The Physics of Narcissistic Abuse — You Can’t Heal in the Same Place You’re Getting Sick

You can’t stay with a narcissist AND be okay

I’ll love him harder.

I’ll love him better.

I’ll lose myself in loving him to the point of making myself sick.

Then he’ll change, right? Then we can go back to how it used to be when I wasn’t so tired, when the reflection wasn’t a stranger, when my heart didn’t break every time he looked at me without an ounce of remorse.

Back when he wasn’t as mean, when he wasn’t as controlling, when he didn’t laugh at my weakness every time I sobbed and begged him to stop hurting me.

So, I waited.

I stuck it out. I stayed for the sake of the children and because I didn’t want to break up the family and every other excuse I clung to so tightly my palms bled.

While I stuck it out, I decided to focus on myself instead. Maybe I could work on all the “issues” he said I had. I could do better, after all. There was always room for improvement.

Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll focus on my own mental and emotional health. I’ll focus on my kids, my home, my career.

Surely that would distract me from the pain I was in from morning until night. And maybe, just maybe, we’d be okay. Our marriage would be okay. I would be okay.

Meanwhile, days turned into weeks, then months, then years.

Time passed — another anniversary, another birthday, another holiday.

He got worse.

And I got sicker.

This is the physics of narcissistic abuse

As long as I looked into the eyes of the person causing my pain, there was no way I was going to be okay. As long as I stayed in the same place I was getting sick, there was no way I could heal.

That’s how trauma works. It’s created. And it’s recovered from.

But the creation and recovery cannot coexist.

Because physics.

When you live with a narcissist, when you love them and are tied to them, whether through marriage, children, or blind loyalty, you exist in a state of perpetual danger to your emotional, mental, and physical health.

Like taking a long, deep drag on a cigarette when you already have lung cancer (and by the way, if you have children, they’re inhaling the secondhand smoke).

There’s the geography of it as well.

When a narcissist walks into the room, you’re in the presence of their indifference, their cruelty, and their lack of empathy. The smirk on their lips, the cold stare from black eyes, the biting words that leave their mouth — all are aimed straight at you.

You’re not just the target. You’re the bullseye.

Then, when a narcissist walks out of the room, the toxic fumes of their presence leave you covered in confusion, questions, and doubt.

While your mind works overtime trying to explain — and make excuses — to your broken heart, which can’t understand what’s going on, your body buckles from the pressure.

And starts to break.

The chemicals in your brain change. Your nervous system is rewired. The lining of your stomach is shredded.

And as long as you stay in the same room a narcissist keeps coming back to, the worse your emotional, mental, and physical health is going to get.

You can’t count on love to save the day or rescue you or defend your reason for staying because love isn’t what keeps you in that room.

It’s trauma and your bond to it.

Likewise, the house where you live with a narcissist isn’t a home. It’s an isolation ward where you’re quarantined with the very virus that’s making you sick.

And reinfecting you.

But maybe the virus will change, you think.

Yeah, that’s what kept me waiting. Waiting for change that would never come. Waiting for a narcissist to be different. Waiting for the pain to stop so I could breathe again.

It wasn’t until I escaped and put space between me and what was making me sick that I could look back and see the dark mushroom cloud hanging over the life I used to live.

Like standing on top of a mountain and gazing at the pollution covering the city below.

With the sun on my face and clean air filling my lungs, I could only see the truth from up above.

I could only heal from the outside looking in.

And by getting far away from that room.

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