The First Step In The Journey of Healing from Narcissistic Trauma

Join us as we explore the transformative journey of healing from narcissistic trauma, focusing on finding inner safety, breaking generational cycles, and embracing true self.

Healing from the aftermath of a toxic relationship, especially one rooted in narcissistic abuse, is not just about moving past a difficult chapter in one's life; it's about embarking on a profound journey of self-discovery and renewal. This podcast aims to guide you through the often murky waters of healing from narcissistic trauma, shedding light on both the internal and external challenges that survivors face. 

Emerging from the shadowy depths of a toxic relationship, the road to reclaiming one's self can be daunting, yet it's a journey fraught with profound transformation. We invite you to join us as we unravel the complexities of healing trauma, where we shift the focus from the chaos of the past to the promise of a stable, nurtured nervous system. Our heartfelt discussion takes you through the essential first steps of finding safety within your own body, a sanctuary from the turmoil, and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. We're not just talking about personal triumphs; this is a clarion call to mend societal wounds by breaking the generational cycles of unaddressed pain.

Within this candid conversation, we illuminate the often-overlooked connection between our physical sensations and emotional scars, drawing attention to the body's role as both a battlefield and an ally in the fight against trauma. By acknowledging our physiological responses to past distress, we embark on a path of self-awareness and responsibility that not only heals our own life but lays down the foundations for a healthier legacy for our children. Listen as we discuss the courageous act of self-love, the investment in intensive trauma work, and the transformational power of embracing your true self. We're not just offering insights—we're extending an invitation to join us on a journey toward clarity, peace, and direction.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Do you wanna show up as your more healed self? If that is you, this is for you. Let's people see you transformed. Let them see you modeling yourself differently and show them that you have stopped this repeating pattern, this toxic repeating pattern, and you've actually broken any generational patterns. Firstly, before we dive into trauma and how to heal, if you're joining me today, thank you, thank you seriously, thank you so much because you're not only helping yourself, but you're helping learn more so that you can help others as well.

Speaker 1: 0:45

It really is a society issue. There's so many people that are more egotistical, that haven't got empathy, that aren't showing love, compassion, understanding to each other, and we need to change all of this. As a community, we need to help that. So if you could subscribe, review, send this podcast or video to other people, I'd really appreciate it, because what we're doing as a community is we're helping people and society deal with this situation called narcissism. So let's get back to trauma. Let's see what do we do when we've got trauma and how do we deal with it. A lot of the time, we don't even realize we've got trauma after a toxic relationship because we're so strong. To be in a toxic relationship, you have to be a strong individual and we don't sometimes feel this emotional overwhelm or we don't know what to do with this emotional overwhelm most of the time, because we've been taught in the relationship not to have emotions. We're not allowed to have emotions. Only the narcissist has emotional needs. We don't. So we can get to the point where we know something's broken and we know we need to fix something, we need to heal something, but we just don't know the different strategies. And how do we heal trauma? What is the process of healing trauma without medicine? I'm not saying that you shouldn't get medicine, by the way. I'm talking about the fact that you might wanna heal the trauma even if you are taking medicine, but you're really looking to heal it. So it's not just you have to keep taking medication for the rest of your life.

Speaker 1: 2:28

So if you're getting started on this journey and you feel overwhelmed, you feel stressed, you feel like you don't know what's happening to you, you don't know what's happening to your body, you don't know, you can't make sense of everything. This is a great place to start. We're gonna talk about trauma. We're gonna talk about what you've experienced and make sense of it in terms of your body to begin with. So the reason why we're starting with the body is that trauma actually impacts the brain. It is our supercomputer, it processes everything, it's the place to go and it impacts our nervous system, and what I really wanna talk about today is our nervous system. That is primarily where the trauma is impacting you, when you first look at healing from narcissistic trauma or any type of trauma.

Speaker 1: 3:18

So what do we need to do is to actually help us settle our nervous system. We need to feel grounded, and when I'm talking about the nervous system, it's that feeling of fear that you've never really felt before, or anxiety or panic attacks where you feel unstabilized in some way or overwhelmed in your nervous system. You feel like you can't breathe. It's just too much.

Speaker 1: 3:44

So what we need to do is stabilize our nervous system first before we do anything else, before we actually go digging and asking loads of questions and looking into stuff about what happened to you, what happened before this experience, your family history, what could it be that you've witnessed in your life?

Speaker 1: 4:05

What happened to you? What were the invisible scars that have been left, the invisible wound called trauma? We have to look at how you have changed the way you perceive the world. We need to do that, but the first thing we need to do is actually look at your nervous system. What's happened to you in this toxic relationship and what they did to you and what they said to you to hurt you? Those are not the questions that we should be asking first when there's trauma. If we start asking those questions, we're gonna destabilize your nervous system even more and that will stop you functioning in the world that you really need to. We all need to function in the world as well as we can do, and if our nervous system struggles, our confidence struggles, our emotions struggle, we feel out of control, our thinking patterns are out of control and our thinking patterns sometimes destabilize our nervous system further. And unfortunately, if you go to a generalist therapist or coach, they will wanna know what happened and they'll ask you all these details about the story, the trauma, how you've been in the toxic relationship, how you got.

Speaker 1: 5:31

The thing is you could be high functioning in trauma and what you've dealt with is amazing, and then you're holding it all together to function and then, very if you keep going over this, what happens is you're re-traumatizing yourself and triggering yourself through your own stories that it becomes a trauma narrative. And then that story of the injustice especially is so, so difficult to let go of and it's very highly traumatic in terms of how it impacts us and we feel victimized. Being a victim is traumatic, you know. It's that story of fear, of feeling unstable, you know, feeling like somebody's gonna come and hurt us, and so our nervous system starts firing up even more. Now I'm not saying you're not a victim, because I know what you've been through is awful. Well, what I'm talking about is our nervous system, and how do we make sure that your nervous system is supported and stabilized so that you can do the work in the trauma work?

Speaker 1: 6:45

Also, it's really important to look at confusion. Narcissists rely on confusion. If you're not confused by someone blaming you and for abusing you, you know it makes no sense. Your brain is gonna get confused. Someone's blaming you for abusing you Makes no sense. So there is gonna be a lot of confusion around this. And what does confusion do? It makes you feel unsafe and that then triggers your nervous system. So when you tell the story of what you've been through, your brain doesn't actually know.

Speaker 1: 7:22

So say, if I'm talking to a friend, my brain won't know whether it's now or it's in the past, yeah, so it will start to release some of that, the toxins, into your body and you might feel the after effects of it when you get home, yeah, or after seeing the friend, do you feel like you're feeling a bit more panicked? Do you feeling like you're ruminating more? You're feeling down, you're feeling exhausted. You know, I remember I talked to a friend and I would always feel so exhausted afterwards, like I just wanted to go to bed. So your brain is also remembering in that moment and then it's releasing all these chemicals in your body.

Speaker 1: 8:07

So you're feeling those feelings and sometimes when numbing our emotions so much that we don't realize that we're feeling those feelings because we've become so good at numbing and disassociating from our feelings so that we're so good at telling the story over time. And it's so incredibly dysregulating for you because you won't be able to live like you used to. You'll procrastinate more, you'll feel more fear, you'll feel like you just wanna sleep more. You wanna. It's exhausting. It's exhausting. It's one of the most exhausting things you can do is retraumatizing yourself by talking about the experience over and over again, because people don't know that when you're trying to, you know your trauma narrative is sometimes causing these emotions and then your nervous system to go into fight, like retraumatizing. Most people just aren't aware of this, that that could happen.

Speaker 1: 9:12

So all I'm asking is that when you're talking about it, or when you're thinking about it, just notice what happens to you. Do you feel more angry, do you feel more resentful, and what are the impacts on my body? Because that is the first step and you're then engaging people that will help you, support your body to feel more safe, because ultimately, we need to be in a relationship with someone who makes us feel safe, and when we're not in relationships, and especially if you've lived with a narcissist, you haven't been able to feel safe in your own space and that is gonna impact your nervous system 100%. So you have to be able to tell your trauma narrative or so that you can face and feel the emotions and not actually numb them and run away from them or pretend that they're not there. That's how you wanna process your emotions Is in a safe environment, using trauma therapy in an appropriate way so that we don't then impact on nervous system where we feel more anxious, we've got more panic attacks, we feel more, we're procrastinating more, we're feeling more tired, we don't wanna engage in life, in relationships.

Speaker 1: 10:42

We feel that emotional overwhelm or anger or tightness or whatever it is. We won't feel like we can be our true self and fulfill our highest self. When we lost our drive for life, we're gonna isolate ourself, we're gonna feel like I don't want to feel. If we feel like the narcissist has got other people talking about us, we're not gonna wanna go out because we're worried that people will judge us. So we have to heal for the first thing. The first thing we have to do is connect to our body. We have to reset the brain in terms of the trauma so that we can process how we feel.

Speaker 1: 11:27

And in order to process how we feel, we need to become aware of how our body is. Yeah, is how is it impacting our body so we can then find ourselves. So the physical level is the first thing we need to do and see what is my body telling me right now. Do I feel tension? That's the sign, you see, when we've been in toxic relationships, we've had to disconnect from our body. It's a survival mechanism, and so I would say that you're an expert in numbing yourself. So we need to connect with the body that's the first thing and feel the tension that you're experiencing in your body.

Speaker 1: 12:06

What happens when you get triggered by the narcissist or some other thing? Because we've trained ourselves to become aware. When we're interacting with other people, we can sense what our body is saying, yeah, and what we're taking into our body, how we're feeling. So we've got to train ourselves to do that, and that will make us more aware, rather than just pushing it away and pretending it's not there, it's not affecting you. It is affecting you, everything is affecting you. So start using all the information that you're gathering from your body and your emotions. So start with the body first, though, because it's there to help you. It's there to help you understand yourself, understand the triggers that you might be feeling, the signs that you're picking up and seeing how situations are impacting you.

Speaker 1: 13:00

Often, when we've been in toxic relationships, we sometimes hear people say I'm not sure if I've even been in trauma. But if you could then first start with finding out is my body reacting? That could be the first thing to realize have I been, have I got trauma or not? And if you find that you feel exhausted after dealing with them, you feel sad, you feel anxiety, then you'll know if you're feeling this tightness in your chest, in your throat, in your stomach you're clenching or sweating or you've got headache the more distinct thing that you're doing Typically these are the symptoms that correlate with that you've got.

Speaker 1: 13:43

Your nervous system is actually internalizing the story. If you've got a knot in your stomach, this is a really good one. That means that our nervous system is actually shutting down specific functions of the gastrointestinal tract because we don't actually need that for survival. So if you're feeling that in your stomach, it's a survival mechanism. If you feel not in your stomach, we've gone into fight-brite-freeze form mode. And or if you've got issues around your stomach, or if you've got autoimmune issues or you're getting more sick more often, it's probably because your body is shut. Your nervous system is affected. So just know this right.

Speaker 1: 14:27

If you've had space and time to work through what's happened to you and you're finding that you're addicted to telling the story over and over again, know that even 30 seconds of telling the story of something that happened a few years ago or 10 years ago is still going to hurt you today. It's going to hurt you until you've healed it. That means that your body isn't going to be impacted and your emotions aren't going to be, You're not feeling those emotions and if you really let go of something, you probably don't need to talk about it. That's another thing, right, because you've moved on Until we can let it go. If we're off, where our focus goes, our awareness goes. If our attention is on something, that means that we're not letting it go and it will metabolise in the body. And if we look at the long-term effects of this, if it can manifest into chronic illness and that's one of the biggest risks, you know, if it's unaddressed for years and years and years, it's going to be passed down to the next generation.

Speaker 1: 15:36

There's a lot of consequences for this. But you know we have to think what is it that I want to pass down to my kids? You know, I remember the specific point I realised this has to end is I thought I was feeling so worthless. I felt so yucky and worthless and I just thought do I want my daughter to experience what I'm experiencing? Because I'm literally setting her up to think that this is what relationships are about. And if you're ever worried or fearful about healing and a lot of you will be fearful of healing, but facing your emotions, not wanting to do it because you have become an expert in it. Think for a moment do I want my children to hurt the way I hurt and emotions, you know, to feel the way I feel, to live the way I'm living, based on how much you have been through. Is that what you want for them? And that is sometimes enough for you to know it's not worth passing it down, but it is worth breaking the cycle.

Speaker 1: 16:42

You know, thinking about my daughter, it was enough for me to want to break a generational cycle. It was something I learnt and I didn't want her to absorb these kind of traumas that I've absorbed and not healed and I wanted to learn from. I didn't want her to learn this from me about what this is it. This is how you live your life in struggle and pain and sacrificing yourself for others forever and your needs don't matter. That's not what I wanted for him, because we have an inner child wound as an adult. So we have to start healing our own trauma and as we start healing our own trauma, we give children the important gift of understanding our emotions and understanding our self-worth and feeling that we're worthy of love. Then they can feel worthy of love, worthy of receiving, and live a life where they know that they are worthy of happiness, because we can actually deal with these emotions of happiness and love and we can self-serve when we aren't getting love. We're not making our self feel like it's because it's our fault If we can do that for ourselves, for our children, it's a generational gift.

Speaker 1: 17:59

People, we need to know that our feelings matter, our children's feelings matter. So the first thing we need to do is watch out what you're saying to yourself and how your body is responding. Notice how you feel. Are you drained speaking to that friend about what this person did, or your parent or somebody? And then the next thing is noticing where's the tension and finding ways of releasing that tension, that impact that's having on your body. It's important to counteract that build-up of that trauma response in our body and start to relax the body. It's important that you know what to do when you get triggered. It's important to have methods of calming, of self-soothing your nervous system down. Please don't ignore this.

Speaker 1: 18:49

There's this thing called bed-wotting. It's basically where, when we have emotions that are so overwhelming, like being in a toxic relationship, we'll go into this phase of wanting to stay in bed and not do anything, procrastinating, feeling tired, feeling exhausted, and that's because our nervous system is shutting down. What it's doing is saying hibernate until you're ready to actually heal your emotions. So what we want to do first is to say get to a space where our nervous system can feel safe to look at any of these obstacles and move through it, because life is gonna throw you stuff. It's not gonna stop, life isn't gonna change just because we've been in a toxic relationship. Things are gonna happen and more stuff's gonna come our way.

Speaker 1: 19:42

So we have to think what is it that calms you down? So do this right now. Right now, have a thing what is it that calms you down? Does yoga help you? Does walking help you? What other things help you calm your nervous system down? Breathwork what is it that helps you? I do have some processes. If you're looking for some tools in the Reclaim your Power program, if you want some techniques to help you, look in the resources section, and I've also got an offer at the moment. So if you wanna do that, it's a good time to do it. It can help you release that tension from your body.

Speaker 1: 20:22

So what we're doing in the moment is recognizing. Then, okay, what could be the source of my trauma. It could be emotional, physical, but we're learning to relax our body first, as a first step, so we don't go into overwhelm and then it's easier to release the emotion, especially so it doesn't go into disease mode, because emotional memories can turn into physical pain. And there's a lot of science behind this. Many metabolic conditions, diabetes, cardiac conditions have all been mapped back to stresses in life. It can be mapped back to trauma, autoimmune conditions, all deeply connected to stresses, and some certain cancers, unfortunately, as well. Well, basically, your body is telling you it's too much I need to be taking care of emotionally and physically, and so it's a clue to say, okay, let's slow down, slow down. I need to now deal with what I've been carrying for one, two, five, 10, 15, 20 years, and it's also the impact of telling the story but not allowing yourself, your body, taking care of your body to make sure that it feels safe.

Speaker 1: 21:41

So remember, a lot of us have been trained by the narcissist to numb and disassociate the pain. We don't really feel the pain because it's too painful and we have had to find ways to numb because there's been no one there for us. So you might distract yourself, you might busy yourself, you might dissociate, you might block the pain, you might drink, you might do drugs. Whatever it is that you're doing, you might eat, emotional eating. These, I just want you to know, are protective factors. You are protecting yourself from the pain, from how you truly feel, because the depths of your pain are just too much, and that is the survival mode. Then we're not living. Okay, we're not living life because we're protecting ourselves, because we've been deeply hurt and even though we've been, we're really.

Speaker 1: 22:44

We are strong enough, by the way, to deal with the pain. It's just that you probably don't have the tools to know how to process the pain. So you decide I'm gonna live with the trauma because you think you're strong enough to do that, rather than and go into survival mode rather than actually process it. It's just a protective way of dealing with everything that you've been through. And a lot of the time we're choosing to hold on to the hurt because we don't wanna let go of the pain and the injustice, even if we get sick, because we think it benefits us to hold on to it in some way so that we can then, you know, never get into that situation again. Okay, that's the reason why you're repeating it in your head and that's the reason why. So it's a protective measure.

Speaker 1: 23:36

So I would say to you, another thing that is really important for you to do is why do you think this you know, holding onto this is protecting you in some way? Yeah, a lot of the time there's a fear, and that fear you're gonna try and preserve yourself in order to make it through another day. You know you're making it through day by day, the mind and the body. I mean, they are absolutely brilliant and what they've done is recognized, a way of numbing so that you can protect yourself, cope with all the things. So, even if it's a harmful thing that you're doing, like drinking or I don't know, whatever it is that you wish you wouldn't do, like procrastinating, and you're disconnecting from life, from joy, from happiness, because you're protecting yourself to get through another day. But you can do something different, right? You can actually learn the skills to process this and connect to yourself so you feel more like yourself and find happiness and healthy relationships with other people. You know, because it's the long-term win you have to see. You know it's the long-term if you get to a space of really healing your wounds.

Speaker 1: 24:56

Sometimes people worry like, oh, how long is this gonna take? It's gonna take forever. And is it gonna fully? Am I gonna be fully happy? No, you're not gonna be enlightened. I'm gonna be honest. You're not gonna get into a space of bliss. You might do, I don't know. I'm not here to say that you won't, but you won't maybe get to. You know the level of Buddha. But you will feel more ease and more peace. You will feel hope. You will feel love. You will feel you're living more authentically. You. You will feel stronger within yourself, that you're moving towards a better life for yourself. You will believe and trust in yourself more and more each day because you have got out of the trauma responses.

Speaker 1: 25:40

If you get triggered all the time, you will find that you're able to tolerate and get back up because you've actually got tools to be able to get there. There's like a sense of empowerment, like I am gonna get through this. It's you know, and I'm not gonna stay stuck and frozen for years. I know I'm gonna move through this. But feeling numb towards everything and then getting stuck and frozen for years, it's not worth it. If you wanna help settle your nervous system, it does take some time. The Heal to Frive program if that is something you wanna do. It takes about four months. That will give you tools to actually help you settle this once from before. That's gonna help you experience a more blissful time where, even if you get thrown into the deepest, darkest abyss of emotions, you won't feel like the overwhelmed, that dark hole survival that you've been going through.

Speaker 1: 26:43

The truth is, what's happened to you isn't your fault, but it is your responsibility to heal though, to process it and to know and realize what you've been through isn't your fault and not let it consume your life. Moving forward, find the tools to deal with it and allow yourself to open the doors to your authentic, pious self, so that you're living from that most of the time, living from peace, harmony inside you, more towards your true nature. And it's not about perfection, it's not about being Zen all the time, but it is living a beautiful life in peace and harmony, whereas when you're dealing with trauma, you're in suffering, pain, agony, numbing yourself all the time, and it's all the time living in survival mode. Most of the time you'll have small snippets of feeling like yourself, but most of the time you don't know who you are anymore. You're so in the trauma phase and sometimes you identify with it. You get used to living that life because you did that with the narcissist. That doesn't mean that you have to do that anymore. You can get to.

Speaker 1: 27:58

After doing some intense work trauma work you can get period of time where you feel free.

Speaker 1: 28:05

So it is important to look at how many years have you lived like this with trauma and are you willing to take that intensive time for four months, and is that four months really worth it, so that you can then have feel more grounded, more like your true self and more of your clarity, peace and knowing what you want? Or because suffering keeps us stuck in that same phase, thinking that you can't move forward? But if you do want to move forward and you want to transform your life, do look into the resources section. If we are aligned, we can get you on board into the Heal and Drive program. I only have limited numbers every month and so if it is something of interest to you, please do look in the resources section and remember love, compassion, understanding is key, no matter where you are in the healing process. Love yourself, you are enough and we want the best for you. And when you love yourself, you want the best for you. You love yourself enough to want what's right for you rather than everybody else feeling someone else's ego. So keep loving.