Thank you for being here.
If you just landed on this episode, please go back and listen to episode 21 for Part 1.
Find the Right Trauma Therapist, not just ANY Therapist
I hope that I can make it clear right now, if you have had a relationship with a narcissist, please seek the right kind of therapy called Trauma therapy. Find the right trauma therapist.
Interview a few of them and find out if they have any experience in Pathological Love Relationships (PLRs) because the symptoms of PTSD are specific for PLR. If they are not trained in PLR it’s okay, but what techniques do they use to help process the trauma? Find that out.
Don’t go to any therapist expecting you will get the right kind of help, okay? And just FYI, not seeing a trauma therapist is to your own detriment. You are not going to do this alone. You are not going to heal on your own through meditation and joining a spiritual program.
Meditation and spiritual programs are great and I highly recommend that, but they don’t touch your psyche even a little bit. They are wellness programs yes, but the part that needs your attention is your psyche. So please, seek the help of a trauma therapist.
If you are so used to doing everything on your own, I get it! You are a CEO, a business owner, an astronaut, a doctor, a lawyer, a nurse, a teacher, you’re a bad ass, it doesn’t matter who you are, there is a blind spot in your psyche, and you are not going to think your way through this or meditate your way through this.
You’ve probably done everything except therapy. Please don’t waste your time or rationalize through it. Find the right trauma therapist.
The First Mistake of Healing from
Narcissistic Relationships:
Doing Everything EXCEPT Therapy
Make sure the Trauma Recovery Techniques (like EMDR) work for you
Now, most trauma therapists and psychologists will take you through trauma recovery (like using techniques like EMDR). That work great!
But here is where it gets tricky. Once you can manage your symptoms, you realize there isn’t much left for them to help you because processing trauma memories is all you have been doing.
Once trauma memories have been processed because (80-90 % of NA Survivors develop PTSD symptoms) you are left in this in between place. If you continue with your therapy, you have to bring what is new that is currently affecting you.
Process Your Past Until You Feel Ready to Move Forward — Don’t Rush the Process
Do you have new memories to process? You process them and that continues for a while (depending on what you are processing, how deep and how long the trauma was for). And remember, this is different for everyone. And no two people are exactly the same.
At some point your PTSD symptoms have completely dissipated. You live a normal life although it’s very easy for you to be triggered by things that look or smell familiar.
And you ask yourself? What next? This can’t be it.
That’s because it isn’t.
You Feel Ready for More, but Something is Missing
Think about it this way, after surgery, the doctor has opened up a wound, you have all this bandages and covering on a big and fresh wound. What do you think the doctor will tell you? Rest for 8 weeks. Do not do any heavy lifting. Rest, drink enough liquids. And to give your wound time to heal.
Take supplements, avoid junk food, eat healthy food. Walk every day and slowly increase your activity to increase blood flow but do not overexert yourself. Listen to the body.
Change the dressing every X number of hours and then visit the doctor every X number of weeks for evaluation. Sounds familiar? You understand the physical body well and you take good care of it.
After narcisstic abuse, there are similar steps that you need to take after and during your trauma recovery.
It’s called RECLAIMING THE NERVOUS SYSTEM.
The Second Mistake of Healing from
Narcissistic Relationships:
Thinking that Therapy will solve everything.
There is still so much more – Beyond Therapy
What Actually Heals Narcissistic Abuse? Healing Through The Central Nervous System
You have an open wound that is not physical (meaning you can’t see it with your physical eyes but it is real). It’s in the nervous system. You flinch at every creek or sound that could signal danger. And a person that looks or resembles that person in how they walk or talk or how tall they were, whether its real or not. Your system is on extreme high alert.
This is the time, you meet all the narcissists at work, in the grocery store, everywhere. I read a story somewhere of someone who could not leave the house, they were paralyzed by their fear of meeting one of these people who triggered her. Obviously, this is not a way to live.
Again, you have a big wound. The realization that most of your relationships were with people who used your good nature, it hurts so deeply, it cannot be put into words. The pain of having your world view and innocence shattered is fundamentally life changing.
How can you live life ever again? That the people you thought were friends weren’t real, the relationships you imagined you were forging, were a one-way street, that the narcissist was all a show of smoke and mirrors.
It makes sense that when the wound is open and you are facing the death of your old life, you are on the lowest frequency of energy called grief.
Healing the Nervous System — What Actually Works & Where Do You Begin
When you are on the frequency of grief (which is close to frequency for self-loathing, insecurity, unworthiness, hatred etc.) this is where you will meet the narcissists, this their den, their home, they live here. But don’t run away from those feelings because you fear to meet one of this people, you are literally here to face your fears.
When these challenges come, face them with courage. Feel your feelings of grief, sadness, feel how your feel in your body. Which part of your body is aching? Noticing the different parts of your body and anchoring your awareness deeply in the body.
Why is this important? The truth is you haven’t lived in your body for a long time. You have a body yes, but most of your existence has been in your head.
The rationalization, intellectualization, winning arguments, using head logic and not feeling your feelings because feelings at some points were dangerous in your household or when they opened, it was just too much to handle and sometimes you’d feel like the feelings would drown you.
Repression of feelings is very common in our world that we came up with many avoidance strategies for negative feelings- drugs and alcohol. And now we use other activities to avoid feeling our feelings watching too many YT videos, Netflix, doom scrolling, video games and too much screen time.
Food is another numbing mechanism and so on…All of these just to avoid ourselves and our feelings and you can’t do that for too long before it catches up with you somehow.
Face your feelings, be with them, they are a part of you, and they just want to be honored. They represent a part of you that experienced something profound and that part wants to be seen, validated, felt and honored. And then integrate that part of you into the whole of you.
Imagine telling a part of you like you were speaking to a child you love, “I’m so sorry I didn’t know. I am so sorry I didn’t protect you. I am so sorry I wasn’t courageous enough at that time. I am so sorry I wasn’t there for you”. How would you speak to your child that you loved so much you would die to protect her or him or them?
“I’m so sorry I didn’t know, I didn’t know he was this kind of person. I am so sorry I wasn’t there to protect you”.
Imagine if the young you said, “Of course you didn’t know, how could you have known”. You didn’t know, don’t be too hard on yourself. It’s okay. You didn’t know what you didn’t know. It’s the way of life, it’s how we learn and grow.
I wasn’t there for you, but now I can be there for you.
I didn’t have the tools but now I am learning the tools.
I didn’t know how to be present in my body, but now I am learning that.
Gentle dialogue with the self is so important because this is the connection between the many hurt places within you and the fully functional adult within you. Body, mind and soul.
You can only heal narcissistic abuse through the nervous system, and through being fully present in your body. And that is scary for many. But it doesn’t have to be. The worst part already happened; it’s not happening right now.
Now it’s like a doctor showing your CT scans or x rays of the damage in your psyche and you have to sit there and digest that, process that, face that, look at it from many angles, go through different emotions. But you don’t have to run away anymore, because the worst part was over.
You going to see a trauma therapist is the beginning of the healing journey, a journey of emotional freedom. But it doesn’t end with therapy. The journey continues as you continue to embody the wisdom of your body and psyche, the wisdom of the unconscious and the lessons you are learning about who you were and who you are now becoming.
The journey continues as you continue to
– Transform into Wisdom Podcast
embody the wisdom of your body & psyche,
the wisdom of the unconscious and
the lessons you are learning about who you were
and who you are now becoming.
Reclaim your nervous system, rebuild your life. People come to see after working with a therapist and becoming aware of their own shadow and also realizing the limitations of therapy. They come when they are ready to rebuild their life.
When the idea of a better life ahead is greater than the past events. And one thing people appreciate the most is that my program is structured, a step-by-step guide into emotional mastery and emotional freedom.
If you are ready for the next phase in your healing, go to my website transform into wisdom and let me know that you are ready to work with me.
Be courageous enough to walk the journey today. It’s what you came here to do. To learn, to grow and you knew you would overcome this challenge.
One day I was sitting in my house on a weekend evening. I had been sad over a memory that had flashed in my mind that afternoon and it brought me to tears. And when I cry, it’s like I have never cried before. The pain I was letting go felt like it was coming from a very deep part of me.
After I had calmed down and that episode had flashed out of my system, I heard a voice in my inner ear that left me with 2 messages and for now I will share the first message.
- You didn’t come here to be held down by this; you came to overcome this. And in that moment, I knew I would overcome this. That this too shall pass.
That’s what I want to leave you with today. You didn’t come here to be held down by this; you came to overcome this. And so, it is.
Take care my love.
I will see you in the next episode.