How I lost 100 pounds by going no contact with narcissist parents: unexpected outcomes of healing childhood trauma

 Hello my friends. This blog began life as a tutorial on how I lost 100 pounds. Then about 2 years ago, I began recognizing and beginning to address some of the childhood trauma I'd experienced from four narcissist parents. I say childhood trauma but as any child of malignant narcissist parents knows, it doesn't end in childhood. Narcissists don't age well and they get better at their ugly manipulative, cruel, destructive behaviors the longer they get away with it. And many of us, especially women in their fifties on up, grew up never being allowed to express anything, let alone criticism of selfish, entitled parents. They crippled, blinded, deafened and silenced us to the abuse they were wreaking on us. They gaslit us into believed they owed us nothing and we owed them everything. They endangered and abandoned us,  cutting off all support and depriving us, while still demanding we care for them. And like the good little do-bees we were groomed to be, we did. To the utter destruction of ourselves. We quietly died inside so they could usurp our beings. It really is that bad. 

So now that I've taken the blinders off and begun to use my eyes, ears and voice, I see the trauma, chaos, deprivation, neglect and abuse for what it was. And I saw my four parents for the self-centered, entitled, Machiavellian, sadists they were. It was, is and would continue to be that bad had I not  made the unenviable decision to cut tie and go not contact (or hyper low contact) with the remaining two parents. And that, I see now is part of how I lost 100 pounds. Albeit I lost weight before this big epiphany, I was at least starting to question them and to believing their gaslighting lies. 

And you know what started that process? Not me realizing how bad they'd treated me all these years. It was the way they treated my children. I've always been much better at defending others than myself. I've been quick to see abuse and call it out when others are experiencing than I am at seeing how I  have been harmed. That's why it took me till 59 to be able to accept that what happened to me happened, without candy-coating it and making excuses for them. 

So how is all this relevant to how I lost 100 pounds? Well, understanding obesity and childhood trauma links is another work in progress. I'll be writing a series on that in the weeks to come. Today, I'll focus on one unexpected outcome of healing childhood trauma from narcissist parents and that is that in  finding my voice also found my freedom. I found that I had lived all my life playing supporting cast to their main character syndrome. I did, said, thought, believed what they did. It wasn't safe not to. And that fear they that had always used to hold me captive, suddenly lost its power. 

I could dress, live, eat, think, react, the way I wanted to, not the way they gaslit me into believing I  had to. I could buy what I wanted, no longer letting the deprivation mode they imposed on me (just me) dictate. And how does that affect how I lost 100 pounds? Obesity and weight gain are directly linked to parental neglect and abuse. Damaged food relationships stem from fears and experiences of doing without, going hungry, not having needs met. And my weight gain was almost entirely down to depression from abuse and neglect, anxiety about not being enough, guilt and shame over letting people down, trauma nightmares destroying my sleep and other family of origin issues.

My weight gain is also directly attributable to losing two stillborn babies which is directly attributable to malignant narcissist parent trauma. I'll blog more on that in my next article. In summary, going no contact with malignant narcissist parents was an exit door to their
unhealthy emotional control and an entrance to taking back power stolen from me.