The average life span of a relationship is two years. That makes breakups difficult to deal with, as you turn a shared life into two separate ones.

Adding narcissism into the mix makes an already painful experience even more traumatic. If you’ve gone through a narcissistic relationship, you might wonder if it’s even possible to heal from one.

You might even vow not to, so you won’t ever feel that pain again.

Here’s the thing though. Healing doesn't mean pretending nothing happened. It means the damage is no longer driving your life. 

Think of it this way. You’ve probably had a physical injury, whether that’s a twisted ankle, a paper cut, or something more serious. Once you've healed, it doesn't mean it never happened. It means your body has repaired itself and you can move on. 

That’s what we help you to do on an emotional level after a narcissistic relationship. 

We've talked a lot on this blog about how to spot narcissists...but how do you heal from a relationship with one? Read on to find out.

The Pain of Narcissistic Relationships

No one sets out to find a narcissistic partner. The problem is, they set out to find you. So if someone told you that you ‘manifested’ them, then forget that terrible claim. You didn’t. Narcissists target people. You do not manifest them.

You often end up isolated from your friends and family. Perhaps the narcissist convinced you to move to a different city or country. You may have lost interest in hobbies or passions you once had. That’s because the narcissist wants all of your attention. Any threat to that becomes something they need to cut away.

So you become dependent on them for companionship. In turn, they’re dependent on you for their supply of self-esteem. They cause so much damage to other people to keep a sense of power and control.

Despite this, they also have an addictive effect. The initial love-bombing phase creates a trauma bond where you’ll do anything to get back to that state. They leave you craving the love and affection they showered you with early on. This lets them control your behaviour since they out hold the promise of a return to those early days as a ‘reward’. It doesn't matter how terrible their behaviour was, or how awful the breakup felt. There’s still a part of you that remembers the heady romance. It becomes almost impossible to imagine that was an illusion all along.

The problem is these relationships also cause you to develop high levels of guilt, shame and fear. When the relationship breaks down, you also need to heal from these, as well as the pain of the breakup. These relationships cause you to question who you are. You also need to rebuild yourself at an identity level. 

That’s why traditional counselling and therapeutic approaches can be counterproductive.

The Problems With Traditional Counselling Approaches

Many therapists and counsellors try to treat your trauma as if it was a normal relationship. They ignore the differences in healing from these relationships compared to normal heartbreak. Most counsellors don't realise these relationships have different types of psychology.

So you might find that they only want you to talk about it without ever moving forwards. The focus is on talking, and reliving the trauma, not healing from it. Some therapists might encourage you to start a new relationship to get over the narcissistic one. One of our clients developed severe trust issues following a narcissistic relationship. Her therapist insisted the only way to ‘cure’ them was to have a relationship with someone else.

No! That’s such harmful advice. Imagine you’d broken your leg and you were in severe pain. Then your doctor told you the only way to heal is running the London Marathon. You’d think they were the worst doctor ever. The same applies to this “just start seeing someone else” advice.

These therapists ignore the fact you might be unable to trust your judgement. There can also be a sense that you somehow should have seen the abuse coming. That if you stayed too long, it was your fault and you brought it on yourself. You need support, not judgment. And that’s where the Helix Strategy comes in.

The Helix Strategy

There are plenty of articles about ‘getting over’ a narcissist. Many of them focus on practical things, like going ‘no contact’ and working on your self-worth. These things are important and you should still do them. In fact, completely cutting the narcissist out of your life is one of the most crucial things you can do. 

But these things are not enough on their own. You’re forcing yourself to go cold turkey from an addictive relationship. It can take months to heal from a narcissistic relationship without support. That's especially true when those around you don’t understand the narcissist dynamic.

The Helix Strategy cuts the time needed to heal because it takes a different approach. Instead of endless talking about what happened, it focuses on teaching you how narcissists work. With this knowledge, you can truly understand your relationship with one. This means examining their behaviour and learning how (and why) they do what they do. You can overlay this knowledge onto your lived experience to thoroughly process it.

You’ll be able to see why they did what they did...and why it was nothing to do with you. Even better, you’ll be able to see why you did what you did, and why it was perfectly understandable at the time. This makes it much easier to heal the guilt and shame caused by the relationship.

By learning how narcissists work, you’re also well-placed to avoid another one in future. This gives you confidence that you can enjoy a healthy relationship the next time around. Remember, 1 in 200 people are narcissists. You don’t need to date more than one. Thanks to the Helix Strategy, you won’t.

You Can Heal From a Narcissistic Relationship Too

The key principle behind the Helix Strategy is simple. Getting clarity about what narcissists are and how they operate is one thing. Your lived experience of a narcissistic relationship is another. Putting the two together is the only way to get the clarity you need to heal from the relationship and prevent it from happening again.

We want you to heal from your relationship with grace and ease. And you can! So if you want to learn more about the Helix Strategy? Sign up for our exclusive webinar, 5 Steps to Heal From Narcissistic Relationships (without spending years in therapy).