How to get out of a Narcissistic Relationship with Shamanic Healing
Shamanic healing can help to heal the effects of being in an abusive relationship with a narcissist – and help bring about resolution – because it delves much deeper into the roots of the abusive relationship and the individual in it, than any other type of therapy.
I have worked worldwide as a shamanic healer and spiritual teacher for nearly twenty years now. Shamanic healing is the oldest form of healing on the planet, and it forms the basis of most modern-day medicine and therapy. It must be remembered that we are complex beings who exist on many different levels, not only the mental level, but also the emotional, energetic, physical and spirit/soul levels. Conventional therapy is excellent at assisting people on the mental level – but what about the other levels? My personal belief is that if a traumatic event affects us, it affects us on all levels of our being, and therefore in order for the traumatic event to be healed effectively, all levels of our being need healing.
And what I have found with my clients who are caught up in abusive relationships with narcissists is that they are deeply entangled with their partner, mentally, emotionally, energetically, physically and also on a soul level. I believe this level of entanglement is one of the reasons people find it so hard to leave such difficult relationships – no matter how great their levels of support from family and friends, no matter how unhappy they are, or, most importantly, despite their own logical understanding that the relationship is not good for them and possibly even dangerous for them – they still cannot find it in themselves to leave.
How to get out of a Narcissistic Relationship with Shamanic Healing
Narcissistic relationships are difficult because they are insidious – they creep up upon us a millimetre at a time, so subtle we are hardly aware of it. There is a gradual erosion of self and trust in self. I was in an abusive relationship many, many years ago and I remember my partner telling me how direct debits worked. He was completely wrong – and I worked at a bank – but I had been worn down so much I agreed with his comments and then questioned myself – had I got it wrong? No! Of course, I hadn’t! But this is the degree to which you lose your faith and trust in yourself. It got to the point where if I said the sky was blue, he would disagree and say, “No, it is green,’ and I would look up and think, ‘Is it green?’ Over time, constant abuse and destruction of personality take their toll and suddenly you find you can’t make a decision to save your life.
Additionally, science suggests that huge levels of stress hormones can affect the normal functioning of the hippocampus and amygdala – the areas of the brain essential for good decision making and the processing of emotions. And having been there myself, I know there is nothing more stress inducing than living in an abusive relationship with a narcissist.
My years of helping clients in this area have highlighted that there are also patterns in abusive relationships. The client may be the child of a narcissistic parent or simply may not have received the love and attention they needed as a child. One client saw a pattern with her parents – her mother was emotionally unavailable and her father physically and emotionally unavailable. She told me,’ I would try to do anything I could to please my father when he was around.’ This pattern of literally doing anything in order to be loved – at the expense of one’s own identity – then follows into subsequent relationships. Her husband was a narcissist and abused and demoralised her. Eventually leaving him, she quickly found herself in another abusive relationship with a narcissist. He would shame her, blame her, criticise her, not speak to her for days and do everything he could to demoralise her and downplay any of her significant achievements.
Her friends were literally screaming, ‘Just leave him!’ But even though she could see their point, something in her held back. He would give her the tiniest kindness and she would cling to it like a huge rock in a stormy sea, believing he had suddenly ‘turned a corner’. My client – like many people who find themselves in abusive narcissistic relationships – is a sensitive, empathetic soul. She wanted to ‘help’ him, thinking that one day – if she could just be perfect enough to be loved – he would see the error of his ways and turn into a nice person. This – just in case you are wondering – is NEVER going to happen! And given her childhood, she had no other model for relationships, so in many ways this was her ‘norm,’ …an uncomfortable comfort zone. (Personally, I hate the term ‘comfort zone,’ – the term ‘known zone’ is much more accurate).
How to get out of a Narcissistic Relationship with Shamanic Healing
So where does shamanic healing come in and how can it help someone in an abusive relationship with a narcissist?
As discussed, while therapy is excellent, we do not only exist on a mental level and in my opinion, it is also important to address and heal all of the other levels of our being. In the case of my client above, we found a huge degree of entanglement on an energetic and soul level between her and her partner. Here is a list of a few of the things we found.
- My client and her partner shared a huge number of past lives together. In these past lives she was often sacrificed or murdered by him in some way. In others she was betrayed by him and often tortured or killed as a result. In many of the lifetimes, he was in a position of significant power over her. In the very few lifetimes where she was in her power, he caused her downfall.
- Energetically, things were very messy between them. He had created psychic hooks between them which we found in various places in her back, giving her the feeling that she was tied to him and unable to move forward. Additionally, there were a number of black cords in place attaching their energy bodies together, so he was literally not only draining her of her life force energy and personal power, but also sending his heavy energy down the cords so that her energy body had to process and clear it. (Please note that her partner would not be aware of these constructs on a conscious level and many of the entanglements were created in former lifetimes in which he misused his power). My client would say that it felt like he ‘had his claws in her.’ We would also find that he would create energy blocks in her energy body, particularly in her throat area – cutting her off from the wisdom of her body and speaking her truth, or blocking her sacral chakra – her power centre.
- Psychic attack – we found that when we tried to build her power back up by the processes of power retrieval and soul retrieval, energy exchange or hugely important inner child work, he would turn up psychically and try and prevent the work from taking place, so I repeatedly would have to banish him from the healing space.
- We also had to plough through an array of ‘soul contracts’ – effectively binding her to him and preventing her growth. Such contracts act as magnets and can attract things to us that are not helpful to our journey, so they must be broken.
How to get out of a Narcissistic Relationship with Shamanic Healing
The details above are not intended to scare you, but to help demonstrate that very often your abusive partner did not just ‘show up’ out of the blue because of the poor relationship you had with your parents, or simply that you make ‘bad choices in relationships.’
There are a few key things to remember:
- We are not our bodies, we are souls who have had long, long journeys over many, many lifetimes in many different worlds. We tend to incarnate into soul groups, the same souls playing different roles. For example, in this lifetime your son may be your son, but in a previous lifetime he may have been your father, your grandmother, your wife or even your enemy. Your best friend in this lifetime may have been your mother or your husband in a former lifetime. Actually, there are very few people in our life who we haven’t met before. When we say to someone, ‘It’s funny, I feel like I’ve known you forever!’ that’s because you probably have!
- Why are we here? As souls we take up physical bodies and incarnate on earth because earth is a type of school where we come to learn and grow and most importantly, evolve. Life on earth is not reality, it is like a video game, and we hold the controls. The idea is to learn and grow and evolve enough so we reach the stage/level where we can get off the cycle of birth, suffering, old age, death. Everything is about the evolution of our soul and the realisation of Divinity.
- Over the course of all these lifetimes, we create patterns and – particularly in this lifetime – many of us are incarnating to break long standing patterns. Let’s say Bob and Fred incarnate together. In the first lifetime, Bob kills Fred. In the second lifetime, Fred kills Bob. The third, Bob kills Fred again, and so on, …for aons. At some point Bob and Fred need to go on their personal healing journey and develop a higher level of consciousness to consider whether it is helpful for the journey of their soul and the accumulation of karma to keep on killing each other. When Bob and Fred incarnate and decide not to kill each other, the pattern is broken, and Bob and Fred can go on to learn higher lessons. So, like the video game analogy, they can chose to play a different game because they have got to the highest level in the old one.
- This one will challenge you I’m afraid! Before we incarnate into bodies, we decide what we would like to learn on a soul level, we decide the events that will happen in our lives as at that point, we know what we need to experience for the growth of our soul (ie, try not to kill Fred). Now I know a lot of you are going to shout and scream and ask why on earth would I chose x, y, z for myself? And the answer is, because you are trying to experience everything, so you can get off the cycle of birth, suffering and death. Everything that happens, happens to help you to grow and evolve.
You may well be asking yourself how does all this relate to being in an abusive relationship? Well think about it. You are a soul, you have lived for many lifetimes. You are here to learn, to break your patterns and evolve. To make it simpler, let’s go back to my lovely client, who very kindly gave me permission to share her story. The truth is that as a soul she is a very powerful individual with a high degree of spiritual understanding and a lot of light to bring to the world. Yet, in the majority of her past lives, she has played small. She has hidden her light, her power and her wisdom. Repeatedly, she has been slain in some way by her boyfriend, in various guises. In this lifetime however, she has worked with me and started her personal healing journey. We have worked hard to disentangle her energetically from her boyfriend and to bring all of the lost parts of her (her power, soul, energy) back to her.
How to get out of a Narcissistic Relationship with Shamanic Healing
Eventually it got to the point where – very easily – she told him, ‘It’s over, I’m done.’ She hasn’t heard from him since. Since then, she has started to follow her dreams and has re-trained to create her dream career. She has learnt that she doesn’t need a partner to justify her existence or prove her worth and that she can be happy on her own. She has taken up lots of hobbies and enjoys fun times with her friends. She is fitter and more confident than she has ever been.
On a spiritual level, if we look at her ex-boyfriend, was he a curse…. or a blessing? Over lifetimes he has abused her, killed her even and the pattern has repeated and repeated, but in this lifetime, she has broken the pattern. She has stood in her power and said no, this is not for me. No more. This ends now. In terms of her spiritual evolution, this guy is her spiritual teacher, forcing her to break the pattern and step up into her power. So, was he a curse or a blessing? He was a blessing.
Now as the Universe always does, it sent her a test in the form of another man, who did the typical narcissistic love-bombing thing, sweeping her literally off her feet. As is normal, a blissful couple of months went by. She was in heaven. And then, gradually, the cracks started to appear, and he began to lie, gaslight her, belittle her and control her. The difference in this relationship was that she had stronger boundaries, she stood in her power and stood her ground more, and she was able to recognise the ‘red flags’ very quickly. Her energy field was stronger, and he had less control over her. She ended the relationship very quickly, knowing she deserved much better and she continues to push ahead in achieving her dreams.
I hope this article helps a little and makes you think about life – and all of your relationships – from a different perspective. I hope it also helps you to understand that if you are struggling to leave an abusive relationship there are probably many reasons why, not least the atrophying effects of massive stress on the decision-making parts of your brain. Listen instead to the advice and guidance of your friends and those you trust.
Seek help and support from your doctor and a mental health professional who can help you on a regular basis to understand yourself, your patterns and assist you in moving forward. There are also many support organisations and domestic abuse charities out there to help you, so use them.
Know that none of the things you have been told by your partner are true. You are not useless, or unlovable, or unlikeable. You are strong, you can survive in the world, and you do deserve to be treated with love and respect. Everyone does. Know that you count. You are one of God’s precious children and you are loved unconditionally. You may not know what a healthy, loving relationship looks like – as a minimum it is a relationship in which you feel safe and secure cherished and respected, like something precious. Most importantly, start treating yourself with love and respect, you cannot expect someone to treat you differently to how you treat yourself. When your relationship with yourself improves, your relationship with others improves. (The world is a mirror, remember that).
Most of all know that your abuser is not going to change, no matter how ‘good’ you are, or how long you wait, or how much you want them to. If you are scared about living on your own, look at the things that scare you and then start learning about them. If you don’t know how to change a tyre on your car, learn. If you don’t know how to manage your finances, learn. Many banks will help you; your friends might be able to guide you and there is a wealth of information online. Do everything you can to empower yourself. If you are unsure of your rights, go and see a lawyer, or visit a domestic abuse charity and they will guide you. The more informed you are, the more you learn, the stronger you will feel. Instead of asking ‘why is this happening to me?’ ask ‘what can I learn from this?’ think about the bigger picture, your spiritual life. You are here to learn, heal, and break your patterns.
You have a right to happiness, remember that. Everyone does.
If I can assist you on your healing journey then I would be delighted to do so. Please contact me through the appointments page of my website, or feel free to text me on +44 7748 361210.