Healing from Narcissistic Abuse
What if the worst thing that ever happened to you is the best thing that ever happened to you? What would it mean for your life? How do you live differently?
You stop hiding.
Healing from narcissistic abuse is brutal, relentless, emotionally back-breaking work. Narcissistic abuse is a form of psychological abuse that involves manipulation, gaslighting, invalidation, and exploitation by someone who has narcissistic traits or narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissistic abusers often target people who are empathic, compassionate, and vulnerable. In my family, that was me and my little brother.
I find that when I recover a memory from my childhood, a particularly horrific one, I need about four days on the couch bingeing some low-stakes sci-fi or fantasy show to help me integrate and reset.
Everyone’s healing looks unique.
Recovering memories may be misleading if not a somewhat inaccurate way to describe what happens in these moments. To be sure, when your brain doesn’t encode the memory because it’s too horrific because you were too young to understand what was happening, the only thing your brain can do to protect you is not to allow it in. You go black, which is…
