Breaking the Cycle: How I Overcame Intergenerational Trauma to Become a Peer Advocate
By Angela Colón-Rentas
You may wonder: How did that young Puerto Rican girl who very much disliked seeing a therapist when locked up in the juvenile system end up working in the mental health field as an adult? Simple answer: I wanted to help youth in crisis. And it was meant to be.
One of the lesser discussed outcomes of toxic relationships is how narcissists are often successful at convincing your friends and family that YOU are the dysfunctional, toxic one. Sometimes, they can even turn them against you.
So then, not only do you have to cope with the painful smear campaign, but you are also faced with the fact that your friends and family who sided with the narcissist have betrayed you, as well.
These are not your people. Maybe they never were.
Anyone who knows you – authentically – should not side with the person who is trying to tear your life down.
Sure, narcissists are exceptionally skilled at pretending they’re just regular people trying to live their lives, but these people knew you long before the narcissist came along…yet, here they are, siding with them.
If someone doesn’t know you well enough to know the narcissist’s accusations are false, then did they ever really know you?
I find that life is too short to change people’s minds about things. If flying monkeys and enablers want to believe the narcissist’s stories, then they have their own path to travel. It’s not our job to make them see the light.
Along my own journey, I stopped wasting my precious time and energy trying to correct the narrative or defend myself against accusations and the people who wanted to believe them. Let them find out the truth like you did (IF they ever do).
Some people love to eat up drama like a tasty snack.
Some people want to think they found dirt on you.
Some people want to get into the narcissist’s good graces for their own reasons.
And some people are just too naïve and gullible.
None of these people belong in your circle OR your tribe.
These are lost people who need to find their own way or remain unwoke. It’s not your job, and it’s not your project.
Save your precious time and energy for other, more important things…like getting through the smear campaign with the people who are truly on your side.
And if you have no one, get a dog, a cat, or a goldfish. Our tribe can be anyone or any creature who will have our back.
🔥 Grab your free Beginner’s Healing Toolkit for backup:
https://bit.ly/BeginnersRoadmap
#selfhealers
In a new article published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine Focus, researchers lay out the American College of Preventative Medicine’s (ACPM) position on preventing and mitigating adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). While the authors endorse surveillance and research around childhood adversity, they recommend against screening for adverse childhood experiences in individual clinical encounters.
Through a synthesis of research and expert opinion, they put forward seven recommendations for preventing and assisting in recovery from adverse childhood experiences. They write:
“The American College of Preventive Medicine offers seven adverse childhood experiences‒related recommendations focused on screening, education/training, policy/practice, and research: 2 are evidence-based, and five are based on expert opinion. Notably, regarding secondary prevention of adverse childhood experiences, the American College of Preventive Medicine endorses population-level surveillance and research around childhood adversity but not adverse childhood experience screening in individual clinical encounters.”
Stockholm syndrome is a coping mechanism used by many people in toxic and abusive relationships. Instead of feelings of fear, terror, and hostility toward your abuser – which is what you should be experiencing – you may feel a sense of sympathy for them. Your positive feelings toward your abuser are very common and normal when learned helplessness has set in. Subconsciously, you feel you’ve no other choice but to stay with your abuser.
Stockholm syndrome can, and often does, cause targets of abuse to feel as if they’re deeply in love with their abuser.
But, those who have left and started their healing journey soon discover that what they thought was love was a coping mechanism and was the only way they could survive in a dangerous and life-destroying relationship.
If you don’t know how to deal with Stockholm syndrome in the aftermath of narcissistic abuse, it can paralyze you. It sure did me at the beginning of my own journey because I didn’t know how to handle it. But I do now, and I want to help you overcome this awful feeling, too.
Read the article here:
👉👉 https://bit.ly/OvercomingStockholmSyndrome
Always thinking of you,
Kim
Being raised in high conflict families, we are raised to be our own worst enemies and harshest critics. High conflict family environments do not operate from love.
These families are driven by competition, comparison and conflict. To gain any sense of peace in these toxic environments, we must go against what is in our best interest to fit in.
Cutting off from a family like this, requires going through a period of a “major detox.” We need time to detox from all the poison and brainwashing. This detox requires examining and understanding the totality and vastness of our family’s dysfunction. It requires grieving and a strong commitment to moving forward. It requires self love.
This detox period is the launching pad for the development of a healthier sense of personal power that does not include forcing, pressuring, controlling, criticizing or competing.
There are far better, and more empowering ways to do life than from the same type of dysfunction we were raised in.
Sherry Campbell PhD
Certainly seems alien
Please see more of my posts on Instagram.
https://www.instagram.com/charliemccready1/
Parental alienation is probably the hardest experience you will ever go through and screws you up mentally and emotionally. I know because I have been there too!
The alienating parent’s childhood trauma may have been triggered by the separation/divorce, and they fear abandonment, feeling worthless and empty, and losing control – so they rewrite the narrative, recasting all the roles. Good parent becomes bad. Victimizer becomes victim. They cling to the child/ren as the emotional attachment bonds with their spouse/partner sever.
I also know that although it was the alienator that put you onto this emotional rollercoaster, ONLY YOU can get yourself off. Every day that you sit on that ride experiencing pain, is another day that the alienator wins. It is another day that you are less able to help your children and your family.
Many of us need help to get off the rollercoaster, learning how to best support our children in ways to be more effective in dealing with alienators.
The Personal Authority 9-Step Program can start making a difference to your life in just a few weeks. DM me and start taking back control today!
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At their core, the alienating parent is afraid, jealous and cannot bear to think there could be time spent, let alone love given, to anyone but themselves. Their wounded ego needs revenge, and this will be inflicted on anyone (especially a ‘target’ parent) who exposes the truth of who they are inside (often triggered by separation/divorce – it can’t be their fault). They can’t bear it. They even hide from themselves. To deal with this, they try and control everyone and everything. They rewrite the narrative. They encourage and magnify any natural discord that happens in the course of childhood with parents. The children are coercively controlled, and weaponised. They’re not allowed independent thought or any positive feelings or even memories about the ‘other’ parent. But the child/ren loved you, and they still do, they’ve just been ‘indoctrinated’ to think otherwise. Once they remove their gas mask, their toolkit of survival, they can breathe. They can live their sovereign lives as they deserve. They can reunite with you. Please see more of my posts at:
https://www.instagram.com/charliemccready1/
AND PLEASE DO JOIN ME ON MY NEW COMMUNITY PAGE as we reached capacity here. Thanks.
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#familylaw #familycourt #highconflictdivorce #parentalalienation #parentalalienationawareness #coparentingwithanarcissist #childcustody #custodybattle #parentalalienationischildabuse #parentalalienationisacrime #fathersrights #mothersrights #parentalalienationsyndrome #cognitivedistortions #psychologicalsplitting #familyviolence #survivingparentalalienation #generationaltrauma #hostileaggressiveparenting #parentalalienatingbehaviours #FamilyLaw #falseallegations #alienatedparent #parenting #alienated #narcissisticabusesurvivor #narcissisticabuserecovery #narcissisticpersonalitydisorder #coercivecontrol #childrenfirst #StopParentalAlienation #fathersrights #mothersrights #reunification #coparentingwithanarcissist #emotionalabuse #psychologicalabuse #traumabonding #divorcinganarcissist #EndParentalAlienation #consciousparenting #consciousparent #consciousparentingcoach #childhoodtrauma #targetparent #targetedchild #parentalrights #childsupport #Custody #cognitivedistortions #splitting #familyviolence #survivingparentalalienation
GreatCosmicMothersUnite 