Heal Yourself with Neuroscience: Understanding Life After Narcissistic Trauma🌟

Unlock the secrets to breaking free from toxic relationships and reclaiming your true potential. Have you ever felt trapped in a cycle of narcissistic trauma, unsure of how to move forward? This episode promises to be a game-changer as we explore the powerful connection between science, spirituality, and self-love to heal and empower. You'll discover how the brain's capacity for mental time travel can either trap you in the past or help you envision a brighter future, and learn how to use this understanding to regulate your nervous system and release trauma. We'll guide you through practical visualization techniques designed to shift your focus from pain to possibility, creating a mental space where healing and growth become attainable.

In this poignant exploration, we tackle the complexities of why leaving a toxic relationship often feels more daunting than staying. You'll gain valuable insights into shifting the source of your dopamine from the fleeting highs of external validation to the lasting fulfillment of internal achievements and self-worth. Our discussion highlights the transformative power of self-compassion and provides actionable steps for rewiring your brain to foster resilience and acceptance. With neuroscience-backed methods, you're encouraged to embark on a healing journey, making 2025 your best year yet. Join us for this heartfelt episode as we foster a community of self-compassion and personal growth, and celebrate the incredible impact of self-love on your path to recovery.

Chapters

• 0:00 Healing From Narcissistic Trauma and Empowerment
• 10:35 Rewiring Your Brain for Self-Compassion

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to the Toxic Relationship Detox, where we bridge science and spirituality and self-love to help you heal and thrive. Today's topic is groundbreaking and it's about understanding how your brain's unique capabilities can empower you to heal from narcissistic trauma and unlock your true potential, no matter where you are right now. Here is the deal. Your brain is an incredible tool. It's not broken, even if it feels like that right now. It is wired for survival, so it is doing its job. It's working perfectly the way it should be. But today we're going to be looking at how do we rewire it so it thrives. Stick with me and I'll show you how.

Speaker 1: 0:52

The first thing we want to look at is the power of mental time travel. The key lessons we can take from neuroscience is that your brain, specifically the hippocampus, has an amazing ability called mental time travel. It allows you to reflect on the past, live in the present and imagine your future. This is what makes you so utterly unique and powerful. The hippocampus also is wired to ensure that you're learning from everything, so it's set up for you to learn from everything that you're doing and every experience that you have. The problem is that when there's trauma, the trauma hijacks this ability. We keep going round and round in a loop and we end up getting stuck in a different part of the brain because it's going over the past experiences but it can't understand where it's gone wrong and how it can make your future better. So you're basically stuck in the past all the time, going over it and it can get quite addictive. This process is quite addictive. It gives you a dopamine hit and we'll talk about dopamine in a minute but it is really difficult when you've been in a toxic relationship to imagine a better future. There isn't something wrong with you, it's just literally your brain. The part of the brain called the hippocampus has started to shrink over time because you're unable to use that part of the brain like you were and everything is getting stuck in the hippocampus. Everything in the brain goes into the safety check first and if the engineer in the safety check says, yeah, everything's safe, you can move on to the next level.

Speaker 1: 2:43

Problem is, when we are in a toxic relationship, we're not safe. Our nervous system doesn't feel safe. You can convince yourself with words all you want. You can tell yourself calm down. It won't make any difference what you say to yourself, because your nervous system is unbelievable. It's like the security system. It's like no other security system out there. It can sense before you are even aware. It's doing its job without your awareness. So it knows that you're not safe being around someone that's toxic, because it isn't safe being around someone that doesn't have empathy, that only thinks about themselves. You've got to understand.

Speaker 1: 3:29

With narcissism and psychopaths or any cluster B, they have the personality disorder or the disease, if you want to call it that, and you have the symptoms of it. So it's like they hold, they're the carrier of a cold, but you've got the symptoms of a cold. But the most important thing here to know is that you will have the symptoms and your nervous system knows that this person is dangerous. For me. It's not safe to be around this person, even if you convince yourself I love them oh, they love me. Your nervous system still knows. But here's the good news you can change what's going on in your brain by releasing the trauma and learning to stabilize your nervous system and then practicing visualization to actually look at what's possible instead of what's painful.

Speaker 1: 4:35

So it takes three key steps here. The first one is regulate your nervous system to really know it's safe. So in order to do that you have to create some space from the toxic individual and learn how to regulate your nervous system. The second thing is because, ultimately, the reason why you have all these symptoms is because they're dysregulating you. So your whole nervous system is sending out alerts and you've got trauma, emotional trauma, psychological trauma from the words that they've said, and also the emotional trauma from where you have to numb your emotions around them all the time. Otherwise they'll say things like you're weak or you're overreacting, or you're so needy, you're so sensitive all these things because you're actually responding to the abuse that they're putting on you.

Speaker 1: 5:32

So there's three main things. It's your body that you really need to look at which is your nervous system and what's happening in your brain. The second thing is actually helping yourself regulate your emotional system. The second thing is actually helping yourself regulate your emotional system. The third thing would be to really look at your thinking patterns and start releasing some of that, and then you can move forward and look at okay, this is what I want in the future and all of this is possible, even if you think it's impossible right now. Even if you think it's impossible right now. So an actionable step here would be take some time to really feel how you feel around this person.

Speaker 1: 6:13

What happens to you in terms of do you feel anxious, do you feel low, do you feel depressed? What happens to you? Do you go into this feeling of helplessness and hopelessness? That means your nervous system is going into shutdown. Just imagine what it would be like if you were with the dinosaurs. Your body would be like well, there's no point in fighting, there's no point in running the dinosaurs. See me, I'm just going to pretend I'm dead. So you go into shutdown mode. Or are you in fight or flight? Are you reacting? Are you getting angry? Are you wanting to run away? Well, that means that the good news is that your nervous system is mobilized still. So you've just got one step to move forward and we release all that tension, that mobilized tension, and move into focusing on getting into a calm, safe state, and then you can actually start releasing all the trauma that you've got stored up in the amygdala and then your hippocampus can start focusing on growing again. So the main thing I want to get across is you can do something about it. You can release the trauma and you can start visualizing at the same time about what you want instead, and that will help your hippocampus grow so that you can start seeing a better future rather than being stuck in the past old stories. This is science. If you can take those steps and get the healing for those two things, your life will completely change.

Speaker 1: 7:57

The next thing that we want to look at is how do we break. One of the things that we really need to look at is dopamine. It's the brain's rewards chemical and what happens when we're in a toxic relationship. How does this get mixed up and how does it get messed up? If you like, we're drawn to quick wins like checking and making sure that we're getting validated by the toxic person. You've got to understand what the toxic individual does is. They give you dopamine hits, they acknowledge you when they're happy and they allow you to get some reward chemical in your brain when they are happy. So that means that you're constantly looking for validation from someone like a toxic individual, and you might find that, if you're trying to break up with them, one of the things that you miss them when you're doing well, and you don't know why. Well, there's a reason for that. When you're healing from narcissistic trauma, your brain craves certainty and safety, which can make you rely on these quick dopamine hits, where you're getting this reward chemical but that keeps you stuck in survival mode. To really heal, you need to disrupt this cycle and give your brain space to think, to feel, to grow in the right way. So one thing I would say dopamine is the brain's reward chemical and it drives us to seek out validation, quick wins and anything that feels rewarding in the short term.

Speaker 1: 9:46

When you're healing from narcissistic trauma, this system often becomes wired around external validation, especially from the narcissist. Why? Because the narcissist conditions you to rely on their approval for your sense of worth. You're programmed to seek validation from them like a reward and every time they give you that, yes, get that dopamine hit and what that means is you get stuck in this cycle where you depend on their attention, whether it's positive or negative for your emotional stability. This is why it's so hard to move on from toxic relationships. Your brain is literally wired to associate their validation with safety and survival.

Speaker 1: 10:35

If you're in this relationship, you'll know that there's a fear of actually getting out of the relationship. You feel more fear of getting out than staying in a relationship that is obviously creating a lot of trauma for you. That's where the brain science explains it to us that it doesn't make sense what you're experiencing, but it's scientific. Yes, what you're experiencing is real. Breaking this cycle means learning to source dopamine from within, not from their approval or external stimuli, but actually giving yourself. So instead of getting dopamine hit from them, you need to find ways of getting that reward from yourself in some way. Find other people that will give you that reward as an interim maybe, if you need that validation, or do something that is kind. Acknowledge, keep track of what you're doing. That is good.

Speaker 1: 11:41

Imagine what your life would look like if your sense of worth wasn't dependent on anyone else's opinion. When you feel free, when you feel liberated, by building an internal validation to really understand your self-worth, you can reprogram your brain to find joy and safety in your own achievements and self-acceptance. I hope you can understand why the devaluation phase is so difficult when we're going through a toxic relationship because they are devaluing us and our sense of value, our sense of self-worth, comes from them. So one actionable step would be start reclaiming small moments of validation for yourself. Write down one thing you did today that made you proud, or, over this course of the day, validate yourself over and over and reward yourself over and over again every single time you accomplish something. Over time, this will rewire your brain to connect dopamine with your internal successes rather than external approval.

Speaker 1: 12:57

Now, if it is that you're really struggling with this and you're finding that you need support, then get support, because this is an addiction to a person for that dopamine hit. If you need support to reset your brain, to reset your neurotransmitters, then it is worth focusing on getting the healing step by step to detox completely so that you can get out of this mode and make 2025 the best year of your life. Of this mode and make 2025 the best year of your life. Why not? Because you can do it in a step-by-step manner. If that is something that you are interested in, please do look into the resources section. What you can do is apply for a free one-to-one consultation, discuss your custom treatment plan. You click on that and you will apply for a spot with me where I can talk to you one-on-one and we can look at what is it that you need to be able to move forward. You fill in the form and then you can book in a slot with me. After that point, let's make 2025 the best year for you so far. Lastly this is so important Self-compassion is the foundation of change.

Speaker 1: 14:18

Scientific insight, research shows that self-compassion rewires your brain for resilience. When you stop criticizing yourself for the past mistakes, when you stop asking yourself why did I do this, I'm foolish, or feeling foolish, you're reducing the stress hormones and you're activating the brain's ability to learn and grow again. So then you can get your hippocampus to the right size again. People healing from narcissistic trauma often struggle with self-compassion and self-love and because they've been conditioned to believe their needs and feelings don't matter. But here's the truth Showing kindness to yourself isn't indulgent, it's essential. Self isn't indulgent, it's essential. If you don't like yourself, if you don't take care of yourself, who is the only person that you are meant to take care of is you. The only person's nervous system that you have control over is yours. The only person's brain you can really heal is yours. The only trauma that you can heal is yours.

Speaker 1: 15:38

Think of self-compassion as like a fertile ground where healing grows. Without it, you're trying to rebuild on shaky foundations. Without it, all we do is traumatize ourself more and more. Forgive yourself every day for something, big or small. Look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself I forgive myself for not recognizing the red flags earlier, but I'm ready to move on now. It helps your brain know that you're ready to move on and it's safe to move forward, that you're not going to keep telling yourself off because, in a way, we've got dysregulated by the toxic person and they're continuously dysreg. It's not that you allowed them to traumatize you. It's more that you were programmed to be in a relationship where it's okay for there to be trauma. It's not your fault, but the most important person that you need to build and trust and create a loving relationship is yourself. Your brain is built to heal. That is backed up by science. With small, intentional actions every day, by doing programs that can rewire your mind and let go of trauma and reclaim your life, you will start to heal and change your brain, and that will mean that you will have control over how 2025 looks for you.

Speaker 1: 17:30

If today's insights resonated with you at all, take the next step. My Heal to Fry program is designed to guide you through this transformation, using neuroscience-backed methods and compassionate support. My whole ethos is self-love and acceptance. Healing isn't about fixing what's broken. It's about uncovering your true self, which is whole, complete, beautiful, amazing. So do visit the Link link tree and start your journey today.

Speaker 1: 18:06

Listen, I really really appreciate every single one of you that have been listening to my podcast. I have to say I was taken aback the other day when I was listening to somebody talking. Her name's Michelle. I can't tell you how much every single person's message means to me that my this podcast is helping. I had a moment of real humbleness and humility when I realized, oh, wow, it's actually really helping people heal and have more compassion towards themselves. Your brain is your ally and healing is your superpower and self-love and self-compassion and kindness and love towards yourself. You are so worth healing. You really are.

Speaker 1: 18:58

I really wish I could get through to as many of you as I can that you deserve such an amazing life. You're not here to suffer. You're not here to hurt. You don't need to feel guilty or ashamed of anything. You are amazing and the universe loves you. God loves you. You are so blessed because you're here. All this programming from someone that is toxic. There's so much misunderstanding about who you are. Sometimes we're not conscious of the programming that they've done to us, but the truth is you are so loved. You're not meant to live this life in this way forever. The purpose of this experience is so that you know the truth of who you are, which is you are powerful and you are loved and there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. Just release the trauma, release all these thoughts, allow yourself to regulate and find that freedom to really be yourself and create the life that you're meant to live. I'm sending you so, so, so much love Till next time no-transcript.