I found this on facebook, written by a user called Narcissist's Daughter.
#CPTSD
They sell healing like a destination. Get therapy, do the work, cross the finish line, declare yourself healed; congratulations, you're fixed. That's not how trauma works and it's certainly not how recovering from a narcissistic mother works. Healing is less like climbing a mountain with a summit and more like walking a spiral staircase where you keep passing the same windows, seeing the same view, except each time you're higher up and the perspective has shifted. You're not going in circles; you're going in cycles and there's a difference.
You'll think you've processed the abandonment, made peace with her inability to love you properly, built boundaries, moved on and then something will trigger it again and you're back in that familiar grief. Except you're not actually back. You're revisiting it with tools you didn't have before, awareness you've earned through years of healing and a nervous system that can hold what would have destroyed you the first time through. The wound looks the same because it's the same source, but you're meeting it as a different person now. That's not regression. That's integration.
The deeper layers don't reveal themselves until you're strong enough to handle them. Your psyche is protective, it won't show you the full extent of the damage whilst you're still trying to survive it. So you heal one layer, feel like you've arrived, start building your life and then boom, another level unlocks. More memories. Deeper understanding of how her behaviour shaped you. New awareness of patterns you've been unconsciously replicating. It feels like failure because you thought you were done, but it's actually your system finally trusting you enough to go deeper.
This cyclical process is exactly how complex trauma heals. Safety and stabilisation, then processing, then integration and then back around again when new layers emerge or old wounds get triggered by new life circumstances. Each cycle isn't starting from zero; it's building on everything you've already learnt. You're not losing progress, you're deepening it. The fact that you're encountering these wounds again means you're alive, you're growing, you're in relationships and situations that are bringing up what still needs attention.
Integration isn't about making the trauma disappear. It's about weaving it into your story in a way that doesn't control your life anymore. Understanding that healing is cyclical frees you from the expectation that you should be "over it" by now. You're not meant to be over it, you're meant to be moving through it, returning to it when necessary, extracting new wisdom each time. That's not failure. That's exactly how healing is supposed to work.
#healingiscyclical #notlinear #integration #deeperlayers #revisitingwithawareness #notfailure #complextraumahealing #spiralnotcircle
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