10 Signs That You're Finally Over Your Narcissist

Anyone can rationalize why the past was a lesson and convince themselves that they are happy. But despite the awesome people you’re with, if your past still haunts you in your darkest moments, then it still owns you.

"He works at this agency now," a mutual friend said, and I wasn't interesting. It wasn’t a dogged "I need to avoid everything about him." There was no emotion, yet it wasn’t apathy. The best analogy I can think of is that it’s like garbage bins lining the sidewalk. You know they’re around, but you don’t really register their presence. Nor do you want to gravitate toward them.

Narcissists prey on over-givers with an inflated sense of responsibility. Partners of narcissists have problems receiving—they don’t believe they should, shun favors, and repay kindness 10 times over. And they still feel bad. I know it intimately because that was who I was fundamentally. And I understood that if I couldn’t allow myself to receive, then I would only attract people in my life who needed fixing but didn’t want that. Indeed, I saw it in a subset of historical "friends" I hid from the healthy majority of my circle.

For a while, I loathed the word "rescuer." I was an adoption counselor at the animal shelter when he first knew me, and I brought stray animals home. My master's thesis centered on prisoners’ rights, then I became a psychologist.

Many women preface their expectations and boundaries with, "Even though I was once in an abusive relationship," and it floors me that they have to justify their demands. Perhaps you may feel that way for a little, as I did. Know you have the right to let go of that story. Failing once in a business venture doesn’t doom you to demand less from life.

I used to bend over backward, feeling like a dancing monkey, trying to prove that I was intelligent rather than a privileged "air-headed pretty girl." So I piled on responsibilities to show I could "do it all": Living that internal conflict was exhausting, crippling my identity. So of course, I couldn’t trust my hunches about what and who were bad for me.

We are governed by a set of stories we’re often unaware of.

When bad things like abuse happen, it shatters our world of assumptions and we become the puppets of stories like, "Only bad things happen" and, "The world is a dangerous place." This is how a happy-go-lucky person suddenly becomes bitter and hypervigilant.

When you are truly free of your narcissist, you know in your bones that good things will happen to you and that there are good people in the world. You aren’t doggedly forcing yourself to "be grateful" while actually feeling miserable. You truly see and experience the magic in the present and future, even if life throws you the curveballs it throws everyone.

As a young girl, I was guilted into being nice and turning the other cheek. Nobody taught me what boundaries were. No matter how tough I was, when someone wormed their way into my heart, I didn’t know I could have boundaries. Here’s what boundaries really are.

Just as standards are the "Hell yes!" in your life, boundaries are the "Hell no!"

We are attracted to narcissists because they feel familiar. But no matter how we know that logically we won’t tolerate subpar treatment, a part of us gravitates toward them. This is because there is something about the dynamic that reminds us of something familiar.

When we're young, our minds are immature and we form stories about the world and our worthiness based on conclusions we jump to. And we repeat these scenarios like a tape on loop, until our minds get closure.

I always ask my clients, "How does your body feel around a narcissist?" Do you find your brain relentlessly justifying why they are good people? If there were a song that could capture how you feel around a narcissist, what would it be?

It’s normal for people to start doing things to show their ex-partner what they’re missing. Eventually, though, you start to live for yourself. You reclaim the parts of you he locked away. You boldly pursue the things you never dared to. And you take life by the balls.

But you’re not just doing it to escape; you’re becoming whole. That happens by sorting out the weak spots through which your narcissist wormed his way in.

Let me explain what healing is. Healing isn’t just talking things away and implanting another mindset. We are governed by both our hearts and minds; unfortunately, we oscillate between both rather than listening to their combined wisdom. Trauma is stored within our cells. This means it cannot be released with logic—hence why sometimes people say they’ve been in therapy for decades and nothing’s changed.

When you heal yourself, your heart and mind play a symphony with each other, and that’s when beautiful things happen. You are at peace. You learn to take care of yourself, and you learn to upgrade your life because you’ve given yourself the permission to do so.