In my journey from pain to self-love the first step for me was recognizing who I truly was. As I discussed in part one, entitled Spirituality, when I finally realized that I was this massive, powerful eternal being, my beliefs about me changed. Knowing that I was a huge energy field, capable of all things – I could no longer look at myself as a weak, helpless, out of control, victim.

Once I got that, I realized that all the baggage that I had been carrying around with me wasn’t mine. It belonged to my mother, my father, my siblings, my friends, the bullies at school and every man I had ever dated.  I had been walking around with hundreds of pounds of other people’s junk that didn’t belong to me. I was able to see that the criticism my mom so lavishly heaped on me, was the same baggage that was heaped upon her and I decided I wasn’t going to carry it anymore. When my boyfriends would act in an unkind and disrespectful manner, I stopped taking the blame for it. I stopped internalizing their bad behavior and I gave them back their baggage and handed them their walking papers.

I’ve received a lot of queries lately from people asking how they can get revenge against their Narcissist that left them. When people are angry and hurting and they realize that they’ve been duped, lied to and manipulated, it’s normal to want the person responsible to feel what you’re feeling.

One of the most difficult things to cope with is watching the one that hurt you, trot off unscathed, while you are left writhing in agony.  While it may look rosy from where he’s standing, keep in mind that while you have the ability to grow and become a better person, your Narcissist does not. So before you start plotting out a method of revenge there are a few things you should consider.

“Know thine enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles, you will never be defeated. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are sure to be defeated in every battle.” Chinese General Sun Tzu.

A few years back, I went through a major life crisis. My mother was fatally injured in a car accident and within a few short weeks of that, I had lost everything. I had no parents, no partner, no home, no car, no job and no friends. All of the things that make a person feel safe and secure were gone and I was in no man’s land. It felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under me and I sank into a deep depression.

During my struggle I travelled alone to South America and I stayed there for a long time. I learned to speak Spanish, I climbed the Andes and I tried to do anything and everything to make the pain bearable. Upon my return I immediately left for an Orthodox Monastery in Michigan and spent a few days with the most holy men I have ever met. Depression was new to me. I’ve always been a happy-go-lucky kind of person, but this experience, as horrific as it was, started me on a path of deep soul searching. I needed answers to how my life got so far off track and why I was so miserably unhappy.

For much of my life I believed that relationships hurt. I thought that love equaled pain, because when I was in love, it always ended up hurting. Somewhere, subconsciously, I believed that that’s how you knew you were in love – it hurt.

Not surprisingly, most if not all of my relationships, ended with me feeling that way, regardless of who did the leaving. Heartache was always my default setting and it went with me everywhere I went.