Why Am I Not Getting Better? The Hidden CPTSD Symptoms That Can Stall Your Healing

You've done the work. Read the books. Tried the strategies. So why aren't you healing? 

This week, survivor and educator Ellen Tift reveals the hidden CPTSD symptoms quietly keeping you stuck—and why naming them might be the most powerful thing you can do. 

PODCAST EXTRA EXCLUSIVE SEGMENT 

Find the exclusive second segment and weekly newsletter here. 

MORE ABOUT THE PODCAST EXTRA INTERVIEW 

🔹 Ellen dives deep into the little-known difference between existential shame and existential humiliation—and why survivors often feel ashamed just for existing. 

👉 Get immediate access to this extended interview

THE BOOK

There's a Word for That by Ellen Tift (Available on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited) 

MORE ABOUT ELLEN TIFT 

Ellen Tift is a 30-year university educator and CPTSD survivor who turned her own healing journey into a comprehensive recovery resource. Her book breaks down the invisible symptoms of complex trauma into plain-English chapters—each with practical strategies and real-life scripts. 

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Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist & author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism. 

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This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or your local emergency number.

Transcript

The Hidden CPTSD Symptoms Keeping Narcissistic Abuse Victims Stuck

Ellen Tift: [00:00:00] This is about my worldview, like my entire understanding of the world and the world doesn't make sense when the person who's supposed to love me or be good to me is harming me. The world doesn't make sense. 

Dr. Kerry: You are the apex predator. You are better than the most dangerous predator in the world because you have an internal system that is highly accurate.

The problem is we don't listen to it. We're not attuned to it. 

Ellen Tift: don't think I have what it takes to be alive in this world. Like I just don't think I can do this anymore. I am really, really feeling pain and there's a part of me that thinks this is the answer.

Dr. Kerry: Many survivors struggle with healing because it affects our core sense of self. They struggle with even naming the experience well today. Ellen Tift, who wrote the book, there's a word for that, joins me to talk about how to understand the healing and find more effective strategies in the healing process.[00:01:00]

I'm so excited to be joined by Ellen Tift today, and actually how I discovered you, Ellen, is really a very. Interesting route. You contacted me basically saying, Hey, I've been listening to your content, but I happened to write a book and I just wanted to give it to you as a gift. And I thought, oh, that's nice.

I mean, I get a lot of offers and they really appreciate it. But when I got it, you know, um, it, it, you know, it's called, there's a word for that. And. I was stunned. I mean, first of all, look how thick this is. And it's, it's not like the font are big either, you know? It's, it's, it's a, it's a resource. It's a reference book.

That's how I've been re referring to it is a reference book. I was blown away and when I started to dig into it, I realized that you really broke apart. Trauma C-P-T-S-D into its components and then talked about what's a great resource or support or aid or tactic to deal with these different components of trauma.

So first of all, I just wanna thank you, Ellen. This is an amazing. Support [00:02:00] to all the literature out there. You just really have given us a big gift. But tell me about the journey of this book. How did you decide to, to write it? 

Ellen Tift: Funnily enough, um, I actually was gonna put just a bonus glossary of terms at the end of a novel that I had written.

Uh, and the novel was a fictional portrayal of a narcissistically abusive relationship as told from the perspective of a, of a Rose Bush, uh, it's called Rose in the Dragon. And I had paid for a manuscript evaluation and I was. Overwhelmed at the thought of having to go through this manuscript evaluation, making edits.

And I knew I was gonna add a glossary of terms as a bonus. And so I thought, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do a quick thing, get it outta the way. I'm just gonna make this glossary. And then, and then I realized a glossary. My heart was more in like, not only what is this term and what does it mean, but how do you navigate this?

How do you, how do you overcome this? And so I ended up starting to write articles. Um, around these terms [00:03:00] because in my own life, you know, I was in my own narcissistic relationships from various angles, and it would take me years to pick up on patterns of mistreatment, patterns of manipulation, and I would pick up on the pattern, but I wouldn't know what to call it.

And then it would take even that much longer to figure out, oh, that's called this. And it's like. It's like if you learn what the color yellow is and you know, finally know the name for yellow, and then you're out in the world and then you see yellow everywhere, you know? And so being able to call out, oh, well that's a false dichotomy, you know?

And with time I was able to start to call it out in real time when it was actually coming at me. And I think there's so much power in. Being able to name something that is confusing because so much of the experience of being targeted, it, it's so confusing and you stop blaming yourself. Like you [00:04:00] can stop saying, am I overreacting?

Because like how, how many times did somebody say, am I overreacting? And you're like, no, 

Dr. Kerry: right, 

Ellen Tift: no, you're not. So it helps you to kind of frame and get perspective on it. And then when I was writing. I realized, I remembered back to when I was in the depths of my hardest times. And by the way, I'm still very much in, in my recovery.

Like I'm very much on the healing path. 

Dr. Kerry: Gonna say, I don't know if we ever get off of 

Ellen Tift: it, honestly. No, we don't. We don't. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. 

Ellen Tift: But honestly, the first article I wrote was, how much can you heal from C testing? Mm-hmm. You know? And I had to kind of get a reality check on where the quote finish line really is.

And there really isn't a finish line, but like the good enough, you know, managing, handling it. Phase. And then I realized that my expectation of what healing looked like was incredibly unrealistic. I thought I was never gonna get triggered, triggered again. I thought, you know, like, I just thought I would be unshakeable, you know?

And, and then I realized, oh, I'm actually [00:05:00] way further along than I thought I was, because the descriptions of what healing looked like, I was actually able to achieve some of them. Now. Five years ago, 10 years ago, when I couldn't even listen to an audio book and retain anything. Hmm. And. I was, as I was writing my article, as I was aware that there was for me a gap from my capacity to take in the information and my emotional capacity and physical capacity to put into practice the things that these resources were saying I needed.

It broken down into much smaller incremental steps, and I needed it in plain English. I needed it in a format where I could just take it in little bits and not completely forget everything from six weeks ago, the last time I had listened to the book or whatever. And because I'm an educator, I've been teaching at university for 30 years, and so it's [00:06:00] very second nature for me to take what I'm learning for myself.

You know, I'm writing this not because I have all the answers. I'm writing it because I need the answers. And so as I'm compiling all of this. It's very second nature for me to just think, oh, I'm just gonna put this in a format where it can be helpful for other people. And so I started to publish my articles on Substack and I was getting really positive feedback.

Then I thought, you know, I think this is this own book. Like I, this isn't gonna be a glossary like this. That's way too unwieldy for the back of a novel. So. It's not just one. Like I've published maybe 90 articles at this point, and this one book is just 13 of them, so I'm just trying to, you're 

Dr. Kerry: kidding me.

This is just 13. Oh 

Ellen Tift: my, this is only 13, so, wow. And, and the thing is, as I've been writing the articles, I've sort of developed my approach more like I've been incorporating more fictional vignettes and I've been incorporating more helpful scripts because yeah, so often we lose our access to the language parts of our brain, and we don't know [00:07:00] how to verbalize things.

And so. Like how to talk to a doctor or how to explain something to your kids or how to respond when you, like, how do you set this boundary? You know how here, here's a script you can use. So things that I very much needed myself. And as I would read through my drafts, I would read through it and I would feel like when, when am I feeling panicky?

You know? And so then I would kind of realize, well, in this part I need to address that. The reader may be feeling some sense of panic as they're reading this or, or I need to give them reassurance at the beginning of this article that. We're gonna cover how to, you know, how to navigate this. Don't get panicky.

'cause you know how often you read something and you just wanna throw the book across the room 'cause you just feel like so triggered by it, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I've tried to address like, um, you know, and if this is triggering for you, just hang in there. We're gonna get through this. And I try to put a lot of compassion and a lot of validation.

Like, there's a reason you feel this way, you're not broken, it's not [00:08:00] weakness and. Giving it context. And I think that as I have put this together, I, a lot of people have been saying, you know, I feel like you've written this for me. And I think it's just, yeah, because I'm, I am like you, you know, I am also struggling and trying to find understanding and trying to heal my nervous system.

'cause my nervous system's way behind my. Understanding, you know? 

Dr. Kerry: Right, right, 

Ellen Tift: right. We can know something, but that doesn't mean our body believes it. 

Dr. Kerry: Exactly. And I love the way that you laid out, I mean, I, I, I'm looking at the, the table of content right now. You're, you're like, the first thing, the first chapter is anger after trauma is like.

Yeah, a lot of that and, and you go into anhedonia, which is sort of the loss of pleasure, sort of loss of energy and then body memory, but you, then you get into things like emotional flashback, emotional resilience, existential humiliation. I mean, now that one hit me, existential shame, which is fascinating that you differentiated those two separate and then functional freeze and internalized worthlessness.

These are all. Core dynamics that victims [00:09:00] really struggle with. And you're right, we do a lot of things like say, set a better boundary, but we don't realize that there's a level of functional freeze that's inhibiting that. What I love is that you're describing an internal dynamic that that then affects external behavior and affects the way in which we see and feel about ourselves and the way we interact with the world.

It, it's, it's so powerful. And then I, what I love is that you get into these chapters and there's like actual strategies. Like I, I flipped open to the. Section on emotional flashbacks. And you said there's a strategy for managing emotional flashbacks, early recognition, which I often talk about is running a marathon is like, what marathon Mile did you recognize?

What did you feel? What did you feel just before that experience as a way to sort of back yourself up. But I love the fact that you, you did this because. This to me is a handbook. It's, it's not a, you're not gonna pick it up and read through it. You're gonna like, oh, today I can't do anything. What's going on?

Oh, let's go to Functional Freeze and, and look into that. 

Ellen Tift: Yeah. And, and [00:10:00] so this first book, this first volume is. I started with the most core level kind of quiet, invisible struggles that people even within themselves don't, don't even necessarily have an awareness of like, right. How many of us are aware that we are making so many of our life decisions from a sense of internalized worthlessness?

You know, how many of us ever actually register that and registering it is just the beginning. And then how do you heal it? And then how do you, how do you start to make different choices for yourself or how do you engage differently with people? And the same with existential shame and existential humiliation.

I feel like I, who doesn't, who doesn't have this fight? I mean, especially by, you know, I'm. My fifties, like, especially by then, like, how do you not have some of this from, even if you grew up in a relatively functional home, which is, I, I think they're probably [00:11:00] very rare. Um, even if with the most well attuned caregivers, the world, the world damages us, the world humiliates us.

And one thing that I've really been struck by as I've done all of this. Writing and research is how often I'm seeing that marginalized groups get it so much worse that it, the damage is so much greater for marginalized groups and I. It just makes me understand that I need to, when I'm writing, really address like really neurodivergent groups, you know?

Yes. Ethnic identities, uh, LGBTQIA plus. Yes. Yeah. You know, all of the groups that, beyond even just women too, but like, it's so important to recognize, first of all, yeah. This is hard. Like you've been through some really hard stuff. Yeah. That wasn't cool. You didn't deserve it. You know, like when we're kids, we don't [00:12:00] understand that the bad things that happen to us aren't our fault.

Like our brains can't even comprehend it. 'cause the world doesn't make sense. The world is scarier when, when it doesn't make sense that it's not only that bad things happen to bad people, like when you're a kid, nothing bad that happens to you is what you deserve. Like. You don't deserve any of it. Right.

But, but kids blame themselves and even the most attuned caregivers can't counteract what even the world does to kids. And so then no. 

Dr. Kerry: And as simple as a misattunement can feel traumatic. 

Ellen Tift: Yes. Even

Dr. Kerry: if, which, if, you know, I, I would like, I'm hungry and mom interprets it as I'm bored. And, and that alone is like, well, she didn't mean me harm.

Right. But he got harmed in the process, 

Ellen Tift: right? And especially if you have one parent who is narcissistic, right? And then your other parent was slaying dragons that you didn't know about, right? And so then they can't be super attuned to you as a child. So it's not only. It's not only that you're not [00:13:00] seeing healthy modeling, but you're, you know, by default experiencing neglect and whether the neglect was intentional or not, you still experienced neglect.

Yes. Uh, you know, knowing whether it was intentional is helpful later on when you're grown up in your healing. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. It makes a difference when you, in terms of how, how to get resolution, 

Ellen Tift: but Right. But you still experienced neglect and so kids, when they, when their needs are not met. And there, there are other, you know, say the narcissistic parents' needs were prioritized, the kid internalizes that as, I'm not as important, I don't matter.

And I think that that whole thing on internalized worthlessness was, I mean, every single one of these chapters that I wrote was like profoundly eye-opening for me. Mm-hmm. Um, and it, it helped me to. Just have a little more grace with myself. You know, I feel like with the healing journey, I'm, I'm understanding more and more how the beginning is in our own self-talk and in our own sense of self-compassion.

And I [00:14:00] think you'd be hard pressed to find a survivor who has too much self-compassion. I mean, there is such a thing as too much, but I don't think people struggle with that, you know? I don't think that survivors struggle 

Dr. Kerry: with that. No, I don't think so either. I 

think, 

Dr. Kerry: yeah, no, no. In fact, we, we sort of set ourselves up is.

My job is to be there for you. I'm a good person by my ability to be emotionally available without realizing that self betrayal at the, at the far end of that continuum. 

Ellen Tift: Yes. Moral perfectionism is another term that I, I, you know, those things where you hear at one time, you're like, oh, that's me. You know, like, oh, that's me.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and so. You know, if we can have self-compassion, if we can start to reframe our expectations of ourselves and others in a more realistic way, and if we can learn that we've been trying to protect ourselves every, you know, the IFS internal family systems. Yeah. You know, it's all about trying to stay safe, trying to, it's an adaptive survival [00:15:00] mechanism.

So it's not that you were stupid to, to do these things, but it's just that you were trying to. Safe and, but now that you're older, like you don't really need to do those things. You can, you can set boundaries. So like by understanding, you know, the whys and then having self-compassion, not judging yourself, then learning to not abandon yourself automatically because that is really hard.

It's like just, and because when you stop doing that, you start to feel like this. Dust kicking up. It makes you feel physically sick the first time you set a boundary. 

Dr. Kerry: Oh yeah. I mean, for me it was so scary. I, I anticipated it would almost felt like world ending to me. 

Ellen Tift: Yes. And then the people who push back are the ones that have been benefiting from you, not having boundaries.

Right. So then you start to go, oh, am I wrong? You know, like, was that wrong or right? Even if you know that it wasn't wrong, your nervous system still completely freaks out. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah, and then you take their, their antagonism or their pushback, you know, [00:16:00]whatever extreme level, lack of extreme level it is, you don't realize it's just protest behavior.

You see that as, no, this is information that says I'm bad. And then you internalize their upsetness as personal when it really often is just they didn't get their way. It's a tantrum. 

Ellen Tift: Yes. And honestly, and, and this is gonna go in a future book, but I wrote a whole thing about being brainwashed. You know, essentially when you are in an abusive relationship to a degree you've been brainwashed, um, the more you've been manipulated.

The more brainwashed to become. And I know that's a term that people tend to equate with cults and, you know, extreme really extreme. But I think brainwashing happens on to a degree in more, way more places than we even realize. Oh 

Dr. Kerry: yeah, I got to interview be Sandra Brown. And she said, the minute they open their mouths, you are being mesmerized.

Ellen Tift: Yes. So, so then you're fighting against these beliefs that you've adopted, um, [00:17:00]because you wanna believe the more. Loving truth. You wanna believe that this person is really good and they just had a bad day and, and, and so they really do love you and, and you know it. It's not, you know, that they hate you or that they're dangerous or that you have to like completely blow your life up and you know, like you wanna believe the kinder truth and because the world makes more sense that way.

And I think that's one thing that, another thing that I realized is that this isn't just about this relationship that I have. This is about my worldview, like my. Entire understanding of the world and the world doesn't make sense when the person who's supposed to love me or be good to me is harming me.

The world doesn't make sense. So this is far more of a crisis than just. Giving up on this one relationship. This is a crisis of faith in everything. Everything that you've believed to be true. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. 

Ellen Tift: So it's like coming out of a cult, it's like, it's like breaking the [00:18:00] brainwashing. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah, it's, it is. In fact, there was just a report this last week, I believe, I'm looking at it right now.

I'm trying to think of what date did this come out on? Um, yeah, it was September 6th, September 15th. There's a model that suggests that gas lighter manipulate their targets by taking advantage of the learning process. 

Ellen Tift: Hmm. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. So actually it, it, it hijacks or it hijacks the way the brain takes in information and makes assumptions about the world, the model of the world, the way that it works, and that when, when someone gaslights you, it violates the frame of your understanding of the way the world works.

So it causes you to stop and question, and that questioning opens you for learning. So then you begin to adopt their worldview. It actually hacks your brain and changes the way in which you perceive reality, perceive your own perceptions. 

Ellen Tift: Yes. That's very interesting. I'd love to read that. Um, 

Dr. Kerry: yeah, I could be happy to share it with you wherever, where it came out of.

Yeah. 

Ellen Tift: But, you know, and another, another term that I learned is moral injury, which, mm. You know, when once you start to [00:19:00] betray your own personal compass, your, your moral compass, then you have to do all of these mental gymnastics. And emotional ninja tricks to justify in your system why you're doing something that's against your own moral compass and that is damaging.

That's super damaging. Mm, that's a wound. That's a huge wound. But once we start to betray ourselves and constantly abandon ourselves. You know, in some cases that is a moral injury, that it's an injury regardless, but it's not always a moral injury. But sometimes it is, you know? Yeah. When you do things that betray your own, your own sense of self.

Dr. Kerry: Oh yeah. I mean, I had to look back at myself and say, how could I have allowed that? I knew at the time it felt wrong. Um, I knew that it was not, it was not in line with me, that it was a breach of my own integrity, so why did I slide with it? And then, yeah, and then you, you, you have to deal with the crisis with yourself.

Like, what does that mean about me that I did that? And then even that I would [00:20:00] prioritize love and belonging over my own integrity. And, and normally I, I, I thought I valued integrity over more than that to, to me, it felt like it cheapened me in some ways. 

Ellen Tift: Yeah. And honestly, the whole. Shattered sense of self and our broken sense of self.

It, it, that reinforces it like it's already happened. You know, so often people who use narcissistic abusive techniques or manipulation techniques, they're not the beginning. They're just playing on previously existing wounds that we have from when we're young, but layer by layer. You know, we're getting ourselves reflected back, but I put reflected in quotes because so often it's not an accurate mirror, and the people who are mirroring who we are back to us are distorting it.

And so then we end up with this broken sense of self and it happens. Over here. It happens over here. It happens over here, you know? And so by layer, by layer by layer, we do lose our [00:21:00] sense of who we are. And then also in addition, we have to be a version of ourselves that we don't wanna be, because this person won't allow us to be the compassionate, loving, empathetic person that we wanna be.

Because every time we do, it's a trap. Yes. They weaponize our best traits against us. Yes, yes. And so it's on multiple fronts that we end up losing who we even are, partly because of survival and partly because of bad mirroring back to us and more, more than that. But that's just part of it. Yeah. I 

Dr. Kerry: don't, I think most of us don't appreciate the fact that we are an open system.

Meaning? Meaning you're a living active organism that is in constant change. Subtle. It's once you get past a certain age, I think in the mid twenties, and your personality becomes pretty consolidated, but you're still slightly adjusting the way you experience yourself, the way you interpret the world, the way you understand the rules of everything, the rules of interactions and the rules about yourself, and, and it's in that riff.

That loop, that [00:22:00] feedback loop between right now, you and me. You know, if, for example, if you start to suddenly have a radical face change, I would think, okay, what's wrong? Did I do something wrong? Is there something happening inside of her or is it happening between us? Or is a reflection of me, you know, I'm making decisions about that and then I'm adjusting based upon what I read off of you.

And if that becomes chronic enough, like you said. It starts to then change the way I experience myself and the way that I understand the world around me. I think most of us don't understand that we're that vulnerable. We think, and this is why we get so hard on victims, that we're a fixed system, a fixed organism that's not open to change.

We just have bad internal whatever algorithm or something, and that we just need to change the algorithm and behave differently. No, you're interacting in real time with other people and that influences you. 

Ellen Tift: Yes, and I think also just the. Immense part that our nervous system plays in all of this. Yeah.

Because we may be selective [00:23:00] in what we remember. We may block memories, we may be, you know, leaning into the cognitive dissonance to believe what, what feels most psychologically comfortable versus what is true. However, our bodies don't lie. And our bodies, you know, so often what another word that I learned is.

Are in interoception, which is our sense of our bodily, uh, signals and, and how often we just, 

Dr. Kerry: we dampen 

Ellen Tift: them. Shut up. Shut up. 

Dr. Kerry: Exactly. 

Ellen Tift: Exactly. You know, we think of our body as like our adversary because it's interfering with our lives. It's trying to shut us down. And in that, or we have a really hyper, hyper sense of that.

Like we're, it's just everything's amplified and you feel it way stronger. And so listening to that is. Can be incredibly uncomfortable. Um, but man, our body is the best truth teller we've got. I think 

Dr. Kerry: it is. In fact, it, you know, you reminded me Gavin de Becker in his book, the Gift of Fear says, you are the apex predator.

You are better than the most dangerous predator in the world because you have an internal system [00:24:00] that it's highly accurate. Problem is we don't listen to it. We don't, we're not, we're not attuned to it. And here's the other thing that I think we get, we get wrong. And when I really got into understanding abuse, psychological abuse, it hit me.

We assume, in fact, our constitution says this, that we're about pursuit of happiness. And we even say, what do you want for kids? I want them to be happy people. Actually, that's not what our, that's not what our bodies and minds want. It's not pursuing happiness. It's pursuing survival. 

Ellen Tift: Yes. And when I came across that.

Statement that we are wired for survival, not happiness. Mm-hmm. That was just a real like. 

Dr. Kerry: Moment for me. Yeah. To me it was like, I, yeah, I didn't re I just sort of like, oh geez, our system is all about survival. It's all the time trying to measure and analyze risk and danger constantly and Yeah. And, and that, that's what goes, it's, it's trying to take care of us that it's trying to make it through the day.

That's the goal. Let's make it through the day. 

Ellen Tift: Yes. And I, and I fir, when I first came across it, I was like, well, that explains a lot, you know, like [00:25:00] now I kind of get myself a little better now, but also I think. One important thing, and I write about this in my book, which is, um, how often suicidal ideation shows up as, as an answer.

And, and it's not the dark, heavy, you know, self-harm desire. It's, it's like that part of you that is misguided in its attempt to say, I have. I have a solution for you. I wanna, I wanna stop your pain. Mm-hmm. And I think when people can understand that there's a difference between wanting to actually, you know, take your own life versus just not wanting to be alive anymore, um, there's a big difference between those two things.

Or 

Dr. Kerry: just not, yeah. Just not wanting to be in pain anymore. 

Ellen Tift: Really Yeah's just not wanting, just feeling like, I don't think I have what it takes to be alive in this world. Like, I just don't think I can do this anymore. When you, when you realize that that's actually a part of yourself. Valuing you enough to try to protect you.

And you can [00:26:00] reframe it that way. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. 

Ellen Tift: It becomes a lot less like, what is wrong with me? You know, like, yeah. You can just kind of kindly understand, okay, I am really, really feeling pain and there's a part of me that thinks that this is the answer, and so I just need to see that for what it is. Understand that I don't need to be scared of talking about this, you know?

Dr. Kerry: Right, 

Ellen Tift: right. Um, but that's, I talk about that in my book too, because the loss of Will to live after abuse is one of the chapters. Um, because I don't think anybody who hasn't been through it, I don't think they would understand how common. That thought is Yeah. Um, how many times a day a person can think, I just don't, I just don't wanna do this anymore.

You know? 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. And you mentioned another thing that's really powerful that I think most people do. I mean, we say it all the time and, and until it's one of those things that's like, until you've been. Been a pet and or you don't know what it's like to be your own pet or until you have your own children, you don't really know what it likes to be a parent.

But this is one of those experiences that once you get in the inside of this, you, you realize there's a whole [00:27:00] lot you never really understood until you've experienced yourself. I feel that way. I mean, I'm, I go back and I think of all the years of client therapy that I've, hours that I've spent with clients that were in very abusive situations and I feel really bad because I didn't understand the inside of it.

Now I intimately understand 'cause I actually walked that road and it was extremely. You know, devastating, but also life changing. And, and, but you're right. It is, it, there is a, there is a, it is a, it's a, definitely a crisis. It's a incredible crisis of self in the, in fact, another clinician said it shatters yourself.

The sense of self is shattered in this experience. 

Ellen Tift: Every angle of yourself. Spiritual, physical. Yeah. Sexual food, sleep, you know, just how your body feels as you go about your day. Just. Everything is affected by complex trauma. And again, yeah. If somebody hasn't experienced it, they really, they can't even comprehend.

The [00:28:00] experience. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. Yeah. First of all, excited to hear there's another book or more books 

Ellen Tift: behind it. Oh, there many. I don't know. It's like, I can't think about too much of it. It's overwhelming to think about 

Dr. Kerry: how much I imagine. I imagine, because I, I know each book in themselves. It's a very huge task.

It's a mountainous task. So I'm super excited to hear there's more coming. So thank you so much for the book. There's a word for that, and, um. I would love to jump over the podcast extra and talk about the difference between humiliation and shame. What you sort of learned about that as you were digging into that.

But how can people get a copy of this book for themselves and how can they, how can they learn out more about, are you on social media or anywhere talking about this at all? I would like to have them, yeah, know how to find you. 

Ellen Tift: So my website is. Ellen tif.com or what? My ne my, uh, novel was gonna be, ro is gonna be rose in the dragon.com.

Um, I'm on all the socials. I'm not admittedly like the best at like, being an author online 'cause it's only one small part of my life. Oh, the book. It's on Amazon and Kindle. Kindle Unlimited. Okay. So, [00:29:00] um, I get paid by the page turn on Kindle Unlimited. So yeah, 

Dr. Kerry: it's wonderful. Which means anybody who has the Kindle Unlimited program can just it for free.

Ellen Tift: Yep. 

Dr. Kerry: Yeah. 

Ellen Tift: Yep. And then, and then if you're in. You gotta go to the UK site, and if you're in Australia, you gotta go to the Australian Amazon site. So. 

Dr. Kerry: Well, thank you Ellen. Like I said, yeah, this is a huge, huge boon to the survivor community. It's, I, I don't even have enough words to tell you how grateful I am, and thank you so much for being with me today.

I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you. 

Ellen Tift: Much been my pleasure. Absolutely. 

Dr. Kerry: It's 2:00 AM again, and you're replaying that whole conversation over and you're wondering yourself, was it really that bad? Or maybe I'm just being dramatic. So you start to draft that, I'm sorry, text again, because the guilt that you're feeling or the confusion you're experiencing is just unbearable.

And you know this loop because you've been there before. But I want you to know that you're not alone. I'm Dr. Kerry McAvoy. I'm a retired psychologist and for 25 years I've been helping people untangle exactly what toxic relationships do [00:30:00] to your mind, how they create the confusion, the self-doubt, and that trauma bond that keeps pulling you back in.

Here's the truth. Recovery isn't about getting more information. It's about having the right support in the exact moment you need it. That's why I've created Reclaim You. It's a private, always available coaching app built from my work and my content organized into an extensive library that you can actually use when you're triggered inside it.

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