The MINDFUCKERY Podcast

Since the beginning of this year, I've been hearing that 2026 would be the year of the fall of the narcissist. And I'll admit, there was a part of me that thought — yes, bring it on.

But recently I've started noticing something else: people we've placed in positions of authority being publicly questioned, challenged and exposed. I'm not diagnosing any of these people as narcissists, but it made me question how we give people so much power in the first place — particularly when they're charismatic, convincing and appear to have the answers we're searching for.

In this episode, I talk about some of those stories and about binge-listening to investigative journalist Isla Traquair's The Narcissist's Playbook, which explores serious allegations surrounding Sam Vaknin. Listening to the women describe their experiences brought an unexpected recognition of my own — particularly the belief that I could see the wounded child underneath the behaviour and somehow save or teach a grown man how to behave.

What surprised me most was being able to recognise so much of my own past without the energetic pull that once came with it. The connection had gone.

So perhaps the fall of the narcissist isn't only about watching people being exposed. Perhaps it's also about what happens when we stop feeding the dynamic — when we protect our energy, stop supplying the attention and stop waiting for their downfall before allowing ourselves to be free.

Whether 2026 brings the downfall of the person who hurt you or not, perhaps the real power shift happens when you break those ties, reclaim your energy and no longer need to wait and see what happens to them. #narcissistsplaybook #Isla Traquair #samvaknin 

This week I talk about the grief that comes after emotional abuse — grief for the relationship, yes, but also grief for the version of me that existed before it, and for the future I thought I was building. I share my own experience of the manipulation that continued long after the relationship ended, through two divorces and the games that came with them, and how oversharing personal details became something used against me later. I talk about reprogramming, ancestral wounding, and the parts of ourselves that step outside of us to survive trauma — and why those parts need to be found and brought home. The episode closes on a powerful reframe: once you can see the script you were written into, it stops being your story and starts being theirs. And that's when you get to put it down.

ROADMAP TO HEALING

Lost. Confused. Numb. If that's where you are right now, look at your thumb. That fingerprint hasn't changed once through any of it.

This week I talk about coding — the beliefs, rules and conditioning we're handed before we're old enough to tell what's ours and what isn't, and how an abuser can get into that same code and rewrite it from the inside.

I talk about recognising the wounding of people who mirror our own childhood, and how I used my ex's own patterns against the lies he told me — including one moment in couples counselling neither of us saw coming.

Whatever was recoded was never erased. You were always underneath it.

DOWNLOAD ROAD MAP HERE

Last week a caterpillar landed on me and refused to let go, no matter how gently I tried to move it. It stayed with me for days afterwards, because it reminded me so much of the healing process itself — the breakdown before the rebuild, the shamanic idea of being taken apart before being put back together. This week I talk about that process: the caterpillar's journey through the chrysalis, the "honest conversations" technique I developed myself to pull me out of days-long rumination spirals, and the freeze response I never experienced until after my marriage ended. I talk about the difference between understanding a pattern and actually healing from it, and why looking back — rather than only moving forward — was one of the most important parts of my own journey. Recognition is the doorway. The question is whether you're ready to walk through it.

I posted a short video a week or so ago on TikTok and wasn't expecting the response I got. This week I want to talk about why it landed the way it did — the loneliness of spending years editing yourself, minimising yourself, softening the truth of who you are, just to feel safe. I talk about why we protect abusive relationships the same way abusers isolate us within them, why finally being "seen" can feel so powerful that we hold on through the chaos, and what happens when we come out the other side, awake, but surrounded by people who don't speak the same language anymore. I share my own experience of that moment in Greece when I finally saw the pattern across every relationship I'd ever had — and what I've learned since about the difference between loneliness and simply being uncomfortable in your own boundaries. Because maybe the person you've been waiting for to finally understand you... is yourself.

"Who do you think you are?"

For many of us, those words weren't asked with curiosity.

They were used to make us question ourselves. To keep us small. To remind us of the place we were expected to stay in.

But what if we asked the same question for a completely different reason?

In this episode, I explore what happens when the labels we've been given become the identity we believe. From childhood conditioning and inherited beliefs to trauma, relationships and survival, we slowly adapt until we can no longer tell the difference between who we are and who we've learnt we need to be.

Inside this episode we explore:

• Why we're not born believing we're "not enough"

The Five Pillars explored what happened to us.

The Labels explored what we came to believe.

This episode asks perhaps the most important question of all...

If none of those labels, roles or survival strategies are who you truly are... then who are you?

A follow-up to the Five Pillars series.

Before we believed we weren't enough, before we believed love had to be earned, before we became the strong one, the people pleaser, or the scapegoat — someone handed us those beliefs.

This week I explore how labels quietly become part of our identity, why we aren't born believing we're "not enough," and the connection between childhood, survival, and emotional wounding.

I discuss how these beliefs are passed down through families and generations, why the same patterns keep repeating in different relationships, and what it means to reconnect with who you were before the labels ever landed. Healing isn't about becoming someone new — it's about uncovering the person who's been there all along.

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The final episode in the five pillars series.

This week I cover financial abuse — often the most overlooked pillar, yet one of the fastest ways an abuser controls a partner and stops them from leaving.

I break down how financial abuse fits within coercive control (UK law since 2015), the tactics abusers use — withholding money, running up debt in your name, controlling access to bank accounts, using gifts as transactions, sabotaging your credit — and why this control often continues long after separation, especially where child maintenance is involved.

I also share my own experience of financial control in my past relationship, and how healing from it connects back to the emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical pillars covered earlier in the series.

This episode is about the mental impact of emotional abuse — how chronic manipulation and unpredictability physically change the brain.

I break down what happens to the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex under sustained psychological stress, why survivors experience brain fog, memory gaps, and chronic self-doubt, and how the three core wounds — abandonment, betrayal, and shame — get triggered and often trace back to childhood.

Drawing on research from Yale, Stanford, and NYU on cortisol and hippocampal damage, this episode explains why "I can't trust my own mind" is a neurological reality, not a personal failing — and why recovery is possible.

Over the last few weeks I've been exploring the Five Pillars of Abuse and how emotional abuse, coercive control and manipulation affect every area of our lives.

This week we're exploring the Physical Pillar.

Trauma doesn't just live in your memories.

It lives in your body.

The nightmares.

In this episode I explore:

• Why emotional abuse affects the body as much as the mind

Healing isn't about forcing your body to "move on."

It's about helping your body discover that it's finally safe.

🌹 Free Temple Event – 23rd July

🗺️ Download the free RoadMap and reserve your place using these links.

📹 7 Things you may notice if you are suffering from narcissistic abuse

As always, I'm sending you loads and loads of love.

Until next time.