by Lara Just, January 2026.

Reclaiming Your Somatic Truth in a Sea of Confusion: In today’s fast-paced world, many of us are conditioned to prioritise performance over presence. We often override our inner signals just to keep the peace. But when this becomes a pattern—especially around people carrying narcissistic wounds—we risk losing touch with our own truth. This post explores how narcissistic dynamics distort reality, how your body signals boundary violations before your mind even notices, and how you can reclaim a grounded, embodied sense of self.

What Is Narcissistic Wounding?

While confidence and self-love are positive qualities, narcissism, however, reflects emotional wounds and a reliance on others for validation. It involves patterns of control, projection, and emotional manipulation rooted in deep unmet emotional needs. Often it can come from childhood experiences of neglect, enmeshment, or conditional love. This creates a fragile self-image held together not by authenticity, but by control, validation, and projection.

People carrying these wounds often treat others not as individuals but as extensions of themselves—tools to soothe their inner turmoil. You might experience sudden shifts from being idealised one moment to devalued the next. Love feels transactional, empathy feels performative, and control can turn to manipulation.

How Boundary Confusion Happens

Healthy boundaries require a strong, stable sense of self. When that’s missing—either due to narcissistic traits or chronic people-pleasing—roles blur and responsibilities get misplaced. The emotional atmosphere becomes heavy with unspoken contracts and obligations.

Signs you might be experiencing boundary confusion include:

• Feeling guilty simply for saying “no”
• Taking on others’ feelings or responsibilities that aren’t yours
• Feeling drained or exhausted after interactions that should feel supportive
• A nervous system that feels tense or “on edge” for no clear reason

These aren’t weaknesses—they’re your body’s early warning system sounding an alarm.

The Drama Triangle: Understanding the Energetic Loop

Psychologist Stephen Karpman identified the Drama Triangle (see also my previous blog: From Rescue to Clarity: What the Drama Triangle Taught Me About Boundaries), a repeating cycle of three roles that often appear in dysfunctional relationships: Victim, Rescuer, and Persecutor.

• The Victim feels powerless and seeks rescue.
• The Rescuer over-helps or fixes others.
• The Persecutor blames or shames to regain control.

In narcissistic dynamics, people cycle through these roles rapidly, keeping you caught in emotional triangulation. One moment, you’re expected to rescue; the next, you’re blamed. This cycle traps you in proving yourself, placating, or performing—never resting in your true self.

Gaslighting: When Your Reality Is Questioned

Gaslighting is one of the most damaging tactics in narcissistic relationships. It involves repeated invalidation of your experience and feelings, leaving you doubting your own reality.

Common gaslighting phrases might be:

• “You’re too sensitive.”
• “That never happened.”
• “You always make it about yourself.”
• “You agreed to this, remember?”

This pattern erodes your self-trust. You start overriding your intuition, doubting your feelings, and apologising for things you didn’t do. Gaslighting isn’t just psychological—it’s somatic. Your body carries tension, anxiety, and fatigue as it struggles to make sense of conflicting messages.

Listening to Your Body’s Signals

Your nervous system often senses danger before your conscious mind does.

• Flow feels expansive: open chest, deep breath, spacious time.
• Force feels contractive: clenched stomach, shallow breath, urge to flee or freeze.

If you experience an inner flinch, dread before a message, or a pull to justify yourself again—pause. Your body is signalling a boundary violation that deserves recognition.

Reclaiming Your Somatic Clarity: Steps to Inner Authority

Breaking free from these exhausting cycles means reconnecting with your inner compass, starting with your body.

Try this:

1. Pause and Ground: Sit or stand with your feet firmly on the ground. Breathe deeply. Place a hand on your chest or belly.
2. Name Without Blame: What emotion are you feeling? “Tension,” “resentment,” “confusion.” Naming it brings clarity.
3. Ask: Whose Need Is This? Are you responsible for fixing this, or is someone else projecting their pain onto you?
4. Listen for the ‘No’: If your body could speak freely, what would it say?
5. Respond with Neutral Clarity: Say things like, “That doesn’t work for me,” or “Let me get back to you.” No need to justify.

This isn’t about controlling others—it’s about liberating yourself from unhealthy energetic entanglements.

Flow Is Not Passive — It’s Powerfully Aligned

Living in flow means living from your core, not fear.

• Flow honours choice over compliance
• Flow respects your energy over obligation
• Flow follows your truth over performance

When you stop trying to manage others’ reactions and start tending to your own truth, relationships either recalibrate—or reveal themselves as unbalanced. (See also one of my blogs: Flow vs. Force – The Test I Passed).

From Fog to Freedom: A Closing Reflection

If you feel stuck in cycles of over-giving, guilt, or confusion, remember this: your body is not betraying you. It is guiding you back home.

You don’t need permission to step out of toxic patterns. You don’t need to convince someone who refuses to see you. Trust the quiet “no” in your chest, the easier breath when you step back, and the clarity that emerges when you rest.

The fog will lift. Your truth will return. Let it flow like an ocean tide within you—clear, rhythmic, sovereign.

Journaling Prompt (Optional)

Take a quiet moment today to check in with your body.

• Is there a dynamic, role, or “yes” that feels off or heavy?
• Where might your energy be asking to be reclaimed?

Let your pen follow your breath. You don’t need to solve—just listen.

by Lara Just, December 2025.

In this blog, I explore how well-meaning acts of kindness can sometimes spiral into overwhelming emotional dynamics, blurring boundaries and creating hidden pressures. Using a recent personal experience of house-sitting gone awry, I unpack the subtle shifts that can trap us in the Victim-Rescuer-Perpetrator triangle — a common pattern in transactional analysis. I share insights on recognizing these patterns, maintaining clarity, and honoring your body’s truth amid confusion and shifting roles.

When a Simple Favour Quickly Becomes a Maze of Expectations

Earlier in the year, I found myself in a situation that tested the edges of my emotional clarity and personal boundaries. It began with a seemingly simple house-sitting favour — caring for a pet and plants in a countryside home — but within 48 to 72 hours, it quietly morphed into an obligation marathon. Despite a resulting agreement to step back, I felt roped back in the very next day amid urgent back-and-forth messages, all while juggling full, back-to-back workdays.

A clear, time-bound agreement shifted as unspoken expectations accumulated and responsibilities expanded. Subtle comments and emotional undercurrents cast doubt on my perceptions and boundaries, turning goodwill into confusion, resentment, and pressure. This tangle of shifting roles and hidden demands left me drained and questioning my own instincts. It wasn’t until I stepped back and viewed the experience through the lens of the Drama Triangle that everything clicked into place.

What Is the Drama Triangle? 

The Drama Triangle is a psychological and relational model developed by Stephen Karpman, a student of Eric Berne, the founder of Transactional Analysis. It identifies three habitual roles that people unconsciously adopt in emotionally charged dynamics: the Victim, the Rescuer, and the Persecutor.

These roles aren’t fixed, and individuals often shift between them in the course of a single interaction or relationship.

• Victim: Feels oppressed, helpless, hopeless. Seeks saviors or blames others for their circumstances.
• Rescuer: Feels needed, compelled to help or save the Victim, often without being asked or in ways that aren’t sustainable.
• Persecutor: Blames, criticizes, or controls. Can appear rigid or aggressive, often as a reaction to the other roles.

This triangle perpetuates drama, confusion, and codependency—and can be incredibly hard to spot when you’re in it.

Mapping the Dynamic 

In my situation, the initial invitation came with the tone of a Victim seeking help: overwhelmed, unsupported, needing a break, others have let them down last minute. I was suggested and asked by someone I know, and I responded with empathy and care, naturally stepping into the role (Rescuer). I rearranged my busy work life to be helpful, overextending without clear boundaries.

But when I started to express my limits—saying no to last-minute changes or not responding immediately—I was subtly shifted into the Persecutor role. Suddenly, my healthy boundaries were interpreted as not understanding, making a big deal out of it, even misinterpreting, possibly coldness. I felt confused, guilty, suddenly obligated and emotionally off-center.

What made it even more complex was how fast the roles shifted. One moment I was appreciated, the next I was perceived as letting someone down. The emotional ping-pong of this dynamic left me exhausted.

The Turning Point 

The breakthrough came when I tuned into my body. My stomach, and particularly solar plexus area, felt tight. My focus was disrupted. My sleep was restless. I would carefully craft and revise my responses — not only to be understood as I intended, but also to set boundaries as clearly as possible, hoping to prevent any further misunderstandings, assumptions, or expansions of responsibility that weren’t agreed upon. These were all signals that I was trapped in a role that wasn’t mine to hold.

I paused. I reassessed. I realised I had been hooked into a familiar loop: trying to earn peace by over-accommodating. The clarity came not from logic alone but from reclaiming a deeper sense of knowing—my somatic truth.

How to Step Out of the Triangle 

Escaping the Drama Triangle doesn’t mean blaming others. It means choosing to relate from a different place.

• Awareness: Notice when you’ve stepped into a role.
• Pause and Reflect: What’s driving your reaction? Obligation? Guilt? Fear?
• Reclaim Boundaries: Speak from an adult-to-adult stance. Use clear, kind, non-defensive language.
• Let Go of the Outcome: Others may still try to reassign you a role. Stay grounded in your truth.

In my case, I gently yet firmly stepped away from the arrangement. I didn’t over-explain. I didn’t rescue. I didn’t retaliate. I simply honoured what I knew to be right (for me).

Lessons for Life and Therapy 

For those of us in caregiving roles—therapists, coaches, friends, empaths—it’s easy to fall into the Rescuer trap. We’re trained to hold space, to support, to soothe. But when that care morphs into self-sacrifice or confusion, it’s time to check the triangle.

For clients, understanding these roles can bring enormous relief. It gives language to those gut feelings of imbalance, guilt, or pressure. It helps them reclaim agency.

Closing Reflection
What happened with this home-sit situation wasn’t just about logistics—it was a mirror. A reminder. An invitation to grow. And most importantly, a chance to model, for myself and for others, what it looks like to step out of emotional entanglement and into grounded clarity.

We don’t have to play roles to be loved. We don’t have to rescue, collapse, or defend to stay safe. There is another way—and it begins with honoring what feels true and aligned in our own bodies.

This isn’t about the truth in a universal or confrontational sense. It’s about your truth—the kind that comes from deep listening to your nervous system, your values, and your lived experience. The kind that doesn’t need to be justified or debated. Just felt. Trusted. And followed.