Crossing The Emotional Sea – Battle Number Two
The first battle that takes places post disengagement or escape is the battle of the Emotional Sea. That is a battle that you are always destined to lose. You will always fight at least one Emotional Sea Battle because you do not know any other way. In all likelihood, you will face several of these battles because you will keep being hoovered back into our grasp until such time as you learn to recognise what you are dealing with and understand what you must do. Eventually and this may take several Emotional Sea Battles before you realise this and are capable of achieving the appropriate response, you either evade the Emotional Sea Battle by escaping as opposed to being discarded, or you prepare yourself for the eventual discard in a manner which means you no longer have to ensure the Emotional Battle. Instead, you move on to the next post disengagement or post escape battle, that of Head versus Heart (“the HvH Battle”).
The HvH Battle (also known as the Logic v Emotion Battle) is a battleground where you stand some chance of victory. This battleground is one where you have gained understanding. It might be through your repeated exposure to our kind so that eventually something has “clicked” into place or more often than not it is as a consequence of an external agent who has explained matters to you. It might by a therapist, a friend, the content of a book, something you saw on YouTube or even something that I have written. Whatever has caused this understanding to increase, it is this which provides you with the fighting chance to win this HvH Battle.
You have been discarded and run the gamut of emotional fall-out thereafter. You may understand what we are. You may understand some of the things that we have done. You may be familiar with the fact that we will try to hoover you back into our grip. You may even be starting to comprehend that what has happened was all predicated on an illusion. The degree of understanding will vary but what is important for you is that you are allowing logical thought to be heard above the raw heat of your emotions. You once again will not just be battling against us but also yourself. We will be looking to hoover you in order to draw you back into our grip or perhaps we will be unleashing a malign hoover since we are unable to draw you back into our false reality and therefore we opt to keep extracting negative fuel by way of punishment for your treachery. You have us as an opponent, but you will also be fighting yourself as your emerging logic grapples with the still churning emotion. You have learned many things and you know you should apply what you have learned but still there is the emotional pull that you experience. You are not removed or detached from your emotions, they have not dimmed either, they are still there, raging away. The hurt, the love, the longing, the passion, the fear and the upset. An ocean of emotion which you once tried to cross but that was the Emotional Battle and you had barely taken four strokes as you began to swim before you were engulfed by the emotion and sank to the bottom of this sea, drowned by your own emotion. Now you have built a vessel. It is made from cool, hard logic. Critical thinking, once a stranger to you during your savage devaluation, has re-appeared. You can analyse and assess. It is unlikely you are able to do so at the level you once enjoyed before we came along but it is there. Whether this vessel is a tiny raft, a dinghy, a boat or a hulking great liner depends very much on the extent of your understanding. The choppy emotional seas will smash against your vessel of logic. A wave of sorrow will buffet you, a tsunami of longing will threaten to swamp you once again. Wave after wave of emotion will try and capsize your vessel as you try to navigate this emotional ocean. Chances are your life raft will be smashed to match wood and you will be tipped into the sea to drown once again as emotion subsumes you and you find yourself back in our hold. Your clipper may be holed beneath the waterline and you start to take on board more and more emotion as steadily you sink beneath the emotional waves once again. It is during this HvH Battle as you try to cross the emotional ocean, because what you must do is reach the dry land beyond and in effect put an ocean but you and us, you will be subjected to the push and pull of your emotions trying to guide you, to control your decision-making, your head will tell you one thing as your heart screams something else at you. This is probably the harder battle for you to fight. In the Emotional Battle, you do not stand a chance and your defeat is swift and total. During the HvH Battle you will make gains, suffer losses, seem to making a breakthrough and then out of nowhere a tidal wave will flip you from your boat and into the churning ocean and you drown once again. All the while we will be whipping up the waves, firing our torpedoes at you as we endeavour to cause you to sink into this emotional ocean yet again and you fail to cross it and win this battle. How might this HvH Battle manifest in the real world?
- You will know you ought not to contact us but you need to send a message to see if we respond.
- You will keep checking our social media profiles to ascertain if you are mentioned, if we are with somebody else and/or to find out what we are doing.
- You will ask about us to our coterie and lieutenants, often unwittingly doing so, so this is fed back to us.
- You will go on dates but find you are always comparing this new person to us and they are always found to be wanting.
- You know what the outcome will be but you just want one more night with us.
- You realise that we are unlikely to change but if you do not try you will never know, so it is worth one more attempt to talk isn’t it?
- You understand much of what we did and said was a lie, but surely it could not all have been an illusion? There must have been times where we really did love you and you need to ask us about this.
- You know we are bad for you, but you cannot help what you feel. Surely it would be better to stop this pain from being there all the time and just have it occasionally?
- You know you should not reply to our messages but it feels so good to have a conversation with us again. It has been too long.
- You know we are using you, but it feels so damn good.
- One kiss cannot hurt can it?
- You know better now, so going back will be different because you know what to expect. Armed with this new knowledge you can enter the lion’s den again but be better prepared.
- You know we are bad for you but you cannot bear the thought of someone else being with us and perhaps being the one to work.
- What if this time the apology is sincere and the desire to change is real? If you walked away from that, you would only be denying yourself happiness wouldn’t you?
- You understand engaging with us is dangerous but there are things you really need to tell us.
These and others besides are all examples of the inherent tension that arises in this tug-of-war between your cool intellect and your burning emotions.
Can you win this battle that rages post disengagement or post escape? Unlike the first battle, the Emotional SeaBattle which you can never win, you can be victorious. You may have to fight this HvH Battle many times before securing the win. In the beginning you may be clinging to little more than a log as you desperately try to sail the emotional ocean and you are swept from it. However, by reading and understanding, by disciplining yourself to apply logic, to prevent your emotions from engulfing you, by reading more and increasing your knowledge you will begin to increase your logic vessel. From log to raft to dinghy. Still you may be swamped and drowned again. But then it becomes a small boat, a yacht, a clipper, a steamer, a passenger liner, a frigate, a destroyer and a super tanker. Each time you rebuild, better, bigger and stronger as you learn more, making the vessel more seaworthy. You begin to chart routes so you avoid the most tumultuous emotional areas, finally beginning to steer through calmer waters until there it is, on the horizon, the sight of land and the final battle that occurs with our kind post discard.
The HvH Battle is not an easy battle. You will fight it several times, but each time you should be better prepared to cross the emotional ocean and improve your prospects of success. Sometimes you are taken unawares by some of our provocative tactics and dumped unceremoniously into the water once again, but it is a battle you can win through the dedicated application of knowledge and understanding.
16 thoughts on “Crossing The Emotional Sea – Battle Number Two”
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Thanks to you, HG, I’m going to make it to shore. But I have shaken my head so much; I think I have a concussion.
Still, I much appreciate your help. Thank you for sharing your knowledge… and your kindness.
You are welcome.
Fought and made it.
But I wonder sometimes, who discarded who in the end. I get this wierd feeling it was me who was discarding him. He never fully got control over me and I started to challenge and taunt him. He accused me of going on desctructive rampages but he clearly started down that road. I guess most other people have a highter tolerance for his games and hung in longer as so many still lingered around him.
I know he wins many, many other battles. But I really don’t think he did with me. I think we had a complete tie in the denigrations and discards.
HG, have you ever tied with an empath who went on full on Super Nova? What are you left with the most from it all? Biding your time? Because she can never, ever win? If it doesn’t matter much, you move on to better fuel, then its all good and over. Something that never was, never would have been, never will be. Just a grand illusion and game.
I honestly can’t even imagine talking to him ever again. Nothing in me has any desire to test it anymore, to reach out or anything. I replace in my mind the fantasy he built with the reality of what it would have been like to be stuck with him and it now really sickens me. I will take care of that old longing in other ways as I see now, it has nothing to do with him anymore. And it had everything to do with my own life.
Sarabella.. I am curious about what you said about not knowing who dumped who. What happened? I had the same thoughts on my last N. I sent a text telling him to take care and good luck because he spoke to me in such a manner that was horrific it possed me off. He never responded at ALL and i never heard from him again. So its a great question! I would like to hear what happened to you in this aspect if you care to share?
Its too long a story to convey, but I started to do some really wierd things, pushing him away, testing him. Something wasn’t right. When he started in with his denigrations, I begane to dish it out. I started to say “bye” but hasn’t conquered the emotional so it dragged on. In one of our last interactions, he accused me of being destructive, not knowing if I was coming in friendship or blood (Never mind what he did to me, of course). he said I had no self-respect, I said he used me. I hoped he was proud of what he did. Back and forth. He blocked me, I easily got around it (delete IG and recreate it again and even with the same email and you are back -there is no delay in delete like FB). It went back and forth, the insults, the anger, the hurt (on my part, he didn’t care, though I know I wounded him). In the end, we gave each other a big fat FU and that was the end. So I am not so sure he controled that one.
Sarabella.. that sounds all too familiar! With my 1st N of 4yrs it was a never ending circus of that same thing you went thru. I finally dished it out and stuck to my guns and unfortunately I work with him and he kept his hoovering up to the point I had to get his Sgt & Lt’s involved (We work law enforcement) and guess who lost? Yep, he enlisted his flying monkeys and smeared me and it got sooooo bad I litterally sold my house and moved! Narc-1. Julie-0.
I’ve thought all the steps. I have not acted on any of them. I’ve fantasized . . . for instance, just one kiss, what can it hurt? His kisses are amazing. But then I play the scene all the way through . . . and then I play each step in my mind all the way through to conclusion. The end result is always the same. The exact pattern. I even feel the emotions as my mind plays out to the conclusion.
In reality when I initiated the contact (pre-HG), the result wasnt always the same, it was worse.
I’m starting to apply this simple logic to each step by playing out the scene in thought and by going through the emotions in private. It is lessening the emotion attachment I have to my ex.
I hope I made sense . . . time to move on with my day . . .
This is one of my absolute favorite posts. I am working on upgrading my dinghy to a supertanker, one step at a time!
While barreling down a 28-hour drive back home after post escape, I came across HG Tudor. I searched “Narcissist” on Youtube and up came his name. Funny? What kind of name is that? Tudor, really?….is he royalty? Oh whatever….
Anyway, the search yielded an interview with him. “Out of the Box” I think it was??? The interview lit me up. I couldn’t get enough. For the remaining drive home, it was Tudor FM the whole way.
What I learned those next few days on the road girded me for the ensuing HvH battles to come. Knowledge is indeed power. Four times before this current escape, I used emotional thinking & was crashed into the jetties every time. But THIS time, ohhhhh this time I would employ my new HG Tudor logical thinking.
Yes, my life raft has been battered about by a few Hoover’s since I left but she remains intact.
And so here I am, 77 days NC. My ship is sturdy & her bow will not break. Every NC day builds her stronger.
A strong Hoover will be coming my way in August & by then I hope to be impenetrable.
Thank you HG for being the source that turned my stinkin’ thinkin’ from emotional to finally logical.
Think I’ll name next dog after you.
69
Thank you 69R, you are welcome.
Once again spot on HG! Thank you!
In regards to the #4 , I found I did that and I am wondering if that is why I seem to keep finding myself in the grip of narcissist after narcissist? Could it be subconsciously im trying to find another just like him? Since my 1st N several years ago it seems they are have crawled out of the woodwork for me. They all seem to be the Greater type as well as far as i can tell which makes me question also will i ONLY attract a certain type of N or it dosent matter?
Just started reading sitting target as well in hopes of trying to keep them at bay and why this keeps happening. So far its a plethora of knowledge!
It revolves around your susceptibility, drawing our kind to you, your emotional thinking causing you to ignore red flags and possibly also not knowing some red flags to begin with. It is an expansive topic.
Thank you, downloaded to the kindle
Reading, reading, reading!!!
What I am experiencing now is that everyday my LT is making headway’s over ET and in a very unexpected fashion.
I was with my Narc ( well he is many other’s narcs as well… lol) and I was looking at him and hearing him and interacting with him like if it was a movie .
I felt I entered the fiction I was always in with him but entered it consciously this time.
I saw how he uses my love letters to triangulate : he leaves them open for other woman to see – before I would have been flattered and would have thought that he really liked me to keep my letters so handy to read again – in the movie – I know it is a triangulation technique.
And when we went to bed spoon sleeping and when he hold my hand in the middle of the night – knew I was giving out fuel… not love.
I know this golden night was an illusion , a nice romantic movie but at least I knew it was a movie .
So the new knowledge helps being able to see on the other side of the screen of what is being said and done.
At one point he was saying something really childish about another woman and I said to myself … oh yes that is right … you are emotionally at 12 years old … that explains the syliness of what you are just saying . My logical thinking kicked in just when I was starting to get frustrated.
Maybe one day I will just wake up and will not want to play with a 12 years old anymore and that day my logical thinking will say « game over !
Hi, OMJ~
I’m so happy for you that your logic keeps growing.:-)
Do the tactics he uses ever make you feel ill? I ask because of my own journey, seeing so clearly now *what* the narcissist did to ensnare me and to try to keep control over me, and it just makes me feel physically ill… so much so that as soon as I hear his voice now, my mouth gets dry and I feel sick to my stomach. It’s hard to even focus on what he says because I’m so overwhelmed by his masking deception.
It’s this awful, full awakening. The more my logical mind sorts through, the more apprehension I feel — all the plotting and scheming he has done… it’s so dark, and I’m full of light — so it’s actually a confusing reality to feel that he “chose” me in the first place. I have zero interest or desire to break through to him… I’m just playing along as I try to get him off me, and that’s how I know there’s fear on my end. I’m not normally a fearful person. I have this terrible feeling he can tell that I know, and I have no idea what he’s capable of…I thought I knew, but how could I?
I don’t even know who this guy is! He’s a lie to me. I have to admit to myself that I know nothing about him, as every “deep” talk or moment I thought I shared with him — anything I thought was an actual quality he has — how would I even know if ANY of it is real?? Those are all assumptions on my part.
That is why I asked you a ways back if you feel like you know HG better than your narcissist… because I feel I would have to say “yes” to that, even as just as acquaintance on a blog — because HG acknowledges to us that he’s a narcissist and shows it. He doesn’t hide the essence of who he is.