Let me just have a little word about social media. I am a social media consultant. I help companies and clients and people with social media. And, one of the advantages of me being in this business is seeing how people use it for their personal use as well. I’ve studied it. I study how people engage with their friends and how they build community and we all turn to it. We all turn to social media. And, when you’re in a relationship that has ended, narcissistic or not, the key is to disconnect. Go Grey Rock. Grey rock is not a term that Facebook recognizes. It would be called ‘block them’. Don’t just hide them. Hiding them is a joke that you’re playing on yourself. If you just go in like, I don’t want notifications but then at any given time, you can go in and take a peek it’s not going to work. Trust me, I’ve done it! I know! You can just peek. Let me just see. I don’t want to see his stuff in my feed but I want access. That’s where you have to learn to take control for yourself.

If you don’t take control and don’t say, “I am committed to moving on with my life,” then, by having that opening on social media, on Facebook, you are going to set yourself up for temptation. There’s going to be that little devil on your shoulder that’s going to call out to you all the time and say “Well, I wonder if they’re still in that relationship. I wonder if there’s pictures up.” It doesn’t matter. Think about whatever it is that’s there. That’s gone. You don’t have to worry about it anymore. If you put any energy into thinking about what he’s doing or she’s doing and you have that key to the car, you have that opening that you can go and peek, that’s only tempting yourself. If you cut that off and you just say, “I’m taking control here,” and block them. Block them now and anybody that they were friends with first, block them. Get rid of all connections.

I had a situation where an ex, continued to have my old best man spying on me and I didn’t even know I was still connected to this person because he stopped using social media just so that they could spy on me. So, I didn’t close that door properly and in the end, it came and hit me in the head. So, make sure you disconnect all of the friends that are connected to that person. That is not just on Facebook. That might be on LinkedIn. That might be anything that you play in. Your Instagram, Snapchat or Pinterest, I don’t care. You say, “Well how can they possibly care what I pin on Pinterest?” They can hurt you. You don’t need it rubbed in your face and it’s just too easy of a temptation to be connected to someone on social media.

So if you’ve been involved in a narcissistic relationship and you are trying to recover, grey rock is not enough. Blocking them, that is social proper etiquette. From this point forward, I’m going to preach this when I speak to people and tell them, “Just cut it off.” Cut off every tie because any tie that you have, they get a new job and you see it and comes out in an email to you because of LinkedIn, how are you going to feel? There’s just too much out there. Just cut it off. Social media, just say goodbye, just don’t even let yourself have that opportunity. I would block their phone number on your phone, maybe even delete the contact. Just say, “I don’t need that number anymore. That person is dead.”

Think of it, when someone dies, it’s a really hard thing to take out your phone and delete someone’s contact if you love them and they died. It’s like, “Do I remove them off the calendar? Do I remove their birthday?” Remove their birthday off your calendar and any other special days that you might have, that remind you of your first kiss or anything like that. Go in and take all that out because two months from now, you do not need an email reminder telling you that it’s their birthday or that you had your first kiss or your first date. Get rid of all of that. That is your power. That is you taking control and that’s all we can do, is take back control and no contact, no contact.