Narcissist Ex Hoover/Trying to Contact me: Massive Anxiety

[LookBackInSorrow]

A man who I was deeply in love with but was horribly emotionally abusive to me has just tried to get back in touch with me after 2.5 years.

It was a classic massive love bomb situation and I thought I'd found my Mr Right, followed by a nasty, nasty, cruel discard and then a repeat rinse cycle that happened a few too many times to be defensible. In short, I was an idiot in love with hope each time would be different.

I have heard nothing from him for over 2 years. This afternoon in the space of about an hour he contacted me 6 times - call at work, call on mobile, call to home, text message, and 2 emails to work and home emails both asking to call him.

I know what this is - a blatant hoover - probably because he's at a loose end/single/low on sex options. I've been here before.

This time for some reason I am filled with massive anxiety. I think I am scared of him or of speaking to him. I have a huge knot in my stomach and feel a bit sick when I think of having to speak to him. He never hit me or anything like that so I'm not sure what this is.

Why am I feeling like this? The best way to describe it is anxious fear - but fear of what exactly? I'm more than capable of ignoring him or telling him I'm too busy to see him if I get caught out and take a call.

It's also reawakened all the feelings of worthlessness he created in me before which hasn't helped. I am feeling like "I loved you so much, I was offering you everything and you think so little of me that you think it's fine for our last contact to be another cruel discard and that you can just get in touch years later like there is no problem."

How shit must I be that a man thinks its ok to treat me like a disposable piece of trash you can pick up and drop at will? Why do I feel so anxiously frightened?

I think its like that thing where you know you could drop your keys down a drain or something, and you never would but you have that fleeting 'I could to that' thought for a second.

You know you'd never go back to him but 'omg what if' lol xD and even that thought brings back the sick feelings.

Plus once you realise how vile they are and how they are totally empty inside...I mean whos blood wouldn't run cold when such a person tries to contact them. You feel sick because you know his true nature. Dark things are scary.

I don,t think it's a supernatural power. I think that narcissists are highly attuned to reading people and pick up on micro things that other people might not.

A classic is them pitching back up just at the point when you are feeling like you are nearly over it. It might look like its coincidental but it isn,t. Anything from whether mutual friends leaking info even just through body language when asked about you to whether they see you as avoiding them or their social media how you are presenting on social media (directed to showing them how great you are doing) - all combines to allow them to form a view as to whether you are about to move on and escape their influence.

A therapist I saw got me to do a visualisation about a protective shield which may work in a similar way to what you suggest.

My interaction with this narcissistic man has disrupted my life and emotional happiness in a violent way for far longer than I would have ever known believable and far more than was deserved from the length of our actual relationship.

If anyone out there is starting to see someone who displays narcissistic traits then please run for the hills.