it’s because I am. I was severely broken. I am not fully mended. I’m not as emotionally or intellectually engaged as I used to be. My mind is still healing from a thousand tiny cuts.
Writing gives me an outlet and something to do when bad memories haunt me. I funnel them into something constructive. I sometimes feel the tug of unpleasant emotions while writing, but then, when I put it away, the emotion goes on the proverbial shelf with it. That’s relief.
Reading other people’s stories about their entanglements with cluster B disordered people helped me a lot and I hope my story can also help others. I hope to provide some insight and perspective to people who maybe aren’t understood, who may not understand what’s been happening to them, who need inspiration to start healing.
I hope telling my my story can help heal myself and others.
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I love your articles. Considered a book? I write as well but I haven’t posted or created a blog as often as I consider it. Your writing really feels like you’re on the other side of it, healed or healing.
Did you find in the beginning you had more anger or more emotional blocks? I still struggle with processing the fantasy of it all, or allowing myself to really feel the reality of it. I did much better with healing the first time around. Different impact the second time around.
I’ll keep reading. It’s inspiring me to reconsider blogging.
Thank you. I’m glad you’re finding my musings helpful and inspirational. Reading other people’s stories was a big help to me. I began writing as therapy, but hoped it could also help others.
I am in the process of writing a book, actually. It’ll be published in the next couple months.
Some of my earlier entries probably don’t look so “healed.” I had a lot of anger as I was coming to grips with the reality of what I’d been subjected to. Writing everything out factually really helped get out of the fog or as you say, “the fantasy of it all.” That’s a really hard passage to get through. I spent months nearly paralyzed.
There were setbacks, too. I would start feeling close to normal again and some new revelation would hit me – like how some of my friends were involved in my abuse! A narcissist can infiltrate and corrupt nearly every aspect of your life. Recovering from narcissistic abuse involves unraveling a lot of tangled memories and coming to new understanding. Again, writing was the way to map out reality.
I try to avoid guessing or mind-reading or speculation and stick to the facts of what happened and then compare my experiences to what I’ve learned about narcissistic abuse. Then, I can see how it all fits. The more it fits, the more it hits home that my narcissistic ex never cared about me at all – that I was targeted, manipulated and used for everything she could extract from me. I was nothing but supply to her. The bubble burst.
You really sound like you are writing from the position as victim. You also cannot define someone else’s behavior without their input.
Whatever gave you that idea? Could it be when I repeatedly referred to myself as a “victim of narcissistic abuse” and variations?
I’ve had quite enough “input” from you and Tina already.