People can spend years shrinking themselves and saying you're sorry for how much space you take up. You wish you didn't have to be the kind of person who bends into these impossible shapes the narcissist wants you to fit into, but that's just how life has turned out.
You just wanted to keep the peace. That worked, until something major happened.
Something inside you cracked open and refused to be stuffed back down. You stopped apologising mid sentence. You stopped explaining yourself to people who never really listened.
This is the Rubedo stage. It's a stage the narcissist will hate.
1 Rubedo? Say that again?!
If you want to go back to school for the next minute, then listen up. Rubedo is a Latin word, and its meaning represents the fourth, and final stage of the process of alchemy.
Put simply; rubedo is enlightenment; it's the point of a long and painful transformation that is finally showing signs of worth; of value. Where empaths are concerned, rubedo says:
You have come a long way. You've been to hell and back. You've been broken, burned and pushed to your limits. Instead of retreating and leaving, you stayed and returned as something the narcissist never thought you'd end up doing.
It honestly blows my mind every day that there are people out there living this life, and walking among us. You are you; no apologies, no regrets.
It terrifies a narcissist, and they get scared because you rose from the ashes of the fire they lit that you put out with your spirit. They wanted your self-doubt, and you gave them rubedo instead.
Someone said to me recently, "I don't recognise the person I was two years ago, and honestly, I don't want to." That's rubedo talking.
2 Your predictability drops to an all time low
Before this crucial stage of healing, you will be the most predictable person in the narcissist's life. They will know your every move, behavior, and reason for all of it, too.
Narcissists love to know what's coming next, because it will have been exactly what they'd crafted and planned for, and to do that, you have to be readable. They can spot your triggers, fears and feelings a mile off, and so eventually, you'll be someone who caves under that pressure.
Then you're a problem. You're this, you're that, the narcissist was 'only joking.'
You can only be what they say you are if you pull their comments inside of you and keep them there. An empath at the rubedo stage is everything the narcissist hates. They are sitting in that wreckage, and they're finally awake to what it all means.
They may be wounded, but you aren't reacting from that place any longer. You're clear, and so is everything else. For the narcissist, you'll be glad to know they have no script for this chapter of your life.
They can't possibly know it's coming when they've based their whole abuse patterns on the person you were before this. It's real 'fear' time, and a narcissist will never admit that they're finding you, the new you, scary.
They don't want to do that kind of ego-bursting action because it's a dangerous, slippery slope for them. Instead, they're shocked, and that shock will be so difficult for them to mask.
See also 5 Creepy Things Every Narcissist Hides Somewhere in Their HouseYou'll catch it in the double take. The slight pause before they speak. The way they suddenly ask questions instead of making statements. Sound familiar?
3 Every single move you have predicted before the narcissist makes it
It's great to get to this kind of point, don't you think? For so long, victims can just not see what's right in front of them because they're too busy trying to contain or maintain how they feel. The cycle goes round and round constantly, with nothing changing.
You could write a book about how much you have been through.
You know the pattern so well you could set your watch to it. The silent treatment on day three, the sudden flowers on day five, the whole routine.
The way the narcissist is great at love-bombing, the way they discard you or guilt you when it suits them. The frightening way they are suddenly warm when they feel you pulling away. You know every part of it.
When they try it as you're sitting in that rubedo stage, everything is different. You don't want to fix things, or scramble to find a way to gain back the narcissist's approval. Instead, you're calm to the point where you're still.
The narcissist is banking on your reaction, and giving it to them means they win every time. To be still is to give yourself a level of power you've never had before, and they've never seen before.
I almost want to congratulate you at this point, as it's a huge place to get to. Think about it; a narcissist is only truly thriving when they are in the middle of everything dramatic. If you don't feed them that drama, what do they have? Nothing!
4 The empath stays right where they're meant to
People might get this part wrong, but I want you to pay extra attention to what you're about to read. There is no coldness with an empath at the rubedo stage. You aren't turning into a narcissist at all, even if you feel you are.
You still feel strongly for other people, and that's the main thing. Instead, you've lost this compulsion to hold any responsibility for comforting the narcissist at the expense of comforting yourself. This is totally different, please remember it! The narcissist? You see them clearly now.
You see how much they're actually fearful underneath all their ways they're trying to control you, and you see the emptiness that brings them. Where you once may have lost yourself trying to fix the narcissist, you don't even slightly run toward them.
You see it for what it all is; a performance. Your firm boundaries aren't meant to be unkind, they're meant to repel the very person who has been taking advantage of you this whole time. When you stand firm in that, you're unable to be manipulated, and that's a fact.
You're not a problem, but you become problematic to those who are used to getting what they want from you, and realizing they no longer can.
And they'll tell anyone who listens, "They've changed, they're not the same person." Good. That was the whole point. You weren't put on this earth to stay easy to use.
5 You're unshakable, and this is why
Unshakable… I love that word! It perfectly describes a rubedo-stage empath because what can possibly rile them now? They've been through the thickest, muddiest waters, and come out the other end dusting themselves off and strengthened with such a strong force. Now, a narcissist can handle a lot of things.
Anger, your tears, your pain, your suffering, your begging, your pleading, your anxiety. For them, it's perfect. If you're hurting, they are loving it. Differences come in when they are asked or expected to handle a person who compassionately says no.
That's why you're still an empath; you aren't cold, rude, or unbothered. You simply say no, and that's that. It will still cause damage to the narcissist, who is looking at you and thinking, "What on earth has changed in you?"
You're saying no to everything, from the drama to the cycle itself. You are not the narcissist's dumping ground, and you never will be again. I'm not doing this with you. And that's all you need to say in order for the narcissist to be put in their place.
Firm, but fair. The best part? The narcissist can't change your mind. It wasn't your mind that turned you into a rubedo-stage empath…
…It was life. And you can't change your experiences, neither can the narcissist.
That's what really rattles them. They can rewrite a story, but they can't rewrite the years you spent learning who they actually were underneath all the charm.
6 Why they can't love-bomb their way back in
Love-bombing only works if the target still believes the fantasy. And you don't. Not anymore. The narcissist will still try it, because it's all they've got in the toolbox.
The flowers, the long paragraph message at 11pm, the "I've been thinking a lot about us," the sudden interest in that thing you love that they used to roll their eyes at. You've seen it before. You've lived inside it.
The difference now is that you can feel the hollowness underneath every gesture.
Where you once heard, "I've changed," and felt hope flutter, you now hear the exact same sentence and feel nothing move. It's not that you're bitter. You just know the script. You wrote half of it in your head over the years, waiting for it to actually mean something.
A rubedo empath doesn't confuse intensity for love. That distinction is the door slamming shut on the narcissist's only reliable way back in. Without that door, they're standing outside in the cold, holding a bouquet nobody asked for.
7 The smear campaign lands flat
The smear campaign is usually the narcissist's parting gift. They go around telling people you're unstable, dramatic, cold, cruel, whatever fits the audience. Before rubedo, this used to send you into panic mode. You'd try to correct the story, defend yourself, message old friends and explain what really happened.
You cared what people thought because you cared about being seen accurately.
Now? The whispers reach you and they just don't land the way they used to. You hear that so and so has been told you're the difficult one, and you shrug. Not out of coldness, but because your identity is no longer up for a vote.
People who know you, actually know you, aren't going to buy it. And people who choose to believe a bitter ex over their own experience of you were never really in your corner anyway.
The narcissist keeps talking, expecting the damage to reach you and hurt you. It doesn't. Their most reliable weapon just stopped working, and they have no idea what to try next.
