Post Traumatic Stress Caused By A Narcissist

being controlling and entitled narcissists have no difficulty stepping all over your personal boundaries which is why I put together the comprehensive course this is me it consists of 25 videos each with accompanying documents and guided questions I'm going to teach you how to maintain proper boundaries despite their efforts to the contrary there's a link below and I hope you'll find it therapeutic [Music] [Applause] [Music] I want to go into a bit of a difficult space with you here today as we talk about post-traumatic stress that can be caused by a relationship with a narcissist or even a narcissistic system now it's one thing to say that you can have stress when you've been around some difficult people or groups of individuals and when we talk about stress we're talking about having a feeling of emotional duress because of adverse circumstances that you just weren't expecting or didn't need but then when we add on that word traumatic when you have traumatic stress that takes the whole notion of duress to an entirely different level when we talk about you being under post-traumatic stress we're talking about you having a sense of shock to your system where you're just not acting as normally as you would like you can have a feeling of emotional paralysis it may be that you have a very heightened sense of vigilance in your level of trust has gone way down and you can have all sorts of bad memories because of disturbing experiences when you've been in the presence of a narcissist they just have a way of whittling away at who you are and what your resolve is and how you're going to manage life and as a result you can have you can carry quite a bit of emotion with you that's not what you were intended to have emotions like fear and anxiety or heightened anger or depression or confusion or bitterness a sense of futility can come upon you and then one of the things that we know about post-traumatic stress is that when you're in this trauma you have a real hard time letting go of it you keep going back to the events that happened and you relive it because it was so strong and it was so counter to what your body needed that you're having a hard time coming to terms with it with post-traumatic stress typically the emotions linger you find yourself sometimes weeks months years decades going back in your memories thinking to yourself how am I going to make sense of all of this that's what we're talking about when we say when life with a narcissist is is going to be such that it takes you out of your realm of normalcy now when we talk about identifying post-traumatic stress there are four major categories that we can look at that can help you identify if this is indeed something that you're dealing with the first category we're going to mention is and I just mentioned this very briefly you can have Disturbed memories and those memories can be triggered by who knows what kind of stimulations it may be that you're in a conversation socially and someone mentions something and boom it happens and your mind just goes back to some very difficult circumstances or you may be reading a book or watching a movie or a television show and something triggers you or it just may be that you're having a good time and you and something happens and you recall some of the great difficulty when we have Disturbed memories uh you go back and you relive those episodes all over again and you try to retrace your steps how did I get involved in this what was going on inside of me uh why was I so vulnerable you can have some flashbacks sometimes these the uh these memories can show up in dreams where you just dreams will represent much of your unfinished business that might be there and so you can see that there can be times when you're you're having a normal kind of day and then something happens and you go backwards and it's like I still haven't been able to figure that out now a second major indicator a category of behaviors that indicates that you're in a type of trauma is that you can go into avoidant reactions when you've been through trauma your trust is broken you're you're in a feeling of confidence regarding your connections with other individuals has been diminished greatly and as a result it's like uh I don't want to talk to people I don't know if I want to connect with individuals anymore for example I've heard people who've been through family or marital situations that were really awful and they'll say I don't ever want to marry again or I can live like a Hermit and I'll be just fine you can have social withdrawal you can be very reluctant to connect with other individuals or if you do you might do so in a very superficial kind of way there may be people from your past that are were connected with that narcissistic individual or they just remind you of that and it's like I'm just going to avoid event and some people and circumstances so that avoidant reaction a third category that you can have is you can have a wide array of mood swings I want you to think in the aftermath of having lived with a narcissist you tend not to have that smooth and steady and peaceful kind of mindset but instead pessimism can creep into your moods you can have a feeling of Doom and Gloom and it's like this world is just really difficult you can be down on yourself and you can have a sense of questioning of your own decency and guilt you know how in the world that I get myself hooked up with something like that and I don't like the way I responded you can be down on other individuals you can have a sense of futility and suspicion regarding other people you can be cynical in the way that you engage sometimes you just feel numb in your mood or you feel detached often you have what we refer to as free from free floating anger free-floating anxiety there may be no particular impetus right there in front of you but that emotion is there and then a fourth category that is part of your uh post-traumatic stress is that you can uh experience some adjustments in your lifestyle for example many times when people have been through something like this they'll pick up excessive drinking habits or substance abuse it's kind of like they've decided Well who cares I'm just gonna do whatever feels good in the moment sometimes in your lifestyle habits you have such a feeling of being startled and and agitated that you become very cautious in the way that you engage or maybe you go into the other direction you become very rebellious it's like I don't want to participate with any groups because whenever I've tried to call and go along with other individuals it hasn't worked out very well you might become more argumentative you might not tend to your normal chores and duties and responsibilities because it's like I give up you see what I'm talking about and many times when you've been exposed to this wrong set of circumstances The Narcissist brings this post-traumatic stress is going to be what occurs now the way I look at it as a therapist is I see that all of this reaction that you can have is evidence that what you are exposed to was simply wrong and it's important for you to recognize the reason you have this traumatic stress reaction is it's your body and it's your spirit and it's your mind's way of saying I I didn't deserve this nobody deserves to be controlled like the narcissists like to control and micromanage nobody needs to be exposed to the type of judgments and the shame that narcissists can put upon you you don't need to have your dignity or your respectability impune the way that narcissists do but they they do it that's not something you deserve and all of the intermittent reinforcement in other words the consistent inconsistency that the narcissist brought that was not something that you needed to have you didn't need to be on the receiving end of a narcissist contempt or their hatred or their manipulations that was wrong and that was not on you that's on them they brought you into something that you didn't deserve the physical the verbal the mental the spiritual the emotional abuse that you've received it was wrong and it's it's not on you that it happened it's on them but you're the one that's bearing the the burden of of all of that knowing that you've been second guessed so many times over you've been on the receiving end of ridicule or mockery you've been shunned or scoring all of that is is wrong and your traumatic reaction is your body's way of saying I deserve so much better this was completely inappropriate listen to the message that that's saying now having said that you might ask well if I've been through all of this and Dr C I can appreciate everything you're saying how am I going to respond first and foremost now one of the things that you don't want to do is you don't want to go into deep isolation now you're tempted to because you're thinking well who's going to understand what I've been through one of the things that tends to happen when you're with that hyper-controlling manipulative narcissist or the group is you do already isolating when you're around other people that might know you differently it's like I don't know if I want to be around them I don't want to tell them my story nobody's going to understand but instead open up with someone it doesn't have to be a large number of someone's but find a confidant sometimes it might be a therapist sometimes it might be a close friend or a family member who has been through some similar kind of things but having a support group is going to be so necessary another thing that's going to be necessary is you try to work your way through this is drop any kind of Illusion that you can or should be able to reform the person who brought all of this trauma upon you in the first place those are Disturbed individuals and if they bring these ingredients to you in such a volume that it just wears you out and Alters your personality that's somebody that doesn't care about you or human nature they don't know the the essence of love and it's not going to be your job to make them see the light instead it's it's going to be so necessary for you to reclaim a mind of Freedom inside a narcissistic system you're you're confined you're held down you're imprisoned Freedom means you get to be what you want to be you get to decide and so in Freedom you want to go back and re-examine your core values re-examine your lifestyle preferences re-examine how you're going to handle your emotions for example when I feel angry what do I think is the smart way to do things or when I have guilt or shame what's going to be my reaction or how do my preferences and value speak into my emotional management and so ultimately I'm hoping that you can reclaim your sense of initiative it means you have assertiveness you're going to stand firmly for who you you are somebody needs to do it and so we're going to put you in charge of that you want to have your sense of boundaries a well-established identity about who you are and how it plays into specific uh episodes in your life and so there are ways to get through this know that what you've been through is not is not something of your own choosing or making it was done to you and and now it becomes your job to take front and center stage and saying I'm going to decide uh what it means for me to be a healthy individual sure enough narcissists can stay in your head for a long time there's no time limit table on getting over some of this post-traumatic stress but hopefully as you understand what you've been through you understand the impropriety and what your better alternatives are you can walk away from this knowing that you're going to have a much deeper appreciation for the things in life that are good and right ingredients like love and peace and respect and honor that's something that the narcissist was incapable of giving on any kind of consistent basis I'm wanting you to claim that and claim it for all it's worth I hope that video such as this can give you some good awareness of what you might be dealing with if you haven't already done so I would encourage you to hit that subscribe button hit the like button too because that'll help we'll keep more videos coming in your direction I truly appreciate you letting me be on your journey with you if you haven't uh if you have a need I would encourage you to seek out counseling like I mentioned we have a sponsor of the people at betterhelp.com they're an online therapy resource and if you can go down below beneath the video there's a link that will take you to their website and you can choose from a whole host of licensed professional therapists I strongly encourage if you've been through something like this particularly with the lingering elements that you would make it that make that available to yourself we have my therapeutic courses and these are very extensive they're like signing up for online classes multiple videos and written documents and guided questions that we have Ready Set connect about making good connection skills this is me about your boundaries free to be finding yourself despite the controllers we also have my podcast we have our website with many articles we have my books and other resources so again thank you for letting me be a part of your journey with you post-traumatic stress is definitely not a simple thing to get Beyond but I think the more you are able to understand it and know it and recognize uh you know the making of it then it is going to be possible for you to re recoup who you are and recruit recoup your sense of synergy As you move forward and in doing so I hope that you can actually see yourself as becoming a person of Peace it is possible foreign [Music]

Channel: Surviving Narcissism

Views: 187,758

Keywords: PTSD, trauma bonding, covert narcissist, malignant narcissist, anger, anxiety, mental health, Psychology, Dr. Les Carter, gaslighting

Id: SWssINopixw

Length: 14min 52sec (892 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 17 2022