Dear Sheelanagig:

A quality psychotherapy situation, one with a capable, empathetic therapist that you learn to trust, one who treats you respectfully and attentively, where you feel safe, is the place to “turn the intellectual knowledge into a felt experience of awareness, compassion, change and healing inside (you)”.

Otherwise, it may help you to share about your childhood experience, here on your thread (if you so choose) in this way: use words a child would use, don’t use terms you read about like narcissist, co dependent, grooming and so forth. Use a simple  language, shot sentences, like a young child uses.

I suggested it to members before. Hardly anyone takes this challenge. It is difficult to do, uncomfortable in the context of a public forum, I imagine. Maybe you can do it outside the forum.

By using a child’s language, you depart temporarily from that intellectual-adult mindset and go to the emotional child that you were.

anita