The Ongoing Trauma Of Surviving Narcissistic Abuse

Attachment trauma isn’t something that happens in convenient pockets throughout the day, turning on and off and giving you a break every once in a while.

Attachment trauma happens always. Everywhere. At all times.

People who are not chronic trauma survivors mistakingly believe that trauma is something that shows up only when there is a trigger, and then the person is thrown back into a memory or experience of something bad that happened to them. It’s thought that the survivor will have a meltdown, or panic attack, or be otherwise “obviously” and visually distressed. That’s how we know they have experienced trauma. And while that is certainly one experience of living with trauma (flashbacks for example), the reality for most trauma survivors is that everyday existence becomes a chronic slog.

Chronic trauma survivors (such as those with Complex PTSD from childhood attachment wounds) have spent nearly their entire lives in a fight/flight/freeze/fawn/Force mode. As such, they’ve learned to adapt and integrate constant triggers into their daily existence. They don’t often have outright flashbacks, because they live in a perpetual state of holding on to the memory. They may have panic attacks, but more likely they are having chronic, debilitating panic and anxiety all day long.

But they appear fine from the outside.

The Invisibility of Attachment Trauma

People with attachment trauma have learned to literally absorb and mask the debilitating impacts of parental shame and rejection so they can get through life. They pack it up and carry it with them in an invisible backpack by necessity; after all the trauma wasn’t going anywhere so what else were they to do? They built it into their lives and created a space for it alongside their everyday existence. If they didn’t carry it with them, who else would hold space for it? Attachment trauma survivors are chronically questioned about the validity of their experience. 

I never blame a survivor for holding on to their pain. They didn’t choose this. There simply weren’t alternatives or options available! They needed to survive so they shoved their needs to the side to please others. They were trained to deny their own emotional wellness and emotional boundaries. As such, they didn’t learn the skills (or have permission) to face the triggers, feel them, and work through them. They literally had no choice. Their trauma and the constant triggers became the platform of their lives because it was all that was available to them.

And it’s painful because trauma survivors know there is a life beyond trauma. It’s just not a life they were given. Which feels so unfair. They were given a life where everything literally feels unsafe. Things that aren’t even obviously related to the trauma feel unsafe. Things like career choices or work tasks, picking up groceries from the store, or deciding on what to eat. Everything feels impossible and like you’re going to make the wrong decision. That you’re going to make a mistake, somehow, somewhere in your life and then life is going to crumble down around you.

You’re barely holding on.

Trauma Doesn’t Have To Be Your Defining Feature

While some survivors may feel hopeless and at the end of their rope, others feel scared and stuck in place. Some will experience suicidal ideation, and some will not. Regardless of how trauma impacts you, you’re not broken. There is help available. Call your local crisis or suicide prevention line for support, resources, and direction. There is a way out of the darkness. I will be bold and say all survivors want to live, they just don’t want to live like this. They want the joy, happiness, hope, and energy that others have. They yearn for safety, peace, fulfillment and wholeness. And they deserve it and can achieve it.

They just don’t know where or how to get there, or it feels like they’ve tried everything and are justifiably exhausted. Everybody needs help sometimes.

Because trauma permeates every cell of your being (literally) and shifts your neural pathways and brain development, it creates a filter through which you see the world.

But so does healing.

I want to pause here and make clear that having a filter does not mean “it is all in your head and you just need to get over it”. Your trauma is real. And while there is a filter there that infuses everything you do with a “panic alarm”, there is also the very reality that trauma survivors experience more unsafe relationships and victimizing experiences because they have been conditioned away from trusting their internal cues. They have also been taught to place their needs and safety to the side in order to “earn” love and respect. This means many trauma survivors really do experience more danger and struggle more with things other people don’t.

But the panic filter makes it worse. The panic filter (born out of having secure attachment severed at such a young age) struggles to find anything safe. Because everything could be a potential danger. Because growing up, existing was dangerous. If you were scapegoated or experienced narcissistic abuse, you could have been shamed, targeted, or rejected for anything you did. You walked on eggshells trying to calculate the perfect equation to feel safe and accepted by your caregivers.

You have developed a keen ability to scan your environment and look for threats. You have needed to do this to survive and stay safe. And you may still be in that not-safe space. If your body is still in fight/flight/freeze mode, it cannot recognize safety. It can only recognize threats.

That’s why you may think or feel things like:

• My partner doesn’t get me. They keep abandoning or disappointing me (to be clear, without knowing your situation firsthand, you may indeed have an unsafe partner. The difficulty lies in knowing what to trust as safe or not and that should be worked through 1:1 with a trained professional).
• Nothing will ever make me happy. I can’t feel joy anymore.
• I can’t turn to friends, they will just be annoyed with me. I have no one.
• I am a burden, I am broken.
• My therapist/coach isn’t helping
• Shit things keep happening to me. Nothing ever works out for me.
• I struggle too much and will never feel peace or happiness. Everything is so hard and takes so much effort.
• Why do I have to do all the work of healing? I’m exhausted.
• Will my world or external circumstances every change? Will someone come rescue me?
• If I only had a different job/partner/living situation/body/face/etc. then I would be free of this heavy burden and will feel happy again.
• I need to run away and completely start over. if I burn this all to the ground I can start fresh and that means I can live without my trauma. Everything will be better.
• I deserve more than this. How come everyone else has it better than me?
• Maybe it’s because other people are better than me. I’m so unloveable and unwanted, and I don’t belong anywhere.
• This will not be ok. The worst thing possible is going to happen! (Even if something relatively “minor” happens, the trauma brain can see all the possible worst-case scenario outcomes and fixates on them)
• Where can I go, what can I do, who can I be to finally feel safe, like I matter, and like I belong? Please tell me, I am desperate!

If you are thinking any of the things on this list, know that you are not alone, nor are these crazy thoughts.

Trauma makes everything 10X harder and requires 100X more steps.

It can feel like even healing itself becomes more cumbersome and complex because of all the layers of identity that we have to unlearn and rebuild. It’s not as simple as talking to a coach or therapist, it’s grief work and somatic work and emotional processing and brain reconfiguration and relational skills and interpersonal effectiveness and sensory-motor work, building support networks, learning to recognize red and yellow flags, building assertiveness skills, and learning about effective and compassionate boundary setting. It’s learning how to take up space and have permission to practice self-care and advocacy. It’s making really difficult decisions about who is in our lives and who isn’t, what career we actually want, and what type of partner is actually good for us, and discovering what it feels like to trust ourselves and honour our needs. It’s all of these things on top of getting through each day. Washing our faces. Brushing our teeth. Doing dishes and putting clothes away. Taking care of our kids and taking care of ourselves. It’s learning what it feels like to be enough.

Trauma is no joke. And if you haven’t figured all this out then, well…you’re completely normal and that is completely understandable. Most un-traumatized people haven’t figured this out.

There Is Hope and Recovery

But trauma survivors have a secret power. It’s a gift we were given even though we didn’t want to have to receive it. The gift of resilience, courage, and fortitude. Those are fancy words that often don’t mean much beyond faux-inspirational Pinterest posts telling you to “rise up and shine like the strong amazing human that you are”. Ok. Thanks. Now what? What exactly does that mean and how exactly do you want me to get there??

The resilience, courage, and fortitude that you were given are like a window. They afford you the ability to peek through into a future that is perfectly aligned with who you are. Honestly, many non-traumatized people do not have this window. Because they haven’t had to slog through the agony of daily existence, it means they also haven’t had to re-evaluate what genuinely matters to them, who they are and what they want. And for many, that is just fine. They aren’t in distress. Nothing needs to change for them. It’s not a judgment against them. They have lived according to societal expectations and don’t necessarily feel burdened by them. Or they do, but they think, “so does everyone else and this is just the way it is. We work to fit in, and we learn how to be happy by achieving the things that society says will make us happy!”

Trauma survivors know too well the exhaustion and consequences of living for others and trying to meet impossible ideals. Trauma survivors wear a mask at all times. Trauma survivors also have a unique opportunity to actually reconstruct their life to meet an internal ideal. Sure they were pushed and tormented into it, which sucked big time (that’s the clinical term for it), but they have the ability for genuine freedom.

Unmasking Trauma

So what does this look like and how do we get there? We start by unmasking. Unmasking means learning how to feel safe in your body, your life, and the world by aligning with your actual needs and desires and knowing when you are being tugged off course by other people’s needs and expectations. In my practice, I guide clients through reconstructing their relational blueprints (the actual attachment and neural programming that came from our upbringing with toxic and dysfunctional families) and then we integrate our own values back into our existence. We un-train and re-build. Pull out the rotting beams, re-pour the foundation, and build the house of our dreams. And then we create a metric by which we can live our life according to our own values (aka we decorate our dream home now that the structure is safe and sound so that our home always feels like a sanctuary).

The trauma body wants to heal. It doesn’t want to hold on to the pain anymore. But it has never been exposed to safety. Unmasking is a process of introducing safety so that we can access our wholeness.

Affirming for yourself that your feelings are real, that your trauma is real, and that things are genuinely hard is the first crucial step in your unmasking journey.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not a replacement for 1:1 professional or medical support. Information in this article is shared from one perspective and is not advice, suggestion, recommendation or clinical guidance.