Number 1: Chronic anxiety disorders.
What are they? When you are constantly keyed up, cornered, anxious, worrying all the time, and this anxiety does not go away, no matter how much you try to relax yourself. You put on that relaxing meditation on YouTube or some other platform, but it doesn’t do the trick. You take Xanax or other medications, but still, your nervous system is not able to fully let go, and you are constantly spinning things in your head, which is called rumination. It’s like a washing machine continuously running—you’re trying to wash things, but that anxiety, that worry, the paranoia that comes with it, they don’t go away. All of it is destabilizing. Why? Because that individual, that narcissist, traumatized you to your core by doing all the things they did. I’m talking about manipulation, gaslighting—you know the drill—abuse of various kinds: physical, psychological, emotional, withholding affection, or taking so much affection from you and leaving you dry completely.
You feel exhausted; there is no energy in you. But at the same time, you’re filled with so much heat, so much anxiety, and that survival stress does not find a way out of your body. You feel frozen; you want to move forward. These are all characteristics of major anxiety disorders. Now, why is it happening? Because your nervous system is massively and chronically disregulated. It has been in a state of fight, flight, or freeze for a long time, and now it has become your dominant state, which should not be the case. It has to be the opposite: rest and digest should be your dominant state, and fight, flight, and freeze should take over occasionally.
Recommended Book: Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself- By Shahida Arabi.
Now, how can you reverse this anxiety? First, it’s going to take time; it’s not a day’s job. It’s going to take months—eight months minimum—and sometimes years. What do you have to do in those years? You have to stabilize your nervous system by doing regulation work. I say it all the time: you have to make yourself feel safe at an emotional and environmental level. That is when your body will let go and finally readjust the inner clock, the inner systems, the cares within, so that your nervous system starts working properly for you.
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