Finally, a Language for What They Survived
- Aug 13
- 6 min read
Christopher Sanchez-Lascurain is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, somatic therapist, and founder of Healthemindset, specializing in nervous system healing, ancestral wisdom, and trauma recovery for empaths, HSPs, and BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities.
I sat down to watch Narcissist’s Playbook expecting to take clinical notes. I've spent years working with survivors of narcissistic abuse, and I wanted a resource I could point clients toward, something that would help them feel less alone in an experience that so often gets minimized or misunderstood.
What I didn't expect was for the film to reach past my clinical training and land somewhere much older in me. About halfway through, I realized I wasn't just watching this as a therapist anymore. I was watching it as someone who has also loved a narcissist and who spent a long time not having the words for what that actually was.
I'm not going to walk you through the film's story here. Part of what makes it so powerful is experiencing it without knowing what's coming, the same way so many of us lived the real thing without knowing what was coming. I will say this much: it is not what I expected, and it left me sitting in silence for a while after it ended. I'd encourage you to give yourself that same space when you watch it.
What I will talk about is why a film like this matters so much, both for the clients I sit with every week and for the parts of my own story I've done my own healing around.
The thing survivors say most often
In session, one sentence comes up more than almost any other: “Something happened to me, and I don't have the words for it.” People know something was wrong. They can feel it in their body long before they can name it in their mind.
It starts one way and ends somewhere completely different. Something that felt like being chosen slowly turns into isolation, then dependency, until you become a version of yourself you don't recognize, second-guessing things you used to know for certain. Most people can't see the shape of that until it's already over.
Without language, healing has a hard ceiling, because you end up trying to make sense of something using tools that were never built to hold it.
This film gives people that language, not clinical jargon recited at them, but their own experience reflected back, spoken by people who lived it and people who study it, in a way that says clearly: this was real, this had a pattern, and you were not imagining it.
That validation is not a small thing. For a lot of survivors, it is the first domino that has to fall before any other healing can begin.
This shows up far beyond relationships
One of the things that struck me most about the film is how far it widens the lens. Most of us think of narcissistic abuse as something that happens in a marriage or a relationship, one person, one story. But the same pattern of love bombing, isolation, and the slow erosion of your own reality shows up in workplaces, in schools, in religious communities, and in entire systems of government. The scale changes. The pattern doesn't.
I think about how many of my clients have described a boss who charmed them in the interview and then slowly chipped away at their confidence once they were dependent on the paycheck. Or a religious leader who demanded total loyalty and painted anyone who questioned him as the problem. It's the same architecture, just wearing a different uniform. Naming that mattered to me, because it means the survivors sitting across from me aren't only healing from one relationship. Sometimes they're healing from an entire structure that was built to keep them small.
Why I donated to this
When I found out this film was raising support to reach more people, I didn't hesitate to contribute. Not because I needed convincing of the subject matter. I'd lived it and I treat it weekly. I donated because I know exactly what it's like to sit across from someone in the earliest, most disoriented stage of realizing what happened to them, and I know how much it would have meant to hand them something like this.
This is the kind of resource that turns confusion into clarity, and clarity into the first real step toward healing. That's worth supporting.
What I'm bringing back into the therapy room
I went into this film to learn something for my clients. I came out having also done a little healing of my own. That's not something I expected to write about publicly, but it feels dishonest not to mention it, especially in a piece about the power of finally having language for something.
If you are a clinician who works with survivors, I'd encourage you to watch this not just as research, but as a witness. Let it move you before you think about how to use it clinically. That's where its real value lives.
If you are someone who has lived through this yourself, whether you're my client or a stranger reading this, I want you to hear something clearly. What happened to you had a name before you ever found the words for it. You were not imagining it, and you were never the problem. The part of you that survived it is not something to hide. It is one of the most attuned parts of who you are.
What I tell clients who are still in it
If you're in the middle of this right now, here's what I actually tell people in session: not textbook advice, but what I've watched work.
Don't try to name it to them. Telling someone “you're a narcissist” almost never produces the reckoning you're hoping for. It usually just hands them a new way to make you the problem. Save your energy for people who can actually hear you.
Stop looking for what you did wrong. I promise you, there isn't a version of you that would have been treated differently. This was never about your flaws. It was about their need for control.
It doesn't always look like arrogance, either. Sometimes it's the loudest person in the room. Sometimes it's the quietest, the most sensitive, the one everyone worries about hurting. Underneath, it's the same need for control and admiration. Only the delivery changes, and the quieter version is often harder to spot until you're already in it.
Watch what they do, not what they say. Words are cheap for someone who's good at performing. If someone tells you they're changing, give it time and give it distance before you believe it with your whole body.
Protect your nervous system like it's sacred, because it is. Every time you share something tender with someone who has hurt you, you're handing them a map. You get to decide what stays inside you now.
Practice becoming boring on purpose. This one surprises people, but a flat, low reactivity presence is one of the fastest ways to starve a dynamic that feeds on your emotional response.
Boundaries aren't mean. They're the thing that lets your body finally exhale. If you've spent years being told your limits are unreasonable, that was never true. It was just inconvenient for them.
If you can create distance, do it. Full distance when it's possible. Structured, minimal, low-emotion contact when it's not. Either way, you're allowed to protect your peace.
How you can help this reach more people
This film is still raising the support it needs to reach survivors and clinicians around the world. If it moves you the way it moved me, consider donating so more people, in more places, can finally have this language too. You can contribute here.
Read more from Christopher Sanchez-Lascurain
Christopher Sanchez-Lascurain, Psychotherapist & Ancestral Healer, LCSW
Christopher Sanchez-Lascurain, LCSW, is a somatic therapist, AEDP-trained clinician, and founder of Healthemindset. Drawing on polyvagal theory, Curanderismo, and his Choctaw and Chickasaw ancestral healing traditions, Christopher offers a deeply integrative approach to trauma recovery and nervous system regulation. He specializes in supporting empaths, highly sensitive people, and members of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities navigating the intersection of identity, culture, and healing. His work bridges clinical rigor with cultural reclamation, creating space for clients to reconnect with their bodies, their lineages, and their wholeness. Christopher is based in Los Angeles, California, and works with clients remotely all over California.
