Time.

I woke up at 1:30 AM today. That's not my usual time to solve world problems from my pillow. I scoured my brain to find any reason I couldn’t sleep. It was September 5. Three years since I drove away from the Narc. It marked 3 years of healing. I didn't mark this date last year. Why this year? Because the nervous system remembers.

I’ve taken a two-year hiatus from writing. I slowed life down. I cocooned from the world. I rehabbed a house in my small hometown. I’ve found a new city I love. At the encouragement of Nikki, I put myself back out in the world of dating. I met the pieces of me I didn’t know existed. I’ve kept my inner circle small. I’ve learned compassion and grace are a practice that starts within. After all that and three years, the nervous system still remembers. I read back in the blog & there are days I don’t recognize myself or those stories as my own. It’s difficult to capture that sensation in words. But my nervous system still activates on certain experiences. I’ve opened up and shared with others who have been through the same. Picking up whatever pieces remain of yourself and moving forward is universally the hardest part. 

Three years of rebuilding, rewiring, and rehabbing. I was fortunate to find a team of healers. It’s not for everyone, but knowing myself, I knew I had to do this without the help of pharmaceuticals. From brainspotting, I knew I needed to process and experience the emotions. Physically, I found dry needling for my shoulder to release the trauma of the torn ligaments from him. As she stuck needles in my shoulder, my stomach would knot up, my left leg would tremor, and tears would roll. Not like a needle-related pain, but a deep ache from my body screaming for release from the bottom of a well. A somatic release from physical abuse. After those quick 15-minute sessions, I would be absolutely exhausted by 7 PM. The kind of sleep where you can’t keep your eyes open and your entire body feels like it’s moving through mud. With each session, I gained more mobility and experienced less pain. After 14 months of dry needling, I gained back 95% of my motion with no pain. Only then could I begin to build strength. I put the time in because I know the body keeps score.

The Nervous System Remembers

Time alone doesn't heal. Time only distances your nervous system from the direct impacts of the trauma. Whether the traumas are tangible or intangible abuse, the further you are from it, the less it hurts, but it doesn't heal because the nervous system remembers. Healing doesn’t just take time; it takes money, a circle of knowledgeable healers, resources, bravery, courage, determination, compassion, consistency, community, and most of all, self-love. To know you are worth investing in, to know there are modalities to heal from the inside out, and to trust the process might be the biggest challenge after being devalued by the narc. The human body only knows how to heal itself, and it's truly amazing what it's capable of doing given the right set of tools.

The Western medicine system is not equipped with the knowledge to heal the intangible narcissistic abuse. They often offer pills to calm or numb the nervous system; they fail to recognize the amygdala/brain damage, and won’t make the connection that narcissistic abuse has to the ongoing gut and neurological disorders that follow these experiences. So many hear it's all in their head. It is. And it is, because the nervous system remembers.   

Why and how does this happen? The nervous system remembers trauma by storing memories as intense emotional and sensory fragments. A process influenced by an overactive and unregulated amygdala and an impaired hippocampus. This leads to physical manifestations of pain and heightened emotional responses to triggers, essentially keeping the body in a perpetual state of "high alert" even when long gone from the Narc. It's a defense mechanism developed for survival. The nervous system is a beautifully designed system in which we aren’t given instructions on how to use or navigate. It’s not a one-size-fits-all, or even most. Healing takes a combination of physical, emotional, and energetic bodies, integrating to feel at peace. And of course, that takes time.