Parent Your Orphaned Self After Narcissistic Abuse
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2023-05-27

According to the dual mothership principle, when you break up with the narcissist or are discarded by him, you are orphaned. You need to parent yourself. Here's how:

See yourself: document yourself, revisit yourself, be your friend and mentor, get to know yourself.

Frustrate yourself, push yourself away (give yourself space), allow yourself to separate, individuate, and form proper boundaries, reality testing, get rid of magical thinking. 

At the same time, be your own secure base: empathic, attuned, caring, loving, accepting. 

Invest in and prepare yourself for physical reality, social reality (socialization), hegemonic culture (acculturation), and skills acquisition: research, skills acquisition, education, training.

Love yourself.

Self-love is a healthy self-regard and the pursuit of one's happiness and favorable outcomes. 

It rests on four pillars: 

1. Self-awareness: an intimate, detailed and compassionate knowledge of oneself, a SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, others's roles, and threats;

2. Self-acceptance: the unconditional embrace of one's core identity, personality, character, temperament, relationships, experiences, and life circumstances;

3. Self-trust: the conviction that one has one's best interests in mind, is watching one's back, and has agency and autonomy: one is not controlled by or dependent upon others in a compromising fashion;

4. Self-efficacy: the belief, gleaned from and honed by experience, that one is capable of setting rational, realistic, and beneficial goals and possesses the wherewithal to realize outcomes commensurate with one's aims. 

Self-love is the only reliable compass in life. Experience usually comes too late, when its lessons can no longer be implemented because of old age, lost opportunities, and changed circumstances. It is also pretty useless: no two people or situations are the same. 

But self-love is a rock: a stable, reliable, immovable, and immutable guide and the truest of loyal friends whose only concern in your welfare and contentment.

WATCH Love Yourself: Here’s How - or, The Four Pillars of Self-love https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vzBf9QvClo

WATCH Narcissistic Abuse Recovery: First Separate, Individuate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95QBUV9CR_4

WATCH How to Individuate, Heal from Narcissistic Abuse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3gmcbWsyBM

Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/60F8EC8A-5812-4007-9F2C-DFA02EA713B3