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Are there stages that a victim goes through after narcissistic abuse, like the stages of grief? I've read some who have moved on and others who haven't. What can I expect and when will it get better? Please don't say, "move on". That doesn't help.Hello friends. This question has been sitting in my queue for a long time now. I thought I would try to answer it now. This is really long, I hope you make it to the end and then reward yourself, buy an ice cream or something.I have so much I would like to write on the topic of recovery and to me, it is kind of like taking math classes. If you attempt algebra before properly learning your arithmetic, not only will you fail but you will frustrate the fuck out of yourself and spend considerably longer to get across the finish line. I have been at this a few years now, and only recently discovered Quora, unfortunately. The worse of the war was over by that point. I eventually was forced into the “fuck it, I’ll do it on my own” road, and I seemed to defy the law of averages by making every single mistake possible causing me so much grief and time. I have many things I wish I would have just been told upfront. I will try to touch on a few of those here, with an emphasis on early-stage recovery.With such a diverse audience it is impossible for me to know what everyone knows and where everyone is at, and yet it is hard to explain everything in few enough words so this is going to be a real light treatment on things I could probably write a book on.This question asks about the stages, and indeed there are some. The real ask though is how do I get rid of this God awful uncertainty? Is there an end to this madness? I can (and have) journaled 100’s of pages on just uncertainty. The hope is that these stages will be like a map out of this freakshow from hell. I am afraid it gives you an idea in some broad strokes but your path through those stages will be unique for you. There are tons of inputs and influencers in your situation. Each of those factors into all the little knobs and levers and creates a personalized slant to your hell making it your very own. Thankfully there are broad strokes, and commonalities as well. That is what you should focus the most on. I am going to offer a few tips and make a few callouts, then I will go over the stages and probably still be well over an acceptable length for an answer.Without further ado, let's dip our toe in the multifaceted, layered and complex ball of mud that is Cluster B abuse as well as the bat shit crazy shit show that is the recovery from it.Here we go, in no particular order.Know Thyself - Take regular brutally honest self-assessmentsRegardless of how you were before this fiasco by the end, you are raw and vulnerable. And those words really do not properly convey what I mean. What I mean is that everything in your life even your identity has been eroded, chipped away, destroyed, and warped. You are as defenseless as a baby for the most part.I often say that you were physically, emotionally, psychologically, financially, socially, spiritually, professionally, relationally, temporally, and perhaps legally raped. Take a second to think of what each of those cost you. Even intangible things like lost income potential or opportunity, all the happy moments with friends and family you were not allowed to have, the years or decades of your life that were stolen, smear campaigns turned everyone against you, no justice, in fact, worse you are are the bad guy, your fellow Christian church members turned their back on you, you find yourself alone, you suffer from CPTSD and physical ailments, you have no quality of life or ability to feel happiness or joy (anhedonia), time and money on therapy and medications. I could fill up this page with just this stuff. Did it cost you everything? How is your self-esteem? Your sense of identity and worth? But don’t worry the good part is… There is no good part. No silver lining. The whole thing was a lie. You have the death of your soul mate to grieve, you must grieve accept the truth of the evil depraved soul gobbling demon that you still at this point can’t seem to stop ‘loving’ and obsessing over. The shame. The betrayal. I don’t believe in silver linings. As a matter of fact that “well the silver lining is..” is an invalidating statement. Did you know that? Accept this tragedy for what it is and make the very best of the rest of your life, but personally I don’t believe in trying to attribute anything good to that. It does not deserve to be given any credit for anything, doing that is just your defense mechanisms trying to shield yourself from the blow of truth and reality. When people read of this kind of abuse they shouldn’t walk away thinking…”Well, look at all this fine stuff that abuse led to”. What led to the fine things is your work and effort on yourself that you could have done regardless. The fact you were destroyed and it became a necessity does not add pros to the abuse column.You can pick any single thing from that very small abridged list of things I just listed and it would be enough to bring any healthy secure adult to their knees with the pain and trauma. Take a minute to honestly assess the state of things and understand just how raw, vulnerable and traumatized you really are.Even the slightest of unintentional pokes from a good friend or family member burns like a dagger through your heart. This point plays into what I will talk about later, but in this state, you can sustain massive amounts of real trauma by seemingly innocuous things that you will likely minimize or dismiss (but still sustain trauma from). The truth is victims from my personal experience and reflection as well as the research I have read likely incur as much trauma from everyone else (not the abuser) as they did from the abuser themselves. It really does not take much in a defenseless and vulnerable state like that. Needless to say not being aware that this is happening to you and that you are sustaining significant trauma from everyone around you not only exasperates things but causes a metric shit-ton of unnecessary suffering and extends your recovery time by a lot. You cannot spend your time applying ointment to all your burns while you are still on fire.The problem is that pain is all you know at this point. These little transgressions that people are constantly making when they invalidate you, tell you to get over it or move on, deny your truth, defend the abuser, look at you like a monster and you are the unstable one, expect you to own up for your part of the abuse and in general not understand or have a fucking clue burns, but its actually causing way more damage than you realize. This is something I really wish I would have known and taken countermeasures to right away. There is no telling how much that could have changed all of this.For those that have been walking this road awhile consider this question for a minute. How would it have changed things if this abuse were understood? If it were treated similarly to similar types of trauma such as torture victims, kidnapping victims and POW’s? Imagine you walked out of this relationship and world rallied around you, they threw that fucker in jail, your friends and family brought you dinners, check in on you and nursed you back to health, a medical professional took you under their wing and explained what to expect and validated your truth and your experience. They walked you through all the necessary treatments to address the trauma. Imagine if you would have experienced that love, compassion, validation, and understanding from the world at large. Would that have changed your recovery? Would you be more likely to put trust and love in others? Would you have more faith in humanity? I think you get the idea. The damage that the world at large even our own friends and family causes us is huge, and not properly understood even by most victims. The research on it is disturbing, to say the least.When we get into the stages you will see why the path through is not a predictable or sane progression at all. It is because you have so much to grieve and for each new piece of truth you accept as you unwind those defense mechanisms mind-bending your reality to protect yourself you will have to accept the pain of that truth and grieve it sending you backstages potentially. You will repeat stages and you will likely be in multiple stages at once. Eventually, you will unwind and take apart those defense mechanisms like cognitive dissonance, and magical thinking and accept and grieve all those truths. That is when that part ends. Of course is still the matter of the trauma, brain, CPTSD, trauma bonds, boundary work, identity work, self-esteem, self-validation, self-love etc. There is still a matter of building your defenses so you can feel safe and trust again. There is plenty more. Like I said it is complicated. It is a shit show.Recovery is hard workYes, the old adage that time heals all things is true, but it alone cannot heal this and if you don’t work it you are going to be waiting a long damn time for a much lower quality of life than you deserve. Just like abuse is a factor of frequency and intensity so is recovery. You get out of it what you put into it. Reading this long answer is effort. Following my links for more information is effort. Trying to implement the suggestions before discounting them is effort. Consistently applying the strategies is effort. In the end, though you determine how bad you want it. If you want it bad enough you will do the work.I have gone over some simple types of things that make a huge impact such as exercise and diet etc. That is incredibly hard when just getting out of bed is almost too much. Many myself included don’t take it seriously just how much of a game-changer those things are and why. My lack of discipline with those types of things is one of the biggest factors I still have work to do on some of the things that I do. I go over it more in this answer:William Gorder's answer to How can we heal the brain damage from malevolent narcissistic abuse after no contact at all?Get your ass out of the fire - everyone that is not a victim or the abuserLike I just said your biggest threat now is not even the abuser. I think it is everyone else. Of course, it is a bit of the chicken and egg problem. The first step is to get out of the fire but what you need to properly do that takes time and effort to develop and the fire is pretty much all around you. This becomes less and less of a danger the further along you get in rebuilding yourself.The best thing you can do I personally believe is do not include anyone in your recovery. Don’t talk about it period and don’t let other people talk about it or tell you what to do either. If they won’t respect your request to mind their own fucking business then cut them loose until you are healed sufficiently. If you are lucky enough to have a great friend or family member that does not make things worse then, by all means, use them. I have written before on what to expect from a friend or family member that wants to help. That answer is a great checklist to make sure they are not working against your recovery. I link it in the next section.Ignorant Medical ProfessionalsThese jackasses have one tool in their toolbox, and that is a hammer. If one of these ignorant muppet farts insists on treating you like a nail and incessantly hammering on you like a caveman with their crude stone tools, then I advise you to politely tell them to fuck off. They are doing way more damage than good and they have no business being a part of your recovery. Once again they should validate your truth, take the extent of the trauma seriously, not blame you, pressure you, tell you to get over it, make you feel like there is something wrong with you or that it is partly your fault. In general the kind of stuff I wrote about in this answer:William Gorder's answer to What are red flags to watch out for regarding pseudo life coaches who claim to help victims of narcissistic abuse?Use specialized therapists familiar with narcissistic abuse or those able to identify and treat traumaLike it says these people should hopefully know their ass from a hole in the ground. If you can swing it and they are available to make use of then definitely do it. It is a basic human right and needs to be validated, acknowledged and feel like you exist and are important. It is tough going on your own but still preferable to getting “helped” with invalidation and further shame and trauma.A couple of tools for your belt. Thought Reframing and Repetitive Self TalkTwo of the defense mechanisms in play are cognitive dissonance and magical thinking. Both of these helped you to endure the trauma that you did, and now they are in your way to recovery. Two effective tools to handle this are:Thought Reframing - this is a technique used in therapy oftentimes to help create a different way of looking at a situation, person, or relationship by changing its meaning.Cognitive dissonance and magical thinking are mind-bending lies we convince ourselves of to be able to endure the abuse we couldn’t escape and restore some semblance of equilibrium to our reality and lives.I provided a description of some of the defense mechanisms in this answer:William Gorder's answer to How is it I was such a strong person with self love and boundaries prior to meeting the narcissist and then became a shell of a person? Why wasn’t I able to execute these strengths with him?As you unwind the lies the truth is painful to accept. It is easy to regress back to partial truths or other realities as you work towards real acceptance. This is especially not good with your abuser whom you are addicted to and already feeling intense ‘love’ for and obsessing about. Giving up that soul mate in exchange for a shit stain on the underpants of humanity is straight red pill shit. That is real death, real grief and a real pain to accept. It also means all of that stuff in that first list of what you lost becomes a reality.You may have noticed I don’t often say ‘narcissist’. I use some colorful metaphors instead. While it serves an entertainment factor for sure, that isn’t the main reason I do it. I do it as a form of thought reframing for the reader. The term narcissist is something those new to recovery are just beginning to research. Even cognitively grasping all that it truly means takes time and work but accepting it even more so. The concept is a fluid one and in a state of flux from one day to the other. Today they are this and tomorrow they can be maybe cured… That is why instead I say a shit stain in humanities underpants. That reframes the way you look at that person by changing its meaning to reflect reality in a way that cant so easily be distorted by your defense mechanisms. It is pretty difficult to make a shit stain into anything other than that.Make use of this tool as much as you can to help you keep your thinking straight and make faster progress. It will also greatly reduce the chances of relapsing and breaking no contact and hasten your journey through that nasty withdrawal(‘intense love and obsession) from that demon fairy in your life.The next tool is a repetitive self-talk. In the beginning, victims are unsure of everything. All that gaslighting takes its toll. Just as lies were repeated over and over until you accepted them so you must tell yourself the truth over and over until it is accepted. This is useful for those euphoric recall moments when you suddenly feel the need to reminisce the ‘good times’. They were not good times, you don’t remember clearly and none of it was real, you were being lied to and baited, hooked and abused. Repeat that to yourself until it starts to sink in and stick. Do it for as long as it takes, but don’t run with any of those kinds of memories. Stop them in their tracks. That kind of thing keeps your dopamine system dysregulated as well as I went over in a previous link and will prolong that obsession, and anhedonia that is so painful.Do you really want an unsightly brown streak in your underpants? Use that self-talk and ask yourself that when these moments arise. These dingleberries use covert tactics to dodge getting flushed down the shitcan where human excrement and waste belongs. Think of what keeping a huge pile of dung in your life has already cost you? Repeat it over and over to yourself. Trust me this stuff does work.As a child, we learned that while it seems like a good idea at the time and maybe was oddly satisfying picking your nose was pretty damn embarrassing when people started to notice and nobody wants to spend years or decades of their life trying to flick that nasty snotball out of their lives. They are parasites. They stick to you. Leeches.There you go, it is like relationship hygiene for the modern era.Don’t worry about divining intentions or agendas. Focus on action and behaviorI spent a lot of time on defenses. This is a good start to getting ready for that but also it is important to apply to anybody in your life including the douchebag you are researching. It is natural to want to divine why they are doing this or that, and maybe this is what they really want. Eventually, that is possible as they are pretty predictable in their depraved ways but initially, that is a trap. Whatever you come up with will fit what you want to be true more than reality. The single best predictor of future behavior has and always will be past behavior. Do you know what you can expect? Evil and abuse, that is what. When you have to deal with people pretty words are all well and good but how do they invite you to feel? Shame? Defensive? Pressured? Guilty? Start becoming cognizant of what people invite you to feel. That it is the first step for proper defenses. Once you have them in place you will be quite appalled at how often and how badly you get spanked without knowing it even happened.Beware comparing to others and terminal uniquenessI want to point out that as I reference my experiences or as you read others’ experiences they may not match with yours perfectly. It is important to realize that you should not focus on the differences when looking at the recovery aspect. Especially if the laws of averages fucked you and you kept getting stuck holding the old maid. You may have gotten an especially long recovery time or more extreme CPTSD symptoms or more factors that strengthen the trauma bond, permanent physical damage, or a stranger path through the stages we are going to cover, etc. I got a few of the more uncommon nasty ones myself.Focusing on how you got it worse is stinking thinking and leads to what recovering drug addicts call terminal uniqueness this leads to unhealthy self-pity and gets in the way of recovery. Try not to compare yourselves in that way to others and focus on the broad strokes and commonalities. Similarly, if you see someone that had it “way worse” don’t let it invalidate your suffering or experience. Everyone is severely traumatized and that is that. Focus on the commonalities and broad strokes.There are also different types of these demons and they have their own peculiarities. Those differences matter little here but it will when I start covering proper defense mechanisms, detection and resistance tactics and strategies and rules for engagement with them.Another fire… The narcissistTo keep this from turning into an encyclopedia I am going to take the happy path here so I don’t have to address safety plans, stalking, rules of engagement, co-parenting, legal, etc.Let’s for the sake of this make the assumption that the rabid wolf discarded you and went prancing off with some new naive and innocent lamb to brutally slaughter. That leaves you with exactly one super important thing to do no matter what the cost.No Contact. That means to block them on all the things. Text, phone, email, social media. Don’t go to places they frequent if shared connections become a way that you find yourself hearing about them or being affected in any way cut them out. No looking at old pictures. If you find yourself ruminating on some old thought as I mentioned before do not allow yourself to run with it. Stop immediately and use your tools. Reframe and self-talk until it goes away. Rinse and repeat.If you relapse and go back for another beating then just give up on recovery until you have enjoyed enough abuse to take it seriously again. Like I said you cannot treat the burns while you are still on fire.*There is a recovery path for those that choose to stay in the relationship. It's not an easy one. What I've covered still applies but the plan changes quite a bit later if you choose this very difficult route.Close your circlesWherever possible cut out any shared touchpoints (mutual connections). I ended up eventually following the rule I don’t care who they are or how long I’ve known them. If they talk to her, then they won’t be talking to me. Best decision I ever made.Beware the disassociation defense mechanism.This will probably be much less of a problem if you follow the advice I didn’t and do not include anybody in your recovery or allow them to talk about it with you. That significantly reduces your chances of sustaining their ignorant invalidation and victim-blaming trauma.However as you can imagine in that very vulnerable state when you start incurring all that trauma from the world including your loved ones, your body does not know the difference from that and the ass wipes abuse. It just knows here is some more CPTSD. Naturally, the defense mechanisms you already had in place are subconsciously tuned up to handle this new trauma as well. Disassociation is another common defense mechanism. If you remember feeling numb and detached. Husked out. Unable to care or empathize or give a shit in general. A loss of knowing who you even are. That is dissociation. For me, I put that in place and it certainly protected me from the trauma. I could have given a fuck what people thought anymore. I was self-reliant to the extreme. I didn’t realize what had happened though. I eventually got myself back to having boundaries excellent defense mechanisms and all the jazz, but I still suffer anhedonia, I still felt numb and lonely, I still just didn’t care. I was hard. That was because I had turned inward and withdrawn into my shell disconnecting from humanity and those emotions like empathy and compassion that connect me to other people. Those were being exploited so when you disassociate you disconnect them to remove the threat and the trauma. This is what Quora did and does for me. I was no longer in danger but I didn’t trust or love not because I felt vulnerable or unsafe but because I didn’t even want it. I didn’t care. Now I have reconnected and am exercising my compassion again. That oxytocin production needs that stuff to reregulate and that hormone is responsible for all the good stuff like love, trust, bonding, and orgasms. You can never get that back where it should be when you are disassociating. This can help in a pinch but be cognizant of it. I wasn’t.A guiding truth… Nobody thinks about you as much as you doAfter a smear campaign, there is a lot of trauma in just handling the pain shame and embarrassment of what others think of you or what you think they think of you. The truth to keep in mind is that nobody thinks about you as much as you do. Repeating this with repetitive self-talk like a mantra is very useful.This is why the way you handle smear campaigns is to not get involved at all. Triangulation and backstabbing require your participation to remain interesting to people. If you don’t play well guess what? They have their own shit that is far more important to them than you to think about. Furthermore, they have their own skeletons in the closet. Good old Barry is more worried if he is sleeping on the couch again tonight since he got caught watching porn than he is about some shit that the backstabbing weasel said about you months ago. If you don’t bring it up then other people quickly forget. Reminding yourself of this truth is extremely helpful in reintegrating with society and getting rid of that unhealthy shame.Another tool for your belt. Quora victims and survivorsLike I said I just recently got involved. People who understand is so huge that it cannot be overstated. Use that for everything it is worth, especially since you are cutting out those in your life who cannot possibly understand and are just introducing more trauma.Do be aware not everyone including fellow victims is trustworthy. Use the rules we went over and make sure their actions match their words and that they do not invite you to feel any of those icky feelings. If they do that is a sign you are being covertly manipulate and abused and you should avoid that person.Own your truth! Embrace your emotions! A word on anger…You were there, nobody else was. It doesn’t matter if you are standing in a room with 100 other people and some of them all kinds of fancy 3 letter acronyms after their name. You know what you saw, feel/felt, and experienced. That is the truth and no number of ignorant know it alls is going to make it untrue. Do not alter your truth to fit in or appease a bunch of assholes. They mean nothing to you or your recovery.You were taught you meant nothing. Your feelings meant nothing more than that your feelings were not welcome at all. You were conditioned to suppress them. You were backed into an emotional corner with their abuse and when you lost your temper you were told how unstable you are and that you need help or medication. You learned that your anger was unhealthy and shameful. You walked on eggshells and the best way to survive is not to piss them off as impossible of a task as that is. Once again stuff it, stuff it and stuff it.Now it is time to embrace all that. You won’t feel a little anger. You will be consumed with burning rage. Remember that list of what this cost you? That is healthy anger my friend and all that unhealthy shame and guilt you have is like parchment paper that feeds the burning rage. It is a natural way to clean the house. It also makes a pretty good defense early on. It, of course, is not healthy if it still consumes you years later but part of this is knowing the difference between healthy and unhealthy anger, shame and guilt. I will go over in a future answer.Anger is not only expected and healthy it is necessary to recovery. One of the last steps of CPTSD recovery addresses letting things go. The acceptance stage which is the last stage of grief includes letting things go as part of the criteria. By the time you get there, you will most likely find much of that has been done already. Point is embrace don’t suppress.A Pseudo stage - Am I a narcissist?A very common question since they gaslighted you into believing their BS narrative and they scapegoated and projected all their icky shit onto you. The answer is its a perfectly normal to question to be asking and the answer is definitely no. Don’t worry it will become clear.A Pseudo stage - Obsessive ResearchYup, you have been living a lie and some monster out of the twilight zone that makes no sense to any logic or reason on this earth did it to you. You have been living in total uncertainty and been denied closure. At the same time, you find yourself due to the addictive trauma bond obsessing about this hobgoblin and you feel driven to find an answer to all of the madness, now that you have discovered there is an explanation. It also will help you acquire the truth/knowledge to unwind all that cognitive dissonance and magical thinking we talked about. Research away!How much of this is my fault? CulpabilitySimple. None. There is no mutual abuse in a relationship like this. Even the domestic violence hotline agrees with that. You are most likely very uncomfortable with not taking any of the blame. You don’t even know what to think about not having any culpability for being abused. For now just take my word for it, when it comes to being abused by this freak or trapped in a relationship by trauma bonds or that you were baited and deceived in the first place you have no blame. When you had knee jerk reactions to the covert abuse that was there but you hadn't yet learned to see that was you being manipulated (being made to do something you otherwise wouldn’t that was not in your self-interest but in the manipulator's self-interest). I could go on but short story long none of that was your fault.How long will it take? What to expect?Everyone is unique for an almost infinite number of reasons that I am not going to even start listing. On average most can mostly recover in 12–24 months, but be patient and kind with yourself and do not put time limits on it. It really does depend on many things.The stages of griefOk so finally after all that build up and waiting… I don’t really know how to let you down gently here but this is going to be really anti-climactic.Get this, you want to know how many versions of the stages of grief there are defined? Uno, just one.The Kubler-Ross Model. So if you are a POW, torture victim, kidnapping victim, had a death in the family, break up with someone, been diagnosed with a terminal illness, or your goldfish drowned in the fishbowl (did you get it?). It doesn’t matter the same damn stages. What they do you see is they have you adapt the meaning of each stage to the catalyst/event. It seems a bit lazy on their part, doesn’t it? It is like a fucking fortune cookie. Let’s make it so generic it is always true and then let the guy trying to find some answers adapt it (a fancy way of saying you do all the work).It turns out they had it in the pipeline to do something about this and come up with some new material but after things were prioritized the funding got pulled so they could work on the NAVOB (Narcissistic Abuse Victims on Blast), BPAVLN (Butthurt Psychiatrists/Psychologists Against Victims Labeling Narcissists) and MPEA (Medical Professionals Enabling Abusers) programs. Bummer.OK here are the stages adapted for narcissistic abuse victims.DenialFind excuses and reasons to hold on to the relationshipYou want to believe against all logic or rationale that things can changeYou do not want to believe that the relationship is actually overYou refuse to accept the reality of what happened to youThe bad things that happened don’t seem so bad and the good things seem much better than they actually wereYou isolate yourself from othersAngerYou are angry at yourself for putting up with the abuseYou are angry at your abuser for ruining your lifeYou are angry at other people for letting you downYou are angry at God or the Universe for punishing youYou hate your abuser for everything they have done to you and fantasize about ways to get them backYou hate yourself for being so angry and blame your abuser for making you that wayBargainingYou feel desperate about losing the relationshipYou suffer from anxiety over the lossYou are willing to change your ways or give your abuser another chance to change theirsYou are willing to forgive and forget what happened and start with a clean slateYou are willing to renegotiate the boundaries you setYou ask them to agree to counseling or offer to go yourselfDepressionYou are overcome by a feeling of profound sadnessYou feel hopeless and helplessYou are unable to snap out of itYou cry often and are inconsolableYou are unmotivated and lethargicYou have disturbed sleeping patternsYou self-medicate with drug and/or alcoholYou withdraw into yourselfAcceptanceYou come to terms with the lossYou feel peacefulYou are able to let the relationship goYou accept the limitations of your abuserYou accept the choices you madeYou let your resentments goYou are ready to move onThank you for reading all of this really long article and as always your feedback and comments are both welcomed and valued.Happy Healing!