Have you ever felt like you were the parent instead of the child? Growing up as a parentified daughter means carrying emotional burdens too heavy for a child to bear. In this video, we explore the experience of daughters who had to step into a parental role—providing comfort, stability, and care at the expense of their own childhood.
This video is inspired by my own experience of being a parentified daughter and I share a deeply personal poem I wrote in my early twenties when I was struggling with my mother.
The poem in the video is written below:
***Please only re-use this poem by giving credit and asking for permission.***
Self-silencing is much more common that people think.
Feeling too afraid to express your true thoughts, desires, and emotions often stems from childhood experiences in environments where self-expression didn’t feel safe. This behavior is frequently shaped by generational patterns passed down unconsciously, where parents, influenced by their own upbringing and unresolved trauma, lacked the tools to create a space for open and secure communication.
If you recognize that you have a tendency to self-silence, it’s essential to take proactive steps toward building healthier habits and learning to express yourself more openly and authentically.
Watch my video below, to gain more clarity on self-silencing.
When you grew up in a home with dysfunction, chaos and unpredictable emotional outbursts, your mind and body is constantly thrown into a state of emotional dysregulation. Home didn’t feel safe, so you also didn’t feel safe. When unpredictable and unfair demands were placed on you as a child, this will have caused long term problems with hyper vigilance, low self-worth, shame, anxiety and depression. CPTSD will be the end result of growing up with emotionally immature and/or toxic parents.
As an adult, you will struggle with certain very basic every day things. Normal changes that are very much a part of life, may feel huge for someone with CPTSD. A sudden change in plans, a packed train, an illness or a delayed flight can all create immense anxiety in someone with a history of trauma.
When you live with CPTSD, over-preparing and knowing the details of things in advance, can ease your anxiety and help you feel more comfortable.
Creating safety as much as possible, helps trauma survivors feel better.
Creating regular routines and predictable outcomes can also be very helpful.
It is of course impossible to control everything in your environment, but being prepared can very much help.
When things don’t go as planned, having a back-up plan can create a safety net. Having certain objects with you that provide comfort, can also be extremely helpful.
What is your experience with this? I would love to know in the comments below!
Cognitive Bypassing is the practice of avoiding feelings by detouring into cognitive ideas or beliefs. It means that we tend to overthink in order to avoid uncomfortable emotions such as grief, fear or anger.
There is nothing wrong with using cognitive strategies as part of your emotional well-being. However, when every negative emotion must be analysed, changed or explained cognitively, this is counterproductive. Compulsively adding cognition to emotion means that you don’t ever allow your traumas to fully heal. The uncomfortable truth is that there is a component of painful emotions that simply must be felt, as hard as that may be to hear.
Healing trauma has more to do with embracing the feeling in the body than holding on to the thoughts of the mind. Somatic healing is crucial in recovery from trauma when you live with CPTSD. Allowing yourself to grieve the losses of your childhood is also a huge part of the healing process. Throwing CBT techniques at clients who suffer with trauma just isn’t enough!
Different therapies that enable us to somatically process trauma are very important in healing childhood trauma. Art therapy, dance therapy, drama therapy, play therapy as well as somatic healing, EMDR, sensorimotor therapy and accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy are all very important.
Most of us who have experienced trauma, find ways to constantly avoid our emotions by overthinking but also by comfort eating, doing drugs or drinking alcohol, being compulsive, dissociating and so much more.
How many of us actually just sit with our uncomfortable emotions and allow ourselves to self soothe, allow ourselves to have a good cry and share what we are actually feeling? Do we actually allow ourselves to feel our sadness or fear and just give it the space to be present without analysing it? This isn’t easy for many of us. As much as it isn’t easy, we have to find ways to make room for it and really feel whatever comes up.
Have you heard of echoism? Echoism isn’t commonly talked about but is very real and a lot of individuals who have suffered narcissistic abuse in childhood actually live with it.
Echoism is very common with individuals who live with Avoidant Personality Disorder or who have many avoidant traits. Echoists find it extremely uncomfortable being the centre of attention.
In this video, I talk about narcissists and whether they have a moral compass.
In some cases, people may argue that narcissists can actually feel guilt when they have done something wrong and they can also feel ashamed.
It is important to take into account that somebody with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) also has a unique character, history of trauma and a certain outlook on life. All these must be taken into account when considering whether they have a moral compass.
In my experience, I would say narcissists definitely choose to ignore the things that they have done wrong to others but are quick to inflict the moral high ground on others, if they don’t agree with what these others have done.
‘You are the light that refused to surrender’ is a wonderful way to look at your healing journey after experiencing trauma.
If you, like me, have a history of trauma, you will be very familiar with the ups and downs of living with CPTSD. For me personally, having hope in my lowest moments, was the 1 thing that kept me going when things truly felt hopeless.
Having hope means that you allow yourself to believe that the day WILL come where you WILL feel better, where things will feel less scary, less isolating and less depressing.
It’s important to never stop hoping when things get tough and to allow yourself to embrace that feeling wholeheartedly.
Practicing gratitude is also extremely important for improving mental health. Be grateful for any tiny steps of progress you make, even if you managed to do 1 additional thing today that you didn’t manage to do the day before.
Living with mental illness is never easy but it can be manageable. Living with mental illness means that you might have to constantly make adjustments to the way you live your life, in order to feel better.These adjustments may look like the following: Changing your diet, adding more exercise to your daily routine, cutting out sugar, moving to the countryside, ending a relationship, leaving a stressful job, practicing meditation, seeking out support from a specialised therapist, going on a retreat, taking supplements and/or using medication. Each journey with mental illness is unique so what might work for one person may not necessarily work for another. Try things out, see what works and go from there.
Darkness may have been a big part of your past and may still creep up on you in the present. This is realistic as life can be tough even when you don’t live with a mental illness.The only way through this darkness however is to find the light. The light could be anything: a therapist, a close friend, a partner, a beloved pet, being in nature, a safe space, art, music or anything else that brings you comfort.
Most importantly however, you must try and find the light within yourself, within your heart and soul.
In those moments of relentless anxiety, depression or emotional flashbacks, love yourself unconditionally. Take yourself by the hand, like you would a small child and tell yourself ‘ I’ve got you, you are not alone’… ‘ I am there for you, unconditionally’.
If you are having a tough day, then I hope this post helps a little.
Passive aggressiveness is very common in dysfunctional relationships and families where covert narcissists are in control. This is my most recent video.
Have you experienced passive aggressive behaviour?
A little over 3 months ago, I finally made the decision to embark on a sugar free lifestyle. This has ultimately been life changing for me and required buckets of discipline and persistently resisting temptation.
In this post, I will talk about why I made this decision and what changes I have noticed, especially after a lifetime of constantly eating too much sugar.
The following video was hugely inspiring to me but my dear friend ‘Ketodawg’ was the main reason I embarked on this life-changing journey.
I will talk a little more about ‘Ketodawg’ in my next post but for now, please watch this video before reading any further.
Many of you, just like me, have probably enjoyed eating pasta, bread and starchy foods for as long as you remember. Many of you have a sweet tooth and can’t imagine life without sugar or processed food.
In my case, my childhood was filled with sugar. Both my parents had a sweet tooth and they allowed me to eat and drink sugary things as young as 2 or 3 years of age. I preferred drinking chocolate milk instead of regular milk and loved sugary cereals for breakfast. We always had packs of biscuits in the house and I learned to bake cakes before I learned to cook food.
In many households, this was and still is the norm.
Did you know that more than 5 grams of sugar in your bloodstream, can already be harmful to our bodies? Our bodies are not made to carry more than this amount in any given moment.
If I take a moment to consider what my daily intake of sugar and carbs was for most of my life, I would say it exceeded 200grams a day. I am pretty sure I was already insulin resistant, which would have eventually lead to type 2 DIABETES.
I loved comfort food, so would regularly cook high carb foods such as pasta, rice and potatoes and I enjoyed bakery items, cakes and biscuits daily. I managed to reduce the sugar in my tea from 2 teaspoons to half a teaspoon, but that was still not good enough, as I was drinking 6-8 cups of green tea per day. At my absolute worst, I weighed 72 kilos. I was completely addicted to sugar, had always been an emotional eater and essentially learnt bad eating habits from a young age.
My father developed type 2 diabetes from an unhealthy, overindulgent diet and this is sadly what killed him in the end, at age 70.
For nearly 3 months now, I have been following the Keto Diet which means reduced carbs, no sugar and lots of healthy fats and leafy greens. This reduction in carbs puts your body into a metabolic state called ketosis. When this happens, your body becomes incredibly efficient at burning fat for energy. It also turns fat into ketones in the liver, which can supply energy for the brain.
The first week I started Keto, I was having intense cravings for all the foods I couldn’t eat. I was reluctant to throw out all of the yummy biscuits that I had brought back from a trip to Greece. I was also convinced that I wouldn’t be able to give up pasta, which was my go-to food most of the time, especially when I was really busy with work.
In the first 10 days of my Keto diet, I experienced Keto flu symptoms just as I had predicted from the research I had done. I reduced my intake of carbohydrates and sugars to a maximum of 25grams per day, which in turn made me feel lightheaded, fatigued, irritable, low and achey. To compensate, I was drinking plenty of fluids so I could feel better. A keto diet can cause you to rapidly shed water stores, increasing the risk of dehydration.
After this initial 10 day period, my cravings for sugary foods had gone and I was getting used to my new lifestyle.
My body had already started burning ketones from fat instead of glucose. This was evident in the fact that I had started losing weight.
The most amazing thing I started noticing was that I was no longer having these afternoon energy crashes, where I felt like I was going to fall asleep. I also felt like I had better mental clarity, less of a ‘foggy head’ and my energy levels overall were hugely improved.
I lost a total of 10 kilos, which I am extremely proud of and I feel much more confident in my body than I used to.
Last but not least, I have generally felt more stable in myself. As I have lived with the effects of CPTSD all my life, I have definitely noticed that I am much calmer and more positive now. This has been extremely important to me, as I never wanted to be on medication for my symptoms.
My friends and loved ones have also noticed that I am much better in myself and have even commented on my skin, saying that I have a healthier glow.
Overall, I would highly recommend cutting out sugar and processed foods.
Since these lead to chronic inflammation in the body, which eventually cause Type 2 Diabetes , Cancer, Alzheimers and ill mental and physical health, it is a no brainer for anyone that is looking to be healthier.
If you suffer from anxiety, depression, PTSD or CPTSD I would highly recommend changing your diet, before resorting to medication. A good diet and regular exercise does make a huge difference. I have seen the results myself.
What is your experience?
Do you pay attention to what you eat and listen to your body?
Have you noticed any changes at all when cutting out sugar and processed food?
Narcissists are notorious for wanting to always be in control of every situation, especially in close relationships. Sadly, this is happening more often than not, especially behind closed doors.
Many viewers have resonated with the content of this video sadly.
If you resonate with the content too, please feel free to leave a comment and share your experience.
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