How I lost 100 pounds by healing childhood trauma responses and chronic anxiety disorder

Hello my friends! I've been working to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. I've also been sharing how I lost 100 pounds without GLP-1 drugs or weight loss surgery. The more I explore, the more I find that how I lost 100 pounds was also how I am healing childhood trauma responses to narcissistic parent abuse and resulting chronic anxiety disorder from people-pleasing, fawning and hypervigilance. 

Narcissistic parent abuse creates childhood trauma responses from living in a hostile environment where chronic anxiety, fixing people, fawning, hypervigilance to narcissistic parent expectations, is norm. But all this is not normal. And it takes a huge toll, in many dangerous forms, on our bodies. Several involve unhealthy weight gain, obesity or weight loss. 

So a lot of how I lost weight  without a GLP-1 diet drug or weight loss surgery was by dealing with the  inner childhood trauma and all the dangerous concomitant trauma responses (freeze, fight, flight, fawn and fixing). And wow, the more I unpack the more crammed I realize my emotional suitcase is. 

I cannot hear anyone express any frustration, problem or concern without feeling an unbearable need to rush in and fix it. Which is wrong on so many levels. Especially if this person happens to be manipulating me into these feelings or gaslighting me that their problems are somehow my responsibility. It makes it very difficult to sort out which are actually mine and which aren't. I'm a sitting duck target for bullies who would exploit my hypervigilance and overly-empathetic nature. 

And having said that, I see that empath and chronic anxiety fixer/ people pleaser are similar but also different. My empathy makes me sensitive to other's pain. But narcissistic parent abuse drove my people pleaser behavior and heightened the urgency to fix others' problems. It added inappropriate FOG to empathy: fear, obligation and guilt. 

Narcissistic parent demands generated a false sense of responsibility in me. This manifested as parentification (child parenting parents and other siblings), scapegoating and enmeshment of them in my self. So part of how I lost 100 pounds was also how I am working to get my parents out of me. Thank you to YouTube psychologist Jerry Wise for coining that most helpful term. 

It's not just figurative, to say that how I lost 100 pounds was by losing, or going no contact with them. Literally, I'm shedding the weight of responsibility for my narcissistic parents. I'm working to lose weight of their unrealistic and wrong demands. I working to clear the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) over their misdeeds, that I never earned nor deserved. 

The hardest part is convincing myself of this. Inbred childhood trauma responses are like cattle prods goading me to freeze, fight, flight, fawn and fix. I have to find a way to not feel the artificial pressure, the manufactured crises, the weaponized empathy, they indoctrinated in me. I have to learn to feel healthy empathy without the chronic anxiety of needing to fix it. I'm working to stop the constant self-debasing, groveling obedience and hypervigilance to others' moods. This will help in all areas of my life and those who live with me. 

It must be exhausting to feel they can't share without having me swoop in like Florence Nightingale to tend them. It must feel patronizing and enabling and enfeebling. That is what my narcissistic parents wanted from me: mothering, nursing, caretaking, coddling. That is neither normal nor healthy. And normal healthy people do not want that. I don't want that from other people I just want someone to sit with me, hold space and affirm that I know what I need and can do it. Just like how I lost 100 pounds: by seeing what I needed and doing it. 

Do this now to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse

 Hello my friends. Are you dealing with childhood trauma? Today I'm going to share one essential thing you so do now to heal childhood trauma from malignant narcissistic parent abuse. Start seeing blind guides for their toxic positivity the red flags they wave. Begin to hear their agenda-based unsolicited advice for the poison it is. Avoid blind guides at all costs because they will derail your healing faster than a boulder on the tracks. 

Who are the blind guides? They are people who don't see, know or understand situations but talk as if they do. They are ignorant, arrogant hypocrites. They make you think, with gaslighting, deceit and manipulation, that they know all and are sent from God to call you to the right path which you are avoiding. They aren't and you aren't. All they do is lead you astray. Check out my other articles for more details on blind guides. 

Blind guides are everywhere: in families, schools, workplace, churches, the doctor's office, friend groups, even psychologist's chairs. Not everyone who tries to help is a blind guide. But anyone who makes you feel uncomfortable, destabilized, insecure or worthless, is. This is their tool and you need to recognize it for what it is. It is not, in fact, a tool but a weapon to destroy you with. 

Truly loving, caring people do not make you feel stupid or foolish. They may be trying to help you find a better way, but they do not do it by shaming, undermining, questioning, humiliating, scolding, attacking or invalidating, as blind guides do. And what's most sadistic, cowardly and telling about their cruelty is that they target the most vulnerable and fragile ones to attack. And there's none so vulnerable as one with childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. 

So now you may have some questions which I'll attempt to answer. I said that they make you feel uncomfortable and you may be wondering if maybe discomfort is part of learning new healthier behaviors. Ehhh, a little yes, but mostly no. Unfamiliar might be a better way to describe new patterns we try to learn to heal. 

This is not the discomfort that blind guides make you feel. Oh they will say their job is to unsettle you and shake you up. That's a religious trope that Christian narcissists have taken and run with. My mother firmly believes that God has given her dispensation to "shake people out of their complacency" and "call them to repent" despite her own unrepentant, unprincipled, unethical, unkind and illegal behavior. He categorically has not and makes that explicitly clear. 

Blind guides make you feel ashamed, insecure, foolish and stupid. They confuse you with their hypocritical double standards, twisted ethics and made up rules. They say things that sound nonsensical because they are. We know this, it's just that we have been conditioned by malignant narcissistic parents to devalue and ignore our own common sense. We have been taught to believe their gaslighting over God's Word. 

So you may be wondering, how do I recognize a blind guide. Excellent question and one I'm still working to answer. But the more I learn about their toxicity, the easier they are to spot. Every blind guide I've encountered (and I've encountered a lot) has left me with a vague bad taste in my mouth and a sick stomach. Because they don't heal, they harm. With arrogance, lies, machinations, they sow seeds of doubt and shame. They are the embodiment of what God hates: lying, conniving, violence, pot-stirring, malicious tale-bearers, gossips, 

You will know them by their deceptions. Which sadly resembles our narcissistic parents' abuse. Their narcissistic smirk, haughty eyes, deaf ears and scorn, belies their proclaimed good intent. I know, you might fear, as I did, that you won't see these things. But you will. You just have to start listening to your own wisdom and looking for the wolf in granny's nightgown. We must see the big eyes and big teeth that we've ignored. 

Once you start really listening to what they say, how they say it, and how it makes you feel, it will get easier to recognize the toxicity. Read my post on toxic things blind guides say. You'll know what I mean. You'll start to see it, not as helpful advice but shaming, belittling and invalidating. You'll begin to hear how they dismiss your feelings, thoughts and even experiences, as if they know you better than you know yourself. 

I was once told by a raging narcissist blind guide that he knew me and that I was a vain fraud and a poser (pot meet kettle). He would "call out" my deceptions for my own good (sound familiar?) He would speak the truth about me that everyone else was afraid to say. (Way to echo my narcissistic dad.) He was going to set me straight because he knew the "real" me like no one else. He saw the "TRUTH" about me (how they love that word) that I had somehow blinded others to. Yikes. 

That blind guide is also insanely arrogant, abusive, dangerous, sociopathic, manipulative, violent, rageful, passive-aggressive, aggressive, oversensitive and insensitive, uninformed and ignorant. This isn't me saying it. I typically defend him when everyone else is saying it. He has been gaslighting me for years with his BS. 

It took me so long to accept it because this kind of behavior was exactly how my father and mother and their new spouses acted toward me. Cunning, calculating, devious and exploitative. They would set me up to love them, make excuse for them and then pull the rug out from under me. All the while proclaiming to have my best interests at heart when their only interests were selfish. 

Not all blind guides are as bad as this. See my article on the types of blind guides. The similarity is how their unsolicited advice makes you feel. If it triggers trauma responses, shame, self-loathing, self-doubt and destabilization, they and their advice should be avoided till you can sort out why this is so unsettling. Very likely  you'll find that they are trying to undermine you and even sabotage your healing. 

Which may sound paranoid but isn't. It's finally being honest and seeing ulterior motives for what they are. All our lives, people with childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse have kicked ourselves to the curb. We've believed and trusted other people over ourselves. To being healing, we need to get priorities straight. We need to affirm and trust ourselves. We need to understand that if something feels off, we must stop and acknowledge that. We need to quit rushing past red flags that are in place to help us. They are the guides we should follow, not the blind guides who would lead us astray. 

My toxic parents were so bizarre that I have nothing in common with ordinary kids

Hello my friends. Today's task in healing childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse, is to address  head on what I've been skirting. And that is that my toxic parents were so bizarre that I have nothing in common with ordinary kids. If that sounds extreme or exaggerated, it's because it was and they were. Their odd, off, chaotic, hypocritical, cruel, insane, exploitative, manipulative, self-centered behavior bears no resemblance to any normal parent behavior. I could not make this up. No one could. How I was raised goes against any culture, in any time period, whenever and wherever. 

I hear their stories and they are horrific. Mine are horrific too but in a way I can't articulate. Or don't dare to. Actually, I only just, at 59, realized how bad they really were. Or I hear normal childhood stories and I have nothing to add. Because mine were so abnormal. For example, I read an FB post in a memories group about teens coming in late and sneaking in a window. The entire group of responders laughed to recall. How could I say that if I'd done that, I'd have suffered a fate worse that death? That I WAS literally kicked out of the house for nothing. Normal greasy kid stuff was a luxury forbidden me.

Here are back posts to give you an idea what I'm talking about

Bizarre backstory up to age 7 

Bizarre backstory up to age 11

Parentification back story 

Super creepy was I was endangered

Cringy things my narcissist parents did for attention

What I learned when my mom threw a pie in my face

My bizarre and traumatic childhood experiences defy explanation 

Shocking things my dreams teach me about narcissist parent abuse

Why I'm just now recognizing parent and stepparent abuse

My religious narcissist parents shocking hypocritical behavior

Am I saying that no one else has suffered as I have? Yes and no. Sadly countless children have been subjected to horrific suffering of many kinds. Too many kids suffered the kinds of toxic parent behavior I have: abuse (physical, emotional, mental, sexual, financial, medical, religious), neglect, endangerment, abandonment, exploitation, parentification, invalidation, enmeshment, enslavement, humiliation, shaming, triangulation, scapegoating and gaslighting about it all. 

But I have never heard of a single person who experienced the uniquely bizarre and contradictory, hypocritical, parent behavior, in combination with divorce and remarriage to other narcissists, who then had new families whom I was made to serve but gaslit that I was not part of. This put me in a parallel universe, with an assortment of four narcissistic parents and their  hodge-podge families. I lived coincident with but experiencing nothing like normal family life. Even the dysfunction was abnormal. 

Because family, parents, parent and child relationships, society, have a formula for how it works. Even the bad parts. Time and time again, I hear how it works for others. I hear the rules they lived with. I'm not saying they had it easy or good. I'm saying that even the abuse had a pattern. There were others who could relate to it, having similar abusive or alcoholic parents. What I lived with bore no similarity. There is no one I can talk to about it because it fits no recognizable format. 

Whenever I hear a psychologist speak on childhood trauma, such as Dr. Ramani, Jerry Wise or Patrick Teahan, I get so much from them and I appreciate their wisdom. But I've never heard anyone address the uniquely weird shit that went on in my life on the daily. My patchwork existence in which everything changed from one month to the next, for shits, giggles and selfish whims.. New places, homes, people shoved at me, new rules, new chaos. Not because it made any sense. No one agreed with their crazy choices. But their arrogance won every time. So my next "patch"  looked nothing like the one next to it. And the reason no one addresses it is because no one has ever heard of anything like it. 

Now I know, as I write this, that it sounds strange. BECAUSE IT IS!! But not because I'm setting myself up as some kind of oddball paradigm. I don't want to be different. I never did. I just want a fucking framework for understanding why my life was so weird and how I can heal from the off-the-charts childhood trauma it caused. I'm not blaming anyone for not getting me. I DONT' GET ME! 

But I'm also sick of my trauma responses to fawn and fix, to make my life palatable to others. I want to tell the weird shit that happened and have it acknowledged as effing mental with no precedent. But all too often all I get are blind guides who pooh-pooh and dismiss what happened to me. They say gaslighting stuff like it couldn't have been that bad, could it?  Or "your parents probably just did the best they could." Which tells me these blind guides weren't listening. They were just promoting some pet agenda. They proclaim to know better than I, how to cope. Which is so extra special disturbing because none of these people were there or lived, through their  own admission, experiences anything like mine. 

Because if you read back through my posts where I spell out the bizarre things my narcissistic parents did, the very normal things I didn't get, the oppressive expectations coupled with deprivations I lived. I mean really read it. Without preconceived ideas or a prepared  homily. If you just hear the weird and let it read as written, I would challenge anyone to say they've ever heard anything like it before. 

I just want someone to say, wow, that's crazy. But having said that, it is probably because I don't tell people. Partially because I was indoctrinated to keep secrets, to absorb their shame and take on myself the consequences of it. I was groomed to think I deserved it. That God expected me to be their scapegoat. But also because my backstory is so weird that I expect not to be believed. I've been gaslit that they weren't mistreating me (even though I saw no one else being treated quite like this), that I was showing off, attention seeking, too sensitive. 

Which I can hear now, was all gaslighting because I NEVER COMPLAINED! This was all just my narcissistic parents abuse and backpedaling. They knew damn well their behavior was awful AF. They knew that if anyone else saw what they put me through, they'd have lost custody and very probably been jailed. So they shamed me into keeping quiet to protect their abusive behavior and I did. 

So I probably minimize my own experiences. In fact I know I do. It's a kneejerk trauma response. I say things in such as way as to normalize it. My then boyfriend, now husband said I sanitized their terrible behavior from the first time we met. I told him how they'd kicked me out of the house and that it was my fault. He neither accepted that explanation nor believed it was my fault. His first reaction was "wait, what? what kind of parent evicts a teen and how could it be  your fault?" and he may have said that. But I didn't hear it. Because our trauma ears can't hear common sense or compassion. We only hear shame. 

So a very few people get us. And maybe more would. But traumatized kids are accustomed to hiding abuse and shielding parents. We're used to being disbelieved, shunned, scapegoated, shamed. So we don't take chances. We also don't tell, in unvarnished black and white, what happened. We paint it pretty with nonsensical excuses. 

And layer on that, the blind guides who have been enabling our perpetrators. Saying things to us like "she's always been like that." And?? How is that helpful? Okay so  you're kind of acknowledging she's "difficult" but you're offering no support. And you're kind of trauma dumping on me, her child, by alluding to how she's mistreated you?? 

Well, to quote Sidda in Divine Secrets of the Yaya Sisterhood. "Ya'll have your little Ya-Ya scars but it was nothing compared to what she left on me." Preach. Because no matter what my mother did to siblings, they had 1) good parents 2) each other 3) choices and 4) were adults. I had none of those. No one save 3-4 friends, has had the balls to come out and say. "That's bullshit!" I never  heard of anything like that!! What kind of parent does that to a child?? I never had any experiences remotely like that!"

They HEAR what is weird about how my narcissistic parents treated me. And they call it out. They help me hear what is wrong with it. I don't have to get them to see. They help ME see.  They don't make excuses for the perpetrators. They don't fall for their  DARVO nonsense. They don't fall for my trauma responses of taking it on myself. They hold me accountable TO MYSELF to accept that it was not my fault, no matter how much my gaslit trauma brain thinks it is. 

And having mentioned Dr. Ramani, Jerry Wise and Patrick Teahan as healers, I fully believe that they would acknowledge my unique hell as unique and  hell. I'm just always so afraid of ever sharing because in my core trauma brain, I believe the old parent gaslighting. I WAS my fault. I AM making it up (yes, I hear the contraction in that but nevertheless...). It WASN'T that bad. 

I am afraid that these experts on childhood trauma and narcissistic parent abuse will say those things. That they will echo my narcissistic parents. Even though I have zero reason for fearing that. Trauma brains don't think in common sense. They think in brainwashed, indoctrinated broken patterns. In fact, the trauma brain doesn't really think at all. It trauma responds. 

THAT is what I want to get out of my head. That is the point of the exercise. Not to compete for Worst Childhood Award, to reach my inner child and give her some hope. Which is really just a fanciful hope because the years of being trapped in the nightmare are long gone. The window for help, closed. There was no one to help and there's no do-overs or second chances. Yet the nightmare goes on. I'll blog more on that tomorrow. 

What people with childhood trauma do and don't need from you

Hello my friends. So this post is written to people who do not have childhood trauma issues, who would like to help those of us who do. I'm going to explain from my own childhood trauma what we do and don't need from you. Because there is a LOT of confusion around childhood trauma because a lot of people are not trauma informed, which makes dealing with our CPTSD so much worse. 

Childhood trauma survivors don't need no education. Thank you Pink Floyd. We don' need thought control (gaslighting), no dark sarcasm (toxic shaming) required. We aren't idiots, we are injured. We don't need indoctrination into your pet dogma. Good God, we got enough narcissistic cult indoctrination from our narcissistic parents. We don't need your shame-splaining or any other kind of explaining. We need you to hear us. 

Childhood trauma survivors need affirmation, not advice. It's ludicrously foolish how people with no idea or experience with childhood trauma, yours or their own, will pedantically preach  to those of us who do. Why would you think you have the ability, much less the right, to advise on what you do not know. You're what the Bible calls speaking from ignorance. You don't understand because you were not there. So stop pretending you have some insider knowledge that we need to hear. 

Childhood trauma survivors need autonomy not autocrats. All our lives we've been told what to do by people with a vested interest in keeping us subservient. And it's killing us. So, no directors, bosses, supervisors, comptrollers nor chief whatevers need apply. It's time for us to live in an autonomous collective not an oligarchy. 

Childhood trauma survivors need salving, not saving. We need balm for our wounds and comfort such as the Good Samaritan provided. We don't need Pharisees proselytizing, pontificating or an altar call from blind guides. We don't need to go to your church and hear your preacher. The last thing we need is another ignorant, arrogant person putting his spin on our truth. 

Childhood trauma survivors don't need you to tell us "how it is." We need you to hear how it was for us. We don't need you of all people, translating for us, telling us how we really think and feel. We don't need you putting our experiences in your own words. We don't need you putting words in our mouths. You don't get to have a say on our lives. Hands off my truth and my life, get your own. If you can't just love me, then get thee behind me. 

Childhood trauma survivors need encouragement, not exhortation. I am sick to death of this wrong-headed practice, preached from the pulpit, about calling other people to repentance. God, the arrogance and hypocrisy in that! We don't need to be told what we are doing wrong. Especially not by people who are doing the very things they preach against! Save your finger wagging for the narcissists but be careful. Because even against narcissists, the one finger you point means four more pointing back at you. Which  makes sense because hypocrites very often are narcissists and narcissists are always hypocrites. 

Childhood trauma survivors need to be held by people who hold space for us. We don't to be held accountable, held to inappropriate expectations and selfish demands of others. We got that all our lives and that's why we're in the mess we're in and why we need people to hold space for us, till we can hold it for ourselves. 

Childhood trauma survivors need caring, not controlling. FFS, what do you think we've lived with all our lives BUT coercive control by our narcissistic parents? Have you been listening or just thinking up what you're going to say next? Stop trying to divert or direct us. Anyone who would presume to dictate terms, shows that they are power hungry control freaks. 

Childhood trauma survivors need acceptance, not agenda. We need helpers not heroes. And I'm not even sure we need helpers. Definitely not the patronizing, condescending kind. All too often, for whatever reason, when someone hears I was mistreated as a kid, it becomes their goal to "reach me" Like I'm some kind of Lost Boy. We aren't problem children that need discipline, direction, taking in hand. We aren't your project. Take your do-gooder missionary work elsewhere.

Childhood trauma survivors need neither validation nor invalidation. We require neither your imprimatur nor your Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. We're not asking for permission. We would like your validation but we don't need it to proceed with getting healthy. 

Childhood trauma survivors need to be seen not sorted. So often people at childhood trauma like it's something the child brought on herself. It is galling and gaslighting. WE DIDN'T ASK FOR THIS. But that is exactly what our parents taught us. I just wanted to be loved as a child should be. And yet, we are dogged into adulthood by this pernicious notion that we have some lesson to learn from abuse. All I learned was to keep dancing attendance on narcissistic parents. 

Childhood trauma survivors need perpetrators identified, not abuse perpetuated.  It just boggles my mind that this even needs to be said. And yet, so often, the would-be help just makes it worse. Such as the aforementioned comments that tell me off, scold and shame me for my own good. How is that good for me??? Bloody hell, Harry, that's what my narcissistic parents said! That's what I'm trying to heal from! I don't need calling out, they do! It's time somebody said enough. 

Childhood trauma survivors need listeners, not tellers. That's all it takes, to get childhood trauma from an outsider perspective. Hearing and listening, not deafening yourself. Seeing, not blinding. Acknowledging, accepting and believing, not gaslighting ignorance and stubborn refusal to admit what's in front of your eyes. We don't need to you to paraphrase, define, translate for us. That's just more gaslighting. And if that's all you have, move along. 

Childhood trauma survivors need healing, not helping. We don't need problem-solvers, saviors, fixers, Maytag repairmen, rescuers. We can usually discover what we  need on our own. So long as someone isn't derailing, scolding, criticizing or fault-finding our every move. Having said that, there are people who help in healthy ways, such as YouTube's Dr. Ramani, Jerry Wise, Danish Bashir, Patrick Teahan, Dr. Les Carter and Kris Reece. These folks help by holding space, encouraging, informing in non-directive respectful ways. 

Childhood trauma survivors need good judgement, not judgementalism. And the wise judgement comes from within, from following personal truth, inner wisdom and common sense. It comes from  listening to rational, reasonable, well-intentioned speakers, not the self-driven, selfish motives of blind guides.  We don't need judges, juries, hecklers, trolls, etc. And don't worry, you'll know the difference by the love you feel in the one and the harm from the other. 

Childhood trauma survivors need friends, not flying monkeys. If all you're going to do is defend my narcissistically abusive parents, then hit the road. All I ever heard from anyone was support of them. I've heard enough scolding about what I owe them, their my parents, yada yada to last a lifetime. You wanna support them, be my guest. But don't say I didn't warn you. It will come back to bite you and they will bite the hand that feeds them. I know from experience supporting, excusing, exonerating, expunging, exempting them. It only makes things worse. 

Childhood trauma survivors do not need your toxic gaslighting. And we are not going to take it anymore. If you come at me with your "brutally honest" "you won't like this but you need to hear it" "it's for your own good" bullshit, watch out. If you come to start trouble, be prepared to finish it. Because the good girl is done trauma responding, fawning and letting you drip poison in her ear. That's what I have narcissistic parents for. 

In short, we don't expect anything of you, other than to just sit with us and hold space. If that's uncomfortable, I'd appreciate you just telling me honestly. I can understand it's difficult. We can part company and I won't  hold it against you. But then, you don't get to come back and start telling me what to do. No more two sets of rules for me. You don't have to fix me. In fact, I'd rather you didn't try. It's counter-intuitive and frankly humiliating to me. You don't have that power. Just work on being the best version of you, you can be and leave the fixing of me, to me. 

Healing childhood trauma by showing off and breaking rules

Hello my friends. Today on the road to healing childhood trauma or just working on recovery from CPTSD, I'm going to share how I'm working my program by making noise, getting loud, showing off and breaking rules. I'm talking back to toxic narcissistic parent abuse. 

So I know, it's currently trendy to talk about making noise instead of keeping silent. To be the brave, woke rule breaker instead of rule follower. Even people who have been breaking rules of common decency all their lives, talk as if they're breaking free from some mythical chains they were never held to. Chains they actually bound other people to. It's kind of pathetic, this "I'm done, I'm not gonna take their shit" crusade from people who've done nothing but deal shit. 

But hear me when I say, breaking free from childhood trauma is NOTHING like this. There is no enslaved, dominated, silenced person like a child victim of narcissistic parent abuse. There's no framework and no one understands unless they've been through it or are incredibly empathetic. Or just good listeners. Childhood trauma survivors  need space and acceptance, not more manufactured shame. We're not stupid, we're injured. 

But all too often, those who would help us, the "blind guides" as I've been calling them, aren't interested in actually assisting. They just  want to keep us in toxic shame and FOG (fear, obligation and guilt), to  keep us quiet and biddable and playing our role. I don't recall if it was YouTube psychologist Dr. Ramani or Jerry Wise who made the point that it works for EVERYONE when we go along with narcissistic abuse. When we keep peace at our own expense, when we placate and soothe and humor narcissists, it makes everyone's life easier. Now they don't have to deal with the arrogant narcissist when they have us to do it. 

Everyone can just go on pretending everything is happy in the garden because for them it is. THEY aren't suffering the narcissistic abuse. They can minimize, gaslight us, dismiss and shame because they aren't in his path. We are keeping him regulated with steady doses of narcissistic supply. You're welcome. 

But you know what? I'm sick of  buffering the suffering. I'm sick to death of being the human kickball. And I'm disgusted that all the younger versions of me had to do that. So it's time I spoke up and out for us all. And if it means getting loud and making people uncomfortable, so be it. It's about damn time I did. Healing childhood trauma means doing the very things malignant  narcissistic parents said was wrong. Like telling their dirty secrets and saying what happened. And blocking them and going no contact with abusers. 

All my life, I let them subjugate me with threats, coercive control and gaslighting nonsense. I lived in fear of being an attention seeking show off. When my four narcissistic parents were outrageous attention seeking show offs. I've shared in other posts ludicrous things they did and how they got narcissistic supply from their bombastic behavior. 

So now it's time for me to rewrite those rules according to my own healthy God-given common sense. I'm not showing off in the way they did. What I  have to say may make people uncomfortable but not because it's awkward and creepy like my parents. It's uncomfortable because people have been used to being comfortably numbed to childhood trauma. They like the status quo and I'm shaking that up. 

I'm breaking rules that  keep children silent about trauma. I'm setting a precedent for calling out narcissistic parent abuse BEFORE the child gets too old and set in their trauma. While they are young enough to find and live a life free from this horrific narcissistic parent abuse. I am calling abuse, neglect, parentification, exploitation, scapegoating, gaslighting, triangulation, manipulation, child endangerment, abandonment, WHAT THEY ARE! 

I'm showing off and telling off what I experienced and how it damaged me. I'm telling secrets that I should never have been made to keep. I'm rethinking "disobedience" to narcissistic parents as obedience to God. And "disloyalty" to sick family practices as loyalty to myself. And "disrespect" to disrespectful people who have not earned my respect as self-respect. I'm shunning the notion they indoctrinated in me that self-care, self-protection are selfish. I'm denouncing that as weaponized, willful child abuse. 

No longer am I letting bat guano crazy narcissistic parents define and dictate terms. And this is no easy task. When you've lived 61 years in their crazy-making narcissistic fantasy world, it's devilishly difficult to see clearly. I have decades of lies and gaslighting cemented in my brain, so that digging through all that to the real, is like excavating the ruins of Pompeii. So where do I begin? 

Well, if all they did and said was arrogant, self-centered, double standard, hypocritical, agenda based manipulation, I start by denouncing all of it. No more do I believe that it was right for me because they said it was. I'm trying a new model--everything they said was wrong, backwards, twisted, exploitative. But what if some of it was right? Am I throwing the baby out with the bath water? Yep, and the bath tub, bath mat and shampoo, too. 

I guess what I'm doing is cleansing my memories, sanitizing the toxicity, and uprooting the family dynamics to create healthier ones. I've already begun long ago, before I even recognized the dysfunction, to do my family in a better way. Not perfect. Better. To provide a place for children to be safe, happy, cherished, nurtured. To affirm their voice, self, needs, wants, opinions, experiences, not to gaslight, steal and thwart them as I was. 

How I lost 100 pounds by working my CPTSD recovery program

 

Hello my friends. I've been sharing how I lost 100 pounds, for the last 12 years or so. Only recently, I realized that I needed to work on healing CPTSD from narcissistic parent abuse. And then I began connecting the dots between weight gain, obesity, childhood trauma recovery and weight loss. Here's what I found. 

It might seem like a stretch to say that obesity is linked to childhood trauma but consider this. Traumatized kids who are subjected to narcissistic parent abuse are exhausted. Our resources are zapped. We lived with endless selfish demands from our narcissistic parents. Our identities stolen. Nothing is easy or comfortable. Nothing is like it is for most normal kids. Life is dangerous and filled with anxiety. We don't possess selves, feelings, needs, wants, opinions, interests, normal things. We have been gaslit that we exist only to serve. 

We are neglected, bullied, exploited, abandoned, endangered, parentified, terrorized, shocked, humiliated, invalidated, scapegoated and gaslit on the daily. This is boggling for children who are supposed to be able to expect care and nurturing from their parents but only get shite and shoved in it. Everything we do is twice as hard, takes twice as long with half or none of the resources. We build proverbial bricks without straw. 

Where parents are usually the ones exhausted from caring for resources, we are burned out from caring for them. We are expected to be grownups in children's bodies by grown adults who conversely and unfairly scold and harass us over the smallest of normal child behaviors. We have all the work of adulthood and none of the perks. 

And we were taught that self-care was selfish. So we don't care for ourselves because we don't know how. We survive at best and mostly just limp along getting sicker and more run down. We don't get medical treatment because they didn't care for our medical needs and taught us we didn't deserve it. We don't eat right because they didn't feed us right. They withheld, deprived and cut us short so they could have too much. We gave, they took. 

I have gone hungry so often in my life. I ate the cheapest and lived off scraps. I learned to ignore hunger till I fainted. I deprived myself because I thought I couldn't afford it because they had stolen so much from me that I didn't have enough to live on. My narcissist mother will now play this little attention-seeking game by telling people "sometimes we (her and her family) don't get enough to eat." 

My aunt called me to ask if this was true. And I told her it wasn't. But I didn't tell her that it WAS true of a lot of my childhood. I went without so they could have. And yet she denies any of it. Same with my dad. He made sure everyone but me had everything they wanted and more. So I grew up not really understanding my own needs. 

I was hungry all the time. Tired all the time. I fell asleep everywhere. I was sick a lot. I lost too much weight because I didn't eat enough. It wasn't an anorexia kind of starving myself. It was a deprivation mode thing. I gained too much weight when I went on an antidepressant that took out my limit switches. I couldn't feel anything, joy, sorrow, nothing. I had random uncontrollable rage that seemed to come from nowhere. 

So part of how I lost 100 pounds was by learning to feel in healthy ways. I'm learning to need, to be okay with it, to ask for things and expect to get them. Or to get them for myself. I'm learning to shed the accumulated shame of decades of narcissistic parent abuse. I'm learning that to care for myself is crucial. I'm learning to shut out the gaslighting voices by going no contact with the remaining gaslighting family. 

It's not how I would have wanted things but it's what I got. Now I have to do what I can to heal myself f from the toxic influences. 

How I lost 100 pounds by reading red flags toxic narcissists and blind guides wave

Hello my friends. I've been sharing how I lost 100 pounds in surprising ways. As I look back, a lot of  how I lost 100 pounds had to do with addressing childhood trauma responses, toxic shaming and narcissist parent abuse and gaslighting. Healing CPTSD from narcissist parent abuse was a big part of how I lost 100 pounds. Today I'm sharing how I lost 100 pounds by reading the red flags toxic narcissists and blind guides were waving. 

So toxic people do not mean to wave red flags. They want you to fall into their abuse without seeing it as abuse until it's too late. Their red flags are inadvertent warning signs you can read in what they say and do. Such as learning which snakes are poisonous by their markings.  What I'm sharing are the dangerous signals narcissists and blind guides give off, that already traumatized people miss. 

First a note on blind guides. These are people who pose as  helpers who, by their ignorant arrogance, make our suffering so much worse with their gaslighting, toxic shaming and bullying. And they act and talk remarkably like our narcissist parents, thereby perpetuating our trauma. Here are some of their behaviors, mannerisms and sayings to avoid.

Self-important liars, cheats, cons, rumormongers, backstabbers, gossips, pot stirrers. Proverbs 6:16 spells it out. Things God hates: A proud look (narcissistic smirk), a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked imaginations (schemes), feet that be swift in running to mischief (troublemakers) a false witness that speaks lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren. 

Arrogant Christian hypocrisy.  So that is a contradiction in terms and a major red flag, to start with. Christians are called to be humble doers of the word, not haughty preachers of it. So anyone who talks the talk without walking it, should be ignored. How do you spot Christian hypocrites? By listening to how they tell others what to do without doing it. Watch out for double standards and arrogant, ignorant posturing. 

Sweet vs. Kind. You know, I'm not a fan of plain sugar. It hurts my teeth and makes me feel a little sick. And that's how you know a narcissist/ blind guide. They feign sugary sweetness but their words are bitter, harsh, metallic, toxic. There is no love, just judgmental self-righteousness. And once you look past the gaslighting nonsense, you see that they're not even sweet. They aren't peacemakers, they are passive-aggressive. They aren't real, but disingenuous. They aren't smiling, they're simpering, smirking and sneering. They don't reach out, they push down. 

Dodgy motives. Once you start seeing the fake, you start questioning the motives and you find they are really dubious. They aren't trying to help. They curry favor, ingratiate, bully, mock, belittle, malign, character assassinate, plant seeds of doubt against you, set you up, shame, ambush. They get their kicks off humiliating you. They don't speak truth, but a warped fictional, opinionated, agenda-based deception. They twist, manipulate, exploit, distort and invalidate. 

Bizarre, disturbing toxic comments. Funny how the people who proclaim to help you, often make such undermining, devaluing, invalidating comments. And when coupled with hypocrisy, smirking, self-adulation, twisted motives and unkind, fake sweetness, it's a Molotov cocktail. You know the toxicity by the way their comments leave you feeling destabilized. Because they aren't building up, they are undermining you. They INTEND to destabilize you. 

Questioning and second-guessing. Not themselves, in humility. No, toxic blind guides question you and gaslight you into questioning yourself. They poke holes in your common sense. They sabotage your defenses and self-care skills. They second-guess your motives. None of this they have the slightest authority or ability to do. They speak from ignorant arrogance, not wisdom. They pervert, subvert and distort. 

Speak for God. This is at the crux of their wickedness. They will tell you that they know God's will and their toxic shaming is God's will for you. They say it's for your own good. It's NOT it's their will and they speak from self-serving ends. They claim to speak for God but their pride shows they speak from evil. Anyone who would proclaim to know the mind of God and speak for  him is a liar and poser. They aren't speaking God's word they are setting themselves up as God. And that is the one unpardonable sin, unrepented pride. 

So how is the part of how I lost 100 pounds. Shame, deceit and chaos cause dysregulation, anxiety, trauma responding, stress and depletion. My body pooled resources to protect me. Unfortunately, it couldn't provide emotional resources or self-care skills. It could only store fat. I had to learn and practice self-care skills to heal from CPTSD and obesity from this. 

I did this by feeling and acknowledging the hurt of their comments. I began to question the blind guides and narcissists in my life, instead of myself. I stopped listening to their sick, perverted gaslighting, selfish lies and began hearing my truth. The truth.