Member Article

Reclaim Inner Freedom: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse, Addiction, and Authoritarian Systems

Joanna Poppink, LMFT

Emerge from a dark pit of censorship. Free your eyes, see opportunities to expand your mind, and breathe and reclaim your inner freedom.

Momentary relief from fear, shame, or chaos can feel like safety. Blocking or numbing your awareness of reality and choice can feel like safety.

But over time, these emotional survival strategies create psychological fragmentation, leading to disconnection from soul, loss of vitality, and inner freedom.

Through depth psychotherapy and symbolic healing practices, we explore how trauma-informed recovery helps rebuild the psyche—and why to reclaim inner freedom after trauma is not just possible, but essential.

What Do Eating Disorders, Narcissistic Relationships, and Authoritarian Regimes Have in Common?

At the surface, they seem unrelated—eating disorder recovery, narcissistic abuse, and political control. But all involve surrendering your inner authority in exchange for psychological safety.

This article maps their shared structure using tools from depth psychology, trauma theory, and mythic symbolism.

“I’ll keep you safe—just give me your freedom.”

Whether it’s an abusive partner, addiction, or a controlling parent, each system manipulates a vulnerable psyche, offering false safety while fragmenting the authentic self. To reclaim inner freedom is not even in your imagination.

1. Psychological Structure: How Trauma Fragments the Self

Every authoritarian system—whether external (like a regime) or internal (like an eating disorder)—demands a split: a false self emerges to please, perform, or disappear. The authentic self retreats, and with it, your power to feel and choose. Even if you have an inkling that you have more depth than is allowed in your environment, to actually reclaim inner freedom seems, and may be, dangerous.

Survival System	Internalized Message
Narcissist	"I’ll become what you need so I’m not abandoned."
Addiction	"This ritual feels safer than my emotions."
Eating Disorder	"If I control my body, I might control my worth."

This is a trauma response, not a weakness. It’s how the psyche survives when overwhelmed by fear, shame, or neglect.

Explore more: Healing Your Hungry Heart by Joanna Poppink

2. Emotional Survival Strategies: Why Control Feels Safer Than Freedom

These systems don’t just dominate—they soothe. Temporarily.

Force Submitted To	Relief Offered
Controlling Parent	Conditional love
Authoritarian Family System	Predictable order
Addiction	False mastery and numbing
Eating Disorder	Illusion of control over self-worth

The psyche isn’t irrational—it’s protecting itself. Sometimes, controlling food or seeking a narcissist’s approval can feel safer than facing emotional abandonment.

Learn more: In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Dr. Gabor Maté 

3. Symbolic Healing and the False God Archetype

In symbolic terms, these systems function as false gods. Each promises salvation but requires submission.

System	Archetype
Dictator	Messiah, Protector
Narcissist	Mirror, Master
Eating Disorder	Priest, Punisher, Savior

Spiritual psychology and Jungian depth work reveal how these distorted archetypes colonize the soul. In trauma recovery, soul retrieval is a sacred act of reclaiming your inner authority.

Further reading:

• Addiction to Perfection – Marion Woodman
• The King Within – Robert Moore

4. Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy: Survival Through Submission

If you’ve been shaped by abuse, authoritarian control, or toxic family systems, your patterns are likely trauma-based adaptations. They’re not bad choices—they’re survival codes embedded deep in the nervous system.

“How to reclaim inner freedom after trauma?”
Start by understanding your nervous system is doing what it had to do.

Depth-oriented psychotherapy offers a path to release these patterns by rebuilding inner safety, emotional capacity, and soul-level trust.

Suggested resources:

• The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel van der Kolk
• What Happened to You? – Oprah Winfrey & Dr. Bruce Perry

5. Colonizing the Inner World: When Soul Is Suppressed

When you live under internalized oppression, it’s not just your behavior that’s affected—your imagination gets shut down.

• Under eating disorders: numbness replaces intuition.
• Under narcissistic abuse: love becomes performance.
• Under authoritarian family systems: spontaneity becomes threat.

To reclaim inner freedom, your soul, creativity, and symbolic freedom, you need space—space for art, movement, dreaming, grieving.

Explore:

• Women Who Run with the Wolves – Clarissa Pinkola Estés
• The Wisdom of Trauma – Documentary

Reclaiming the Self: Small Acts of Sovereignty

Inner freedom is not a glossy outcome—it’s a sacred unfolding.

What helps:

• Witnessing – being seen without distortion
• Symbolic expression – dreamwork, movement, journaling
• Grief and rage – mourning what was silenced
• Therapeutic alliance – a space where trust and agency return

Try:

• The Narcissist in Your Life – Julie L. Hall
• The Emerald Podcast – Joshua Schrei
• The War of Art – Steven Pressfield

Final Thought: Why Inner Freedom Is Essential

Whether you’re recovering from an eating disorder, addiction, narcissistic abuse, or authoritarian control, one truth remains:

Inner freedom is not a luxury. It’s the foundation for wholeness. To live an authentic life its essential to reclaim your inner freedom. And this is possible.

Depth psychotherapy helps you rebuild from the inside out—restoring your voice, your creativity, your power to choose.

Frequently Asked Questions

1.  What is inner freedom?
The ability to think, feel, and act from your authentic self, free from domination by fear, shame, or internalized control systems.

2.  How are eating disorders connected to authoritarian or abusive dynamics?
They often attempt to reclaim control or establish worth in environments where expression, emotion, or freedom were punished.

3.  Why do people stay in these systems?
Because they once provided safety. The exit begins with trauma-informed awareness and support.

4.  Can psychotherapy help with this?
Yes—especially when rooted in depth psychotherapy, symbolic healing, and somatic attunement.

Joanna Poppink, LMFT, psychotherapist, speaker, and author of Healing Your Hungry Heart: Recovering from Your Eating Disorder, is in private practice and specializes in Eating Disorder Recovery for adult women and with an emphasis on building a fulfilling life beyond recovery. She is licensed in California, Florida, Oregon, and Utah. All appointments are virtual. Website: EatingDisorderRecovery.net