Interrupting the illusion created by the narcissist

Hi everyone, it's Petra again and I'm so happy to be back. It's been a very long while. So thank you to all of you who reminded me this week to get a new video going and it's great to be back again. So before I get started, I would just like to say Teresa from Ireland, you have been sending me several emails in the past couple of months and I've replied to all of them but they keep being returned to me. So I don't know what's wrong, whether your email address is missing a digit or it's missing a letter. I don't know what it is but I have not been able to get back in touch with you. So if you're watching this, Teresa from Ireland, please know that I'm not ignoring you. It's just that I cannot send messages to you. I don't know what's wrong. So please, could you get in touch with me maybe even through Facebook if you're on there. I don't check my messenger very often but maybe you could send it on there. That might be a way to be able to get in touch with each other. So thank you. A question that keeps coming in is how do I break away from the patterns that have been taught to me through the narcissist? Of course, it goes a lot deeper when you have been raised in dysfunction and when you have come from a home with a narcissistic parent or both narcissistic parents. But if anything, the pattern is always taught to you. You're always programmed in a certain way to show up a certain way, to be a certain way, to think a certain way. It's all programming from the narcissist. So this is the illusion that we get seduced into. And the narcissist has had decades, decades of practice to bring this down to a fine art. And this is a fine art in their mind. But this is what they use to lure us into friendships, to lure us into relationships. When you have been raised in dysfunction, this is the same tactic that they use. And this is why you feel so broken as an adult child of narcissistic parents is that you feel that you will never be able to come to terms with what has been done to you. And maybe that's saying it in a disrespectful way. That's not what I meant. But when I say come to terms, what I mean is finding yourself again, grounding yourself again. This is, don't forget that you have been living in this illusion for years on end. And of course, the same goes for friendships or relationships with narcissists. It is all an illusion. So they build this tactic over years. They have years of practice and they become very, very good at it. And in some cases, this has also been just to digress here, but this has also been the case with very many people that I've spoken to in the past couple of weeks. And I know it was also my experience is that when you were dealing with spiritual narcissists, they will very often have NLP in their training package. They will have gone to great lengths to find out how the human brain works. They will study human behavior. And this is all to assist them in luring you in, into seducing you. So it is really about interrupting that illusion, because that is what you are. That is what you have been living in. That is what you have been functioning in. And when you have experienced the discard, or when you have prioritized yourself and left that relationship, you will still be plagued by the continuous patterns of thoughts that run in and out of your mind every single day, through your dreams, through your nightmares. And this can be very paralyzing. So what it really is, is the programming. That is the bottom line. You have been programmed to be this way. And you know, the narcissist uses this illusion. It is like a cover-up, like a vehicle, where the outside of the vehicle looks very shiny and new and bright and exciting. And then you get into the vehicle, and the doors are locked, and you cannot escape. So people from the outside looking in will see this very beautiful car, this very beautiful vehicle that is just driving around and cruising the boulevard. And they will not realize, those on the outside looking in, will not realize what is really going on on the inside of the car. And this is the illusion that the narcissist wants to create, not only for you, even though you see both sides, because once you are in the relationship, you, of course, are going to know what goes on on the inside, and that is the abuse. But on the outside, outsiders will just not get it. They will not see. They will say, what are you complaining about? This person or these people are so wonderful, and they are so upstanding in the community, and they have so many merits to their name. So we don't know what you're talking about. And this can be so frustrating when you are living in two different worlds at the same time, the world of illusion and the world of reality. And the reality is what you are trying to tell people and show people, but all they can see is the illusion. So it is not up to someone else to say, you need to just step out of it. That's very easily said, but it is a very challenging thing to do. It is up to you to recognize what reality is, and then step out of that illusion. So this is the diversion that is used in order to abuse you. It is, bottom line, it is diversion. And they know they can get away with it, because to some degree you tolerate that. And this is not about putting shame or blame on the targets. That is not what I'm doing. But what I am saying is that we tolerate so much in these relationships, because we get confused between the illusion and the reality. So we put up with so much. We offer advice. We offer help. We offer all matter of craziness to try and get them to see the reality. But this is something that a narcissist is not willing to do, because their reality they know is very ugly. And this is what they are not willing to confront and not willing to face. So we just keep pouring into them and pouring into them. And this is where, you know, this is where you can get so fatigued, compassion fatigue. This is where you get so disillusioned. You get drained of your energy, of your resources. You do not know how to tap into your inner resources anymore. But again, this is all part of it. So in the aftermath of abuse, when you have broken away, when you have been discarded, it is very important to work towards releasing the illusion that you have about yourself. And what do I mean by that? The narcissist not only abuses you physically and emotionally, but they also put certain diabolic programs into your mind. And you start, you know, when you have been living in or marinating in that energy for too long, you start to believe whatever they tell you. So what they are in fact trying to do, and sometimes they do succeed, is that they are making you believe their illusion. So it is very important to start again, I'm repeating myself here, is to start releasing the illusion of who you are supposed to be and start to embrace your essence. That is the bottom line. And there are several ways you can do that. You know, one way is to get the therapy, is to get the coaching that you need for yourself. But what helped me is that I, because I wasn't really sure of what I was involved in at the time, it made it difficult for me to find the right therapy, to find the right coach. And eventually I did. People who would just listen, that was so important, who maybe didn't fully understand the impact of the abuse, but they listened to me. And that to me was very valuable. But when I didn't have the opportunity to speak to someone and when I wasn't being listened to about what I was going through, I would just escape into nature and just write. I've said this before, journal. Journal your thoughts, journal your feelings. And you know, you can even, this is something that I also did, is I created on a sheet of paper, I love using, I love using old school tactics, which is just getting a good book, a notebook and a pen and just writing. And what I did is I created on a sheet of paper is what is it that I want? What is it that I desire? And on the other side of that paper I wrote what is it that I don't want? And what we tend to do when we are trying to break free of the illusion is that we focus on what we don't want. I don't want to be abused anymore. I don't want them to call me. I don't want to be in touch with them. I don't want to feel this way. So we focus on the I don'ts. And what happens, this is the way, you know, energy works, this is where the universe works, is that whatever you don't want, whatever you put your focus onto is what is going to come to you, is what you're going to experience. So become clear about what it is that you want. So that was the one sheet of the paper. On the other side I wrote what I desire is, what I need is, what I'm willing to release is. So it's shifting the focus from the negative to the positive. It's affirming your essence, affirming what you want to draw, which experiences you want to draw into your life. And it's affirming health. It's affirming positivity. It's affirming the goodness, your great traits. It's affirming your talents. So get clear about this. You know, whether you have to do it once or whether you have to do it 49 times as I did, do that. Because you will come to the point, when you focus on what is it that I desire and what is it that I need, that is when it is going to come into your experience. This is just the way the law of energy works. It's, you know, we cannot always understand it. But then again, we don't understand internet. We don't understand Wi-Fi and how that works, or at least I don't. But I know that it works. So put your focus on that. This is what works, is affirming of who you are and not living in the illusion of what the narcissist has told you you are. So what they will often do, even though they may not always verbalize that, but what they are affirming to you when you're in the throes of that abuse, is you are not worthy. You are not worthy of love. You have no self-esteem. You are nothing. You are not, you are not, oh goodness, you are not worthy of living a happy and fruitful life. So all of these things is, we take them on as our own and we marinate in that and we believe that this is who we are. So you have to visually create for yourself on this piece of paper, what is it that you want? What do you desire? What is your vision for your life? And it will get to the point, when you reach page number 49, you can then fold the page in half and tear off what it is you do not want and make a ritual of that. This is what I did. I made a very sacred, in my being it was a very sacred ritual, where I tore off all the things that I did not want any longer and I burnt this. I burnt them outside. Some of those pages I just tore into shreds and I threw them away because I thought it is very symbolic and this is what you will often hear, you know, when you are doing rituals for healing, is that you need to symbolize which part of your journey you are on. So with me this was symbolizing that I'm releasing the old. I'm releasing what I don't want and I'm focusing on what I do want. So I would say do that to all of you watching and you are still caught up in the cognitive dissonance. You are caught up in confusion. You're caught up in pain. Sit and write. Get it out of your system. I've said this so many times before and I will continue to say it because this is what works. Don't forget that you are dealing with an energy warfare, a spiritual warfare. You are dealing with an emotional warfare. So the way to approach that and the way to heal it is holistically. It's not only looking at what's going on, you know, in your thoughts cognitively, but it's also looking at your emotions, looking at what your desires are, what your emotional needs are. It is looking at what are you putting into your body, you know, this is also very huge. What are you eating? Because the worse, the more terrible we feel, the more we stuff our faces with stuff that is not good for us. It is comforting at that time. I remember I would go through bars of chocolate and I would eat a lot of chips or crisps, excuse me, as the English would say crisps. I would just absorb all of this junk food. I would drink excessively, trying to numb out the feeling and not wanting to face the fear, not wanting to face the pain. But just become aware of what it is that you're putting into your body. What are you consuming? This is all part of it. This is how you approach yourself holistically, is to look at yourself. You as a human being have so many different aspects to who you are. So you cannot just look at one aspect, you have to look at all of them. So again, you know, don't forget that you need to interrupt the illusion. The narcissist will never do this for you. They will never interrupt that illusion because it works for them, because we have tolerated it for so long. People only do what they can get away with. And once you say this is my boundary, I am no longer going to tolerate this. This is not working in my life, this is not who I want to be in my life, this is not the way I want to show up. When you start setting those boundaries which will feel extremely scary in the beginning, that is when you are breaking and cutting the chains of the illusion. You're getting rid of all those cobwebs, you're wading through the cobwebs and the muck and the drama and the chaos in order to discover your true essence. So I commend all of you for getting into this, for being willing to look at yourself and to heal yourself through this very painful process. It's painful, it's beautiful, it's magical, it can be very, extremely frightening at times, but it is a beautiful process. And don't forget that when you are cutting the chains of the illusion, it is an ongoing process. You never get to a final destination. If anything, healing from narcissistic abuse is lifelong. And it is not a sentence, it is a beautiful process of rediscovering yourself, getting to know yourself again, getting into friendship with yourself, which I think is the most important thing. Because when you are in friendship with yourself, you always have your best interests at heart. You always have your own back. You know how you want to be treated. You demonstrate to others how you wish to be treated. So this is all part of it. Get in there and enjoy the ride. And when you feel the pain and the anxiety and the fear, sit in that. Acknowledge it. Because whatever you resist, persists. I don't know who says it or who said it, but it is the absolute truth. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it is the truth. Whatever you resist, persists. So don't resist it. Allow it to be. Allow space for your emotions. Allow space for the pain and the anger and the hurt that you're going through. Because that is how to get through it. You cannot go around it. You cannot step aside from it. You have to go through it in order to come out on the other side. So let's all continue this wonderful journey of interrupting the illusion. Because we do not want the illusion. We want the reality of who we are. And we want to look at the spirituality of who we are as beings, as human beings. We are all spiritual beings. And at this point in time, we are experiencing ourselves through human life form. So when you hold on to that and know that your true essence is that you are a spiritual being, you have a soul, you are love. That is it. You are love. Period. But when you have been caught in the illusion of narcissistic abuse, you forget what love is. And you forget that is your inner source. You forget that that is where you come from. You come from this beautiful collective energy of love. And that is where we need to return to. It's the same as the book that Marianne Williamson wrote very many years ago, was The Return to Love. And that is the absolute truth. I need to dig out that book again and read it. Because it is the truth. We have to return to a place of love. And love for yourself first. It's not selfish. It's self-care. It's where you need to be. You need to have that love and compassion that you so freely give to others, but very rarely give to yourself. So thank you again for watching. Please keep emailing me. I know that it takes a while for me to return your emails. But just know that they are truly appreciated. And also for your support, continuing support of this channel. I appreciate all of you. Have a great weekend, wherever you are in the world. And put yourself first. Prioritize yourself first. Speak to you all next time. Bye for now.