5 Mindfulness Exercises for Healing from Narcissistic Abuse from Parents

What is Mindfulness

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), describes mindfulness as “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally.” He means being focused and steady trying to give something your full attention. It is about valuing the here and now, and appreciation of the richness of your present experience.

By being non-judgemental. Here you will not accept or reject anything. Despite what thoughts and feelings come up. Does not mean you will act on them. It just means you just acknowledge their existence and do not judge them as good or bad.

Why is mindfulness useful for Healing from Narcissistic Abuse

Why Mindfulness? There are many benefits of mindfulness with scientific evidence to back it up. Mindfulness decreases stress, anxiety, depression, irritability, emotional reactivity, and fatigue.

There is research that shows the benefits of mindfulness to help you manage the symptoms of narcissistic abuse such as compulsive negative thinking, reducing stress et. For example, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, a branch of MBSR, reduced the likelihood of repetition for patients who had experienced at least three bouts of depression. After fifteen weeks of practicing MBSR techniques, students under counselling reported enhanced emotional and physical well-being, with a positive influence on their therapeutic relationships and psychotherapy skills.

5 great mindfulness exercises for healing from narcissistic

1. Setting boundaries with your narcissist parents

One of the things that those experiencing narcissistic abuse struggles with is starting to set boundaries with your narcissist parents. I explained the reasons why you may struggle with them in another blog here.

First understand that this is learning process that learning how to set boundaries will not always be straightforward and you may not get the expected outcomes all the time. It is important to try and set aside time to reflect on those interactions to explore what went well or what did not go so well. Also, what you can learn from for the future.

Try this mindfulness technique

• Ask for some time to get back to your parent if you can
• Set aside some time and do the following. I should only take a few minutes
• Notice how you are feeling. Use the feeling wheel to work it out
• Focus on your breathing. Do some deep breathing to help you to relax whilst doing this
• Try to be more compassionate to yourself and try and talk how you would to your best friend or child.
• Ask yourself are you responding out of fear or love?
• What would you suggest to your friend or child if they were in the same situation? Do not judge your response or what comes to mind
• Journal what you would like to say to them and how you would respond.
• Let go of the possible outcomes and visualise it not affecting you.

You may prefer to practice this on things that will not affect you that much if you say no. Like a muscle you can build yourself up to more difficult challenges.

2. Understanding your emotions

Take a few minutes just to do this exercise

• Set aside a few minutes when you can be quiet and won’t be disturbed.
• Start by paying attention to your breath. Notice your breathing and breathe slowly in and out. It might help if you could imagine having a balloon in your belly. Also, notice the sensations in your belly as the balloon inflates on the in-breath, and deflates on the out-breath.
• Notice the feelings, and what it feels like.
• Name the emotion by choosing it from the feeling wheel:
• What is it?
• Accept the emotion. It is OK. It is just a normal body reaction. It may help you more if you understand how, it came about – what it was, the set of circumstances that contributed to you feeling this way. You do not need to accept or believe the emotion. Simply let it move through you without resisting it, struggling against it, or encouraging it.
• Investigate the emotion more
• How intensely do you feel it – rate it from 1 – 10
• How are you breathing?
• What are you feeling in your body?
• What is your posture like when you feel this emotion?
• Do you have any muscle tension, if yes where is it in your body?
• What is your facial expression? What does your face feel like?
• If any other emotions come up, if anything changes, simply notice, and repeat the steps above. Just notice that the feelings change over time.

As you become more practised, you can use this mindfulness technique when you feel more intense emotion.

3. Self-Compassion

This will involve bringing awareness to the painful emotions that arose due to your severe Inner Critic or internalising of what you have been told about yourself throughout the years. Write about how you felt: sad, ashamed, frightened, stressed etc again using the feeling wheel. As you write, try to be accepting and nonjudgmental of your experience, not belittling it nor making it overly dramatic. (For example, “I was frustrated because she was being so slow. I got angry, overreacted, and felt foolish afterward.”)

Write back to yourself how you would respond to a friend who experienced the same thing and felt the same way. You can use any other feeling on the wheel to help you with this

For example, for example if you are talking to your friend who is feeling frustrated because her mother keeps talking down to her. You could write back and say, “I understand you are feeling frustrated because of what your mother is saying but you need to remember that you are valuable and important to all of us and what your mom is saying to you just isn’t true.”

4. Build a “wall.”

When it comes to protecting yourself from your parent’s negative energy, creating a barrier is a useful practice. Doing these taps into your power of creative visualization.

Start by taking a deep breath first. And closing your eyes.

Imagine, surrounding yourself with a soft white positive light. Imagine this white light protecting you from your parents’ words and actions. You could also imagine the words that they use not being able to penetrate your protection and, it is a solid way to block out negative vibes.

If you do not want to use a light, you can visualise other things such as a bricked wall or fence. You could even visualise a person standing in-between you and your parents protecting you from them.

It might help also to practice for a few minutes a day doing this so that you can do this well as and when you need to.

5. Give the Shame Back to Your Abuser

• Sit comfortably and breathe deeply.
• Imagine you are looking inside your body. Find any shame or bad feelings you might have there.
• Imagine you are reaching down inside your body and pulling out all that dark, ugly stuff—all that shame and self-blame.
• Now imagine you are throwing all that dark ugliness at the abuser, where it belongs.
• Open your eyes and make a throwing motion with your arms. Say out loud as you do it,
• “Take back your shame. It’s not mine. It’s yours.” Do this until you can feel the truth of what you are saying.