The Long Journey Home

  As a narcissistic abuse recovery life coach, I have been helping my clients to get out of the victim mindset and transform their life through self healing techniques. During the process of coaching a recurring theme that has come up especially in the context of Indian Culture is the enmeshment that Parents have sometimes with their Adult children which in turn negatively impacts the Adult child's marriage.  It is normal for a child to grow up and shift priorities to their partner especially once they are married. But what happens in enmeshed parent-child relationships is that the adult child struggles with a lot of guilt to shift their priority to their partner and this causes a lot of strain in their marriage.  Having gathered inputs from my clients and having done my research in this area, I can safely say that if you dig deeper into divorces and couples falling apart, there will be an enmeshed parent who has a big role to play. Not all divorces happen because of enme...

Very often we are focused on how others are toxic for us and how they may have caused harm to us knowingly or unknowingly. But how often do we stop to process if our behaviour is hurtful for those around us? What are our toxic behaviours which may affect our close relationships? How can we cope with such toxic traits? Read on to know more. Monopolizing the conversation: If someone shares something that is hurtful or disturbing or challenging in their lives, do you immediately take the opportunity to redirect the conversation to yourself ? For example, a close friend of yours recently had covid and they come to you to share their challenges. Instead of hearing them out, you may jump in and start telling them that even you had covid recently and it was no big deal or you may start talking about how difficult it was for you as well. Your friend may end up feeling unheard and may next time choose not to share their challenges with you. This is a toxic trait that you could be having in your...

  Did you know that our minds are hardwired to look for the negatives more than the positive things in life ? If I share a positive and a negative story right now with you, it is more likely that your brain will recall the negative story later more easily than the positive one!  This is an evolutionary protection to ensure that we remember dangerous incidents so that we don't repeat them! As cavemen it was pretty useful but do we still need this type of protection now a days ? Not really.  This is a part of the unconditioning and unlearning that I do with my clients in our coaching sessions. We take a close look at your belief systems that are holding you hostage to the past. Yes we need to hold onto the lessons when things go wrong or when someone toxic manipulates us or hurts us , but we do not need to stay stuck in the victim mindset forever. We can learn those lessons and keep evolving into better and truer versions of ourselves.  Every step in life offers you ch...

  Disclaimer : This post is not to shame parents/in laws -Parents are our role models and our first love and for those of us with good set of emotionally mature parents- We are blessed ! Yes even the best of parents would also have made their share of parenting mistakes which is absolutely fine. We are all human and mistakes are bound to happen.  But there are also generations of toxic parents out there who need to be called out for their bad behaviour , else the generational trauma and dysfunction may never really stop. My post is made for this purpose so that there is more awareness about this trend of toxic parents who destroy their kids' lives and relationships using guilt tripping and emotional manipulation.  With more awareness , this toxic cycle can be broken and more marriages can be saved before it is too late !  Sadly some of the divorces happen because one of the spouses have an enmeshed relationship with a parent who is toxic or has made the child a carbo...

 No one is perfect or toxic free including our own selves ! Yes you read that right! Have you ever paused to think what are your own toxic traits which you are either aware of or maybe someone has told you about it. How have you reacted when someone says that your behavior is toxic for them?  Do you respond with defensiveness or acceptance? Do you feel attacked or do you look at it as an opportunity to grow and make amends in your life? The reason why we are all here is to learn our lessons and finish our Karmic accounts with others around us. So when you come to know that your words or actions are repeatedly hurting another person, what do you do about it? My suggestion is to take a deep look at yourself without shame or judgement and see if what the other person is saying about you is true. Do this without defending yourself and  your actions. Tap into your own inner voice (intuition) to get the answers for this. If you are always only listening to your conscious mind a...

Have you noticed that your energies dip around certain individuals ? After even a few minutes with such people, you feel drained out, irritable and anxious ? Pay close attention to those signs that your body and intuition is giving you to protect you. Do not disregard those signs or you will pay a heavy price for ignoring it. Just like how there may be people who are toxic for us, you also can be equally toxic for few others ! Learn to spot your own toxicity too while you process how to safeguard yourself from anyone else that is toxic to you.  Ok- so now you know the signs and how to identify a toxic person. What do you do next? The first option which normally everyone does is to try to communicate with the toxic person- you try hard to explain what you feel or how their words or behavior is impacting you. You do this with the hope that you can salvage your relationship with them and repair any ruptures.  In normal healthy relationships- this channel of communication is ope...

  As a life coach, the most asked question by my clients who are recovering from abusive relationships is " When will I know that I have completely healed ?". There is no clear answer to this and it depends on each person's emotional resilience and the amount of healing work that you are committed to do. Some may heal and move on in just few weeks or months and some may take even few years and some may never completely heal from the trauma of abuse. Healing is non-linear and there will be days when you feel completely healed -on top of the world and  some days when you regress backwards and fall apart again. Stay with the process and trust that you will heal. Do not give up on yourself ! Abuse changes you as a person and you can't go back to who you were earlier even if you wish to go back. A physical wound heals with time and medication but what about your emotional wounds? The more you suppress it, the stronger the pain becomes and it manifests as physical health is...