The Emotional Sea – The Second Battle
The first battle that takes places post disengagement or escape involves the Emotional Sea. That First Battle 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. You will make the common mistakes that victims of narcissists make for two fundamental reasons :-
Most people do not know what no contact truly involves. This is because most advisors on the subject do not understand our kind in the way that I do and thus you end up with well-intentioned but limited, flawed and even dangerous advice.
Your emotional thinking is too high and torpedos the No Contact Regime.
You must know what you are dealing with. You must know how to implement and maintain a Total No Contact Regime. You must understand what Emotional Thinking is, where it comes from, what it does and what you must do to conquer it.
If you do not do these things, you will never cross the emotional sea.
It will, in all likelihood take several First 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 disengaged from, or you prepare yourself for the eventual disengagement in a manner which means you no longer have to endure the First 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 be a therapist, a friend, the content of a book, something you saw on YouTube or preferably 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 disengaged from 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 begin to realise that you are contributing to the failure of the no contact regime because you are being led by your Emotional Thinking.
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? Here are some examples.
- 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, 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 disengagement.
The sooner you access my work, the sooner you follow my direction and APPLY my work, the faster you will build that aircraft carrier and the sooner you will get across the emotional sea. Need some encouragement – then gain inspiration by reading here
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.
I will give you the tools to build that vessel, you can build it and you will cross the emotional sea and success in the Second Battle of the Emotional Sea.
Had enough of drowning?
25 thoughts on “The Emotional Sea – The Second Battle”
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Your posts are precious. You help so much to develop logical thinking which I obviously lacked. It is so clear that the whole relationship with a narc was a fight. The funny thing is that narcs also have some kind of emotional dependence on a victim. It is their need to be a boss, to be a winner, to be the only one who decides what comes next, to have a total control over a situation. They want to see a victim destroyed, begging, crying or being scared etc. But when they see you slipping through their fingers they feel frustration, they hate it, probably even suffer feeling powerless. Am I right or it is my emotional thinking conning me?
1. Most narcissists do not wish to destroy you, that is a common mistake generated by those who do not understand narcissism.
2. What we want is the Prime Aims – this includes fuel and control. Obtaining those MAY result in your destruction as a collateral consequence, but that is not at all common.
3. You being scared, crying or begging is fuel and denotes control (see 2 above).
4. If you are slipping through our fingers, this threatens our control and causes irritation, frustration hatred etc in the narcissist until such time as control is asserted. See The 3 Assertions of Control to understand more, that is required reading.
I do understand that their primary aim is not to emotionally destroy a victim. Narc I am dealing with has some traits of a white knight which is good…sometimes.
What I mean is that if a necessary in his opinion punishment was not effective or even made him look a stupid person it brings frustration. He is not getting his fuel=power. So it bruises his ego.
Understanding a bit a narcissistic dynamics I can clearly see what he was punishing me for in some cases.
Thank you once again for your answer! I definitely need some more reading.
You are welcome.
HG is it necessary and advised to carry out some type of no contact on narc work colleagues also .
How would you do this ?
I’m panicking a bit as I have to face it this week after being off work for summer.
I will consult again re this but have to wait a couple of weeks until I have the means again.
Kiki
1. Yes, see Cross Pollution.
2. How to Handle the Narcissist at Work.
“Most narcissists do not wish to destroy you, that is a common mistake generated by those who do not understand narcissism.”
This is the first time I’ve ever come across this information. I would assume it’s essential to know and understand as it helps to reduce ET. Is this correct? It’s like he’s from another fucking planet.
It would also explain the look on my narcs face in the early days when I would react to his blatantly selfish or insensitive behaviour. He put an end to that by making me feel threatened with potential violence.
I notice I feel lighter each time I’m able to understand something a bit better re NPD…
Thank you.
A
You are welcome.
This misunderstanding arises because
1. There is too much rubbish written about narcissism by people who do not understand it and they tend to regurgitate the same errors written by other people , and
2. ET causes victims to believe they will be destroyed, it is an honest mistake.
Logic demonstrates that for most narcissists this is not the case. I do not have time in a comment to expand on the multiplicity of reasons as to why destruction is not sought, but you can understand some of them from the article Why The Narcissist Wants You Dead.
Thank you HG. You have been very helpful and generous in replying to my comments etc. When I’m in a position to book a consult, I will.
I’m beginning to gain a better understanding of NPD and as a result I’m feeling stronger.
A
I have zero interest in any sort of interaction with him. He has been blocked and I have no interest in knowing what he is doing and who with. I have been occupying myself with learning about narcissism and what I went through so as to make sense of it.
Me too.
Hang in there.
xA
I think I will make it now finally
That storm I mentioned in The Emotional Battle The First Battle post…. is absolutely raging. Over 3 hours of constant lightning. How appropriate! It’s interfering with the Internet connection. Lol. Typical. Nature is doing this & it’s beautiful to watch.
This piece of writing is really good HG. It really explains very well & the suffering is bloody awful (right at this minute, I’m just enjoying the real storm outside & not feeling mine). This post makes sense too! Next time I see my ‘normals’ friend(s), I’ll get this post out & show em why using your work is the best therapy choice for me 😊
Lurve the pic too.
This battle took me many times even with the knowledge of what he is.
ET still trying to win but Logic shuts it down. Today is 5 months NC.
If you are in this battle be kind to yourself. If you fail get up and do it again and again and again if need be.
And keep telling yourself it is “NOT my fault”. “I did nothing wrong”
Congratulations on 5 months NC!! 💖💖💖
Ashley,
Thank you. How you doing?
I am really good, thank you for asking! 💖 I did get hoovered a week ago. I felt surprised that it happened, but I didn’t feel any emotions for him at all. Everything I have learned here came full circle. It was exactly a year later that he hoovered & he did it by emailing a business email of mine. He said he had a horrible year but “wouldn’t go into detail as he didn’t have the energy to focus on that much negativity when he has so much work to do,” that he gained 25 pounds, hoped I was well, & one of his thinly vailed insults to put me down. His email was an unattractive combination of pity plays, blameshifting, trying to have control over me, & arrogance. It was a great highlight of everything I learned here about zero accountability & zero remorse. He behaved as though he picked up right where he left off & I was expected to accept his absence & lack of explanation because of all the “work he had to do.” Haha!! I deleted & blocked it
Ashley Get back on the NC train and ride it to happyville.
Yup! 😀 he doesn’t have my phone number or any other ways so I’m all set! Only way for more would be if he sent gifts to my uncle (his friend) in which case I would tell my uncle to discard anything or not give it to me or tell me.
Ashley;
I had one who ghosted me for months, then suddenly happened to call on my birthday. I guess I was supposed to ask him why he hadn’t answered my calls, even just to confirm it was over. I was to cry, beg, demand explanations. And he could drop his narc bomb and spoil my birthday.
Except I had a few friends over, all of whom he knew. “So-and-so, whatsisname, and whatchamacallit are over celebrating my birthday, would you like to join us?” I sounded so perky I was genuinely appalled.
“Uh, it’s your birthday?” And he just happened to call that day, as one of my guests muttered afterwards. What’re the chances?
“Sure, ya wanna come over? We’re doing–” ( I forget what we were drinking, but it was alcoholic. Very).
He mumbles an excuse and hangs up.
A few months before I had been coming home from my temp job, curling up on the floor in fetal position without bothering to remove my coat first, and HOWLING. (I tried to keep it down after a neighbor knocked on the door and I apologized, explaining I was preparing for an audition.)
Awwwwww. I am so glad he was not able to ruin your birthday!! That makes me smile. 😀 My own birthday is coming up less than a month from now & there is no way my ex can do anything unless he were to send gifts to my uncle for me. I will give my uncle instructions that if anything comes do not tell me, donate it, or if it’s a check set fire to it
Ashley:
Beautiful.
❤❤
Kim
Congratulations on your five months!
And thank you for this post. I am fighting this second battle right now with a familial narcissist. Not always easy. So what you said, along with HG’s article above, is great encouragment.
Fiddleress
Thanks for the kind words. Encouraging words are all we have to give each other as we all air our dirty laundry. Glad mine could help you💕