What if I told you that there is a 3-step method that can help you permanently recover from narcissistic abuse? And that you’re already familiar with how this method works, you just have to learn how to apply this technique to a new way of seeing the world?
For the past twenty years, I've dedicated my life to teaching and researching the complexities of self-worth, and the dark shadows of narcissistic abuse have caused so many of our struggles. I’m not only a coach, author, and teacher in this field—I’m also a survivor myself.
Today I’m going to share how I recovered from narcissistic abuse, and the 3-step method I’ve used to help thousands of others take back their power, find their voice, and reclaim their life.
The Gambling Problem
I want you to imagine yourself sitting at a slot machine. And maybe right away, you’re already saying, “Meadow, but I hate gambling… I don’t play slots.” But stay with me… because if you have a narcissist in your life… you’re actively playing slots every day.
So back to Vegas. You’re sitting at the slot machine and you’re putting your coins in and pulling the lever, and you watch the reels spin. You wait for them to lock into place, and… no jackpot. So you put more coins in, and you pull the lever, and you wait. No jackpot. You do it again, and again, and again. And every so often, you hear the bells, and the lights start flashing, and you realize you’ve finally won something! Out comes a few coins. And now you’re hooked. So you keep playing. Most of the time you lose, but every so often you win a few coins back. You never know when it’s going to happen, or how much you’re going to win. But you’ve got your eye on the mega-jackpot. You want the big pay out and you’re not going to give up.
Eventually you run out of money, but you feel like you’re so close, you can’t give up now. So you take out your credit card and start playing on credit. Instantly you win bigger than before, so now you’re even more hooked. And you’re trying to make back all the money you’ve spent, but you’re slowly going more and more into debt. So you take out your next credit card… and you max that one out too. Eventually you’re out of credit cards, but all around you—you keep seeing people win. And you think, “I can’t give up now, I’ve worked so hard for this.”
So you keep pulling that lever. You’re lost in the game now… and you can’t stop yourself. You play until you hit rock bottom, where there’s no more money to play, and nothing else to do but walk away. You never did win that jackpot. And you’re not just at zero, you’ve also racked up an enormous amount of debt.
Hitting Rock Bottom: Narcissistic Relationships
And that’s exactly how it works when you’ve been in a narcissistic relationship, but in these relationships you end up paying with your time, attention, energy, and sometimes real money as well… pulling that lever and trying to get a small pay out. Hoping that this time you’ll win something, anything. Maybe you’ll get a bit of connection. Maybe this time you’ll feel wanted, loved, cared for.
The intermittent abuse is what keeps you on the hook. Every so often, it does seem like they care about you. Every so often, it actually seems like they love you. So you keep dishing over your time, your attention, your energy, your hope, your care, your love.
Step 1: Stop Gambling
So the first step to recovery is to stop gambling. Period. This means that you have to stop spending your time, attention, energy, love, and care on anyone who’s a gamble.
I can hear you already, “But Meadow… I don’t KNOW who’s a gamble… that’s my problem!”
I hear ya… so let’s start with this. A gamble is any action that risks danger, harm, or loss for the possibility of a hopeful outcome.
“A gamble is any action that risks danger, harm, or loss for the possibility of a hopeful outcome.”
The key words here are “risks danger, harm, or loss.”
This means that you have to stop spending your time, attention, and energy on anyone that puts you at risk. And yes this is a major. This is some of the most difficult work I do with my clients—helping them navigate who is a gamble and who isn’t.
But here’s the deal, when you’ve hit rock bottom after abuse, you can’t afford to spend a single shred of yourself for a while. Yes, this is hard because it might take your social life down to zero for a bit which is normal and part of the process.
But, this is only the first step to recovery. The gambler who’s in debt, literally can not afford to put one more coin in a slot machine. Does that mean that all slot machines are losers? No. It just means that the gambler is in debt and has no more resources to squander. Until there are enough resources, no more playing slots.
So for this first step, putting a hard stop to gambling—I want you to think of yourself, your sense of self, as the currency that you’re putting into the slot machine. Every time you give more of yourself, you’re depleting your resources. And over time, you’ve gone into debt.
And this isn’t just metaphorical debt… you’ve created mental habits that have to be retrained, you’ve created emotional habits that have harmed you over time, you’ve endured chronic stress which has created a slew of physical body-based issues that you have to repair. You may have a trauma bond that has to be broken (mentally, physically, emotionally, even spiritually). You might have also put yourself in financial debt, or time debt, or any other aspect of debt by giving too much of yourself to someone who was willing to harm you.
So to stop gambling, that often means going no contact, or at least gray rocking or strengthening your boundaries so that you are no longer shoveling your time, energy, attention, and finances to the other person. I’ll go deeper into these techniques in future blogs, for now I just want you to try this new concept of thinking about yourself as currency.
Step 2: Pay Off Your Debt
So onto the second step. Once you stop gambling, you need to pay off the debt. And this works exactly the same as paying off financial debt. To get out of financial debt, you have to spend your money paying off what you owe. To get out of narcissistic debt, you have to spend your time, energy, attention, and care paying off what you owe.
That means for every moment of attention, every worry, every stomach ache, every time you walked on eggshells, every time you discounted yourself… you now have to spend that much time, attention, and energy on yourself—just to get back to zero.
You pay off the narcissistic debt by investing in yourself. Investing in your mental health, your emotional health, your boundaries, your physical health, and your financial health. This means that you give yourself time, attention, energy, care, love, finances, everything. If you’ve ever been in financial debt and paid it off, you know how hard this is. You don’t pay off debt by continuing to use your credit cards. You don’t pay off debt by continuing to gamble. You get out of debt through discipline and intentional action. You cut up your credit cards, you stop buying things on credit, you give everything you can to pay down those loans. And you do this until you’re back to zero.
In future blog posts, I’ll share more details about narcissistic debt payoff, but for now, I just want you to think of this in the same way you think about money. If you keep spending without earning, you go into debt. To pay off debt, you have to pay back what you already spent until you hit ZERO.
Step 3: Build Self-Worth
Once you’re back at zero, you move into the final phase of healing. And that is starting to actually build self-worth. Again, this works exactly like money. If you spend more than you earn, your financial worth goes down. To build financial worth, you have to keep more than you spend.
In the realm of self-worth, you deplete self-worth by spending more of yourself than you keep. To build self-worth, you have to invest more in yourself, keep more of yourself, than you give away. If you want a jumpstart on this, my best-selling book The Worthy Project, covers this in detail. I’ll link it below.
For now, I want you to think of this as the 3rd step. Once you’ve stopped gambling, and paid off the debt, only at that point can you truly start to build self-worth. You do this by only giving what you can afford to give—this means you only spend the amount of time, attention, and energy that you can afford. And in return, you require back fair compensation. This means that you receive enough time, attention, and energy to sustain you. And over time, this builds your sense of self, it increases your value, and it creates a sustainable system of strong self-worth. You do this by being intentional with your actions, staying aware of your inner compass, and reclaiming your voice and power.
so to recap…
stop gambling
pay off your debt
build self-worth
This is the bulk of the work that I do with my clients, it’s what I practice daily, and it is what’s not only helped me recover from narcissistic abuse—but it’s also how I actively repel narcissists from my orbit to this day. To really put this into practice, you need one more crucial piece of that puzzle and that is to understand how to set boundaries. To hear more about boundary red flags and my own embarrassing story about how NOT to set boundaries, read this next: Why 'Friendly' Texts Make You Feel Bad.