Broken After Narcissistic Abuse : A Story Of Gaslighting

thank you very much saya good afternoon and you're probably right thinking what is she wearing cuz I'm not gonna do any wrapping or anything I promise you and then I've obviously got my heels but there is a reason for this because I think very very often we look at people and we have a perception of them we think they're really confident we think that they are really out there and actually you never know what goes on behind closed doors and hopefully I'm going to explain a little bit about that in my presentation so yeah I'm going to actually be talking to you about toxic relationships in particular narcissistic abuse so who in here has ever had in their opinion a toxic relationship Wow so lots of you who in here has thinks they have had more than one toxic relationship so pretty much the same amount of hands and hopefully at the end of my presentation I'm going to give you a little bit of an understanding as to why that cycle keeps happening and what you can do about it so you can see there I'm actually no credited there's only 11 of us here in the UK accredited divorce some breakup coaches and I use positive psychology with that which I'll explain a bit about positive psychology because it's a relatively new science and not that many people know about it as well you can see there I've written a book which I will talk about in the presentation as well but I'm really passionate that I don't want people to just go back to functioning I want them to flourish you're all on this earth for a short period of time so we don't just want to have a normal life we all want to thrive and we all want to flourish so I'm going to tell you a little bit about my story to start off with because I wasn't there as an 8 year old girl saying I really want to be a divorce and positive psychology coach when I get older it wasn't really what I want you to do I was actually a podiatrist so I was in the medical profession and I worked with smelly feet but you never thought that you'd never have thought that would you and we're there so I'm gonna take you back 12 years now when I was 9 no any joking trying to weight you off as well so so basically you can see pictures there on your screen so I was married 12 years ago and we've got my son William and he was about two and a half three at this stage and me my husband like a lot of families thought you know what gonna get a sibling so this started a process of us trying to get pregnant but I kept having a miscarriage and over the course of about 18 months two years I suffered four miscarriages I felt like an elephant those of you who know elephants are pregnant for a very long time and I felt like home as an elephant with no baby at the end of it and that for me was probably the time where I probably thought things weren't quite right in my relationship because I'm so focused you know we wanted a brother or sister for William so we just kept trying and then I fell pregnant again and I said to myself this is the last time 5th and final time I'm very blessed we've already got William but we're gonna try again and I fell pregnant again 6 months into that pregnancy I remember I sat around the the dinner table I wasn't eating anything because I felt very very sick and my husband's phone went off in his coat pocket in the downstairs toilet so I wasn't eating my son and my husband meeting so I just got up went to go and get his phone he shot out of the seat and we all know what's coming don't we grab the phone off me went like that and said oh I've locked my phone so I said my heart was going hard so I said don't worry phones in my name I'll call them up and unlock it so I went in this study he went back to having tea with William and there I was on the phone he I don't know what he was thinking there and I got my phone unlocked or his phone unlocked and I listened to the message and it was this American woman saying hey Englishman I hope you have a fantastic weekend with William and all of this and of course I'm there 6 months pregnant thinking oh my god what's going on so I said to my husband listen to this and I wouldn't let him have the phone and he listened to her and he was said to me Wow and I said what do you mean what he said well I don't know who that is now we can laugh about that but at the time he was looking me in the eye saying I don't know who that is and I started to say to him but they're saying our son's name William it's a coincidence I like that noise mm-hmm exactly but he was looking me in the eye and I was six months pregnant I called my mom and dad and they came over they could tell I was really upset he looked my mom and dad in the eye and said I don't know who this is so remember we were sat in the lounge and I said to him how can it be a coincidence it's saying our son's name bear in mind as well my ex-husband worked for an airline so of course he traveled to America a lot so I calls the number did a bit of research I tell you if you ever I'm probably the best detective ever you have a cheating ex-husband you become the best detective I can tell you so you have any problems that could be a side business for me I can tell you so we sat down and I called the number and this woman answered and said I'm really sorry it was the wrong number so I said okay looked at my husband in the eye again and he said see I don't know who she is and that moment I started to think is it a coincidence my gut was telling me no it wasn't but I've got my husband looking me in the eye saying I don't know who I don't know who she is I don't know why would I cheat you're six months pregnant we've got a family so he went to bed that night in separate rooms and I remember in the night coming downstairs and I was looking at his roster and I saw lots of trips to Chicago which is where this woman had called from I just kept thinking Caroline Caroline don't be stupid he's cheating but I'm six months pregnant what could I do so in the morning I asked him for his crew card because he had allowances and I thought I'm gonna see what he's spending he gave me his wallet really freely and said Caroline I am NOT cheating on you why would I do that so I got his wallet and I'm there online trying to find out and it just locked in his wallet there was a card a business card for a motel in Chicago with a reservation number on so I called the number hi I am PA - mr. Slauson just check-in the reservation number I tell you don't miss me like that he was sat in the lounge while I was on the phone so they said to me oh it got canceled last week okay and I remember standing in my lounge doorway and saying are you still going to lie about this and then he started crying and breaking down and saying I'm so sorry I'm so sorry oh there I am six lots of eight I could even go out and get drunk or anything so we started having this conversation and I ended up comforting him and we can laugh about this but this is what emotional abuse is all about and this is what I'm highlighting it I know now Caroline what were you doing but at the time I'm comforting him about cheating on me it's six months pregnant because I've had four miscarriages and I knew how hard it had been for him it gets better huh I called to speak to the woman again she started crying on the phone and guess what I did I comforted her yeah I comforted her and that's what emotional abuse is all about but I didn't leave because he was really sorry and he would never do it again so I stayed and that for me was probably a catalyst where I was really broken inside but I was six months pregnant I was reliant on him financially because I was just working part time so I felt really stuck and for me my mom and dad were still married and I thought I've got to do everything to keep my family together because in my wisdom I thought the best thing was keeping my family together so that's what I did and I carried on and my children were absolutely my life about a year after my daughter was born my mum passed away really suddenly now she was my rock and she passed away I literally woke up four o'clock one morning in pain and by one o'clock she died and that was really hard so I was focusing on looking after my dad and being everything to everybody else but feeling dead inside really lost my mum in a loveless marriage but every now and again I kept trying to make an effort because I thought oh you know keep your marriage together and there's so many other things that my husband would say to me and inside I thought that is not true she read my book there's one chapter called I think I killed somebody you have to buy the boots if I that word out he came home and told me he killed somebody and I did and I didn't believe him because that was the nature of the relationship that's being told all of these things all of the time and inside I thought that's not right is it me am I going crazy keep the family together we've got children together that's the best thing that we have to do and then in 2010 so a year after my mum died after lots and lots of things that were in our relationship we went camping and when we got back I remember on the Saturday he said to me leaving tell the kids I'm going to work early and I just said no not this time cuz he kept going to work earlier and earlier and he told the kids and within 10 minutes he'd walked out the door leaving me picking up two children one who was three and one who was seven at the time so this started then a catalyst of events so on the Monday I started to look into our finances and realized we were in over 70,000 pounds worth of debt so there I was a single mom 23,000 pounds of debt in my name and I just thought Jeremy because my perception of what a single mom was I thought oh my god I am that person now I feel really a shame that I thought that because actually oh-yo single mums but I realized how much debt we were in and it was really really scary but when you've been in a narcissistic the abusive relationship when you split up it doesn't just stop the control the manipulation it doesn't stop so you can see a picture here and you can see me I'm on the back row at the left hand side and when I look at that picture I feel a physical reaction because it doesn't look like me because I know what I felt at that time that's why I am dressing how I am because I wanted to be invisible I hated myself I wore great track suits and all black clothes he has a lot of black clothes in their wardrobe I know I did I didn't look in the mirror so when me and my ex-husband split up I wouldn't even look in the mirror I put my makeup on every day to put my mask on to go out the door to be said how are you Caroline I'm fine how are you because I didn't want to show any weakness I don't want to show them that I couldn't hope and I used to start every day on my bathroom floor literally I'll show you so I used to get out of my bed go and sit on my own sweet floor and in my pyjamas not a tracksuit then anyone got any ideas what I do with this toothpaste nope I don't got any nails okay this is really sharp on the end so I used to scratch my thighs I had no control in my life whatsoever so I would sit there and scratch so I would focus on the pain rather than having no money being a single mom puts don't abuse still I sit there like that every morning having a panic attack how was I going to cope the money coming in didn't equal the money going out I've got two children reliant upon me how was I gonna cope my diet was dreadful who here had a divorce diet for those of you who got divorced oh yeah a few of you I'll show you my divorce diet so wine haha who had wine as their divorce diet yeah it's funny a few ashamed hands going up I don't say that because I've got children so I'm just gonna say that snack at Jack's so I wouldn't eat all day and then I've have chili snack ejects and cheese and chive dip 600 calories in this you know I don't know that was my diet so I wasn't helping myself now I was having counseling at the time and I've been diagnosed with PTSD so post-traumatic stress disorder I was suffering with depression anxiety and you see self-harm I felt so out of control really out of control how could I have found myself in a relationship like that if you'd have said to me 20 years ago Caroline you'd be in a relationship where someone treated you like that I just said no I would not and this is what emotional abuse is this is what narcissistic abuse is is the most insidious form of abuse but this is how I was it wasn't how I was at the start of my marriage but it's what I was during my marriage and when I came out so in 2013 probably my lowest point I hit 40 that year and I had my family home repossessed really low point getting older but I was going backwards through no fault of my own may I add but I was really citing victim mentality I was waiting for somebody else to come in and rescue me and it was only these two little monkeys who were keeping me going and I've always said I didn't have those two children I would not be here now genuinely I wouldn't but I was sat there waiting for my knight in shining armor to come in who's been sat there waiting for that to be rescued he was sat there waiting for somebody to come in and rescue them I know I was I was taking no responsibility for what had happened to me I wanted somebody else to come in I was having endless messages with my ex-husband and I couldn't help react at all of the time all the time back and forth back and forth back and forth like ping pong and you know what I suddenly realized that the only person who was actually gonna rescue me was me and now I'm gonna unveil haha I was the only person he was gonna rescue me nobody else was going to do that so I came up with all haven't taken my hair out I just heard you were L'Oreal cuz I worth it so hard that is for me to say it really is because I know probably some of you have been sat looking at me and thinking oh she knows so confident she's like the line reverse well first I wasn't like that at 5 o'clock this morning I could tell you but secondly I just want to make a point we don't know what goes behind closed doors you're only seeing the person that I am now not the person I was six years ago because I was not that person I wouldn't have stood up here for a start so when I started to look at how was I going to recover how is our gonna become from this narcissistic abuse so I came up with my three-step recovery perspective power and positivity you've heard from a lot of the speakers today talking about perspective really and this goes back to your childhood we are not in abusive relationships for no reason there are absolute reasons why and the reasons are from within you so perspective is all about going back to your childhood and understanding where those belief systems have come from because without doing that I could coach somebody to actually know how to react in the moment but you're just gonna keep finding yourself in toxic relationships as we can see when people were putting their hands up then there's the power stage it's about you taking back your power because you have far more power than you think you do and then positivity you know I don't just want you to go back to functioning I want you to flourish so there's my book divorce became my super power because not only did I heal from my divorce it actually gave me the opportunity to have a total life audit as well as two friendships family career and I started a home-based business at the end of 2013 which within six months was turning over a million pounds just through Facebook because I suffering with anxiety I didn't want to be out so I literally taught myself to use Facebook as well and I use that a lot in this business too last year I won the national business women awards for the best new businesses a divorce and positive psychology coach as well so how do you move forward after narcissistic abuse because we hear this labor a lot don't we my ex is a narcissist no they're just horrible there's really specific things about coming out of a narcissistically abusive relationships it doesn't just stop there's a lot of addiction that is involved as well and that's why I kept finding it really hard not to keep messaging my ex is in the brain in the hypothalamus it releases a chemical a peptide that goes to all the cells of your body and it doesn't matter whether it's a good feeling or a bad feeling your body gets addicted to it so when you are coming out of that relationship your head is telling you no don't message don't react but you've got a physical reaction where you can't help it and you need to break that addiction and a lot of research has shown that it's ten times harder to break the addiction of a narcissist than heroin so you can imagine how difficult that can be so I use something called rapid transformational therapy so I'm just about to be certified in that and what that is it's about regressing you back to your childhood so hypnotizing you so that we can find out where that belief system was formed because the majority of my clients they don't feel they're good enough but when we're born we absolutely think we're good enough you know you don't see a little two-year-old say well I'm not good enough you know they walk around proud and that belief comes from somewhere so we're all born as codependence and then it is up to our parents to teach us to be independent and show us love and this is where what codependency is is self-love deficit disorder that's probably a better way to think about it so the majority of people will be suffering from self-love deficit disorder they will be codependent and we need to break that cycle but you can see here the events do not affect you it's the meaning that you attach to them for instance for me and my childhood my mom was quite innocuous really that made me not feel good enough my dad never said he was proud of me and I was such a diligent daughter you know straight-a student captain of all the sports teams but I do little gymnastic routines in my lounge and my dad would go 9.99 recurring and I'd be like again and I'd do it again mmm 9.99 mccurry so this set me up for never feeling good enough factor in my mum then who is an empath she put her happiness and everybody else's hand because of her childhood so I got my mum making everybody else happy and probably was never truly happy and my dad never saying he was proud of me so I never felt good enough so of course I was going to be in relationships where I was never good enough but I would keep trying to be good enough so it wasn't coincidence that a lot of my friendships and a lot of my relationships we're all narcissistic so I'd do anything to make them happy as if I made them happy maybe I'll be happy and I'll feel good enough but it never happened because I was actually working on them more than I was working on myself now your words make your reality so this is with rapid transformation or therapy we go back to that we recreate those words can't change the events but we can change the words that you say to yourself around those events and then you'll get a recording about that so positive psychology so I've got a science background positive psychology is actually the scientific study of what makes us happy so if you go and see a psychologist it's about what's wrong with you but what about what's right with you you know positive psychology is all about the six pillars of life scientifically evidence-based positive emotions engagement relationships meaning accomplishment and your health so I coach people in these six aspects so they don't just go back to normal functioning I don't want people to go miserable too less miserable I want people to go to thriving and flourishing so I created the planner program so positive life after narcissistic abuse where we use rapid transformational therapy looking at why you are a codependent addiction looking at the power stage co-parenting because you can't Co pair up with a narcissist you have two parallel parent no contact is so important or extreme modified contact and then the positivity so using positive psychology the six pillars we look at your strengths we look at all of those six aspects so that you can go on and live a more happy and thriving life so this is nine modules that I've written and filmed with six to eight lessons in each that you can get right now 497 pounds so it's out on the first of March but I am selling it today and you'll get some bonuses of nearly three hundred pounds - and I'm really proud of this because I know what a difference this can make to people with the understanding because it nearly broke me it really did or you can go and have one-to-one coaching now you think three months what difference can it make in three months I just want to tell you a story so I spoke to a lady about three and a half months ago now she went in touch with me on Facebook I started having a chat she was still in a marriage at the time very toxic a lot of abuse and she started coaching with me and in that three months she's moved out the marital home with her two children moved into another house we created an exit strategy together moved into another house moved her children to a different school started a new job and her self development in that time and what she now feels about herself is amazing that's in three months and that lady is actually in the room today Hannah hunt you understand out I just wanted to share that story because we've gone from creating an exit strategy so she feels safe and I'm with her every single step of the way she knows she can message me or whenever and we're starting divorce proceedings this week and again I'm going to be right by her side because we've got six months together to do all of this - so with the coaching you can have one-to-one coaching you have unlimited messaging with me as well because for me because I'm in hope that being alone during this time is not what I want for people so I have a group on Facebook with over 3,000 women in now divorce and breakup support after narcissistic abuse it's a really positive community and it was really important for me to it be positive and I'm not saying people don't share their stories because they absolutely do but it's about not sitting in victim mentality it is not your fault you're in a narcissistic relationship but it is absolutely your responsibility about where you want to stay because I'm sure you don't want to carry on feeling like this you want to move forward you want to live the life that you deserve but there are so many parameters that can make it really difficult it isn't just mental and emotional it's physical and physiological as well because you've got all of these peptides it's like being addicted but there are absolutely things that you can do to break that habit and that's where I come in to either help you on a one-to-one basis or the online program too because it was really important to me as part of my six pillars the meaning part I needed to feel like I was making a difference and I volunteer at the local domestic abuse charity now and I've started a local positive divorce Club as well no profit no nothing just bringing people together so that people do not feel alone because I am so passionate about getting word out there particularly about narcissistic abuse because on the surface I look like I was really happy and if my ex-husband walked through the door now you'd all think charming man he's so nice I can't be real what you're saying that makes it so hard it really does because ultimately I wanted to go around with a megaphone and he's not really like that but I couldn't do that because all I was doing them was giving my energy and waiting and I always if you're it's like you drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die because it's not happening no apology no nothing at all so I don't just want to help people bounce back no I went on to have what's called post-traumatic growth so I know I am here now because of what happened to me and I actually have real gratitude towards my ex-husband now because I'm happily married now with three stepdaughters oh my god yes and my two children and I've left my husband at home with them haha or five is over and a dog with a broken foot for those of you who follow me on Facebook so please come and connect with me come I've got some books left if you want to have a chat about the course or any other one-to-one coaching please do but you know finally come on don't just bounce back bounce forward as well because you can do it thank you you

Channel: Caroline Strawson

Views: 289,812

Rating: 4.8892517 out of 5

Keywords: narcissist, narcissistic abuse, narcissistic, narcissistic personality disorder, narcissism, narcissistic abuse recovery, gaslighting, no contact, dissociation, cognitive dissonance, narcissist traits, hoovering, manipulation, projection, parenting with a narcissist, dating after a narcissist, toxic relationships

Id: L3UoDlEh3EM

Length: 29min 15sec (1755 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 12 2019