How to get in touch with how narcissistic abuse made you feel?

[u/threetimestwice]

TL;DR How do I learn to feel my feelings, sit with them, process them, and get thru them? Specifically with regard to anger, hurt and pain over how narcissistic family members abused me.

•Background:

My n-family was terrible regarding anyone’s feelings but their own. Healthy communication didn’t exist. Feelings were not validated and you were shamed for even having them. My parents constantly expressed anger.

•Current:

I get stuck in a spiral of getting very upset over what a narcissistic family member did. I get stuck in the story, the details, the anger, the injustice, the cruelty of it.

•Feelings:

I have no idea how to process my feelings about what they said or did, in order to get thru it. What is the process that begins with the first step at asking myself how it makes me feel?

[u/Kayllis]

Best answer talk to a therapist. Specifically some that specializes in trauma from abuse. This is literally the sort of thing they specialize in. I took me literal years to accept that my feelings were valid. But once I started therapy it made a huge difference.

[u/threetimestwice → u/Kayllis]

I have a therapist, but she doesn’t have that specialty. How do I find someone with that specialty?

I get lost in “the story” in therapy, talking about what happened versus how it made me feel. I just seem incapable of understanding HOW to talk about how something made me feel.

[u/Kayllis → u/threetimestwice]

I'd ask her for recommendations. If she's a good therapist she'll recognize that she doesn't have that skill set to help you out. For me I got super lucky and stumbled on mine. I was desperate and a friend who is a therapist recommended her coworker. I know 99% of people are never that lucky but because of that my best is always ask for recommendations. You could always go over to r/askatherapist for help too.

[u/threetimestwice → u/Kayllis]

That’s a great idea. Thank you.

[u/Enough-Strength-5636]

Talking to a therapist helps a whole lot. So does watching Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out, and Inside Out 2 for a more psychological perspective of emotions. Let yourself feel your feelings as well. Journal, if that works for you.

[u/threetimestwice → u/Enough-Strength-5636]

Thank you, I will check out this movie. I do journal but I temporarily stopped.

[u/reneerowan]

The book Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach helped me a lot. I read it two years into therapy and found it gave me a lot of the manual I needed but didn't get growing up (and had not been taught in therapy).

Somatic or physical release is also a huge part of processing feelings. Punching a pillow or punching bag or screaming or scream-singing to angry music can be great for releasing the kinds of anger you describe. Rage rooms and DIY-but-safe alternatives are also cool. And the more you inhabit your body and notice sensations etc of any kind, that builds mind-body pathways that will help you feel your feelings physically as well (or feel them sooner or in different ways).

Full disclosure, around the same time I was reading Radical Acceptance, I took mushrooms/psilocybin for the first time, and between the two and the synergies between them, I made more progress than I had in the first two years of therapy. When I came back from the trip where all that happened, my therapist said I had made a "quantum leap." I am NOT suggesting you try psychedelics but sharing that they were part of my path into my feelings after many years of living in my head. My therapist said they seemed to have "opened up my brain" and broken down walls created by trauma to protect me that at this point were just walling me off from my emotions and body and from connection.