297 - Your Brain in a Bad Relationship (with Dr. Rhonda Freeman)
Brains, narcissism, and that pesky ex
Dr. Rhonda Freeman, after experiencing a relationship with a psychopath in the past and trouble healing from it, used her background in neuroscience and neuropsychology to develop a framework for helping other survivors of narcissistic abuse. She founded Neuroinstincts® and started teaching online courses to help others understand the brain reactions of people involved in traumatic relationships.
Throughout this episode Dr. Freeman addresses the following topics:
What goes on in your brain when you’re in an unhealthy relationship and why/how we stay stuck in unhealthy connections.
What society as a whole gets wrong about psycho- or sociopathic abuse.
Whether or not there’s a certain neurology behind gaslighting or other abusive behaviors.
Over self-diagnosis of narcissistic or codependent patterns.
What you need to know about recovering from an unhealthy relationship and why you can still feel attachment and longing for someone who treated you poorly.
How to heal from toxic relationships so you’re not bringing toxicity into future relationships.
Make sure you listen to the full episode to get a good grasp of Dr. Rhonda Freeman’s experience and knowledge of brain chemistry and trauma recovery, and be sure to visit her website neurosagacity.com for more information about her online courses, the Neuroinstincts website , and check out her Instagram!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about what happens to your brain in a bad relationship with our guest, Dr. Rhonda Freeman. Dr. Freeman is a clinical neuropsychologist and the founder of Neuroinstincts, a neuroscience-based domestic abuse support website where she educates survivors of narcissists and psychopaths. She has lectured to mental health professionals, as well as abuse survivors to raise awareness regarding the impact of psychological abuse in intimate relationships. Her work has been featured by NBC, Newsweek, Reader's Digest, and best of all now Multiamory. Dr. Freeman, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Freeman: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
Dedeker: I did open up a thread in our private patreon supporter group, asking people if they had any particular questions for you. We got about 6 billion questions. People are really, really interested in the subject. They're really, really interested in knowing what's going on in their own minds. I've tried to write questions that covered as many topics as possible. Of course, I'm going to apologize to our listeners and patreon supporters that, of course, you're not going to be able to get to everybody's question.
Where I want to start out, Rhonda, you're pretty open in your work about being a survivor yourself of an abusive relationship. I'm wondering, is that experience what initially drew you into this work, or did you already have a neuroscience background when that happened? What was your journey that brought you to where you are today?
Dr. Freeman: I was actually already working as a neuropsychologist for several years when this happened to me. My focus was ADHD evaluations, Alzheimer's evaluations, brain trauma, et cetera. I was solely focused on the neurology practice, rather that I was in. Then when this happened to me, I ended up with somebody who's on the pathological narcissism spectrum, I had to go through healing, obviously. I realized the value of this field in addressing that set of symptoms and that was when I realized. I didn't just walk away and think, "Good for me, I made it through." I thought so many others could probably benefit from knowing what's happening in their brain when they get involved with these individuals.
Dedeker: Wow. I can't even imagine what this process has been like for you, integrating both your survivor experience with something that you're already interested and passionate about. It seems like as far as I can tell, of course, there's a lot of discussion within therapeutic spaces and different therapeutic healing modalities of how to handle abuse and recovery from abuse, but it does seem it's like you found this particular niche where it seems to me, like not a lot of people are necessarily looking at. Is that true?
Dr. Freeman: Yes, it's true. The interesting thing is that I went the traditional psychology route when I got out my relationship. I spent a while with a psychologist because I wasn't my usual self. I was like a decompensated version of myself. I right away to see a psychologist. She did the traditional therapy, and believe me, I'm not knocking that at all. However, in working with me, I really feel that she re-traumatize me because she had a very get-it-out type of approach, "Let's talk about it. Let's process what happened." It surprises me that I put my own background to the backburner because I know how the brain works, and it doesn't have a get-it-out. Capacity, actually, works in an activation deactivation from that framework. The more you talk about something, you're just simply activating those neural pathways of pain, and getting the brain you having that as the default, versus the healthier default of being regulated and just calmer and less traumatized.
For a long time, for months, I went through that with her, and I got worse and got worse and got worse. I had to end up just leaving treatment because of that.
Dedeker: I have some questions about that, too. Did you end up finding a modality for healing that worked for you?
Dr. Freeman: Yes, mine.
It wasn't also in any kind of arrogant way at all, it was because I was suffering so badly. I really believe, at the time, I had large, very, very symptomatic with PTSD. I was frightened of him, and all those things. I was trying to get back to my regular self, and it just wasn't happening. I thought, "What time will this go away?" Back when this was happening, we didn't really look at narcissistic abuse. We even didn't have that term, by the way. It wasn't even out. No one looked at it as a form of trauma, when in fact, it is. It's absolutely a form of trauma.
After I stopped with her, I went on my own for a little while, and I thought, This is just my life. I'm just going to make it day by day, by day and just suffer and just miss my old self." I used to be just giggly and happy and bubbly, and I missed my old self, she was gone. I was willing to accept that, then I realized, "You know what, Rhonda, you're in neuropsychologist, what are you doing? You actually help people every single day training their brain." My training of the brain with my patients were the brain trauma patients, who had actual physical damage to their brain. Who'd had a severe concussion, they had speech problems and all this. Then I realized, wait a minute, the emotional system, why can't I train that too?
That was when I started using a framework that I came up with, and I started getting back to me, and it worked.
Emily: I'm really interested to go a little bit more into what that framework is, but can you also tell us what narcissistic personality disorder exactly is and the difference between that and psychopath and other things, just for our listeners, and for myself also?
Dr. Freeman: Absolutely. In narcissistic personality disorder, we consider it in psychology a Cluster B. It's a set of disorders where they have significant trouble with what, we in neuroscience, not necessarily the psychologist, but the neuroscience people call problems with their social neural networks. You'll recognize when someone has that is because they can't say I'm sorry, because they don't have remorse system. They don't have an empathy system. They have it, but it doesn't work properly. They don't have compassion. They can do superficial emotions, like have good manners. "Please give me that." Or they can host a good party, or they can be the life of the party at a party. They can hold court and people just look at them. "Wow, they're so social." They can really do that superficial, social, but when it counts, like when you're with your partner, you have to comfort someone and be soft and be gentle and be compassionate and really care about people. They can't pull that off at all. That's because the social neural networks, which is the limbic system, communicating with the prefrontal cortex, that connection is not working properly.
That's what they have, all narcissists have that, but we have different degrees of narcissistic personality disorder, and we have different blends of it. For example, the histrionic narcissist. That person, you will never think they're a narcissist because they seem so nice. They are so helpful to you. Anything you need, "Hey, I got you." They're the guy who brings doughnuts to the office, everybody loves him, people love his jokes, but talk to his wife or his family or his kids, and they're petrified of him at home. They can't make a mistake. They are afraid of his rageful temper. If anyone in that home went out and said, "Jack is incredibly aggressive at home." No one will believe you. Nobody. Because Jack has a stellar mask where he's so nice. He's a nice guy.
Then you have like the malignant narcissist. That's the one who can't pull off the nice guy masks to save his life and he won't try. They're the intimidators. They are social violators. They will be rude to you and feel proud of it because power is what they're really all about. We go along the spectrum, the histrionic narcissism and narcissist. Then you have the borderline personality narcissist, as the one who they always seem negative. They're always agitated. They even have some anxiety about them. There's nothing you can do to really make them happy because interactions they want you to feel this big. Really small is what doing, the fingers are small. They want you to feel really small, and they're aggressive and they're up, they're down and up and down.
We go further down that pathological narcissism spectrum and you run into a psychopath. Psychopath, they're not as needy, believe it or not as a narcissist. A narcissist needs to be, what we call, fed with supply. They need that audience, even if they're not famous, even if they're just a regular Joe Schmoe person at your job, they need to court in some way. They want people to feel like I couldn't do without you, because you're so amazing. The psychopath has no need for your adulation, they just want your submission. They could care less if you like them or not, they don't need to feed off of you. They just want to dominate, you're in their way, be careful, because they're going to run you over. Whereas, a narcissist is so dependent on the environment.
It's a little bit hard to detect if you don't work with a lot of them. My body, because I have worked so many years with them, and because I've been traumatized by one, I feel them when I have a narcissistic, versus a psychopathic patient. I get tense, I get a fear reaction. I go, "Why am I having trouble breathing?" I think to myself, now I realize, okay, this person probably has some psychopathic traits. My vows are long. I work with a patient from four to six hours a piece.
Emily: Wow. My goodness.
Dr. Freeman: I'm doing psychological evaluations, and they take a long time. It's hard when I have a psychopathic patient for me, because my body is screaming, Rhon is saying you're in danger, but I have to tell my brain this system valuation, I'm safe. It's okay. I know you're picking up on his pathology or her pathology, but you have a job to do.
Dedeker: It's so interesting, you point out the fact that these things are on a spectrum, and they also can be mixed together in particularly unique ways. I think that definitely what I see a lot, in working with my own clients in the kind of questions that people bring forth in our listener groups, people are always wondering, it's like, "How can I really tell the difference between someone who's on the spectrum or maybe moving in a dangerous end of that spectrum, versus someone who's just toxic and unhealthy for me?"
Dr. Freeman: It's difficult when you don't have a good gauge of what they are like. That was one of the things I mentioned earlier, is one of the things you could look at is are there deep emotions? Are there deep emotions there? Am I getting nice or am I getting kind? There's a difference. Am I getting someone who, if they hurt me, do they care about that hurt? Are they able to gently apologize or with contrition? They can say, "I'm sorry," if they feel that, "Whoa, I'm going to lose something if I don't say those words, so I'll say those words to her." Is it followed by contrition, or is it followed by, "Hey, already said I'm sorry, get over it"? That you'll see a lot with a narcissist. They don't like it when you bring up that you hurt me. Once they acknowledge, "Okay, I hurt you," they think it's done. That's it.
In reality, human interactions are complex. You have to show contrition, you have to make it up. You have to listen to the hurt person's pain, because you did that. They don't want to be accountable. Those are few things you can look out for normal human beings, don't want to hurt someone, and walk away from that. That's very abnormal to do.
Emily: So many of us out there, unless maybe you meet the love of your life in high school or something, we are often in bad relationships, and we stick with them for a long time. What really goes on in our brains during that time? Are there specific reasons, like body chemistry or brain chemistry as to why we end up staying in some of those relationships for longer than we should?
Dr. Freeman: That's a really good question. I was one of those people who stayed. Logically, knowledge I know, he was a bad partner, logically, I knew he was a psychopath. I thought, wow, the criteria have been met. Let me just walk away and I couldn't do it.
I went back and analyzed the reasons why, later on because I was in a relationship where we had children together. There was no financial dependence, there were no extraneous reasons that some people have to stay. In those situations, I understand, if you have nowhere to go and homeless, it's going to get pretty bad for you to walk away and live on the street or live in a shelter. I get that. I didn't have those circumstances. I was fine in those in that regard. I stayed because I was connected to him through neurochemistry.
People who are psychopathic and narcissistic don't start off harming you. In fact, they have what's called a normal reward system. Our reward system is the system of our brain that allows us to get attracted to people. It's the lust system. It's the system that you need in order to procreate and continue the species. It's a fantastic system. You want that system up and working normally. It's motivating, it's the craving system. They have that system, and in fact, researchers found that their system works even more powerfully than ours. History isn't that you'll find that they are often cheaters, more often than the regular people, because one, they don't have morals, and then two, they have a strong reward system. Talk about a bad combination to have, by the way. The worse because you don't have any moral constraints that say, "Hey, I shouldn't cheat on my wife. I shouldn't cheat on my pregnant wife. I shouldn't cheat on my boyfriend. I shouldn't cheat on my husband." On top of it, your reward system is craving whatever's new, whatever seems exciting.
When they are first getting with you, they really are attracted to you, because they tend not to fake that. That system shuts down for them just because for all of us, we lose a track, like that level of butterflies in the stomach, that gasping reaction when we see our guy or our girl, after we've been with them for a little while. For the rest of us, we shift into this beautiful, comfortable, loving, cozy, honestly, it's better than the second stage, that cozy level of love that you could just cuddle up with them and watch TV and it just feels like the world is just an amazing place. Like, "This person doesn't have to do a thing for me, just be right there and I'm so happy." They can't shift to that stage.
When they're done with their reward system high of you, the dopamine is all excited and going, they don't shift into, "Okay, and I really deeply love this woman or this man." It's over for them. You, during that time period have bonded with them because you're a normal human being, you bond with them. When they start acting badly, because that's when you start to see their pathology, by the way, unfortunately, is when their reward system is over you and it's shut off.
By the way, this is my own theory. There's no scientific research out there that you'll find this. This is just my theory, and working with so many narcissists and psychopaths. When they're done with you, you are not done with them because that's what, you're in love with this guy or this girl. You are bonded to them, but then they start behaving so badly, so horribly, but then they're good, and then they're bad, then they're good, then they're bad. That is actually bothering with your bonding system. Now you have your bonding system activated in such a way that's confusing.
We have chemistry called oxytocin. Oxytocin works in two different directions, believe it or not. It's that great comfy, cozy chemistry, but it's a part of our alerting system. A researcher, Dr. Shelley, I'm forgetting her last name, she came up with this theory. I think that if you guys can read that theory, is fantastic. It's a theory which she says oxytocin is a part of an alerting system. What it tells you is that something's really wrong in this relationship. Your brain is gush with oxytocin, and it's not the good type. It's the type that says, "This isn't good, we're not happy, we've got to go."
Some survivors are able to leave when they feel that gush of nasty chemistry, but guess what, the nice bonding chemistry of oxytocin pops back in place and, "Well, was it really that bad? Maybe I'll talk to him, we'll have a discussion, and we'll work it out. He did say, 'I'm sorry.' Then boom, you're back again. Because there's just so much chemistry that these people can ignite in you. I want to say to your listeners, don't feel responsible for that chemistry, because you have no control over it. It happens involuntarily, but it also reflects that the brain always is reacting to our environment. Always, always, always.
When one person walks in a room, our brain chemistry can be fantastic. I'm so happy that Jase walked into the room. So happy, so happy. Then when Veronica walks in the room, I feel her coldness, I feel her competition, her hate,her fakeness. I don't feel good around her. Around her, I react a little bit differently because of how she makes me feel. It's all automatic. This is why as a psychologist, I tell people try to get the toxic people out of your life, because even though you say people don't affect me, you have no choice. They do affect you.
Dedeker: I feel like this is such a foundational part of a lot of our assumptions around really blaming victims and survivors of like, "Well, why did they stay? Why did they stay? Why didn't they leave? It was obviously so bad," when there's so many other systems going on below the surface, keeping us in a situation.
Dr. Freeman: Very true. On top of that, the regulator of our brain, which is a prefrontal cortex, it's working at minimal level. In order for a person to be calm and balanced, actually, that system has to be in the forefront. When it's not in the forefront, you have an emotional system that has hijacked everything. Now you become just a reactor and not controlled individual that thinks logically, "This person's a damaged person, or dangerous person or an offensive disrespectful person." This is not a person I'm going to have my life. That's what the follows would say, and if the follows were in charge, that's what you would do, but because you're not in charge, you're in this toxic cycle of sticking around, even saying to yourself, "This is not me."
I remember saying that a million times to myself like, "I'm a smart enough person. I know this is not good. What am I doing here?" The regulator of our brain, which is a prefrontal cortex, it's working at minimal level. In order for a person to be calm and balanced, actually, that system has to be in the forefront. When it's not in the forefront, you have an emotional system that has hijacked everything.
Now you become just a reactor and not a controlled individual that thinks logically, "This person's a damaged person, or dangerous person or an offensive disrespectful person." This is not a person I'm going to have my life. That's what the follows would say, and if the follows were in charge, that's what you would do, but because you're not in charge, you're in this toxic cycle of sticking around, even saying to yourself, "This is not me." I remember saying that a million times to myself like, "I'm a smart enough person. I know this is not good. What am I doing here?"
Dedeker: Definitely.
Jase: There is a lot of information to take in and we love neuroscience stuff, brain chemistry and all of that stuff. I did want to take a moment before we get into some more specific listener questions, to just cover a few more things. What are some key assumptions that you see out there about psychopathic abuse or sociopathic abuse, some common assumptions, or maybe things you see thrown around in advice that you would want to dispel those myths or correct some things? What are some common ones you see?
Dr. Freeman: It's the codependency narcissist stance that I hear. I literally have heard some people say, "If you were not codependent, you wouldn't have been in this relationship." In fact, my therapist told me that and that was my last session with her. That was actually what the last session was. She made me feel so terrible, but she actually told me that. She said, "I think you're codependent. You need to work on those patterns." I didn't question her, I said, "Why didn't you give me any psychological testing?" None of the things that I do as a neuropsychologist to find out if I'm right, about a theory. Why did this never happened before. I was a woman in my 30s. Why would I just all of a sudden develop this pattern?
I want to dispel that myth, because remember earlier, I talked about that our brain has a reaction to everybody. Almost everyone who gets around the psychopath or narcissist, even very securely attached people, they have that feeling of feeling less than around them. They have this way of making anybody feel inferior, because of how their actions are, their behavior. Your brain has a strange reaction to them. They are chronic rejecters, meaning that they don't quite accept you. They want you to feel badly about whatever it is that you're saying to them, or they even reject you, as far as like ghosting you or not responding to you or minimizing you. All those are forms of rejection. The really bad thing when it comes to the brain and rejection is that it ramps up our bonding of all things, believe it or not. It makes us pay more attention to the rejecter.
My theory on that is, I think, it's more of a survival thing. Think about it. Long time ago, when we were around tigers and bears and out in the wild, imagine if our social group rejected us, we'd be out there by ourselves. We're going to die, because we can't make it on our own. It makes you pay attention to who rejects you, what's the reason, let's get it resolved, so that you're not unsafe anymore. That is not necessary anymore for us to feel that way. The older regions of our brain have not changed, they probably will not change. That's why the frontal lobe is so important. The frontal lobes put the cap on that and go, "Oh, no, don't worry about it. This is the reason you're rejected. That person's a horrible person, so don't worry about it." When you have a system where the emotional system is more in power and has hijacked everything, you don't get the benefit of the frontal lobes calming things down again.
If I were to look at anything and say that I want a myth dismissed, because I have so many survivors sending me questions, "How do I take care of my codependency?" We don't even use that word in neuropsychology, by the way. We don't. What they may be describing is an insecure attachment style that they may have. They may have chronically had it because of maybe their foundation isn't strong. Maybe they were mistreated as a child, maybe they have complex PTSD. I think, that's what they're seeing and so they're carrying those patterns into their relationships and thinking that they, somehow, have caused this dance or sought out the narcissist or something like that. That's what I would love to dismiss.
Dedeker: That's so interesting. I never really made that connection before. I do feel that probably around 2016, 2017, 2018 was when I feel I saw this huge spike in groups for codependence recovering from narcissistic abuse or all these books that came out that was about, like you said, that narcissistic codependent dance that happens and it felt like so many people were there. I never really thought about that before, about that it's by attaching this label of codependent to yourself.
On the one hand, I can see how some people could find some ownership in that and maybe some control in that, of like, "There's a label. I can diagnose it, I can work on it."
Also on the other hand, it just perpetuates this sense of you as the survivor brought this on yourself, in some way, and we need to focus on you fixing your problems, instead of talking about bigger social problems about how we deal with bigger patterns of abusive or toxic behavior. I feel like I'm getting the sense from you, do you feel that that there's maybe an over self-diagnosis of codependence matched with survivors of narcissistic abuse?
Dr. Freeman: I do, but I don't want to completely discount that because I think that, perhaps, because they're not psychologists and because they don't have a background in neuroscience, they are calling something like an a certain attachment style, something that came to fruition because of various experiences, very negative experiences, possibly past trauma. They're calling that codependency and then saying that you're enabling the narcissist department by staying. In fact, when you stay it's because you're bonded to them in a certain way, and they're creating certain dynamics in you.
If you got around somebody who was loving and secure, these people that they're calling codependence would actually, probably show a bit of an insecure attachment style, but they will probably improve significantly, in a nurturing, accepting, mature partner of that type. Nobody does well with a pathological narcissist. It's so difficult to make it work with them. You can stay with them, but the quality of the relationship's not going to be a good relationship.
Jase: To go along with the over-diagnosing of other people or ourselves as codependence as it relates to narcissists, something else that I feel like I noticed with a lot of the way people are talking now about their exes, or potentially even their current partners, although I hear this more often when people talk about their exes, based on that, it seems like almost everyone out there is a narcissist, because of how often that's thrown out as an accusation against someone's ex. Is calling your partner or your ex partner a narcissist just the new like, "My ex was crazy."?
Dr. Freeman: I think it is.
I think it's over-used.
Jase: Yes, because you work in this. You'd realize how important it is, but also people are throwing it around too often. What do you think about that? What's going on there?
Dr. Freeman: That's so interesting, you asked that question. A few years ago, it was like 2017, I wrote an article in Psychology Today and it starts off with just that statement, that we're overusing the word. The whole article was explaining, but this is truly what a narcissist is, what that personality disorder is like. Just because you don't like somebody or somebody is a bit immature, that immature person can have contrition and some compassion, they feel as bad, but they're just a jerk or something like that to you. That's not a narcissist.
This is why, as a psychologist, we don't really want people out there diagnosing. When people come to my material, they always ask me, "Is he a narcissist?" They give me all this description. One, I can't say yes or no. Two, it's just how they treat it, focus on that. Don't slap that label on there. Just how did he make you feel? Did you feel scared, did you feel threatened, did you feel little, did you feel disrespected and it was a continuous, and this person didn't care about you? That's what you need to recover from. Don't worry about that label.
Dedeker: Yes, that's very much echoing our conversation with Christie Croft that we had a couple of weeks ago, where it's like, we can get so granular about is it abuse, is it not abuse? Is it narcissism, is it not narcissism? When it's really, it's just you don't have to attach a label to feel justified to leave a relationship, if you're miserable.
Dr. Freeman: That's right.
Dedeker: I do think that these days it is really easy that, as human beings, we all act in selfish ways, and especially in relationships, we can all act in selfish ways. I do think it's like someone can do something really selfish that does hurt you, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're a narcissist, but it is really easy to go there when you're hurting and in pain and recovering from a relationship.
We're going to take a quick break to talk about our sponsors for this week's episode, the ways that you can support our show, so that we can keep having this content come to you for free. Stick around.
Jase: We're back. This next question comes from some of our listener questions and essentially boils down to, "Why am I still feeling attachment and longing for someone who treated me poorly after the fact?" Not just why did I stay in it, while I was there, but why do I still feel that now? Then I guess, related to that, what can people do to recover from that?
Dr. Freeman: That was my situation. I know that question really well. I lived it. When it was over, you would think that it'd be easy to walk away once it's over from somebody who was disrespectful and horrible to you, but it's not and it's not for many reasons. One, we talked about the trauma bond already. The trauma bond doesn't end just because a relationship has ended. Matter of fact, that bond can go on for a year or more for some people. It really depends on their psychological foundation, neurological foundation.
Some people have PTSD. These are traumatic experiences that you were in your most vulnerable state, this is your partner. Some people were left with symptoms of PTSD. PTSD is not something that goes away. It must be treated, in some way. You can have PTSD to the day you die, if you do not treat it. The symptoms can be pretty significant, which is intrusive thoughts, nightmares, bad dreams triggered by various environmental stimuli. That is some of the reasons that people feel that continued pain.
We have different systems in our brain and for the survivor, this is what I found for myself and then after having a chance to work with so many survivors, they had a very similar brain reaction. I had like five systems in my brain having a reaction after the relationship, even a year after the relationship. They were my stress systems, we have a few of those. My bonding system, there is my reward system, my pain system or the brain, and my thinking system. Thinking because I was having a hard time feeling motivated, having a hard time organizing things. I just wasn't on my game. I wasn't as sharp. It took a lot of effort for me to do what I used to be able to do. My thinking was not the same, which would make sense because my frontal lobe was still not put into that proper gear. It was still taking the back seat.
My stress systems, they were activated so much and I actually started having joint pain. I had to go to a rheumatologist, the stress was so bad. That's how bad it was. I started having palpitations, and the doctor was like, "Okay, for your pain, I'll give you this, but for your palpitations, your heart is fine." My stress system was really activated. My reward system because I couldn't get this guy out of my head, it was like a rumination on top of rumination, just constant. I was always thinking about him and I had no desire for him in any way, no attraction, nothing, yet I would crave him in some way.
When I look at my email, my inbox, whatever, and see if there was an email from him. I had to put a lot of effort not to look at his social media. It was like, "What is going on?" Those systems were in control of me. Pain system, of course, because I was feeling hurt. I was feeling betrayed. In my particular situation, he ended up cheating and having children with this person, which was the most horrific betrayal because I had no idea what was happening behind my back. All those systems are activated, even when the relationship is over and they can stay activated, unless you get things back in balance. That's what needs to be done to get things back in balance.
For those who have PTSD, you need a specialist for that, for sure, because that's not a self-care healing kind of thing. You need a psychiatrist, psychology, trauma-informed therapist.
Dedeker: That's so interesting, just to rewind the tape a little bit, that you bring up having this experience of, "I don't feel attraction to this person anymore. I don't feel a romantic pull to this person anymore. I don't feel an emotional pull from this person anymore and yet my brain is just full of this person." We had a couple of listener questions about that too being like, "No, I don't feel like I'm still attached. They're just like in my brain." I definitely experienced that as well. It feels like you're going off your rocker to a certain extent.
I remember recovering from a particularly devastating relationship where it was like 6 months to a year later, still waking up thinking about this person, even though it was so far beyond, still feeling a bond or still wanting to get back together, things like that. It's wild, the way that our brains work and it's also, I think, really easy to get frustrated with your own brain. I know I have bee, I don't know about you all.
Dr. Freeman: I did too. It's so true. Interestingly, wrote an article. I feel like such a arrogant person. I wrote an article about that.
Emily: That's brilliant.
Dr. Freeman: I wrote an article and it says, I forget what outlet I wrote it from, PsychToday or Huffington Post. It was about the brain works against abuse victims. I talk about all the systems that stay activated, that keep you focused on this person that you don't want. I speak on that frustration and how distressing it is because you don't have control of your own mind and it's doing its own thing. There a few things you can do to help that and I talk about those few things you can do in the article.
One of the really good things you can do is just social connections, like getting a release of that really good oxytocin, cools down the bonding system, and the stress system and reward system so much. So much, in fact, that there's a section of research trying to figure out how to use that with addiction. People who are addicted to illicit drugs. Actually, it's the same system, by the way. Our romantic relationship breakups, activate the same system of the drug addiction, section of the brain. They are trying to figure out how to properly administer oxytocin to help people detach from that connection, because it is truly at that point a biochemical thing. It's not you, wanting this person.
Unfortunately, our well-intentioned friends may tell you, because mine did, "Girl, stop. Get over it. It's done. It's over." I'm like, "I'm not even trying, I just can't. I don't understand." Yes, that system kind of takes off, so I know exactly what you're saying.
Emily: That's kind of a good segue into talking about recovery, which you've started to talk about a bit, but I did want to ask about what ultimately helped you after going to traditional talk therapy did end, but you created this thing called Neuroinstincts. Can you talk a little bit about that? Then also, in terms of healing, how do you not bring those feelings into future relationships, which maybe that's impossible, maybe you do, to some degree? Our listeners were interested in that.
Dr. Freeman: Neuroinsticts is my website, Kind of like a hub where you can just find a bunch of articles and videos about narcissistic abuse survivors and the criteria for various violators or narcissists. The actual program I developed for myself is kind of a course that I have, but I'll tell you guys that the content of the course. In that course, I really, really focused on the prefrontal cortex because that's what ultimately helped me. Remember I told you that I had to leave that therapist because week after week, I was dreading going because she was causing so much pain, but she kept telling me it was good for me to get it out.
Eventually, I decided, "Wait, Rhonda, what are you going to do? If you had Rhonda as a patient, what would you do?" By the way, third person referencing really helped me. It's called self-distancing. Self-distancing, I think, is a psychological concept that sort of came up with back in the '80s, maybe even before the '80s, but research from a neuroscience standpoint has looked at self-distancing and it actually activates the prefrontal cortex.
Self-distancing is when you actually speak of yourself or write, and you do your journaling, in third-person because when you do that, you look at yourself as somebody else, but you're writing about what's happening, what you feel, but you're doing it from third-person, which actually activates the prefrontal cortex, which puts you into problem-solving mode because you're activating that section that handles solving problems. I did that. I said, "Okay, Rhonda, what would you do if she were your patient?" I would say, "Oh, she has to activate those prefrontal cortexes. Clearly, it's not working well for her right now." What would I do with that patient?
I found a bunch of executive function games. Those are brain games, but I made sure they met certain criteria. For people in my course, I have a whole list of things that they can look for in games. By the way, it's super fun because you don't focus on your partner, there's no getting it out, you're actually activating a region of the brain that needs to be activated to help you back. I prescribed an hour of that for myself a day. On weekends, I will sometimes do it for two hours, three. I was suffering. I was in it.
I did some journaling. I didn't do journaling just as a get it out approach, I did journaling, but I did a lot of my journaling, some of it in first-person, but a lot of it after I wrote first-person, then I did third-person. Then I could then look back at what I wrote, and I could evaluate it and see what it is exactly was I trying to say, and how can I help that person, me, with that situation.
What third-person writing also does is it activates neural pathways of self-compassion, because for some people who have the insecure attachment style, and as you know, that's tied to often having a childhood of abuse or mistreatment or past trauma. For them, being self-compassionate doesn't feel very familiar. It feels a little bit foreign for them. They can have tons of empathy for other people, but when empathy has to get turned for itself, which is like self-compassion, it feels weird. Writing in third-person, actually lets you look at your own story and feel like, "Wow, look at what she went through and look at what she is." You actually start looking at you and having some gentleness and stop the criticism.
Instead of writing why, "Why did I get with this guy? Why did I do this?" That will never help you. It just activates neural pathways of pain. You want to do the opposite. My whole course is all about very healthy activation of neural pathways, the ones that are going to empower you, the ones that are more positive. That should be our default mode, by the way. It's not some hokey Kumbaya, it's real. You want to activate those neural pathways of the prefrontal cortex, because right now, for those of you who are going through the aftermath, your emotional system is probably in the driver's seat, and you want to switch it to where it's supposed to be.
Dedeker: I'm so glad to know that-- I had a very similar experience hopping straight into talk therapy right after leaving an abusive relationship. Again, to reiterate, like you said, not knocking talk therapy. I'm in therapy now at a much better place, where it's much more helpful, but I did the same thing where it was just like, "I'm just going to hop straight in." And very similar of like, "This is just re-traumatizing me. I don't want to relive this, I don't want to talk about this. I don't want to keep revisiting these details over and over and over."
Talking about this self-distancing work, along with all the other work that you do, and helping somebody through this, it strikes me as it must also be really helpful to be able to have this self-distance narrative as well, to see more of this arc, and to see you more as like the hero of your own story. Going through this arc and coming out the other side, which is so much harder when I think we're writing just about ourselves from our own first-person perspective.
Dr. Freeman: That's exactly true. Mindfulness also helped me quite a bit. In the beginning, as I told you, I wasn't doing so well. I wanted to get comfortable with myself being positive and just guiding myself. I would record different mindfulness exercises. I actually put it on a recorder. Then before I go to bed at night, I would just listen to myself say these recordings. It just really helped put my mind in the right spot. Of course, as you know, mindfulness activates the prefrontal cortex, believe it or not.
Mindfulness is like a twofer because not only does it activate your prefrontal cortex, it calms the emotional system, which unlike the other things that I talked about, they don't do both. They just do one. Mindfulness has the dual ability to do both things. Some of those exercises help well as well.
Emily: In terms of relationships that we have after the fact, are there ways in which we can not carry so much toxicity and pain into those next relationships? One of our listeners asked, are there ways to hack our brains to make this process go faster? You gave a lot of great examples.
Dr. Freeman: Brain hacks. If you were traumatized-- Oh, this is great. I'm not sure if it was Bessel van der Kolk who wrote the book. Gosh, the body always remembers if it was .
Dedeker: The Body Keeps The Score?
Dr. Freeman: Yes, there were go. Is that Bessel?
Dedeker: Yes, that's Bessel.
Dr. Freeman: Okay. He was so right. Remember I told you when I do evaluations after I got traumatized, I would feel my psychopathic patients, before I would even do the evaluation. I thought, "Wow, okay, this is crazy." He's right, your body's going to start having reactions to people. Listen to your body. When I went on days after I was with him, and I went out with narcissists, again, sometimes narcissists, sometimes just normal guys, whatever. I felt them. I was like, "Whoa, what is this?" It was because dating was so important, the stakes were so high because I did not want to go back down that road again. I wasn't going to go through that again. The stakes were high for me not to go there.
I decided I just need to listen to my body while these guys are talking away, whatever. What do I feel like within? What is the thing? Do they seem like a person of compassion? Is this person just being nice? You have to just read yourself, trust yourself, you'll get some instincts from this bad experience because we have what's called the amygdala. What it does is it makes associations from our past experiences.
For example, if you were bitten by a dog as a kid, and then you grew up and you're 50 years old, you still may have some fear regarding dogs at some degree. That's because when
you were five, your amygdala logged in there, "Hey, those things with those mouths and those teeth, they are very dangerous, be careful. Must be more alert, the next time you see one of these little guys running around." It does the same thing with bad relationship partners, with the problem. There's a problem.
If you are a person of high empathy and high compassion, narcissistic people know how to play on that. Because of that, you will be at more risk, unfortunately, of getting into another one of these relationships because what makes you so beautiful and so special, are the very things that these people, unfortunately, prey on. This is why education about this topic is so important because you will be, I don't want to sugarcoat anything and say, "Oh, yes, you'll be fine because you had one relationship, you're going to be great."
No, if you have high compassion, high empathy, it's going to be exploited because that's their pathology. It's actually one of the criteria in the DSM is that they are exploiters. It won't be so easy, but it's possible, for sure, to not back into another one of these relationships.
Jase: What about if you are in a new relationship that's not one of these, how to turn that off a little bit and finally let down your guard once you do see when it's a good one?
Dr. Freeman: The good thing is that the brain reacts to who we're with, so that person may have to be a little patient with you because you're on higher alert. You just went through the wringer with the last person. You might be a little hard on your new partner. However, if that person is a compassionate, loving, and patient person, and you may be in a place of trust that you are able to share that, don't show that too soon because if you possibly have a narcissist, it's the best dish they ever got served, if you say, "I've been in an abusive relationship, I've been hurt before." They're like, "Wow, I just lucked out here because there I go."
The partner that you get with may have to be patient with you on it. Oftentimes, people who've been traumatized, they have trouble trusting again. This is why work on yourself is going to be important. Finding a good therapist who can help you navigate that, but use all that you learn. You can walk into a relationship being informed. Like I said, feeling what your body's feeling, knowing that these people have certain traits, learn those traits, and see if you're with that kind of person.
As I said, I think the key for me always, was looking at the deep emotions. My guy he had the best superficial emotions. He was just the life of the party, he could smooth anybody, have a conversation anywhere. I actually admire those traits. In his success, all those things, I thought, "My God, this guy really has himself together." I saw that he wasn't really kind to people, he bought people, he ran things and that's not what I'm looking for. Just look for their social abilities on a deeper level, and that will let you know if you're with somebody safe or not safe, the emotional therapy on yourself.
Jase: Thank you so much. This has been great. Where can our listeners find more about you and your program, your articles, things like that?
Dr. Freeman: Thanks. So the website is called Neuroinstincts. If you go there you will find everything all the articles, the videos, if you want to get to the course, the link through to the course in there as well. I'm often on Instagram not under my name, but under Neuroinstincts, we can chat there. I have a bunch of stuff there you guys can learn about narcissism survivors, so forth.
Dedeker: Excellent.
Jase: We'll definitely wink you on our Instagram, for sure.
Dr. Freeman: Thank you.
Dedeker: Definitely. We are going to be sticking around with Dr. Freeman to talk a little bit more in detail about all these different brain systems, and how they're affected during breakups, talking a little bit more in detail about bringing all those different systems into balance as well in our bonus episode. That's going to be coming out later in the week after this.