This is the only article that will give you full validation. Validation is not helpful for healing. However without it, the pain may be too much. The seeing oneself may be too much. As such the paradigm may reject the healing. So in this way, validation is important for healing. If you ever feel too challenged by these articles, or angry when reading these, come back to this page. It's ok. Give yourself a break. You have to be hard on yourself to break through your paradigm, yet you have to be good with yourself so that you don't break under the paradigm. You will need to find this balance. Only you can heal yourself. So set your own pace. Only you can challenge your own paradigm in a way that it is effective. The paradigm will fight back. So be prepared.
The healing requires that you look at yourself. That you understand the roles you play. You may not be ready to accept that and your mind will fool you that these articles are wrong. Well, even now you may ask, who says that these articles and path to healing are correct? Why they can't be wrong? They can. The difference is that in the former your mind tells you these articles are wrong because the paradigm does not want you to heal - so it's a push-back yet the latter is a balanced view of your mind analyzing (these articles and) what is best for you. In the former, the paradigm controls you and in the latter you control the paradigm. The purpose of these articles and healing is to get you to the second stage. The process is more important than the content.
Let's state that again: The process of reading these articles is more important than the content of the articles. The content is purely intellectual and thus useless in itself, yet the process of reading it, and studying it, is an emotional process as it pushes against the paradigm.
For a Codependent it is less painful if we focus on how bad the abuse and the narcissist was. Then we feel justified in all the emotions we feel and we can't control - nor want to. Nor even see. And this state prevents us from healing. The focus on the narcissist becomes a defense mechanism of our own paradigm (do you see a parallel with a narcissist here?). So again, this is not to invalidate that the abuse did not happen, or somehow was your fault, or that narcissist is not that bad, but this is about getting away from externalizing our pain, process it internally, so we can recognize it in the future, not feed it, and hold the pain and identity internally.
So initially, you should expect to reject these articles. Perhaps even feel that we spread hatred. That we are wrong. Your mind will tell you how you are the victim of your abuser and how you have been abused. That is actually not wrong. But again, the reason your mind will tell you that - and keep insisting on it - and keep you stuck in it, is that you stop the process of healing. Healing means taking control of your Paradigm. It WILL Push back and use you reason to do so. It will NOT give you some kind of illumination. Your mind will use the truth against you. The paradigm will tell you the truth only if it serves itself, and will lie to you if it again serves itself.
So this article is to give you the validation of everything you suffered. Because that is true.
Read the Codependent Paradigm and learn it well. It describes how your mind works. How you attract the abusers. And how you are abused. You did NOTHING to deserve the abuse. The abuse has NOTHING to do with you. And the abuse is NOT your fault. All of that belongs to the Narcissistic Paradigm.
The gas-lighting was real. The pain was real. You trying to figure it out, to heal, and to work it out, only to be stabbed over and over was real. Perhaps still is.
You deserve to know, and you need to know that nothing that was directed at you, whatever the abuse, was your fault, or you somehow instigated it. No. That was all narcissistic reaction for its own supply.
For the narcissist, you have always been nothing but a source of its supply. Everything 'good' was fake. Not that it wasn't good for real, but it only served to keep you in the relationship and to keep getting the supply. You never had any function but to serve the narcissist. That's a harsh reality.
You also deserve to know that majority of people (if not all) who did not experience this themselves will NOT believe you. They will NOT get it. Whether this is a friend, a psychologist, a priest, or a doctor. It doesn't matter. Being a professional doesn't change one's paradigm. Education does NOT change a paradigm. There are a lot of psychologists who are narcissists. They are therapist ONLY to get supply from their clients. So people will not believe you. They will not get it. They will think you are crazy. They might even think that you are the one who is abusive (Flying Monkeys - Psychosis). Yeah, this might have isolated you once you stopped talking. You might have felt (or still do) that you are still abused. But not by your abuser, but by the system. Or both. By everyone. Silence doesn't solve anything either. You may have withdrawn from the world. It's OK. The pain and suffering is real. And it is enormous. It was never meant for it to be carried by someone alone.
If you have children with a narcissist and now in the process of separating, things might be way worse. Children are used to get more supply from you. Narcissist may not care to abuse the children (Parental Alienation - Not what you think). S/he knows that the abuse will get you going. Get you acting out. And they get intoxicating narcissistic supply when you act out. When you are scared for you life. Or lives of your children. It's intoxicating. It's a real and most nasty abuse one can ever go through.
Abuse can have many forms. It can be physical and you were beaten. It can be sexual and you were raped. It can be psychological where you were isolated, blamed, gas-lighted, threatened, coerced, etc... It can be direct. Or it can be indirect, where others are used against you. And in astonishment you may wonder how others fall for it by becoming Flying Monkeys. All of that is a real abuse and you were the target. That is the truth and no article on this website will state otherwise. However, we will look at this from a different angle. Angle that will be important for healing.
We will need to move to a different frame, to see this differently. Because then the body will react differently to it. We will need to move away from feeling like a victim, even though you were, because staying in that frame will not help you heal. There will be paradoxical statements made. Don't try to understand it. Just walk the path.