I’m not saying “disorder”—I’m saying tendencies.
For example: cleaning. You obsessively start cleaning. You go through the same things again and again. You try to tidy up your house even though it’s already properly clean—you did it three times earlier, and now you’re doing it a fourth time. You’re scrubbing dishes. Why do you do so?
- It feels relieving—you feel like you’re getting control back in your life.
- It gives you a sense of closure: “I’m doing something,” but it has nothing to do with that narcissist.
Another example: obsessively talking about the same thing with everyone you meet. It’s called trauma dumping. You dump a lot of trauma—not because you’re a bad person, but because you feel like you need to tell everyone so you get confirmation that it really happened. That it was you. That your experience was real. That you didn’t make it up.
Why do you want that kind of confirmation? Because the narcissist gaslighted you into thinking you were making everything up. You were causing these issues on purpose. You were studying trouble. You were the actual perpetrator.
So you go around obsessively talking about the same thing to find closure—which you won’t get, because talking doesn’t lead to closure. This is also called trauma reenactment. You reenact the same trauma in different situations, with an unconscious expectation that this time the trauma response will finally be completed.
But it never happens, and you get retraumatized.
What should you do?
Process it in therapy using body-based therapeutic modalities such as somatic experiencing, brainspotting, trauma-releasing exercises, trauma-informed yoga, and more.
3) Psychosis and Paranoia
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