How I lost 100 pounds by healing childhood trauma responses and chronic anxiety disorder

Hello my friends! I've been working to heal childhood trauma from narcissistic parent abuse. I've also been sharing how I lost 100 pounds without GLP-1 drugs or weight loss surgery. The more I explore, the more I find that how I lost 100 pounds was also how I am healing childhood trauma responses to narcissistic parent abuse and resulting chronic anxiety disorder from people-pleasing, fawning and hypervigilance. 

Narcissistic parent abuse creates childhood trauma responses from living in a hostile environment where chronic anxiety, fixing people, fawning, hypervigilance to narcissistic parent expectations, is norm. But all this is not normal. And it takes a huge toll, in many dangerous forms, on our bodies. Several involve unhealthy weight gain, obesity or weight loss. 

So a lot of how I lost weight  without a GLP-1 diet drug or weight loss surgery was by dealing with the  inner childhood trauma and all the dangerous concomitant trauma responses (freeze, fight, flight, fawn and fixing). And wow, the more I unpack the more crammed I realize my emotional suitcase is. 

I cannot hear anyone express any frustration, problem or concern without feeling an unbearable need to rush in and fix it. Which is wrong on so many levels. Especially if this person happens to be manipulating me into these feelings or gaslighting me that their problems are somehow my responsibility. It makes it very difficult to sort out which are actually mine and which aren't. I'm a sitting duck target for bullies who would exploit my hypervigilance and overly-empathetic nature. 

And having said that, I see that empath and chronic anxiety fixer/ people pleaser are similar but also different. My empathy makes me sensitive to other's pain. But narcissistic parent abuse drove my people pleaser behavior and heightened the urgency to fix others' problems. It added inappropriate FOG to empathy: fear, obligation and guilt. 

Narcissistic parent demands generated a false sense of responsibility in me. This manifested as parentification (child parenting parents and other siblings), scapegoating and enmeshment of them in my self. So part of how I lost 100 pounds was also how I am working to get my parents out of me. Thank you to YouTube psychologist Jerry Wise for coining that most helpful term. 

It's not just figurative, to say that how I lost 100 pounds was by losing, or going no contact with them. Literally, I'm shedding the weight of responsibility for my narcissistic parents. I'm working to lose weight of their unrealistic and wrong demands. I working to clear the FOG (fear, obligation and guilt) over their misdeeds, that I never earned nor deserved. 

The hardest part is convincing myself of this. Inbred childhood trauma responses are like cattle prods goading me to freeze, fight, flight, fawn and fix. I have to find a way to not feel the artificial pressure, the manufactured crises, the weaponized empathy, they indoctrinated in me. I have to learn to feel healthy empathy without the chronic anxiety of needing to fix it. I'm working to stop the constant self-debasing, groveling obedience and hypervigilance to others' moods. This will help in all areas of my life and those who live with me. 

It must be exhausting to feel they can't share without having me swoop in like Florence Nightingale to tend them. It must feel patronizing and enabling and enfeebling. That is what my narcissistic parents wanted from me: mothering, nursing, caretaking, coddling. That is neither normal nor healthy. And normal healthy people do not want that. I don't want that from other people I just want someone to sit with me, hold space and affirm that I know what I need and can do it. Just like how I lost 100 pounds: by seeing what I needed and doing it.