Welcome to No Visible Bruises, the podcast that shares real-life survivor stories of narcissistic abuse, domestic abuse and coercive control from a physiology first and nervous system perspective, because you can't think your way out of this. You need to feel to heal. I'm Caroline Strawson, a survivor myself and now a trauma expert and educator.

I am here to create change and understanding of the unseen abuse that we are not taught about

in schools and to heal from the inside out at a nervous system level.

Let's break the silence and change the narrative because we heal

together. So I'm really looking forward, Danny, for our hour together where we're going to be

talking through, well, I mean, I read your intake form

and yeah, I mean, what stood out for me was this whole generational trauma piece in this. And I think

when we start to talk about things like narcissistic abuse, domestic abuse, coercive control

and adult relationships, we often don't realize where these things start.

Right.

So let's kind of maybe dive back a little bit if that's okay with you.

We know obviously future relationships, what that's like and we'll get to that.

But when you think about the experience of things like narcissistic abuse, when do you think

that started for you?

All my life.

I was born to parents, mother and father, both with narcissistic traits.

So it was, it's been my entire experience. And what, so when you say narcissistic traits. So it was, it's been my entire experience. And what, so when you say

narcissistic traits, because there'll be people listening here, and I was one of those, to be

fair, where I thought I had an idyllic childhood. That's what I thought until I started to dive deeper.

So when we talk about these narcissistic traits, did you realize something was up

as a child or was this only when you were an adult and you looked back? Because I think it's such an

interesting question of do we realize something's wrong as a child or is that just when we look

...