Life After a Narcissist:
New Program March 5, 2026
A Three-Month Depth Program for Reclaiming Agency, Identity, and Creative Authority
This program is not limited to recovery from an intimate partner.
Many of those who find their way here were raised by a narcissistic parent and learned, early on, how to read a room before speaking, how to anticipate disapproval before expressing need, and how to regulate their own feelings in order to maintain proximity to love, safety, or belonging. Others have dedicated themselves to high performance within professional environments, academia, or family systems organized around charismatic but emotionally distorting authority, where productivity was praised but perception was quietly undermined.
You may have worked under a leader who rewarded loyalty while dismissing dissent, excelled in academic cultures that privileged intellect over embodied knowing, or moved within family or social systems where the appearance of harmony was maintained through subtle silencing. You may have learned to succeed in environments where emotional self-erasure was mistaken for maturity, adaptability, or professionalism.
Over time, these conditions shape not only how we relate to others, but how we relate to ourselves.
And because the nervous system seeks familiarity in order to predict safety, those raised within narcissistic dynamics often find themselves repeating similar relational patterns in adulthood, including intimate partnerships, not out of weakness, but in an unconscious attempt to finally resolve what could not be addressed earlier.
Gaslighting.
Walking on eggshells.
Emotional withdrawal.
Intermittent approval.
The slow erosion of your self-trust.
And yet, even after the relationship or environment ends, many high-functioning, intelligent, deeply creative individuals find themselves still living within its architecture. You are no longer being criticized, but you hesitate before you speak. No one is actively diminishing your needs, but you continue to minimize them. You are free to move forward, yet something in you reflexively scans the room for permission.
Life after narcissistic entanglement is rarely defined by a dramatic exit alone. It is defined by what happens next.
Because the truth is that narcissistic environments do not only train you to tolerate distortion from others. They train you to distort your own perceptions in order to survive. Over time, self-silencing becomes self-protection, compliance becomes connection, and self-abandonment becomes mistaken for maturity.
And we do not recover in a vacuum.
We are living in a time in which narcissistic forms of power have moved beyond personal relationships and into the very systems we once trusted to reflect and protect our voice. Institutions, workplaces, families, and cultural narratives increasingly deny lived experience, minimize expression, and subtly reframe fear, doubt, and isolation as reasonable forms of protection. It becomes easier to withdraw than to risk being misunderstood. It feels safer to remain small than to invite scrutiny. In this atmosphere, vigilance can masquerade as wisdom, and emotional numbness can be mistaken for resilience.
Many of my clients arrive at midlife with an emerging, embodied life that wants to be lived at full volume, while simultaneously believing they must compress that life into old patterns of politeness, responsibility, and emotional manageability. They stop themselves before anyone else can. They edit their joy before it inconveniences someone. They pre-emptively gaslight their own knowing in order to maintain belonging.
Which is why healing cannot remain an entirely private act.
We require each other in community to mirror our pain without distortion, to validate our awareness without minimization, and to support the gradual rebuilding of intuitive trust that narcissistic environments, both personal and systemic, have trained us to doubt.
This program begins with a simple but confronting truth:
You may no longer be in the relationship, but the relationship may still be in you.
Over the course of three months, we will explore the psychological and somatic imprints left by narcissistic attachment, including:
• chronic self-doubt and second-guessing
• anxiety linked to visibility, success, or creative expression
• the compulsion to over-explain, justify, or apologize
• difficulty identifying desire without guilt
• a nervous system conditioned for hyper-vigilance or emotional numbing
• internalized criticism that now speaks in your own voice
A primary function of this program is to help you identify the ongoing process of self-gaslighting in real time, and to develop the capacity to pivot out of reflexive self-doubt into intuitive trust and guiltless choice-making. You will learn how to recognize when your nervous system is confusing past relational threat with present-day visibility, desire, or expansion, and how this confusion leads to unnecessary hesitation, apology, or withdrawal from the very opportunities that reflect your growth.
Through Jungian-informed Active Imagination, somatic regulation practices, and guided writing designed to restore personal literacy, this course supports you in recognizing where the old relationship still organizes your perception, your creativity, your earning capacity, and your future planning.
Our work is not to revisit the past for explanation alone, but to interrupt the inherited reflex of self-erasure that persists long after the overt control has ended.
You will learn to:
• identify internalized gaslighting as it occurs
• differentiate intuition from trauma-based threat perception
• pivot from guilt into grounded decision-making
• reclaim creative authority without the need for approval
• re-establish access to anger, grief, and self-protection
• restore a sense of authorship over your decisions
• expand beyond survival-based identity into self-directed life design
Recovery from narcissistic entanglement is often framed as an individual achievement, a private disentangling of memory, belief, and self-concept. But one of the most enduring consequences of these environments is relational isolation, the quiet but persistent conviction that your perceptions are unreliable, your needs excessive, or your desires destabilizing to others.
In the absence of accurate reflection, intuitive knowing collapses into hesitation. Decisions become negotiations with imagined disapproval. Guilt replaces clarity. You begin to monitor your own expansion before anyone else has the opportunity to object.
Which is why this work unfolds in community.
Within a psychologically informed and carefully held group environment, you will have the opportunity to test perception against presence, to speak desire without immediate correction, and to recognize how often your internalized doubt anticipates rejection that does not, in fact, arrive. As your experience is mirrored without distortion or minimization, intuitive signals that were once dismissed as unsafe or selfish can gradually be recognized as reliable forms of guidance.
Over time, the nervous system learns that visibility is not synonymous with threat, that disagreement does not require self-erasure, and that choosing in your own favor need not produce relational collapse.
The restoration of intuitive authority rarely occurs in isolation. It is strengthened through accurate witnessing, through shared language, and through the lived experience of making choices that no longer require guilt as their justification.
You do not need to become less sensitive in order to feel safe.
You need environments in which your sensitivity is not used against you.
You have already done the work of understanding.
You have traced the pattern, named the distortion, and survived the silence.
Now we are complete with this way of relating to yourself.
The next movement is not deeper explanation, but expansion. Trusting what you feel. Choosing what brings you alive. Letting clarity replace guilt. Allowing joy to exist without justification.
From this place, we begin again.
Not by repairing the past, but by creating a new body of work rooted in intuition.
The Basics:
Three-month program. Begins Thursday, March 5th, and continues to May 28, 2026.
Live Zoom Classes every Thursday, 6:00 PM PST. Ninety-Minutes. Calls are NOT recorded. Weekly materials and at-home assignments emailed prior to live classes.
Exercises, discussions, personal literacy material gathered from current practices of somatic self-regulation, Jungian psychology, feminist theory, place-based eco psychology, with works from Dr. Gabor Mate’, Marion Woodman, Victor Frankl, Maria von Franz and other specialists in narcissistic personality disorder. NOTE: this is not a class on how to deal with a narcissist. This class pivots you toward self-knowledge, updating systems of self-worth, making new choices, and completing behaviors that previously situated the narcissist into your private world.
Tuition: $90 per month/$270 for three-month program. Due with registration.
Email for application: brenda@brendalittleton.com
For Creatives and Professionals Over 50
A Seasonal Invitation: Jungian Coaching for Creatives, Leaders, and Those at a Threshold
From December 15, 2025 through January 10, 2026, I offer an introductory two-session Jungian Coaching package for the price of one.
This is designed as a gentle, but meaningful entry point, a way to experience the work rather than evaluate it from a distance.
All sessions are held via Zoom.
People rarely come to me because something is “wrong.”
They come because something inside them knows it is time.
Time to stop circling the same internal arguments.
Time to move beyond anxiety that no longer serves them.
Time to outgrow old identities that once kept them safe but now keep them small.
Most of my clients are thoughtful, capable, and accomplished. They are professionals, creatives, therapists, educators, physicians, writers, and leaders. On the outside, their lives work. On the inside, something feels stalled, fragmented, or quietly exhausted.
They often say things like:
“I know I’m meant for more, but I can’t seem to access it.”
“I’m successful, but I don’t feel free.”
“I keep hitting an invisible ceiling.”
“I’m tired of managing anxiety instead of listening to it.”
What they are sensing is not a lack of motivation or discipline.
It is an invitation to complete an earlier chapter of the psyche.
What I Do
My work sits at the intersection of depth psychology, nervous system regulation, creative process, and post-therapy integration.
I am trained as a therapist, a Jungian depth psychologist, and a graduate-level educator. I also work as a coach for creatives and professionals who want change that is lasting, embodied, and meaningful.
Together, we explore:
• The unconscious patterns formed in early life that still shape present choices
• Anxiety, fear, and imposter syndrome as intelligent signals rather than flaws
• Dreams, images, and personal mythology as guides rather than curiosities
• The body as a keeper of unfinished emotional stories
• How abandoned parts of the self quietly run the show until they are welcomed back
This is not about fixing you.
It is about expanding your capacity to be with yourself.
When people learn how to sit with what once felt unbearable, enormous energy is released. That energy often becomes creativity, clarity, leadership, intimacy, and courage.
Why This Work Creates Real Change
From a neuroscience perspective, we work directly with nervous system regulation, helping your body learn that it is safe to feel, to pause, and to choose differently.
From a Jungian perspective, we bring unconscious material into awareness so it no longer controls your life from the shadows.
From a practical perspective, this work shows up as:
• Clearer decision-making
• Reduced anxiety and internal friction
• Increased creative output and confidence
• More authentic relationships
• A renewed sense of direction and meaning
This year alone, clients have:
• Written and published books
• Completed film scripts
• Transitioned from therapy into thriving coaching practices
• Created wellness programs and courses within medical and educational settings
• Built businesses after divorce or major life transitions
• Designed meaningful second careers after retirement
These outcomes did not come from forcing change.
They came from listening deeply and acting from alignment.
How I Work With You
Sessions are spacious, focused, and deeply respectful of your intelligence.
Think of this as a hybrid of:
• a graduate seminar
• a reflective studio
• a nervous-system-informed therapy space
• and a creative laboratory for the soul
I bring structure when needed, curiosity always, and language that helps you name what you already sense but may not yet be able to articulate.
As Jung wrote, true healing comes from making the unconscious conscious. I teach you how to do this in ways that are grounded, humane, and immediately applicable to your life and work.
For Creatives and Professionals Over 50
Jungian Coaching and Mentoring
This work is especially well-suited for creatives and professionals over fifty who find themselves at a meaningful threshold. You may be entering a second or third chapter of life, one that asks for authorship rather than performance, meaning rather than approval. Many of my clients at this stage are writers, artists, educators, therapists, physicians, and seasoned professionals who feel a renewed longing to create, contribute, or lead from a deeper place. Anxiety, imposter syndrome, or old habits of self-censorship often resurface here, not as problems to eliminate, but as signals that the psyche is ready for a new arrangement. Together, we work at the level of nervous system regulation, unconscious patterning, and creative integration so that wisdom, experience, and desire can come into alignment. This is not about becoming someone new, but about finally becoming more fully yourself.
I am a depth psychologist, and I am also a writer and an artist. I know the terrain of psychic and emotional intensity that creative life can bring, the careful balance between staying sane and staying open to the sensuous intelligence of the soul. I understand that creative work does not arrive on command. It chooses its moment, and it chooses us, asking not for control, but for presence and stewardship.
Brenda Littleton is a Jungian therapist‑turned‑coach, retired professor of graduate studies, and multidisciplinary artist‑writer who teaches Active Imagination and Certified Somatic Trauma Recovery. Her signature coaching programs blend depth psychology with creative practice to guide C‑suite entrepreneurs, educators, mental health professionals, thought leaders, and fellow creatives toward soul‑centered leadership and sustainable success.
High-functioning doesn't have to mean high-anxiety.
Less force, more flow and lasting success.
I’m a coach for high-functioning creatives who want to move past anxiety, perfectionism, and self-doubt to succeed with less force and more flow. Drawing on experience in business development, entertainment licensing, graduate teaching, therapy, and Jungian coaching, I help creatives, executives, and outliers achieve lasting results without burnout. Creative success doesn’t come just from pushing harder, but from converting limits into clarity, safety, and insight. When anxiety and procrastination are understood as messages, not enemies, they become fuel for clarity, creativity, and authentic success.
Let’s connect if you’re ready to succeed with less force, more flow, and lasting success.
Life After Fifty: Being Nice Was Never the Assignment
This is for you if you’ve hit a certain age and nothing makes sense the way it used to. Your second marriage looks suspiciously like the one your parents had, and you swore you’d never repeat that story. Your profession feels more like a grind than a gift.
The stress outweighs the return.
A FOUR MONTH PROGRAM:
One client said,
“I grew more in three sessions with you than I did an entire year in traditional therapy.”
If that feels familiar, welcome. You're not too late. You're right on time.
This is your invitation to shed the outdated agreements.
To reclaim your boldness. Your worth. Your weird. Your wisdom.
Because being nice was never the assignment.
Being you was.
Write the Way You Want to Live
This is not a program on how to write. This is an invitation to write the way you want to live: deeply personal, authentic, empowered and free!
Writing rearranges you. It makes things more vivid, more raw, more real.
And that’s exactly the point.
“Tell the truth. Write as if your life depends on it. It does.” -- Natalie Goldberg
This is for those who are ready to find out what their truth is and how to write it.
In the process, you won’t just become a writer, you will write the way you want to live.
If this is you, contact me for more information!
Writing is Therapy: The Ultimate Shadow Work & Transformation
"I can tell how you live your life by how you write."
Before the beauty, there is the mess. Before the clarity, there is the chaos. And before the truth emerges, there is the silence you sit in, waiting, staring, wondering if what lives inside you has any place on the page.
Writing brings all of it to the surface.
The monkey mind. The inner critic. The shame. The belief that everyone else has permission except you. That what you say will never come out right. That the blank page is proof you have nothing worth saying.
And still, you want to write.
You want to slow your thoughts into sentences. You want to stay with a feeling long enough to know what it means. You want to reclaim the parts of yourself that were shamed for speaking out or laughed at for being too much. You want to write through what you’ve spent years avoiding. And you want that writing to mean something — to someone, but mostly to you.
This desire is not a whim. It’s a signal.
It’s the voice of your soul, the same one that has quietly observed your disappointments, your longings, your untold stories, and still believes there is something worth exploring. Worth saying. Worth saving.
As Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way, “Creativity is an act of faith. It assumes that there is a self that wants to be born.” The practice of writing, especially the daily ritual of Morning Pages, becomes a way to meet that self again and again, layer by layer, day by day.
But the first thing you meet on the page is rarely beauty. It’s resistance.
It shows up as procrastination, judgment, comparison. It tells you you’re too late, too unoriginal, too self-indulgent. It sounds like every voice that ever told you to be quiet. Every teacher who corrected your expression instead of celebrating your voice. Every adult who said you were too sensitive, too dramatic, too much.
Writing, real writing, is how we confront all of that.
It’s not an escape from the self. It’s a returning.
As Natalie Goldberg reminds us, “Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.” Her approach to writing — raw, intimate, grounded in the body — invites us to stay honest with the discomfort. To use writing as a tool for both revelation and transformation.
Because if you stay with it, if you keep showing up to the page, something starts to shift. Writing worms its way in. It breaks through performance and taps the nerve of something real. A sentence catches you off guard. A memory returns without warning. You tell the truth without planning to. That truth leads to another, and another.
In that unfolding, you begin to recognize something: a voice. Not the voice you were taught to use for approval, but the one that has been buried under years of adaptation, survival, and self-editing. You begin to write like your life depends on it. Because, in many ways, it does.
“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control,” Julia Cameron says. And this surrender is the beginning of shadow work.
Shadow work doesn’t always announce itself as grand catharsis. Often, it slips in as a quiet moment of self-awareness. A sudden sting of memory. A realization that you’ve been living someone else’s expectations. When you write with honesty, not for perfection but for truth, you start to meet these parts of yourself. You begin to remember.
You write to remember what you loved as a child before the world told you it was silly. You write to understand why you stay quiet when you want to scream. You write to explore the grief you’ve carried, the rage you’ve buried, the joy you never allowed yourself to fully feel. And in doing so, you rewrite the story.
Natalie Goldberg’s advice, “Go for the jugular,” is not about drama. It’s about precision. About finding the pulse of what matters and daring to stay there.
Writing is how we metabolize what we haven’t yet been able to say out loud. It is how we integrate the exiled parts of the psyche: the orphaned child, the angry teenager, the grieving adult. We bring them home through the act of telling. Each time we do, the self expands. The shame shrinks. The voice strengthens.
This isn’t about discovering some grand, finished truth. It’s about the ongoing unveiling of what has always been waiting. The writing changes you. And as you change, the writing deepens. You begin to recognize your own voice. You start to trust it. Not because you’ve mastered craft, but because you’ve stopped trying to prove yourself.
A closed loop begins to form. A sacred cycle. Clarity brings more honesty. Honesty brings better writing. Better writing brings you home to yourself.
Stephen King once said, “Writing is not life, but I think that sometimes it can be a way back to life.” For those who have gone numb, who have lost themselves in caregiving, in performance, in obligation, writing can be a lifeline.
It can return you to the center of your own existence.
Not in a narcissistic way, but in a soulful way. You begin to remember that your story matters. That your way of seeing is worth recording. That there is something sacred in the ordinary. You see with new eyes, your own.
As you keep going, you’ll learn how to stay present with discomfort. How to be gentle as you survey new territory. How to sit with incomplete thoughts, fragments of memory, the sting of old criticism, and the slow emergence of something new.
You’ll meet the parts of yourself that were once silenced, shamed, or ignored, and invite them back into the story. You’ll begin to notice where you’ve been performing your life, and where you’re ready to inhabit it with truth.
This can be disorienting.
You may feel the tension of transition. The ache of becoming. But inside that ache, something rare emerges: devotion. Not to writing for recognition, or for output, or for applause, but writing because something in you has finally remembered what it means to be alive.
Henry Miller understood this when he wrote, “The function of the writer is to reveal the truth about the human condition, not to escape it.” Writing does not lift you out of life. It roots you deeper into it. Into the questions. The contradictions. The body. The moment.
And that’s where transformation lives.
Not in clarity alone, but in the willingness to keep returning to the unknown. To say what hasn’t yet been said. To meet yourself in real time, flawed, open, and unfinished.
Over time, you stop writing to be seen and start writing to see.
To see what you think, what you feel, what you need. To see where the past still echoes and where the future wants to unfold. To see the truth of what it means to be you, right now, with everything you carry and everything you hope to become.
You may write through grief. Through longing. Through doubt and rage and joy. And you may find that you are not alone in any of it. That by writing your truth, you’ve tapped into something shared. And that shared recognition, even if it’s only between you and the page, is medicine.
The more you write, the clearer you become. And the clearer you become, the deeper your writing goes. It’s a cycle that changes everything.
And while you may begin this journey to heal, you’ll end up creating something far more lasting: a life anchored in awareness. A practice of radical honesty. A relationship with yourself that no one can take away.
This is not just therapy.
This is art.
This is soul work.
This is how you come home.
Somatic-Based Active Imagination
July 2025 is the last month for Three-Session @ Discount Fees
July is the last month I'm offering a deep discount, three-session package.
Somatic Active Imagination: A Jungian Coaching Journey Back to the Body.
“Heal the freeze, free the dream.”
This is not just therapeutic coaching. It’s coming back home.
(Continued Below)…
Slow down. Listen. Learn to trust again.
This work is grounded in the understanding that your body remembers—the truths you had to forget, the instincts you were taught to ignore, the sorrow that never had words. Symptoms, stuckness, and anxiety aren’t flaws. They are signals. And when we learn to listen, what was once confusing becomes coherent.
In this course, we slow down. We listen. We learn to trust again.
“You’ve done the healing work. But something still lingers waiting for your attention.”
You’ve read the books, tried the mindset shifts, meditated, manifested, maybe even burned some sage.
And still—
The same money fears circle back.
The same relationship patterns repeat.
The same creative project gathers dust.
Not because you’re doing it wrong.
But because something older is still running the show.
I help people work at the level beneath talk therapy, affirmations, or action plans.
We meet the pattern at its root—through the body, the imagination, and the unconscious.
The bigger the block, the deeper the release.
How It Works:
You’ll begin with a 3-session package, introduction into Somatic Active Imagination. This is a chance to explore the work at half the normal fee, with no long-term commitment required. Perfect for those new to this process or returning after time away.
In these sessions, you’ll learn how to:
• Dialogue with your body through Jungian active imagination
• Calm the nervous system so that insight doesn't overwhelm, but integrates
• Transform freeze states into embodied clarity and forward movement
This isn’t about “fixing” yourself. It’s about coming home to the Self that has been waiting.
This is Jungian-somatic work for people ready to stop circling the same terrain.
If you’re ready to meet what’s really behind the fear, fatigue, or freeze—and let it transform you—
I can help.
For over thirty years, I've helped people through frustration, unresolved emotion, and overwhelm, first as a university professor in graduate studies, then as a Jungian therapist working with creatives and executives, and now as a Jungian coach helping clients uncover the deeper intelligence behind and under their unknown Self, their dreams, their longings.
This isn’t mindset coaching.
It’s embodied soul work.
And it works—because it meets you where words end, and wisdom begins.
If you are ready for the next phase of your creative, joyous and available life, then let's start with a short program where you can feel the change, and learn somatic active imagination.
Send me a private message or email at brenda@brendalittleton.com.
March 24 - April 2, 2025
Brenda Littleton is a guest speaker at the upcoming Radiant Mastery Summit:
Divine Guidance for Women Entrepreneurs
How to Initiate, Recognize, and Follow Your Intuition in Business and Life
Starts at 12 a.m. MST/Arizona/USA
Pre-recorded video interviews, 2 interviews per 24-hour period
10 days = 19 interviews + Irina's Miracle Story
Watch at your convenience. Free Access!
Exclusive coaching from a depth psychological perspective.
In these times, we need to return to our core for guidance, solace and clarity, a place where the world can finds its way back to you. As we choose to be conscious of what we want to change in the outer world, we also need to be conscious of what we want to change in our inner self, as well. When we ignore and dismiss a personal dream, a creative desire, a family vision, a community project, a business goal, a spiritual inquiry, an environmental rescue, we choose to silence our soul. We’ve had enough of silenced souls.
"If you listen, you will hear the work calling you; if you act, you will see your soul in action.”
— Brenda Littleton
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"So long as we are not in contact with our own potential, we are vulnerable to being controlled by others.
If we do not know ourselves, we cannot stand to our own truth and are, therefore, in constant danger of invasion by others."
-- Marion Woodman
