Why Narcissistic Abuse Trauma Doesn’t Go Away

Did you know that there are common behaviours that can derail your effort to heal beyond narcissistic abuse? They will, in fact, keep you stuck in the trauma and cycle of abuse.

You may not think that engaging in these behaviours is a big deal, but I promise you it is.

You see, the trauma we endure within these relationships is deeply traumatizing and paralyzing and keeps your focus on the narcissist rather than on yourself.

I engaged in each of the seven examples I explain in this Thriver TV episode. I lived the consequences of each one until I realized the damage they were causing me. Some I wasn’t even aware I was doing, maybe you aren’t either.

But when you hit a wall, when you get to a dead end you have to try something different and turn your focus where it belongs – on YOU.

These seven behaviours and my explanations of them, are all incredibly important understandings which will help you avoid making these mistakes going forward. Thousands of Thrivers in this community have changed their trajectories by changing their actions. You can too.

 

 

Video Transcript

In the past 12 years, I’ve witnessed tens of thousands of people go through narcissistic abuse and come out the other side. In this video, I want to share with you what I believe are the seven most common things that derail our efforts to heal and keep us stuck in the trauma and the cycle of abuse.

I hope by watching this video, that you’re going to bypass a lot of the pain and the struggles that I went through so that you can achieve your Thriver recovery so much more quickly than what I originally did.

Let’s get into the seven things that keep people stuck, traumatized, and in the cycle of abuse with narcissists.

 

Number 1 – Continued Research About Narcissists

Probably the biggest starting point to understand is continued research about narcissists. Now, let’s just preface this by saying, naturally at the start of the journey, it’s really useful for you to understand what narcissism really is. However, if you continue researching narcissists and narcissistic abuse, you can’t have your intention in more than one place at one time, and you’re going to be denying yourself your own love and healing back to wholeness.

Now, I want to give you a really powerful reason why researching narcissism doesn’t heal you. Imagine if you are walking across the road with somebody that you loved and they got hit by a car. And they’re on the ground, they’re broken, they’re bleeding. Maybe they’re dying. Now, what would happen if you just ran after the car? And then you did everything, trying to research this person and hold them accountable and find out everything about them and you left the person that you loved bleeding out on the road? They’re not going to get better. Think about it because it’s a really powerful metaphor.

I love what Pema Chödrön said. I love her statements and her quotes and this one is especially powerful, “If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart.”

The people who don’t turn inwards to heal their internal traumas, are the people who stay traumatized, victimized and they don’t get better. I promise you, I’ve seen thousands of them over the years.

Research is really interesting. Narcissism is a phenomenon. It’s fascinating and it’s even addictive, but ultimately, it takes us away from turning inwards to heal and empower ourselves by doing the inner work. So you really need to understand that.

 

Number 2 – Trying To Think Your Way Out Of The Trauma

Number two, which is equally as important, is trying to think your way out of the trauma. It’s such a game changer. When you realize the truth of the neuroscientist, Joe Dispenza, and I know that a lot of you in this community love him and I also love his work. His famous quote, short, simple, but to the point, “The brain follows the body.”

What does this mean? It means that the root of our trauma is at an emotional body level. I want you to feel into that time when you were deeply betrayed, abused, or abandoned, it literally is like a gut punch. It feels like shards of ice running through your veins under your skin. It feels like shock and despair and maybe powerlessness. It may be so extreme in your body that it literally feels like you’re going to die.

Now, I know a lot of you know that feeling and I certainly remember it. Neuroscientists now know that our thinking can only match what we’re feeling. And our level of consciousness is what we’re thinking. It’s very hard to control logically when we are somatically triggered into large rushes of chemicals, of cortisol, adrenaline, and certain specific peptides.

I wrote a whole article and I’ve done some presentations on peptide addiction and trauma bonding. I really suggest you look that stuff up to go into it on a deeper level. I’m not going to go into it deeply today.

There are things physiologically going through your body, which are very, very, very hard to think your way out of. It’s all taking place in our limbic system, which you could also call your Beingness, what’s happening under your skin, in your body. You could call it your subconscious.

An incredible neuroscientist such as Bruce Lipton, believes that whatever is going on in our Inner Self, this limbic system is controlling 40 billion bits per second of our entire human operating system, which means how we feel, what we think, what we choose, how our combined systems are operating, including our health, and as well as what and who we choose in our life.

Whereas our logical mind is only operating a teeny, teeny 40 bits per second. Which means that our logical frontal cortex is easily derailed by our powerful, visceral, emotional drivers. Our logical thinking doesn’t effectively communicate with this deep inner part of ourselves. It’s like trying to tune into a radio station and you’re on a completely different frequency.

This deep inner a part of ourselves is our subconscious, chemical, emotional energy. E-motion means energy in motion and it’s powerful.

Let’s do a very simple exercise that helps you understand this. I want you to repeat after me, “I think devastated. I think abandoned. I think abused.”

These statements, when you feel it in your body, do you feel the disconnect? It’s like there’s that and there’s that, and they haven’t connected. It’s almost like caveman speak.

Now say after me, “I feel devastated. I feel abandoned. I feel abused.”

Feel that in your body. It connects. So do you see the difference, how you are actually in communication with your Inner Being when you connect to the feeling, not the thinking, because it’s the feeling, somatic bodily state, where this is really all going on.

Maybe this has helped you understand that trying to think your way out of the trauma with that disconnect only leads to unhealed trauma because you haven’t been able to reach it. The brain is going to keep following the trauma with obsessive, repeated, looped painful thoughts because you haven’t actually healed anything.

 

Number 3 – Joining Victimised Abuse Groups

Joining victimized abuse groups doesn’t heal you. Now I know that’s a really controversial statement.

Let me explain. Whatever you decide you are, is powerful. We’re all so powerful that if we grant ourselves the label of, for example, I’m a post traumatic stress disorder sufferer, then you’ve decided that is your Inner Identity. You may join a group of other sufferers of PTSD who of course have decided understandably that’s their identity. Then in those groups, you talk about your limitations, your conditions, how you can’t engage in normal life, how you’re triggered and what’s going on for you. The best that you’re going to come up with is discussing some solutions of how to manage those conditions.

I want you to know with all of my heart, I completely and utterly understand intimately these disorders that are such a common occurrence of narcissistic abuse. I too went through complicated post traumatic stress disorder, agoraphobia, fibromyalgia. I had a complete psychotic and adrenal breakdown for narcissistic abuse.

I also promise you with all of my heart that if I hadn’t gone through a deeper inner journey discovering how to meet, release, and set myself free from the trauma in my body generating these conditions, that my attempts to merely manage the symptoms would’ve killed me. I would not have made it, let alone be here today. I am 100% symptom-free from these conditions, really passionate about inspiring you to also break free into the human being you were born to be rather than stay stuck with those conditions for the rest of your life trying to manage them.

My greatest suggestion to you in regard to support groups is seek ones that have true healing solutions, seek ones that are going to lead you home to healing and freeing yourself rather than just trying to live with your internal trauma and hoping to manage it.

This is the same for your personal relationships, as well as your larger macro-relationships with any entity or group. If anyone is telling you that you’re a victim, you’re not powerful, you’re not capable, you can’t heal, and you can’t empower yourself, and you can’t go free, then they’re keeping you depressed, small, and a lesser being than you were born to be.

It truly is incredible when people come into my Thriver community, learning to deeply meet, hold, release, and go free from internal trauma to claim their true selves and their true lives, they end up having zero desire to keep identifying with victimized management groups because they no longer need management when they’re truly healed.

 

Number 4 – Trying To Fix And Change The Narcissist

Number four is where we can go so wrong – trying to fix and change the narcissist. Trauma bonding to a narcissist is powerful. I’ve talked about trauma bonds, as I mentioned before, in other articles and other videos, but really what trauma bonding means is that you feel like you love this person who was hurting you, that you can’t live without them, that it’s your duty to save them or fix them.

You may feel highly responsible for them and the guilt’s killing you if you let go, as well as the other reasons why you just can’t stop yourself going back to them no matter what they do to you. Of course, we’re going to do that until we heal. But logically, I’m going to give you an understanding that you need to know about narcissists – narcissists don’t want what you want. What we all want is love, and kindness, and care, and togetherness, and solution building, and growth together, and harmony, and enjoyment. All the normal enjoyable things in life. That’s what we want. Narcissists don’t want that.

Narcissists have either consciously or subconsciously completely discarded their own Inner Being, which is damaged and traumatized and doesn’t believe it can get its needs met and they put a False Self in its place, a fictitious self. That fictitious self is not connected to True Source. It doesn’t have its own good healings and wholesomeness and wholeness. So that False Self is like the proverbial black hole. It needs energy. It needs acclaim. It needs stuff. It needs resources. It needs people’s Life Force. It needs drama.

So this really is a dark entity that’s not connected to the light True Source who feeds off drama, and conflict, and pain, and other people’s anxiety, and disruption. For a narcissist getting peace and love and wholeness is horrifying to them. They don’t want solution because then they’re going to have to feel their discarded, distraught Inner Being bubbling up to the surface without the drama and getting other people’s pain and drama around them.

So they can’t have – they literally cannot tolerate – what you are trying to force them into. The harder you try to get them to be kind and caring and do teamwork, the more they are going to push back and abuse you, which I know you’ve understood.

Now, there’s also a deeper layer to this. It’s Quantum Law, which is so within, so without and you need to understand this. If you try to change someone outside of yourself to make you feel better, which is loved, safe, and whole, this person can and will only give you more evidence of where you are not feeling loved, safe, and whole between yourself and True Source. Narcissists as dark entities are anti-life. They are not your True Self and your true life. The more you try to fix and control them so they stop hurting you, the more you will lose this war for your Soul. The only solution is to let go and heal yourself.

 

Number 5 – Putting Other Things In Front Of Your Soul

The other mistake that we can make is putting other things in front of your Soul. Let me explain what I mean by this, because it’s very important.

Narcissistic abuse is a very humbling experience because you can’t just get up and get on with it after experiencing it. Personally, this shocked me at the beginning because I have a strong A-type personality, and I know many of you do too. You’re resourceful, you’re intelligent, you’re positive and you’ve always believed there’s a solution to everything. Yet this time, after narcissistic abuse for the first time in my life, I couldn’t just get up and get on with it. I’d lost a lot. My life was in rubble at my feet, and I felt like a failure. I wanted to rebuild everything and get my life and resources back as quickly as possible, because that had been my identity, those things, my successes, and the more I tried to do it, everything failed.

All that happened was I kept hitting brick walls and nothing worked. I was just getting depressed and sicker and sicker, and then I finally realized the truth. That this was a deep, spiritual experience calling me to come home, to make it right with myself, to heal myself, to integrate in a healthy way between myself and True Source, my Higher Power, instead of trying to get and do to give me myself.

My true healing began when I let go of all of my outer props and labels and things. Yes, I needed to survive, but I gave myself permission to simplify everything and take the pressure off of success. I started asking for help. I accepted help from the outside, and I focused on my greatest mission, which was the valuing of my Soul above all else to create my recovery from the inside-out, back from the dead, into the best, most-at-peace and a whole version of myself possible, without the need for stuff and outer success to define me. What a relief that was to go for inner success this time, meaning my own healing and wholeness.

Not only did I heal, but from this place for the first time ever, I was able to build incredible outer success and this time with no requirement or need for it to give me myself, because I already had the feelings of wholeness I needed, even when I still had nothing, without any outer results.

Again, it comes back to the truth of Quantum Laws, so within, so without, when you feel whole and at one within, you actually have true abundance. You used to chase things out there to get that. When you get that, then the rest just starts unfolding in ways that will thrill you and stun you, which is exactly what Thriving is all about. I hope that’s explained point number five to you because all of them are so important and key.

 

Number 6 – Trying To Use Distractions To Get Better

Do you remember when we were kids and we were sad and angry and our parents would say to us, “Go and do something nice, go and do this, go do that, distract yourself, don’t think about it.” We were all told that. We thought that’s what we’re meant to do.

Now, I want you to imagine this. Imagine if you’re a mum, you’re a dad, and the child that you adore, who is four or five years old, runs up to you with age-appropriate anxiety. Maybe they’ve been playing with other kids and they’ve been shunned and pushed out and they say, “You know, they don’t want to play with me, they don’t like me. Nobody likes me.” You know, they feel really unloved and abandoned.

Now, imagine if you said to that child, “Oh, shut up. I don’t want to listen to you. I’m going to go and have this alcoholic drink. I’m going to go and smoke a cigarette. I’m going to jump on Facebook. I’m going to go watch Netflix. I’m going to go have sex with somebody. I’m going to go have a cheese sandwich,” whatever it is, that child would become manic, would become so anxious and so panicked with post-traumatic stress disorder. Then maybe, after screaming out in emotional pain, over and over and being ignored over and over by somebody self-medicating away the cries, not listening, that child curls up in a corner, massively, manically depressed and catatonic. Can you see what we’ve been doing to ourselves? I really want you to get this piece.

Now I’m not a fan of Law of Attraction. I’m not a fan of that model at all. For simple little things, without a huge amount of emotional content, maybe, but I don’t believe that when we’re suffering trauma such as narcissistic abuse, just trying to stay upbeat and positive and distracting yourself, is going to get you to the other side to Thriving. This is New Age and fluffy.

I can’t tell you how many spiritual people I know who have been able to stay positive and loving after narcissistic abuse. All power to them. That is pretty amazing. Yet, they keep replaying the same patterns with the same type of people. They still have really poor boundaries. They have money issues, relationship issues, confidence issues, health issues. They’re not getting their life mission started. There are still unconscious blind spots and they keep having the same problems in repeat. They don’t go to the next level. Why not? Because they’re not doing the inner shadow work. They don’t want to turn inwards and dedicate to those levels of deep self-partnering and deep inner healing.

There is a saying, “Nothing changes if nothing changes.” I fell into that trap for years, I promise you, I really did, before I started deeply meeting my traumas with the Thriver way to heal. If we aren’t prepared to meet ourselves and change our Beingness on the inside, no amount of doingness, especially when we have deep-trauma programs, is going to break us through into another trajectory, another reality of our life.

 

Number 7 – Trying To Make Deals With The Narcissist

Now let’s have a look at that last one, number seven, trying to make deals with a narcissist. When dealing with narcissists and trying to separate from them, even if you’re working on yourself, you might be going through the things like custody, and property settlements, or detaching from a business with a narcissist.

All narcissists are very good at enmeshing and getting their talons and their tendrils into our life, so usually, there’s a disconnection process, even if it’s just your personal belongings or pets or whatever. When dealing with narcissists and trying to separate from them, absolutely it can be one of the most stressful times of your life. This is where we’ve got to really step up and take our power back. You’ve got to learn how to be courageous because you may want to try to tiptoe around it and keep the narcissists sane and happy and you’re going to try to get a deal over the line and massage it through.

You’re not dealing with a normal person, you’re dealing with a narcissist. Please know this, if you try to do the right thing, and if you try to keep the peace and avoid a fall out with a narcissist, they will usually keep you on a hook. They keep siphoning out your Life Force and your resources, and they get narcissistic supply from you. They keep punishing you because it’s like a cat with a mouse. They can promise and then deny it and keep you there. They’re so manipulative and it’s exactly where they want to keep you.

There are so many people I’ve known over the years who are separated from narcissists who actually aren’t separated at all because there’s still all these ties and these bonds that are going on. They’re tied up in all sorts of enmeshment because they haven’t as yet done what they need to do, which is heal on the inside. You need to take back your Soul and your sovereign power and your emotional truth, stand in your truth, no longer be derailed and triggered.

Be fearless because you’ve released from within what has kept you small and triggered and derailed and handing your power away. There’s such a phenomenon with narcissists, which is quite amazing once you get it and you realize that they are the little man or woman behind the curtain and they can only operate in your experience when you hand them your power.

When you take that back and you stand in your light, your power and your truth, and you’ve done the work to fill up your traumas with Source, which is exactly what NARP helps you do, and all of my programs where you fill with Source and light and your True Self. Then the narcissist, because you’re no longer on an energy exchange with them where they can suck your Life Force dry and manipulate and punish you and you’ve chopped them off, cease to have power and influence over you.

There are people in our community, as a result of the inner work, and module eight in NARP is very powerful for this, they did the work and they were able to walk in their powerful, sovereign truth. So often when that happens, when a narcissist can’t trigger you and get you to drop a boundary and you just walk your cool, calm, powerful truth, without fear of outcome, then narcissists will capitulate.

They will hand you what they want because for a narcissist, when they can no longer trigger you, hook you and mine you, when you no longer hand them the bullets that they can shoot you with, they have to get out of your experience because it is the hugest insult to a narcissist when they become not your reality and they have no power over you. It is the highest insult. They’ve got to get away and get out. So, they’ll hand over whatever they need to, to get away.

 

In Conclusion

I really hope that today’s video has been helpful for you. These are all incredibly important understandings to not make these mistakes. And they’re counterintuitive. You wouldn’t have been taught to do these seven things because you think that’s the normal thing to do, but it’s the very thing we think we should be doing that we need to reverse and find a better way to do. This is so you can heal from all of the symptoms, be empowered and be freed to get to a higher level of Thriving that you’ve ever known even before abuse, and even if abuse is all that you’ve ever known.

I would love you to go and check out NARP because in as far as the inner healing, it’s the most powerful, fastest way I know how to reprogram your Inner Being to get out of the trauma and the pain of this and into your power. It’s exactly what I used to save my life, and it’s what thousands of people in this community have used to get to a Thriver level. So, go check it out. The link’s with this video and in the show notes.

If you want to learn more about NARP, then please come into my free webinar where you can have a two-hour presentation that’s going to take you through some deeper stuff, give you heaps of understanding and clarity about what you’ve been going through, as well as take you through a free Quantum Freedom Healing, where you are going to feel some powerful, instant relief. I can’t recommend it enough. The link to my free webinar is also with this video and in the show notes.

I hope you found this powerful and that it’s given you some really pivotal answers.