Picture a child who is just being a child…they have big emotions, they’re learning to experience the world, and sure, they make mistakes. Rather than sitting with children through their meltdowns or teaching them to regulate their emotions, the parent punishes them for them. Maybe they spank the child or issue threats like “I’ll give you something to cry about”. Maybe they ignore the child to discourage the emotional response. Eventually, the child learns which emotions are acceptable and which ones aren’t. They eventually repress all “unacceptable” emotions either out of fear of punishment or internalization that those emotions aren’t acceptable. Imagine if the parent also dismisses the child when they express their needs or the parent ignores or doesn’t respond to the child when they try to get attention for something they’re interested in. Imagine if the parent is constantly absent from both meeting the child’s needs while shutting down all emotions that are considered “unacceptable”. The child will eventually internalize that their needs don’t matter, and they’ll carry that belief into adulthood.
Imagine, too, if this child was enmeshed or if the parent engaged emotional incest. Enmeshment is when a child’s performance and existence is an ego mirror for the parent’s or the entire family unit. The child learns that to get love and approval, they have to perform or “be” a certain way. Whatever mom and dad want gets their basic emotional needs met. This is transactional conditional love, and it is extremely unhealthy. The child learns to perform and to play a role, to mask, in order to get the approval that they need while their own needs, which they likely are decreasingly aware of, go unmet.
When these unhealed children become adults, they want their needs met. They want love, safety, acceptance, approval, and forgiveness, even though they cannot offer any of these things to themselves because they absolutely did not get those needs met in childhood.
If there was a constant expectation to perform and to succeed and achieve, the child will likely have internalized perfectionism. This can also lead to the contradictory and disregulated internal state of imposter syndrome. Because the child has internalized so much toxic shame, they will constantly talk down to themselves in a negative thought loop—I’m not good enough, I suck, I’m a bad person, etc.
That’s what toxic shame is. Because internalization wasn’t taught or even allowed in early childhood, that adult constantly looks for external validation—career, money, power, relationships, etc. But because external sources of validation only provide a fleeting amount of dopamine, they are constantly seeking, and nothing is ever enough. They need more approval, more wealth, more power, more affection, always, always, always more. This is what leads to addiction in terms of dopamine-fueling activities like porn, shopping, substance abuse, social media, gaming, etc.
Most people who suffer from this kind of emotional abuse also dissociate whether they realize it or not. Because they can’t look at their behavior and because they already harbor negative internalized states, they bury the shame of their lack of self control in much the same way they learned to suppress their emotions as children.
This is truly where narcissism comes from. It’s not because these are “bad people”, which is why so many people even when they engage in narcissistic behavior see themselves as “good” people, it’s because they cannot see themselves in a clear and honest way. Denial occurs because the toxic shame internalized in childhood acts as a buffer because the sheer pain of realizing that their parents’ love was conditional and transactional is excruciating to bear. A total ego death is required to truly look at it. There is also a lot of anger trapped in there as well.
I’ve written before, too, how our patriarchal society indoctrinates children into misogyny, which is why we have such a separation among genders, where women are blamed for everything and men—especially manosphere men—are so quick to shame other men for “feminine” emotions. (Spoiler: there’s no such thing as “feminine” emotions—they’re just emotions. Emotions are energy in motion, and the more you self-abandon, the more you exacerbate your suffering because everything including manosphere men actually do have a desire to connect in a healthy and meaningful way even if they can’t acknowledge it. They’re just wounded children crying and acting out because they are too afraid to confront that deeply wounded inner child.)
The reality is that you cannot reason with these people. You cannot force them to take accountability. You cannot force them to engage rational and adult thought patterns because they don’t exist because they’re still stuck. They’re children trapped in adult bodies. That’s the reality.
I am fully aware of this because I lived through it. I realize now that part of the resurgence of my anxiety attacks was toxic shame that I hadn’t dealt with invading my senses. It was incredibly weird to experience because I definitely felt it in 2019 after Sean died. Part of it was C-PTSD (and yes, repeated childhood trauma as described above can cause C-PTSD, which is basically where you constantly anticipate the shitty things that happened to you happening again—you constantly anticipate things like abandonment or invalidation or rejection or criticism, etc, and because you anticipate them, you unconsciously create circumstances for them to be recreated. I’ve said this before, but I mean it—I believe so many more people than we realize are walking around with very real C-PTSD).
I had to reparent my 36-year-old self who felt the abandonment and lack of understanding or acceptance because I wasn’t capitulating to receive conditional love or support. I have deal with enough coercive controllers to last a lifetime, thanks much. And this has meant changing relationships and learning to set boundaries, which people who are still trapped in their traumatized childhood versions of themselves cannot tolerate because think about it—you cannot (nor should you) set boundaries with a three-year-old. Shutting them out is incredibly traumatic for them. You’re their emotional regulation system at that age, but you are not for an adult who is still stuck at that age.
I didn’t start healing my own childhood wounds until I was in my thirties, and truly, not in earnest until after Sean died when the relationship I was in exposed them by forcing them to come back up and also helping me see their points of origin. I know there are a lot of adults who have gone “no contact” with their parents, but I understand how my own parents’ upbringings created their wounds, which were passed on to us. Not consciously. My parents did the best they could, however, as an adult, I don’t have to keep playing out my childhood roles. I refuse to. I am the adult now, and this is how we break generational trauma patterns. We acknowledge them, and we heal.
I remember being 35 when a long-time friend of mine had come over to the house to talk about his new girlfriend with whom he was smitten. I’d recently published something on Twitter, and someone had posted that they loved it and invited me to submit to a journal. I immediately felt the flush of what I now know is toxic shame and panicked. I didn’t respond.
Later I was like, “Amy, what the hell is wrong with you? This is what you want to do?” Why was I self-sabotaging? I Googled, and according to Google, I had low self-esteem. Wait, what? I thought I thought pretty highly of myself. I knew I was smart…I’d proven that by thriving in college. I always got good feedback, and I was well-respected in my field. I was always high-achieving, so really? I was extremely self-critical, though. I was always judging my body negatively, and I was always afraid of making a mistake. I was terrified of being called out if I messed up even though I could take feedback, and I’ve always wanted the truth. That harsh inner critic was a mindset that I would eventually change (affirmations might sound stupid, but they really do work).
Anyway, my friend was at the house, and sitting across the table from him while Sean made drinks in the kitchen, I said, “Oh my gosh—I just found out I have low self-esteem!”
My friend said, “Yeah, I know.”
I slapped my hands on the table and laughed, “Why didn’t you tell me?” Could’ve saved me a Google search. Of course, I realize that it’s not common for people to walk up to others and be like, “Hey, did you know you have low self-esteem?” Obviously, we don’t do that, so I didn’t fault him for that. My shit, my problem.
Instead, I did what I always do when I have a problem—I find an audiobook to help. The one I selected gave advice on boosting self-esteem. Trying new things. Doing things you love or that scare you. Build trust with yourself. If you say you’re going to do something, if you tell yourself you’re going to do something, then you must do it. Take baby steps. It really does work. You have to treat yourself with kindness and compassion. That means changing the way you talk to yourself.
I like to use the “best friend” method. That means that I am only allowed to talk to myself the way I would a friend. That means no more self-flagellation when I “mess up”. Instead, I acknowledge and accept my missteps, and I course correct.
Reparenting the other parts would come later. I would use an internal family systems method of self-guided meditation to “talk to” those childhood parts of me that needed to be reparented. I worked through disordered eating, abandonment issues, insecurity, codependency, attachment wounds, and a slew of other issues that were—as I put it “holding me back”.
I wouldn’t change my internal dialogue—change my mind—and the way I talked to myself until I was in my late 30s, but it really did work. When I finally started speaking kindly to myself and treating myself with the compassion I deserved, it felt like the sun was coming out. That helped me push past the swell of toxic shame that was constantlybeing triggered by my former partner at the time (not my husband, the one I call Lucifer), and it helped me look at my trauma responses—mostly, drinking to avoid the painful emotions that came up.
Once I was able to bypass my ego’s need to protect the traumatized parts, the work moved quickly. I was able to do even more work and with greater rapidity after Lucifer was safely back with the people who created him. It is incredibly hard to heal when you’re with someone who is constantly feeding off your energy. As I said—people who have unhealed wounds, who engage narcissistic behavior, are constantly seeking validation externally. They cannot ever have enough, which means if you’re in a relationship with one, they will constantly be demanding your time and attention for supply.
What’s more, when a person like that senses you pulling away, they react like a child. They will do whatever it takes to get your attention back on them, even if it means starting fights and creating conflict. They want your attention regardless of whether it’s good or bad. That’s why young children who aren’t getting the attention they want will act out. It’s not because they’re bad kids—it’s because they’re little undeveloped people who need attention, but they don’t know how to ask for it. People who behave narcissistically do the same thing. They can’t articulate their needs or feelings in a clear way, so they act out.
That’s why you have people who do things they know are wrong, such as cheating, but they still do it. They need the supply. I’ll add to that—this is where the patriarchal conditioning gets really toxic. If the person has narcissistic tendencies or is a diagnosed narcissist (again, though, I don’t think it’s healthy to pathologize that) and they are entitled and believe women are inferior, then they will also believe it is their right to get supply in that manner. Usually these are the people who love-bomb and get you to become emotionally attached before the mask comes off.
They are often also emotionally avoidant, which is very common with C-PTSD because these wounded inner children learned early on that the individuals who were supposed to provide safety and protection were also the ones who inflicted the most pain and suffering either through emotional abuse, punishment, or a dysfunctional environment (such as one where you had to walk on eggshells to “keep the peace”).
During the love-bombing phase, the avoidant is getting all of the supply they need and want from you, which is why, for example, Lucifer described the beginning of our relationship as the “best time”. He felt that way because it was all about him—just as a child’s world is all about them. Meanwhile, I was traumatized and was suicidal because it wasn’t that long after my husband had died that we started seeing each other. Which, I will admit was a huge mistake. I was “bargaining” and trying to avoid the discomfort of total aloneness and the myriad unhealed childhood wounds that were painfully being triggered with a distraction. Hello, trauma bond.
But once the person gets you hooked, they start to back away. You will never see that version of them again. Instead, they will keep you attached through intermittent reinforcement. Just enough kindness or love and attention to keep you coming back or keep you trapped because even though they cannot do intimacy because of those unhealed inner child wounds, they still need your supply. That starved and traumatized child still needs your attention and affection.
The only way to heal is to heal yourself. You can’t heal them. You just can’t. You also can’t fully heal while you’re constantly being retriggered. You have to sit with the discomfort. I avoided it for a long time because I didn’t even know how to go inward. But I engaged the work because I was determined to get better because my daughters deserved better. I was going to figure it out.
I went to therapy. In the summer of 2020 right before the one-year anniversary of Sean’s passing, I did EMDR therapy with my CBT therapist, and it helped immensely. I wish I had been able to do more work with her and do more EMDR, but what I did was enough.
I journaled. I self reflected. I held myself accountable. Learning to hold yourself accountable is also extremely important when you’re healing from deep-seated childhood wounds. You have to be able to look at yourself honestly and to do so with compassion. Lucifer, who could not take a modicum of accountability, was always projecting onto me that every conflict we had was my fault. Nothing was ever his fault. I “made him” do the hurtful and mean-spirited things he did. No, I didn’t.
But I recognized that I needed to be accountable for my actions, so in my journals, I asked what my role was in the conflict when it arose. I also asked how I could handle it better when situations came up. I kept working on the only thing I could control—me.
I also went to therapy and read widely. I read about ADHD, parenting, emotionally immature parents, emotional incest with parents, psychology, spirituality, self-help, addiction, and so many other things. Healing and not feeling constant fear and anxiety was my mission.
It took a couple of years before I was really able to sit still with discomfort. That means sitting still and not looking for a distraction—phone, friend, shopping, drink, whatever, to avoid what was coming up. I sat with the heat of unaddressed shame and got curious about what was causing it.
I had to practice meditation over and over. I set multiple alarms on my phone, so I could pause what I was doing and go sit in stillness and try to quiet my mind. It took a long time. Guided meditations helped. I eventually learned how to “put my thoughts down” and just sit in pure still quiet, allowing whatever came up to pass by, and also allowing distractions without judgment. Meditation is and always will be a practice, which is why it’s important to do it regularly. It really does help clear the landscape.
By doing this habitually, I created space within myself. I created space that enabled me to feel my body again. I could feel into the parts of me that hurt when say, thoughts and feelings of abandonment emerged. I’d later learn to ask that part—if it was willing to talk to me, “How old are you?” And then I let whatever story came up be what I worked with.
For example, with my abandonment origin story, I was left at daycare for about a week. I didn’t take to it. According to my mom, I went totally catatonic and wouldn’t eat. She eventually pulled me out of daycare and left me with my grandmother. In reparenting, I went and picked the baby up myself. I later did another meditation where I visualized holding the baby (me) and then deciding that I wasn’t going to take her in at all. Instead I told her that I would protect her.
Because that’s the reality—we are born to parents. Parents are assignments. They’re meant to show us the things our souls need to heal to live a fully actualized life. Whatever ways they hurt us are ways that we are meant to rise up to protect ourselves. Because the reality is that you are the adult who has to rescue that trapped and hurt inner child.
We have many parts and many wounds from many different times in our lives. Through methods like somatic healing—breath work, sound therapy, movement (yoga), meditation, etc. we can integrate fully into ourselves and heal our wounded parts.
Narcissism is not a permanent condition. It’s just the symptoms of a wounded and traumatized and often neglected and abandoned and possibly unloved inner child. It is not you. It is also not your parents’ fault. You can bypass a lot of anger by recognizing that and by witnessing—especially if you’re a parent—your own mistakes and realizing that you love your children deeply, but yes, your unhealed parts may cause unintentional harm. That’s why accountability with self is important, and it’s why taking accountability with others who say that your behavior was hurtful is important. You have to take action to show that you mean it, though, when you apologize, and you have to be willing to listen without self-blame or self-shame when people say that your behavior hurt them. I’ve done that with friends over the years because I am so not perfect.
What I’ve learned from all of this is that when we do heal, we enter a vibrational state of unconditional love, understanding, acceptance, compassion, and forgiveness. When you can offer those things to yourself as well as to the people who hurt you, you can truly heal. But you have to overcome the ego to be able to do it. It’s so easy to stay stuck in a place of anger and resentment—they hurt me, and to feel entitled to bad or hurtful behaviors such as addiction or infidelity or abandonment or avoidance, but all you’re really doing is hurting yourself and what’s more—fulfilling the prophecy of negative limiting beliefs.
It’s so worth it to do the work and to save yourself. And as for the people who refuse to do the work, who choose not to heal, who want to use you for supply, who keep hurting you—send good vibes their way, but also set boundaries with them. If you can get away from them entirely—good. Do it. They’re not you. They are not the one you’re supposed to rescue. Pray they do that for themselves, but at the end of the day, the onlyperson you can save is yourself, and trust me when I say you are worth rescuing. I hope if you haven’t done the work, if you see yourself in this, that you learn to become compassionate and accepting enough of yourself to do it. Become the love you hope to attract, and you will find it. I have total faith in that.
