After a Narcissistic Relationship: Reclaiming the Self

Kathy Morelli
2 hours ago
6 min read

How Can Therapy Help Susan After She Breaks Up With Donald?

We return here to Susan’s story — first described in “Am I Losing My Mind?” — and begin to consider what recovery looks like in the aftermath.

Healing Power of Non-Judgmental Listening

The first step is empathic, gentle, active listening: allowing Susan to share her story, without feeling judged. Susan carries alot of shame about her choices and her passivity. She is embarrassed about how long the relationship lasted when she had an uneasy feeling that something was wrong and she wasn't feeling like an equal partner.

After a long relationship shaped by distortion, the experience of being heard is healing. With Susan, the person she trusted the most betrayed her by tearing her down and blamed and confused her. Deep listening and validation helps counteract the trauma of betrayal.

Psycho-education Regarding DARVO Research

Understanding DARVO Empowers Survivors

After the therapeutic relationship has been strengthened, introducing psycho-education about DARVO will help Susan understand the toxic emotional dynamics of a narcissistic relationship.

Dr. Jennifer Joy Freyd identified and created the acronym DARVO, short for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, as the manipulative tactic commonly used by sex offenders to deny guilt and avoid accountability.

Further research by Dr. Freyd suggests that DARVO-educated participants rated the perpetrator as less believable - meaning that knowledge of the pattern empowers survivors.

Providing links to relevant research and articles explaining the three-stages of DARVO manipulation, and how the narcissist uses this to maintain control in the relationship is a meaningful therapeutic approach.

Once Susan understood that this pattern has a name - DARVO - and that it's documented and studied - something began to shift. Her confusion started to clear, however....

Tsunami of Emerging Emotions

...with more clarity about the depth of deceit in the relationship, came an intense emotional tsunami of anger, humiliation, anxiety, despair, bitterness and feelings of wanting retribution.

Susan began having panic attacks, crying jags, feelings of exhaustion, crying jags, and screaming in the car when sessions when she she feeling very angry. These responses were not signs of regression. They reflected her growing awareness of what happened.

Anger as Part of Recognition and Growth

Susan began to see more fully what happened - the distortions, the manipulation, and the ways her trust was used. She saw how she was exploited financially and emotionally. Anger and bitterness swamped her.

The anger and bitterness is part of the recovery process. It's part of relearning boundaries and a recognizing what's not acceptable.

It's not easy, but over time, the emotional work is not to suppress this anger, but to allow it to inform a clearer sense of self — without letting it take over or define the future.

At the same time, acting on these impulses in the moment can make things worse. This is where support becomes important. Eliminating these feelings don't work, but learning to accept and stay steady in the presence of the feelings without being swamped is the goal.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) has some practical skills for regulating powerful emotional distress in the face of ongoing triggers. The DBT skills won't change the past, but they can help manage powerful emotions and stay in the present.

DBT Skills: Helping Susan Manage Her Emotions

The impact of DARVO is not only psychological — it's immediate and physical. A message, a memory, or a shift in the social interactions can quickly bring up distressing emotions. In these moments, the goal is not to analyze what is happening, but to stay steady within it.

Some DBT skills can be especially helpful here.

TIPP skills (temperature, brief intense movement, paced breathing and progressive muscle relaxation)

TIPP skills can help settle the body when it becomes overwhelmed. These are short, practical interventions that work directly with the nervous system, helping reduce the surge of anxiety or panic that often accompanies renewed contact with the situation.

Radical Acceptance

Radical acceptance becomes important over time. This does not mean agreeing with what is happening or approving of it. It means recognizing, clearly and without resistance, that this is the situation as it is. The effort to change what cannot be controlled — other people’s narratives, reactions, or beliefs — often intensifies suffering. Acceptance allows energy to shift toward what can be influenced: one’s own response.

Dialectical Thinking

Finally, a simple form of dialectical thinking can help counter the rigid, black-and-white framing that DARVO creates. Black and white thinking is a symptom of mental illness. Learning to hold more than one truth at the same time is a sign of mental health.

The relationship contained moments of genuine connection, and it was also harmful. She made efforts to repair it, and she is not responsible for what is happening now. She can feel hurt, and still trust her own perception.

This “and” is a quiet but powerful way of stepping out of the binary world that DARVO imposes.

For example:

Donald showed me genuine love at times AND Donald is using DARVO to harm me now. I contributed to some of the relationship's difficulties AND I am not responsible for his campaign against me. I made the right decision to leave AND it is still painful. Donald is suffering AND that suffering does not make his behavior acceptable.

Practice the "and" explicitly, perhaps even writing these dialectics out as homework between sessions. The "and" is psychological maturity. The "and" is the antidote to the binary world that DARVO creates.

Somatic & Expressive Arts to Access Non Verbal Material

Psycho-emotional work often has deep, non-verbal aspects that a verbal narrative cannot reach. These felt sense experiences can be accessed through somatic and expressive practices.

These practices are about helping Susan notice how the relationship experience may live in her body and her way of being in the world. It is about noticing areas of guarding, tension, vigilance, or heaviness.

Susan created a private journal to help her re-capture and develop her own voice. It is a tangible creation of her own reality using photographs, collage, and color, with her own words, in her own handwriting. This exercise is about rebuilding the self and self-recognition, not about right, wrong or accountability.

In addition, Susan made a list of the people and the resources she has that help build her up. Safe people, people who cheerlead her, her pets, her own talents, her hobbies, her interests, her therapist and what she likes. This externalized her resources and she can go back to the list again and again and draw strength from this.

Susan also commited to a yoga practice, at first to get out of the house, meet people and to improve her physical health. But she also found that she enjoyed how the meditation part of the classes calmed her nervous system.

Read about somatic and expressive arts exercises to heal from narcissistic abuse here.

Susan's Healing Path

Susan has begun the work of recovery. She's working through her emotional attachment to approval and the familiar dynamic of winning and losing that defined her relationship with Donald. She's working to reclaim her own voice and to separate herself from Donald's voice, which is somehow still running through her head.

Susan is working on the internal and external aspects of DARVO recovery. She is internally rebuilding herself and also not letting the rumors that Donald spread about her to their friend group, define her.

It takes time. It will be a lifetime of strengthening herself and learning to trust her own perceptions.

Part of what supports this process is a therapeutic relationship that offers a the experience where Susan is seen clearly, reflected accurately, and not reshaped in the service of someone else’s needs.

In this way, therapy becomes part of the antidote to the relationship she left: a place where reality is not distorted, and where truth can be recognized and held.

You may also find it helpful to explore:

• Am I Losing My Mind? Narcissistic Abuse and the Distortion of Reality

• DARVO and Smear Campaigns

• What is Narcissistic Future Faking?

• The Nervous System After Narcissistic Betrayal