Youre not over your ex yet: thats because you still define that time as a joyous one. In the same way a deer hunter does not care which deers head he gets to mount on the wall, as long as he enjoys the chase and outwits the deer; your guy sees you as a trophy that he can bag by regaining your attention again. You will keep having sudden thoughts about your ex that would last for days. Try to maintain your boundaries, even if they try to reenter your life. You can still love and miss an ex even after 10 years but the intensity of feelings can change. Thats pretty simple. But trust me when I say I understand your frustration. Now that the dynamics of a narcissistic relationship is clear, lets get into the reason that why do I keep thinking about my narcissistic ex is such a common question among survivors. When you dont grieve, youll feel shame, guilt, and sadness. Narcissists are incapable of looking within themselves because of the fear of seeing how broken they are. | Ego makes you think about your ex suddenly or even after 10 years. Learning to be happy alone vs being lonely can help you so much with your confidence and realizing your self-worth. Their relationships are usually very shallow no matter how much they profess to love you. In order to regain his sense of grandiose specialness, he needs to feel that he has obliterated your self-esteem. When you take a step back and look at the cause and effects of different manipulative tactics like gaslighting, scapegoating, or flying monkeys, it becomes crystal clear that the narcissists motivation behind their abuse is hiding their own emotional instability. Thats why moving or accepting the end of the relationship is hard. You can cry, shout, write down everything. Family members and children are often seen as more vulnerable, easier to manipulate, and control. He stopped calling and did not answer your texts. https://img.mentalhealthmatters-cofe.org/1664005572549.main-qimg-0c2fefcd22f863cab3eb6e713a3031f8, https://www.mentalhealthmatters-cofe.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/logo.png, Why Do I Keep Thinking About My Narcissistic Ex. Youll watch your ex grow from far away and think thats not fair towards you. He starts listing every single thing that his abuser had done to him and triumphantly storms out of the store. You keep thinking about your ex or even miss them because you would like to experience this with them. One day, you get it together to leave. You share the same house, same bed, your thoughts, food, emotions, and love. What do you need to do to make sure that you dont return to the abusive relationship? Some people honestly believe that their emotions are impossible to change and controlso they just accept their rampaging impulses. That means that you havent overcome your feelings yet, youre having a deja vu, or a bad experience is holding you back. All of the content that Unfilteredd creates is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for clinical care please visit here for qualified organizations and here for qualified professionals that you can reach out to for help. Otherwise, youll keep thinking about your ex, until you do it! 3. 1. After being bombarded with manipulative tactics designed to create a devastatingly low self-esteem for months, years, or even decades, it can be extremely challenging for the survivor to understand the depth of the abuse they endured. This means that he may leave nasty drunken phone messages in which he says everything that he can think of that may hurt you. Everyone is going to have a different approach when trying to escape the limitations. Now for reasons that you do not know, he has contacted you again and you have chosen not to respond. What you need to do to get to where you want to be in life is focus on setting achievable goals on a daily basis. Dont worry. 5. A really good approach to this that weve heard from hundreds of survivors of narcissistic abuse is to do everything that the narcissist said that you couldnt do so that you can practice managing your triggers. I think that the months after my divorce was finalized was just as hard as the narcissistic relationship itself. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. When we idealize someone, we tend to remember the good times and forget the bad. By distracting yourself with mind rituals, you can easily forget all about the emotions trying to surface inside you. For example, a child of unavailable, unresponsive, and inconsistent primary caregivers constructing their sense of self out of the validation, admiration, and reassurance that they get for being a fantastic musician. Even after a hundred years, youll be able to think about your ex. This situation leads you to have obsessive thoughts. This habit can be dangerous to your mental, physical and spiritual health because it prolongs and can intensify the struggles most of us have during recovery. You have been programmed and conditioned to crave support that was never truly there in the first place. Many narcissistic individuals are quite capable of assuring you that you are the love of their life one day, and then suddenly leave you for someone else because they got angry or bored. They do not comprehend how to solve the problem. They get their kicks from making threats, and they will do anything they can to get the love of their past lovers to act as if theyre their own. This is how I did it #1 See the narcissist clearly. If you are the type that doesnt let your feelings process then those feelings will make you think about your ex. Unless you are ready to press the nuclear button and go for all-out war and have lots of weapons to use against him, you may want to sit this one out and wait till he loses interest in you again. That is not the case with their brains. Or, he may simply post pictures of beautiful scantily clothed women that he found on the internet in the hope that you will think he is dating them. The short answer is YES! Rumination can also formulate a disdain for oneself. We must remember the nature of narcissistic narcissism in order to resolve these issues. If you are flattered and nave about narcissists, you may think that all of this is about how much he still cares for you. Our brain is attempting to comprehend the concept. 5. It gives the victim time to heal and regain a sense of reality which they lost while under the influence of the narcissist. The moment the victim accepts the narcissists narrative, is precisely when the victim will begin to ruminate. You were emotionally attached & attracted Once you're emotionally connected with your partner, they become part of your life. Youll wonder why am I thinking about my ex from years ago or why am I thinking about my ex all of a sudden? He may spend a great deal of energy on finding ways to publicly portray himself as highly desirable, while portraying you as worthless garbage. A therapist can help you understand why youre thinking about your ex and how to move on from the relationship. Such conversations will not happen with a narcissistic ex husband. Some respond with considerable anger and will use any means they can to seek revenge on the person if they . Get a Free Educational Bundle Every Week! At first, your goals should be centered around your safety. The moment you find yourself in almost the same situations, youll feel the same vibe. Until youre ready to accept this fact and let your ex go, youll constantly think about your ex. If you wonder: Why do I think about my ex so much? If you abuse your narcissistic personality, you will damage the brain, which may take months or even years to recover from. In narcissistic relationships, rumination is used by victims and survivors of narcissistic abuse, to rationalize what happened to them. Youve not processed your feelings yet. If an ex moves on, it would feel like nothing was real, neither the love nor the relationship. Answer (1 of 180): Sometimes all you want is to see the relationship from the rear-view mirror. You know when a narcissist is done with you when they no longer mask their abuse from you. Now, when you are rejecting him, his hunting instincts are reawakened, and he becomes very, very interested in you again. Throughout narcissistic relationships narcissists are constantly projecting their own emotional instability onto their victim. But the point was your mind is so infiltrated that even when you have more critical things to think of you still think of the narc. We highly recommend that you read our articles How to Deal With the Negative Emotions of Going No Contact With a Narcissist, Why Do I Still Love the Narcissist, and Can Narcissists Love for a ton of information that you need to help navigate the negative emotions that come from ending a relationship with a narcissist. There are different circumstances and elements that trigger this memory once in a while. I think part of the reason is that I was so invested in the narc that I thought wed be figuring out shit like this togetherforever. What Does It Really Mean To Be An Extrovert. The narcissist no longer hides their true colors. You might regret your decision to break up and maybe you never told your ex about it. There are many different manipulative phases that lead a victim of narcissistic abuse into a state of cognitive dissonance that we spoke about in our article Can a Trauma Bond Become Healthy but were going to summarize them here. This situation will haunt you for months or even years. Hoovering occurs after the relationship has ended, the narcissist will reach out and claim that theyve changed and tell the victim how wrong they were to treat them the way they did and so on. Being hung up on this idea will keep you thinking about your ex. 7) Risky and unhealthy sexual behaviors. Remind yourself why the breakup happened. If you are justifying, rationalizing, and normalizing abuse for months, years, or even decades, it is going to severely corrupt your perception of a healthy relationship so by re-educating yourself in the dynamics of a healthy relationship youre going to learn that they are built on respect, mutuality, empathy, compassion, compromises, and simply being yourself. The person who once used to trust others has been rendered to be a person who can no longer confide in the intentions of another human being, a person who has lost faith in oneself, and in the. He would change the subject when I was feeling down to whatever he wanted to talk about. 2. This can go a few different ways depending on his personal style. Required fields are marked *. To do this narcissists will use mirroring to absorb important information about the victims identity and use that information to create a falsified identity that is designed to fill a void in the victims life. Narcissists also transform themselves into the victim when they are on the verge of being exposed. Nothing was what it seemed.. Those with this personality disorder also tend to have troubled relationships and often lack the skill of empathy. Learn to name the narcissist tactics and behaviors. We did a study among the 67 participants we work with who have survived narcissistic relationships to find out the most commonly seen obsessive thoughts they had during their rumination phase. I just lost my job and he doesnt even care? Push yourself, challenge yourself, and try to learn more about yourself. This is called projection. It occurs when a narcissist takes aspects of their identity that they find unacceptable and projects or places them onto other people. Even the littlest things will remind you about your ex. Hoovering is essentially love bombing; the only difference is that the victim already knows how horrible the narcissist is. Is he talking to her? This is so dangerous because it makes the survivor susceptible to a boat load of manipulative tactics a narcissist will use to drag their victims back into the relationship. You want what you dont have or cant have again. But he knew what he was doing. Another key component for abuse cycles that dont include a love bombing phase is a low self esteem. Youll think about why your relationship didnt work that way. Why do I keep thinking about my narcissistic ex is a very normal question to have after surviving a narcissistic relationship because how confusing and hurtful a narcissist can be. A narcissists evilness increases as their feelings are hurt and their partner ends up breaking up with them. Co-parenting is not ideal for you. MY GIRL NEEDS ME! So, set yourself goals for the months ahead, and give yourself a new focus. If you are in a toxic relationship then for some time youll go through the narcissistic impact. Experiencing narcissistic abuse destroys the victims sense of self. You could have been abandoned by both parents, beat up by ex-lovers, left broke and broken. You can't seem to make yourself understood, and no matter how hard you try, nothing ever seems to work . It just pops up in your head because it feels like youre relieving some of the moments you lived with your ex. Withdrawal symptoms can be triggered by the brain just as much as any addiction withdrawal symptoms. And as a result, our ENTIRE life, our choices, our pain, our love makes sense to us. When he says, my dear, he really means: MY deer.. Narcissists thrive off of being worshipped, so they use manipulation tactics to get you to do just that," Peykar says. You might keep thinking about your ex every day because you havent let yourself process your feelings. To keep their ex in the dark, they will use all of these methods, including love bombing, self-esteem lowering, and emotional manipulation. Narcissistic supply can be thought of as a drug in the form of social admiration and attention. Keep replaying in your mind the negative parts of your relationship. To escape the limitations that your narcissistic ex created to keep you under their power and control you first have to understand where the limitations that they create comes from. Let me use a typical situation as an example. And this would actually work to heal your pain (because love heals) if it were real. Hence, with time the intensity of these feelings will decrease. It makes. This state of mind traps them within the narcissistic cycle of abuse even after the relationship has ended. But it happens more than I would like. Carnaric personality disorder is linked to a variety of illnesses, including substance abuse, depression, and suicide. He loves a challenge. The change in information and behavior forces victims of narcissistic abuse to choose between continuing to believe that theyre in happy, healthy, secure relationship with someone they believe is perfect and fills a void in their life or let go of the wish for things to be different by acknowledging and accepting that the person they put their trust in is actually a manipulative abuser. IM HERE FOR YOU! So, my therapist would get me to do things like use ALL of the utensils when cooking to work on my triggers. If youre going through these experiences, talk to a therapist and get to know your feelings. Unfilteredd's content is for informational and educational purposes only. While there can be many reasons why an ex-partner reaches out, those who have been involved with emotionally abusive narcissists can feel validated in knowing that their ex-partner's. You love the new one but yet you have a lot of memories and want to play with the old one. What makes you think about your ex in the middle of the night and in the morning is unfinished things. This is when flying monkeys come into play. But the narc loves you sooo good you actually begin to heal and let go of that pain of the past. In other words, the new girlfriend is worried about the Ex and the Ex is worried about the new girlfriend. The combination of extended periods of abuse and misplaced blame enables the narcissist to manipulate the victim into believing that they are to blame for the abusive relationship, even after the relationship has ended. You've broken up. Do not engage: While you may have to discuss logistics about joint assets or your children, it doesn't mean you must engage in every comment he makes. A narcissist might use specific tools and tactics to induce others with negative thinking. When does thinking about your ex become obsessive? Narcissists need their victims to have a low self-esteem to get away with their abusive behavior. Though I agree that these are core factors in why someone might return to a Narcissist, I don't believe they are descriptive of the core . Call someone and talk to them about whats going on. - All rights reserved. That is what healing and rebuilding after narcissistic abuse is all about. You should expect to have a lot of questions that you want answered but it is important to remember that when it comes to narcissistic relationships, the answers, justice, revenge, and closure comes from within. It was hard. This type of attachment is an indicator for making you think about your ex. The best thing to do is ignore him and eventually something or someone else will get his attention and distract him from you. Allow yourself to ruminate over the same thoughts and feelings, and give yourself freedom to finally stop focusing on how to stop thinking about your ex. And no, that doesn't make them crazy, as the Narcissist loves to suggest Maybe you got up the courage to end the abuse and leave. As a result, our narcissists will begin to sell us drugs, rendering us incapable of managing our own affairs. Youre caught up in a vicious circle and you cant get out. Why hasnt he called me? Be careful to not use this technique to restrain healing. However, just because the narcissist has been cut out of the survivors life, doesnt mean the abuse cycle is over. Its been months since your break-up, but you cant stop thinking about your narcissistic ex. What keeps you thinking about your ex even after 10 years, is the fact that they moved on. As weve mentioned in our previous article, Can You Get Closure from A Narcissist?, it is mandatory that survivors of narcissistic abuse let go of the wish for things to be different, confide in people who understand narcissism, and let all of their emotions out. They will convince others that you're the bad person. Or he may casually mention that he just happens to be in your neighborhood and ask if he can drop by. You keep having these feelings for the rest of your life, but the intensity of them will change. HowI Forgave Myself For Loving A Narcissist. *Perhaps you can't concentrate at work? You keep thinking about this person because you need something to boost your confidence. With psychological abuse, it can be extremely difficult for the victim to understand what is happening, especially within a narcissistic relationship. And its probably what hurts most all of all. 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