[breadcrumb]

 

Over the years, so many people have asked me this: ‘Did my childhood have anything to do with me being narcissistically abused as an adult?’

You may have made the link between a painful childhood and sustaining narcissistic abuse as an adult. Maybe abuse is all you have ever known.

Or maybe there was something more subtle going on that made you susceptible to narcissists – without you even understanding what that could possibly be.

In today’s VERY IMPORTANT Thriver TV episode, I want to help you understand vital physiological truths about how your ability to deal with stresses was formed as a child; how this may have been compromised and what that has to do with sustaining trauma as an adult.

I know this is going to answer some very important questions for you – as well as allow you to learn how to heal for REAL from these fractures and traumas today.

 

 

Video Transcript

So many people ask me often, ‘Has my childhood contributed to me being narcissistically abused?’

The answerer is a resounding ‘Yes’.

Is it enough to know this to get out of the horrors of narcissistic abuse? It’s a starting point but not the complete answer. True healing and solution can only come from rectifying the traumatic emotional inner imprints of our childhood. Because then we can have a solid and healthy Inner Identity which is no longer susceptible to abuse.

Today, in this very important Thriver TV episode, you will understand how your childhood has set you up for abuse and also how to heal for real, even if healthy relationships, love and connection have never been modelled for you.

Okay, so before we get started I want to remind you that if you haven’t yet subscribed to my channel please do. And if you like this video, please make sure you hit the like button.

Today there is so much I could cover, but I want to address the most important points. This is vital because I believe that we could spend decades in therapy without a result if we don’t just cut straight to the chase.

I have done episodes on narcissistic parenting before and I will share these resources with this video, but today I want to talk especially about our impaired emotional development as children and how this has lined us up for narcissistic abuse – as well as how to heal it for real.

Before I explain the trauma received in our childhoods, let’s just lay some foundational understandings about trauma.

What Is Trauma?

Trauma is the inability to deal with a certain stressful situation, which causes feeling overwhelmed and powerless.

Trauma, in short, is not being able to process difficult emotions to completion and then enact the solution. This is when trauma is internalised and has a life of its own inside our brain and nervous systems. It impacts our emotions, our thinking and often every part of our life.

Please understand the trauma centres and functions of your brain that deal with stresses are in your right-brain section. Trauma is generated within your emotional and nervous systems centres and therefore is stored in and affects your body.

When we are in tune with our Beings, we know how true this is. What I mean by this is that when you receive a trigger relating to an unhealed trauma you feel the ‘pang’ in your body. It may be a heaviness, a feeling of butterflies in your stomach, a shock of ‘cold ice’ through your veins, or you may start sweating and shaking. All sorts of processes start firing off in your body, including the urge to flee, react into defences (fight) or even shut done where you literally can’t think, answer or even move (freeze).

These are all right brain, instinctual functions; survival mechanisms that fire up when wise, clear and ‘safe’ problem-solving centres within your nervous system and brain are not on-line.

Unresolved stresses become traumas.

Stresses occur in life and will always be a part of our everyday life, forever. Whether or not they take us down and out into trauma depends on how we deal with them. A life of CPTSD (Complicated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and anxiety and depression and powerlessness (victimhood) versus continually up-levelling ourselves and situations into more and more opportunity, growth and joy, evolution and greater interconnectedness with ourselves, life and others (powerful-ness).

The ability to do this depends on how healthily the emotional centres of our right brain and our nervous systems are functioning.

One of the gravest mistakes we can make regarding trying to regulate and manage our trauma is thinking that the answer is cognitive. It isn’t – in fact our left-brain logical functions can’t communicate with our right brain. They don’t help us process trauma through to completion and they don’t assist in developing these centres to deal with challenges and stresses effectively.

Truly, left-brain interception only invalidates and injures the right-side trauma centres even more – as you will discover later in this episode.

The Vital Understanding of What Trauma Does

Trauma is the culprit through and through.

If we have received trauma that has impacted us, it not only affects our brain and our entire nervous system, it also creates embedded belief systems that form our Inner Identity.

These traumatic beliefs become our reality and we can easily remain a victim to them – because they become self-fulfilling prophecies that keep us replaying the same traumatic patterns and disappointments over and over again, despite how hard we may try to avoid them. This is absolutely the case with narcissistic abuse when we find ourselves stuck in grave, and even life-threatening, trauma that is tearing us apart. Even though we know it is shocking and extremely bad for us we can feel powerless to let go.

Trauma does this – we feel like we have no voice or rights and that there is nobody dependable to step in and be the buffer, protect and help. We feel alone, isolated and confused.
Powerlessness takes over.

In our helplessness with trauma, the shame and guilt of not being able to cope is overwhelming; we don’t believe we are good enough or capable enough or strong enough to have a solution. Often we blame ourselves from the problems and stay connected to the narcissist, trying to fix things or be ‘better’ no matter what is happening to us. We feel defective and damaged and ‘wrong’.

This is why it’s important to understand what happened in your childhood to set you up for this and how it is not your fault. One of my greatest wishes for this TTV episode is to let you know that you are NOT defective, no matter how much you may feel like you are. What has happened to you is the ‘normal’ consequences of unconscious parenting, which sadly has been a product of parenting in our former generations. No-one taught anyone better!

Let’s have a look at what happened to us as children.

How Trauma Occurred as Children

Firstly, I want to start off by being very clear about one very important thing – this episode is in no way about blaming our parents. And I really mean that because no matter what they did and how they behaved, they were also a product of trauma – the way they were parented and the levels of trauma that preceded them in their families.

Once you understand this, you will realise how the feeling and emotional centres of our brain are formed and therefore appreciate the capacity each and every human being, including abusers, has in relation to relating to themselves, life and others.

Okay, let’s start right from the beginning – disappointments, challenges, and threats begin as a very small child.

These include being hungry and requiring food; hurting oneself or being scared and needing comfort; or feeling physically distressed and requiring restoration such as in the changing of a soiled diaper. Little children are completely codependent on a stable caregiver granting survival necessities as well as emotional comfort when in need.

If we have a present caregiver, who models safety and comfort for us, then the parts of our right-brain, which is the first side of our brain to develop when we are little, and our connected nervous systems can start to form healthily.

These are our emotional and social centres responsible for developing our beliefs about ourselves, our place in the world and other human beings. This healthy development is essential to having a solid and whole Core Identity.

I want you to understand that the ‘presence’ of a stable caregiver is imperative for the development of our right-brain emotional centres, so as to instil in us the vital ingredients of love, comfort and safety. This has to be ‘age appropriate’ to the child. We have to ‘feel’ the connection somatically in our Being for it to be real for us.

Logical action and provisions and purely ‘adult’ reactions do not translate to right-brain communication.

‘Come on snap out of it!’ to a small distressed child is never going to provide the comfort and healing that a heart-to-heart cuddle and soft cooing will. In fact, it is only going to compound the trauma of feeling ‘unsafe and unsupported’ even more.

To reach and soothe the compromised emotional centres, the input has to be things like caring physical touch and heartfelt words and sounds. Trauma is created from emotional sensory input that registers in the right brain, and the resolution can only come through the physical and emotional senses – the body being an effective way to deliver this.

I have had so many clients and NARP members over the years who, when I talk to them about the necessity to heal core trauma, say to me, ‘My parents were awesome, they always encouraged me and supported me in everything I wanted to do.’

My questions in response to this are, ‘Did they have time to just be with you, hold you in times of need, look you in the eyes and tell you how much they loved you? Could you confide in your parents and have them hear you and be there for you? Would they listen, allow you to be you and let you know how special you are?’

Yes, of course children need boundaries, to learn limits and how to handle disappointment, and to experience cause and effect (personal responsibility), but unless they know they are loved and valuable for who they are, then the emotional centres responsible for self-worth, self-love, self-value and resilience to challenges are seriously compromised.

I know your parents may have been terribly busy in survival mode, most of ours were, either practically or trying to deal with their own trauma. Could they be right-brain present with us so that our own right brain could develop properly?

Probably not.

Now, here’s the thing – right brain and nervous system centres begin forming when we are a foetus in utero. It is now scientifically proven that the mother’s emotional state and her ability to regulate her own emotions is a big contributor to how a child’s right brain centres start developing. If she is stressed without her own resources to integrate these stresses to completion, this directly compromises the child’s right-brain formation.

But the plot thickens and deepens even more, because the scientific study of epigenetics now tells us that the ability of certain genes to switch on or off is inherited. If we have come from ancestors who suffered trauma, then the parts of our right brain that could handle stress effectively for us may be shut down from birth. We may have over-formed, hyper-aroused centres and amygdalae, meaning rather than anchoring into our Core Identity to deal with stresses (which is the centre for our personal power), we will dissociate from our own Being, look outwards and get hooked into trying to control the uncontrollable (which is anything and anyone that is not us).

All of this brings in increased fractures within and without our lives – meaning more trauma and more traumatic events.

How Disassociation in Childhood Leads to Ongoing Trauma

If we didn’t have a functioning developed Core Identity (dependent on right brain and nervous system health), then we were carrying trauma after trauma because we had limited ability to integrate stresses to completion.

The biggest traumas to have impacted us as children were not the disappointments, frights, lack of safety or discomfort that we experienced – they were the traumas we experienced because a safe, functional caretaker did not show up to help us integrate these things back to calm and safety.

As children, we simply did not have the developed inner-resource centres to do this for ourselves, and therefore it became too traumatising to be ‘ourselves’, alone with these unresolved feelings inside of us – it was far too overwhelming. Then shame and guilt joined in, as well as self-blame for having painful emotions and possibly for causing angst or disruption to our parents for expressing them.

We learned it was wrong to feel. We disengaged from our bodies and from our emotions to survive. We checked out and zoned out – we self-medicated our feelings away with fantasy, distractions and even addictive and self-compulsive behaviours.

As we were growing up, rather than becoming more developed in our right brain, which is our connection and gateway to Self, Life, others and our Higher Power (True Source), we became more reliant on our left brain, which is not the master or healer of our right brain.

In fact, the left brain follows the body – it is ruled by the painful and fractured right brain beliefs we have about certain topics. Our left brain will agree with these beliefs and grant us all the excuses and justifications to bring these painful beliefs to fruition.

This is where the traumatic self-fulfilling prophecies that were established in childhood come into play. It’s so important to understand that trauma affects every part of the brain, both left and right.

Let’s say that when we were young no one was there for us to know in a right-brain way that we were supported and protected. We grew up believing ‘It’s up to me. No one is there for me.’ The result is that we will continually connect to people who we co-generate lack of support with – by rejecting any genuine support offered and trying fruitlessly to get it from people who are unavailable to give it.

Then we say, ‘See I’m right!’

Of course, all this is unconscious! Until we wake up and start healing and integrating and coming out of the self-generative trance, we believe that this is happening ‘to’ us rather than ‘through’ us.

The same goes for the traumatic beliefs about things like ‘People who are supposed to love me aren’t interested in me’. And even with tons of cognitive therapy and awareness of this, we may still connect with people who are ‘apparently’ recovering workaholics or who have been in therapy for previous adultery. We believe them to be healed, even though they still act out high-risk behaviours. And then we experience ‘being unimportant and discarded’ again.

The fuel to ‘be’ with people and situations who represents ongoing trauma comes from the right-brain, pre-programmed belief systems we established in our childhood which is then supplemented by the elaborate ideas and justifications that our left brain makes up to follow these beliefs – regardless of what we try to think and formulate.

This all happens because we are not healed and integrated or anchored to inner core truths and values in our body. We are dissociative. We are not yet safe to ‘be’ in our body.

Until we resolve our core trauma through our nervous systems, cells in our body and our right brain, and are able to be self-partnered in our body, this is the sad reality and the prison that we can be continually stuck in – and understandably it makes our trauma pile even bigger.

It makes it even harder to ‘be’ with ourselves – present in real time, in our own Being. We disassociate even more – to the point where we may not be able to feel anything except the rushes of our trauma, which are possibly now being triggered off randomly and continually within us.

This is exactly what Complicated Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is. We may believe it is to do with what has happened to us, however, the truth about this chronic reoccurring and ever-constant unsafe feeling is that we are NOT home within.

When we aren’t self-partnered, we are not in touch with Who We Are or what is or isn’t healthy for us. We don’t have access to our True Self power – we are a Being without a compass or rudder being tossed around mercilessly by Life.

This makes us highly susceptible to narcissists – beings who are highly exploitative, manipulative and pathological who pretend to be the person we need for us to feel safe and loved while using our disconnection with ourselves to mine our energy, life-force and resources.

When we awaken, we realise that the answer to all of this is NOT to try to control, research and monitor things and people outside of us or to keep believing and fuelling the self-fulfilling prophecies that our emotional centres keep playing out incredibly convincingly. The only remedy comes from waking up to the truth and turning inwards to do the necessary inner work to repair – where it needs it be repaired – at our Core.

The True Solution to Our Childhood Trauma and Ongoing Adult Trauma

Have I explained to you enough that the issue, the seat of this, is to do with your right-brain and nervous system?

I hope so, because this is where so many people go horribly wrong – trying to heal and restore themselves with left-brain tactics.

Your healing is going to be no more effective with research, cognitive therapy, investigating and learning, than your right-brain development was as a child when being told to ‘Snap out of it!’

I have found that the solution is turning inwards to your feelings, connecting with your Inner Self, experiencing shifts of trauma releasing, which are performed through direct visualisation, and then somatically feeling the subsequent healing.

These are all strategies that communicate with your right brain and nervous system, and start releasing the fractures and healing these centres back to wholeness.

The greatest minds in neuroscience and trauma recovery now understand that bodywork is key – that it’s through movement, feeling adaptation and sensory input that the right brain shifts, releases and integrates trauma so that people can finally feel resolved, safe and at home in their bodies.

Speaking from total personal experience – the entire success of our life is about being safe and whole in our own body. Without that we are constantly in trauma trying to survive ourselves, life and others.

I’ve lived both ways and I promise you the difference between them is heaven and hell.

Your greatest mission to get your life right is to be whole in your body. Everything else will come from there.

The startling thing that completely astounded me when I started healing myself from the inside out – at my Core Identity – was that I didn’t have to try to learn how to manage my trauma anymore. It was simply gone. I also didn’t have to learn how to be different for my life to work, or even how to love and accept myself.

When I effectively released trauma from within, these things organically came on line without me trying to learn anything.

This was a far cry from my previous belief that the best I could ever expect after a complete adrenal and psychotic breakdown (due to extreme trauma overload) was a lifetime of ongoing therapy and drugs to try to survive and manage my trauma.

Until Quanta Freedom Healing™, which I developed as my right-brain/nervous system super-healing tool, I hadn’t realised the incredible Higher Power organism that we are and the ability we have to repair ourselves when we release our trauma and fill where it was with Source, through specific visualisations that evoke specific feelings.

I didn’t realise that we have the power to simply come back on-line and re-member and be-come Who We Already Are.

This is where science and spirituality come together as a powerhouse of healing. When you work with the physiological facts as well as enlist a Higher Power that can heal what we logically can’t and connect to it in a somatic, right-brain way, everything heals and becomes more whole than you have ever known it to be.

The new science of epigenetics teaches us this: if we change the environment, which is ourselves, then we can completely change our genes and our life – beyond recognition.

This is what I’m talking about – and what myself and so many people in this community are living. You need to know, to heal your right brain effectively you can’t just keep reading articles or watching YouTube; you have to start the real inner healing work.

And I’d love you to let me show you how, gently, safely and powerfully, by clicking this link.

I really hope this episode has helped you.

And if you want to see more of my videos, please subscribe so that you will be notified as soon as each new one is released. And if you liked this – click like. Also, please share with your communities so that we can help people awaken to these truths.

And, as always, I am so looking forward to answering your comments and questions below.

 

[mc4wp_form id="7704"]

Related blog post

Thriver Talks Special: Healing Financial Prosperity After Abuse

Read More

Repetitive Compulsion Disorder and Abuse

Read More

Commments (57) + Leave a comments

57 thoughts on “How Childhood Trauma Makes Us Susceptible to Narcissists

  1. Such an important message for those, like myself, that found that early childhood abuse made us so vulnerable to narcissists. Unconsciously I sent out all the messages that my unhealed traumas were an easy way to manipulate me into being a great source of supply. Instead of getting the love and security I craved I got the opposite and lingered too long. Cognitive behavioural therapy healed nothing and only enabled me to express intellectually what was happening to me – “the freeze” response. I handed this intellectual info to the narcissist on a plate and he fractured my soul with it.

    I found Melanie and the NARP program. After a lot of hard work I no longer experience CPTSD its not my reality anymore.
    I am my own source of love and security. I no longer hand power over to others. I have gone from unconscious to conscious. I really encourage anyone struggling to work this program. The approach gets results and the support in the community is invaluable.

    I continue to work the program as a life tool so I can continue to grow and expand. I can give my inner child the parent she always craved – me. Everything we need is within.

    Very thankful to Melanie and her life changing program.

    With love
    Sandrina

    1. Hi Sandrina,

      Awww I am so thrilled that you, like me and so many others who were able to release and live free from our trauma with the use of NARP http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp

      So many of us had tried to get resolution logically, or to try to manage our traumas, yet life is better than ever imagined when we start living free of them.

      Our lives really begin!

      Thank you for encouraging others Sandrina, our traumas from our history do not have to be a life sentence!

      Wishing you every continued blessing in your life.

      Lots of love

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

    2. Hi Mel,
      I’ve never come across such an accurate reading of my life. Thank you for supporting us and giving us real hope. Just by reading, i already feel positive (just to finally have someone who seems to really understand). Your work is amazing.
      Much love.

  2. I cannot believe that I’ve read this article tonight which address every single issue I’m grappling with right now. Is there really light at the end of this long, dark tunnel I’ve been living in for my entire adult life? My response is to want to believe, but as with everything in my life, I question the reality of this ray of hope for a better life. But deep in my heart and soul I know that I must start right now, right here, before the fight to find a truth for myself and in myself disappears along with the woman I’ve fought for so valently all my life. I am Sixty-seven years old and hanging onto this glimmer of hope that I pray will help me heal within and develop the strength and wisdom I need to change my life for the better before my time runs out.

    1. Hi Ginny,

      Sweet lady please know there is hope.

      There have been beautiful brave Thrivers in their 80s who have used my NARP Program to release trauma and reprogram and start living the life they deserve.

      I invite you to come into my free workshop to connect to Quanta Freedom Healing which is my process to find, target, release and reprogram our trauma in powerful ways and time frames that just aren’t contemporarily possible.

      You will feel how ‘real’ this is when you connect to the information http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/freewebinar

      Please also know that all NARP members receive NARP Forum access where you have your Thriver Tribe, a literal army of angels to help support you as you process your inner transformation, with grave, love and kindness.

      You don’t have to do this alone.

      http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/member

      Your soul is so valuable Ginny and totally worth healing.

      Blessings and breakthroughs to you.

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

    2. Ginny, please please do Melanie’s program. I have done so much healing works in other types of programs but nothing has brought the change in my life that this has. It’s hard every time to face the hurts inside as they come up through her sessions but it only hurts for a little. Healing follows and those things don’t come back to hurt again. It’s done! The price her program costs is what one hour witn a counselor costs but it eeps supplying healing as long as you need it. Thanks so much Melanie!

      1. Thank you so much Bronwyn on your comments to Ginny to look into doing Melanie’s NARP programme. I can see it’s some months ago that you made your comment to Ginny, so I hope you manage to receive my reply to you.

        As a result of your comments to Ginny you have encouraged and enlightened me to move forward and commit to Melanie’s NARP programme.

        I’m a newcomer to this forum and of course as some newcomer’s can be, I’m naturally curious and hungry to gain information as to better improve my current circumstances. I am 68 years old and have been struggling for so so long to set myself free from narcissistic abuse.

        I’m seriously thinking of attending one of Melanie’s upcoming workshops in the East of Australia. I live in Western Australia.

        Your message indicates to me that yes the healing can hurt, but the pain has some gain to it. You have chosen your words well and they are very comforting to me. I am going to join NARP tonight.

        Thank you once again for your loving input into helping others you do not know.

        Warm regards

        Ros xx

    3. Dear Ginny

      I am 67 years old and signed up for this programme in July 2018. I had been listening for about 3 years and something devastating happened to me with my only daughter.
      I can only recommend Melanie’s work. I met her when she came to London in February of this year and she is true to her word. She has healed her body from traum and I could feel that.

      My experience so far with the programme is that it brings me relief and space in my body and I am now seeing little seeds beginning to sprout in my life.
      I know it takes courage and strength and you have those as you have got to this now.

      I hope you do not mind me replying to you but I wanted to support my peer.

      Best wishes
      Reena.

      1. Dear Reena,

        I’ve just sent a response to Bronwyn’s message to Ginny. I’ve also just read your loving message to Ginny.

        I hope you have access to reading this message I’m now writing to you. As a newcomer, I’m not entirely sure how comments are shared to one another.

        Anyway, if you happen to receive this message, I’d also like to say a big thank you for for sharing your encouraging experiences with doing the NARP programme and your comments that you had the privilege of meeting Melanie in London earlier this year.

        Like Bronwyn’s comments to Ginny were, also, your comments to Ginny have been just as encouraging to me as Bronwyn’s were to her.

        Thank you once again, for your loving support to those of us struggling at this present time.

        Love Ros xx

  3. So, SO very true! Paranoid schizophrenic father, narcissistic mother who pitted siblings against each other and a beating with a 2×4 at age 12 sure as anything set the stage for a lifetime of confusing, defensive and inappropriate reactions and a low sense of self esteem. To this day the “golden child” says get over it, why do you hang on to it. Perfect fodder for the narc’s who have previously entered my life. Melanie, your program has helped me learn and clarify so much in my life it would be impossible to express my gratitude. I can now see how I literally was a magnet for narc’s with a need to people please even when I was uncomfortable doing it. A literal floor mat to all.
    Although it’s a little late in life to learn (68), I’m grateful to finally have an understanding of it all, a stronger sense of self and a healthier self esteem. Your work and experiences have directly influenced my life and it’s personal growth. Previous therapy never really helped but your program gave me an understanding that was always missing.
    Namaste Melanie, Namaste!

    1. Awww Donna,

      I am so happy NARP helped you heal and breakthrough after such a traumatic childhood.

      You have moved mountains of trauma out, and you should be so proud of you!

      Please know how welcome you are Dear Lady. I feel so honoured and humbled that myself and NARP helped.

      Much love and continued blessings to you.

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

  4. Hi Melanie

    Thank you, very helpful comments as I had not realised how childhood trauma is so impactful on the right side of the brain. I am aware of past life, time in the womb and genetic influences on early trauma imprints. I have had to clear quite a lot of multi-dimensional influences as well. I find your work accurate, clear and insightful, thank you. I hope the Quanta Freedom healing tools will be more effective for me now. Thank you for your comments on a recent posting of mine.

    Love and blessings
    Kathy

    1. Hi Kathy,

      You are very welcome and I’m so pleased this video and my reply has helped.

      Sending you more blessings and breakthroughs which you thoroughly deserve and have worked hard for.

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

  5. Wow, this is such a beautiful post! It is wonderful and it looked if I was walking through my childhood. Whatever you said is 100% true. We need to love the inner child that resides in the right brain and when he/she is soothed and loved unconditionally, then and only then we can rise and enjoy life. It is a beautiful work. Melanie, you have really helped so many of us. I really thank you for your work. It is awesome and I wish you get the nobel peace prize because inner peace can only bring the outer peace in the world. So with so without. Kudos to Melanie Tonia Evans!

  6. Wonderful video Melanie thank you. I’ve lived the truth of all you said. Decades of counselling and medication attempting to heal childhood trauma. Those things kept me alive, yet just as you said , I was shame bound and locked into an inner identity of defectiveness and not feeling worthy of, good enough for more than that..just being alive. ….Then looking for safety and love in all the wrong places…( relationship with narcissist ) shattered me again. I’m so happy to read here in the comments today that other people like me in their sixties now are finding what I have with you and your work Mel: the tools and support to find REAL healing and the gift of finding our true selves. And discovering , as all those false beliefs and old terrors heal that we are always worthy of our own loving attention, and devotion to our healing work. And heaven knows it is work and lots of effort , it’s not a magic trick. Yet I feel that nothing matters more in our lives. At least for me that’s been true. For anyone who is struggling or tired or fearful of starting or getting through this healing program, I’m here to affirm that every single aspect of Melanie’s work IS safe, gentle and highly transformative. Thank you for making the complex subject of trauma and it’s effects and healing so clear and comprehensible Mel, much love and blessings coming you way 🙏🌺💛💖

    1. Awww Val,

      My heart fills with joy for you!

      I’m so proud of your efforts after a lifetime of trauma and abuse, as I am so many lovely Thrivers who now know that age, or what has been lost, is no barrier.

      I feel honoured and humbled to be sharing this beautiful journey with you.

      So much love to you Dear Lady.

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

  7. So true Melanie, I worked on it a lot and it really changes everything. Thank you for bring this message into words and share it with the world.

  8. About 15 years ago , as part of medical treatment I received to treat severe depression related to childhood trauma…I had a series of 8 ECT treatments ( shock therapy or electrical shock applied to the brain under anaesthetic). It didn’t help, it was horrible and caused memory blocks I still have. Just another reason why your programs have been such a gift to me Melanie. That’s how psychiatrists used to treat trauma and it’s effects not so long ago. It was a horrible experience. Thank Heaven for this video , all it speaks to and all your work Melanie ❤️

    1. Oh Val,

      I’m so horrified you went through that beautiful angel.

      Thank goodness Val you, as I did too, through Quanta Freedom Healing, found out how to heal for real in a safe, loving and beautifully supportive way.

      Thank you for for being you sweetheart and supporting me, this mission and our wonderful community the way you do.

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

  9. Thank you Melanie. So true. Our core identity and sense of boundaries are key to the health of our relationships, the foundations of which are laid down in our childhood. I look at the behaviour patterns that have run through generations of my family and can see how a combination of enmeshed and disengaged family dynamics and trans-generational trauma has created complex PTSD within various family members; including myself. It is clear that behavioural inheritance (not genetic inheritance) is behind all so-called ‘psychiatric disorders’, which are in themselves the effects of trauma and not the causes. I feel no blame towards anyone in my family, because I can see that we are all survivors of trauma.

    I’m beginning to see how I’ve unconsciously allowed certain individuals in to invade my boundaries because of early boundary violations and how I’ve been ‘easy prey’ for both overtly and covertly narcissistic individuals. Every stage of my development from babyhood, childhood and adolescence was thwarted by the ‘criticism, rejection, abandonment and punishment’ you refer to. And, my need to individuate and differentiate was seen as a threat to the extended family as a whole. I know that I fragmented and abandoned myself to play many roles with many different masks in order to survive and be ‘acceptable’ within these dynamics; including being a mother to my severely traumatised mother and sister. I learnt that my wants and needs had no value and that emotions and feelings were ‘weak’. I’ve struggled with my own sense of autonomy and connection, because in the context of my family dynamics, autonomy has meant abandonment and any connection has meant enmeshment.

    I find that I hold myself in a place of autonomy and disengagement, because I’m absolutely terrified of connecting for fear of enmeshment.
    When I finally allowed myself to connect in two relationships, 20 years apart … one was with an overtly abusive narcissistic man, the other was covert, altruistic and spiritual. Both wanted to merge with me as one. Interestingly, the latter experience has frightened me the most, because we seemed to honour each other’s individuality as friends for over a year before shifting into an intimate relationship, yet I didn’t see how I was being subtly and gradually sucked of any sense of myself, like the ladybug and the parasitic wasp! My sense of autonomy and individuality was complimented, yet he was coming in through the back door to annihilate that … and on some level, I was allowing it!

    I’ve been working with various energy healing modalities over the years to help myself process, heal and reintegrate the wounded child aspects of myself and did not expect to have this last experience, which has totally derailed me. I wonder that, as well as childhood trauma, whether overt narcissistic abuse lines you up for covert narcissistic abuse, if not resolved. I realise that I numbed out after the first overt experience, but after the second, I went into shell-shock and experienced absolute terror and toxic shame for over a year. I looked like I had come out of a war zone. I suddenly felt all the violation of that initial relationship as well as childhood boundary invasions. I disconnected from everyone and the only place I felt safe was in nature. I completely lost trust in myself and others.

    With the help of a healing facilitator, using somatic awareness and bodywork techniques, I’m gradually emerging from this and find that your communications are helping me piece things together and gain a much deeper understanding of what’s going on within me. I’m wondering how NARP could help me further on my own healing journey. Are unhealed childhood wounds a primary focus within the program? And, what kind of support is given within the group?

    1. Hi Ally,

      Oh goodness your story is a painful and a powerful one, and I commend and salute your courage honesty and strength for coming as far as you have.

      Many of us in this community experienced a covert altruistic narcissist after the more typical type, it was a big trip for me to unravel too, but what an amazing healing breakthrough it was!

      Ally many of us tried a huge assortment of body work and energy healing modalities before Quanta Freedom Healing (the process in NARP) with varying results.

      The NARP Program addresses generational, childhood and multidimensional traumas throughout our subconscious and energetic network in every targeted shift in every Module.

      It also enlists our super conscious (Source) to enter and heal where a released trauma once was, which creates instant body and then automatic brain shifts.

      I personally find it cleans up and out traumas for me that nothing else could find let alone address.

      However of course many people have found that they loved combining NARP with other healing modalities, which is great – because Quanta Freedom Healing is totally unconditional and compliments any healing or wellbeing practice.

      Naturally I am passionate about anyone suffering from the effects of trauma to try NARP because it saves lives and souls every day http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp

      Because of your energy healing experience and deep understandings you will take to NARP like a duck getting in her favourite pond!

      Love and blessings to you Ally

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

      1. Hi Mel,

        Oh my … I’ve just realised how much I’ve written and really appreciate you taking the time to read and respond in the way you have.

        And yes, I’ve explored many different energy healing modalities over the years – all of which have helped me along the way.

        However, I’m finding that I’m not quite clearing the trauma from my body and feel stuck on a see-saw of painful emotions associated with engulfment/enmeshment and disengagement/abandonment. I feel that I’m going through some kind of identity crisis and experiencing the full impact of past boundary violations.

        I sense that your program will provide me with a more systematic approach specific to healing the hidden traumas and trigger patterns that have lead to repeated narcissistic abuse as well as bring the light of the truth in.

        Your understanding and communications are phenomenal and have brought me many aha moments so far.

        And so, I’ve now signed up to NARP … yay!

        Much love and gratitude to you and your life’s work Mel

        Ally

        1. Awww Ally,

          You are very welcome and I’m so looking forward to getting to know you in the NARP Forum!

          I know you are going to Thrive, it’s your time.

          Much love to you

          Mel 🙏💕❤️

  10. Thank you once again for a timely message that is right on. I shared this several other people who might be assisted through this technique. Your article is absolutely powerful and extremely helpful.

    I completely concur that cognitive therapy taught me many things but it fed my intellectual approach which released nothing from me energetically. Releasing trauma by connecting to memories and re parenting is the recovery work.

    I use the modules three and half years after purchase along with a codependent support group in my community for face to face connection which I find important for me.

    I would like to share a beautiful sample of how I connected with my inner child during a specific time period between the ages of 5 years and 8 months to my 6th birthday.

    I asked myself where the trauma and pain originated when I received an interior image of a current life situation that is painful. Immediately the scene I mentioned from my early childhood appeared right beside the image of what is currently transpiring that felt overwhelming. I realized that the feelings I am having in the present matched exactly what I felt at that time period. Only back then I had no one safe to help me process them. The feelings were frozen.

    I asked Source ( for me, God, Jesus ) where He was present in the specific memory. I placed an image of Christ as we frequently see Him depicted wearing the long white robe and sandals. I couldn’t feel anything.

    I used module nine from NARP the following morning. Shortly after, the image appeared from the previous day. I didn’t force anything. This time the Christ appeared but His Heart was revealed ( Sacred Heart ). His arms were outstretched and His hands were cupped. In His hands He held my heart. He placed it in my adult chest.

    Shortly after while power walking, which helps with processing, the same early childhood scene causing distress appeared. This time the adult me with my heart healed was able to minister to the younger me. I picked her/me up out of that scene with it’s dysfunctional broken wounded caregivers at the time and pulled her/me out of the past and brought her into my chest in the present. I told myself that survival no longer meant I had to keep trying to get what I needed from the same characters from that time period ( narcissists most likely ).

    I realized the valuable information I was being given by my inner child who was locked in that trauma all of my life recreating the same situations subconsciously trying to resolve it. Instead, using learned coping mechanisms developed from surviving my childhood I only re-traumatized myself time and again.

    NARP works well with other means ( spiritually based ) of self-recovery that get the energy released energetically. As I recover from complex ptsd I am feeling Source ( God, light, love, truth ) reflected from within myself. No longer am I seeking validation or source outside of myself. I feel the reflection of my own inner light source.

    When I slip ( occasionally through old grabbing behavior of what was familiar ) because I am triggered, I am able to use the tools effectively and climb out of the pothole quicker and recover in record time. The communication between my adult self and my inner child ( children ) is enhanced because I provided a safe place using what actually releases the trauma instead of reinforcing it by talking about it time and again.

    Blessings and love to you,

    Dorothy

    1. Melanie, thank you so much for this article. I have read it 3x now. Every word is 100% truth. The trauma of my childhood ushered me into an adulthood of trauma…how could it have been otherwise? Your point about processing through trauma, making right decisions when so traumatized is right on point. When in fight or flight cortisol is flooding the brain causing brain fog. No one can possibly process emotions and make valid decisions in the throes of all that. I grieve for so many lost years, so many abusers and their abuse unnecessarily in my life, but, I can at least forgive myself now for my behaviors and the horrible decisions that I made.

      1. Hi Kathy,

        You are so right – how could it have gone differently! Inner programs are so powerful.

        But the beautiful thing is now Dear Lady we don’t have to accept a life of continual trauma – we can reprogram ourselves.

        Sending you healing and breakthrough wishes.

        Mel 🙏💕❤️

    2. Hi Dorothy,

      It’s my pleasure and thank you for sharing this with others in need.

      Also thank you Dear Lady you for your lovely comment and wisdom.

      It’s very beautiful that you have come this far in your healing and integrating your inner child with love.

      Sending you continual love, blessings and breakthroughs.

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

  11. Melanie,

    What a gift this episode was for me. A politician told a story that while raising his daughters, in response to their question “Why is this happening to me?”, he would tell them to ask another question; why is this happening for me? This reminded me of you and that all the hurtful and difficult things that have, and may continue to happen to me, are reminders that I am not yet fully healed. This episode gives me renewed hope and the reminder that the work works. During a very busy time (and before your new series of shortened healings) I was having trouble finding 2-hour blocks of times to do the healings. I have regressed and have fallen back into the hole that you describe in this episode, where this happens “because we are not healed and integrated or anchored to inner core truths and values in our body. We are dissociative. We are not yet safe to ‘be’ in our body.” I am now trying to crawl out of that hole and come back to a place of being whole.

    With love and gratitude,
    Karen

  12. Hi Melanie, Thank you for responding and sending me this video regarding childhood trauma. When we were children we saw my mother and father fight and not fairly – like my Mom throwing a mayonnaise jar at my father’s back and my father retaliating by pushing my mother into a bathtub, knocking her unconcious. We naturally thought he had killed her. Thankfully she lived.
    I’m holding on to my Lord and savior with all of my might as I know he loves me unconditionally. I am still crying everyday over the one I loved and it’s now been 6 months since the break up. I’m still a little confused as to what you meant by healing in the left hemisphere of my brain. and on my video there was no website on the right side of the video. Please let me know where to go from here as I definitely want to heal. I seem to be paralized and am not functioning as I should. I’ve never experienced anxiety before where I couldn’t make decisions like this. I am going to bible studies and a celebrate recovery class but not getting it yet. I’m so thankful for your encouragement and sport and to Know there s hope as you have experienced.

    1. Hi Deborah,

      You are very welcome.

      My heart goes out to you in your pain, and I want you to know from the bottom of my heart there is a way to heal.

      My NARP Program is a step by step healing system that takes you by the hand with in-depth information, easy to follow instructions and healing modules to find, unravel and release you from childhood and adult trauma.

      Check it out here: http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp

      You also have a full guarantee with the program, this creating no risk for you to try it.

      I also highly recommend my supplementary free resources that greatly assist your healing journey http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/freecourse

      I hope this helps Deborah.

      Sending you strength and healing.

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

  13. Completely agree with you about how childhood traumas leave wounds that attract narcissists to us like bees to honey. My husband’s abuse triggered huge traumatic meltdowns in me over and over again where I thought I would literally die: I felt so terrorized, so terrified and so powerless to defend myself. Yet I was so needy of “love” that I stayed through ongoing physical, verbal, mental and emotional abuse, years of lies, cheating, manipulation, humiliation and intimidation. I also honestly believed that I had a “good” childhood, so I had no reason to feel the way I did.

    Since leaving last year, I have had counselling, done affirmations, explored these childhood traumas plus my beliefs and behaviour patterns, but still had a full-blown panic attack upon just seeing my husband in the courtroom recently. Your explanation about left and right brain responses helped me see why I am still not healing. Please can you give further in-depth explanations about this “left brain” healing, and how to do this from a practical point of view, to help myself and others like me to move forward into freedom and wholeness. Thank you.

    1. Hi Rosie,

      I’m pleased this resonated and explained a lot to you.

      You have been through a lot of trauma as many of us here have and it seems like you have made some great progress.

      Rosie the thing is our right brain subconscious belief system, which is limbic, controls 95 percent of our entire nervous system, emotions and therefore being.

      The whole problem is we only have 5 percent power in the logical left brain system to try to address this.

      Regarding the severe trauma from narcissistic abuse most of us who were / are severely traumatised are not lazy or unintelligent people. We tried the good fight logically for years to get better.

      Personally I had a prayer, meditation, affirmation process for 2 hours every morning to try to overcome (manage) my traumas. It didn’t work, leading to my total breakdown where the end of the line was 3 anti-psychotics.

      (Thank goodness from there I did dent left-brain diagnosis and therapy and sought right-brain true healing solutions!)

      I can’t tell you a left brain strategy because there isn’t one, truly. These systems can’t be accessed by the left brain unless by extreme willpower such as in the minute trickling down of teeny bits of incremental information through intense repetition such as affirmation.

      For most mortals it’s just not possible – as I said ‘we tried!’

      It’s like jumping into a battlefield armed with a peashooter!

      Releasing and truely resolving trauma only happens through energetic healing or body work. There are many modalities now that address right brain / subconscious programs such as kinesiology, EFT, bodycode, EMDR etc and naturally my favourite to suggest is Quanta Freedom Healing (NARP).

      I can only tell you the truth of what I know from deep personal experience as well as connecting with hundreds of thousands of people for more than ten years.

      I can literally tell in one conversation whether someone is attempting healing in a left brain or right brain way – the differences are so staggering.

      I hope this helps.

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

      1. Thank you Melanie for taking the time to reply, I really appreciate it. I listen to ALL your Thriver TV episodes, and through them I am continually learning more about myself and why I ended up in a 30 year abusive marriage. I absolutely don’t want to spend the rest of my life bitter, angry and resentful about my husband’s treatment of me, unable to trust let alone love again. I want to find wholeness and healing, and be able to be the best version of myself, no longer impeded by all the emotional flashbacks and protective behaviours I put in place to “keep myself safe”. So many sites and forums just focus on how bad narcissists are and keep us locked in victimhood. Please keep doing what you are doing!

        Rosie

          1. Hi Melanie,
            I absolutely love reading your blog. The information you give about healing from within is exactly what I always knew to be true. What is the title of your book? Is it based on your blog posts?

  14. Hi Mel, could you tell where / how to like your video channel and the individual videos? big thanks xx

  15. Dear Melanie

    Such a very important video, thank you so much.

    You explained to me so clearly how NARP works. The line “we are not yet safe to be in our Body” resonated profoundly with me. Its as if we didn’t understand that being safe and whole in our bodies was the key.

    I am so grateful to you and for your authenticity in the journey of healing childhood abuse.

    I cannot as yet tell my story clearly and I am seeing the seeds of my NARP work begin to grow.

    Thank you so much Melanie for this extremely clear video of how childhood abuse effects us in our lives.

    Reena xxx

    1. Reena sweetheart,

      You are always welcome.

      Thank you for being you and such a courageous and beautifully supportive member of our community.

      So much love to you.

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

  16. Your videos have been really helpful to me, Melanie. Thank you. I only realised very recently that my mum was a covert narcissist & I’ve attracted a whole range of covert narcissistic partners, bosses, friends & co-workers throughout my life. I have been in a process of healing for some time but recognising narcissism in my family of origin has been really key to a deeper level of experiencing both the pain & healing. It is so painful at times but your videos give me hope that I can recover. I’m grateful to you & I also like that you have a higher perspective…I’m not a victim because on a soul level I signed up for this (sometimes hard to acknowledge but I do believe it).

    1. Hi Sue,

      I’m so pleased they have helped.

      I am so pleased you are feeling hope. The bigger picture perspectives so are the truths that set us free.

      Love and blessings to you.

      Mel 🙏💕❤️

  17. Melanie, I had a destructive childhood that caused my behavior to be exactly like you describe.I was cut off from the trauma feelings that I never resolved and I was delusional much of the time.Schizophrenia or something related to that. I never got the help I needed from strictly verbal therapy.Finally by luck I got with a clinical psychologist Phd. who was good at verbal therapy and bioenergetic therapy.Bioenergetic therapy was discovered by Wilhelm Reich who noted that a muscular armoring takes place within the body of a person who has these unresolved traumas.Apparently the muscular armoring keeps the negative situations away from our consciousness so we never are able to see clearly what is going on within ourselves.The bioenergetic excercises release this tension in the body and the legs start vibrating on their own as if they would if a person was trembling with fear.Long story short that therapy was what helped me the most,its been over twenty five years ago and while I had to still learn things, I was over the worst.

  18. Childhood faulty parenting that reaches the destructive level on the childs character formation does indeed have a physical component as well as the psyche.Wilhelm Reich and Alexander Lowen describe this as “muscular armoring” that has a psyche armoring component as a result of unresolved destructive environments.I was never a narcissist but I had a damaging childhood and ended up with a great Clinical Pyschologist Phd who was great as a verbal therapist and a bioenergetic psycho therapist.The bioenergetic body psychotherapy releases chronic muscular tensions that have long become second nature to the person needing help and with that release the psyche opens up too.Opens up not to overwhelming pain but just a new awareness how the persons present day struggles are the result of past abuse.Now the therapist and patient can put those issues into context with an adult mind. You might have to do work with Option method to change incorrect beliefs that you have held so long you rarely look at.Reich called the muscular armonring energy blocks, the internal bodily energy of a living thing becomes blocked by the muscular armoring.

  19. I totally get that the blame game has to stop but where you lost me was when you say in the blue paragraph at the beginning that says not to blame parents as they were just reacting out of their abuse too. Well when exactly does the chain of abuse stop? Ppl have to start taking accountability for their abuse & it should start with the parents! Period! Part of that “blame game” truly is about healing & realizing that it’s the perpetrators fault not my own! I mean my word, my parents were abusive & I know their parents were but I found out the difference & made darn sure I was not going to repeat the patterns with my 6 kids! Now they are all thriving healthy adults! Why? because I broke the chain & found out the difference! And my parents should have done the same. Do not read in to my statement here that I have not healed, I have! It took me a lot of years & many more to forgive & let go! But I’m thee best I could ever be now. Point here is that fault is important in the whole equation. Whether or not parents actually do take accountability or not won’t necessarily help in the healing but regardless they should be held accountable (even if they don’t take that accountability) I hold them accountable for there actions. And that is why those narcissists aren’t in my life anymore.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.