Are You Anxious? The Tie to a Narcissistic Parent

Have you ever felt the weight of anxiety rooted in difficult family relationships? I'm here to guide you through an emotional journey. As we navigate the tangled web of emotions, I'll share why the coping methods you're using might actually be holding you back, and why understanding your emotional landscape is more crucial than just positive thinking.

You'll learn how to cultivate a nuanced emotional vocabulary that can offer you real command over your reactions. Plus, be inspired by a client's journey of confronting anxiety head-on, and discover how an hour of focused advice can lead to significant breakthroughs. Join me for an episode filled with support, insights, and the tools to empower you towards emotional freedom.

In this episode, I cover the following:
1. Signs of anxiety and common mistakes people make in trying to manage it.
2. The relationship between emotional immaturity/narcissism in mothers and anxiety.
3. The impact of not learning to manage emotions in childhood.

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💗 Dr. Steph
@DrStephanieLopez
www.brave-method.com

Chapters

• 0:04 Healing From Toxic Relationships
• 10:43 Managing Emotions
• 17:20 Insights and Direction From Anxiety

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hi, I'm Dr Steph and I'm here to guide you on your journey to healing from a difficult relationship with your mother, whether she was narcissistic, emotionally immature or just plain toxic. I want you to know that you are in fact not broken and you do not have to suffer from anxiety or explosive emotional reactions like lashing out. You can break the cycle. You are a strong, capable woman who can handle any challenge that comes your way, and I'm gonna show you how to have the ultimate control over your reactions so that you are unstoppable. Welcome to the Broken to Brave podcast. Welcome back. I hope you're having a great month.

Speaker 1: 0:52

I wanted to take a minute to acknowledge Marie for reviewing the podcast. She said this podcast and Dr Steph's Instagram has helped me beyond measure. I am so, so grateful I found her, Marie. This warmed my heart reading it. Thank you so much for the kind words. I appreciate you also for taking the time to review a podcast. I know it's time out of your day to think through what you want to say and to actually do a review, and I truly appreciate you and every single other person who has taken time to the review the podcast. It helps my podcast get out to more people and help more people and change more lives. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 1:34

What I want to focus on today is to clear up some confusion, confusion that you may have. If you are anything like the two people who have reached out to me over the last two weeks, you may be confused. But before we dive in, I want to share a few exciting things going on in the brave world and I don't think I've worded it that way on the podcast before. In my world, which is the brave world, now, the podcast turns one this month, which feels so exciting to me. Some of you have listened the entire year. Some of you have listened to an episode here or there, or most of the episodes, and no matter what, it warms my heart. Thank you so much for sharing part of your day, every single week with me. I appreciate you, and at the time of this recording, I am in the midst of interviewing. Actually, you know what we're going to circle back right there. Also, just a reminder, I'm doing a giveaway for the birthday one year birthday for the podcast. So if you want the details on that, just check out my Instagram. I have a pinned post that has all the details of what you need to do to enter to win, and I'm just going to say it has money and a program involved, so do not miss it. Now let's move forward. At the time of this recording, I am in the midst of interviewing a coach to bring on to Team Brave, which I'm super excited about. I have interviewed three women and each of them are amazing. I know that no matter who I pick are amazing. I know that, no matter who I pick, it's going to be great.

Speaker 1: 3:29

Now, speaking of Brave Academy, this month I've added monthly subconscious reprogramming call and I just held the first one yesterday and, wow, it is truly incredible. Subconscious reprogramming is most useful for areas of your life where you feel stuck or where you are experiencing inner turmoil. So it could be something that recently happened or that's going on, or an experience that you're having, or something from a long time ago that is continuing to cause turmoil for you Doesn't matter. I've had a question or a few on that and the woman who volunteered yesterday she really hadn't been feeling herself. She had been experiencing anxiety, felt like she was just kind of getting by and didn't feel happy, and we talked about her old self and she said you know, I really want to feel not everything I used to feel, but a lot of things I used to feel which is stronger, more independent and happy. And I guided her through a number of scenarios where it was absolutely painless for her, absolutely painless. That's really important detail. Painless for her, absolutely painless that's really important detail.

Speaker 1: 4:47

And at the end of the session I asked her try to recreate those negative feelings that you had at the beginning, the ones that had been so heavy over the last few months. And she looked down, she's trying to recreate it and all of a sudden her eyes get really big, as she was trying, and she's like really big, as she was trying, and she's like I can't. She wasn't able to recreate those feelings. Put yourself in her shoes for a moment. Imagine feeling like you're struggling. For months Things have been feeling really heavy, maybe even longer than that. You have one session with me where I guide you through a number of processes in less than 60 minutes and then you cannot recreate those feelings in freaking, credible. That's what we're doing in Brave Academy. I'm so grateful that I honored my intuition personally to pursue this additional training for myself, because now I can guide my clients to massive breakthroughs even quicker and more effectively, and you know that gets me fired up. I don't need to say that out loud Like that is freaking exciting for me to be able to guide you to such powerful breakthroughs Like that is what I'm here for Now.

Speaker 1: 6:13

One more very quick update. I have several surrogacy updates. We are getting closer and closer to embryo transfer. If you're interested in those updates, make sure that you keep an eye on my Instagram stories, because I share updates as they're happening there and without further ado, I want to take time today to answer a question that I've received twice in the last couple of weeks, and that is how is having an emotionally immature or narcissistic mother related to anxiety? This came from people seeing my Instagram that I am a healing coach for daughters of narcissistic mothers and, at the same time, seeing a lot of my content focused on anxiety and there was some confusion like what's the tie here? These feel like separate things and that's my bad, because they're very much not separate things, but if it is not clear, that is my fault and I take responsibility for that.

Speaker 1: 7:11

So first let's recap on some signs that you are experiencing anxiety. If you are dealing with anxiety, you may be experiencing one or more of the following problems. On the outside you have it all together. You're high functioning, you have the house, the education, the career, the car, maybe the family. But on the inside it's different, it's a totally different experience. You feel full of worries and concerns and maybe if I asked you to pause long enough and think about it and compare the difference between these two what's on the inside and what's on the outside you might say I feel like I'm pretending so that nobody knows. Nobody knows.

Speaker 1: 8:02

Number two you replay your interactions at least twice a month, regretting what you said and wondering what you could have said or done differently to prevent a situation. That could be at work, it could be in your business, it could be with family members or even friends. Number three at least once a week, you're afraid to make the wrong decision. You second guess yourself across a variety of situations, whether in your business or at work or with your kids, because you are unclear what the right choice is. Number four you rarely feel present because in any given moment you are mentally preparing or thinking about another situation.

Speaker 1: 8:40

Number five at least every few months your mind plays out worst case scenario. I'm going to give you a couple examples here. If you own your own business, you may find yourself completely catastrophizing that a client isn't going to want to work with you anymore after they gave you a piece of like, helpful, constructive feedback. You may not acknowledge that it's helpful and maybe it feels negative. At work, if your boss suddenly calls a meeting, your mind jumps to you being fired. And at home, if you yell at your kids, your mind jumps to I'm going to ruin them for life, or I'm turning out like my mother or you know something along that nature.

Speaker 1: 9:18

Number six you want everything to be exactly the way that you want it, or you sort of or not so sort of panic or freak out when things don't go according to plan. You worry nearly every day about all the things you need to do at work, at home and with your family and find that you're unable to relax. Number seven you deal with unwanted sensations in your body like change of breath, fast beating heart, maybe a turn in your stomach, and those things have made you feel weak. Which of these sound like you? Do you resonate with number one, two, three, four, five, six, seven? Maybe you resonate with multiple of them, or maybe all of them. If this sounds like you. You may have tried a number of different things to feel better, but here's what I want you to know these things that I'm about to go over are mistakes, and if you're making them, I want you to know that why? So that you can stop doing them, because if you knew that they were mistakes, you wouldn't be making them, am I right? Okay, so these things I'm about to refer to have either caused or prolonged the problems that you're dealing with.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Number one you try to think positive. Maybe you minimize what you're feeling by telling yourself everything's fine, it's nothing to worry about, it's not that big of a deal, get over it. Number two you try to distract yourself and keep yourself busy so that you aren't consumed by your thoughts and emotions. Number three you tell yourself to power through everything, and with decision making in particular. You go through a lengthy process of evaluating pros and cons and asking others what they think you should do. Number four you've been going to talk therapy at least two hours a month for the last three months and your anxiety hasn't reduced more than 20%. Number five you try to shut down your inner critic, that negative voice in your head, and try to make it go away. Which ones resonate. Did you take note, like as I was going through that, so that you can stop making those mistakes? I hope so, and I'm just going to say good, because I feel like you probably did. Hopefully not if you're driving. Essentially everyone that I've spoken to has no idea that these things are actually causing an issue. Of course, they wouldn't be doing it if they realized that. So I just want to make that crystal clear. Now let's keep going. How are these experiences related to having an emotionally immature or narcissistic mother? Let's get a little basic right now. Just recap make sure we're on the same page.

Speaker 1: 12:23

What is anxiety? Anxiety is a form of dysregulation. What does that mean? Anxiety is ineffective management of emotions. In other words, anxiety stems from other emotions that you haven't been managing well, let me just ask you this side note how big is your vocabulary of emotions? Usually, when I work with clients who feel anxious almost every day or every day, their vocabulary for emotions is not very big. They're not able to name that many emotions. That's like one thing that you can do to shift out of anxiety. There's a lot more there, but that's one first step that I want you to be aware of Now. Why aren't you managing your emotions well? Simply because you're human, honestly, and you haven't learned how to. Yet.

Speaker 1: 13:24

If you have or had an emotionally immature or narcissistic mother, managing emotions in a healthy way and regulating your nervous system was never modeled to you, was it? I'm going to go with absolutely not, and or rarely, but I'm going to stick with absolutely not. We might have some variability from those with emotionally immature mothers or even narcissistic, because it's on a continuum and everybody's a little bit emotionally immature and then there can be, like a really high amount, okay. So here's the thing Humans come and by come I mean, are born with the innate ability to upregulate or to go into fight or flight. It's automatic, and you know that to be true already. You don't have to think about going into fight or flight, you just do, am I right? Okay, let's keep going. Here's the thing Humans are not born with the innate ability to downregulate or come out of fight or flight. What does that mean? You have to learn. Isn't that a little cruel joke that the universe did to us? Like, here you go automatically up-regulate. Now you're stuck. Just kidding, you got to go learn. I think it's actually kind of beautiful, because it makes us need each other and, in many ways, every single human has issues. Every single person has strengths and things that they can help each other with. So we're all here for each other. All right, I digress, let's move on.

Speaker 1: 15:04

I want to make sure that I'm crystal clear here. If you were raised by someone who was emotionally immature, if you were raised by someone who was emotionally immature, did you receive guidance on how to regulate your emotions? No, did they model how to regulate your emotions? No, did they make it safe for you to feel through your emotions? Probably not. So it simply makes sense that if you were not ever taught to feel through your emotions, to manage your emotions, to regulate your emotions in a healthy way, that this would be a struggle today.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Hear me out on this, though. This is not a life sentence. I have spoken with so many women who just feel like this is just the way that I am. Well, of course I would be like this. This is how I was raised. These are the experiences that I dealt with. Yeah, me too, but this is not who you are. This is just what you've dealt with and like isn't there something in your life that you've changed? Yes, probably many things that you've changed. Why can't this be one of them? And you might be like, well, I don't know how. Yes, so it's really important to invest so that you can learn how. This is not something that you have to deal with for even another day. If you don't want to, you are in complete control. Now you get to choose differently. Now you get to act from an empowered place and heal. And, if you're ready, come to my free class where I will guide you to ditch anxiety in five minutes a day. Even though this class is free, I promise you it is eye-opening, and don't just take it from me.

Speaker 1: 17:02

Just this week I received an email from Nancy, who recently attended, and here's what she said. I'm going to read this quote exactly from her. Thank you, stephanie. I want you to know your presentation is the most generous I have listened to ever. This is exceptional.

Speaker 1: 17:20

I got a lot of insights and a sense of direction out of lifelong anxiety just from this one hour. Thank you so much. I'm grateful. Warm regards Nancy From one hour. It is the most generous and exceptional presentation that she has ever listened to and it gave her lots of insights and a sense of direction. If this episode today resonated with you. Click the link in the show notes. Sign up for my free class today and get ready to have your mind blown. See you next week. Thank you for listening today. If you're ready to heal so that triggering situations no longer control you and so that you can feel empowered, brave and thrive in any situation, dm me the word brave on Instagram and I'll send you a training where you will learn three of the most common mistakes driven women are making that are keeping them stuck in negative emotions, and what you can do instead.