Recovering from Narcissistic Abuse

Today's guest is Dr. Tracy Kemble, who works in the abuse and trauma recovery space, and she herself is a survivor of narcissistic abuse. Her book, the Narc-tion-ary, helps survivors make sense of their experiences by naming the complex dynamics of narcissistic abuse. It includes over 350 words and terms, as well as a self-assessment for anyone questioning their own experience. In this episode, she shares her insights into how trauma fuels both narcissists and the people they victimize, and speaks to the centrality of self-love and self-respect for recovery.

Contact Femammal:

• Email femammalpodcast@gmail.com
• Follow the podcast on Facebook at Femammal Podcast

If you have feedback or want to be a future guest, please get in touch!

Logo design: copyright Darragh Hannan

Transcript

[00:18] Greer: 
Hi, this is Greer, your host for Femammal, the podcast that holds space for women to explore what it means to live well in our bodies and celebrates moving through this world as female mammals. Today's guest is Dr. Tracy Kemble, who works in the abuse and trauma recovery space, and she herself is a survivor of narcissistic abuse. Her book, the Narc-tion-ary, helps survivors make sense of their experiences by naming the complex dynamics of narcissistic abuse. It includes over 350 words and terms, as well as a self-assessment for anyone questioning their own experience. In this episode, she shares her insights into how trauma fuels both narcissists and the people they victimize, and speaks to the centrality of self-love and self-respect for recovery. Well, welcome Dr. Tracy, and thanks for joining our conversation today about the dynamics of narcissistic abuse and recovery and healing from trauma. I'm wondering if you could start by sharing with us the origin story of your own work in trauma recovery and particularly your attention to recovering from narcissistic abuse.

[01:49] Dr. Tracy: 
Oh my goodness, that's such an important question because the biggest word that I can use to culminate all this is normalitizing. Whether or not it's found in the dictionary, is the reason that I ended up in such high escalations of narcissistic abuse is that I was raised in a family and I must say by somebody I love dearly and to this day have the best relationship as can be expected. But I was raised with somebody with narcissism and you're talking about somebody with a personality disorder. I e. somebody who has, it's not the equivalent, but for example, somebody who has a mental illness, somebody who has down syndrome, somebody who has a handicap. I was raised with somebody with a personality disorder, which is a handicap of sorts. So I was raised with the understanding that the way that this person loved me was normal. So as I went through life, I was attracted to "normal." And as it was a dysfunctional behavior, it wasn't until it reached screaming levels of dysfunction that I realized that something was off.

[03:18] Greer: 
So that sort of grounded your early experience and then did you see that manifested as you lived your adult life as well?

[03:29] Dr. Tracy: 
Yeah, because I was just doing "normal." I was loving to the way that was exemplified to me as normal. I was responding as I was shown love normally responds to. So I was literally going through my life what I thought was normal. But what I learned in my recovery is that normal has to be redefined.

[03:58] Greer: 
And your recovery probably involved looking at all those different stages of your life, from the early stages to maybe adult relationships as well.

[04:07] Dr. Tracy: 
Yeah, absolutely. When I went into recovery, I was knee deep into not just a narcissistic relationship, but I would say more of a sociopathic relationship. The way that I describe it is all growing up. Imagine that you have your hands on burning the stove. And people would say, oh, my God, does that hurt? And I would say, yes, it hurts. Of course it hurts. And they would say, don't you want to remove your hand? And I would say, can I? So what happened is that this base normal of dysfunction that I was really skilled, I didn't understand that it was abnormal until it reached extrusionly levels of pain. And I remember working with so many clients that they would say, well, my partner doesn't beat me. He just slaps me around on occasion. And it's because if you were raised with being slapped around as a normal, you don't understand the intensity and the pain and the dysfunction and the chaotic and the destruction of it until your life as an adult begins to fall apart.

[05:29] Greer: 
That's a really helpful illustration. Thanks for sharing that. I'm wondering what would be the most helpful definition of a narcissist or narcissistic abuse that you could offer us to ground our conversation today?

[05:42] Dr. Tracy: 
Oh, my goodness. You know what, and I'm going to first share a little bit of a background story, is that I was years and years and years into a narcissistic relationship multiplied, multiply. And so by the time I was in a relationship, somebody I was married to, somebody I was committed to, somebody at one time handed me a book. I think it was called, like, the Malignant Narcissist or something of that nature. And I read it because I'm a huge student. And I remember going through the book and saying, okay, yeah, there are one, two, three symbols of it, but not one, two, three, but not four, five and six. And what I didn't understand about narcissism at that time is that narcissism is a spectrum disorder. And unlike pregnancy, where you're either pregnant or you're not, narcissism is a spectrum. It's like a rainbow. And so there were levels of narcissism that were there, but because I couldn't check all the boxes that I was not able to, in my traumatized mind, be able to say, okay, I'm in a narcissistic relationship. Now, here's the interesting thing. We know of the one word narcissism, but in reality, there's ten to 15 different types of narcissism out there. So that's why checking the boxes on malignant narcissism didn't make me understand I was in a narcissistic relationship. Because we're talking about and sorry for the gross analogy and I'm going to use analogy of cancer. And I have gone through cancer, so I understand this, that if somebody says you have cancer and there's a big difference between blood cancer and breast cancer and bone cancer and lung cancer, it's still cancer. But there are very specific signs of that individual destructive factor in your life. And it's the same with narcissism, but because there are different types of narcissism, you have to understand exactly what type of a narcissist you're dealing with in order to be able to grab hold of it like, okay, I'm dealing with this type of cancer. I'm dealing with this type of a narcissist. So you can learn how to hold on to yourself and be able to start healing.

[08:24] Greer: 
That's a really helpful way to think about it. Is there essential dynamic that's at the heart of all those different types?

[08:32] Dr. Tracy: 
I would say the essential dynamic is really the lack of empathy. And what I mean by the lack of empathy is that and this took me a long time to discover is when my narcissist would do something to hurt me, i.e. traumatize me that I would go back and they would apologize to me. He or she would apologize to me, but it would never create the healing that an authentic apology creates. So one day in my therapy, I was saying to the lady that was bringing me through these deep fields of destruction, but I don't understand. They apologized. They apologized, and she began to explain to me an authentic apology. And the difference between a narcissistic apology and an authentic apology is that when a narcissist apologizes, a narcissist may quote, "I'm sorry you feel that way." A narcissist, when they come back to their life, when they want to create change, they will say, I need to change because I am going to lose something. When a human without narcissism apologizes, a human that has authentic empathy apologizes, there's a thought in their head that says, oh, my God, I hurt the one I love. I am hurting and traumatizing another human being, and I am behaving in ways that are less than my highest definition of self. And then when they go back to that person, they are genuinely apologetic about the trauma that they cause because they are aware of that trauma that they cause, and they don't want to be the type of person that harms another human. A narcissist doesn't have empathy, so they don't understand the weight or the pain of what it means to harm another human unless they get harmed. When suddenly the walls fall off the house, that one moment was all about really being able to understand the difference between when a narcissist apologize, they're protecting themselves with no empathy, and when a human with empathy apologizes, they understand they harmed another human being.

[11:11] Greer: 
Thank you. Yeah. I think a lot of listeners' ears probably perked up when they heard you say, I'm sorry you feel that way, because that's a non-apology.

[11:20] Dr. Tracy: 
That's a non-apology. "I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm sorry that you're so sad. I'm sorry that you are..." Those are the buzzwords that you need to listen to, because a person who authentically apologizes has this remorse, and sometimes they can't even say anything except tears of remorse, except anguish of remorse. And then they make life changes that that will never happen to the person that they love again.

[11:50] Greer: 
That's great. Where does a narcissist's insidious power come from? And what idea is at the heart of not becoming susceptible to a narcissist's exploitative power?

[12:03] Dr. Tracy: 
Yeah, that's a really good question. A big question in the world of recovery is are you born as a narcissist? And the answer is no. Narcissists all come from trauma. And the interesting thing, and I'm going to go a little bit deep, and some people will check out at this part of the conversation or really jump in, is that a narcissist and an empath, a wounded empath, shall I say, are the opposite sides of the same coin. And what I mean is that a narcissist is a trauma victim and they only learn to mend themselves together, or better words, to survive by putting on this false face of narcissism and perfectionism. And more than that is, where a wounded empath is the opposite side of that coin and will end up becoming codependent, we'll end up becoming over caring, we'll end up becoming the people pleaser. We'll end up becoming the partner of a narcissist. But what draws these two opposites together is the similarity of childhood trauma.

[13:25] Greer: 
And do you have any advice for us to not become that person's victim?

[13:34] Dr. Tracy: 
Do your self-work. There's one thing that I learned along my personal healing journey is we all have cactuses in life and our cactuses are trauma, our unlearned lessons, our ego, we all have trauma. But the difference between people who press through the trauma and those who don't are those who can. It's a term in recovery and it's called hug the cactus. If we can lean in and love and hold on and embrace all those ugly sides of ourselves, those of you who do, I'm not saying that your trauma is ugly, but that ache inside of you is ugly. And what we do is we avoid it. We shouldn't feel that way. We're stronger than that, we're better than that, we have better skills and we should be able to overcome all that. But until you lean in, you just embrace that cactus, that side of ourselves. My biggest thing was abandonment, trauma. And that is such a painful wound to think, oh my gosh, I don't belong here. I am not enough to be here, I am not worthy to be here, I am not loved. That was my cactus and I had to learn to lean into that, to embrace that, to hug that awful cactus as the adult, to be able to heal the trauma that was beyond my control as a child.

[15:23] Greer: 
You're offering us some really great images and you've put together a wonderful resource called the Narctionary. So it's a book length glossary of terms associated with narcissism, ideas like fake empathy and word salading. What is so powerful about naming the dynamics of narcissism in that way?

[15:45] Dr. Tracy: 
Oh, my goodness. It's everything. It's everything. And thank you for bringing up the book. So I learned this valuable lesson from my mother, that my mother, she taught me something from a very young age, and I took it into my recovery as an adult. And she says, you know, when we're faced with pain that has no name, it's like fighting a ghost in that we can't grab a hold of it and mend it and heal it and love it or even reject it. But when it has a name, we're able to grab a hold of it. We're able to understand what we're dealing with. We're able to say, you know what? I'm going to lean into this and help heal it. Or you know what, this is not to be a part of my life cycle and remove it from our existence. So the importance and what the Narctionary does is the Narctionary gives name to the many ghosts of pain that come from narcissistic abuse trauma.

[16:49] Greer: 
That's great. And how does identifying the dynamics of Narcissism begin to free someone who is the victim of Narcissistic abuse?

[16:59] Dr. Tracy: 
Another great question. So even today, I was meeting with a colleague. She's in a different industry than mine, and I had left a book as a thank you present for something that she had done to me. And I saw her. Oh, hi. Kiss, kiss, kiss, hug, hug. How are you? And we were talking about her business and my business, and she says, oh, by the way, thank you so much for the book. I said my pleasure. And she says, so my best girlfriend was over at the house and she was going through an awful divorce, and she picked up the book. And this book is not something that you read cover to cover because it's not chapter by chapter. It's literally giving definitions to the many ghosts that live in abuse. And as this woman began to read it, she began to be able to slay her ghosts. And she would say, oh my gosh, that's what was done to me in my relationship. Oh my gosh, that was what was done to me in my relationship. Oh my gosh, that was me in recovery. That was me left on the floor. That was a trauma wound that I embraced. So what the book is really meant for, and I have a full recovery program, it's called the Reclaiming Me Program. And it's a year long recovery program that deep dives into the trauma of Narcissistic abuse. But what the Narctionary does is at least starts to give names to the many abuses that take place so that you don't feel crazy. That when I started to be able to give name to the abuse, when the Narcissist would come up and start to taint my reality, where I would say this and this happened. And the next thing I know, I'm giving a reason, a lot of reasons and defense as to why I behaved in a certain way instead of being on topic and being able to address the actual trauma at hand. And when all of these things began to take name I was able to look at my narcissist and say stop gaslighting me. You are blame-shifting right now creating a word salad. And until you stop that and address the real issue, which is the issue that you're being very mean and aggressive, I'm not going to continue this conversation. So that's the purpose of the book is to give a name to the manipulation.

[19:44] Greer: 
That's great. Trauma survivors often struggle to sort their way through their dual identity as both a victim and as a survivor. And they can struggle to identify the role that they played in the trauma so that they can avoid a situation like that in the future, without falling into victim-blaming. It's a difficult tightrope to walk. Do you have an insight into this dynamic and how would you help illuminate how someone can get to a greater place of empowerment and avoid revictimization without falling into victim-blaming?

[20:29] Dr. Tracy: 
Yeah, you know, and I went through that and the first thing that I want to say is I am a non-victim advocate. That the word "victim" itself, even at the depth of my pain, I did not want to be a victim. And part of, all relationships can only exist by two people. And one of the dynamics that I had to face in my abuse and me accepting the abuse was that I was accepting the role of a victim. So I learned to embrace the concept of the philosophy that I would say I was victimized but I will not be a victim. And that right there is a starting point that you start to emotionally stand up from within because you don't deny the trauma that you've been through. I was able to then not have to--One of the reasons that we remain a victim is because being a victim is bringing statement to, somebody is doing something really wrong. But the whole thing about the reality of life is that if somebody does something wrong more than once what is wrong or broken? It's a better word in you that you will accept it more than once? Well, that answer is you've been traumatized enough to accept that you're "normal." And that was me. I accepted years and years and years and years and you have learned helplessness and all these things that add into it. If I was to break it down into a few healthy steps of recovery, because we're on limited time here: Number one, understand that you need to take the stance of I have been victimized, but I will not be a victim. Number two, to understand that the reason that with most people when something awful happens to us and somebody abuses us that what is it in us that the bells and whistles didn't go off to say I'm not accepting this a second round? Well, the reason that is is because we're trauma victims and we don't know life outside of somebody kicking the crap out of us. So the next evolution of that is to realize that, okay, I am victimized by but I have more power than I realize. When you realize that you have more power, and people will treat us the way that we instruct them to treat us, we have to do our self love work. Because the only antidote to healing from abuse, narcissistic abuse, is to understand that I am a valuable human being. I am enough. I have the right to take up the space without apology. And nobody, but nobody has the right to keep me down as a human being. But I am bigger and stronger than this. This takes work. This takes your self work. And it's not a pill that you can take. It's not a drink that you can drink, and you get alcohol, power. It's none of that. It's really reprogramming your infrastructure. And that is one of our birthrights, is to take up space without apology. That's what I teach in all of our programs, is to learn that powerful tool of self-love. And in my life, self-love is a non negotiable. And then as you're moving forward, which is a super important one, is that we make the choices that we make based on the tools that we have at the time. And to beat ourselves up because we didn't, because we could have, because we should have, this is just unnecessary abuse that we put on ourselves. The reason that we accept inappropriateness to the level that we do is simply that we're lacking the tools. And once we get those tools and that's why I'm so passionate to teach people tools that your vibration raises. When your vibration raises, it's impossible to accept the bad behavior. But rather than beat yourself up, as it was told to me, you dealt with the situation, with the tools, with the best tools that you had at the time. Learn tools. Learn that your job in this life is not to accept abuse from other people. It's a matter of putting your footprint on this world and making this world a better place. That's our job. Not to absorb the pain of somebody else, but instead to put the footprint of love and healing into this journey.

[26:00] Greer: 
Thanks for testifying to those truths. Can you also testify to the length of the road to recovery? And some places where people who have been working on their recovery from this sort of abuse for years might still feel bogged down?

[26:17] Dr. Tracy: 
I love that question. Okay, so that is so great. There's this concept that says if you suffered abuse for ten years, it will take you ten years to get out of it, or what have you. Here's how I learned from that very lesson is that the day of awakening--and we all have different days of awakening--with the day of awakening, when you wake up, you're in the middle of a freaking hot toasty, dried out desert, and you're like, I can't move. And so I was just dealing with somebody very close to me a couple of weeks ago that said, oh my gosh, I've woken up and here I am. And somebody told me that as long as I spent in the relationship, it's going to take me that much time to get out of it. And I said to them, no, that's not true. Here's the thing. You wake up and all of a sudden you realize I'm in a really bad place, operating in a level that's not who I am, and I want to get back to normal. So you have a couple of choices. You can stop where you are in that dark desert, in that hot, desperate, powerless desert, and you can remain a victim. Poor me, sad me, I'm going to blame everybody else, blah, blah, blah. And you're going to stay there, and you're going to continue to hurt and pain as long as you choose to take on that victim mentality. The second choice that you can make is, you know what? I don't want to be here. This is not who I am. I want to make different choices. And then you combine to this slow boat mentality of making the choices to get back to the mainland and learning very slowly. Or the beauty of choice and beauty of change is that change can happen immediately. I can change my life tomorrow, in the day that I realize this is where I am. This is what I don't want anymore. What do I want to get out of the hot desert. You can start making choice after choice after choice after choice, and the more choices you make, the faster you will emotionally run, dash, catapult out of that deep desert. So it's your commitment to the choice of change that will create the fastness, the quickness of your transition to reclaiming a new life.

[29:02] Greer: 
What do you celebrate about where you are at now in your recovery from narcissistic trauma?

[29:06] Dr. Tracy: 
Life, joy, happiness. That I belong to nobody but myself. I've been married now almost 30 years. I've gone through trauma, troubles, even in my existing relationship. But one thing I know that where I am, which is a huge thing, is I belong to me. I belong to me. This is my journey, my life experience. And somebody who authentically loves me will love and support me into becoming the greatest definition of me. And somebody that I authentically love, I will love into becoming the greatest definition of themselves. Now I'm going to share something really personal that I don't talk about a lot, is that my husband, now, he has elements of Narcissism, and so many people have said run, turn around, walk away. Luckily, I have enough of myself that I'm able to navigate myself through that. But the one thing that I say for all of you who are out there and you're like, but it's my parent. It's my kid, it's my mate and I don't want to go through a separation. This person I love this person. Then I'm going to encourage you to do what I did, that I looked at this person that I loved and I said, I'm sorry--and this can cross over to alcoholism or any other type of behavior that somebody else is doing that you love that are destroying your life. And I said, I am only holding out for the number one version of you. And I was willing to walk away from that person until they chose to show up as the version that I knew that they could be. I stopped enabling, I stopped supporting, I stopped accepting, I stopped allowing myself to be victimized by this person's pain and trauma. I held onto my life. I stepped into my life. I belong to only me. And even to this day in this relationship, I belong to me. This is my journey. This person loves me as long as I'm not harming them. My life needs to be lived out to its highest definition of self and vice versa.

[31:28] Greer: 
Well, you've shared some really vulnerable experiences with us today and I really appreciate your openness and your resilience and the hope that you hold out for us. And my last question that I ask every guest is what advice do you have for us about how we can listen well to our bodies?

[31:46] Dr. Tracy: 
So I really believe that our bodies talk to us. One of the things that, and I'm a firm believer in mentors and one of my mentors taught me is that our bodies are not to be flailing and failing us. That the only times our bodies, if they are to hurt or to break down, it's because I'm able to like, for example, I was moving the other day and I moved something and I rammed my thigh into a piece of furniture and oh my gosh, my thigh hurt. There was a bruise and my hip hurt. But I was able to say my body hurts because I had this superficial trauma. If our body is breaking down, which mine did for years, my brain couldn't think, my eyes couldn't see. I had stabbing back pains, stomach pains, bowel pains. I had so many things going wrong with my body and that is because I was not listening. That when the external world happened to me, I would pretend that the trauma that was happening to me was not happening. But thank you God, that our body speaks to us. And when my body began to fail me to the point of cancer, I realized, you know what, I'm not listening to my body. And part of my daily regimen of self love, of self care, of living my life to my journey, living in the highest vibration, living in the highest vibration of love that I listen to my body. And if my body starts to misact, I ask it what are you telling me? What are you telling me? You're feeling dizzy? What is spinning you out of control? You can't see clearly? What are you denying? Your back is stabbing in pain? Who do you feel like stabbing you in the back? Your legs feel weak? Where do you not feel stable? You see, our body talks to us, so we need to stop. Somebody says stop going to the doctor, but instead go within spend a day and say what areas of my life is my body breaking down? Because especially if you're young and healthy, your body is not to be breaking down. We are supposed to be happy, healthy, dead. That's the end journey. And if anything in between there, you need to examine the stressors of your life and learn to eliminate them so that you can be the highest, most pure definition of self.

[34:34] Greer: 
Thank you so much, Dr. Tracy. You've shared a lot of really valuable insights with us today and I really appreciate your time.

[34:42] Dr. Tracy: 
I appreciate you.

[34:50] Greer: 
If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me at femammlpodcast@gmail.com that's femammalpodcast@gmail.com. You can also follow this podcast on Facebook. Just search for Femammal Podcast and you will find a community of people who are interested in living well in our bodies. And of course, I'd love for you to rate this podcast and leave a review wherever you download your podcasts. Until next time, be well.