A post by "Growing Strong"

These are not my words but the words of Growing Strong on a forum I am a member of. I had to keep them. Thank you, GS!

!I do think it's a good sign for us to no longer need to "feed" off of information about narcissism. I never per se got bored, I just reached the point where I no longer emotionally needed anymore information, I'd learned enough truth to sustain me.

Now I just pop in occassionally when something is stirred up, when I get a new 'aha' moment and think about sharing it on here, or something gets triggered, or I need a gentle reminder of the reality of the disorder.

Now, the work is focused on changing myself, which will continue forever probably. It's a long, slow process for me because of the many years of damage to undo.

The question about the search for information and knowledge is... what does it mean now, and what will we do with it, and how will we use it.

Because this is not something we can forget about. It is not something we can put on a shelf and let collect dust...like a new hobby we took up and learned about for a while. That's why I found it interesting that you said "I'm not learning anything new". I had to ask myself...does that matter?

It made me wonder if the real question is not so much that we aren't learning anything new but that if we are "still needing" more answers then are we still not "accepting" the truths that we already have found? If we relentlessly keep on looking, are we maybe simply refusing to accept, acknowledge, and believe the truths we've already experienced?

And I think also that maybe bored is not the result as much as is fatigue from the search. I think we just get plain tired... tired or looking, tired of digging, tired of turning over every stone, tired or reliving the moments, the conflicts, tired of redefining everything about the past, tired of casting light after light onto every dark spot we can find to expose.

I heard the most wonderful "aha!" thing on this week's episode of "Army Wives"... when one of the characters said to another...

"punishing yourself for the rest of your life ain't gonna change anything"

At some point we gotta say... ok, this is as far as this path is going to take me. It's not changing anything. It's time to make a change in the direction I'm going.

We got our information about narcissism. We learned about how we were damaged and for some of us, nearly destroyed.

At some point, we have to decide to stop looking at the damage, and instead, piece by piece, start working to clean it up, clear it out, and rebuild something new. Our own life.

Possibly, being bored... is a fork in the road, telling you... ok, time to move a new direction. And that is a good thing... IF we take off and go. Sometimes we sit ourselves down, refusing to budge... always looking for one more thing, one more piece of proof...that maybe it wasn't what it was, maybe it can be fixed... let me try just one more thing...

That is I think a form of punishing ourselves. A refusal to get on with our own lives and live. Unfortunately, it just isn't very easy to do. It's work. (It's easier to instead stay stuck in the "quest" for information)

What "normal" people don't understand is how difficult it is to start living a new life when basically your whole brain has been erased, wiped out, deleted...and you have to reprogram yourself all over again with more correct, and balanced beliefs etc, one day at a time.

Yes, I think it's a good sign to be getting to a stage of feeling bored with learning about narcissim.

Question we have to ask at that point is... are we at peace with what we've learned, and are we now ready to begin the healing process of rebuilding our life?

At some point we have to be willing to put the shovel down and quit digging around in the destruction, and we have to instead, take up a hammer, and start building something new."