Journaling After Narcissistic Abuse to Resolve Trauma

Trauma (including narcissistic abuse) disconnects us – from ourselves, from others, and the world. The fragmentation and isolation resulting from trauma causes distress and dysregulation. What is not connected can’t communicate, and homeostasis cannot occur.

In addition, narcissistic abuse, even more so than other trauma, results in the formation of extremely distorted and heavily shame-laden beliefs about ourselves and our relation to the world.

Journaling after narcissistic abuse can help reconnect us to our reality by allowing for patterns of abuse and gaslighting to be recognized clearly for what they are.

It can also integrate us emotionally and psychologically – by putting particularly troubling memories to rest properly – so that they no longer plague, distress, or shame us.

Early Stage Journaling: Validating Your Own Experience

If you’re in the early stages of recovery, you may have learned about narcissistic abuse & suddenly your whole world starts to make perfect sense. The gut instincts and intuitions you’ve had your whole life were right on – you’re not crazy after all.

And there’s another exciting possibility – maybe you’re not to blame for everything wrong in your world. Maybe you’re the healthier, more responsible one.

However, the accumulated effects of years or decades of abuse and gaslighting have instilled so much self-doubt and toxic shame – that it is extremely difficult to let that possibility sink in deeply.

For so long, you’ve bought into the narcissist’s version of reality – that you’re the problem, any complaints you have are a result of oversensitivity and selfishness, and they are essentially better than you. You don’t have a leg to stand on.

The challenge is essentially to un-gaslight yourself and start developing the capacity to validate your reality.

To shift your worldview to one where you’re the healthy one, and you’ve been abused in a very confusing way, is a monumental task. Many survivors struggle to let the reality sink in on a deep level for a very long time.

It’s a lot to take in and come to terms with. Especially when your instincts have been systematically invalidated for who knows how long – maybe your entire life.

The fundamental task in narcissistic abuse recovery is to get in touch with your subjectivity – your sense of yourself as a subject, not an object.

Support from others is especially helpful, but after being abused, you may well be experiencing others as dangerous, or may not be able to find the right support for various reasons. Journaling is something you can do by yourself, and it can be powerful.

Write a Factual Story

In the early phase of recovery, it’s crucial to maintain clarity and create a reliable record of the abuse. Begin by keeping a daily log or diary and documenting any instances of abuse to combat the accumulation of gaslighting-induced beliefs.

Be specific; include dates, times, and details about what happened, and how it made you feel. Be sure to point out any inconsistencies or just plain lies of the narcissist. This log will be tangible evidence and help you build confidence in validating your own experience and could come in handy for other purposes.

As you go over the details – the facts of what was said, what was done (reality), your self-doubt will start to decrease dramatically and you will find yourself more able to trust yourself, to trust your perceptions and instincts.

Perhaps sit down one day and write down a factual record of the relationship going back as far as you can remember, beginning with where the problems first arose. Add to the story over days or weeks until you come to the present. Then read it.

I advise people with narcissistic problems at work to keep their log of events completely factual and devoid of interpretations regarding the narcissist and their motives. Human resources professionals like to make up their own minds based on objective facts. They won’t trust your log as much if the narrative is colored with your interpretations.

At this stage, you may need to be convinced yourself that you’ve been mistreated. So keep your journaling about what has transpired completely factual.

Maybe even make it in the third person – change your name, change others’ names, and write a story of who did/said what to whom. The reason for this is that (due to toxic shame) you may have more sympathy for a fictional character than you do for yourself.

If you were an impartial reader – what would you conclude? Has the person in the story been treated fairly, with dignity and due respect?

Key Benefits

• Identifying patterns of abuse
• Reducing cognitive dissonance and confusion
• Developing subjectivity & self-validation
• Developing self-compassion
• Establishing a factual record

One day, you will not give a second’s consideration to the narcissist’s convoluted spin on reality.

You’ll listen to them, or think of what they might say, shake your head, and marvel: “Right … yeah … as if.”

Your factual journal will get you on the path to this place.

Later Recovery Journaling: Expressive Writing

Once you’ve come to terms with the reality of what has transpired in your life, and gotten some distance from the narcissist (either physically or psychologically) you’ll move on to healing and growth.

At this stage, expressive writing can help put particularly traumatic events in your life to rest, so they no longer haunt you.

Expressive writing, developed by James Pennebaker, has been studied and shown to alleviate the aftereffects of troubling life experiences.

What to Write About

Expressive writing is appropriate for putting to rest distinct, time-limited traumatic events that are still troubling you. Perhaps you typically avoid thinking about these events, but you’re always sort of running from them, and elements related to them intrude into your consciousness intensely when triggered.

Expressive writing is not a final solution for long-term relational trauma in general. Relational trauma can be fully healed only in relationship(s) … as far as I know.

Expressive writing is more appropriate for discrete events or episodes (shock traumas that may be relational in nature). Many survivors of narcissistic abuse have had certain events that were particularly traumatizing to them.

Cautions

Contraindications

Research suggests that expressive writing about childhood sexual abuse may be detrimental to adult survivors.

Also, if the traumatic event has happened in the recent past, say the last 6 months, wait a while. And if you are currently in a state of high distress, do this some other time. If it gets too overwhelming for you now, don’t seriously distress yourself. Stop if it gets to be too much.

Just Enough: Titration

In expressive writing, you journal about a past traumatic experience for 3-5 consecutive days, for 15-20 minutes per day.

I would not recommend going beyond this timeframe in your enthusiasm. I would also caution against delving into something you feel you’re not ready to face.

In the field of trauma recovery, titration is a foundational concept – an individual encountering traumatic memories or experiences engages with these intense emotions in a controlled, gradual manner.

This measured approach ensures that the person recovering from trauma can process distressing events without becoming overwhelmed. If pushing yourself just a little is good, more is not necessarily better, there is always an upper limit, depending on the individual. You don’t want to go beyond your current capacities.

Titration in trauma therapy is borrowed from chemistry – you add drops of a substance to a solution slowly, to not cause an explosion. If you add too much, too soon, you get an explosion. Similarly, if you go back into overwhelming experiences too much, for too long, you can get re-traumatized.

Therefore, therapists and trauma recovery coaches carefully titrate exposure to traumatic experiences to help clients integrate those experiences at a pace that supports healing and resilience building.

Regressive Aspect

Expressive writing can be thought of as similar to exposure therapy, which is a regressive form of psychotherapy – you’re going back into the past.

As an aside, I categorically do not recommend exposure therapy as a psychotherapeutic modality for CPTSD or PTSD. I believe it is too intensely regressive and research indicates that it can be re-traumatizing for many.

Exposure therapy can regress you back emotionally to a place you don’t want to be, as opposed to helping you gain distance from it. Most of us are regressed enough already.

• The main therapeutic framework I use (The NeuroAffective Relational Model) is:
  • Gentle & completely non-regressive
  • Present moment / experiential / phenomenological
    • The polar opposite of exposure therapy

Nevertheless, I have found expressive writing to be quite helpful in putting to rest specific traumatic events or episodes.

• Sometimes we do need to work through things in our past
• To mitigate the regressive aspect while journaling, keep one foot in the present
  • Stay anchored to your senses and your environment, be in a comfortable, safe space, and make sure you’re not holding your breath
  • Periodically look around and focus on something in the room, especially if you get a bit overwhelmed

• If expressive writing doesn’t seem safe for you, find a qualified professional who uses a gentle modality to support you in transcending your past

Expressive Writing Instructions

Over the next 3-5 days, for approximately 20 minutes per day, I encourage you to delve into your innermost thoughts and emotions regarding a deeply impactful experience or significant emotional matter. Feel free to express yourself fully and explore your feelings without reservation.

You can connect your reflections to your relationships with others, such as family, partners, friends, or relatives, as well as to your past, present, or future.

You may choose to focus on the same themes each day or explore different aspects of your experiences and emotions.

How to Write

Start your writing by essentially narrating the experience as you originally experienced it. Write freely, from your heart – write what happened, and what you were going through, try to use feeling words, and recall the meaning you made of the event at the time. Bring it up vividly and viscerally.

This is going to stir up a lot of unpleasant emotions – perhaps fear and shame. You’re going to feel worse before you feel better. There will be a short-term uptick in distress, perhaps for a week or two.

• Use your common sense and titrate your writing appropriately
• Yes, some courage is required in facing your fears, and there will be fear involved
• But if it gets to be too much, put it aside before you get too overwhelmed and come back to it in day or two
• There’s no rush

Over the next 3-4 days, keep writing about the experience, but over those days, try to zoom out a little and make some meaning of the experience. Can you look at the experience a little differently than you did then? Can you analyze it or make more sense of it now?

What do you know now that you didn’t know then? Might you have interpreted the experience differently? What would a compassionate, objective observer say about the situation that happened? Can you look at the experience from the point of view of that compassionate objective observer?

Did you learn anything from this experience? What “mistakes” did you make then that you’ll never make again, now that you know?

Try to make some coherent sense of what happened to you.

Bonus: Happy Ending

This part is not backed by research, but I’ve found it helpful.

You might write an imaginary “happy ending” to the experience. Imagine that present-day-you goes back in time, appropriately defends the old-you from any perpetrator(s), and time-machine rescues the old-you to your present-day reality.

• Imagine telling the old-you whatever they needed to hear
• Imagine giving old-you whatever would have helped them
• Imagine how your life might have proceeded differently had old-you received this time-machine rescue intervention

If you manage to get through the distress of writing about the experience itself, and you calm down and get a little perspective …

And if writing about rescuing and soothing your formerly terrorized younger version of yourself is making you feel really good and safe and warm …

I think it might be safe to linger more than 20 minutes on the imaginary soothing and comforting of your younger self. If it’s a very comforting exercise, go to town; what would younger you have absolutely loved present you to do for them?

Benefits of Expressive Writing

Expressive writing has been studied scientifically since 1987 and there is abundant evidence that it leads to a host of benefits. Typically, these benefits were assessed some months after the expressive writing.

Psychological & Physical

• Fewer post-traumatic intrusion and avoidance symptoms
• Greater psychological well-being
• Improved mood/affect
• Reduced depressive symptoms before examinations in students
• Improved working memory
• Reduced blood pressure
• Fewer stress-related visits to the doctor
• Improved immune system functioning
• Fewer days in hospital
• Improved liver function
• Improved lung function

Social & Behavioral

• Quicker re-employment after job loss
• Reduced absenteeism from work
• Higher students’ grade point average
• Improved sporting performance

Source: Baikie, K., & Wilhelm, K. (2005). Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 11(5), 338-346. doi:10.1192/apt.11.5.338

Why Expressive Writing Helps

There are several different theories about why expressive writing helps people get healthier and feel better.

• Emotional Catharsis
  • The expression of previously unexpressed emotions makes you feel better
    • Unlikely; after expressing the emotions, you initially feel worse
• Repeated Exposure
  • You gradually eliminate negative responses to the traumatic memory simply by getting used to it
    • Unlikely in my opinion
• Emotional Inhibition
  • By confronting the memory, you’re no longer spending energy inhibiting it
    • This makes sense to me, I think we spend enormous amounts of energy running from ourselves
    • Evidence for this is mixed
• Cognitive processing
  • By thinking about the traumatic memory enough to write about it, you organize and structure the memory better
    • I agree (more below)
• Development of a Coherent Narrative *
  • The memory gets properly integrated into the rest of your life story, with insight and causality attached to it, as opposed to it floating in the ether of your awareness as an implicit memory
    • This makes the most sense to me (more below)
    • Studies have shown that the more insight (understand, realize) and causality words (because, the reason) that expressive writing contained, the more subjects improved

Below are 2 explanations of why expressive writing can help so much, both neuroscientifically informed.

Implicit to Explicit Memory

Explicit Memories

Most of our life event memories (episodic memories) are stored as explicit memories, but traumatic memories are not.

When we experience life events, different neural nets in our brains fire. It’s happening now – it’s in our “RAM”, to use a computer analogy. We’re aware of it.

If we are in a calm state of mind, and pay a reasonable amount of attention to the event, the representation of the experience gets transmitted from those neural nets into storage in our right hippocampus. The memories are encoded, organized, time-stamped, and filed away into our “hard drive”.

We remember these events distinctly, as occurring at a certain time in our past. Explicit memories have a timestamp of sorts in our brain – we realize that they happened at a certain time, and they are now over and done with.

When we recall an explicit memory, we may pause, scan our memory (“hard drive”), bring up the memory from storage, and then recall our experience – the thoughts, feelings, and sensations. We get the sense that we’re bringing to mind an event from our past.

Implicit Memories

There are different types of implicit memories. Procedural memories are one type – your ability to ride a bike, ski, or play an instrument are implicit memories – aka “muscle memory”.

When you pull up an implicit memory, you don’t experience it as coming from your past. It’s a here-and-now thing. It’s in our RAM. For example, when you get on a bike, you just start riding it – you don’t recollect the series of events in the past during which you learned how to ride a bike. You have that memory in the here and now.

Traumatic memories are also stored as implicit memories. During trauma, extreme stress floods your brain with the stress hormone cortisol. Extremely high cortisol disrupts the hippocampal integration of memories.

You may also dissociate (“check out”) during traumatic events, because it’s too much to be fully present during it. This also prevents the encoding of the experience as an explicit memory in the hippocampus.

On top of that, your amygdala releases high levels of adrenaline during trauma, and this deeply consolidates memory traces of the traumatic experience into your implicit memory.

What gets consolidated are the feelings of terror, the circumstances and details of the experience, any meaning you attached to the situation at the time, the way you reacted in terms of fight/flight or freeze, and any bodily sensations of pain.

So, afterward, your traumatic memory is consolidated in your RAM, in implicit memory, in neural nets, unorganized, unintegrated, without explicit conscious awareness of it being in the past. It’s just a part of who you are.

Just as if somebody sat you on a bicycle and pushed it, you would instinctively ride it … if you find yourself in a similar situation to your trauma, (you get triggered) you will re-experience the emotions and instinctively react the same way you did originally.

These unintegrated memories keep us in a constant low-level state of distress and they get “triggered” (often without our realizing it) when elements of our environments, thoughts, or emotions match those of the original event. We have a filter on our experience which is hypervigilant for similarities to the original event.

When our traumatic memory is triggered, it is brought into consciousness and experienced as occurring in the present. All of the original fear, shame, and overwhelm flood us, because experientially, it is happening all over again, right now. Emotional flashbacks are especially amorphous and we may have no idea what triggered them.

Implicit traumatic memories imprison us, impinge upon our experience without warning, and cause us to constrict our lives to avoid triggers.

Expressive Writing: Implicit to Explicit Memory

Expressive writing allows our implicitly encoded traumatic memories to be brought to consciousness under conditions that allow them to finally be encoded as explicit memories – time-stamped and put to rest.

Although writing about the traumatic event is upsetting, your levels of cortisol and adrenaline during expressive writing should normally not be as high as they were during the original event. And over 3-5 days, you should be considerably calmer at the end than you were at the beginning.

Also, the process of writing requires a lot of focus and attention to the details of the event, which promotes hippocampal (explicit) encoding of the memory. Optimally, by the end of your writing, you’ll be writing about the event in a calm, grounded state of mind – anchored in the safe here and now.

Expressive writing allows you to take a free-floating, essentially always occurring (and regularly flaring up) memory of an awful event, and file it away into your past – into your right hippocampus. It’s a way of laying to rest something that haunts you. You put it in your past and so are free to move on.

It probably won’t be a 100% cure – but you can get significant relief and freedom. Typically the psychological and physical benefits manifest over weeks and months after the expressive writing exercise.

Memory Reconsolidation

Another way of looking at expressive writing is through the lens of memory reconsolidation.

Consolidation

The formation of implicit memories works as follows:

• We experience an event and our neural nets fire
• If the event seems important, we consolidate the memory into implicit memory
  • Part of what we consolidate are schemas

Schemas are fundamental beliefs about who we are, and how the world works -they guide our perceptions, thoughts, and actions, allowing us to filter information and act on it quickly, almost instinctively.

Schemas influence us profoundly, especially when they are rooted in traumatic experiences. Very strong and very negative underlying beliefs tend to be formed during traumatic experiences. These beliefs affect how we view ourselves, how we interact with the world, and how we understand safety and survival.

Reactivation and Reconsolidation

Scientists have long believed that implicit memories and their associated schemas could not be changed.

And there is ample reason to believe this – you can’t forget how to ride a bike, for example. Or if you establish bad habits when you first learn how to play the guitar, it’s really hard to go back later and “un-learn” that implicit memory / procedural knowledge / muscle memory.

Similarly, your foundational beliefs about who you are and how the world works do not change as easily as your beliefs about facts in your explicit memory do.

You might easily change your mind about an explicit factual memory of yours – for example, what year a particular war started in history. “Oh well, I was wrong, now I know.” But your beliefs about who you are, what’s safe for you, what’s possible for you, and what’s not? Not so easy.

However, research over the last 15 years has shown that every time we pull up an implicit memory into conscious awareness (reactivation of the memory), it does not go back into storage exactly the same way it was before.

After being reactivated, these memories must be reconsolidated before they go back into your memory.

• We know now that it is possible to cause schemas to be reconsolidated differently than they were originally consolidated in the first place
• Reconsolidation occurs if strong disconfirmation of the original schema occurs while the original schema has been reactivated

How Memory Reconsolidation Happens

1. Reactivation
   • The implicit memory and schema is called up and focused on – strongly and vividly on a felt, experiential, visceral level
     • Doing this makes the memory and schema labile (subject to change) for the next 5 hours
2. Disconfirmation
   • Exposure to disconfirmation of the schemas formed during the original experience during the 5-hour window. Disconfirmation of the schema could come in the form of:
     • Compelling logical information, or
     • An experience
       • That disconfirms the schema(s)
   • Disconfirming information or experiences are those that are completely incompatible with the original schema
     • The new information/experience makes impossible the original schema
     • The original schema and the new experience or information cannot possibly both be true
   • Disconfirming experiences could be that you are now treated as worthy, valuable, and loved by somebody, while the original schemas of being worthless, valueless, and detestable
3. Reconsolidation
   • After the strong disconfirming experience, altered schemas will be reconsolidated into implicit memory, replacing the original schemas

Expressive writing can be understood through this lens. It brings up the original memory and associated schemas very vividly and then exposes you to disconfirmation of the original schemas.

The disconfirmation could be information – the way you are now framing the event, the sense you are making of the event may now be very different than the sense you made of it at the time. The meaning you originally assigned to the event may simply not hold up. Be objective, and fair, and give yourself some benefit of the doubt.

Or, the disconfirmation could be experiential – now you are seeing your former self with compassion instead of assigning badness to it. The disconfirming experience could also be simply the fact that you are safe now – you are no longer in extreme danger, you are no longer 100% dependent on that person like you were then, and you are now an adult, not a helpless child, etc.

Again, the more you can assign updated meaning (and maybe even a positive spin) to the original experience, the more the schema will be altered, and the more effective the expressive writing will be.

Journal Prompts for Healing from a Narcissistic Relationship

These journal prompts are designed to help you reclaim your sense of self and subjectivity after narcissistic abuse. By encouraging self-referencing and present-moment awareness, they facilitate a journey of compassionate self-exploration.

This empowers you to challenge limiting beliefs, regulate emotions, and nurture authentic internal connections, fostering personal growth and resilience.

1. Connect to Your Inner Self:
   • As you think about your experiences, what do you notice in your body right now?
   • Take a moment to ground yourself by focusing on your breath or observing your surroundings.
   • How does it feel to connect with this part of yourself?
2. Identify Personal Beliefs:
   • What are some fixed beliefs you hold about yourself as a result of the relationship?
   • Are these beliefs serving your current state of being or do they stem from past experiences?
   • How might you challenge these beliefs to foster a healthier self-image?
3. Explore Emotional Responses:
   • When recalling a distressing event, pay attention to your emotional and physiological responses.
   • What emotions come up, and how does your body react?
   • Allow yourself to explore these feelings without judgment.
4. Clarify Your Present Desires:
   • Reflect on what you currently want for yourself. What steps can you take today that align with your desire for healing and growth?
   • How can acknowledging these desires help reinforce your sense of agency?
5. Reflect on Connection:
   • Write about a time you felt a genuine connection to someone. What was it about this connection that felt enriching, and how can you seek similar experiences now?
   • How does focusing on positive connections support your healing?
6. Regulate Your Experience:
   • In moments of overwhelm, what strategies help you return to a state of calm and regulation?
   • How can you incorporate these strategies into your daily routine?
7. Reframe Past Experiences:
   • Looking at a challenging experience, can you find a new perspective or understanding that you hadn’t seen before?
   • What does this new perspective offer you in terms of healing and moving forward?
8. Acknowledge Your Resilience:
   • Reflect on how you’ve navigated through difficult times. What does this say about your resilience and strength?
   • How can you honor and build upon these aspects of yourself?

These prompts are designed to engage both your emotional and physiological awareness, encouraging a holistic approach to healing that emphasizes connection, self-awareness, and present-moment focus.

Transformational Healing for CPTSD

Transformational therapeutic healing requires deep, schema-level memory reconsolidation and recontextualization of traumatic memories and sense of self disturbances.

Many therapies essentially put you in a situation where you are permanently “efforting” with your cognitions and will against your implicit memories and schemas. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy comes to mind – I don’t recommend it for complex trauma.

Those types of modalities can result in some incremental change, especially if the client is highly integrated to begin with. They can also be exhausting, disappointing, and discouraging.

Transformational change happens when you permanently alter your implicit memories and schemas. You no longer have to effort against them; they have been transformed, forever.

Your foundational schemas about who you are and how you relate to and fit into the world are simply replaced by updated, healthier, and more realistic schemas.

Transformational change takes some time and work but is entirely possible with the right support.

Transformational Therapeutic Modalities for CPTSD

• NeuroAffective Relational Model
  • This is the modality I use
• Schema Therapy
• Coherence Therapy
• Internal Family Systems

Jim McGee

Trauma Informed Coach

NARM-Informed Professional

I bring a blend of personal experience and professional expertise to my work. Having navigated & continuing to navigate my own journey of recovery from CPTSD, I now serve as a puzzle master & voice of experience for fellow travelers on their own path to healing.

Learn More About Me