- Welcome to Psychotherapy with Joanna Poppink -

If you suffer from an eating disorder now or have in the past, have a history of narcissistic abuse, PTSD, career blocks, or relationship stress, please email Joanna for a free telephone consultation.

 [email protected]

 

Joanna Poppink, MFT
Eating Disorder Recovery Psychotherapist
serving Arizona, California, Florida and Oregon.
All appointments are virtual.

 


Reclaim Inner Freedom
 
Reclaim Inner Freedom: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse, Addiction, and Authoritarian Systems
Emerge from a dark pit of censorship. Free your eyes, see opportunities to expand your mind, and breathe and reclaim your inner freedom.

 

 Summary:

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:

🩸 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:

🕯️ 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:

💎 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:

🕊️ 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.

🧭 Ready to Reclaim Your Inner Freedom?

If you’re ready to begin—even gently, even slowly—contact Joanna Poppink for a free consultation. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Joanna Poppink, MFT, depth psychotherapist licensed in CA, AZ, FL, OR. virtual appointments only. 

 

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