Empaths who’ve been subjected to narcissistic abuse will know that the biggest side-effect is trauma. Trauma wounds are deadly because they’re invisible. They’re not immediately apparent to a ‘normal’ person, but to the trained eye of a therapist they’re everywhere; ruining our inter-personal relationships; underpinning every ‘loaded’ sentence; informing every impulsive decision; provoking every anxiety spiral, panic attack, depressive episode.
That’s a trauma response, the therapist will say, when you describe how you froze and failed to stand up for yourself, or conversely, how you completely overreacted to a minor transgression in the supermarket.
Buried trauma left unfelt, unheard, undealt with, wreaks havoc on our nervous systems, hormonal system, sleep patterns, and emotions. It directly leads to addictive tendencies such as: drug or alcohol abuse, sex, shopping, gambling, and disordered eating. These self-soothing addictions numb our emotional pain to distance us from feeling the full impact of trauma.
Trauma is also inextricably linked to shame… yes, trauma and shame are VERY close bed-fellows. Whether you’ve been emotionally, psychologically, sexually, or physically abused, you’ll undoubtedly be riddled with shame. You’ll blame yourself for what happened to you. You’ll convince yourself that it was your fault, or if you believe in New Age guff, that you manifested the mistreatment yourself, and got what you deserved.
Alongside trauma, shame and blame are also inextricably linked. For example, say you contract an STD during a period of promiscuity following sexual abuse (the promiscuity being a trauma response). You’re so ashamed and immediately blame yourself; which is odd given that you can’t give yourself an STD. Too embarrassed to see the doctor to get the appropriate medication, you buy some dodgy antibiotics online, or waste money on herbal alternatives, or resort to spiritual bypassing, obsessively googling: metaphyscial reason for attracting an std.
Hard-wired to believe that you must be perfect in order to be loved, you do anything you can to avoid the shame of facing up to your situation; your inner narrative being that you are: dirty, unworthy of help, should have known better, and will be rejected if anyone finds out.
The shame amps up your anxiety which, like a heat-seeking missile, taps into pre-existing trauma wounds, generating a tsunami of overwhelm which floods your ‘window of tolerance’ and completely derails you. In order to deal with the fall-out, you reach for a different addiction to numb the pain… and so it continues.
. . .
Healing from trauma is a complex, multi-faceted process. Let’s use the analogy of fixing a broken second-hand bike to illustrate this point…
You’ve been riding your bike obsessively as movement is the only thing that calms you down (trauma response). You suspect it’s on its last legs, but ignore the fact. Sure enough, the bike breaks, so you take it to be repaired. You’re told the brakes urgently need replacing and the bike needs a full service, so all the other parts can be checked.
Only interested in a quick-fix, you pay to get the brakes done and ignore the rest. Two days later, one of the tyres blow. You return to the shop. You’re told the tyres were pumped up when the brakes were repairedand that one of the inner tubes must have ruptured, which a full-service would have picked up. Huffily, you pay the bill and cycle away.
A month later, you’re changing gears when a loud clunking noise occurs and the gear cartridge breaks. Again, you visit the bike shop and pay the repair fee. Three days later, the chain breaks. You storm back into the shop and a heated exchange ensues, during which you point out that the repairs have now cost MORE THAN THE BIKE!
You’re duly reminded that a service had been recommended; that ALL the parts of your bike are inter-linked; that if you’ve been repeatedly cycling around with one faulty component, the others will soon get worn out and eventually malfunction as a consequence.
This is EXACTLY what it’s like trying to heal trauma. You suffer a majorly traumatic event, or prolonged insidious emotional abuse; something vital inside you breaks. Riddled with shame, you blame yourself, then bury your pain and carry on as if nothing happened. Unconsciously, you begin to act out, and the wound soon manifests elsewhere.
Again, you bury the pain and … repeat repeat repeat … until eventually you find yourself emotionally derailed with a laundry list of trauma symptoms, trailing all the way from inception to your current reality, which causes every part of your life to malfunction.
Having hidden your situation from others, they stare at you aghast when one day, seemingly out of nowhere, your life comes crashing down around your ears. All you will feel is SHAME and you immediately blame yourself: you caused this shit-show; it’s all your fault etc.
. . .
So, what’s the way out? Well, just like the broken bike, it’s not a simple case of fixing one part and ignoring the rest. There is no silver bullet to heal trauma; we must take a holistic 360 approach: mind, body, spirit all need to be repaired.
We must accept that we’ve been broken; acknowledge the damage, then ask for help, because we are ‘as sick as our secrets’ (infamous Al-Anon saying). We must make space in our overloaded brains by doing meditation, yoga or qi-gong; we must offload traumatic memories in talking therapy; we must unfreeze the trauma in our bodies with movement, exercise, and physical therapy; we must heal our psychic wounds with energetic treatments, such as cranio sacral therapy, reiki, acupuncture, and massage.
We must eat well, sleep well, dress well, and remove all toxic people from our lives. And finally, we must reclaim all the abandoned parts of ourselves, and love each and every one of them back to wholeness.
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This post was previously published on Change Becomes You.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
 White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism |
 Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box |
 The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer |
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Photo credit: JLO
