No Contact Mistakes : Item Retention
It is well understood that no contact is the effective approach to tackling our kind. Whether your entanglement with a narcissist was in a romantic context, familial or a friend, the aim is to cut that person out of your life forever so that the cessation of fuel supply forces the narcissist to seek an alternative source and leave you alone. The concept is an easy one ; have nothing to do with us and cut off all means of contact. Execution is somewhat more difficult. You will have to overcome significant emotional hurdles which cause you to either want to continue some form of contact or leaving a route open for an approach to be made “just in case”. You will have to conquer innate empathic desires for answers, to know the truth of what has happened, to know what the narcissist is now doing, whether he or she is alright. You will have to make changes – whether that is blocking numbers, altering e-mail contacts, staying off social media or more significant ones such as moving jobs and/or home. You will also face a determined opponent who will be reacting badly to the sudden cessation of a source of fuel and also the inherent criticism that comes with such a bold move on your part. Dependent on the precise nature of your narcissist, you will be hoovered, often in ingenious and intense manners, you will face appeals to your better nature, your sympathy will be milked, you will be threatened and charmed. Resisting much of this proves difficult and even more so when you are ground down, exhausted and bewildered. Nevertheless, should you grasp fortitude and bolster your resolve to execute no contact, it remains the most effective way of forcing us to seek our fuel elsewhere and in the process provide you with a much needed respite
This road to being left alone is paved with difficulties and often they are of your own making. This may arise from under-estimating who you are dealing with through to the complacency which arises as a consequence of the perception that a period of silence on our part means that it is finally and completely over. There are five common mistakes that are made when people implement no contact and we begin with item retention.
1. Item Retention
People like mementos. Whether it is a reminder of a wonderful holiday in the sun, a trip to a concert or a sporting final, people like to collect something which is a tangible reminder of the experience. A link is made between that item and the experience and picking up that glass lighthouse with different coloured sands inside of it transports the holder back to the sun-kissed shores of a Greek island and the blissful times that were spent there. It might be that pilfered plastic seat taken from the stadium when the football club moved to pastures new and the zealous fans helped themselves to a memento. It may sit in the garden shed, but every so often it is touched or gazed at as the memories of victory (and defeat) come surging back, triggered by looking at this piece of coloured plastic. The associations are powerful. The emotions that were experienced are imprinted on that person and they are able to summon them or indeed the memories and emotions rise in an involuntary fashion just by their eyes looking on the memento. They are transported back to the concert, the triumph of completing a marathon, the first music exam passed, the memory of a relative who in their dying days would sit with that blanket over their knees. Indeed, the blanket is kept in a box so that every now and then, the holder can hold the blanket to their face and smell their deceased relative still and in so doing intense emotions are evoked through such an act.
This is no different with our kind. I have explained about Ever Presence and our instinctive (and in some cases calculated) laying down of triggers throughout our entanglement. This Ever Presence is very powerful and allows us to linger in your memory, maintain a grip on your heart and pave the way for a successful hoover in the future.
Some people make the error of retaining those items which were both gifted to you and which we purposefully left behind. They think that whilst no contact has been implemented there is no harm in having those reminders of better times. The first present that was given to you as we seduced you, a jumper of ours which we have left in the wardrobe which still smells of our fragrance or a particularly special gift given to you on our first anniversary of being together. Sometimes the item may prove to be expensive and/or practical to you and you are loathe to remove it for those reasons. More often however it is because you still wish to retain some reminder of what we had together, so that every once in a while you can sit and hold that stuffed toy, or let your fingers trace the ornate frame of a beautiful landscape we gave you and conjure up the memories of when we were together. It may be one item, it may be several.
Do not do it. All items – be they gifts or our possessions which have been left – must be purged.
By allowing yourself to retain this connection you are enabling us to live large in your memory. This means that you are allowing emotion to govern you, rather than the cool, hard logic which is needed to keep no contact effective and in place. By giving emotion the opportunity to surface and interfere in your no contact you are weakening it. You allow yourself to consider matters such as
“We had such a wonderful time when he gave me this, I wonder what he is doing now?”
“I have always loved this item, I could never get rid of it, we had some special times together”
“It is bittersweet holding this now and thinking of her, but I still crave her. It wouldn’t do any harm just to chat would it?”
“I remember this so well, seems like such a long time ago, I can put it behind me now, so it would not hurt if I contacted him.”
As I have repeatedly explained, there is a reason you were ensnared by our kind. You have an innate ability to attract our kind and be susceptible to our overtures and that will never leave you. Yes, you will become adept at recognising our kind and knowing you ought to stay away from us, but many of you will fall for us again if you allow yourself to interact with us. You cannot help it. Some of you have greater resistance and may well be able to interact without plunging back into the quagmire you once struggled in but why would you ever want to risk finding out what the outcome would be? The fact that you were once ensnared means that there always remains a risk of it happening again. You have acquired the knowledge and that knowledge tells you what we look like, what we do and why you must maintain no contact. That knowledge is based on icy logic and that is why it is effective. As soon as you give any emotional thinking the opportunity to govern you, then this icy logic is abandoned. You may even be thinking “i should not do this” but you are unable to fight the emotional thinking which has taken you over and is drawing you back into our grasp. You will always remain vulnerable to us. That is how you have been built, in the same way that I have been built to always need fuel. You are able to protect this vulnerability by staying away from us and evading the new vultures which come sweeping towards you.
By allowing yourself to retain some kind of trinket, trophy or object you are giving the emotional contagion that we placed inside of you the chance to surface. This then wants to govern your thoughts and once it does, it will create a considerable risk that you will make an approach to us and thus break your no contact. Even if you do not place yourself in a sphere of influence in that way, your nostalgic interaction with this item places you at risk that if we execute a hoover against you, you will crumble and respond to it.
If you keep some totem of your supposed love, a memento of those fabricated ecstasies, you are sitting with a time bomb. It will keep reminding you of us and this will hinder your forward advance which is required to enable you to recover. As you know, much of what we do is designed to paralyse you so that you cannot escape us. This paralysis is caused by our varied manipulations. The keeping of a memento is self-inflicted and a potential for us to infect you again.You are keeping the ghost of us with you. Our haunting is allowed to continue and by glancing on this item, holding it, touching it, smelling it or caressing it you are allowing the poison to continue to flow through you and in so doing the experience which may feel reassuring to you amidst all of the pain that you are enduring, only serves to weaken your resolve. The greatest risk is that you are puncturing holes in your logic vessel as you try to cross the emotional sea (see The Post Discard Battle – Part Two ) and in so doing you will fall into that emotional sea once again. Once that happens it becomes far easier for us to ensnare you.
No matter how strong you might feel, no matter how much you feel that a mere object cannot have such an effect, you ought not to take that risk. Whether it is a gift we gave you, something created through the golden period or a trinket of delightful times then it poses a risk. If those items belong to us, you are exposing yourself to a double risk. Viewing those items has the potential to affect you in the way that has been described above. It is also provides us with a ready reason and excuse to make contact with you and to see you for the purposes of collecting those items. By enabling us to appear directly in front of you, from our point of view at worst we will gather fuel from you and at best we will successfully seduce you once again and resume the Formal Relationship. Once you give us a toe hold, we will take it and use it to hoover you and apply our manipulations once again. Combine this determination on our part with your inherent susceptibility to our kind and the fact that you are allowing emotional thinking to surface and override your logical thinking, you are exposing yourself to danger once again.
Do not keep those items. Purge them all. Return our property and expunge everything else. Retention risks infection.
38 thoughts on “No Contact Mistakes : Item Retention”
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This article has prompted me to do some more clearing out. I deleted all our text conversations when I blocked him, but I’ve discovered screenshots of some of his messages saved on my phone from last year. I had such a laugh though. Some would be worthy of the label PPPP but I also found one worthy of ‘mealy mouthed, contrary, pontificating, pedantic, supersillious, sanctimonious and grandiose bollocks’. I haven’t deleted that. I’m going to save it until a prime example of twattish mid-range is needed.
All this deleting is very freeing!
Well done.
Hi notme…i just wanted to say congrats on blocking! Just be careful bc its freeing at the beginning but theres a phase where it hits you and you can doubt your decision or at least thats how its been for me. I hope you keep going strong!!🤗
Completely off topic but HG your diverse lexicon and almost musical use of the English language is so addictive.
I can’t help thinking that half your coterie must be drawn to you by your verbal and written eloquence.
It’s such a stark and welcome difference from eye-watering posts online containing “could of” or rather horrifyingly “has well has” as opposed to “as well as.”
You’re no stranger to typos but it’s clear they’re incidental rather than due to ignorance.
Bluntly put : your intelligence as manifested in your execution of vocabulary is better than sliced bread.
Thank you.
Yes, the typos are annoying. I would prefer for them to vanish, but then that would reduce my output and for now, they remain an occasional collateral irritation.
No matter, they don’t detract from the content.
I do my best, Sir 🙂
“Retention risks infection.” I always love those powerful last-liners.
Keep them as logical watchword to diminish your emotional thinking.
I did it H.G. I did it. I finally blocked him not just on social media but on my phone as well. I have nothing I am attached to. He is such a fool ( lower mid-range ) low IQ fool. Thank you I would not have been able to do without your teachings.
Well done.
My favorite final move…
Leave (Often disappear) and send everything back through the mail…. no letter… no warning… nothing
Block
And let the silence really begin
The sound of silence is beautiful – so underrated
Can I keep the Ninja blender I just found on a shelf (new in the box) in the basement? I was happy to have snatched $75 out of him after he lost a ton of money gambling. I’m not kidding. I just took it out of the box today and it says it crushes ice with no lumps. I believe the box.
💯 on this one. I’ve been saying I had the situation managed. Not true, it turns out. I’m staggering around with a new dagger in me this week. I did a video collab w the Narc last week, partly because he wanted me to use the green screen he got for my birthday. The price for this was excruciating, and one of his discarded primaries who knows who I am shared my video to their page and gave me a shout out and additional viewers.
Don’t do it y’all! Don’t be like me, who can’t stand up to the Narc!! 🏃♀️ 🏃♀️ Run away!! Step away from the Narc! Put down the Narc pipe!!
Time to try again 😣
Cogra002.
Shitty deal. Everything seems easier in theory and you’re not alone in that. No shame – just start again and read, read, read.
NarcAngel 👍👍
Oh cogra it’s ok, a lot of us have this happen, especially this time of year. I’ve actually had two try to contact me this weekend, the one I didn’t even realize was a narcissist until he contacted me on Sunday and a light bulb went on. The other tried through a friend and failed. I haven’t been with HG this long to fall for that garbage! You will be fine. Just try again. One step and one day at a time. 😘
It’s hard to imagine, but the Narc is upset his other discarded primary featured me on his page, lol. What a weird twist in the plot, lol. That’s some of what the “punishment “ is about.
I can imagine he wouldn’t like that very much at all cogra.
He did not. There was further injury when my video trounced his.
Things are going from bad to worse in this scenario.
Yes I think it’s best you just start again with your no contact cogra.
congra002
Hugs. Forgive yourself and move on. Live and learn.
Thanks y’all. I’m just trying to get through the holidays peacefully at the moment.
He’s so angry w me. It’s also because I caught on to a copy/ paste to me that was for someone else. I called it out only because I get sick of him thinking I’m stupid. But there’s no point, it just always gets worse for me, not like he would think about his his behavior.
So I had 3 Narc injuries this week that we’re not intended. This is the consequence of being painted black right now.
Cogra
Be aware that the copy/paste may not have been an accident, but a ploy to get a response (fuel) in which this case was successful.
Thank youre right, NA. Passive aggression. Seems to be a mid-range specialty. Lesser aren’t passive, just aggressive, and uppers are more subtle.
Greaters, not uppers.
Sorry, my drug-addled adolescence is talking.
cogra002,
Painted black is a good way to RUN!!!!!!! Hopefully you will be ignored for sometime. Doesn’t matter if he is angry. Start your NC again and let him stew in his “anger”
HG, I know that one of his T-shirts is in the house as he told me he left it, but surely you don’t mean I should find it and send it to him?! I’d be afraid it would cause a hoover trigger. I could find it and put it in the bin. I have avoided doing this as I know it’ll smell of him and I don’t want to touch it and turn back into a sap. Maybe that’s just a cop out but my ET kicks in just thinking about going to get the bloody thing. Eugh!
Awww notme. Use a stick so you don’t get too close and then just bin it. You’ve got this. Just get brexit done!
Thanks Sister Smith, I got rid of it late last night as it was bin day today.
Bin Day for him, yay!
Ah that’s brilliant notme! Bloody well done!
I remember this article from before and you telling me to get rid of items HG in a consultation. Well, he never gave me much, but i recently sold the silver rolo and a silver bracelet (which was supposed to have been an eternity ring – it was given to devalue me). I sold them on eBay and they paid for the dog to have his balls lopped off.
Interestingly, on a note to do with this, rather than giving me expensive stuff, (i hardly got anything, particularly nothing on birthdays and Xmas ) my ex was good at getting stuff out of my house and into his. Especially stuff which was important to me. In particular there was a painting i had, it was bought by me for a special reason. A gift to myself many years ago. It was beautiful, an original and and a painting that represents beauty and dreams/ambitions. I never discussed it with him, or the reasons i bought it, but he seemed to know even without discussion its internal value to me as he singled it out to take to his house. It may have been that he picked up on the fact that i always stored it away carefully. Anyhow, he had it in his hand and was on the way to the door saying that he had a place for it at his house and we could ‘share’ each other’s things in each other’s houses as we would always be together. I refused, which i hardly ever did. So luckily it never left my side. He didnt argue the point but i did notice that he managed to take and ‘savour’ other stuff of mine. It reminds me of a serial killer taking items from a victims body. What are your thoughts on their filching items away HG?
Sense of entitlement, no emotional empathy, lack of boundary recognition, unconscious act committed by the narcissism to provoke and maintain opportunity for the later assertion of control over the appliance.
What you did there was quite literally the dog’s bollocks. Well done.
Hilarious. Absolutely, HG 🙂