Listening to “Healing” episodes provides practical strategies for recovery and emotional healing, empowering you to rebuild a fulfilling life after surviving narcissistic abuse.
What Are We Discussing In This Episode?
In this episode, we focus on five questions related to narcissistic abuse:
I was in an abusive narcissistic relationship, escaped it and learned everything about trauma bonding and I understand that I was trauma bonded to that person, but why am I still gravitating towards other narcissistic people? (01:37)
I feel very stuck due to not trusting myself any more. I question my interactions with everyone now and am so cautious about any relationships with other people now, not just romantically. I’m finding it hard to find a sense of who I am and am really quite fearful of making any decisions. It was very strange because, although difficult, once I made the decision to leave I did after 10 years and the first 4 months really pushed myself and was coping fairly well starting to do things I did before, seeing friends, really embracing my freedom even with the urges there to make contact. Now I have just flattened out, all my motivation has gone and I started having nightmares and flashbacks and panic attacks which has now been going on for about 5 months. I’d like to know from a neurological perspective if there is a cycle of stages that occur after experiencing this sort of trauma and ways to help get through it. (11:15)
Why does experiencing narcissistic abuse make the body respond mentally and physically, and ailments start happening? You start acquiring diseases you never had before such as high blood pressure, diabetes, migraines and etc. Why does this happen? (18:48)
How do we progress from processing the abuse (what happened to us) to focusing on owning our healing/recovery process(rebuilding ourselves)? Tools and steps? (24:09)
I’m in a very bizarre, frustrating situation where my Narcissist has turned his ex-wife and son into Flying Monkey co-abusers by telling them lies about me by portraying himself as a victim, and setting me up to look bad. To my horror, he took videos of me one evening when I came home from a party and was slightly inebriated, antagonized and baited me into an argument, then sent it to his ex-wife claiming I am an angry drunk abusing him. I tried reaching out to his son who I thought might be able to help partly because he is in medical school, however to my surprise the son reacted angrily that I am “trashing his dad” , and the ex-wife told him not to speak to me, and I have been shut out. It is amazing how the Narcissist controls them with false narratives & triangulates using the ex-wife’s jealousy turning her against me. I feel so outraged by the lies the Narcissist is telling them , I want to send them an email letting them know he is telling lies about me, and I’m wondering how to do that? How can I educate them what is really going on? All this prevents me from moving on and healing. (28:03)
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More Information About the Host & Gina Polesetsky
The host, Juliana Akin, is a co-founder of Unfilteredd, a lawyer, and a survivor of narcissistic abuse. She creates content about narcissism and narcissistic abuse to share her personal experiences with healing because she hopes that by sharing her journey, she can help you navigate yours.
Gina Polesetsky is an LMFT in California with a background in trauma-informed care including specialties in EMDR, Gottman Couples Therapy, and ACT. Much of her practice is focused on working with trauma processing and skills building through, and in recovery from, narcissistic, interpersonal, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.
