THE DISCARD
We may think it is a narcissist leaving our life and never wanting anything to do with us again, but really this narcissistic delisting is something we experience over and over with a narcissist even when still attached to them.
We are discarded every time we are dismissed, deemed irrelevant, or dehumanized, which of course is part and parcel of narcissistic abuse.
Narcissistic abuse tears up the very fabric of our soul, and our humanness - the place of feeling whole, valued and safe.
Sections:
- The Narcissistic Discard
- The Shock of the Discard
- Why the Discard Is So Traumatic
- Why They Must Discard You
- Stages of a Discard
The Narcissistic Discard
When a narcissist discards you, things don't end pleasantly and in a way that can be processed humanely.
The narcissist will assert that they were honest, loving and credible and that you threw their love away and acted with a lack of integrity and care for them.
There will be zero responsibility taken for their behavior, actions, words and lies. You will be dismayed to discover that there is no empathy, compassion or concern for your life now. In fact, if the narcissist can make you pay dearly for not serving their false self adequately, by taking everything from you that they believe they are entitled to, this further vindicates their insatiable ego.
If you stay long enough to reach this stage, your self-esteem and sense of inner calm will be in tatters.
Your narcissistic partner will pick one last angry fight, leave you in tears, and throw a final devaluing statement about you back over his shoulder as he stomps out the door.
Others simply disappear and will not reply to your texts or calls, leaving you without closure and forever puzzled about what happened.
The Shock of the Discard
Falling from the dizzy heights of being idealized is such a heavy shock.
We may have believed that we were the narcissist's 'everything', and certainly this appears to be the case in the love-bombing stage of the relationship and reappears when a narcissist is hoovering us back into their clutches in order to retain us for narcissistic supply.
What we may not have realized until much later, is that we were 'necessary' to the narcissist, but not as a flesh and blood human being with a soul and feelings.
Rather, we were the object to grant them their addiction - their feed of energy, significance, resources, sex, money and/or any attention that allows them to self-medicate themselves away from their inner screaming wounds of defectiveness and insecure feelings of insignificance.
A narcissist is never 'in love' with you, they are incapable of that. They are only 'in love' with the feelings of relief you grant them from their inner wounds, no different to a heroin addict being in love with heroin.
A narcissist is never 'in love' with you, they are incapable of that. They are only 'in love' with the feelings of relief you grant them from their inner wounds, no different to a heroin addict being in love with heroin.
You are a necessary commodity, and therefore when you prove to be no longer useful to self-medicate with, the narcissist will immediately devalue and discard you and replace you with someone else who can fulfil that task.
The replacement person may have been groomed and waiting for quite some time, if not already enlisted in the narcissist's life.
In relation to narcissistic relationships, the narcissist's involvement with you is all about what they get out of it.
The narcissist seeks to make you responsible for tending to and dancing around their wounds, by using you to their advantage and scapegoating you as the person to blame for why they have such disgraceful and regular all-consuming negative emotions when their inner traumas are not being offset adequately enough with narcissistic supply..
Once you are no longer adequately serving their False Self, you need to be completely delisted - meaning you will be smeared and discredited to anyone who will listen.
All of this is shocking because YOU regard humans as human beings, not objects. You care about their heart and soul rather than objectifying or sexualizing them and using them for ego feeds and agendas. You may even still care about the narcissist. It is unthinkable for you to be able to grasp how the narcissist operates.
All of this is shocking because YOU regard humans as human beings, not objects. You care about their heart and soul rather than objectifying or sexualizing them and using them for ego feeds and agendas. You may even still care about the narcissist. It is unthinkable for you to be able to grasp how the narcissist operates.
The relationship was never about you, team or 'us', it was about being with a severely damaged individual whose thoughts and actions were always about them, without consciousness or remorse.
A narcissist will always eventually, one way or another, discard you. It doesn't matter whether you leave, they do, or how the relationship blows up.
One of the hardest things to come to terms with is this: the narcissist doesn't care about me and can live without me.
We experience this from their words and actions, lack of understanding, non-existent empathy, accountability or remorse regarding what they have done to us.
We discover that our feelings and life mean nothing to the narcissist; he may even hate us now and be hell-bent on trying to destroy us.
Why the Discard Is So Traumatic
It truly is one of the cruelest things that you could ever go through.
I can hear you saying,
“How can this person say they love me and then throw me away like I don't exist?”
“Why do I feel like my heart is broken and I can't even breathe and I'm not going to survive after being discarded?”
What is so painful, when the narcissist walks away without a backward glance, is the suddenness, severity and finality that it feels like.
Possibly, seemingly moments before, you were being told you were desired and valued, and then you are meaningless and not wanted.
Narcissists switch from adoring you to abhorring you on a dime.
When a narcissist has decided you have got too close - you know what is under the mask and they could possibly be exposed, or if they have drained you of all that you could possibly give, or you no longer supply the stuff that makes their life interesting and exciting enough, or if better narcissistic supply appears, or if you were only ever used as a tool to momentarily freed the ego or punish on a current partner...or for whatever reason they have decided you don't fit in to their agenda anymore - then you will be sacked from their life.
Permanent narcissistic silent treatment has happened for this reason - the narcissist has simply changed movie sets. The things and people who are no longer relevant to the present grandiose, fictitious, pathological needs of the False Self, are deemed redundant and discarded accordingly.
Once we've been discarded (and usually replaced) there's the shock of how the narcissist is capable of shutting us out, and not giving a damn.
It is devastating to experience that the narcissist will not offer any explanation or grant any form of compassion - and is not interested in anything other than forgetting you and getting on with his life. The horror of being discarded like yesterday's garbage, after all your service and devotion, is unspeakable.
It's so sad that many of these discarded people were long ago been trained into accepting a relationship that was all about the narcissist and very little about them. Even so, they feel like they can't imagine life without the narcissist.
The narcissist won't return calls, won't deal with you face to face. It is like No Contact has been reversed, the narcissist is the one executing it - with unyielding deliberate force.
Why Must the Narcissist Discard You?
To preserve his or her False Self, the narcissist must deny and reject your True Self at all costs.
Deep within, your True Self knows it deserves honesty, team play, empathy and real love. The trauma screaming inside you is because you are not living aligned with your True Self. The emotional pain is the signal to tell you how far off track this relationship is.
If your needs, feelings and opinions were valued by the narcissist, this would mean that you would no longer be dancing around the narcissist's wounds, pandering and catering to them.
This is why the narcissist will not listen to your grievances, take responsibility or value your feelings.
They do not want to work towards solutions and harmony with you or amend their narcissistic behavior. They want you to stay asleep and keep feeding their egoic significance.
Then they must discard you and move on to more fertile narcissistic supply.
You waking up, pulling away or starting to assert your own needs, boundaries and rights by no longer marching to their drum, or arguing with them or justifying yourself whilst trying to get the narcissist to change, stops feeding the narcissist.
Then they must discard you and move on to more fertile narcissistic supply.
This also happens when you became so sick, needy or emptied out that there is nothing left for them to gain.
The horrible, never-ending and disastrous eventuality for narcissists is that all relationships with others will end up being discarded, discredited and delisted by them.
The real reason for this is because the narcissist has completely discarded themselves.
The narcissist has attempted to kill off their own True Self; they have disowned and divorced themselves from it and put a fictitious character in its place (the False Self).
When the deeply damaged, wounded and abandoned True Self emerges, the narcissist lines someone else up, projects their pain onto them and tries to destroy them, which unconsciously is all about trying to destroy their shameful True Self - the inner vulnerable parts that they have no desire to meet, heal and resurrect in order to become whole.
The narcissist does not relate to him or herself with empathy, love, kindness, vulnerability or self-honesty or self-soothing. Instead, the narcissists self-relationship is delusional; it operates in egoic and pathologically disordered ways, designed to prop up the False Self and grant this fragile insecure identity the feed of significance.
The narcissist has no resources to relate to you as a valued human with a soul, because people cannot grant what and who they are not being to themselves.
Stages of a Discard
Signs a Narcissist Is Getting Ready to Discard You
Signs a Narcissist Is Getting Ready to Discard You
The warning signs that a narcissist is getting ready to discard you can be quite blatant, others are less obvious but ALL are very painful.
And quite tragically if you have been emptied out and there's nothing more to take or gain from you, the discard is probably right around the corner.
Inevitably, this black and white individual will decide that you are no good, that you need to be thrown in the trash, that you are bad, horrible, that the relationship was your entire fault and they have to smear you.
They have to discredit you. They have to make themselves out to be the better person.
Another one of the warning signs could be when you are laying boundaries and you're speaking up for yourself and you've had enough and what the narcissist may do in that case is they could try and do the pre-emptive strike first. It's like - you're going to leave me, well, I'm going to break off the relationship first, I'm going to leave you first - because this is an ego protective mechanism for the narcissist.
Another sign can be if, and this is a really sad and a really horrible sign, but if you are broken and you've been emptied out and there's nothing more to take or gain from you, or you have a serious health issue, the narcissist will discard you.
Because as far as the narcissist is concerned, it's all about them and they don't have any Inner Self to grant to you. They don't have the emotional resources to make it about you.
So, if it becomes all about you because you need support absolutely, well, then the narcissistic rage is triggered, "How dare you want my energy, I'm here to get your energy. I am going to have to leave you."
This could also be if you just had a major crisis in your life where you've lost your job or you've lost somebody dear to you or something terrible has happened in your life, emotionally a narcissist may just ditch and run, which, of course, is incredibly painful.
But if this is happening in your life, it's really important for you to start preparing yourself and getting support systems and trying to get some connections outside of the narcissist, so that the fall from grace with the narcissist is not going to be as painful as what it could be.
Also too, it's important for you to start preparing yourself for the possible hoovers It's just really important to know that no matter what comes out of the narcissist's mouth, "I would never leave you," and all these things that they say, any one of those three things could be a warning sign that a narcissist is about to discard you.
Another thing is that you may be having the cycles, and we all do with narcissistic relationships, where you have the blow up. You have the abuse cycle, and then what happens is you get back together and everything seems like it's going to be fine or you hope it's fine, tension builds and then you have another blow up again.
Well, one day the blow up could be so big and so ugly that it is the end of the relationship because that's how narcissistic relationships generally go.
Well, one day the blow up could be so big and so ugly that it is the end of the relationship because that's how narcissistic relationships generally go.
During & After the Discard
Well, definitely during the discard, you may be shocked to find out how cruel a narcissist can be, because when they have decided that they're going to discard you, this black and white individual has immediately decided that you are no good, that you need to be thrown in the trash, that you are bad, horrible, that the relationship was all of your fault and they have to smear you. They have to discredit you. They have to make themselves out to be the better person.
When this happens, you're going to be shocked. You're going to be horrified. You'll be accused of things that you couldn't even think of, let alone do.
Not only have you got the horrible trauma of a breakup of a relationship and all of the fallout that happens with narcissistic breakups, you're also going to feel like, "How could I have ever believed this person loves me" or the heartbreak really is the person who's meant to love me can treat me so horrifically.
Of course, you're going to be devastated. This person, you will discover, doesn't care about you moving forward. They're not going to say, "Okay, well, we split up now, what would you like? How can I help you move on and what's fair?"
It's not about that. It's really about - I'm going to punish you as much as I can and I'm going to get as much stuff as I can and I'm going to make your life as difficult as I can, because they've decided that they hate you.
It's not about that. It's really about - I'm going to punish you as much as I can and I'm going to get as much stuff as I can and I'm going to make your life as difficult as I can, because they've decided that they hate you.
With a narcissist, it's either you're up on a pedestal or you're their worst enemy. There's not a great deal in between, so that's what you can expect. During the Discard is disgusting.
After the discard, anything goes and it can be very confusing and it can be intensely painful because you may have things that you are trying to get your head around, such as being able to work, function, get a settlement, be able to rebuild your life.
You're dealing with this incredible trauma bond that is beyond explainable, because you will literally feel like your life support has been cut off and you feel like you're going to die and you're losing your mind. With this, there is just so much trauma in a discard.
Discard is one of the most painful things that you could go through. What can be likely to happen is the narcissist may replace you very, very quickly, because as far as a narcissist is concerned, they want to punish you because all of the relationship problems in the end were your fault and that's just what false selves do. They're very nasty. They're very vengeful.
So they may throw another person in your face very, very quickly and maybe this person they had on the sidelines waiting and they were toggling between the two of you. You see, the thing is when a narcissist is getting close to a discard, what they will do is set up other sources of narcissistic supply. That's very normal that there are other people in the picture.
The Narcissist's Hoover
Now, what a narcissist may also do is hoover you and what this means is if you pull away and you get strong enough or you just have to be that way, you start pulling away and you're licking your wounds and you're trying to get on with your life and you're trying to work it out and if you don't come back begging and pleading and all the things that we've all done, the narcissist may come back to hook you back up again and it's not about love. It's not about care. It's about an ego injury.The ego injury is, well, if you don't make contact and you don't beg and plead and you don't come back, well, oh my God, it must mean that I'm not significant and I'm going to have to go back and reel you in again, not for love, not to take responsibility, not to create solution and healing in the relationship, but to get that ego feed.
Then I can play with you again, like a cat and a mouse. I can reel you in. I can give you false promises. I can hurt you some more and then I can throw you away again.
That's an incredibly painful cycle to get into with a narcissist after a discard. It's horrible and I know a lot of you have suffered that as I've suffered that as well.
How to Use the Discard to Your Best Advantage
What is so important with this discard is in that horrific trauma of this - is to be able to pull away, go and get some support. I totally recommend you to lean into this community and especially if you are really ready to heal those deep wounds that are keeping you trauma bonded and hooked up in there and feeling like you're going to die, when massive survival programs are triggered.
That's when it feels the worst. It feels worst at the end of a relationship, as opposed to when you're discarded, it feels worse than when you're in it fighting for your Soul. It really does and I really want you to understand that.
In that time, my highest suggestion to you is to not be a sitting duck for a hoover to come back in, to go through the horrific trauma of seeing another person in your face, to go through the massive persecution programs when you're being abused by proxy, when you're having to try to face legal situations to be able to get some of your life earnings and work out of the relationship to move on with.
The most vitally important thing, of course, is to stop yourself crawling and going back to the narcissist, because it just feels so traumatizing, you don't think you're going to survive it.
That's the time when we'd go back and we try to fix things and turn crumbs into cookies and hand over more of our boundaries and our rights and our truths and our values to avoid going through that dark night of the Soul and that's really dangerous.
That's what leads to incredible breakdowns that may be very hard to come back from, from narcissistic abuse. The most important thing that you can do in this aftermath to be able to take advantage of the discard is to let go to the best of your ability, get space, put boundaries up where you are not in the fray of the conversations and the attacks or the hoovers or the madness, and really turn inwards to start healing yourself.
Because you will take your power back, you'll take your sanity back, your Soul back and you're going to be able to navigate what's coming up, which is all of the things I've talked about.
Narcissists don't just walk off into the sunset, give you a hug and say, "Okay, let's do the fair thing. I hope you're going to be okay. Call me to help you put up shelves in your new house. I'm here if you need me." Narcissists don't do that.
You're going to go to hell and back. So what is important with that is that you've got the most emotional solidness and strength and support with really important coping tools, healing tools, and a community that can help you.
If you know that your relationship is cracking at the edges and any of those three things I talked about are there, we all know deep down, we know, we just don't want to know that it's getting very close to the end or you're getting close to walk.
Because the thing is too, if you're getting close to let go and walk, the narcissist could do the whole flip around and go, "Well, I didn't want to be with you anyway. As far as I was concerned, it was the end anyway and I'm out of love with you," or whatever they're going to say. They're going to want to claim the discard. You're going to feel discarded. That's how these endings go.