Healing From Narcissistic Abuse & Blame
Trauma & Narcissism Redefined
Caroline Strawson
4.8 • 701 Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2024
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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http://carolinestrawson.com/pre-order
At forty, I believed my life was over. I had just ended a relationship with a covert narcissist and felt he had taken the best years of my life, leaving me with nothing but a downhill journey.
However, I came to realise that I was blaming others for my feelings and was stuck in a functional freeze response. On the surface, I seemed to function normally, going through the motions of daily life and maintaining appearances. Yet, deep inside, I was grappling with trauma that I hadn't fully acknowledged or addressed.
This internal struggle left me feeling isolated and disconnected from my true self, as I had built a façade to hide my pain. It became clear that to truly heal, I needed to confront these buried emotions and take responsibility for my own healing journey.
In this episode, we will explore:
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Why we shouldn’t blame other people for how we feel
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How to break out of a functional freeze response
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Beginning to heal after a narcissistic relationship
My new book, ‘How To Heal After Narcissistic Abuse’ really is your essential guide to leading a better life and not blaming yourself for what happened in your narcissistic and abusive relationships. Where you are right now isn’t where you have to stay.
Podcast Resources:
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Join my FREE Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/thriveafternarcissisticabuse
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Access my low cost Narcissistic Trauma Recovery Programme https://go.carolinestrawson.com/heal-the-trauma-of-narcissistic-abuse
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Connect with me on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolinestrawson/
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Find me on TikTok!: https://www.tiktok.com/@carolinestrawson
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My website: https://www.carolinestrawson.com/
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Do you always find yourself blaming other people for how you feel, getting angry at them and wanting |
| 0:07.0 | them to change their behaviour so you go back to feeling a certain way? If that sounds like you, |
| 0:12.0 | you're not the only one. I used to be the same. This is exactly what I'm talking about in today's episode. |
| 0:18.0 | Hi everybody, my name is Caroline Strawson and I'm a trauma therapist and coach |
| 0:24.5 | and a 51 year old woman who at the age of 40 years old I thought my life was over. I'd come out of a |
| 0:31.5 | narcissistically abusive marriage with a covert narcissist and thought he'd had the best years of my |
| 0:37.2 | life and it was all downhill. |
| 0:39.4 | And I realized that I'd actually been living my life, blaming everybody else for how I was feeling. |
| 0:45.5 | I was literally living in a functional freeze response, meaning to the outside world I |
| 0:50.8 | looked like I was functioning, smiling on the outside, hi, I'm fine, walking out the |
| 0:55.7 | front door. But I kept saying it's everybody else's fault. You know, if they weren't like this, |
| 1:01.5 | then I wouldn't feel the way that I'm feeling. And I'd be stuck in this freeze response, |
| 1:06.0 | totally disconnected, and then I have these moments of explosive anger. What I didn't realize was actually that |
| 1:12.0 | explosive moments of anger was signs of my healing because when I had those explosive moments of |
| 1:17.1 | anger, I didn't lean into the sensations of that and sit with it. I felt shame. I felt guilt. I thought |
| 1:22.6 | people think I'm going to be crazy. People think that I can't cope. So I shoved it back down inside my body. |
| 1:29.5 | And then I wondered why I was suffering with chronic illness in my late 30s and early 40s, |
| 1:34.7 | with things like irritable bowel syndrome, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. I got diagnosed |
| 1:39.7 | with a heart condition. And all of these, I am convinced, are in relation to trauma. So if you're listening |
| 1:47.7 | to this right now and this might be a hard episode for you to listen to, I'll be honest, |
| 1:53.4 | because I'm kind of dropping some hard truths that I want to say as compassionately and |
| 1:59.9 | kindly as possible because really this is the only way that you're going to be able to heal. |
... |
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