This Is Not In Your Head: The Neuroscience of Narcissistic Abuse

This Is Not In Your Head: The Neuroscience of Narcissistic Abuse

In this deeply validating and eye-opening episode, Noelani Pearl Hernandez sits down with Meghan Woods, Licensed MFT, Certified Clinical Trauma Professional II, and Certified Narcissistic Abuse Treatment Clinician, for a powerful conversation about the long-term impact of narcissistic abuse on the brain, nervous system, body, and identity.

Together, they unpack why survivors often struggle to trust themselves, how gaslighting rewires the brain, and why narcissistic abuse is so much more than “just emotional abuse.” Meghan explains how trauma bonds mimic addiction through neurochemicals like dopamine, oxytocin, cortisol, and adrenaline, leaving survivors trapped in cycles of confusion, hypervigilance, dissociation, and self-doubt.

This episode explores:

• Why survivors often think they are the narcissist
• How narcissistic abuse impacts the nervous system
• Trauma bonds and the addiction-like cycle of abuse
• Hypervigilance, dissociation, doomscrolling, and nervous system shutdown
• The connection between trauma, autoimmune disease, shingles, stress, and chronic illness
• Why healing is not linear
• The difference between talking about trauma and actually processing it
• EMDR and Internal Family Systems (IFS) explained in accessible language
• Why boundaries and no-contact can feel terrifying
• How unresolved childhood trauma shows up in adult romantic relationships
• The importance of rebuilding self-trust and listening to your gut
• Healthy communication, nervous system regulation, and “take a break” techniques for couples
• Why narcissistic abuse survivors are not weak, broken, or “too sensitive”
  
  

“This is not in your head. This is physiological. This is neurological. This is psychological.”

Whether you’re healing from a narcissistic parent, romantic partner, workplace, or high-control environment, this episode offers validation, education, and hope.

Meghan Woods is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, Certified Clinical Trauma Professional II, and Certified Narcissistic Abuse Treatment Clinician specializing in trauma recovery, EMDR, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and narcissistic abuse treatment.

She is the founder of Connecting Pathways Trauma & Marriage Therapy Inc. and works with clients navigating trauma, attachment wounds, narcissistic abuse recovery, and nervous system healing.

Learn more about Meghan and her work at:
Connecting Pathways Trauma & Marriage Therapy Inc.

https://www.instagram.com/mwoodslmft/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You're listening to the Beyond Mommy Daris podcast, where we talk about growing up with narcissistic moms, how it shapes your nervous system, your relationships, and your sense of self, and how to heal without shame.

SPEAKER_00 0:12

I'm your host, Nelani Pearl Hernandez. This episode is sponsored by the Happy Cannabis, body products designed to help you on your healing journey by supporting your nervous system with every application.

SPEAKER_01 0:25

Trigger Morning. This episode contains discussions of suicidal thought, self-harm ideation, sexual trauma, dissociation, and complex PTSD. Please listen with care and take breaks if you need to. Your safety and well-being matter. If you're in crisis or need immediate support, please contact a trusted mental health professional or the crisis resource in your area. Today we're joined by licensed marriage and family therapist, certified clinical trauma professional, and certified narcissistic abuse treatment clinician, Megan Woods. Together we dive deep into narcissistic abuse and what it actually does to the brain and nervous system. We are talking about gaslighting, disassociation, hypervigilance, people pleasing, EMDR, internal family systems, and what it really means to process trauma instead of just reliving it. If you've ever questioned your reality, felt stuck in survival mode, wondered if you were just being too sensitive, or found yourself asking, wait, am I the narcissist? This episode is for you. Take a breath, settle in, and let's get into it. Megan, thank you so much for being here. What people don't see before this is that um I do a little warm-up with people because um we oftentimes are just meeting for the first time. It's very rare you have um someone like my good friend Victoria, where I'm I've been friends with them to log uh to have and have them come on. And Megan and I just figured out we have actually a lot in common. We are here in the Bay Area in California. Um, although apart, we're about 45 minutes apart. We're all we're we are considered. If you talk to Californians, we are considered all the Bay Area. And we are all attached by bridges. So I'm really excited that Megan's here today. Megan um was introduced to me by uh one of our former guests, Kirsten. Um Kirsten, there's only Kirsten informed me that there's only about 80 people in the US who have this specialty by Dr. Romani that's focused on narcissistic abuse. And so for me, it was really important to get in touch with them. And Megan is one of those people. So I'm very excited that she's here today. Um, I have a quick my first question for you, Megan, is um how I would really like to start is what specifically drew you to trauma work and supporting survivors of narcissistic abuse?

SPEAKER_02 3:02

You know, it's really interesting because I never pictured myself being a therapist. I actually initially went to school to become a firefighter. Really? That's super cool. Yeah. Um, I have my associates in fire technology, and through a series of unfortunate events, um, I ended up getting injured and worked in organized tissue donation.

SPEAKER_01 3:27

Oh, interesting. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:29

So I was the one um when people passed away calling the family members and and asking them, hey, are you are you willing to to give, willing to help? And so what ended up happening is I'd hear these just horrific and sad stories about people passing away, but I'm on the phone with them, I'm trying to support them, but I'm also trying to, you know, see if they're willing to donate and help berm victims, cancer victims. So um what ended up happening is I I really wanted to provide that psychological support for people suffering. So um I ended up going back to grad school at Sonoma State, ghosting. And um I just kind of fell into working with trauma. I have my own trauma history. Um, I gotta work with some very complex cases, and I started noticing when I graduated that there's some patterns going on here that it's not these single incident events that are causing the most damage, that what is going on in these interpersonal relationships is causing massive, massive harm. And for my clients that have some single incident incident traumas, we might be able to work through something in like three months, four months. But for other individuals who have these interpersonal wounds, it was taking a long time. And I started noticing that there's this pattern that's going across these relationships. And so that's how I started working with narcissistic abuse because my clients with those trauma histories, we started noticing, wait, there's a lot of manipulation happening here. And so uh I got an email for Dr. Romani's program. I'm like, this is perfect, this is the right time. Let's go, let's get some more information.

SPEAKER_01 5:34

You know, and it's so interesting because you know, I have talked in the past about ACES. So, you know, adverse early childhood experiences and how if you test high on that score, how it kind of like there's a trajectory that you go on in your life. And what I have found is when kids are scoring high on that, they often fall into these kind of relationships because it's just the norm for them. Yeah. Right. So something that uh a person, and I'll say it how about a health would they have a healthy uh parental relationship, they're not gonna fall in it. I uh I often talk about my poor dad. So not to speak ill of the dead, I loved my grandmother. I absolutely adored her, she was the funniest person. And when my dad um was, I think he was about one or two, my grandparents got a divorce and she moved up to Oregon. My grandpa stayed down here, and my dad was little, so she was out of his life. And my stepgrandmother, who is also my grandmother, he didn't. I think he was about 13 when he got with her, like my grandpa got with her. So a mother figure was my grandmother, my great-grandmother was his mother figure, and my dad is drawn to narcissists. My mom was a narcissist, my stepmother is a narcissist. It's probably possible his new girlfriend's a narcissist, and I tell everyone to come back. I'm sure in about six episodes I'm gonna find out whether or not she is, and we can go from there. But this is like it. I've heard Dr. Romani and others say it, and I think it needs to be said narcissistic abuse is an epidemic. It is, and why isn't it an epidemic? I think one of the reasons is narcissists never get treated. Um, I think the other reason is it it's a uh a tangled web that you're undoing, right? Because you've been gaslit. Yes, and so you're trying to figure out what's real. Like you're constantly in this haze I I talk about. Like once I got out of the haze, once I decided, um, it's kind of like stranger things. Like, I feel like stranger things in the upside down is like the best way to explain what narcissistic haze looks like. Because as you come through that, you're like, this is what the real world looks like. Oh right, these are the colors that it actually is. And I think that's a really important thing. And you have such an extensive background in these trauma modalities. What did you start to notice across these clients that made you really focus on these patterns to like move forward to help?

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Yeah. So I think some of the biggest things that I started noticing is that my clients typically did not trust themselves. They didn't trust their reality, they didn't trust their intuition. Um, a lot of times they would actually come in thinking that they were the narcissist, almost, frankly, almost always.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 8:49

Yeah. And so, like there was just this pattern of I call it psychological warfare that was going on. 100%.

SPEAKER_01 8:58

That's I mean, that's what's going on in your brain, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I remember just like a normal day would make me exhausted.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Because you're like, oh my God. There's because of the constant questioning, right? There's a constant questioning. There and because narcissists are so good at this, they they make it so they don't even have to gaslight you. You are gaslighting yourself. Yes. Yeah. And that is like that is master manipulation. Like where you're like, oh, wait, what? Did that really happen? But wait, maybe, maybe I'm the narcissist. Yep. And so, and let me like reassure everyone if you're saying I'm the narcissist, are you ask your therapist, am I a narcissist? You are most likely not a narcissist. Yeah. There's no possibility. Yeah. Narcissists don't believe that they are narcissists. Yes, they don't. No, never. Like they never believe it. And and and I'll say this, they're from a therapist's mouth to your ears, not from AI, she is saying a narcissist never thinks they're a narcissist.

SPEAKER_03 10:10

That's like when you don't care.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Yeah, that's the empathy part, right? That's the empathy part. And that that to me is always crazy. When whenever my mom would be like, I don't care that I hurt your feelings. I'm like, I'm a child. That's why when people um, and it's in this next episode where some I talk about what what will happen with me if my mom passes away or if she becomes terminally ill. And I have said, I don't care. Not because I don't care, I do actually care. Like it's going to be sad. And I don't care because she never cared about any of the 30,000 things that she did to me. And that's how they hook you because you are an empathetic person.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

And that's how they and it it's um we we talk about like nice and kind in our family. And we say, you can be kind, but being kind doesn't mean being nice because being nice makes you weak. If you're just nice all the time and you're people pleasing and you're doing all that stuff, that's different than being kind. Being kind is looking at things with empathy, doing things that are the right thing to do. Uh, we have a very high sense of justice. I think being a narcissistic abuse recovery person. And then my husband, um, his his dad was a police officer, and my husband worked in the court system. So huge, huge sense of justice in our in our family. And kindness is like the way we try to drive things for our kids so that they don't get taken advantage of. Because I think, you know, uh from a really clinical perspective, so this for you, uh, what makes this specific type of abuse, especially from a parent, so uniquely destabilizing for people?

SPEAKER_02 12:04

There's so many things, but uh the two main things that I think really destabilize people are one, if it's your parent, they were supposed to be your attachment figure. They were supposed to be the safe one, they were supposed to be the base with you explore the world from, and I got betrayed. I got betrayed. And so there's not this baseline sense of safety that is supposed to happen for a child. But even more complicated is that we've actually found that what happens in these narcissistic relationships mirrors addiction.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Yes, with the neurochemicals, yes. We talk my husband and I talk about that because um for the abuser, there's the addiction, and then for the what we see for the person who's recovering, there's the addiction. Yeah, so the addiction goes both ways. It's like you're two addicts going back and forth. Um, if I and I am very far along in my healing, doesn't mean that I don't get tripped up. Everyone does, like, and that's I think something that's really important. Healing is not linear um when it comes to this. But if I get tripped up on something, or if I get caught in my head on something, I have to go around in this loop. And the way that I've seen my healing occur or where I'm at in my healing is that loop happens faster. But I still have to go through the loop. Yeah. Like it's like it's like this whole thing, and I get triggered or activated to go through it. And that that is the addiction part, right? Or I see a lot of so I'm not a therapist, but I do coaching. So and often like we we ride together on horses to come in because we work with different things that are um our different modalities. But what I am I am seeing often, besides the gaslighting and how that affects people in the second guessing, is the self-sabotage.

SPEAKER_03 14:11

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

So that to me is the the the grossest part of narcissistic abuse. So it's the okay, you have the gaslighting, and if the gaslighting doesn't work, if the person comes out from the haze, then there's the self-sabotage, whether it's, you know, um the like successes, like where I always say, I'm so proud of myself that I graduated from the university because self-sabotage was there. It was like real poignant during that time in my life because I hadn't accepted that my mom was a narcissist. She was still in my life, but a low contact way, mainly because she moved away and it gave us that space. And that space is what made me realize that she was a narcissist and that I had experienced such complex trauma while I was growing up in this environment. So, how are you seeing complex trauma showing up for adults that you're working with that grew up in these narcissistic environments?

SPEAKER_02 15:18

Everybody's nervous system is all over the place.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

And I mean that was so much love, but it's not regulated. It's even this really dissociative shutdown, this um this paralysis, this zoning out, this losing track of time, or the complete opposite, such hyper-arousal that it's like a hamster on a spinning wheel, just going, going, going, inksy, ympsy, waiting for the shoe to drop. And so it's this constant state of not being able to have calmness, have peace, have regulation.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

And that's a lot of like this, I think is a really important thing when people understand this part of it because there's the hypervigilance that everyone probably like we see, and we're like, okay, well, what is this person? How are they gonna feel? Like I saw it when I um I I say all the time that my husband saved my life, and that's no joke that he did, because he taught me that I didn't need to be hyper-vigilant. Like a healthy relationship doesn't look like that. Like as adults, we work off each other's moods and we take care of each other. But there's that flip side of this haze, or a time I call it the time warp. When I'm having to deal with um when I've had like a narcissistic boss or a board um when I've worked for nonprofits that has been narcissistic, like together as a board, where there's a time warp that happens, like you just mentioned, where it's like, what the heck, like what just happened? Where did these last five days go? You know, like what's going on? And I think that that is a really important thing to name because and the reason for this podcast is not only to say, okay, my mom was anarch, or you might have a mom that's a narc narcissist, but it's also to to think about where narcissists show up in other parts of your life, right? We're gonna be doing some podcasts with um the survivors of the Nexium cult and of the um of the not the Warren Jeffries, but um Sam the Samuel Bateman cult after the Warren Jeffries, because cult personalities, cult leaders have such similar tendencies, that to me is crazy.

SPEAKER_04 17:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

And and one of the things is that I've seen um it just in my adult life is when you put a name to something, whether it's you know, you know that the reason why you have frozen shoulder, like for a lot of women who are going through perimenopause, that it's not because your shoulder's broken, it's because you're going through perimenopause. But once you name something that you went through, that really helps a lot of people. But people struggle to do that, especially when it's their parent or a romantic relationship. So, what are some signs that you see that are common are that people might know that they are experiencing now to say that this was actually this narcissistic abuse?

SPEAKER_02 18:33

Okay. So there are a couple of key things that tend to be prevalent across relationships. So what's really standing out to me is coarsive control. So I'm going to force you into doing what I want and I'm gonna be possessive of you. And this is in romantic relationships, this is in parental relationships, but it's I'm gonna isolate you from other people. I'm gonna take control of the finances, I'm gonna control how you dress, what you eat, how much you weigh. Um, I'm gonna make you trust me more than you trust you. And I'm gonna vilify you to everyone outside of the relationship so that way they're on my side and they're backing my story. And what's really um frankly, pretty disgusting is that this is done under the guise of concern. And so people it's I care about you so much that I'll take control of the finances so you don't have to worry. Or um, in the beginning of a relationship, I love you so much. I just want us to nest together. I just want us to have personal time. So it feels like love and it feels like concern, and it feels like this person really knows me and cares about me. So they're turning something that should be beautiful and they're twisting it, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:53

Yeah. And that to me, that's the fucked up part. You know, you talk about trauma not being just cognitive, but like living inside your body. So, what does that actually look like day to day?

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Yeah, so um it can be a lot of different things. So it can be um most commonly what I see is when you're in a relationship with somebody who is narcissistic, no matter what form it is, it's this kind of discomfort anxiety. You can feel it literally in your gut, feel it in your chest. Um, sometimes your throat tightens because it feels like I'm not allowed to say I'm allowed to have a voice. But there's so many somatic symptoms, and there's actually overlap, like you said with the ACES study, there's overlap with autoimmune diseases because of this.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Yes, yeah, yeah. You know, and that's a crazy thing. Like I um I had a guest on who talked about having MS. Like it took her hitting MS, having to learn to talk and walk and do all those things again to say no more. And she left her narcissistic partner. And I think for a lot of people who maybe are maybe they haven't been in that position where like your body starts to shut down basically. For me, I got the shingles. I was under like, you know, I'm I'm bumping up to 50 now, but this happened like uh in my 30s where I got the shingles. And that is not like a 30 person, like a 30-year-old disease. That's like, you know, it's something that they worry about older people getting. And the first thing my doctor said is, Are you under a lot of stress? And I was like, but yeah, but I always am. And she said, Oh, no, no, no, no. This is this is coming from this, and you're gonna have to remove whatever that is. But and I fear felt like a lot of the same thing where there was Like guilt or shame or fear or confusion when I started setting those boundaries. Um, and I know for a lot of women that I help that are going no contact, they feel the same thing.

SPEAKER_03 22:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

So I would love for you to say like what you are seeing when you you see that in your clients.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

You know what's so hard about clients trying to go no contact is that sometimes we don't slow down and think about what is it that their parts, I'm a parts work therapist, what their parts think is going to happen. And there's a risk to going no contact. We have to remember that people in these relationships uh a lot of the times love the person who is doing this to them. Yes. So if they set boundaries, if they go no contact, they are essentially giving up the relationship, which is a really big ask.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah, yeah. And I think for a lot of people, some of it is they feel like that person is a part of who they are.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

And I would say even more so as a child, because they're your parent. And so I think for a lot of people, it and when I'm working with someone who let's say has called, like they're always calling their parent, right? The first thing I always say is, um, I usually don't talk to my adult daughter every day. Like maybe we'll do a ping here and there, and I have her location just for safety if something happens, but I don't like I rarely look at it. It's just, you know, she'll ping me if she likes she has a cold or something. Oh, we'll keep in touch, but I could go like two or three days without talking to her. That is what a healthy relationship with a grown adult child looks like. Where of course I'm thinking about her, but I'm not gonna bug her all the time. And because of that, she's got her autonomy to go and do whatever she's gonna do. This, these clients are talking to their parents as someone who's my age, like in the morning and at night. And I'm like, that's a lot. Like, that's a really a lot. Why don't you try to start setting boundaries? Like, why don't you say, I'm not gonna call you on my drive home? But you can still call them in the morning on the way to work or flip-flop it. Do you want to go to work in a nasty mood or do you want to go home and be in a nasty mood? And I let them decide. And that boundary, that first set of boundaries, is usually when they start to see that activation happen in themselves and in the person. And, you know, you mentioned it before that people's nervous systems are all over the place. I think just on a baseline, because of the world we live in now, with social media and everything that's going on in the, you know, at least in the US, but other places too, our nervous systems are off the hook, right? We're we're feeling things that we've never felt. So can you explain what a person might feel like if they're activated around a romantic partner or a parent, like what their nervous system might look like?

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Yeah. So it really depends on if somebody is more um shut down and dissociative, or if they become more hyper-aroused. So typically what we see, though there's always exceptions to every rule, is that people who are hyper-aroused, they cannot um stop. It's going, going, going, going, going. It's I need to fix this, I feel so anxious, I need to stop this. It's really kind of motivated by momentum, so much discomfort in the body. But then what happens is that people get to a threshold where they can't tolerate that anymore. They can't type tolerate that hyper-arousal, that anxiety, that panic that's going on. So then boom, they crash down and their system essentially shuts down. It goes into this dissociative state where basically, from a uh biological and neurolap, neurobiological standpoint, the body is preparing to die. It is preparing for death.

SPEAKER_01 26:15

It's fucking crazy. I just like holy cow, that's that is that's fucking nuts.

SPEAKER_02 26:25

No, we can't fight anymore. We can't leave the situation to what are we gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 26:30

You're gonna die. That's oh my gosh. I never like and I never thought about it in that sense, like putting it in layman's terms, because you know, for me, when I disassociate, pick up my phone and I just doom scroll. And that's you know, part of me protecting that part of like making sure that I don't die. But in a sense, like that that's crazy. And I'm gonna talk about some of the things that I do use. I use these little heating pads to help. Um, I get them from this great place, um, Santa Cruz. Oh, it's uh made in Santa Cruz. It's heating and cooling recovery pillows. So I use these, like if I had a long day, like I'll warm it up, put it on my legs, or I have squishies and I'll put them up, but like the fact that we even have to like do that, right? Like that that's crazy. And thank you for saying that. I think that that's a really important thing because when you talk about let's say uh someone getting cancer or someone like there's a disease or something that they can put, they can put their hand to it. They can say, Oh, I have cancer, that's why I'm dying. But this is like death by a thousand paper cuts.

SPEAKER_02 27:51

Oh, absolutely. And then you're being told that you're not dying at the same time. Yes. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 27:57

Yes, you're too sensitive, you're not actually dying. No, that's not what actually happened. No, and in fact, I'm the one who's dying, not you. Yeah, I'm dying. You're not dying. Get over yourself. Oh my gosh. Uh you know, I bet you so many. And if if you need to pause the the podcast now, take your aha moment and then come back to us because like this, that is a really poignant thing for people to understand. Even if there is not like a disease or something that you is happening to you, uh, you know, MS or cancer or any of those things, high blood pressure, which, you know, all those things, diabetes, all those things can cause that. This is you essentially losing yourself. You're losing yourself to this. And you know, you have to take that moment and realize that you are worth you're worth it. You were brought into this world. And even if that one person who brought you into this world, who held you for the nine months, doesn't love you, fuck them. Like you're here, you are here and you made it through. I think, you know, one of the things I um I when I look at healing, I look at it as a charcuterie board. And I say, okay, what works for what person? Like for what worked for me might not work for somebody else. And you've been trained in EMDR and IFS and other approaches in healing. So can you tell me what um these acronyms stand for? And then how if someone's new to healing, how can these help?

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Okay. So EMDR is probably the one that more people are familiar with right now. It's pretty popular. And that's um eye movement, um, desensitization and reprocessing. Okay. And so what EMDR does is it literally rewires the brain. So when we go through trauma, something gets stored in our brain in a maladaptive way, and it can make us believe certain things about ourselves, and we can get stuck in that. And what happens is basically um, think of a spider web, okay? So if at the center of the spider web there's this belief that um I'm a bad person, other events and other memories start to get stored in that spider web. They get stuck and they confirm I'm a bad person. So what EMDR does is it gets a list of targeted memories associated with that maladaptive belief. And typically using really fast eye movements, but it can be any sort of bilateral across the body simulation. It goes into the memory and helps rewire it to be stored adaptively and to not be distressing. So that's kind of SparkNotes version, but that's what we're trying to do with EMDR. We're we're rewiring the brain, we're changing the memories so you can see them in a different way. And really, so you can see yourself in a different way.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

And how long typically, if you have someone doing EMDR, how long do you typically have them on that stint? Like, do you say you have to do it forever? Or is it like a a stint of time that people are doing EMDR?

SPEAKER_02 31:25

It depends. So according to the research, they believe that um depending on the trauma memory, it can take between like 12 and 20 sessions to reprocess a memory. Now, something called the generalization effect starts happening once your brain starts understanding oh, this is the answer, this is the answer, this is the answer. It starts realizing, oh, these other memories where I felt like I was a bad person, that's wiped out because I already learned that that's true.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

Interesting. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

Yeah. And then with internal family systems, what we're basically doing is we're working with the different parts of yourself that try to protect against the womb. So, like, um, have you ever been on the couch and like part of you wants to eat a brownie, part of you thinks you should work out, part of you thinks I should go take care of my kids, part of you feels like I deserve to relax. Yeah. So what we do with internal family systems is we map out the different parts of you that became really um inflexible and rigid because of what happened. So in a relationship with somebody who is narcissistic, you might have developed uh a part that people please to try to make sure you don't get in trouble. You might have uh developed an inner perfectionist that's trying to make sure if you're perfect, that things go right. Um, you might have developed a drinking part because let me numb away the pain. So we map out the different parts that protect the core wound. And what we know is that these different parts of yourself all have positive attention, positive intentions, even if they don't initially seem that way. So, like, for example, that drinking part, a lot of people initially would want to get rid of it, right? Yeah, yeah. If I work with this drinking part directly, I might find out that this drinking part has its own story, and that story might be I'm the one who takes away the pain for her. I'm the one who stops it from being too much, I'm the one who quiets the suicidal thoughts.

SPEAKER_01 33:37

I see that makes sense. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:40

So we work with these parts to get permission to access the wound, and by working with the wound directly, we rewire the brain, we rewire the nervous system. So it's lasting change versus temporary change.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

You know, and that's a beautiful thing about the brain. I think that people um don't understand. And it not be, you know, I'm not trying to be elitist or anything like that when I talk about this. You know, that was one of the reasons why I went into neuropsychology, was because there is just like any muscle, and that's what people have to remember. Your brain is a muscle, just like any muscle, it can be rewired, right? You see somebody who's like crazy buff, it's that's not what their muscle looked like at the beginning, and it's changed and it's built. And those are the things that you, as you are, let's say, processing trauma or working through the trauma, um, that you've you know built a wall and protected yourself. And now you have to just, you know, create a little door, build a little door, get um to that trauma, and then rewire that all because your trauma doesn't make you. And that's what I, you know, something that is really, I think for a lot of people, because I think about it, I I was listening to you talking about uh overachieving. I was like, oh God, that was so mean, like overachiever. And then when I was like, when I would mess up, oh God, the things I would say to myself if I mess up on something or I made a mistake, and that those things still happen, meaning like if I make a mistake or like um in my old age, in my perimenopause, I've noticed that I'm dropping things a lot more. Um, and when I drop something, I'm like, oh God, you know, and I'll say something about it, but I know that it's just, you know, the changing in the way my strength and my grip. And when I think about it, I'm like, of course, right? But that that trauma is still there. And so that process still happens for me. And one of the things that I think is really interesting for people to know is you can process your trauma, like you can process through it. And um, I would love for you to talk about what does it mean to process your trauma versus just talking about it? Because I think for a lot of people, they don't know that difference.

SPEAKER_02 35:55

There is a huge distinction between the two. So talking about your trauma may help on some levels. What tends to happen though is that people end up re-experiencing their trauma by talking about it.

SPEAKER_04 36:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

And what happens when you re-experience it from um from a brain perspective is that we have this saying that neurons that uh neurons that fire together wire together, which is a fancy way of saying it's going to get solidified. If you keep talking about it without actually processing it, you're making the trauma worse.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Yes, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 36:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Yes, and I can say that from the standpoint of doing the podcast, because I am constantly talking about my trauma. It's a constant thing. And what I personally have noticed when I do that is if I stack a day up where I have like usually like we're talking about podcasting, because I am the the work is releasing every Friday, and I stack up stuff. So maybe like this week I might have four people that I'm interviewing, and next week I don't. And because of that, I have to manage that. I have had days where I've had two or three people where I'm interviewing them, and I like among the couch and I'm having to like, I'm totally exhausted. And so what I've learned is because of this healing that I'm going through, is if I don't process it, then I the next day I'm real pissed. And I'm upset and I'm agitated, I might feel some anxiety, which sorry to say to those women under 35 who are about to go through perimenopause, you might have panic attacks and you've never had them before. And so a lot of these things I started noticing happening, and we're what were I've probably interviewed about 50 people now. And I I after the first half, the first 20, I was like, okay, there's something going on. And I just spot checked with my therapist. I was like, hey, I'm doing this podcast now. And she's like, okay, so don't back to back people. You gotta give yourself space. And you have to, if you tell a story, if there's a story that is different that you're telling that is not something that you've shared before, you have to take a moment to process it. If you don't, then you're gonna, it's gonna be right there all the time. And you're just doing exactly what your mom wanted you to do, like just abusing yourself over and over and over again. That was like, okay, I knew that, but you know, I just needed to hear it from someone else. And I think that that's a really important thing for people to understand. And it doesn't mean you're broken. Like, let's be really clear you are not broken just because this is something that takes more time. I mean, if you think about being in a romantic relationship and how long a lot of times, and I'm gonna make a generalization, uh, people might be in a narcissistic abuse relationship with a romantic partner for some time. Just because of the way that things are set up. Uh, person who's had a parental figure, for me, my mom, that was abusive and a narcissistic abuse person that took time. So you have to take that time to heal yourself. Like it's it's something that's really important. There's this woman who I had that on the podcast. I love her to death. She talks about being married to a narcissist for like 30 years. And she said, when I first started talking about it, I was so petty. Like my Instagrams were super petty. And then as I started to grow and move through and heal, there has been a real intention in regards to that. And I think that is a really important thing for people who have gone through this trauma that to be intentional about things that you do. And you know, to to bring it back to the podcast part is that's what I've had to focus on is that intentionality when I'm doing this podcast. Or else I get stuck in those patterns. And I think that that's a really important thing. So for someone who is stuck in the patterns, what's one thing that they can start to do to create movement towards that healing? Like if they feel like they're stuck.

SPEAKER_02 40:32

You know, I feel like one of the most important things to do is try to give your body the relief it's asking for. And so we can always work on the narrative of what happened. We can always eventually work on the thoughts that have happened, we can always work on trying to find safer relationships. We need your body and your brain on board in order to do that. And so um, one quick thing that I teach some of my clients is that um if you rub right here, that fleshy part of your ear on both sides, and just kind of give it a massage for a bit.

SPEAKER_01 41:12

Oh, yeah. You start to, I feel this little sensation.

SPEAKER_02 41:16

That's so interesting. You're activating the vagus nerve, which is actually um a nerve that helps us engage in something called the tend and befriend response. It's basically um when your body feels safe, and when um when there's this positive activation of the parasympathetic nervous system with the ventral vagus nerve, um, it's helping regulate the body again. It's helping bring you back into yourself again.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

That's so interesting. And you feel it, like just so you know, everyone. So what I felt was like this little sensation go like over my head and then start to move down. I'm gonna do that once we get off some more. I think that that's like a really important thing. Um, you know, other things are like I have this really cute little axle auto squishy. And I use that like if I know I'm gonna do um like a really highly um difficult client, um, not difficult in a sense that they are difficult, but I know that their background could bring up things for me, like I'll squish it because my anxiousness comes out in um like I pick my skin. So like I will squish the hell out of it in order to remind myself and ground myself and say, you know, this is my real life, I'm safe, I'm good. And so that what a that's a great trick. I'm gonna I'm gonna keep doing it today after we get off. Um, you know, one of the things that I mentioned in regards to my dad, um, in regards to that unresolved trauma. And I know for me in my first um relationship before I met my husband is a lot of that unsolved, like on unresolved trauma with my mom showed up in my like first real romantic relationship and like mirrored that that relationship that I had with my mom. So can you explain maybe um how some of this unresolved trauma can show up in the romantic relationships that people choose?

SPEAKER_02 43:32

Yeah, so we tend to be drawn to what we know. And those wounded parts of ourselves are desperate for healing. And so what can happen is if you've grown up in a chronically invalidating, manipulative, gaslighting environment, those parts of yourself that want the healing can place you in that environment again.

SPEAKER_01 43:57

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Relationships that um the same sort of need to people please, the same sort of need to shut yourself down, the same sort of need to um justify the other person's behavior happens again and again.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

Yep. Yep. And that, I mean, and there's two really great movies that are coming out, and they when this runs, they should have been out for some time. But the narcissist playbook and I love you, my narcissist, where they both address, yeah, they're really good. They both address issues. The narcissistic playbook is um by produced by Mark Vicente, who came out of the Nexium cult. And so he has Rachel Evan Woods in it, who was in a relationship with Marilyn Manson, and talks about it. We have a guest that's coming on um who talked about being in a narcissistic relationship with a woman for 12 years and talked about like how he kind of ended up in that. Um, whereas I love you, my narcissist is fact uh fiction and it's also non-fiction, Dr. Romani is in it, actually in both of these films, and she talks about how if you think that you're not gonna get caught up in a narcissistic relationship, just you wait, because it probably will happen. It's how you end up or stay in it, is the difference between that. And maybe you can talk about some of these patterns that you see in couples, where one or both of the partners have some of this like traumatic history and what happens.

SPEAKER_02 45:35

You know, we have this phrase in IFS that our partners are our tour mentors that they're on a tour to have the traumas of our past.

SPEAKER_01 45:46

Yep, yep. That's like it's so true. Um, my husband now that like I want to make clear that's not who it is. I think my first romantic relationship was very clearly that. And one of the things that I I don't know if you talked about in this in your psychology class, but one of the things, and it was, I can't remember if it was a family systems class or it was general psych, but they asked us to go and interview people, um, in particular like children. If you had the ability to have access to children, um, and you would go in and interview them and ask them who they would see in someone they a partner that they would date and someone they would marry. And um, I was uh doing a lot of volunteer work at this one school, and I remember asking the kids this question. My daughter was in the class, and I remember the person that she would date was actually the kind of person that she liked, and the person she would marry, she was mirroring it to her father figure at the time. And I was like, that was what woke me up because I was like, I think she said something to the effect of someone who yells all the time is someone who I would marry. And I was like, And she she was little, I think she was in first grade, so maybe six or seven, or seven or eight, one of the two. And I was like, that's not who I want for her, like that's not the person that I want for her, and then pretty quickly that relationship ended, and and you're right, we look for those tormentors when we don't have those things healed. And you know, what does like healthy communication actually look like when both people are triggered?

SPEAKER_02 47:41

You know, controversial opinion, yeah, I don't think it can happen when you're triggered.

SPEAKER_01 47:46

Yes, so yes, I agree with that. I agree with that a hundred percent.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

No, because look, if we're talking from a brain perspective, your prefrontal lobe, yeah, that's your area of your brain that cares about the relationship, that makes decisions, that engages in higher level functioning, that thinks about consequences, it is gone.

SPEAKER_01 48:10

Yes, consequences, that's the key word. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_02 48:14

Yes, but that's gone.

SPEAKER_01 48:16

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 48:16

And so I tell my couples look, you're not gonna have a caring, productive, or communicative conversation when you're triggered. So what we do instead is we implement something called the take a break technique. But a lot of people do it wrong. So yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:36

So explain this so people can hear it the right way. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 48:40

So you can't just leave, guys. That's not what we do. No, that's not what we do. What you need to do is let your partner know that you're triggered, that you need a break. And here's the key part when you are coming back. Yes. When you are coming back, yes. Because if you leave and you don't tell them when you're coming back, you just activated their attachment and their abandonment.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Yes, yes. And mine is off the hook. I have to say, always something that someone else says, like if we're dealing with clients in our normal work, if we're uh and I say normal work in the work that we do in our company together, if we're dealing with like executives or leaders where there's conflict between like the board and the leader, that's usually where I get triggered. Um, and I can manage people through that and work it through, but then I get triggered and I come off of my meetings and I'm usually lit and I'm like, this person did this and blah, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, there's this person, you know, my husband's like, okay, let's take a breath, let's calm down. Um, I recently posted this thing where I said, it's the pick, it's that video of that like dad hugging his daughter, and he's like, say, he's all repeat after me, I'm brave, I'm big, and I'm beautiful. And like, that's the way that I see my husband all the time. Like before, and this is gonna sound crazy, but before I was with him, I when I looked in the mirror, what I saw was like of just a woman who had scars and all this stuff all over her. I didn't see who I see today, and that to me is like that. My mother created that person, that that's who I saw all the time. Someone who I like visually looked at as ugly, just like it didn't look like I wanted to. And so that to me is crazy. I also want to call out, too, that I appreciate the fact that you just said when people are triggered that they can't have healthy communication.

SPEAKER_02 50:51

Not much.

SPEAKER_01 50:52

I think that's right. I think that's really important for people to understand because it doesn't mean that you're broken, it doesn't mean that you're not healing, it doesn't mean any of those things. And taking a break is totally okay. In negotiations, let's talk about negotiation, healthy negotiations, any type of negotiations, when things start to get heated, people take breaks. Because number one, you can't make a smart decision when you're triggered ever. You're gonna say, Oh yeah, I love chocolate, and maybe you hate chocolate, you know, like that. Those are the things that people who are narcissists or people who are trying to take advantage of you will jump on. So if they're forcing you to have that conversation when you're triggered, like that's something else for you to look at. And I think the other thing it does is it makes people question their self-trust.

unknown 51:44

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

Right. And so we often talk to people about slowing things down. Like, let's slow it down to speed up. That's what we say about a lot of things. And so, how do you help clients like really rebuild that self-trust so they know when to slow down, when they know when to listen to their their gut or they'll listen to their you know, brain um instead of pushing it to the side?

SPEAKER_02 52:10

So there's a couple of different things that I do with my clients, but one of the things we start with is helping them listen to their gut. And I don't mean that metaphorically. What we actually found out is that the gut acts as the second brain. So the brain can be tricked because of past experiences, but the gut practice the gut processes the same chemicals that get released through the body, and it's harder to trick because it's not relying as much on past experiences. So, what we do when we're in sessions together is I'll have people slow down and I'll ask them, Well, when you're telling me that he, she, they did XYZ, what does it feel like in your body? What's your gut telling you? Or um, one of my favorite things is to ask, if your best friend was telling you this story, what would your reaction be? But we also look at a pattern of things too. So, like rather than me pointing out to people, um, do you see that this is gaslighting? Do you see that this was manipulation? Do you see that this is love bombing? I want my clients to come to those conclusions on their own. So I encourage them to write it down, see if you can find any patterns. Bring it into session and we can discover together. Does this feel familiar? Because if it is, this is a pattern. You're you're not um you're not mistaken. They're they're wanting you to feel like you're mistaken, but you're not.

SPEAKER_01 53:40

This is a pattern. Well, and you know, it's interesting that you bring up the gut. I think that I want to um kind of tease that out a little bit. I know for me personally, um, that was one of the first things that as I was going through healing, that constantly was a thing. When I would bring up things to heal with, my stomach would start to hurt.

SPEAKER_03 54:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 54:03

And it like, and what people who are abusing you narcissistically will do is say, Oh, that's just a stomach ache. And they will dismiss it. Or, oh, you know what? We need to go to the doc. Like, because there was medical abuse involved with my mom. It was we need to go to the doctor, there's something wrong with you. No, bitch, you are giving me a stomach ache. Like, that is what it's uh the conclusion I have come to. My tummy hurt because you were doing something you weren't supposed to do. Yes. And for people who like I think of my like my my oldest daughter and then my um my youngest bonus daughter, they are they have like this way of like they're very sensitive. And I say that not in a negative way, in a like they will start to feel things just a little bit before somebody else feels it. Like they will start to feel like maybe there's a danger. My husband's the same way, maybe there's like a danger where there's just something off in the ether a little bit. Um, you uh oftentimes like service dogs. Um, when you have a service dog, maybe your child has um diabetes and their their blood sugar goes down, a service dog, we are animals. So we it those things that we push down that we've evolved to ignore, that it's still there. You just have to tap into it. And I think that is a really important thing. So for me, it's always a tummy. If I like start to feel that drop, or if there's a situation or um maybe my husband and I have experienced like an event, the same kind of event, and I'll say when we get in the car, that was a little off, right? And then he'll say, Oh, yeah, this is this is what I was saying. I was okay, just making sure. Um, you know, what you know, how do you help people realize or separate um who they are from their survival skills that they've developed?

SPEAKER_02 56:09

You know, I think this is when IFS can be really helpful because that is a part of you, not the whole of you. So, like if you're somebody who does tend to people please are fawn, you don't want to abandon that part. We're not saying that it's bad, we're not saying that it's evil. What we're saying is that because of what happened to you, that part became rigid, that part became inflexible. There's a time and a place to focus on um the relationship and making sure everyone is comfortable. But that part, because of what you went through, took over. It completely blended with you. And so I tell my clients, look, this part has helped you survive. This part made sure that you were safe. It is not the whole of who you are though.

SPEAKER_01 57:03

That's really important. I think that's a really important thing because you know, I I often tease about how rigid I am in certain things as a result of, you know, just the abuse that has happened in my life. Um, like I talk about moving furniture. Like I get real antsy around furniture starting to move in the house. And, you know, my husband bought this house 20 years ago. This is like when I moved in eight years ago, this has been like my spot. This has been the the safety. And I think for me, that's deeply rooted. Like we were moving all the time as a kid. My parents lost their house um during the divorce. We didn't know where we were gonna go. So that's something, you know, that although I'd never experienced being unhoused, my mom constantly talked about it. It was, oh, your dad's not giving us enough money. Oh, your dad's not doing this. And it was a it was constant that we would lose our housing. And for me, like that is something. So moving furniture is something that triggers that. Because I think of moving. Whereas my husband's like, this is our home, this is where we live, we can design it however we want when we move our like there. That's the healthy side of it. Where I'm like, okay, but if we move the furniture, or if we do this, and he's like, What he has done to help me with that is like, hey, so I was thinking about doing this. What are your thoughts? And I'm like, Oh, I think that would be great. And then as it happens, I'm not as antsy. Yeah. Because he didn't, he was like, I didn't realize that that was something that would bother you. Well, I didn't realize it. I didn't realize it until I started healing. And I think for you know, a lot of people that I work with, and I'm assuming a lot of people you work with, for and for people who are listening to this, maybe you stumbled upon us and you don't have a narcissistic mom, or you don't have a narcissistic partner. You just think that we're two really groovy chicks and you're listening to us. So maybe they're like, you know, that doesn't seem like it was that bad. Oftentimes my clients say that. I had one client say to me, but what if my mom wasn't that bad? And you know, I haven't told you about all the good things she's doing, right? So what would you say to them if they are kind of stuck in that mode?

SPEAKER_02 59:30

I'd say to them, I have a question. Is having your brain hijacked really not bad?

SPEAKER_01 59:42

I think that is a really valid question. And a lot of times when I ask questions around this too, I often say, and this came from Kirsten, um, what if you were saying all that you're saying, but it was a romantic partner instead of your mom? Tell me what you would say to that person, right? Because it's easy for me to be like, that lady's a bitch. I can't believe that you're still with her, or that guy's a total jerk, or a total asshole. I can totally see that. Um, and oftentimes, and I would love to call it out here too, because I think there's a lot of uh conversation going on with, you know, I call it cheese make, that's what gossip is. Hot gas is in Spanish cheese. And so there's a lot of you know, cheese make going on about celebrities and all that kind of stuff. I always say, like, listen, understand that there's two sides to the story. And if you're Rachel Evan Wood and you're telling the story of Marilyn Manson, like there and the stuff that was going on, there's something else there. But something else underneath that. And I think that this comes to this this question of what's something that you wish people understood about healing from this narcissistic abuse? Like, what what do you wish they knew?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:17

I really want them to know that this is not about them being weak. This is not about them not trying hard. Somebody rewired your brain, and somebody rewired your nervous system, and not only that, they're using four neurochemicals to their advantage. They're using oxytocin by having respond to them through physical touch and through love, and through they are using dopamine by um love bombing you and giving you rewards and showering you with compliments. Then you're withdrawing from it when they uh when they reject you or when they stonewall you. They are using um cortisol and adrenaline, the stress hormones to activate you. This is not in your head. This is this is physiological, this is neurological, this is psychological. So this is gonna take a while, and that's okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:22

It's okay. I mean, I say it often that healing is not linear, right? And I think the really important thing is I think Zoe Dashnelle and New Coral said it best like shut it down, like shut down. Shut it down because you can find your people, you can find people that you can work with, you can find people who understand. And I think this is a really important part when you're looking for a therapist, which I'm gonna have Megan share the ways that you can work with her when you're looking for a coach, is not having to share this part of like you don't have to convince us. You don't have to convince us that your parent or your romantic partner was a narcissist. Once you start telling your story or talking about what happened, we'll be able to know. It'll be really freaking clear. And that's why it's really important to go to people who understand this abuse specifically. And so I think that it's really important to, you know, build up the book of therapists that work with this and coaches that work with this. And I say this because we work usually side by side. It's like this little superpower relationship that we work side by side, but how can people find you and work with you if they do? Because so you're licensed in California. I know that. Where else can you work?

SPEAKER_02 1:03:47

Um, I can work in Idaho as well. Oh, okay. And um my business is connecting pathways, trauma and marriage therapy, Inc. But we also have a group on Facebook too. It's um yes, Kirsten, myself, and Eileen, who I hope you see soon.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:09

Okay, good.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:10

We formed a group together so that way us clinicians who do specialize in this are able to consult with each other and um kind of have support. And so for anyone interested, they can always see if somebody is a part of the narcissistic abuse treatment professional group. Okay. Um and I really recommend looking for somebody who is certified in working with narcissistic abuse because even a really good therapist, they can fall into the narcissistic charm too. So how many knows and is trained in it is really important.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:49

Absolutely. I think that's really important. And I'll I'll leave people with the story. My mom, when I was in high school, I think the peak of her narcissism came out. Um, I haven't talked to her in about 11 years now. And I think some of that had to do timed with perimenopause. Not saying that perimenopause causes narcissism, but uh it like it basically like amplified it, which makes sense because of hormones and all that stuff that was going on. And so I get I get that 100%. Um, I remember going to the school counselor, which shout out to school counselors because they do amazing work, and I think that they're they need more support because there are things that come up like this, and there are definitely um actions that are taken into play that help with this. But uh I I remember going in and telling her, you know, there's this weird thing that happens with my mom. Like I see her do something and then I'll like say, Hey, blah, blah, blah, blah, and she'll try to tell me that she's not doing that. Or she'll like, and there weren't words for this back then. know i mean i was in high school god uh let's see 35 years ago or 30 years ago so 30 years ago when i was 15 16 talking about it with this counselor and she's like well why don't we have your mom come in i was like no no no no like no like don't no and she's all no it'll be fine this is common i was like no please don't bring her in and like i tried to talk to her and and she came in anyway and my mom i remember say i said something like mom you don't understand when you lock me out of the house that means i can't study and i can't do things and she's like i've never locked you out of the house oh ha ha ha ha ha ha and i was like are you i knew this was gonna happen i knew this but i was like are you kidding me I'm all no this woman does lock me out of the house and the crap that I got afterwards I remember um I I was driving so I was 16 I went over to my grandparents' house after because they lived close and I was like I just I can't do it anymore I talked to my grandfather I was like I can't do it anymore and because my mom immigrated here from the Philippines unfortunately my dad's side of the family said that I think some of it had to do with their own racism but that's a whole nother topic they said that it's because she was an immigrant that she was acting like this and I was like no that's that's not the case like she's a fucking narcissist like you don't understand and I I said something I didn't say narcissist I said she's abusive is what I said and um because the words weren't there 35 years ago like I don't I I can't remember when narcissistic personality disorder came into the DSM but it just wasn't something that was talked about. It's talked about now all the time I think um in a poppy way like people will say oh you're gaslighting me or whatever there is again I'll say five like you have to have five of the nine criteria to be a narcissist like there's a whole like chapter on personality disorders and like you have to look at all of this and you could have tendencies like someone could have narcissistic tendencies and not be a narcissist. Like I think a key indicator of whether or not you are a narcissist is lacking of empathy. That is like extremely important. And then as you start to wave into that you get into sociopaths and various other things. So all that to say in you have to be really trained well as a therapist as a coach to know whether or not you're dealing with someone who has a narcissistic personality disorder because if not if you don't you could cause damage like this person did which I don't think she meant to do on purpose. So um I just want to thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate all that you're doing and my hope is that I can have you on again and that we can talk more about narcissistic personality disorder because it's probably one of my favorite things to talk about.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:14

Well thank you so much for having me. I would love to be back and if you ever have any questions in the future feel free to reach out.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:22

I will thank you. A huge thank you to Megan Woods for sharing your expertise compassion and insight with us today. One of the biggest takeaways from this conversation is this what happened to you is not all in your head. Narcissistic abuse impacts the brain the body and nervous system and the way we move through the world healing takes time and you're not weak for needing this time. If this episode resonates with you please subscribe leave a review and share it with someone who may need to hear that they aren't alone. I'm your host Nalani Pearl Hernandez and until next time take gentle care of yourself.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:07

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