There is a kind of leaving that happens with your feet, and another kind of leaving that happens within you.

You can walk away from a relationship and still carry it everywhere. You can stop answering the phone but continue hearing the person’s words in your mind. You can create physical distance while replaying old conversations. You can know intellectually that a relationship was unhealthy while emotionally wondering whether you should give it one more chance.

This is one reason cutting ties with someone who displays narcissistic or deeply unhealthy relationship patterns can feel so complicated. The relationship may have ended, but the emotional connection does not necessarily disappear the moment you leave.

Why Am I Still Thinking About Them?

This can be one of the most frustrating questions after a difficult relationship. You may understand what happened. You may recognize manipulation, criticism, confusion, broken promises, or repeated emotional cycles. People around you may even tell you to “just move on.”

Yet something inside you may not feel ready to move on. That does not mean you should return. It may simply mean there is more to acknowledge and release.

Sometimes you are still waiting for an apology. Sometimes you want the other person to understand how deeply they hurt you. Sometimes you replay conversations because you are trying to find the moment when everything changed.

And sometimes you are not longing for the relationship you actually had. You are grieving the relationship you believed you were going to have. That distinction can be profound.

Sometimes We Grieve What Never Happened

One of the hardest things to release is not always the person. It can be the possibility: the future you imagined, the promises you believed, the version of them you saw in certain moments, or the version of yourself who believed that more love, better communication, greater patience, or the right words might change everything.

How do you grieve something that never fully existed but felt real inside your heart?

You can begin by acknowledging it. Your hope may have been real even when the future you hoped for never arrived. It is possible to grieve that future without treating grief as a reason to return to what hurt you.

Separating Their Voice From Yours

Another tie can remain long after a relationship ends: the other person’s voice.

Perhaps you were repeatedly told that you were too emotional, too needy, too difficult, too sensitive, selfish, or impossible to please. Perhaps your memories were questioned or your feelings dismissed until you began questioning yourself.

After enough repetition, those messages can begin sounding like your own thoughts.

This is why cutting ties may involve more than saying, “I’m done with you.” The deeper questions may be: What do I believe about myself because of what I repeatedly heard? Is that actually who I am?

The work becomes not only releasing another person, but separating their perception of you from your identity.

You Do Not Need Their Participation to Explore Closure

Many people remain emotionally connected while waiting for one final thing: an apology, explanation, admission, accountability, or conversation in which the other person finally understands the impact of their actions.

But what if that conversation never comes? Does that mean you have to remain emotionally standing at the door forever?

There may come a point when closure becomes something you begin creating for yourself. You can acknowledge what you experienced, what it cost you, and what you need now. Another person does not have to agree with your experience before you are allowed to make choices that support your life.

The Journey Back to Yourself

This is the heart behind 8 Weeks Meditations - Cutting Ties with Narcissism.

The journey begins by recognizing what is real. Then it explores the emotional hook: the part that may still feel pulled toward validation, answers, promises, memories, or hope. It examines invisible contracts that can make us feel responsible for saving or fixing another person. It invites participants to distinguish another person’s voice from their own and make room to grieve what never became.

Then the focus begins to change. Instead of asking only, “Why did they do this?” you can also ask, “What do I need?” Instead of waiting for them to understand, you can ask, “Do I understand myself?” Instead of organizing the future around whether they change, you can ask, “What am I choosing now?”

That is The Return: a return to voice, intuition, boundaries, dreams, peace, and life. The journey ultimately leads toward Unbound—not a place where the past is erased, but an invitation to imagine a future that is no longer defined by it.

Perhaps one of the deepest forms of cutting ties is being able to say: “You no longer live inside the way I see myself.” From there, a different life may begin—your life.

8 Weeks Meditations - Cutting Ties with Narcissism begins October 5 with Elena and includes a special prerecorded conversation with Janine.