Invisible Wounds And Naming Harm

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hielessness, you know, like there is a particular kind of harm that leaves no visible marks. It is a kind that makes you question about your own reality, your own worth, your own sanity. And when you finally name it, when you finally see it for what it is, that the real work is, then the real work actually starts. So not the work of you know fixing yourself because you were never broken, but the work of remembering who you were before someone else decided to rewrite your story.

unknown 0:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 0:37

So dear listeners, welcome to Mind Meets Machine. I'm your host, Avake and this is where we explore what it means to be a human in a world that sometimes forgets. And I'd say, yeah, because today I am with someone who knows this terrain intimately, both as someone who has walked through it and as a someone who now guides others through it. So please welcome Sherry Hiller. Welcome to the show. Thank you, Avik. Great to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you so much, Sherry, for being here. And their listeners like I'll just quickly tell you about Sherry. So uh she's a trauma-informed psychodynamic therapist specializing in narcissistic abuse and ordained interfaith minister and a survivor turned thriver of complex trauma. So I will say stay with us because there will be a lot of discussions, a lot of information that you'll get to know from her, because we are talking about something which is very, very important, like surviving and thriving after narcissistic abuse. So please

Sherry’s Story And Lost Agency

SPEAKER_00 1:42

be with us. So, Sherry, like I mean, before we start, if you can just share a bit about your own story so that people get to know more about you and from where you're coming from. So, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Okay. I was born into very difficult circumstances on a more overt level. My mother was schizophrenic, my father had MPD. I wasn't able to identify that until later on in my recovery process. There was poverty. I was very damaged by the time I started treatment. I was on my own as a teenager and I went into treatment early. But the the piece that really, I think, was so pivotal for me was recognizing the psychological abuse, the narcissistic abuse, even more so than the more overt forms of deprivation and abuse. Because I felt that I didn't have agency. I mean, there's always a loss of self with complex trauma.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

But I didn't really conceptualize how I was robbed of my freedom. So, you know, I what I see in a lot of clients who come to me for complex trauma is a state of hypervigilance and anxiety. And that's sort of the driving force that galvanizes the need for treatment, but they don't really understand that it's an adaptive response to systemic abuse. And that's why I think it's so important to talk about it. It is being highlighted, I think, in terms of legislation these days. Although I think Hawaii in the United States is the only state where it's a misdemeanor. But, you know, there are evidentiary challenges. You know, how do you prosecute prosecute something like this? So, as a clinician, what I really want to do is crystallize exactly what it is, how it happens, and why the victim cannot necessarily just leave, which I think is kind of the persistent mantra of the masses. Well, they can just get out. You can't get out when you don't have agency. You have to have agency to leave, right? So the breakdown of a person's agency in a trauma bond when there is a pathological attachment and Stockholm syndrome, that first has to be even just recognized as a reality for the person who's going through it.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Exactly. So that's really great. Thanks for sharing that. And I believe, listeners, you can relate to what we are talking about and also from your life as well. And at the same time, I'll just say like, if today's conversations somewhere hit you, just be with that and let us also know like what you think, what your story, because this will definitely help us understand, and also it will help others to learn from what you've been through, right? So just be with this.

What Narcissistic Abuse Really Means

SPEAKER_00 4:24

So I think a lot of people hear this term narcissistic abuse, and they think that it is just about someone being selfish or uh self-centered. So then what do you think? Yeah. So what do you think is the most common misconception about what narcissistic abuse actually is? Like, why does that misconception actually matter the most?

SPEAKER_01 4:47

I think the most common misconception is that we conceptualize when we're talking about narcissistic abuse, a psychopath. And a psychopath is the most malignant form of narcissism. Narcissism is a spectrum. We all need healthy narcissism. It's a foundation for self-esteem. But people who are on the very rigid end of the spectrum, who are narcissists, are not really, if they have the capacity for empathy, they don't care. They are driven to dominate, to have control. And they are driven to have what's called supply, which is kind of others are seen as an objectified means to shore up one's sense of tenuous sense of who they are, to capitalize on another person's attainments, essentially to co-opt their sense of self. Everything is open for to for the for the abusers' need to fill an insatiable emptiness. Otherwise, they the narcissist will become dysphoric. So we're not necessarily talking about a vindictive sadistic psychopath. That's that's a possibility, but we may be talking about someone who is extremely charismatic, someone who is very polished, actually, someone who has tremendous status, who can seem to be very virtuous in the public eye, but is really ruthless. Because when you don't have a conscience, it's easy to take people down and it's easy to get to the top of the food chain. So I think often we think about a person who is sort of grandiose, a buffoon, or someone who is just overtly needing attention. But I think what uh what gets obscured is how a person with a narcissistic personality disorder can be very polished, and that makes them all the more insidious.

SPEAKER_00 6:37

Yeah.

Trauma Bonds And Engineered Confusion

SPEAKER_00 6:39

So when someone is in the middle of it, what makes it so hard to see clearly? Like what makes it and keeps people from recognizing what's happening to them?

SPEAKER_01 6:50

The most difficult aspect of this is the trauma bond. So we are by our biological inheritance is to attach. We have to attach, we want to love and be loved, and we have certain moral imperatives that we live by, biases, you know, we have to work through conflict. That's capitalized on by a narcissist. So they come in really fast, what we is typically referred to as love bombing. But love bombing can take many forms. It doesn't necessarily have to look like very elaborate forms of gift giving or limerence, you know, and narcissistic abuse isn't only within romantic relationships. It can happen with an employer, it can happen with I'm a victim of parental narcissism. So it runs a gamut. But the what is so difficult to understand is how the narcissists, because they subsist on supply as we subsist on air and food, they have to be very attuned to who the target is. So they know how to read people very well. And they will absolutely, you know, hone in on what the target's vulnerabilities are. What do they need? What do they desire? And that will be the foundational pull in. You know, some people who are more intelligently guarded, and that's kind of what I really encourage in people, will may not be perceived as good supply because they are not malleable enough. Which is why I think a lot of people I work with as a complex trauma therapist were groomed to be malleable. You know, it's part of adapting to an abusive system. So by the time the the attachment takes hold, the that's when the narcissist will blindside you. And when you're blindsided, it throws you into a state of shock, like a state of dissonance. It's one of the things we do. I'm also a hypnotist, so it's one of the things we do in hypnosis, is like I might say something, I'll pace and lead someone into a trance, and then I'll say something that's completely random, like a non sequitur, and that throws the subconscious into a state of confusion. And that state of confusion actually is what helps to induce a trance state, right? Because you're thrown off your center. So that's tactically what the narcissist does. And by that time, you don't always hit you, you know. And then the narcissist also will use what's called intermittent reinforcement, zapper and conditioning. So they may even seem contrite. You're right, you know, I didn't mean it that way, or there may be some inferences that, but you heard it that way, even though it's not how I meant it. So that's where the coercive control starts to kick in. And again, to go back to the moral imperatives, we want to be able to find common ground with people. That's a big mistake with a narcissist, and that's what makes the narcissist gives the narcissist leverage. All these relational rules of engagement that we live by is exactly what the narcissist will capitalize on. Otherwise, you're gonna seem like you're you're being paranoid or rejecting, which anyway is going to be inferred down the line once you start questioning things. But the state of cognitive dissonance that starts to kick in, the attachment, that's what makes it so difficult to get out early. I agree. I agree.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Okay. Definitely it is striking because how the very nature of this kind of abuse is designed to make you doubt your perception. So it is not, yeah, I mean it is it's not just about it's hard to see, but it is that you are being actively taught not to trust what you are seeing. So that kind of layer of confusion is a part of trauma itself.

Fear, Flying Monkeys, Cassandra Syndrome

SPEAKER_00 10:40

So from your work and your experience, what do you see as the deeper patterns underneath the narcissistic abuse? Like what is really happening beneath the surface behaviors that you can observe?

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Beneath the surface, I mean there is terror because there is always an ambient threat. If the person pushes back, there is reprisal, right? Whether it's stonewalling, parental alienation. I work with a lot of people who want to get out of a relationship or a marriage with a narcissist, they're afraid for the children. Children are typically triangulated, scapegoated. So underneath is always fear, and that's why people show up in therapy with hypervigilance. They're dysregulated. Because underneath it, and that's always what's underneath Stockholm syndrome, is I have to adapt habitation. It's a blessing and a curse. I have to adapt to this by taking on the abuser's reality because I can't tolerate how terrified I actually feel. So it's a locus of control. And so a lot of the work is to first uh stabilize the dysregulation, to try to reclaim instincts, instinctual awareness, which has been pathologized by the narcissist. You're crazy, you don't know what you're saying. And then in the how things look, because impression management is such a big part of narcissistic abuse, there are all these flying monkeys, these enablers who support the narcissist. So underneath is also what's called uh Cassandra syndrome. Cassandra was a goddess in the Greek pantheon, and she was taught the gift of prophecy by Apollo. But uh he tried to rape her, and when she resisted his advances, he leveled a curse on her. He said, I can't take back the gift of prophecy from you, but you will always know the truth, and no one will ever believe you. And she went mad. So a lot of people present with Cassandra syndrome, but again, it's all kind of under the surface, and that's part of the work to exhibit these uh tragic realities.

How Identity Erodes Over Time

SPEAKER_00 12:45

How do those patterns take root in someone sense of self overtime? Like what happens internally to the person on receiving end, on the receiving end?

SPEAKER_01 13:00

So it starts with the love bombing, as we talked about, and that is the state of limerencing and feeling just enraptured. Oh, this person knows me better than anyone. We're so aligned. I've never had this kind of connection before. It feels almost otherworldly, whether it's a friendship or romantic relationship, or even with a um, I had a client who came into treatment with clear signs of complex trauma. It was more acute trauma. I couldn't figure out what was really happening. She had a very healthy background. She was a she was a chemist. The CEO of her company was a psychopath. And she felt, oh, I met another woman like myself who I could really partner with. And at first, it just seemed like, wow, this was going to be great. They were going to really inspire each other. And there was a whole smear campaign going on behind the scenes. There was a lot of gaslighting. And she was able to recover pretty quickly her because she had such strong supports. Her family was really concerned about her. But she was having nightmares. She had to leave the company. The company eventually went under because of the influence of this of this woman, the CEO. But it starts out in a in a very hopeful place, a really just a feeling of I've found, I've found another who really gets me and who I could really share great things with. That is tactical. And as I said, the narcissist will read the other person and behave in a way that seems to be very benign, innocuous, very loving, very caring, encouraging, inspiring. So when the hooks are in, that's when change occurs. So it may feel like I'll tell you experience I had. This was interesting. I was living in Montreal and met a woman who was also from New York, and we became friends, and everything seemed okay. And then at a point where I felt that we were really connected, she suddenly started playing mind games. Like she would always walk with me. She would walk, then she started walking in front of me. We would sit together in a restaurant. She would sit apart from me. It seemed to be very subtle, but because I'm so at this point skilled, I felt this rage inside of me. I felt like I can't believe I'm being blindsided. And it was funny because I was with our husbands were with us. My husband's sitting apart from me. He's like, What's going on with you? We were at dinner. I said, I have to go. We have to go. Um, I can't continue this farce. But he couldn't see it. And her husband was so abused. It was very clear. And then he starts opening up to me, as people sometimes do with therapists, about all the abuse in his life. And I'm thinking, you don't even know what you're dealing with right now. But it happens in a way that is very tactical. Now, if I didn't have the awareness that I do have, I probably would have felt very insecure and vulnerable and said, Did I do something wrong? And she would say, What are you talking about? I can just, I'm just sitting over here. What's wrong with you? It would, the onus would be on me. So suddenly I'm this insecure, fragile person who is manufacturing concerns. So that's how that's how it begins. And over time, with the intermittent reinforcement, the attachment deepens and the sense of confusion is enhanced. And so what you start to see is a state of hyper-vigilance that is also paired with a tremendous sense of fragility. There's a feeling of threat, but it's not defined. And so the person feels like, what's wrong with me? What is happening to me?

SPEAKER_00 16:40

Exactly. And I mean, obviously, like if we if we talk about our daily part, like for someone who is listening who might be wondering that if they are experiencing this, then how does narcissistic abuse show up in their day daily life?

Daily Red Flags And Hidden Surveillance

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Like what are the small ordinary moments that reveal something bigger is going on?

SPEAKER_01 17:04

It really depends on the stage. So you have when you're by the end of the relationship, it's called the degraded discard. If there's any pushing back, eventually the narcissist will either get tired of you, or if your primary supply for many decades, you're basically diminished at that point. The idea is to break the person down. It's all about power. So signs, when you're in, let's say in a romantic relationship, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting, a lot of lies. Usually there's infidelity, but it doesn't have to be necessarily, but that's pretty common. There is generally a sense of you are always mistaken. You're going to hear that there is never accountability. So that's important to look for. Sometimes the a big tactic, which is really nefarious, is the narcissist will feign innocent. Not, they won't say no, that never happened, but they might say, I'm sorry, you're you're perceiving it that way. I really didn't mean it that way. I'm very confused. You usually I think what you see is when I see a couple that comes in and this has happened, the narcissistic partner will be very, will seem very present and contained, and the victim is off the rails, is unhinged. Yeah. And so a lot of times a therapist will say, Well, that the unhinged person is the problem. But given my framework, I ask, hmm, how did they become this way? What's going on here? And move in a direction to sort of uncover what is going on beneath the surface. But there's always going to be uh a lack of accountability, a lot of implications that the target is making things up or is misunderstanding or is just outright mentally ill, that could be part of the gaslighting to induce mental illness, which ultimately happens. Complex trauma is a mental illness. It's also an adaptation to abuse. So that's important to recognize. I mean, if you start to feel very flooded and then you start to feel very numb, as if you are kind of in a suspended reality, that's typically an indication that you're being abused.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

So are there any emotional or psychological signals that people often overlook?

SPEAKER_01 19:19

There's often reactive abuse, which is a setup. So people can reach a limit and then they're perceived as the abuser after they are so pushed to the edge. And that can typically happen. And then the and that further reinforces the narcissist's agenda. Alternatively, the person can become very compliant and obedient, you know, is always thinking, what will happen if I speak? Now, and losing sight of the fact, well, you have your right to your spontaneous expression is it's inherent, right? It's our birthright. So even when that becomes conceptualized as something that is egregious in a relationship, that's an indication that there's psychological captivity happening. Any kind of preoccupation with what you want to say, what you want to do. Oh, I can't, I'm not allowed to go out, I can't see that, I can't wear this. You know, there's a lot of surveillance that happens. So adapting to being always watched. I've had a lot of clients who've had devices put on, like forensic, actually tracking devices that have been put on their computers, on their phones. So it's it's often very concealed, and that's why it's so difficult to identify. A lot of the work, as you said, is returning to who you were. Even the idea that this is lunacy, that I I've normalized this.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

Understand. And one more thing here which is

Nonlinear Healing And Building Safety

SPEAKER_00 20:51

striking me. Like healing is a kind of complex trauma. It's not I mean, from a kind of complex trauma, it's not linear. So what do you tell people about handling the setbacks that are at those moments when old patterns resurface?

SPEAKER_01 21:08

It is going to be circuitous. You know, so when I I do encourage no contact or at least gray rocking. A person needs to protect themselves, especially, you know, you have to look at the level of abuse. Is someone in a life-threatening situation? Sometimes you have to really talk about a contingency plan before you can even get into patterns. Often, I think what happens, a pattern that really erupts is because a person is coming out of a relationship and they were wish they were systematically and tactically abused, there's a lot of paranoia. Everyone's a narcissist now. Everything that anyone does is a sign, is a red flag. So a lot of the work at first, when the patterns start to emerge, is having a foundation of safety. What does safety look like? How do Feel safe in one's body, to repair the mind-body split that happens when you're going through complex trauma. Regulation is really important. I'm really looking at rules of engagement because it is life-changing. The patterns, sometimes, you know, the patterns of compliance or the patterns of reactive abuse, some of that you want to actually borrow from in terms of establishing rules of engagement. I don't want to get to a point where I act in a way that's antithetical to my values. So I have to be intelligently guarded. That may mean I'm not going to be as friendly as I used to be. I'm not going to be as open. I need to have sort of a blueprint, a relational blueprint. And all of my clients, myself included, I mean, who have gone through this, it changes you. So when the patterns emerge, it is an indication that there's activation and learning how to regulate oneself, return to a place of safety, but then also to question. I think that's a very important piece. Why am I triggered? What's happening? It was I was watching a show last night and I was triggered by a scene with a mother who was clearly a narcissist who was assaulting her daughter. No one could see it. And I was so mad at the mother. I was like, it's this kind of outrage that more so is why does no one see this? You know, why are we so inclined to want to preserve this fantasy that everyone is good, particularly if it's coming from a parent? So, and that changes. So, and that's a big change that happens because these patterns that could that emerge, the activation, the hypervigilance, the dissociative numbing, all of this is indication that there is harm, you know, and that we live in a world that can be dangerous, and we have to assimilate that

Worldview Shifts And One Core Advice

SPEAKER_01 23:50

reality.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

So if you have to give one advice on uh suggestions to the listeners today, what that would be.

SPEAKER_01 23:56

I think it it relates to what we're talking about, which is it changes your worldview, you know, open up to the reality that there are there is a demographic of people. There are people in the world who are actually driven to to to assert power over others, to dehumanize others. There is malignancy is real. And I know we scoff at notions of human evil. Carl Jung, who father of psychoanalysis, he said, you know, we cannot address, we cannot address evil and help victims of abuse if we don't even recognize it as a potential within all of us. We all have lower impulses. So to scoff at notions like this, and I've had many people who come into treatment, many of my colleagues who are trauma-informed therapists, also, we talk about this a lot. People who come in who say they were in treatment before, but they were encouraged to find the best in the abuser and someone who is um glaringly malignant. So that would be my message. As difficult as it is to open up to that mindset, I think paradoxically it actually will enhance your life because it allows you to have information that can insulate you from harm.

How To Connect And Closing Words

SPEAKER_00 25:16

So if listeners want to connect with you, how they can connect?

SPEAKER_01 25:19

I would suggest visiting my website that's sherytherapist.com. I spell my name S-H-E-R-I. Um and my title is Rev Sherry Howler, L C S W, if you want to look me up on Google or on my medium blog.

SPEAKER_00 25:34

Amazing. So your listeners like what I'll do is I'll put all the links, details, everything into the show notes for you prints. And I'd say the opposite, the opposite of narcissistic abuse is not just the safety, it is the reclamation of your right to be seen, heard, and valued as we actually are. So definitely definitely thank you for sharing your perspectives and knowledge as well. So this will definitely gonna help people. And thank you everyone for being here. And as I said in the beginning, like if today's conversation has touched you, then do share like what you think, what you've been through. Because this those those scenarios will definitely help people, and we will definitely come out with more questions of I need help or I need to understand, right? That is much important. So everyone who is listening, healing is possible. It does not always look like the way we expect, but it doesn't happen on anyone else's time either. So but reclaiming your sense of self, your trust in your own reality, that's not just possible, it is your birthright, right? So take what resonates from today and leave what is not. And also remember the fact that you are asking these questions that you are seeking the understanding. That itself is an act of resistance and the healing as well. So with this hope, this is your host Avik, and this is Mind Meets Machine. Until next time, take care of yourself and each other as well. Thank you.