For those in a relationship with someone who has narcissistic tendencies or NPD – whether a parent, partner, or close friend – the experience can feel captivating, destabilizing, and difficult to navigate. Long-term relationships with these individuals can leave a profound and long-lasting effect.
We’ve all been there—stuck in the same old argument that keeps resurfacing no matter how hard you try to move past it. Maybe it starts over something small, like chores, but it spirals into something much bigger, leaving both of you feeling hurt and disconnected. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. These recurring arguments can leave even the most loving couples feeling stuck. The good news? Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) can help you break the cycle.
The truth is, therapy isn’t just about processing crises; it’s also a space for exploration, reflection, and growth. And if you’re not sure where to start, that’s okay!
Through my work as a therapist and within my personal life, I’ve witnessed the pressure of society’s beauty standards, and how it can greatly impact someone’s self-esteem and body image. While this experience is fairly common, there is a difference between temporary dissatisfaction with your appearance and a diagnosis. For someone with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), this preoccupation can take over your daily life, leading to a constant loop of anxiety, self-doubt, and shame.
Imagine your emotional state as existing within a window. When you're within this window, you can think clearly, make rational decisions, and feel in control of your emotions. This state allows you to handle daily stresses without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down. It’s where we experience a balance between our sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) nervous systems. This is your window of tolerance.
Imagine your emotional state as existing within a window. When you're within this window, you can think clearly, make rational decisions, and feel in control of your emotions. This state allows you to handle daily stresses without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down. It’s where we experience a balance between our sympathetic (fight-or-flight) and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) nervous systems. This is your window of tolerance.
While the holidays are filled with the warmth of loved ones around the table, laughter echoing through the house, and shared traditions, grief sees the empty chair, the unspoken name, the absence of familiar voices and touches. What should feel like togetherness instead brings a longing for what is no longer possible.
Our senses play a pivotal role in how we form, store, and retrieve memories. This is because the brain areas responsible for processing sensory input are closely linked to the regions that store and retrieve memories. The hippocampus, which organizes and recalls memories, works together with the amygdala, the emotional center of the brain. They ensure that emotionally charged events are more vividly stored in memory. This link exists for both extraordinarily painful and joyful memories alike.
When we talk about “trauma,” we’re talking about an emotional or psychological response to a distressing event or experience. It’s not necessarily the event itself that’s traumatic but rather the way it impacts a person’s sense of safety, stability, or identity. Trauma often leaves people feeling overwhelmed, helpless, or disconnected from themselves or others.
I have thought through every situation from every possible angle my brain can come up with and analyzed so much of my life and experience that it often feels exhausting. This “self-awareness” can start to feel incredibly frustrating when I have some understanding, yet I still find myself in familiar patterns or generally not feeling better. If this description sounds familiar to you, you might be intellectualizing your feelings vs. actually feeling them.
Navigating grief can feel like a journey without a map; perplexing, lonely, and disorienting. It doesn’t have a linear timeline. You might cycle through stages, jump back and forth, or even skip some altogether. While each person’s grief looks and feels different, there are certain stages of grief that most individuals experience at some point or another.
At its core, EMDR is based on the idea that our brains can process and heal from trauma just like our bodies can heal from physical injuries. However, when a traumatic event occurs, the memory of it can get "stuck," preventing the brain from fully processing it
I suffered my first heartbreak during my senior year of high school. I was 17 years old and had just broken up with my first boyfriend. I never knew it was possible to feel so much pain. For weeks I called my friend Julia multiple times a day, crying, I sat in my car in the school parking lot, crying, and went to bed and woke up, crying. I had never really lost anything before, and grief wasn’t yet something I had encountered much in my life.
My mom, also a therapist, noticing me in my pain, told me about the Stages of Grief as described by Swiss-American Psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. For the first time in weeks, I was able to name the different waves of grief I was going through, and through this was able to experience some relief and stop crying every. damn. day.
Little did I know that I would return to the Stages Of Grief over and over again throughout my life as I moved through teenage heartbreak into adult heartbreak, and deaths of pets, friends, and family. The awareness of the stages of grieving helped soothe my aching heart throughout these different losses, and also helped me provide support to clients and friends alike to cope with grief at any stage.
“And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”- Maya Angelou
These lines from the poem “When Great Trees Fall” by Maya Angelou were read to me in session by a client as she prepared for her first Thanksgiving without her husband. Though this client has been feeling the immense weight of her grief daily and even hourly, the thought of the imminent holiday season has been bringing up new and intense emotions. The experience of managing grief comes up every year in therapy sessions, but this year the grieving feels even more pervasive as so many of us have lost family members throughout the pandemic. In some way, we are all grieving the loss of unmet expectations and hopes from the past 21 months.
For many, the end of the year holidays signifies a time of togetherness, happiness, and celebration. For those of us that are grieving, these feelings are muddled together with pain, loneliness, longing, resentment, and a myriad of other emotions. Creating space for all of these jumbled emotions can feel overwhelming. Here are some coping skills to keep in mind this holiday season for anyone experiencing grief in any form.
