Cathy: We have new comment. Hey peeps, running for a dear friend who had a classic narcissistic partner with who have been lying to her for years. A lot something major, it’s a long story. I’m looking for advice about psychological response to experiencing betrayal and the loss of abusive addictive relationship. How can someone flame of bad relationships of their self-talks than can find strength to pick up and move forward. Tough question I realized. Love you, I love your channel so much. I’m always sad when there’s part two and not post yet. You’re so thoughtful.
Reid: Thank you for saying nice things about us.
Cathy: Yes, of course you will answer the question. We do really appreciate people writing in. I love that you care about your friend and you pretty much thought into this and there’s definitely some things you can do to help and I also want to suggest that if someone’s been in an abusive relationship or a controlling relationship for a number of years, there’s going to be a period of grieving and a period of just kind of feeling the feels. Sometimes we want to fix things as opposed to just be there with them and encouraging them to take the steps to help them not repeat the pattern is wonderful and it’s also okay just to give space if they asked to feel a little.
Reid: This is Cathy Vartulli from https://TheIntimacyDojo.com/.
Cathy: And Reid Mihalko from https://ReidAboutSex.com/.
Reid: That was a really good question that we forgot to do our little intro.
Cathy: No wonder you were smiling on me.
Reid: We forgot. First off, if this person can avail themselves of therapy, please get a therapist or advise your friend to get a therapist so they have somebody else to talk to. So you as their friend get to cheer them on and support them as well.
Cathy: I’m just saying not necessarily trying to fix them.
Reid: Oh no, not at all. And that grieving and having feelings going to happen when you have find out about betrayal or lying. Sometimes people lie for reasons that they think are perfectly legitimate reasons. So you have feelings whether it’s a relationship with narcissistic or not. If your friend is geeky enough to go and look for resources and type in narcissist in amazon and there’s a lot of books there and the ones that have great reviews. I’m not an expert in this particular area so I don’t have a book that I read that I can recommend but there’s a lot of resources out there to orient yourself to what’s happening and get better resources and tools so that you or your friend so that we can feel more empowered and less shameful being in a f*cked up situation.
Cathy: When I have clients that gone through some betrayals in relationships, I realized that if you can give them a little space to want to check on things if they’ve been really disappointed someone’s really gone bad that way, it’s harder to trust people and for them to need to check in and reassured especially if you can do it in a way that makes them feel empowered like that can be really healing. It’s like if you encouraged them to ask for what they need rather than ask you directly. Because sometimes if someone has been intrude, they won’t want to ask for needs, they want to hint them. If you say, it sounds like you’re asking for reassurance to be clear about what kind of reassurance you like.
Reid: The way that occurs to me is that I often ask people in a conversation like what hat you want me wearing right now. Do I have my fixing hat, am I your cheerleader? Do you want somebody who’s on your side being how dare them? Let’s go find them and kick them in the sheens. Like what role do you want me playing right now in this dynamic? That can be really helpful because then you’re helping the other person figure out what they need and ideally, you don’t have the wrong hat on cause when I mistake somebody needs fixing Reid and I’m trying to fix it that’s not what they need, that just makes it worse and people who are in pain then shut down. That approach to me is really, really helpful and empowering others to find their words.
Cathy: I found emotional freedom techniques or people taught tapping your EFT was very powerful for me to release all the drama I had. There’s different techniques out there, different ways to release some of the energetic trauma.
Reid: Hope this was helpful. Let us know how it goes if that feel appropriate. Leave comments. Other people resources if you had experience like this would help you get through it. Hit subscribe.
