Last week’s post identified the personality trait known as echoism. Echoism is on the extreme opposite side of narcissism, but both are destructive. Narcissism is destructive to those who come into relationship with a narcissist, and echoism is destruction caused by narcissistic abuse. While getting help from a good therapist is the most effective way to rise above the damage of echoism, there are some steps that you can take by yourself to begin the healing process.
First: Make a Commitment to Your Healing
Traits of echoism include low self-esteem, poor boundaries, and a desire to be invisible. You are not a mistake of nature. You are an exceptional person. Your job is to allow that distinctiveness to come to the surface and flourish in the face of the wrong that has been done to you.
Second: Allow Your Anger to Surface
- The behavior that formed your echoism was a gross injustice to you, befitting of justifiable anger.
- Getting angry allows you to express buried emotions and motivates your healing process.
Third: See the Situation for What it Truly Is
- Start to identify and recognize what has been done to you that is toxic behavior.
- Recognize and record your awesome qualities. You have many to start with, but you’ve also developed others due to your experience. You are a survivor – that in itself is a truly amazing feat. But being a survivor facilitates your developing additional empathy, patience, kindness, a loving nature, and many other admirable qualities.
- Reclassify your perceived weaknesses into the strengths that they are.
Fourth: Celebrate Your Specialness
- Allow yourself to feel good about who you are and your accomplishments. You deserve it. Being the best you can be is not consistently giving of yourself. It is when you give and take with honest recognition of your own capabilities.
- Celebrating your specialness lets yourself and others know that you also recognize your worth.
Fifth: Record Your Journey in a Grief Recovery Journal
- Start your commitment to your healing off right. Get yourself a lovely journal that you feel good about writing in. Make a pledge to yourself to write faithfully.
- In the beginning your recordings will be the incidents where you were treated badly – the wronged actions that led you to believe things about yourself that are not true. These help you with the next two steps, getting angry and seeing the situation for what it truly is.
- Record your emotions, no matter how ugly they may seem to you. Remember – this journal is for your eyes only.
- As you begin to heal, you will start to record your insights into the behavior that damaged you, how you were deceived, and how you now see the truth.
- Be sure to record your victories, your positive changes, and the attributes that make you unique and special.
As you heal, the anger will burn itself out and you will benefit from the growth that came at such a hefty price. When you slip backward, revive your journal and read how much you overcame. Feel good about yourself. You deserve it.
Copyright 2022, Monica Nelson
