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    Vacancy In the (Relationship) Rabbit Hole: How to Escape Toxic Love, Re-Define Self Worth & Beat Every Narcissist at The Game of Life
    Vacancy In the (Relationship) Rabbit Hole: How to Escape Toxic Love, Re-Define Self Worth & Beat Every Narcissist at The Game of Life
    Vacancy In the (Relationship) Rabbit Hole: How to Escape Toxic Love, Re-Define Self Worth & Beat Every Narcissist at The Game of Life
    Ebook141 pages3 hours

    Vacancy In the (Relationship) Rabbit Hole: How to Escape Toxic Love, Re-Define Self Worth & Beat Every Narcissist at The Game of Life

    By Zari Ballard

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    About this ebook

    From the Author of “When Love Is a Lie: Narcissistic Partners & the Pathological Relationship Agenda”

    “When we love a toxic person such as a narcissist, we spend much of our time in the relationship rabbit hole and will become quite acclimated. Our eyes adjust to the darkness and our skin becomes just thick enough so that most bullshit rolls off. It is a hole that feels endless...and somewhere between its ominous opening and this infinite endlessness is where our toxic love resides.” Zari Ballard (Vacancy in the Rabbit Hole)

    The bad behaviors of toxic people should never determine your self-worth. Narcissists play the Game of Life very differently than normal people and they count on the fact that you haven’t studied their playbook. Let’s change all that!

    Like her first book, "When Love Is a Lie", Zari’s long-awaited new book once again tells it like it is. For those who struggle with the finality of a break-up with a narcissistic partner, this anecdotal narrative provides a roadmap to recovery for those seeking to lessen the setback of emotional suffering. "Vacancy in the Rabbit Hole" analyzes the break-up and the phases of suffering and discusses trauma bonding, co-parenting, and the question of forgiveness. As always, Zari speaks from an experience that readers who have “been there, done that” will understand and appreciate. If you’re seeking a way out of the madness, this book will take you on a journey that you don’t want to miss.

    It’s time to step beyond the borders of suffering and beat these vampires at their own game without even trying. It’s as simple as changing your perspective...

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZari Ballard
    Release dateMar 1, 2021
    ISBN9781005362706
    Vacancy In the (Relationship) Rabbit Hole: How to Escape Toxic Love, Re-Define Self Worth & Beat Every Narcissist at The Game of Life
    Author

    Zari Ballard

    Zari is a Freelance Writer/Author (and single mom) who resides with her son in sunny Tucson, AZ. Born and raised in Rhode Island, Zari, then an aspiring journalist, graduated from Rhode Island College with a B A in Mass Media Communications/English and headed out from the ocean state for a life in the Southwest.In 2005, when her son's diagnosis with child-onset schizophrenia changed everything, Zari set aside the executive rat race in lieu of a home-based career as a Freelance Writer. A leap of faith that could have gone either way, the choice to work from home was meant-to-be and she has never looked back.Motivated by the success of her first book, "When Love Is a Lie", Zari has since published four additional books about narcissism in relationships: "Stop Spinning, Start Breathing", a journal-style workbook about narcissist abuse recovery, "Narcissism In a Nutshell", a quick start guide to understanding narcissistic behaviors, "When Evil Is a Pretty Face", providing support for male victims of female narcissists, and now, in 2021, "Vacancy In the (Relationship) Rabbit Hole", a complete guide to a full recovery from narcissist abuse.Zari continues to provide support to narcissist abuse victims via one-on-one counseling, through her website, thenarcissisticpersonality.com, and also at her YouTube channel where she discusses in detail all aspects of narcissism in relationships.

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      Book preview

      Vacancy In the (Relationship) Rabbit Hole - Zari Ballard

      Vacancy In the (Relationship) Rabbit Hole

      (How to Escape Toxic Love, Re-Define Self-Worth

      & Beat Every Narcissists at The Game of Life)

      Other Books by Zari Ballard:

      When Love Is a Lie

      (Narcissistic Partners & the Pathological Relationship Agenda)

      Stop Spinning, Start Breathing

      (A Codependency Workbook for Narcissist Abuse Recovery)

      When Evil Is a Pretty Face:

      (Narcissistic Females & the Pathological Relationship Agenda)

      Copyright@2021 Zari Ballard

      SMASHWORDS

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and is not to be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the work of this author. All rights reserved.

      Table of Contents

      Note to Readers

      Introduction: The Relationship Rabbit Hole

      Chapter I: Narcissists & The Game of Life

      Chapter II: Aliens Among Us

      Chapter III: Simplified Evil

      Chapter IV: The Break-Up

      Chapter V: Wanting to Believe

      Chapter VI: Signs of the End Times

      Chapter VII: Trauma Bonding

      Chapter VIII: Relationship Amnesia

      Chapter IX: Logical Self-Worth

      Chapter X: The No-Contact Rule

      Chapter XI: What’s Your Intention?

      Chapter XII: Avoiding Triggers

      Chapter XIII: The Co-Parenting Dilemma

      Chapter XIV: Suffering Is a Process

      Chapter XV: The Truth About Forgiveness

      Chapter XVI: Vacancy in the Rabbit Hole

      Final Thoughts

      Speak w/Zari

      About the Author

      A Note to Readers:

      Change Your Perspective,

      Change Your Life

      Please know that, in this book, although I typically refer to the narcissistic partner as being of the male gender, it is only used as a general term and as a matter of convenience since I speak from personal experience. Narcissists come disguised as boyfriends, husbands, wives, girlfriends, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, bosses, and co-workers. In the end, the suffering is all the same. Clearly, narcissists can be male or female and I try to refer to both genders as often as possible.

      Secondly, because Vacancy In the (Relationship) Rabbit Hole and all content contained therein is based solely upon my personal experience and perspective, I deliberately exclude any type of clinical information. In other words, I offer no medical or psychological explanation for narcissistic behavior because it really has no bearing on your recovery.

      This book is about healing from the narcissistic nonsense and beating narcissists at their own game. It’s about following the path that leads away from our self-induced suffering. In a relationship rabbit hole, we are distracted from our own happiness. I want to show you the way out. Often, in order to change our lives, it is a matter of simply changing our perspective about that which ails us. On the proper path, we then can see, with clarity, that self-worth should never be based on the bad behaviors of narcissists but rather on the authenticity and integrity we create for ourselves day to day as we play along in this Game of Life.

      Thank you for reading…..

      Introduction: The Relationship Rabbit Hole

      There are people in this world who’ve lived their entire lives without ever going down the relationship rabbit hole. I wasn’t one of those people. For me, life in this particular hole dragged on for thirteen years although I didn’t officially understand the true nature of my emotional habitat until I was eight years in. It was at that eight year mark that I began to really question the bizarre behaviors of my partner…behaviors that I often dismissed as quirky (albeit, hurtful)…behaviors that caused me to behave in ways that were totally out of my fairly laid-back character. It was also at this point that I had my a-ha moment, putting together for the first time the puzzle pieces of my broken love story. This life-jarring moment was the culmination of an experience that only those who have lived it first-hand could ever understand.

      I refer to this particular emotional realm of existence as a relationship rabbit hole because it is what it is…a dark, dreary tunnel filled with unexplainable turmoil and inexplicable emotion. When we love a toxic person such as a narcissist or sociopath, we spend much of our time in this rabbit hole and will become quite acclimated. Our eyes adjust to the darkness and our skin becomes just thick enough so that most bullshit rolls off. It is a hole that feels endless…and somewhere between its ominous opening and this infinite endlessness is where our toxic love resides. Reluctantly attached to this toxicity, we will venture into the darkness as far as we can go. It is a precarious time during which we will accept - and settle for - certain bad behaviors from our partner that we never would before. This acceptance and willingness to settle, of course, is how we get stuck in the rabbit hole, blinded by love and unable to feel our way out.

      Now, there will be those times, periodically, when common sense comes to call. We will snap to attention, surfacing to the light to get on with our lives. We will do our best to leave the pain behind us. During this time, we actually feel free. We announce to the world that we would never go back. But toxicity creeps and is forever patient, one finger poised above the reset button. Narcissists, you see, because of their chameleon-like qualities, can live in the light quite comfortably. They have learned to blend in with the crowd. The rabbit hole, in fact, is a narcissist’s second home and the one he reserves for us when the time is right and the reset engages. In the light, the narcissist appears to be normal and he or she knows it. I’m sorry, baby, I don’t even remember what happened. All I know is I miss you, came the whisper from my rabbit hole. The tug is familiar but we pretend we’re feeling it for the first time. Suddenly, the toxicity that we hate intoxicates us in a good way, like a bouquet of fucking flowers. This is insanity at its best. We begin to wobble, drunk on the madness of it all, and the suffering restarts. Silent treatments, gas-lighting, triangulation, and other narcissistic niceties pick up right where it all left off. At this point, it is clear that common sense has long left the building.

      The irony about life in the relationship rabbit hole is that, as we become accustomed to the abuse, the rabbit hole becomes the one place where we feel secure…the one place where we actually find a reprieve from the suffocating separation anxiety. Again, only someone who has been there, done that will understand what I mean by this. The rabbit hole becomes both the last place and the only place we care to reside because it’s the one place to which the narcissist will always return. And the narcissist knows this because he or she has studied how we think. We will journey own the rabbit hole to find our narc and inevitably lose ourselves in the process. After all, it is the mere shadow of our former self that he or she so adores and it is only our mere shadow that can live in the rabbit hole.

      It’s time to put up the vacancy sign, my friends. The rabbit hole, by its very dark nature, will suck the light from our soul if we allow it. We venture down the tunnel for many reasons - out of love, curiosity, desperation, and to offer forgiveness or even beg for it. We are bound and determined to uncover clues to our mind-boggling mystery. This person we love is always a stranger and our endless search for evidence leads us to very muddy waters. One girl that I counseled would agonize over the lengths to which she would go to investigate the obvious. She often put herself in precarious positions, risking her self-respect and general reputation just to gather the evidence necessary for a confrontation that never takes place. Finally, as we all inevitably do, she had to stop and ask herself just how far down the rabbit hole she was willing to go.

      Yes, the rabbit hole is the domicile of narcissists and sociopaths and the place where he or she feels the most comfortable. Since we love this person, we will selflessly pretend to be comfortable as well. We want to be where he or she is at all times and will adjust to the darkness of the tunnel while at the same time trying to shine the light of love within it. We spend a whole lot of time trying to figure it all out…why they do what they do and say what they say and why they never mean what they say or say what they mean. We agonize over a narc’s willingness to cheat and how easily he or she will lie about it. We demand to know why they leave and how they can do it as if our history together meant nothing. We suffer through silent treatments and disappearances that make no sense. We will wait, often for months, for the inevitable hoover…the special invite…to come back to the rabbit hole. In our twisted reality, we actually believe that we belong there.

      So, why do narcissists do what they do? To understand this, you’ve got to understand the game. My theory is that there really is just one all-encompassing incentive in the narcissist’s relationship agenda…one all-important motivation for the nonsense that is securely connected to everything else. This motivation is key to his or her winning in their twisted version of the Game of Life…even if no one else on the game board is aware that they are playing. To understand and accept this simple theory is key to mentally breaking free from the madness. Allow me to explain…

      Chapter I: Narcissists & The Game of Life

      Most of us remember a board game from our childhood called The Game of Life. This game, which is still in production today, is a family-inspired game that takes players on a journey from birth to death through a variety of situations including love, marriage, work, and so forth. The winner of the game, according to the rule booklet, is the player who, at the end, has accumulated more wealth and happiness than the other players. He or she will have done this presumably through hard work and doing the right thing.

      Now, to understand how narcissists work and think in our modern world, I ask you to imagine a board game much like The Game of Life but with a slight variation on the methods of play. In this modern day version, the world is different than it was in our childhood. There are players at the table with narcissistic personalities that we neither recognize nor understand. We see these players as normal and, therefore, we are naïve to their intention…but, as I am here to tell you, intention in life is everything. To understand the natural mindset of narcissists, we have to analyze how they move through everyday situations…how they see the world and the ultimate goal at the finish line. Stay with me here and it will all start to make sense.

      In this new, modern version of the Game of Life, players who have a narcissistic personality will always play by a different set of rules than everyone else on the game board. To all normal players, the point of The Game of Life, as reflected in the rule book, is not so much about winning as it is about collecting as many Happiness points as possible without bumping other players off the board. The narcissist, on the other hand, sees the finish line very differently. To him (or her), the point of the Game is indeed all about bumping players while still moving forward…. and to hell with the happiness points.

      To ensure a fair start in Life, each player begins The Game with ten Conscience Cards. As players move along the board, they will have the option of exchanging Conscience Cards for Happiness points depending upon different scenarios presented. For example, if, by the roll of the dice, a normal player does happen to bump another player, it is usually done with regret and this player may choose, at that moment, to either forfeit the move or continue on ahead. If the

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