Your Best Pandemic Partner. . .
Following narcissistic abuse, your next relationship should be with your self
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We’ve all heard it more than we wanted to. It takes time to heal.
Oftentimes one of the common denominators for people recovering from trauma and abuse with a disordered partner who suffers from Cluster B personality disorders like narcissism, sociopathy, and psychopathy, it is almost impossible to sever the energetic cords that connect you. Trauma bonding is real, and it is the result of an extended period of intermittent reinforcement. Relationships with disordered people are filled with this brainwashing torture that binds you to them. The love addiction chemicals in your brain are activated in a destructive path that creates ruts in the brain. Each time a person is triggered, they fall back into those ruts that set off a series of traumatic experiences. Things like PTSD do not go away overnight. In fact, it is common for it to be an ongoing condition much like alcohol addiction or drug addiction and although you may achieve periods of sobriety, the condition never truly goes away. That’s why continued therapy and 12-step programs are crucial to maintaining success and freedom from destructive patterns. People learn to live beside their addiction, and people with trauma must also learn to manage their symptoms and live beside their PTSD.
Learning how to deal with all the symptoms of trauma is a tedious task. There is no one remedy that works for everyone. Each person must experiment with different healing modalities through trial and error and harvest the ones that work best for them. One of the most important parts of the healing is the inner work that must take place. The internal mechanisms of the person recovering from betrayal trauma and narcissistic abuse must be healed and made whole. It is common for the victim to suffer from childhood wounding and toxic programming that must be addressed in order to fully recover and end cyclical patterns of abusive relationships. The problem is that it is difficult to know how to heal that inner child. It takes much time and introspection along with many different techniques to experience success or progress.
