The Emotional Sea – Post Disengagement/Escape Battle Number One
Everything we do is regarding as a battle. It is a zero-sum game. What you lose, we gain. There may appear to be a “win/win” scenario during seduction but it is not the case. Believe me, we are getting what we want, The Prime Aims, foremost of which is control over you and positive fuel in huge quantities and the repeated binding as we draw you closer and closer to us. You are made to feel like a king or queen, but you will be deposed and beheaded or defenestrated in due course. You always pay for the golden period we shower you with.
We draw up our battle plans when we ready ourselves to seduce you. The Greater Narcissist adopts the approach of every battle is won before it is fought and operates through calculation, planning and a degree of instinct. The Lesser of our kind remain effective but they rely on being a blunt weapon, not possessing the intellectual finesse of Greaters. The lesser operates through instinct alone and relies on the visceral (unknown) need for fuel and control to drive his battle strategy. This is similar also for The Mid-Range Narcissists who also are driven by instinct although their approach is above that of the Lessers, aided by generally higher cognitive function. The Lesser is all about reaction and immediate response, an automatic adjustment, which is invariably successful because he has been blessed with those tools, blunt as they may be. The Mid-Range does have more subtlety with his reactions and responses, but they are no less instinctive.
Our engagement with you is not love. It is war. We conquer, overrun and blitzkrieg you into submission. We occupy you so that your heart and mind fall to us within moments. This army of occupation does not stop there as it raids the land it now resides in. Your resources become our resources and we ensure that our supply lines are fed from your assets.
The occupation eventually takes a savage turn through devaluation as we slash and burn, looking to grind you into the dirt before leaving you a stripped, bomb-blasted shell and setting off for a new campaign against some unsuspecting target. The theme of battle and your entanglement with our kind being a battleground, is one which is repeated throughout your engagement with us.
This is especially so once the callous disengagement has taken place. Disengagement is most common with the Intimate Partner Primary Source (wife, husband, cohabitee, partner, boyfriend or girlfriend), although it can happen with Intimate and Non-Intimate Secondary Sources, but it is rarer. Those secondary sources are more usually treated in a shelf manner, however the emotional battle is applicable to those in the relevant dynamic of secondary source with the narcissist. It is then that you find yourself confronted with three battles which take place one after the other. Not only do you have us as your foe but in an especially unappealing turn of events you find that in fact you are actually fighting against yourself. The first battle following disengagement is the emotional one.
You have been left with no explanation. If one was tendered it made no sense. You cannot reconcile where you are with what has been. The descent from gilded pillar into the dust has been swift and merciless. Whilst we (usually) do not set out to destroy you, it may feel that way to you or that has occurred as a collateral consequence of the pursuit of The Prime Aims. Every day you have run the gauntlet of scores of emotions, which has drained you, eroded you and taken a significant toll on your well-being.
Your emotions are red raw, heightened and easy to trigger. Your pain is extensive, agonising and brutal and it is during this emotional battle that your ally of cool, detached thinking has not fled the battlefield, it never turned up to begin with. Your ability to assess, rationalise and consider you position with the necessary critical analysis evades you.
All you are left with is a cauldron of emotion, which serves only to heighten your distress and your confusion. Nothing makes sense and you have not been left in a position to make any sense of what has happened. This is entirely deliberate and is put in place by the narcissism. It is consciously deliberate where you are dealing with a Greater Narcissist and unconsciously deliberate where you are dealing with a Lesser or Mid-Range Narcissist. I know so many of you use the phrase “hot mess”. This is entirely apt. You are a mess. Your life is a mess. The heat comes from your raging emotions as you veer between hysteria and anger.
Of the three battles that you fight post disengagement, the emotional battle, the first, is the one which you invariably end up losing. This is because you are utterly ill-equipped. If you were an army your troops would be sharing guns, you would not know which way to face, your supply lines have been overstretched and, in some places, broken and the enemy seems to appear at will. The fog of war obscures your vision. Is that us advancing or just the silhouette of a tree? You cannot tell.
Once you could, but no longer. It is a tortuous place and one which has been created through our design in order to ensure that when we return (and we will) you will be in no position to resist. Weakened, governed by emotional thinking rather than intellectual logical thinking you will be overrun easily. Intelligence is now defence, this is not about intelligence but the fact that your emotional thinking is far too strong for what little logic may exist.
This battle, where all you have is emotion, means that you want the pain to stop. You want the golden period again. You give no consideration or thought to what the price of such desires might be, or whether it really is the golden period once more. You are ruled by emotional thinking and this proves to be your downfall. We know this (Consciously or Unconsciously) and this is why our narcissism ensure syou are a churning, broiling scorching crucible of emotion. Our narcissism creates it, we want that. This is why your first attempt at no contact (without the benefit of specialist input form me) nearly always falls.
You are not equipped to prolong it because in this emotional battle all it takes is for us to come galloping over the hill once again, offering terms of the golden period and you surrender in an instant allowing us to occupy your territory once more in the understandable but ultimately forlorn hope of a peaceful co-existence.
As you drown in the emotional sea once again, you will feel a rescuing hand grab you and haul you out. Your relief is immense. The rescuing hand belongs to us and such is the effect of your emotional thinking that you will return into our grasp. The hoover that we deploy as we rescue you from the emotional sea succeeds so readily because you want to escape the turmoil and the quickest way to do so is to return to us.
What makes it worse is that as your rescuer we grant you a new golden period and thus your emotional thinking cons you further by telling you that it was absolutely fine to go back because ‘look everything is as it once was’. You have been rewarded for agreeing to return and therefore that was the right decision wasn’t it? Your emotional thinking rules supreme again as it cons you into thinking that this is the best outcome.
Your immersion in the emotional sea has permeated throughout you, any logic that was trying to gain a foothold to make you see clearly has been flooded out. Logic cannot make itself heard and you are drawn back into our grasp once again.
How do you win this first emotional battle? You cannot. You are in such a position that we always win this battle. The key however is not to participate in this battle but rather avoid it altogether. If you know there is a battle you cannot win, why would you ever fight it?
You would not. You would evade your foe, take steps to bolster your defences and seek to avoid this emotional battle. This is what you must do. Once you have gained awareness of the foe you are engaged with, possibly during seduction or more likely through the period of devaluation, you must then take those steps to prepare yourself. You either avoid the emotional battle altogether by escaping rather than being disengaged from (discarded). Alternatively, you steel yourself for the inevitable disengagement so that the emotional fallout is massively reduced and instead you find yourself transported to the second battle that takes places post discard which I shall expand on next.
If you have been disengaged, then you face the emotional battle and you will lose. You must avoid the emotional battle in its entirety or engage on terms in the second battle which follows post disengagement.
How do you eventually avoid this first emotional battle?
How do you start to journey across the emotional sea rather than continue to drown in it?
You use my work.
My work, works.
You are here. It is time to GOSO, get out, stay out.
24 thoughts on “The Emotional Sea – Post Disengagement/Escape Battle Number One”
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I came back for the second time. I did it because i wanted to escape the moment i would have perceived the devaluation was starting. I escaped and i had my victory. I never came back after that. I could not accept he devalued me the first time and i wanted to test if i have learnt my lesson. I did, i runned. I won.
HG, if a mid ranger discards someone and is in the golden period with their new source do they ever wonder why the old source never begged them to come back? My ex has always had exes beg him to come back and I am the first to actually go NC. Would a mid ranger view this difference from his norm as a challenge or just a wounding?
They will not wonder because they will be focused on the new golden period with the new IPPS and therefore unconcerned by what they former IPPS is doing or did not do.
Autumn
Thats his sory that they begged him to come back. They could have run far and fast but of course he would tell you that to make you think he was worth holding onto. Narcs do lie.
“defenestrated” Best. Word. Ever. Thank you HG. Now, to find an occasion to use my newly acquired vocabulary word!
I was lost at sea. I spent too long fighting the current of emotions. It was especially difficult during those first inclinations of… something doesn’t feel right here… He’s probably not going to be where he says. But when the realization set in that my fears were indeed valid… well, this article suitably describes that turbulent-emotion-filled-I-need-to-throw-up feeling.
Narcsite has been a life-preserver for me. Thank you to everyone brave enough to share his/her story. While it makes me sick to my stomach to know this many people have been affected, it gives me comfort to know that I’m not entirely alone.
There is so much shame in being emotionally abused by a narcissist. But knowing that others have taken a plunge in that same emotional sea… it’s comforting in some sad way. But the best part feels like being in good company… to see how others have made it shore… to know that the emotional-sea-sickness doesn’t last forever. Thanks for that.
BKK – I love your first sentence about fighting the current of emotions. I am now at a still water stage. You know when there is no movement between the tide going up or the tide going down the emotions swirls gently in quasi stillness quasi no momevemnt or the illusion of no movement , just there, not troubling anything but it is inevitable that the tide will go up or down as long as the moon will exists . HG told me this would ebb and flow … 🙂
Thank you OMJ. And yes, I know that place where you spoke of. I am not quite there yet, but I’m working on it! Mine is in that ebb and flow you spoke of… nut its not alwaus duch a smooth flow. Some days, it feels like I’m treading water… others, swimming as fast as I can and winning the race. 🏊 🏆
I hate those days where it feels like I could let the current pull me under, but my logical thinking (yes, I do have some HG) will come to surface to tell me that it is all going to be okay.
But I truly want to find that peaceful place of floating, basking in the sun… with some handsome non-narc slathering SPF 30 all over my baa— anywhere he wants to put it. 😎
Ahhh. 🌞💦👋💦🌴💦🍸💦😍
Now that’s hope for ya.
Bkk I love that !! Today I was in my own golden in my head. I texted and he responded they were nice texts – I bought him 2 small little things for when I see him next. I was happy today so the tide went up – and I was positively emotional which means that my ET has positively derailed … because all this is an illusion but my derailment is real. The difference is that now I can observe myself in that derailment and saying : today we had positive texts etc that is in response to his fuel matrix and his other IPSS. Tomorrow – it could all be different .
Before I would have dreamed of golden coming back being convinced that we are back in that great companionship we had.
I had a date a couple days ago with a nice guy and I was from being fault at everything he was saying or doing.
Agree with the quiet water and sun and hands to cream my back and my tummy. :))😋
I love what you said here.
I’m still in the emotional throws, switching from one emotional to the next.
You mentioned feeling shame.
That’s a huge one to get through. I feel it everyday.
T
What do you feel shame over?
The first things that come up is shame for being gifted with empathy. He would call me a witch and beat me severely for my empathic ways… Ive come to now see it as a curse.I hope that changes. I know it’s what I am. Not sure where that fits in a healthy life?
T
It seems contradictory to feel shame over something you describe as being “gifted” with. That indicates that you know subconsciously that it is a good thing. Shame is not yours because someone else is unable to process your gifts in a healthy way. If there is any shame (and I personally think you should own none), it is that your gifts were wasted on those who were unable to appreciate them while someone else who could, went without. Better to spend time sharing your gifts with those who deserve them than feel shame, which benefits no one and least of all you.
He couldn’t deal with energy and I couldn’t deal with his .
Being a super hyper vigilante, I would catch him in thing’s he claimed I had no business in like cheating. But I kept on loving him. Trying to help him, like so many other’s. In reality I needed to help myself.
And even now, I miss him. Sick thinking. Dis-eased thinking. Not being raised to know any different, as my mom and sister are narcissists.
HG is right. The fight to change being attracted to narcissists will be a life long thing.
There is something T that narcs allow us to do , is to use our talent for intuition, hypervigilance, listening skills and in a way we feel in « the zone « we feel that we are using our gifts … but it’s just we are using it for a lost highly manipulative cause and we become more and more rightly intuitive and confused at the same time with the gaslighting and other techniques .
We call them out… but in reality we should call ourselves out – this is what this site tells me.
My skills are true skills but they turn against me in a relation with a narc.
Hope that makes sense !
Omj,
Yes, thank you.
It makes total sense!
I understand T… it’s like I’m ate up with it. I think it comes from the way I was raised. I always say that I have catholic guilt and I’m not even Catholic.
Best wishes to you T as you continue to find peace.
Yes BKK, lol, the feeling of guilt sucks!!!
Hey T… I just now read more of your story. It sounds like you went through hell… a pain that you didn’t deserve.
And I understand what you were saying about your empathic abilities. It sounds as though he was threatened by your qualities.
Sometimes I think that they see that inner contentment within us, and they want it so badly… so they try to take a piece of ours. They end taking our ‘peace’ and replace it with turmoil. There is nothing about it that is fair. But I do believe that the enlightenment we receive here will continue to prove beneficial for you.
Again, best wishes.
Thank you so much.
Still going though hell. I’m sure he’s moved on, and for the first time in glad. But I figure if I keep walking through it that everything will get better. HG and everyone here helps me feel a lot less alone.
I’ve read one in three people have NPD.
Cheers to all of us fighting the good fight.
T
Don’t feel shame over being empathic. It really is a strength.
Separate that which is absorbed to understand yourself on a deeper level.
.. and thank you very much too, BurntKrispyKeen.
Please try not to feel shame at what you have experienced. At heart, you are not manipulative or deceitful and so you didn’t suspect that someone would wilfully lie to you and emotionally abuse you. There is absolutely no shame in being an honest and trusting person. None at all.
You have empathy and a conscience. They are wonderful qualities to have.
Shame is a debilitating, hurtful emotion and in a way, it is another form of emotional thinking that is detrimental to your wellbeing. It is an illusion that you have believed, but it has no logical truth.
I can see so many good-hearted and well-meaning individuals who are willing to help and support people they’ve never even met on this blog. You are included in this group. If you could see yourself and think of yourself in the same way others here see you and think of you, you would have satisfaction and a quiet pride about yourself. That is my honest opinion 🙂
Avoiding big time.
And yes, in only speaking for myself, I, and my life is a mess.
Ouch.
Thank you HG.
I remember when Narc 3 ghosted after 4 years together.
Send him a text with the picture of the Christmas tree .. he said « wow » and that was it. Silence.
After 4 Years.
The first month – you rationalize – because he has given you silent treatment and quasi disengagement before , you think he will return.
That shall past.
It’s Christmas – he is with his familly. January .. ok he will text soon. For 1.5 years after – I was in my emotional turmoil – Battle until a friend told me what happened to her with him. She went to golden to devaluation in one night . She woke up with him and saw him for what he was and went nc and is still today.
This is when I started to heal and go over the emotional sea .
I was so damaged.