Narcissistic Abuse Therapist in Toronto

I Had to Become a People-Pleaser to Survive

I grew up in domestic violence. There was a lot of yelling, emotional volatility, anger and rage. I had to do everything perfectly, to a parent’s liking. I was groomed and conditioned to seek approval, or there would be so much anger. I lived so hypervigilant, walking on eggshells ever since I was young.

In hindsight, I dissociated and froze a lot. When you’re a small child developing in that, you can’t help it. When you hear rage, you freeze. When you’re wronged but victim blamed, gaslit, called names and shamed to no end, you want to fight back and speak up. But there are real consequences for using your voice. So you learn to suppress your emotions.

Being emotionally abused and repeatedly invalidated, I developed BPD. I was extremely emotionally dysregulated. I was high functioning, but I had anger issues, and my identity became performance: always performing, always people-pleasing, an emotional caretaker of people who were angry or in authority. I was conditioned to be a people-pleaser and a performing monkey, just to be approved of and to be good enough.

I Abandoned Myself and Didn’t Even Know It

In all that stress and suppression, I abandoned myself so deeply that I didn’t even know I was doing it. I created an entire identity to survive my environment. My boundaries were so broken that I didn’t even know what a boundary was. I became a boundaryless, heart-on-my-sleeve caretaker, with codependency and an addiction to trauma bonds and toxic, painful dynamics.

In my most toxic relationships, especially with narcissistic men, I put them on a pedestal. I caretook them, babied them and loved them. It was like Stockholm syndrome. I lived to perform, love and please, to be whoever they needed me to be. I struggled so much within myself, one foot in, one foot out. I spiralled in perfectionism in my business too. I was so traumatized that I couldn’t work.

Healing Myself Became the Business

All that pain propelled me into a very deep spiritual and healing journey. I turned my career into a psychotherapy practice and a healing business, because there was no other way out for me. Healing myself became the business.

So when I work with survivors, empaths, caretakers and people-pleasers stuck in perfection, performance and hypervigilance, I see every nook and cranny, every blind spot. Because it’s not even patterns anymore. It’s an entire identity that we heal.

Lived Experience and 10 Years of Practice

I’ve been doing healing work with clients for the last 10 years: six years in my therapy practice and four years in holistic health coaching. I’ve worked from the ground up: healing the nervous system, regulating and releasing trauma trapped in the body, understanding relationship dynamics and breaking them, and working through grief and attachment.

The lived experience is so important. But so is the professional and relational experience with clients. The outcomes I see are a real sense of self, healing bodies, and better relationships with everything.

When Truth Recognizes Truth, the Patterns Break

When you’ve been through it yourself, you hold the awareness and the illumination to really see someone else. There’s so much power in seeing, hearing and understanding someone deeply. I see clients not just for the emotion and pain they bring me. I see the heart of the soul, I see the patterns, and I see the power through that.

We do this through embodied relational therapy, from a highly trauma-informed, faith-based perspective. We can integrate somatic work and psychodrama. But essentially, it’s the eyes and ears that can cut through the noise of trauma and connect with the deeper parts of who you are. You start to remember, and you shed.

It’s accelerated healing. When truth recognizes the truth in someone else, the falsities fall away, and the authentic self and the voice are naturally encouraged to be expressed. The patterns break, because patterns can’t hold when the truth has been awakened.

The work is a process: peeling back these patterns, grieving this identity, breaking things, and reclamation.

No One Can Ever Take Your True Self From You Again

It’s an identity transformation, and it’s one of the most transformative things to heal from. As you peel back, grieve, let go and break these patterns, you find your authenticity. You find your voice and your power. You get embodied. You come into who you are.

When it’s a self that is authentic, a self in Christ, so connected to the presence of life, no one can ever take that away from you again. That’s the beauty of healing from narcissistic abuse. Your voice is full of conviction, your power is reclaimed, and you’re embodied. It’s a journey toward sovereignty, power, voice and connection.

A survivor becomes someone who heals the survival identity, and what’s revealed is the true self.

Can’t find a time that works, or want to reach Tracey directly? Send a message or email truehealthcounselling@gmail.com.