If you’ve ever wondered why your body still panics—even when you know better—this episode is for you.
Narcissists don’t just manipulate conversations; they manipulate states like fear, urgency, guilt, and confusion. And once your nervous system is activated, logic goes offline.

In this episode, Christy breaks down three specific ways narcissists hijack your nervous system, why your reactions are not a failure, and how to begin calming your body so you can respond with clarity instead of spiraling. This is especially important for anyone co-parenting, navigating post-separation abuse, or dealing with a narcissistic parent or ex.

You’ll learn how nervous system hijacking actually works—and why healing isn’t about “being stronger,” but about safety, regulation, and self-trust.

Your Next Step in Healing
If interactions with a narcissist still send your body into panic or shutdown, 1:1 coaching offers personalized nervous-system-aware support, communication strategy, and boundary clarity—especially for high-conflict or co-parenting situations.
Email: https://shethrives.thrivecart.com/transformational-coaching-quarterly/

6-Month Coaching Container
Deep nervous system work, boundary integration, and identity rebuilding so you stop second-guessing yourself and start living from calm authority.
https://shethrives.thrivecart.com/6-month-queens-of-peace-program/

12-Month Coaching Container
Long-term healing for complex trauma, co-parenting, family narcissism, and post-separation abuse—supporting true, lasting regulation and peace.
https://shethrives.thrivecart.com/12-month-queens-of-peace-program/

Additional Support & Resources

Boundaries Pocket Guide (Free)
https://christyjade.ck.page/ce79ea9250

Copy-Paste-Peace Scripts
https://christyjade.thrivecart.com/copy-paste-peace-scripts/

Empowered Boundaries Course
https://shethrives.thrivecart.com/empowered-boundaries/

Free Facebook Community
https://www.facebook.com/groups/christyjade

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1 (00:00):

If you've ever thought, why am I still panicking when I know better? This episode is for you. Today, I'm going to break down three very specific ways narcissists hijack your nervous system so you can stop blaming yourself and start calming your body again. Welcome to your Thursday, thrive in five, your five minute pause from the chaos, the gaslighting, and that text you knew better than to reply to take a breath, queen. This one's for you. Alright, so welcome back. Let me say this clearly right out of the gates, if your body still reacts even after therapy, after setting your lovely boundaries and doing everything right, you are not failing. Your nervous system has been trained. So narcissists don't just manipulate conversations, right? They manipulate states. So states of fear, urgency, God, I hate that one. Guilt and confusion. So today we're not talking about just, oh, just ignore 'em or be stronger, right?

(01:19)
We're talking about how the hijacking actually happens and what helps you come back to safety. Alright? So the first way they use urgency to bypass your regulation, this one is very, very important and one that I didn't really learn about till later in my research. Education, knowledge, all of them, right? This urgency is something we all get conditioned to have. So it can be sneaky, it can be sudden texts, last minute demands, fake emergencies. I remember having some of those, like this needs to be handled right now or call me immediately. I've literally had a narcissist say, this is an emergency you need to pick up when I wouldn't pick up. And then it goes, you go, oh, okay. And then you find out it's not really an emergency, right? So urgency shuts down your thinking brain and activates what we are familiar with survival mode.

(02:33)
So your body doesn't ask, is this real? It asks, am I in danger? And once you respond from that place, the narcissist feels power again. So what do we do with all this, right? I can just, sorry, I'm just thinking back to that urgency feeling and how disruptive is right. So I just want to, I guess for solidarity sake right now, say I see you and I feel you in this space of urgency. And it's this just constant stress in your body that is feeling like everything's urgent and this fear of if you don't respond right away, if you don't do what they say, it's this tight chest tight neck. It literally changes your body, not just your mentally, but your body, your physiology. So one way to reframe it is that urgency does not mean importance. So what can help with this is before responding pause and orient, because you have to pull yourself out of this urgency.

(03:55)
You have to retrain, reframe your brain so that you don't feel stuck in this cycle. So orienting, I've talked about this on here before, but this really helps in these situations. So you can just pause wherever you are. This is great. You can do this tool anywhere. Name three things you can see. So I'll do an example right now that you don't have to think about it. This is non-thinking work. This is get in your body work. Okay, Queens, we need to get in our bodies way more. So how do we do that? Orienting is one step. So I'm looking at my beautiful floral picture. It always helps. I like to my eyes organically kind of gravitate towards the prettiest things in the room. So this beautiful, beautiful bouquet of flowers. So automatically I'm looking at that and remember to just kind of focus on the details, even if it's one detail.

(04:57)
There's just this one kind of magenta flower against the rest of the pastel. So I'm kind of just letting my gaze set on that and just observing that for a minute. And not even a whole minute, but a few seconds, 30 seconds. A second thing right now I'm looking at my flamingo. She's beautiful too, but what really crotches my eye is her glittering gold crown. Yes, I have a flamingo with a crown because how crispy is that, right? So I'm just letting my gaze settle on her crown and enjoying the reflecting light on the glitter as glitter is my favorite color all. And just kind of letting myself be present looking at that. And then I'm going to look another direction and I'm seeing a beautiful piece of artwork again, it's a different piece of artwork. I have a lot of artwork. I love art.

(06:00)
If you don't know that about me, now you do. And it's got some really beautiful teal shades in the background. And this also is a nice little cozy feeling because me and my stepsister and my daughter created this artwork together and it's just beautiful. So that's like an extra icing on the cake. If it is something beautiful or that has a nice story with it, but it doesn't have to be, it could just be like a couch cushion and you're just looking a little deeper into it, like the texture. So those are three things you can see, and you can name them out loud. You can say beautiful flowers, crazy old flamingo with the crown, gorgeous teal background of the painting, right? Then you put your feet on the floor, okay? Because this is, you want to get grounded. So you're getting present, you're getting grounded, noticing you're right here in this moment. Your feet are here on the ground, you are here.

(07:12)
And slow your breath. Inhale through your nose, exhale through your mouth. That's called a halo breath. Inhale through your nose and out your mouth, okay? And then ask, is this truly urgent or just activating? Now my example where that person said this is an emergency. Of course, when we have children, let's say your child is at their house, you are of course, no matter what, that's going to feel urgent, be urgent until the true story, whether it is or not. So you do have to respond to something like that. But there's a lot of examples, and you probably can already think of some that aren't truly based on urgency, right? So if they're saying, I want to know if blah, blah, blah, but it's really not that urgent, but they make it feel urgent. They have a tendency to get that control and that power over you. And you go, is this really urgent or is it activating? Or is it just what I've been taught to respond like this? Alright, so number two, another way is they weaponize tone not content. So here's why their message messages mess with you even when they're reasonable.

(08:45)
And that other people, I feel like we're always like, oh, other people don't see it, of things like that where it seems reasonable, but you know that you can see the difference or hear the difference. So it's not what they say, it's how they often say it. But that sarcasm, a kind of cold politeness. If you know subtle digs, maybe not so subtle digs, but we're talking about the more subtle things and concern that feels threatening. So your nervous system remembers who you are and how they make you feel, how it makes your body feel with their tone, with their actions, all of that, your body remembers, right? That's why we do somatic work, which I'll talk about in a little bit. Not just the words. It's not just the words, it's the whole energy around it. So that's why you reread their messages over and over.

(09:54)
I know you've done that. That's why your chest tightens that neck. Like oh, it's just everything the muscles contract in your body and that's why you spiral. The mental spiral is real. So you're not dramatic, you're conditioned. Okay, so with this one, what helps read the message once and identify the category, not the emotion. Okay, is it logistics? Is it information, useful information? Maybe, maybe not. Is it bait? Are they baiting you? Right? And so you respond only to the category, not the tone. Is it logistics with picking up your child? Don't take the bait part of it, just respond with an answer if you need to yet two o'clock, whatever time you agreed upon whatever it is, or is it just bait? Often it can just be bait. Now why would you do X, Y, Z? There's no real question in there. That is a bait question.

(11:21)
If it's something they do not need to know. And those are very common bait questions or bait guilt trips. Oh, so I'm the bad guy, I try to help you out. Look what you do. There's no need to respond to that at all, right? So you're responding to the category, yes, you're going to respond if it's some information that you need to give or obviously something that information needs to be figured out or whatever, if it's about your child or something like that. So way number three, they pull you into self-doubt. Not my favorite either. None of these are, this is the most damaging one. I will say that. I mean that urgency can be so triggering, but the self-doubt one is where that longer term damage really, it really does happen from this, right? So they'll provoke you, react as many people would, and then you'll beat yourself up maybe about it, right? Why did I respond? Why am I still affected? I get this question so much from my clients, why am I still affected? Am I ruining this for my kids? So there's a shame loop there and it keeps your nervous system stuck. But here's the truth, your reaction is not a character flaw, it's a protective response that hasn't been updated yet.

(13:12)
It's still working back there. It's a protection that needs a little refresh. So what helps in this situation, after any interaction, you can say this, my body reacted because it learned this pattern for survival. I'm safe now. My body reacted because it learned this pattern for survival. I'm safe now and often with my clients in this somatic world, when we go on our little somatic journeys together, this stuff will come up and we will rewire that part, part of the brain that's thinking, oh, I'm still not safe. I'm still not safe. We go into that world and rewire so that we can feel safe again. So after that, you can do something regulating like take a walk, stretch. Oh, the power of YouTube. Do you know how many stretches Pilates, yoga, dance is on there? Unlimited. So there's no excuse. You can't literally, you don't have to do a 30 minute video.

(14:29)
Just move your body. Move your body. I'm telling you, moving your body really is so healing. Okay, another one, and I just did this with my client the other day. She messaged me on Voxer. If you don't know what Voxer is, it's like a walkie-talkie app and we can walkie-talkie or text back and forth through the app. And my long-term ongoing clients get this bonus with their packages where in between calls we get to walkie-talkie, we get to Voxer. It's so fun. One of my favorite things and she was just like having a moment and I said, okay, for this specific thing, and there's different things and you also, there's many methods and tools. We can talk about that in another episode. So for this specific client and what was going on, I knew that the cold water would be a really good one, cold water on the wrists.

(15:31)
So I said, go run your wrist under really cold water and tell me how you feel after. And she felt better. It worked. So now she can use that as a tool. That's something that worked for her and it works for a lot of people, but maybe it won't work exactly for you. There's plenty of other tools. So if you aren't a big fan of cold water, we'll find something else. And then there's always breath work. We call it breath work, but really it's just breathing, slow breathing. There's so many different ways. I actually am certified in breath work, so I know all the different breathing patterns and breathwork patterns and my favorite is the halo in through the nose, out through the mouth. I just love that one to regulate the nervous system. But you do what feels best for you. I always use my favorites with clients or even on these podcasts, but this is about learning what works for you too. You get to say, I'm more comfortable just breathing in and out my mouth or in and out just my nose or taking super long inhale and just a little inhale. Is that a new word? Exhale.

(16:46)
So just don't forget that this work has to work for you. You have to be comfortable. So just a little reminder. But yeah, so doing any of those regulating actions, walking, stretching, cold water, breath work, even just popping on some Britney Spears, I don't know if that's maybe not one of her videos right now where she's doing crazy things with knives, but you get my drift. Something that brings you joy and where you can move your body. So an important little reminder, your kids don't need a perfect unbothered parent. They need emotional honesty and safety, showing them how to calm their bodies after stress and being a role model, being a role model for them, saying, I'm taking the time to heal and take care of myself. Obviously they don't need to know all the ins and outs of what's happened with your ex and all of that, but showing them in general when you are in a dysregulated space saying, you know what? There's tools for this. I'm not going to ignore it and try to be a hero. I'm going to be a hero by actually saying, oh, my body's dysregulated, so I'm going to take a few moments to myself, right? This is teaching them resilience, not weakness.

(18:23)
You absolutely have to take care of yourself to keep moving forward, get burnt, crispy, fried. That can happen after narcissistic abuse especially. We are resilient ERs. Can I get a what in the back? Yes. Okay, good. Thank you. Alright, so you're not failing, you're not weak, you're not too sensitive. I know you've been told that by that lovely narcissist. I'm sure you're not. You are unlearning a nervous system pattern that was not your fault. It was someone else. Controlling and manipulating and conditioning you and healing doesn't mean that you'll never ever react again. It means you come back to yourself faster. We were born with emotions. We're supposed to have emotions. We have them, right? I'm like, yeah, God said, let there be anger, let there be joy. Let there be all the feelings.

(19:26)
He could have tucked a couple of those back in his pocket. But here we are with all of them and we're supposed to have them. And a lot of them help us to know, well, let's say fear, right? We have fear to protect us. We have anger to be able to express ourselves, but it is being able to get back to the grounded part of us way more quickly than when we have been through abuse and we are triggered and we are scared and we are still in survival mode. We have to be more regulated. We've got to get that back. And that's when you start to feel the joy, the peace, the calm again, if you can even imagine.

(20:19)
And with less shame, less guilt. We don't like those words around here. We're going to stomp 'em. Okay? So if co-parenting or dealing with a narcissist keeps hijacking your piece, my one-on-one coaching is for nervous system aware support and strategy. So if you are somebody, I have a lot of co-parents, I have people who have narcissists in their family and they have to deal with them, but they're not living with them actively. Usually it's someone that they can keep a space with because I really work with people who are ready to regulate their nervous system and not be really intertwined with the narcissist, if that makes sense. If we're co-parenting, that's a different story. Many of my clients are because they are forced to, but they are on the journey to really getting not entangled other than what they absolutely have to. And that's where a part of my specialty lies, how to navigate that.

(21:31)
So there's that. There's the copy paste piece scripts, and if words are your biggest trigger, you have trouble with knowing what to say. I have those and my Empowered Boundaries course for the full boundaries system covering all your boundaries. If you get nervous about setting boundaries or you don't know how to keep them or you're nervous about what to do if someone pushes back, it's all in there. And there is a free boundaries pocket guide. If you're just starting, this is a great place to start. But the one-on-one coaching, if you know want to sign up, I have three, six, and 12 month options for you. I do occasionally do one-off calls, so you can email me if you're interested in that. I don't promote that as much anymore. That's like if you really just don't understand and you want to get a better idea of what's involved with the coaching and the somatic healing.

(22:37)
And so I can tell you briefly, the coaching obviously is how to navigate all of this on a logistical way and I will give tips and methods and whatever. And the somatic healing part is we actually go on little somatic journeys. And that can be, I mean it's more than meditation, it is nervous system calibration and balancing, rewiring the brain, going to childhood stuff where we go back and into the childhood vortex. We're not going and going into very long elaborate triggering traumatic sessions here. This is usually at the most a half hour, usually less. It's a whole hour long call, but usually it is less than a half hour of the actual journeying. And it can involve so much and that's why we could have a call if you want to get more details. But it's really recalibrating your nervous system through different methods, right?

(23:56)
It's through the body. Somatic means body. So we are healing your body. It's remembered everything. The body is kind of not caught up with the brain. You might say, I know that I shouldn't worry about this. Why is my body still viscerally reacting when I see a text message from this person? So we get to go in and heal that part on a somatic level, a deeper level. I mean the mind is a deep place too, but on a deeper level as far as the body and the cells and regeneration and rewiring, it's amazing work. It's mind blowing. That's why I do it. My favorite thing. Alright, so if you're interested in that, either signup, if you know you want to do that, there are signup links for all three packages, check them out. You can read more details in there too. Or if you'd like to jump on a one-on-one call, it's like an intake call.

(24:56)
So that's like if you're pretty sure you want to do it, but you just want more information. And that's where I can take more of your information to get your story and share about in more detail what we would do together. So there's also that you can email me if you're interested in that. My email and those links are always in the show notes. So the show notes are always in the episodes. And I believe on the main page of whatever podcast, you're listening to this as well, but if you go right to the episode page, everything will be in that description box. Okay? So remember, Thursdays are Thrivent five always related to Tuesday's episode, and they're shorter episodes. We do little somatic healing tools and all of that fun. So those are great to save and use later too. You can always go back to them.

(25:51)
So they're a good resource. This is an ongoing journey healing. It's not like a one and done. There has been some damage, but guess what? That doesn't mean you are damaged. That doesn't mean you cannot heal, which so many people come to me feeling like that. And I love why I do this work is watching them come in feeling helpless and being done, whether it's 3, 6, 12 months. The transformation is obviously more and more the longer you do the program. But even after three months, the transformation, the transitions, the healings that people have is just incredible and it's just beautiful work. So obviously I'm a big fan, but I will also follow, so you get my episodes right? Look at the, it should say follow, I believe wherever you are on whatever platform, follow or subscribe or something you don't miss my next episode, which will be Thursday and all of the fun episodes.

(26:58)
And I'd love you to email me with episode ideas that you have. I'm here for you. What would you like to learn more of? I know there's a lot of information already. I don't even know, 200 episodes or something. Two 50. And I just reached 200,000 downloads, which thank you. I'm so glad. See, it's hard. I'm not glad it resonates because that means a lot of people go through this stuff, which is hell. But I'm so glad that I'm able to help that many people. That's just insane to me. And I'm so grateful that I get to do this work. I really am. So thank you for supporting and listening and being a part of that. I recently hit 200,000 downloads, so it's awesome. So yes, reach out with any questions or just introduce yourself. I love to hear from you guys. So send an email, say hello, ask a question, suggest an episode, topic, whatever. I'm there. And also join my Facebook group. It's a private group for women and it's women who have gone through this abuse and are just like you. There's unfortunately a lot of us out there, but we can kind of be in solidarity together in the Facebook world. And so join that, and I will talk to you in the next episode. All right, love you. Bye.