Stop Explaining to Those Who are Not ‘Listening’​.

Maria Anna van Driel
2 min readMar 18, 2023

--

You know what I personally find worse than dealing with PTSD, the emotional flashbacks, and the triggers that are spawning from the mental and sexual abuse caused by a person with a narcissistic personality disorder? The embarrassment of being aware that my cognitive intelligence (the mental ability and understanding developed through thoughts, experience, and senses) operates at such a low frequency that, compared to me, a Neanderthal appears to be more intelligent at this point.

Expressing these personal thoughts and emotions recently to someone I received the response “Don’t look back…you have to enjoy and move on with your life.”

“Thank you for trying but, that’s not what I am saying. That’s not what I trying to explain here. I telling you that I feel as if the Earth’s surface is slowly slipping away underneath my feet. Don’t you get it?! I am standing on quicksand!”

The moral of this story, don’t rush people into a healing process when they are not ready. And, don’t yell empty words from a distance just for you to get ride of the difficult moments when someone is reaching out to you.

Instead, ask them how they see themselves at this moment or say “I understand that you are struggling to balance the terrifying chaos that is happening in your mind and life at the moment. Tell me, what thought and/or emotion is nagging you the most at the moment?”

Questions and comments as such invites people to speak about their thoughts, emotions, dreams…their struggle. It provides them, over time, the opportunity to balance their thoughts and emotions at their own pace.

--

--

Maria Anna van Driel

In 2020 I realized I was trapped in a toxic relationship since '00. In Aug. '22 I found the strength to break away, flip my life to become a psychotherapist.