For many, practicing self-care is a life style change. It means giving up self-destructive habits. It’s a shift in perspective about how you view yourself and it’s adopting a pattern of positive behavior that reflects those perceptions.

Sometimes our hearts haven’t quite caught up to our heads and when you throw a little physiology into the mix, getting over a Narcissist can seem like you’re trapped in a maze, unable to find your way out.

As we mentioned last week, the first thing we have to do to extricate ourselves from our dysfunctional relationship, is to become aware that this relationship is toxic and damaging to our sense of self-worth. That’s the easy part, because for the most part, we know when we’re being disrespected and generally treated poorly. The next few steps have to deal with driving an emotional wedge between our addiction to our Narcissist and ourselves, which will allow us to gain distance and some perspective.

It defies reason, logic and common sense, to want to hang on to someone, who treated you so appallingly. It’s almost addict-like behavior, complete with withdrawal symptoms, cravings and an inability to focus on anything else.

Imagine that you were in a relationship with someone you didn’t love. Imagine that you found this person to be flawed, worthless and just not good enough for you. Now imagine that you couldn’t leave the relationship. You were stuck in it. What kind of relationship would that be? How would it affect your thoughts, your behavior and your everyday life?

We’ve all heard the phrase, you’re making mountains out of molehills, which of course means, you’re making something out to be bigger than it really is. When you’re a codependent, or have low self-esteem, you have a tendency to do the opposite and dismiss big, important issues as unimportant or insignificant.

You’ve done all the right things. You’ve broken up with your Narcissist, you’ve gone no contact and you’ve done your very best to put your focus back on you. But much to your chagrin, your Narcissist is pulling out all the stops, throwing everything at you to try and illicit some type of response.

“Everything that happens to you is a reflection of what you believe about yourself. We cannot outperform our level of self-esteem. We cannot draw to ourselves more than we think we are worth.”     -Iyanla Vanzant