Overcoming A Traumatic Relationship With A Narcissist Husband With Natalie Coulson

I’ve been in a situation, not in a relationship, but I suppose the relationship with money, which is another type of relationship and suffering, terrible losses. I particularly remember the shame around that and the fact that it was all my fault, even though this was when Wall Street crashed. It was pretty understandable what happened.

I was relating to what you were saying about being a super high achiever in the early days. I wonder if that’s setting a lot of us up. We have become accustomed to getting our gratification externally through the praise of others. I can see it’s almost inevitable that we might be attracted to someone who maintains that, who tells us how wonderful we are constantly. That becomes addictive as well. Did you find that you’re almost sucked into that?

He would pick up on everything that I loved or wanted more of. I’ve got close family, but most of them are spread in different places in different countries, but he’s the only one in town. He was able to bring me into his world. He was able to tick all the boxes, but then turn it around so that he was in control, which was bizarre.

I think he was feeding off me a lot of the time. Although he had this emotional control, it was my high achieving, my grasp of money, and my dreams were things that he was grabbing onto. I hear that a lot. These types of people, narcissists, in my case, are attracted to strong people and high achievers. It’s a real trap.

In both scenarios, you’re talking about people and I thought that myself here too. We lose a sense of who we are. We’ve become disconnected from the true self. It’s almost like we speak completion in another, and for a time, it feels right, and then there’s a realization that there’s something deeply wrong with it. Did you have a point that you remember what we might call the dark night of the soul, where you felt you couldn’t have got to anywhere lower than where you got to at this particular moment?

There was a time that led me into the psych ward where I was very suicidal. I’d never thought I would ever get to anything like that because I’m generally one of these people who loves life. I am that person again. I remember that and I thought, “It’s over. My life’s over.” I know from reading your questions that you sent through that then you bounce along the bottom.

I ended up in the psychiatric facility. I’m learning about this from other shows I’m listening to around domestic violence specifically. A lot of mostly women, there are men, who end up in these places, have been so worn down that you’re exhibiting symptoms of severe mental health issues or mental illness, but they’re not taking into account that there’s been an external influence.

There’s been a relationship that’s caused this. That’s not taking away from people that have other mental illnesses. It’s a huge problem, particularly with women being traumatized by their husbands and worse. To answer your question, I haven’t heard that specific expression before, but there was a time when I started to come out of things as well. The bouncing along and then coming out. That was when I started to realize it was this relationship that was causing most of the problems. I was burning myself out. I’m working too hard, but that is what put me over the edge. Once I realized that then, everything started to move in the right direction.

It’s a fascinating journey, which when you look back on it, it’s interesting you can talk about it so frankly. You must have done a lot of work on yourself and a lot of introspecting. Before you got to that point of being able to separate yourself a little bit from what was going on in your life, what were some of the negative thoughts that you were telling yourself? What were some of the stories that were running through your mind?

I’d been through the anxiety phase. This is quite common too. You go through the anxiety phase and I had been taking anti-anxiety medication. That wasn’t necessarily thoughts. It was more this overwhelmed anxiety, probably that many of us have felt. Going into the thoughts, the next phase of that, it was the rumination.

What was different between that anxiety where you’re worried about the future, sweaty palms, and your chest is tight, it’s so much fear of keeping up with life to hitting that wall. One explanation is it’s a psychotic break. You don’t care anymore. There are the physical symptoms of being apathetic, being so tired and fatigued, but then the thoughts are constantly looking backward.

Instead of looking worried about things, which I feel is anxiety, you’re worried about looking forward and there’s some looking back. Depression for me was constant ruminating about what I’d done wrong and how I’d gotten to this point, which was this wall I couldn’t seem to move forward. There’s no future. I’m a planner. I’m thinking about things. I’m planning things that are 5, 10, 20 years in the future. I’m trying not to plan to the T. That’s so uncharacteristic of me. That’s one thing I’ve learned is it’s going to happen to anybody.

That’s why it’s so valuable to have these conversations. I know I did the same thing for the phase of a year. I would ruminate. I’d lie in bed going, “If only I’d done this, if only I hadn’t done that,” until I eventually made myself go crazy and I ended up with PPFA, not too long, about three months, to the point where my finances weren’t fire anymore. I could look at an inbox in my emails and not be able to open an email or let alone answer it physically. It sounds like there’s a system crash that happens at some point, whether it’s physically or mentally or both. You described it as hitting that wall where you need a timeout.

I felt like I ran into a brick wall. It was like this elastic band in my head and it snapped. It didn’t all happen that day, but I feel like that was literally a breaking point. I feel like those expressions come from somewhere. The breaking point, hitting a wall, it’s because it happens in our brain. It was pretty confronting.

No one prepares us for these types of things and quite often, our parents and those around us try to smooth it over. They’ll say, “You’ll be fine. You’ll get through it.” That dark night of the soul is a line from The Hero’s Journey. To hear what you’re talking about is you start off in the ordinary world and then there’s a calling. In this case, it’s a relationship.

You plummet into the netherworld of yourself with the darkest part, but then something happens and you start to shift out of the darkness. Speak to us about that. What was there a point where you consciously decided that you were going to shift away from this darkness? How did it happen? How did the exit out happen for you?

I was in CAMH in Canada, the Centre of Addiction and Mental Health. They had a big quote on the wall and I cannot even remember. I keep trying to recall the quote, but this is what our brains are like going through these things. I can’t recall it. It was a quote I looked at every day and finally, it clicked for me. It was some inspirational like, “You’re here now, but you won’t always be,” something like that. Waking up every day to that quote began the process.

You’re talking about not being able to answer emails. I couldn’t brush my teeth. I couldn’t be bothered. Who cares? I couldn’t brush my hair. I didn’t even bother. At the hospital, they had shampoo, no conditioner. I thought, “I’ll use shampoo.” Finally, I was making the realization that I am worth the conditioner. I started putting conditioner in my hair. I thought I deserved to brush my teeth every day.

I specifically remember one day. It was November, so it was gray and horrible outside. I started noticing things. The girl next to me, her family would bring things in. She had all the bells and whistles. They’d be offering me food. I had almost nothing. That’s where I realized I was worth more than this nothingness that I thought I was only worth. I looked up at the sky and I thought, “I can do this.”

What I wanted to do was get back to Australia because I knew that’s where I wanted to be. All the things I’d kept telling myself like, “Real estate is too expensive. My family won’t understand. It’s been eleven years, so my friends are doing other things.” I didn’t care at that moment. I looked up at the sky and I thought, “It’s crap here, but I can do this.”