Alexa Sasha: Healing After Narcissistic Abuse, Past Talk Therapy

Physical injuries are visible and the body has a process for them. Emotional abuse has neither, which is why Alexa Sasha says it can be so much harder to address. You may not know which parts of your life it reached: your self-esteem, your finances, your ability to trust your own read on a person.

Alexa Sasha is a results coach and narcissistic abuse healer based in Brooklyn, and the founder of Your Higher Self Actualized. She draws a distinction between life coaching and results coaching, which she describes as goal getting rather than goal setting. She began her career teaching high school special education in Brooklyn after studying psychology in college, and that training shows in how she teaches: concepts broken down, made visual, and tied to what a person can actually do next. She also runs a weekly creative writing circle called From Ink to Evolution.

In this episode, Alexa explains overt and covert patterns and why the covert version is harder to name: entitlement covered by pity, and behavior calibrated to whoever will tolerate it. She and Lisa work through the childhood-trauma explanation that so many people are handed about their ex, and why an explanation is not an assignment. Most people had something happen to them, and most people do not do this.

The second half is about getting out of the loop when going no contact is not available to you, which is the situation for anyone sharing children or caring for a parent. Alexa argues that support has to be layered: someone who understands this specific experience rather than teaching from a textbook, nervous system work like breathwork, yoga, and trauma release exercises, and a creative outlet. She says talking through the layers without ever being asked where your power is can send you further down, which is what happened to her. Lisa describes the mosaics she made on her porch at the end of her marriage, and the seed bombs that recently scattered across her yard.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• A plain definition of narcissistic abuse, and why the damage is so hard to locate
• Overt and covert patterns, and why someone can be one way with you and another with everyone else
• The childhood-trauma explanation for an ex's behavior, and where your responsibility ends
• Why criticism lands so hard on someone with no established self-esteem
• The signals people miss: waking up exhausted, ruminating, the conversation that gets flipped on you
• How to reduce the drain when going no contact isn't possible
• Why support has to reach your body, not only your talking
• Creativity and play as a path back, and what talk therapy alone can miss

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 Results coaching, and Alexa's path from the classroom
4:00 What narcissistic abuse is, and why it's harder to see than bruises
6:00 The colleague who told her his diagnosis
8:00 Overt and covert patterns, and who gets to see which
10:00 The trauma explanation, and where your responsibility ends
12:00 The signals: exhaustion, rumination, and the flip
16:00 When going no contact isn't an option
17:00 Layered support: the right helper, and nervous system work
19:00 Creativity as the way back, and Lisa's porch
22:00 From Ink to Evolution, play, and your highest self

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183
🔗 Alexa Sasha Marshall on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexa-sasha369/

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.