“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ~C.S. Lewis
I’m not sure why some of us have a tougher journey than others, but I can say I wouldn’t be who I am today if I hadn’t loved a narcissist.
Most days now are filled with love from my three little rescue doggies. But there are days I am teleported back in time.
Just the other day, I was standing in my kitchen on a quiet Tuesday afternoon when a familiar smell caught my attention.
I had the window open, and someone passed by wearing patchouli.
That was the essential oil my ex-partner wore.
Without warning, my breath caught in my throat. My chest tightened, my heart began to race, and tears flooded my eyes. Suddenly, I wasn’t in my kitchen anymore. I was back in a past relationship, engulfed in the familiar, suffocating fog of walking on eggshells.
I stood there thinking about the hike he took me on deep in the woods and the great photos I took. And how when we returned home, I was sharing the photos with him instead of preparing dinner, and he suddenly grabbed my phone and smashed it on the table. As I knelt to pick up the shattered pieces, he said, “Chrissy, I don’t know why you make me so angry. But I forgive you. Let’s just go get a pizza tonight.”
As I was wiping tears from my cheeks, a wave of familiar shame washed over me. “Why am I crying?” I asked myself, feeling angry and defeated. “I left that toxic situation long ago. I know they weren’t good for me. I should be over this by now.”
If you’ve ever found yourself weeping over a song, a scent, or a sudden memory of a past relationship or parent who harmed you, you know the crushing weight of that shame. It makes you feel like you’ve taken ten steps backward—like all your hard work and healing vanished in a single second.
As a registered nurse and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner student, I thought I understood how trauma worked. But in that moment, I realized there was a huge gap between what I knew in my head and what I felt in my body.
Only by exploring the neuroscience of emotional abuse did I realize the truth: my reaction wasn’t a personal failing. It was an automatic reflex of a nervous system designed to protect me.
Your Brain Isn’t Damaged—It’s Protecting You
When we think of abuse, we usually imagine physical scars. But psychological and emotional abuse—any repeated behavior meant to control, isolate, or scare you—leaves deep invisible tracks on the human nervous system.
When you live through repeated emotional harm, three key areas of your brain adapt to keep you alive:
The Alarm System (Amygdala):
This tiny part of your brain detects danger and triggers your fight-or-flight response, sending your heart rate soaring. After repeated abuse, your amygdala gets stuck on high alert, mistaking old memories for active threats in the present moment.
The Memory Filing Cabinet (Hippocampus):
Trauma makes it hard for your brain to file memories neatly by date. Instead of storing a toxic relationship safely in the “past,” memories are saved as raw emotions and bodily sensations.
The Logic Center (Prefrontal Cortex):
This is the part of your brain that reasons through problems. Under extreme stress, the logic center slows down, making it almost impossible to convince yourself in the moment that a sudden memory isn’t real danger.
When that scent wafted into my kitchen, my brain didn’t process it as harmless essential oil. My amygdala recognized a pattern from my past, sounded the alarm, and flooded my body with stress hormones before my logical brain could step in.
I wasn’t relapsing. My brain was simply firing an old survival reflex.
The Chemical Addiction of Trauma Bonding
The hardest part of recovering from emotional abuse is the confusing grief that comes with it. We ask ourselves: “If they treated me so badly, why do I miss them?”
The answer lies in how trauma bonds are formed.
Relational abuse rarely stays in a constant state of chaos. Instead, it moves through a predictable four-phase cycle: Tension, Escalation, Reconciliation, and Calm.
During the reconciliation phase—when the abuser suddenly apologizes, acts sweet, or pretends nothing happened—your brain experiences a sudden surge of dopamine, the brain’s relief and reward chemical.
This sudden release of dopamine after high stress creates a powerful, physiological high. Over time, this emotional rollercoaster creates an involuntary physical attachment that is biologically similar to an addiction.
When you miss an ex or a toxic family member, you aren’t missing the harm they caused. Your nervous system is simply remembering the chemical relief after the storm. Recognizing that it wasn’t love—just biochemistry—helped me forgive myself for grieving over people who weren’t good for me.
How Writing Rewired My Recovery
Understanding the science of my brain was comforting, but I still needed a way to calm my nervous system when emotional triggers surfaced.
That was when I turned to expressive writing.
Decades of research show that putting your raw, unedited feelings onto paper does something remarkable: it forces the emotional right side of your brain to collaborate with the logical left side.
When you write down what you are feeling without worrying about spelling, grammar, or neatness, your prefrontal cortex steps in to label your emotions. This simple physical act sends a direct message to your amygdala: The threat is over. I am safe right now.
Writing became the bridge that allowed me to process my own story, transform my raw memory fragments into a coherent narrative of strength, and eventually share my journey in my book.
On the page, I finally stopped censoring myself. For a long time after leaving, I carried a heavy blanket of secret shame.
I was ashamed that I still grieved someone who had harmed me, and angry at myself for not “moving on” sooner. But when I put pen to paper, I gave myself permission to write the raw, unvarnished truth. I wrote unsent letters—unfiltered confessions of my grief, my rage, and the agonizing confusion of loving someone who made me feel so unsafe.
I poured out the memories that once trapped me in sudden panic: the quiet cruelty of the silent treatment, the subtle ways my reality was rewritten, and the constant, suffocating feeling of walking on eggshells. I wrote about the chemical high of reconciliation, acknowledging how desperately I had craved those brief moments of relief amid the storm.
As I watched those chaotic, terrifying memories take shape as neat lines of ink on the page, a profound shift occurred in my body. The trauma was no longer spinning uncontrollably in my head or coiled as a tight knot in my chest. It was outside me. By naming the subtle tactics of control, honoring my nervous system’s survival responses, and giving my grief a physical place to rest, I stripped the past of its power to hijack my present.
A 3-Step Practice for When a Trigger Hits
The next time a scent, song, or sudden memory pulls you back into old pain, try this short fifteen-minute grounding practice:
Somatic Check-In:
Grab a pen and paper. Ask yourself, “What am I feeling in my body right now?”Write continuously for fifteen minutes without editing yourself. Let the raw emotions flow out of your body and onto the page.
Name the Feeling:
Remind yourself softly: “This is a memory and a biological reflex, not my present reality.”
Anchor in Truth:
Place your hand over your heart, feel your feet on the ground, and state out loud: “I am safe in this moment.”
Healing Isn’t a Straight Line
Healing from emotional harm doesn’t follow a neat checklist. There will be days when you feel invincible and clear-headed, and there will be days when a random memory knocks the wind out of you.
When those hard days come, remember this: You are not starting over from scratch. You are simply processing old pain from a new level of wisdom, safety, and self-compassion.
Writing didn’t erase what happened to me. Still, it allowed me to finally reclaim my narrative—turning what felt like brokenness into an undeniable story of survival.
Your brain isn’t broken; it is healing, one page and one moment at a time.
About Christina Ditchkofsky
Christina Ditchkofsky, RN, MSN, PMHNP-S, is a registered nurse, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner candidate, healthcare writer, and author. She specializes in trauma-informed health literacy and helping survivors translate complex brain science into compassionate self-healing. She shares her personal journey and clinical insights in her #1 best-selling book, Burnt Letters. Learn more about her work here: https://christinaditchkofsky.com/
- Web
- More Posts
|
See a typo or inaccuracy? Please contact us so we can fix it!
