Trauma response is real. It’s also normal.
There’s nothing wrong with us.
In fact, our bodies are protecting us.
Go with it.
We’re truly amazing! Trauma response is normal, valid and to be honored. When our eyes are at half-mast, and it’s only 11:00 am. That time in the afternoon when our brain is mush… and by afternoon, I mean 1:04 pm. The wish from deep in our bones to curl up with Netflix or just nothing and do nothing but sleep…
Continue readingPTSD triggers are the normal bodily response to a traumatic event. The traumatic event we’re concerned with is that of an entanglement in a relationship with a narcissistic individual.
Particularly the ones so narcissistic that they’re what you’d call, pathological. This would be the kind that lies even when they wouldn’t need to in order to get what they want and basically lies about everything else as well. – In this case, what you’ve experienced is a single traumatic event that by its nature takes place over a period of time rather than in a flash, and then it’s done.
PTSD is an alarm system built into the body. It’s meant to protect you from an impending repeat danger by alerting you with specifically designed triggers based on a previous traumatic event.
It’s bespoke, custom-made for you unconsciously by your body.
A specific trauma is experienced when the person we thought of as “the one” lies and deceives us.
The depth of the deception and the continuous deception by someone we thought of as trustworthy and close to us is profoundly traumatic.
PTSD is a state in which our body’s nervous system is out of balance, out of order, if you will. This is where we get the naming of PTSD as… post-traumatic stress dis-order. Its purpose is that you recognize and avoid the danger same kind of danger in the future.
Naturally, until we’re fully recovered, there will be things that catch us off guard almost anywhere and trigger us. There isn’t anything permanently or even temporarily intrinsically wrong with you…
Though weeping suddenly at the sound of a song wafting through the air while in a department store can be frustrating and maybe even embarrassing, your body is beautifully doing what it’s designed to do to protect you.
Those strong fear signals are to keep you away from the source of the trauma. – Over time we rebalance the nervous system so that the song in the department store doesn’t bring fear or tears or bad memories.
Knowing what’s happening and why is more than half-healed.
The bodies way of recording past experiences and remembering markers of danger to keep us safe now and in the future is a perfectly great plan when the traumatic event is that you see a lion or a puma in the jungle about to attack – again – and you need to turn and run.
In this case, however, here in the 21st century with our more discerning minds, office towers, paved roads, and Amazon delivery, the PTSD and its lovely triggers feel as useful as a wool sweater in mid-summer. And honestly, can be really scary or out of place in a social setting and make you want to just stay home.
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared hauled through the confusion, lies, fear, and pain, and breaking away.
Told in their own words, they leave nothing unsaid. Find validation and see new glimpses of the truth as they share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
So, what to do about this wool sweater? What to do about triggers in the middle of your modern workday? Or at the market? And at a cocktail party? Let’s talk about how and when and what can trigger the memory of the trauma and about how we might smooth the experience… and eventually diminish this response altogether.
A key bit to smoothing the rough edges of PTSD is realizing that it’s natural, that it’s normal. And for me, this took me into a kind of awe at its efficiency; even to appreciate it a bit.
When I went through it, I found myself amazed at the power of the body’s warning system. I’ll tell you what, my body was the first thing that told me I was in trouble with this “relationship”, while my mind rationalized it. In the aftermath I observed myself in wonder, thinking, wow, people’s hands really shake. Our knees really cave in. – Isn’t that kind of miraculous?
The things that bring on PTSD triggers vary depending on what the body has stored for us as markers of this kind of danger. It can be the shape of a body, the movement of a person, cologne or other smell or scent, a certain car, a particular neighborhood or place or song, even a certain food or activity.
Sometimes when activated the trigger releases a memory, sometimes it does not. In some cases, it can be a full memory of an original traumatic event. For others, it’s more of a sickening momentary reminder. This varies from person to person and is also in relation to the event itself and the level of perceived and actual trauma.
Our bodies don’t mind where we are, or what we’re in the middle of doing… they do their job to protect us no matter what. This can be embarrassing and awkward when we’re in places where we feel it isn’t appropriate to shake like a leaf or cry or want to vomit.
All of this is okay. Your feelings are valid. Your fear is yours, and that’s okay. You get to be who you are. PTSD triggers don’t have to be permanent. If you’re anything like me, my desire was to heal the PTSD, to heal the triggers, to tame and resolve them so that they were no longer part of me.
Choosing how to approach your healing is up to you. Whatever it is that brings you answers, resolution, and returns your calm and well-being is good. Whatever brings you the confidence, knowledge, and skills to disassemble the harm and to turn your raw emotions, feelings, thoughts, and perceptions to your benefit is fantastic.
EMDR: EMDR stands for, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. This is a kind of therapy performed by a listened practitioner of this modality of healing. It can be very effective for diminishing triggers tied to specific singular events. Its goal is to process past experiences and sort out the emotions attached to those experiences.
Somatic Therapy: Somatic therapy is a mind-body connection therapy using exercises and other physical methods to release stored tension. It combines talk therapy with what are sometimes considered alternative forms of physical therapy. A somatic therapist might utilize breathing, meditation, vocalization, and even massage as a part of this modality.
All therapy choices are personal and individual. This is in no way meant to be taken as professional mental health or medical advice or a substitute for professional care.
Traditional Therapy: Psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, and counselors are educated from the paradigm of approaching you as a client in order to determine what is wrong with you. Some therapists are centered on more contemporary or casual talk or narrative therapy and can be quite passive. Others are centered on classical or Freudian approaches to analyzing and fixing you.
Ultimately their decisions, advice, and opinion of you can influence how you feel about yourself. Being “declared” as having a condition or disorder can often retard or interfere with actual healing. Depending on your circumstances this may or may not be a good route for you.
Be aware: their findings are part of your medical records. If you mention anything that signals to them that you are a danger to yourself or to others they are obligated to report your condition to authorities. These findings, though private can be subpoenaed for court if the court decision is to determine your ability to care for a minor child.
Medication: Chemical medications are prescribed by a licensed medical or mental health practitioner and a record of this remains on our health records. Some find medication useful to in effect, suppress the trauma response and associated anxieties. Chemical drugs do not resolve the trauma or emotional memory of it stored within our bodies. There are a few go-to’s for PTSD: Fluoxetine (Prozac), Sertraline (Zoloft), Paroxetine (Paxil), and Venlafaxine (Effexor). All have effects that may be undesirable, uncomfortable, or harmful. – Do your research.
Homeopathic Healing: Homeopathy is a form of medicine that causes the body to remember perfect health. It’s subtle; when it works you simply feel good again. It leads the body to heal itself and repair on a deep level. Common remedies for shock, trauma, loss, and grief are Arnica (Arnica Montana), Ignatia (Ignatia Amara), and Aconite (Aconitum Napellus). There are no undesirable effects or harmful effects. Either a remedy works for you or it does not. Aconite is particularly for when nightmares are part of your experience and Ignatia helps when sleep is difficult due to a busy or racing mind at night.
There are many other homeopathic remedies that may be perfect for you, as the remedy chosen is unique to each person. Remedies can be self-prescribed and purchased through retail sources such as Amazon, Whole Foods, natural health stores, and Hahnemann Labs or by a licensed classical Homeopathic doctor.
Recovery Coaching: Guided recovery coaching is quite useful when carried out with a certified coach who is familiar with this specific trauma. A good coach can lead you to answers that resolve every question and leave you whole and confident again. As coaching is forward-directed and query-based, there is great depth and ground that can be covered including moving into your renewed life plans as you heal.
Knowledge and Perspective: This must be sought on one’s own. Many find partial answers that leave more questions; maybe that leaves the mark of self-blame or shame. In the case of being roped into an abusive dynamic by a pathological person, gaining the true perspective on how a person can commit these acts that harmed you is a way to diminish the effect. There’s much well-intended yet incomplete and flat-out inaccurate information about this.
When knowledge, information, or perspective is right, it fits and falls into place allowing another aspect of the maze to arise for resolving. – You roll through to completion and resolution rather than remaining in pain. – There can be resistance to new views on this phenomenon or about this person who you were involved with. It’s up to each individual to pursue what it takes to truly be free of this trauma. Full recovery requires courage.
Time: Time is on our side in healing. Though one must be careful that you aren’t relying on time alone. Along with time, please be sure that over time you’re continually looking for the things that answer your questions.
Burning questions such as, how can someone do this to someone else? And how does this happen, and why did this happen to me? And does he love them, and why didn’t he love me? Am I a bad person because I want him to suffer? – And of course answer all the questions about how to handle the real circumstances you’ve been left with and turn over your ideas of certain aspects of them that keep the confusion to no confusion at all.
So scary, embarrassed and triggers can go bye-bye… Each of these questions has an answer that will leave no question in your mind that this whole surreal debacle had nothing to do with anything about you…other than you – being fully human and gorgeous inside and out.
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Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
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2021_03_16 2022_11_06
Things looking bleak, feeling uninspired,
and just plain worse?
Holiday cheer can turn to holiday blahs
and intermingle with PTSD.
Post “Holiday Season” there’s special brand of the blues that can hit us in our heart and soul. Even mid-holiday season, our emotions can take a nosedive. Though not much is said about it, for most people feel a lag in our energy and inspiration after the holidays. And this year… geez louise.
Continue readingWeeping in despair, grief. Confusion.
A shattered life. Depression and self doubt. Isolation.
This heap of feelings and thoughts and questions
are the beginning of restoration.
We can heal even the PTSD after a sociopath or what many call a narcissist. It includes emotions rolling over us in grand sweeps and simmering cess pools. These turn to feelings and thoughts that are untrue. There’s a is terror in PTSD others around can’t us usually can’t understand… We might not understand it ourselves.
You owe it to yourself to realize what this PTSD is, how it shows up, how to heal and rebalance yourself, and that it’s okay to be in a sate of post truama so that we can restore our gorgeous selves.
Altogether it’s loneliness and fears and doubts that are not the new you but can seem like it. There are many signs of PTSD, but the initial stages are most described by one word.
Continue readingI don’t need to list the horrific things we’re all going through right now. You all know. I don’t need to list any of them. If you’ve seen the news or spend any time on Twitter… you know.
Depending on which continent, which country, and which part of that country you’re in the details might vary, but overall: it’s colossal. And particularly here in the USA, we’re seeing things we never dreamed could be.
Continue readingPost-trauma is rife with too much.
Too much to be dealt with.
Too much to figure out.
Too much to explain. Clear things up for ourselves.
Think of it as weeding the garden.
In the post-trauma and even further along in the post-post-trauma we need things streamlined, cleared up, and cleaned out. Make life as simple as possible.
There’s so much to manage. Things that aren’t truly supporting our life and our restoration are simply and truly too much. Dump ’em like sorting out rusty hinges and broken tricycles and tattered stained curtains. Here are some things we can do to weed our garden.
Continue readingPTSD is most definitely a thing.
After narcissistic abuse, we have it.
Our friends don’t understand.
Maybe we don’t, but:
we’re not really broken.
PTSD stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD isn’t permanent. It might surprise some of us that the range of swinging emotions, and thoughts we’re going through is PTSD.
It may surprise our family or friends to realize that the pain, the terror, all the weeping is post-traumatic stress. We’re swinging through a jungle of cognitive dissonance, shock, and more shock.
We’re hard at work grabbing at answers, trying to make sense of what happened, though, for all they can see, we’ve been slumped in a corner in tears. Many of us feel broken. Rest assured, you are not.
PTSD is a thing after a sociopath or a narcissistic abuser. What we’re feeling is normal, unavoidable, not permanent and there are hope and healing. It wouldn’t be normal to not feel this way. It’s the residual and the aftermath of being spellbound.
We Can Heal. We Win.
I remember – after he was gone, at some point early in restoring my life, I looked in the bathroom mirror… the word “broken” floated up to my mind. Broken. I’m broken, is what I said in my head. I’d never been broken before. Never knew that was a way people could feel. It made sense though.
Here’s the thing, any time spent around a sociopath is traumatic. So, after they leave, we’re going to go through feelings that are more than uncomfortable. These feelings and thoughts are our body attempting to heal, they are not the new us.
These intense and so often conflicting thoughts, emotions, and despair are the beginning of healing – the key is to find the way to use these for healing rather than be seen as a pile of disorders. This is not the end of our life as it used to be before we met them.
Breaking Up with Evil: Escaping Coercive Control on Amazon
Five women’s true stories of being ensnared, hauled through the confusion, lies, fear and pain and to breaking away.
True crime. Told in their own words with nothing unsaid. Find validation, and see new glimpses of truth as these five women share their stories… Stories that could be any of ours.
Join the podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
So many people around us tell us to: Move on. Or, Get over it. We try to do that, but somehow instead we can’t sleep, have lost weight, feel like we’ll never trust again and a whole bunch of other not great feelings, worries and fears, and health issues to boot.
There’s high or elevated blood pressure, weight gain, weight loss, headaches, and much more that might visit us in the aftermath, along with coping habits we’d rather not keep.
Memories of this creep won’t stop. We’re so worn out of thinking about this loser, yet we can’t not think about this loser. – That’s normal. And it’s because we need answers to what the heck happened.
Imagine we just got hit by a freight train, a bus, or a piano just fell on our toes; no one just gets up and walks away from that without needing to recover.
Here’s a tiny example of what PTSD is, think of this: Have you ever almost been in a car accident? Driving along normally and suddenly, there’s almost a smash-up? Then you keep driving but tingles run through your hands, and they shake on the steering wheel, palms sweating, breathing shallow.
“Post-trauma is normal. It’s the normal human reaction to the trauma of this particular sustained influence and entrapment by person of ASP – antisocial personality disorder. We couldn’t be expected to have any other response. In fact, this response is where healing begins. It’s a cluster of simultaneous feelings and physical reactions and responses from the body, mind and heart. If you think of it in the way that the flu is a cluster of symptoms you can see this isn’t the new “us”, but a passing situation. We’re still there. The determination to pull our real self back through this fog, and the time and insight into how to tame these post trauma reactions and emotions, to understand them, to manage them and heal them are all we need. For whatever reason, I did this instinctively and now I help others do it.“ ~ Jennifer Smith
Driving along because traffic lights are green, and we have somewhere to be, we try to act normally; we try to have normal control of our body and the car, and our mind. But our heart pounds, our blood rushes, and images of what just happened run on a loop in our minds. Which is only partly there and is off on its own someplace kind of floaty and yet we feel sharply aware at the same time.
Then, in the aftermath of nearly getting into a head-on collision, our emotions kick in and keep swirling. Now here’s what happens when humans have emotions: As we feel all these emotions, the emotions turn to thoughts.
We start forming ideas and thoughts that make words in our heads. Then those words, those thoughts: become beliefs. Beliefs about what just happened. Why, how, who’s a fault it was… And, significantly, these ideas and thoughts and beliefs in our head are pulled from and formed in conjunction with things we already “know” and “believe” about life and about ourselves.
Hearing the word “sociopath” or similar is only the beginning. That’s when recovery can begin. After the trauma of this whole event, one we could think of as a hijacking, our emotions and thoughts are all over the place because the trauma deregulates our nervous system. If we take in the effective methods of re-regulating our nervous system and other specific insights, we can fully recover.
For example, from the feeling of fear, our brains might make the thought such as, “Wow, what an idiot that driver is!” Or maybe, “I almost hit that guy! What’s wrong with me?!“
The emotional soup in the midst of the post-trauma takes us to a conclusion or belief about what happened and about ourselves. We might likely conclude it was our fault, and we just did something stupid. At the same time in another part of our mind, we wonder what our mom would say about our (bad) driving.
Or what would have happened if our child had been in the car with us? We consider the reactions or judgments of people who aren’t present but matter to us. We automatically think of worse things that could have happened.
In the case of leaving one of these “relationships”, though we aren’t sure exactly what just happened as we walk and run and get away any way we can from a pathological user, for most of us, our natural first thoughts are related to taking responsibility for what happened.
We’re usually really hard on ourselves when things go wrong in life. We worry about what could have happened (but didn’t) and think about what we should have done instead of whatever it was we just did.
All this is going on while we’re aware we need to refocus on driving… so this won’t happen again. Sound familiar…?
This is what post-trauma is. This new emotional soup and confusion aren’t who we are. It’s the body’s natural delay from the traumatic event into healing. It’s a kind of debriefing. We take in and review the trauma so that we can feel safe again, and skip another such close call in the future.
It’s up to us, in this case with a con man to learn how to manage this natural mental and emotional “debriefing”, that is the post-trauma so that we come out whole, healed, and with every answer to what happened. And, the good news is, the answers are here.
The thing is, any time spent with a con man, a sociopath, is traumatic, we sustain a prolonged traumatic injury. Then we go through post-trauma afterward. This is unavoidable. We decide what winning is for our life in the aftermath, and post-trauma. We decide what’s next. Post-trauma isn’t the new us.
Post-traumatic feelings and thoughts and the whole schemer is the unavoidable fallout and aftermath of time spent with a sociopath. We aren’t permanently broken. This is temporary. – returning to normal and even better is a deliberate consistent effort that sometimes looks from the outside like nothing other than laying on the couch.
PTSD is the normal result of trauma, and we can recover. There are specific, effective methods and perspectives that heal PTSD after a sociopath, what many may be called a narcissist.
Hearing the word “sociopath” is only the beginning. That’s when recovery can begin. After the trauma of a hijacking by a sociopath, our emotions and thinking are all over the place because the trauma deregulates our nervous system. If we take in the effective methods of re-regulating our nervous system and other specific insights, we can fully recover.
We’ll feel some or all of the following things in PTSD after this ride in hell: profound fear, self-doubt, lowered trust, suspect people and situations, weepiness, physical weakness, apathy, confusion, indecision, depression.
Also an inability to concentrate on daily things like laundry or food, our minds will be flooded with replays of conversations and things that went on. This is all normal. The replays wind down, the confusion abates, the indecision clears as we get real answers. – If the answers you’re finding aren’t helping; keep looking
There’s extreme and sudden weight loss or weight gain. Sleep patterns are all over the place. We might sleep in the day, but unable to sleep at night, waking in the early morning and not being able to sleep again, can’t sleep at all or sleep all the time. You might be having nightmares.
Post-trauma can include fear of going places that hold memories related to them. Terrorizing recall of scenarios with them. Confusion, indecision, and doubt. Emphatic desire to leave, move, change jobs, or make a drastic change… it affects our body and mind. We might miss them so much or feel like we could die. We feel broken. – As heavy and numb and broken as you feel, none of this is permanent.
There’s nothing about us that makes this happen.
Trauma is… “Anything less than nurturing. An event or experience that changes your vision of yourself and your place in the world.”
Judy Crane
In PTSD we’re in shock, scared to death, sad, confused, wanting to die, crying all the time. We feel alone, or want to isolate ourselves. There’s a heavy feeling in our bones and hearts; it’s overwhelming and the word “stress” doesn’t begin to describe it.
We’re grief-stricken and wondering why this happened. Feelings that it’s our fault haunt us as we also wonder if we’ll ever smile again, or ever love again.
We wonder how to get from broken to normal. There’s no other way a person can feel after a collision and entanglement with a sociopath. This is the only possibility when we’re ensnared by one of these people – a conman, a sociopath – and experience the inevitable and profound clash with our emotional way of life.
Patience and self-love are necessary. Spending time only with those who truly love us is a part of the cure. Establishing and keeping no contact with the con artist who hijacked our lives is essential. There is without a doubt hope after a sociopath doubt or a narcissist.
Hearing the word “sociopath” or similar is only the beginning. That’s when recovery can begin. After the trauma of this whole event, one we could think of as a hijacking, our emotions and thoughts are all over the place.
This is because trauma deregulates our nervous system. So that we’re basically thinking and feeling scary things most of the day. If we take in the effective methods of re-regulating our nervous system and other specific insights, we can fully recover.
We can recover, we do heal when we find answers. One of the most important things we can do is find a way to gradually realize that, though this happened in our lives, to us, this wasn’t personal. Love, affection, and then betrayal had nothing to do with it. It looked like love, but it wasn’t.
Many definitions of this phenomenon out there will try to tell us it happened because we’re codependent or we need to look at our “part in it”. This concept of “our part” in it could only possibly apply if these had been relationships.
We owe it to ourselves to give this idea some thought before swallowing it whole. It’s time to trust our gut and to give the benefit of the doubt to ourselves.
When you consider it, this was a raid, a home invasion, a breaking and entering through our hearts. This wasn’t a relationship, if anything it was a crime. Please, keep in mind: No one robs an empty house. You are awesome.
It is not how you compare to others that is important, but rather how you compare to who you were yesterday. If you’ve advanced even one step, then you’ve achieved something great. ~ Daisaku Ikeda
The podcast!
Have a listen: Narcissistic Abuse Unwound
True Love Scam Recovery on Medium
On Facebook
Add these to your contacts
so you don’t miss a newsletter!
jennifer@truelovescam.com
info@truelovescam.com
Visit truelovescam’s profile on Pinterest.
True Love Scam on Tumblr.
Tweet to @truelovescam.
2015_08_22 2020_09_22 2024_05_22