Beyond Survival - The Therapy Podcast with Katie McKenna

You're fluent in everyone's emotional language except your own.
If you grew up with a narcissistic parent, you probably have a PhD in reading other people. You can spot a shift in their mood, anticipate what they need, and know exactly which version of yourself keeps the peace.
But what about your own thesis? What do you feel, want and need?
The clench of your jaw when a friend cancels again. The lump you swallow down when a comment lands. The sting of resentment after yet another yes you didn't mean. Your body has been speaking all along. In this episode, we start listening.
This isn't about overanalysing yourself. It's about getting curious, trusting what your body tells you, and slowly building a relationship with the person you were never allowed to be.
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BEYOND SURVIVAL - The Therapy Podcast

"It really made me feel like it was a kind of Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde kind of life."
For two weeks of every month, Dr. Shubhangi Karmakar was thriving: studying medicine, completing a master's, and researching PMDD. 
The other two weeks of the month, they wanted to crawl out of their skin, and wondered what the point of it all was.
In this episode, we talk about PMDD – premenstrual dysphoric disorder – a severe hormonal mood disorder. 
Dr. Shubhangi is a practising clinician, psychiatry researcher, and barrister in Ireland, and they brings both their clinical expertise and their lived experience to the conversation.
We explore what PMDD can look like, from depression, hopelessness, and anxiety to sudden rage, exhaustion, sleep and appetite changes, and difficulty concentrating. 
We also talk about how it affects relationships and your sense of self, the relief that comes when symptoms lift, and why every person's experience is different. 
Whether you suspect you have PMDD, have a diagnosis, or want to support a friend, sister, partner, or daughter, this conversation offers understanding, validation, and practical next steps.
Resources mentioned, including a free, evidence-based PMDD self-assessment you can bring to your clinician, are linked in the show notes.
Form:
Gold Standard - Severity of Symptoms

Websites:
IAPMD.org

Clinics / Services:
Marblearchhealth.com
Drummartin Clinic
Kingsbridge Private Hospital
The Menopause hub
Well Woman Centre
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BEYOND SURVIVAL - The Therapy Podcast

The narcissistic parent hands their child a mirror. 

The child job is to hold it up and reflect back whatever the parent needs to see. 

Beside it, the parent paints a canvas and says: this is you. Selfish. Difficult. Ungrateful. Cold. Unlovable.

None of that was ever you.

In this episode, I pull apart what it means to grow up invisible. Behind the mirror and behind that ugly painted canvas, there's a blank one. 

It isn't blank because there's nothing there. It's blank because you were never allowed to find out.

I explore why:

You don't know what you actually feel, only what's "allowed"
You mistake self-erasure for being "easygoing" or "low-maintenance"
You confuse being needed with being loved
You can't trust what happened until someone else confirms it.
You get to exist. Not for anyone else's benefit. For yours.
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BEYOND SURVIVAL - The Therapy Podcast

Have you ever found yourself wondering, “Why is he doing this?”
You replay the argument. Question what you said. 
Apologise when you’re not even sure what you’ve done wrong. 
You explain away the silence, the accusations, the sudden shifts in mood.
He was stressed. He had a bad day. I could have said it differently.
But what happens when you stop looking at each moment on its own — and start looking at the pattern?
In this week’s episode of Beyond Survival, I’m joined by Lundy Bancroft, who has spent more than 30 years working with abusive men and their families and is the author of 'Why Does He Do That? - Inside The Minds of Angry and Controlling Men'
Lundy describes an abusive man as operating a little like a magician. The trick isn’t necessarily what he’s doing — it’s where he gets you to look.
While you’re focused on his feelings, his anger, his wounds and what you might have done to cause them, you can lose sight of what’s actually happening.
This conversation is about stepping back from the confusion of individual moments and noticing what happens when you look at them together.
Because sometimes, the things that are hardest to see are the things we’ve been living with for so long that they simply feel normal.
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BEYOND SURVIVAL - The Therapy Podcast

In this solo episode I tackle the complex topic of grief. 
If you grew up in a narcissistic or dysfunctional family
system, the first roadblock to this grief is often minimising it. 
“It wasn't that bad”
“Other people had it worse” 
“I've nothing to complain about"
We say this so automatically, that we never even get to the feeling underneath it.

In the episode, I use an example that might surprise you —
Ireland's colonization, and what happened when we were denied our own language.
I know that sounds like a strange place to start a therapy podcast, but stay with me, because the parallel is exact: a narcissistic parent does the same thing to a child. 
They deny you the language of yourself — your own feelings, wants, preferences, boundaries — until you're so disconnected from them that you don't even know they were ever yours to have. 
And it's hard to grieve something you never knew you were missing.
This episode goes deeper into the invisible child, the cruelty of the inner critic, and how to start giving yourself the compassion you never got.
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BEYOND SURVIVAL - The Therapy Podcast