Failure To Thrive

When around narcissistic personalities, there is always a failure to thrive. You may not realize it because the complexities of this is very subtle. Bit by bit and moment by moment, a narcissistic personality will eat away at every thing about you … every cell, every molecule, every atom … until you are a former version of yourself or until you are destroyed.

Narcissistic personalities exist to steal you away from the all of the components that make up your life. They seek to steal your dreams. They seek to kill your special moments. They seek to destroy whatever gives you life. You may not even see any of this because they will come under the guise as a friend and confident. Yet, this is all by their design to come to you as ally when there only purpose is to be your most formidable foe.

If it sound sinister, it really is, but it’s also a daily occurrence and simply how many narcissistic types operate everyday. On the surface, there might be nothing sinister about them, but make no mistake about it, they will foil all of your plans. Their primary goal is to keep you from thriving and obtaining any success. If you have success, you won’t maintain it as long as a narcissistic type is in your corner.

They aren’t your cheerleader. They won’t roar and push you on to any battles to win. Instead, they will lead you into battle ensuring you don’t have the necessary equipment to defend yourself. They will loot everything you have at your disposal to win. They stand as guards to your destruction, and they smirk with glee when they see everything around you tumbling down. If you are miserable, they are happy. They’d like nothing better than to see you maintain a failure to thrive.

Discernment Is Key

I first began taking note of my failure to thrive very early on, but I can’t say that I fully understood what I was experiencing at the time. My own parents were the culprits. As much as they seemed to encourage me to go out into the world and do my best, they were the very ones to place huge obstacles within my path. They said a lot of things to erode my confidence within myself. They often spoke in contradictions. They were often the discouraging voices that kept me from succeeding.

Realizing their tendency for toxicity, I chose to step away from my parents and pursue my goals despite their pronouncing discouragements. I chose a different path, and in doing so, I chose to thrive. If I had remained in connections with my parents in a way that gave them access to my life, I would have failed to thrive. I discerned the issues within my family system, and I stepped away to grow apart from the toxicity as well as heal myself. It wasn’t easy, but it was the best thing I could do to change the course of my life.

This was in like fashion with other toxic relationships in my life as well. I always failed to thrive around narcissistic personalities. In fact, I’d be thriving and vibing quite well on my on up until the moment these personalities came into my life. My downfall didn’t start out right away with most of them, but in time, I found myself questioning my once secured life choices. I even questioned my will to live.

In my own personal struggles with depression and other mental maladies, I recognized that my mental health worsened the longer I was around a narcissistic personality. When I had breaks from these folks, I noticed how much brighter my world and how much more at peace I felt. Although it took me some time to dislodge some of these folks from my life, once I did so, I was back on track. Unfortunately, however, a lot of damage had already been done much to a narcissistic personality’s desire, and I had to rebuild myself and my life.

From financial destruction to near life depletion, I had to overcome a lot of setbacks just because of the people that surrounded my life. I failed to thrive even where thriving should not have been an issue, and once I realized the culprits, I set on a course to remove myself. I cannot blame everything on the narcissistic personalities though. I prolonged some of these situations in hopes that things would change even when I knew the actual outcome. I also made some very foolish decisions.

In the long run, however, it was to my best interest to distance myself from personalities that thrived on toxicity and my destruction. It was to my overall advantage to go no-contact, heal, and reinvent myself. Failing to thrive for me was in many ways a failure to live my life to the fullest. It was a failure to advance past the steps of procrastination without knowing the true reason as to why my life was no longer going anywhere.

It was a failure to launch myself from a launching pad from where the fuel I needed to take off had been drained from me. The longer I remained in narcissistic relationships, the longer I failed to thrive and grow. I couldn’t move forward, and I could be me. The me that I was prior to those narcissistic relationships was gone, and I needed to get “me” back. It could not be done with those personalities bleeding me dry of my life’s energy source.

A failure to thrive is a failure to truly live, and I want to truly live before I leave this earth. That cannot happen as long as I remain in toxic and volatile situations that deter my life’s direction. Specifically speaking in terms of narcissistic relationships, a failure to thrive is a life filled with constant struggle and turmoil when it doesn’t have to be that way. Choosing to walk away from the fate that these toxic relationships tend to yield is always for the best.