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After Narcissism

Updated: Jan 28

Did you have Narcissistic parents? My mother was the Olympic champion of Narcissistic abuse. Working in plastic surgery, I met Narcissistic people daily. This can leave an unwanted legacy of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) and its associated emotional flashbacks from when you were a little child, which I know all very well.



After Narcissism

 

Michelle Lee gives a great summary of the overwhelming symptoms, the five faces, of C-PTSD after parental Narcissism, and what’s needed to overcome them. The five symptoms are:


1.        Emotional flashbacks

2.        Toxic shame

3.        Self-abandonment

4.        Vicious inner critic

5.        Social anxiety


In her video, she also talks about the importance of healing unresolved overwhelming issues by means of emotional flashbacks (there is no visual component to the feeling) and how to overcome them, based on advice in the book by Pete Walker ‘Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.’ C-PTSD doesn't go away until you work on it. Here is the video by Michelle Lee:


After Narcissism: Five overwhelming symptoms of C-PTSD `and how to overcome emotional flashbacks

 

The 13 steps to healing from emotional flashbacks (if you want to avoid disassociation from unresolved issues and emotional pain) are:

  1. Say to your Self "I am having an emotional flashback." Flashbacks take you into a timeless part of the psyche that feels as helpless, hopeless, and surrounded by danger as you were in childhood. The feelings and sensations you are experiencing are past memories that cannot hurt you now.

  2. Remind your Self "I feel afraid but I am not in danger!" You are safe now, here in the present. Remember you are now in the present, far from the danger of the past.

  3. Own your right to have boundaries. Remind your Self that you do not have to allow anyone to mistreat you. You are free to leave dangerous situations and protest unfair toxic behaviour.

  4. Speak reassuringly to your inner child. The inner child needs to know that you love him/her unconditionally - that they can come to you for comfort and protection when they feel lost and scared.

  5. Deconstruct eternity thinking. In childhood, fear and abandonment felt endless - a safer future was unimaginable. Remember this flashback will pass as it always has before. This too shall pass.

  6. Remind your Self that you are in an adult body with the resources to protect your Self.

  7. Ease back into your body. Fear launches us into our head (the worst place to be) with numbing and dissasociation. We can ask our body to relax. Breathe deeply and slowly. Slow down. Find a safe space. Feel the fear in your body without reacting to it.

  8. Resist the inner critic's dramaticising and catastrophising. Use thought stopping to halt the inner critic's endless exaggerations of danger. Refuse to hate, shame, or abandon your Self.

  9. Allow your Self to grieve. Flashbacks are opportunities to release old, unepxressed feelings of fear, hurt, or abandonment. Validate and soothe your inner child's past experience of helplessness and hopelessness. Healthy grieving can turn your tears into Self-compassion and your anger into self-protection.

  10. Cultivate safe relationships and seek support. Take time alone when you need it, but don't let shame isolate you. Feeling shame doesn't mean you are shameful.

  11. Learn to identify the types of triggers that lead to flashbacks. Avoid toxic, negative, and unsafe people.

  12. Figure out what you are flashing back to. Flashbacks are opportunities to discover, validate, and heal your wounds from past abuse and abandonment.

  13. Be patient with a slow recovery process. It takes time in the present to become de-adrenalised, and considerable time in the future to gradually decrease the intensity, durarion, and frequency of flashbacks. Real recovery is a gradually progressive process, not an attained salvation fantasy. Don't beat your Self up for having a flashback.


For my articles on the book by Pete Walker on Complex PTSD please click on the links below:




Speak in such a way that others love to listen to you: Listen in such a way that others love to speak to you.


George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Are you ready to change your mind?


Namaste.


Sending you love, light, and blessings brothers.


Olly



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Hello,

I am delighted and enchanted to meet you. I coach men with 'Deep Coaching', 'Supercoaching', and Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching on Zoom or in person. 


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