Healing from Crazy-Making
If you’ve found your way here, it’s likely that you’re feeling discouraged, angry, or just plain exhausted. Maybe you’re tired of being used or walked over. Perhaps you’re feeling lonely, scared, or unsure of your own instincts. You might even be questioning your sanity. Whether you’re desperately flailing or simply in need of better grounding, you’re not alone.
Recovering Your Identity After Escaping Codependency and Abuse
We cannot get through life unscathed by trauma. Yet, we often let trauma dominate our lives through denial, avoidance, fear, or naivete. Undealt with, trauma isolates us and leads to self-protection, manifesting as codependence or narcissism. Both extremes involve hiding oneself to manage the world around them. As natural nurturers, most women tend to lean toward codependency.
Healing and Wholeness after Escaping Abuse
You cannot live (or love) well if you are not well. Your journey to healing begins with finding your own footing to think, speak, act, and live authentically no matter who agrees.
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Narcissistic Victim Syndrome: Recovery
In this part of our series on Narcissistic Victim Syndrome, we focus on recovery. Standard, run-of-the-mill approaches are potentially dangerous for couples stuck in power and control cycles. As coaches and counselors, we must protect the victim from further harm and work to potentially bring them to a place of collaboration. The dominating partner must become connection-oriented before collaboration can occur. Which means that couples work is not the first step.
Narcissistic Victim Syndrome: Overview
Our working definition of emotional abuse is that it is an ongoing pattern of selfish, destructive behaviors used to gain and maintain control over their spouse for one’s own benefit at the expense of their spouse. Underlying this pattern of behavior is a strong sense of entitlement to use others regardless of the cost to them. Narcissistic, emotional abuse eventually culminates in a very complicated case of un-health. The soul-crushing experience of being dismissed, unheard and unseen, belittled, and silenced culminates in becoming a dead (wo)man walking.
Hostage to The Misplaced Responsibility
I’m going to make a statement that might initially cause a strong reaction in you, but please hear me out. Ultimately, my goal is to find that precious, sacred, powerful point at which we become intentional about living, even in the midst of a destructive, stifling world. It is at that point where we have the God-given agency to make a choice about our next step, and about who we are and how we are showing up. The hardest question to answer is: How?
What is your bias?
Another nuance impacting attachment is confirmation bias. This might seem a bit random in the context of trauma, but there is a strong correlation between confirmation bias and resistance to change, thus resistance to healing. What we’ve deeply learned, both intrinsically and extrinsically, determines what we seek, expect, and perceive. When there is a gap in our understanding, we fill it in with our own narrative based upon previous learning. Most often we fill in those blanks with negativity and suspicion. Trauma teaches us what to watch for, what to expect, and how to perceive it.
Attachment has a Role
There is a curious power to attachment theory and the role it plays in complicating trauma. I believe attachment issues underlie every psychological disorder and diagnosis. In my intro above, I started to write “…the role of attachment on psychological health.” But, it goes much deeper than that. I think it has a role is every aspect of our health – biological, psychological, sociological, spiritual, and relational.
