Trauma is an emotion being stuck in the survivor´s body bringing a lot of discomfort, exhaustion, stress and desperation to people who deeply suffer. Here are 14 powerful coping strategies that the survivors might try to feel a relief and/or to remove the trauma out of their bodies:
1. Observe your triggers.
Every
good therapist will ask you to come to the therapy clean (not medicated
or self-medicated). Its because the therapist needs to trigger you
on purpose to see where is your issue. The medication would suppress
your reactions. The triggers are the hint what is your issue. The
triggers will give the therapist the starting material to work with.
Observe your triggers - think about why you are feeling this or that way,
what situation exactly triggers you, where it is coming from and what and who
is the root cause.
2. Allow yourself to feel the negative feelings and radically accept them.
Allow
yourself to feel all emotions without the shame. Yes, expressing the negative feelings will be expressive and weird, do it anyway. Healing is
ugly, its not a beautiful process but its necessary. And thats OK. You
will go through various stages through your healing - anger, sadness,
depression, grieving, hate, self hate and a lot of negativity. These are
all valid normal emotions and you have a right to feel them. Do not
skip any stage of your healing. The healing is a process. Unfortunately,
there is no magic button to press to go from being traumatized to feeling good
and happy right away. Every stage is important. "Vomit" it out. You are a human, not a robot.
The narcissists are suppressed individuals and they have the tendencies to suppress other people around them too and make them feel like having positive and negative emotions is defective. The opposite is true. Expressing positive empathy and even negative reverse empathy is normal state of being. What you resists, persists. The
sooner you fully accept how you feel, the
sooner the negative emotions will go away. The society is disordered itself, you maybe
heard that the negative emotions are not allowed or normal, but they are. We
live in a duality. You are a light and a darkness. Accept it. Its
absolutely normal. If you do not express the negative feelings but you
suppress them, they will get stuck in your system for months or years and come out later in your life in more intense and unexpected ways (including making you sick).
Rather go through your negative emotions just like the plane flies right through the
storm and stormy clouds. Eventually your plane will break through through the stormy clouds and raise above those clouds where will be only nice clean view with the sun. Sometimes, in order to be closer to sun, our planes need to go through the turbulence.
3. Therapy & talk it out.
Talk
therapy is very effective, you have to "vomit" it out. Find a good
therapist or if you have some friend or some close person you trust,
talk to them. The more authentic, raw and honest you will be, the more
you will purge the trauma out. Be true to yourself. People often times get stuck in the illusions because as Friedrich Nietzsche once said: "People don´t want to hear the truth because they don´t want their illusions destroyed." But remember, everything that is not real deserve to be destroyed. If you do not have an option to talk to a therapist or to some close person, talk to
yourself. Very effective is to find a peaceful quiet place where you can
be alone and loudly talk to yourself. Ask yourself questions and answer
them ("Why am I hurting? I am hurting because....").
4. Keep a diary:
Writing
it out is also a very effective method how to cope with the trauma.
Keep a diary and write daily about your feelings. The writing will also
help you to cope with the cognitive dissonance and the shattered
thoughts. Write a list of all bad things the narcissistic abuser did to you and every time you will feel confused or you will suffer from the symptoms of the trauma bond and the cognitive dissonance, read the list.
5. Have a good cry and complete the grieving process.
Allow
yourself to complete the grieving process. Unfinished grieving process
is preventing you to close your past and make a peace with it. Trauma is an unfinished grieving. Grieve the childhood you never had
because of the narcissistic parents. Grieve the person you never
became because you have been suppressed with the abuse. Grieve the
narcissistic person who abandoned and abused you. And yes, boys cries
too. And its normal. Every person who tells you that crying is not
normal is not a normal person.
6. Join a community of survivors of narcissistic abuse.
A
great place to be is Quora.com or Youtube. Talking to
people who went through the same as
you is very validating and helpful. You are not alone in this. Maybe
you can start a blog on internet or a vlog on Youtube channel too.
The community of survivors of narcissistic abuse is very supportive and
interactive. It is helpful for them to read your story and to be
validated by your experience as for you is important to write it out, being validated too
and to be seen and
heard. Through the healing, you will notice that people around you do not understand what you are going through, they might even invalidate you or minimize your suffering. You will find the understanding and the validation of your pain in the community of the survivors of narcissistic abuse. Stick only to people who understand you. Its a surreal experience to try explain the narcissistic abuse to people who never experienced it. They will look at you like you are an alien.
7. Practice positive distraction and relaxation.
The technique of a positive distraction is very useful. It distracts your obsessive thoughts and redirect your attention to more positive activities, at least for a moment. Find a new hobby where you can work a lot with your hands and less with your head. People who went through the narcissistic abuse spend most of the time in their head and its toxic. Its a good thing to turn inward, isolate yourself for some time to heal, to go into the hermit mode but having too much overwhelming rushing thoughts is harmful. An art therapy has a very good results with coping with an anxiety and a psychological distress. Listen to relaxing music, watch a positive movie, go for a walk to nature.
8. Educate yourself on PTSD trauma, narcissism and codependency.
The truth will set you free. A knowledge is a powerful tool that helps you to go out of the cognitive dissonance, brain fog, denial, dissociation and it will correct your perspective on everything you have been through. The more you will understand what happened to you, the faster you can heal and do your inner work more effectively. Listen to free Youtube videos, read self - help books and sign for online courses. A great place to be is Quora.com where the healed survivors together with the professionals are answering the questions on trauma, narcissism and codependency to survivors who are being freshly out of the abusive situations and feel disoriented.
9. Practice self - care, self - partnering and self - love.
Make yourself a priority now. Put everything and everybody aside and focus only on getting better. Be kind to yourself. Have a patience with yourself. Pamper and spoil yourself. Make a plan how to better your life. Self - love is a key that will help you to heal your energy vibration and once your energy vibration will raise, your reality will change.
10. Remove toxic people from your life.
You can´t heal in the same environment where you have been broken. Those who broke you can´t heal you. Choose either healing or toxicity because you can´t have both. Remove everybody who are sabotaging your healing, growing and thriving (intentionally or unintentionally). If you can´t go full no contact, minimize the contact. Part of the narcissistic abuse is also a secondary abuse, abuse by proxy and enabling. Your effort to get better might be sabotaged by either enablers, narcissists or people who are not educated on narcissism and narcissistic abuse. Avoid such people even if it means you have to walk the healing path alone. Find the right support group for you that is empathetic, understanding, good for your well being and educated on this topic. No worry, once you fully heal, you will reconnect (and maybe connect for the first time in your life) with the world. Trauma removal does magic! You will meet new amazing people and you will attract much healthier friends and partners. But first you have to do your inner work. Do not be scared to lose toxic people. Make sure that fear and loneliness is not the only reason why you are actually in contact with the toxic people.
11. Create a vision board.
Create a vision board and go wild with your plans for your future. Even today you do not have the energy and will to fulfill your dreams, desires, wants and needs, still, place the vision board somewhere around you where you can see it often and you can get reminded every day that there is a positive things and positive future waiting for you once you will be ready. It will give you the reason to get up from the bed every morning. Surround yourself with things that motivate you to get better.
12. Establish healthy life style.
People would be surprised how even slight adjustment to lifestyle can contribute to recovery from narcissistic abuse. Even little changes and baby steps make a great difference. Find the right and healthy technique that works for you for sleeping better and overcoming your insomnia. Having a good sleep will tremendously contribute to your healing. Eat nourishing food. If, due to the stress, you are not capable to digest a solid food, at least make yourself a nourishing smoothie full of vitamins and minerals. Eat even if you do not feel like. Even if it does mean you will eat your dinner 2 hours. Without health, you have nothing. Make your health now your number one priority.
13. Try minimalism and clean your space.
If you advanced in your healing and you have now more energy, you might start to clean your space. Remove and throw away everything that reminds you about the narcissistic abuse and the narcissists. The narcissists do not have any identity. You felt in love with the void with no identity behind the "false self mask". You felt in love with your own self through the mirroring (the manipulative tactic of the narcissists). The narcissists are giving the gifts to people with a bad intention and after they ghost their victims, the narcissists want to stay relevant inside of the minds of their victims forever. On purpose, they leave a lot of reminders of them around their victims. Delete the photos, throw away the items. Everything is about energy. Those items carry negative dark energy of the narcissists. Set yourself free. They do not care about you and they do not think about you. Do the same. If you are not ready yet to give away all items at once, you do not need to clean your space at once. Do it in small doses in more sessions. Give yourself a chance to move on and stop re-traumatizing yourself over and over again. Instead, surround yourself only with the items that positively inspire you, motivate you for your new future and items that better fit your new visions.
14. Practice positive self - talk.
Its not a cliche. A positive self talk is a positive programming of your mind. Many people do not believe that this technique works. But think again - how powerful is the negative self -talk? The negative self - talk sabotage people´s self - esteem, life, view on life, day to day functioning. The negative self - talk is a very powerful destructive method and it works perfectly. So, why do you think it would not work in reverse? Take a pen and paper and write down a positive self - talk monologue. Read it loud every night right before you go to sleep. Every time you catch yourself talking negatively to yourself, immediately stop and replace the negative self - talk with the positive self -talk. You have to reprogram your mind. Especially after the narcissistic abuse. The narcissists are masters in corroding other people´s self esteem and positivity. Purge the negative energy and start to reprogram yourself in a positive way already today.
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