Recovering from Trauma

Recovering from Trauma

What remarkable journeys have people faced head-on against addiction and abuse? Here, N.A.R.C. Troopers turns its focus to the mental and emotional wreckage left by narcissistic partners and how survivors can start to reclaim themselves. Host Prajinta Pesqueda breaks down what happens inside a narcissist’s mind using vivid imagery.

She describes their inner world as "broken pieces of glass, shiny and sparkly, but very sharp and jagged," stressing that no amount of love, patience or sacrifice can glue those fragments into a healthy, coherent person. Survivors who try to "gather these fragments and put them back together" only end up emotionally shredded.

The episode looks at how narcissists lack a continuous sense of self and memory, rewriting the past to fit a "false persona" that always makes them the hero or the victim. As Prajinta bluntly puts it, "They have no self. It is an absence of being." She explains how this distorted memory means the relationship that felt deeply real to the survivor can be erased by the narcissist as if it "never existed".

You’ll hear how this psychological erasure adds an extra layer of trauma: the loss of the relationship, plus the loss of the shared story and any chance of genuine closure. Prajinta also touches on their pattern of idealise–devalue–discard, their rule-breaking mentality, and how they see other people as extensions of themselves rather than as separate human beings.

The tone is direct, sometimes darkly funny (like her jab about 60- and 70-year-olds who "never had a fully functioning brain"), but always aimed at helping survivors make sense of their experiences. If you’ve ever felt like your memories were stolen or your reality was rewritten after narcissistic abuse, this episode might help you realise you’re not crazy – you were targeted. What could change for you if you stopped trying to fix the narcissist and started backing yourself instead?