Narcissistic Abuse Therapy in Sacramento
Are You Having A Hard Time Relaxing Or Prioritizing Yourself In Your Relationships?
Do you regularly struggle with aspects of anxiety, exhaustion, overthinking, or chronic stress?
Does people-pleasing come second nature to you, causing you to feel responsible for everyone else?
Is it difficult for you to maintain the relationships and relationship dynamics you actually want?
When you grow up in an environment where the needs of others are constantly put before your own, it’s easy to fall into roles where you’re always “on”: the person keeping the peace, managing others’ emotions, and taking care of everyone around you—usually at the expense of your own wellbeing.
“Growing up in a family with emotionally immature parents is a lonely experience.”
— Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
Though you may appear outwardly “together” and successful, you’re likely battling an inner critic within that is always demanding more of you.
Living like this leads to burnout, overwhelm, and, ultimately, disconnection as you go through the motions of doing what’s expected instead of doing what feels right. And as you’ve begun to pursue intimate partnerships in adulthood, you may have noticed the development of:
Anxious behaviors
Fears of rejection or disappointing others
Imposter syndrome
A lack of self-trust
An inability to have healthy conflict
Unhealthy patterns that get repeated
Research shows that many emotional reactions, judgments, and behaviors occur automatically, outside of conscious awareness. These learned subconscious patterns can strongly influence how we interpret situations, respond to triggers, and relate to others—even when we consciously want to respond differently. Following emotional or narcissistic abuse, they may contribute to anxiety, self-doubt, people-pleasing, guilt, hypervigilance, and difficulty trusting yourself or others.
Disruptive Patterns In Adulthood Often Stem Back To Early Experiences
In our culture, we are seeing increasing awareness around early attachments and unhealthy or imbalanced family dynamics from childhood. When Lindsay Gibson’s book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents came out in 2015, many people felt that their experience of growing up with emotionally immature and unavailable caregivers had finally been captured.
While experiences involving narcissistic or emotionally unavailable caregivers vary and don’t always meet the criteria for abuse, these are experiences that ultimately generate stress and trauma that gets trapped in the nervous system at an early age.
In many cases, adult children from these environments grew up in a home where one or both caregivers “parentified” the child by neglecting their needs, relying on them for emotional support, or making everything about the parent rather than the child. As a result, these individuals often share the experience of:
Measuring their worth according to how responsible, successful, and accommodating they appear to others
Overperforming and being constantly productive—often to the point of perfectionism—in order to feel accepted
Chronic anxiety and self-doubt, especially when it comes to setting boundaries or asserting needs
Repeating some of the same patterns of emotional immaturity as caregivers that they themselves experienced in childhood
Do You Identify As An Adult Child Of Emotionally Immature Or Unavailable Parents?
If any of these responses sound familiar to you, you are not alone. In fact, a big portion of the population won’t make it past childhood without some type of attachment injury or emotional wound that causes certain patterns and behaviors to develop out of a need for self-protection.
Of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) studied by Kaiser and the Centers for Disease Control, it’s estimated that emotional neglect or abuse is the most common ACE among American adults. But because these patterns tend to develop beyond conscious awareness, therapy is often needed to fully process unresolved experiences, maladaptive ways of thinking, and the overall effects of narcissistic and/or emotional abuse.
Four Seasons Counseling Provides Trauma-Informed Therapy For Survivors Of Childhood Emotional Neglect And Narcissistic Abuse
While our therapists are well-versed in PTSD and trauma of all kinds, our therapy approach is particularly effective for developmental, relational, and attachment traumas involving emotional neglect and narcissistic abuse that occurred in childhood.
Our goal is to offer you a counseling experience that gives you the opportunity to connect your current struggles with the underlying attachment patterns, narcissistic abuse, and/or family-of-origin dynamics at play. Together, we can determine how early stressors and traumas are shaping the subconscious ways you think, feel, behave, and relate to others.
What To Expect
As insight into your early attachment patterns grows, your therapist will incorporate practical tools that reduce anxiety and distress, improve functioning, and nurture healthier, more flexible relationships.
Our practice is not about cutting off or going no-contact with a difficult family member, as our objective is to help you get what you want out of your relationships—no matter what that might look like.
“I am valued for what I do, rather than for who I am.” — Karyl McBride
Our Approach
We use the highly effective approach of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) to help you process the past in a way that allows you to feel less overwhelmed and reactive in the present.
Alongside EMDR, we use Thais Gibson’s Integrated Attachment Theory™ (IAT) to help clients understand how emotional and narcissistic abuse may have shaped their attachment patterns, core beliefs, and emotional responses. IAT helps clients identify and reshape the subconscious beliefs and attachment patterns connected to those experiences.
Through IAT, clients also learn practical techniques and skills to recognize their triggers, meet underlying emotional needs, challenge limiting beliefs, set healthier boundaries, and develop more secure relationship patterns. By addressing both current symptoms and their underlying roots, these approaches can support lasting relief, healthier relationships, and a stronger sense of safety and self-trust.
All of us have early life experiences that affect the way we function, perform, parent, and relate to those around us. As therapists, our role is to help you identify and understand the patterns that resulted from emotional neglect, trauma, or narcissistic abuse so that you can live with greater peace and connection.
Frequently Asked Questions About Therapy…
While I did experience some family dysfunction, I wouldn’t classify what happened to me as emotional neglect or narcissistic abuse—do I really need therapy?
It’s common for clients to believe that therapy isn’t warranted for what they experienced in childhood because emotional neglect, abuse, invalidation, and narcissistic behaviors were normalized by their caregivers. So from a very young age, these individuals are often conditioned to tune out their own emotions and focus on everyone else’s needs.
If you are someone who struggles with people-pleasing, perfectionism, anxiety, and imbalanced relationships, you deserve to find peace and get relief—and counseling can help you connect early experiences to the experiences you’re having today.
Won’t reliving the past through therapy just make me feel worse?
The goal of therapy is not to make you relive the past but to help your brain process early wounds so that you’re no longer anxious, flooded, and overwhelmed. Using these techniques, you will still remember what happened, but it won’t feel as triggering or activating.
EMDR helps the brain process distressing memories that may still feel emotionally “stuck.” You do not need to share every detail or repeatedly revisit what happened. EMDR can reduce the emotional intensity of painful memories and support healthier beliefs about yourself.
Integrated Attachment Theory™ (IAT) complements this process by helping you understand how past experiences shaped subconscious beliefs, emotional triggers, and relationship patterns. Through guided exercises and repetition, we work to replace these patterns with healthier beliefs and responses.
Together, EMDR and IAT can help you rebuild self-trust, feel safer in relationships, and become less controlled by the past.
Can I heal without cutting my family out of my life?
Healing isn’t about walking away from your family; it’s about changing the way you relate to them. As you process the way those relationships shaped your thoughts, values, and belief system, you will gain a stronger sense of self-understanding.
With this understanding, you can communicate more effectively, better advocate for your needs, and establish healthier patterns. You can even develop a stronger sense of empathy for your family’s experiences without minimizing the empathy you have for your own.
You Can Change The Way You Engage In Your Closest Relationships
Growth and healing come from using the therapy process to work through—and not run away from—the patterns of anxiety, exhaustion, and people-pleasing that have developed from emotional neglect and narcissistic abuse. For more information or to get scheduled with one of our therapists, contact us.
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