If you’ve had a relationship with a narcissistic person, your recovery often goes something like this:
✅ Heaps of research (I know how those late night Dr Ramani binges go).
✅ Reading and listening to every survivor story you can find.
✅ Identifying the red flags you missed.
✅ Learning the words that help define your experience.
✅ Months of picking apart what was real or fake…to finally realise the kind of demon you were in a relationship with!
Once you’ve seen your experience enough times in the words you’ve read. (And you’ve stopped yourself from vomiting a few times from the shear shock of learning about narcissistic abuse).
Then you might just realise this isn’t a “normal” breakup you can handle alone – you need professional backup. And if you’re lucky enough to afford it, talk therapy tends to be the natural next step.
But what if you invest a tidy sum in it and still feel stuck after therapy? Does that mean you’re helpless?
No, of course not!
But I can definitely see why you’d think that – I did too.
So let me be clear that there’s nothing wrong with you; you’ve given your mind all the right info. It’s just that your brain also needs physical proof to realise your reality that you’re better off without him.
Why your ‘PhD in narcissism’ hasn’t stopped the pain
I don’t know a single survivor who hasn’t researched narcissistic abuse to death after their breakup. I’m talking PhD levels of knowledge. (I even ended up getting a certification in it)! So the research phase is a very normal part of trying to wrap your head around what happened.
Because when you can’t get the answers from your ex, you have to search for them yourself. You need to understand how a person can both love you and chuck you away like you never existed.
That’s not something anyone can accept lightly – your brain needs to try to make sense of that relationship first.
So when you’re full to the brim with narc knowhow, therapy then helps you to gain insight and awareness of what kept you in that relationship. So you can understand where you’re at and have your experiences validated.
But what cognitive therapy often misses is the body piece – changing how your body responds to the memories you discuss.
If you want to learn more about the difference between somatic coaching and therapy. And which option is right for you when healing from narcissistic abuse, click here to read my full guide.
Why your physical state matters
This is vital because of how memory really works. You see, your brain doesn’t just store and retrieve memories; it reconstructs them.
For example, when you remember being gaslighted, your brain uses fragments of the past—bits of conversation, a specific t-shirt, and physical sensations—to simulate a new experience in the present.
It’s a ‘remembered present’ built to help your brain predict how to act in the moment [Gerald M. Edelman].
So when you recall a painful memory, while your body is still tense and your breath is held, your brain uses those body signals as evidence that its guess of danger is correct.
Because your brain is a prediction machine, it may actually ignore the safety of, say your therapist’s couch. And “correct” your reality to match your physical distress instead. It interprets sensations, like a fast heart rate, as proof that the past threat is still active in the present moment.
So your physical state convinces your brain of your reality. And without managing that first, you’re trying to convince your mind of safety while your internal sensations say otherwise.
So to truly move from stuck to free, you need to give your brain new sensory data, like dropped shoulders and a regulated breath. That way when it reconstructs those memories, it can finally begin to assemble them from a place of calm.
What keeps you stuck after narcissistic abuse
After difficult experiences, your brain becomes heavily invested in the prediction of a threat that it stays in a high-alert physical state.
So even though you logically know you’re away from your ex, your body’s signals—like tense shoulders or gritted teeth—keep signalling you’re not actually okay.
Your brain gets so obsessed with its old danger prediction that it disregards the quiet signals of safety around you.
But it’s not that you can’t recognise you’re okay. And rather it’s that your brain is simulating the threat so realistically that safety doesn’t even get a look in.
Your body remains ready for action because your brain is still planning your defence against your ex – who is history now.
Why you feel so drained
This is also why you probably feel completely wiped out most of the time. The best way to explain this is to think of your body like a bank account. And every time your brain predicts a threat, it makes a withdrawal to prepare your muscles to fight or run.
Because your brain is stuck in that old danger loop, it’s making multiple withdrawals all day long – even while you’re just sitting on the sofa. So if your daily budget was £100, and each threat costs you £20 – that money’s going to go down pretty fast.
So if you only feel up to lounging around the house and scrolling your phone, it’s not a case of you being lazy. And rather that you’re biologically over-drawn.
You’re stuck because your brain is spending all your energy on protecting you just in case. And now it needs to reduce its spending and save what it has left. Which is why you might feel exhausted, or like you have nothing left to give to your actual life.
So to get back up to a healthy bank balance, you just need to make more deposits. Like sleep, nourishing food, supportive friends and hugs!
You have to show the bank manager (your brain) that you’re no longer with your ex and that’s a good thing. That way your brain stops spending your energy like you’re still with him.
The constant dread
You might also find yourself trapped in a loop of thinking about the relationship over and over. Like what lead to his final disappearing act, or how does the perfect man suddenly flip and become cold.
And this rumination is like a physical habit your brain is building [Lisa Feldman Barrett]. And every time you dwell on a painful memory, you’re further engraining the pattern. Because the more you do it, the easier you make it for your brain to keep thinking the same thoughts.
Like driving home from work: you’ve done the route so many times that you’re on autopilot. You don’t even notice the little details as you drive past them.
So your brain is basically over-predicting danger and under-correcting the safety of the present moment. This is why you feel that heavy dread and like you’re frozen in time. You’re investing your body’s energy into keeping those painful memories alive.
So to break the cycle, we have to start intercepting your brain’s patterns…
What can get you unstuck – giving your brain a ‘correction’.
To stop feeling stuck you have to provide your brain with what neuroscientists call a “prediction error”. Which is basically where your brain expects one thing to happen, but you force it to experience something else.
For example, if you’re ruminating on whether your ex meant to hurt you, your brain predicts you’re in an ugly situation. And so it prepares your body to defend against that. But if you intervene and intentionally calm your body down—by slowing your breath and noticing your shoulders drop while you exhale—you create a mismatch.
Your brain expects shallow, fast breaths. But it feels slow and controlled breaths instead. That error forces your brain to stop and take notice. It realises its old danger prediction was wrong for this moment, and it starts to update your internal map to a calmer one.
How somatic coaching helps with this
This is exactly what we do in somatic coaching. We work together to explore the parts that need updating and feed your brain new felt experiences.
You might notice details like your fists clench and you hold your breath every time you think about your ex reaching out. So in our sessions, we practice tracking what your body’s doing in real time and how to change those sensations.
By doing this, we’re physically proving to your brain that you’re better off without that fucker! We’re essentially teaching your brain a new, calmer response for those moments. So dread doesn’t have to be your default setting anymore, and freedom can step in.
Obviously this is not a one and done type process. Repetition is how you rewire your brain. And your brain might even test you down the line to see if the old danger prediction is still useful.
These are opportunities for you to remember to repeat what you’ve learned. Pause, notice and sense what the body is doing in that moment. And make sure you’re giving your brain calmer signals for it to interpret.
A holistic approach to healing
I’m not saying don’t do talk therapy. It’s incredibly important to have a cognitive understanding of your situation and to have your story validated.
But if you’re still feeling stuck after having it, it’s often because your healing needs a multifaceted approach. While therapy works on your thoughts, somatic coaching works on the physical ingredients your brain uses to make those thoughts in the first place.
We can’t change your past experiences and we can’t always control the outside world. But we can change your internal world by updating the signals your body is sending to your brain.
Each time you use a somatic technique to intervene, you’re handing your brain a new set of data. You’re giving it physical evidence that contradicts the threat.
You have more control than you think
What I love about this theory is it makes you realise how much power we all have to change our circumstances. We don’t have to accept feeling stuck and we can take an active role in changing that.
If you want support getting there—from a certified somatic trauma informed coach who has walked this path, coached survivors just like you, and understands exactly how to help you find your sense of safety again—I’m here to help.
References:
How Emotions are Made, by Lisa Feldman Barrett
Interoception | Cultivating Your Emotions with Lisa Feldman Barrett