The Aftermath: 8 Stages Of Grief After An Abusive, Psychopathic Relationship

Being aware that you’re stuck with an abusive partner and then escaping that psychopathic relationship is really difficult, but at the same time, a truly fortunate thing.

However, you have to realize that ending this relationship won’t immediately heal your scars or comfort your fears. No matter if you ended the relationship or the psychopath let you go, dark times will still be ahead of you.

It will be hard, but you will need to brace yourself and accept the reality. Every loss is painful. But, losing a psychopath from your life requires a bit more effort and energy.

Here are 8 modified stages of grief after ending a psychopathic relationship:

1.UTTER DEVASTATION

You are out of the cage. But, what comes next feels even worse. You’re in disbelief and absolute shock. You don’t know who you are, or what you are anymore. You have no sense of self, nor a sense of belonging somewhere. Your gut is filled with nothingness. The emptiness inside your heart numbs you and triggers a lot of harmful thoughts. You no longer have a will to live.

2.DENIAL, DENIAL, DENIAL

After a certain period of time, the psychopath shows up and throws their happy life in your face. In an attempt to suppress your painful memories and get even with the psychopath you deny your feelings of sorrow and you do your best to prove to them that you’re doing better than them. Your pain eats you alive, but you bend over backward to convince them that you’re having the time of your life. You’re becoming impulsive and aggressive. You’re not rationalizing. You are competing and you’re hurting at the same time.

3.SELF-DOUBT

Time passes by, but the scars remain the same. You now know that there’s nothing you can do about it that will change the course of things. So, you decide to learn something more about them. The deeper you go, the more you read about the dangerous red flags of narcissism, you experience self-doubt. All of a sudden, you start to blame yourself for making the wrong judgment. You keep reading and you keep wondering whether this is a reality, or it was you who made it all up and ruined the relationship. You cannot accept that this happened to you.

4.UNDERSTANDING THE PSYCHOPATH

But, you continue contemplating. And after the self-doubting phase ends, you begin to understand the reasons for their actions. You allow yourself to dive even deeper and you do your best to discover the truth about the monster that was once a part of your life. You are not afraid anymore. Now you simply need to feel what they felt. You want to get inside their skin. You want to understand how their mind works. You want answers. Eventually, you get them, but they enrage you and make you feel disgusted. You suddenly realize that it was all a part of their manipulative game. You were never loved or cared for.

5.RAGE!

You now know the truth. This new-found knowledge triggers your anger. And now the self-doubt is gone. The only thing that is left inside of you is the rage. Hate. Despise. Anger. You become even more obsessed with this person. And everything you’ve once felt comes back to you. All of those repressed, bottled feelings in your soul are out in the open. And none of them is sympathy or compassion. The rage inside of you just keeps on boiling.

6.DEPRESSION

The time slowly passes by and you keep going back and forth between your fiery rage and your depression. One day you believe that you can overcome the pain and move on, and the next you wake up regretting that you’re still alive. The dark veil of depression gently and subtly covers your body. You cannot believe where you ended up. You regret all of your decisions. Reality hits you and you realize that you’ve lost everything dear to you. The worst part is, you now realize that there’s nothing you could do to bring them back. Your world is destroyed. You’re no longer capable of trusting anyone.

7.FEELING AND HEALING

But something else awakens in you and you become aware of how low you’ve sunk. “How did I end up here?” ; “I’m stronger than this.” ; “Why did this happen to me?”.

Slowly but surely you free yourself from the toxicity and you start spending time with people who make you feel good about yourself. There are still some leftover feelings that give you flashbacks of those painful times in your life, but the good news is – you feel like yourself again. You’re finally experiencing all of those things you weren’t supposed to feel with the psychopath. You’re finally free. And it feels good.

8.SELF-DISCOVERY

Step by step you start to discover new things about you. Things that were buried deep inside of you. Feelings that were suppressed for a very long time. You realize that your love and your kindness were never weaknesses, but rather your greatest strengths. You are now stronger to be exactly who you wanted to be. You begin to explore everything around you and you become more confident about the path you’re about to take. You are not afraid to embrace the new you and open your heart to the possibility of love again.