“Be aware. Take a look at your childhood. Look at it and say there is something there that I need to look at, and then start researching and studying. That would be very helpful.”
Healing Childhood Trauma: From Awareness to Self-Understanding
Childhood trauma healing can begin with something as simple—and difficult—as becoming aware of what happened. For many people, painful experiences from childhood don’t fully make sense until years later. Their effects may instead show up in relationships, emotional reactions, self-esteem, or difficulty feeling safe and in control.
In a conversation on the Purpose and Progress Podcast Show, retired forensic psychologist and memoir author Patricia Grenelle shares her personal experience with childhood sexual abuse and the process of understanding its lasting impact.
How Childhood Trauma Can Follow Us Into Adulthood
Patricia explains that childhood experiences can influence how people relate to others as adults. When a child grows up without healthy or secure relationships, developing trusting relationships later in life can become more difficult.
Her own realization came during therapy at age 27. Although she had previously thought of childhood sexual abuse as something that happened to other people, her therapist helped her recognize that she had experienced it herself. That moment became a turning point in her journey.
Trauma awareness doesn’t necessarily mean that every reaction has an obvious explanation. Patricia describes still experiencing hypervigilance and becoming particularly frustrated when she feels she has lost control of a situation. Recognizing those reactions as connected to her past has helped her better understand herself.
Childhood Trauma Healing Starts With Awareness
The conversation also examines narcissistic abuse and the cycle of love bombing, devaluation, and discard. Recognizing unhealthy patterns can help people better understand confusing relationship dynamics and identify behaviors that affect their sense of self-worth.
Patricia’s advice is straightforward: be aware. She encourages people to look honestly at their childhood experiences, learn more about trauma, and consider tools such as the ACE test as a starting point for further exploration.
Her memoir brings together personal experience, information about trauma symptoms, and additional resources and statistics. More than simply telling her story, Patricia hopes it helps others feel less alone and gives them a starting point for understanding their own experiences.
Childhood trauma healing is not necessarily a single moment or destination. Sometimes, progress begins with finally recognizing that something happened—and deciding to understand it.
Listen to the full conversation and explore Patricia’s work: https://tinyurl.com/Progress-and-Purpose-Podcast
Episode Highlights:
02:36 Why Patricia Wrote Her Memoir
05:21 How Childhood Trauma Shapes Adult Relationships
06:40 Understanding Narcissistic Abuse
10:37 Recognizing Trauma Later in Life
12:19 Beginning the Healing Process
14:54 Hypervigilance and Trauma Responses
16:56 Using a Memoir as a Healing Resource
29:39 Awareness as the First Step
Resources:
📖Get Patricia’s Book
We Were a Nice Normal Family: A Memoir of Recovery from C-PTSD and the Trauma of Narcissistic Abuse
📖 The Adventures of Harold from the Hood Book Series:
🚙A Trip to the Park: https://bit.ly/40Lvv6h
🤝🏽Friends Like Different Things: https://bit.ly/4ocAQxq
🍟 Fun Time Lunch Time: https://bit.ly/4odUCJ1
😤 When I Feel So Annoyed: https://bit.ly/4l6WSPt
Meet Patricia:
Patricia A. Grenelle, PsyD, is a retired Forensic Psychologist and survivor of childhood sexual abuse and C-PTSD. She brings dual perspectives to her writing: the raw emotional truth of lived trauma and the clinical expertise of decades studying it. Patricia wrote We Were a Nice, Normal Family to honor her sister, who suffered beside her, and for every survivor who’s been told they were “too sensitive,” blamed themselves for family dysfunction, or wondered if healing was possible. Through her work, she reaches those who have experienced abuse, helping survivors live more productive, happy lives by understanding what happened and why it still matters. Patricia lives in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona with her husband Ed, a retired US Army Major, and her service dog JP, a Goldendoodle who supports her through her own C-PTSD journey. She encourages readers to help stop childhood sexual abuse, rape, and trauma by supporting the organizations she highlights in her work.
Quotes:
05:38 “A lot of times, childhood trauma can influence how people respond and react in their adult years.” —Dr. Jim Price
06:22 “Every 68 seconds, somebody in the United States is sexually abused, and every nine of them, that person is a child. People don’t recognize that this is such an epidemic.” —Dr. Patricia Grenelle
10:25 “People who don’t always recognize the cycles [of abuse] can definitely put themselves in a situation where they can be hurt.” —Dr. Jim Price
11:26 “Everybody’s path to healing and making progress is different and looks different.” —Dr. Jim Price
15:12 “I get really angry when I don’t have control over something… but I had to realize that that was because I was feeling so traumatized.” —Dr. Patricia Grenelle
19:39 “Be aware. Take a look at your childhood. Look at it and say there is something there that I need to look at, and then start researching and studying. That would be very helpful.” —Dr. Patricia Grenelle
transcript:
Patricia Grenelle: Whatever happens to a kid as a child, he’s going to grow up to be, whatever, but he’s going to have to learn to associate with other people. And that means that he’s going to have a good relationship. And if he didn’t have a good relationship as a child with either of his parents or anybody, then the likelihood of him having a good relationship with adults is not very good.
Dr. Jim Price: Hello, I’m Dr. Jim Price, and welcome to The Purpose and Progress Podcast. This is the place where we explore how purpose can guide our actions, and how growth can become a part of our everyday lives. On the show, I talk with amazing guests, from educators and creators to everyday people with extraordinary stories about the challenges they face, the lessons they’ve learned, and how to keep moving forward. My goal is to share conversations that inspire you to live intentionally, embrace growth, and take meaningful steps to your own purpose. Let’s get started.
Hello, and welcome to The Purpose And Progress Podcast Show. I’m your host, Dr. Jim Price. And on this show, we share inspiring and motivational stories of people from all different industries who motivate, inspire change in a positive way. And today is no different. You have an amazing guest today. She is a retired forensic psychologist and best-selling memoir author. She brings both professional expertise and lived experience to conversations about childhood sexual abuse and narcissistic trauma. Her goal is to expand understanding, encourage open dialog, and offer practical hope for resilience and healing. Today, we have Patricia Grenelle. How are you doing today?
Patricia Grenelle: I’m doing fine, thank you.
Dr. Jim Price: Very good to have you on the show. Blessed to have you on the show. And it’s interesting because when we talk about childhood trauma and stuff like that, I know a lot of that is some of the things that a lot of the focus, a lot of unhealed trauma, there’s a lot of unhealed trauma, unhealed childhood trauma, and it’s so wonderful that you have put yourself in that niche to be able to help people to go through those things and deal with that. So to start off in terms of what inspired you or what influenced you to begin on that path to get toward making your award winning memoir.
Patricia Grenelle: I guess it started when I began the class . I was at a writing class, and it was to write your memoir. I started to write, and I thought, well, I don’t have anything to say, but I’ll go ahead and write. As I started and went a little bit further, I thought, wait a minute. I do have something to say here because I have some stuff, some information for some people that probably really need to hear this. I decided that not only had I been sexually abused as a child, but my sister, who was 17 months older than me, she’d been sexually abused a lot worse than I had. And she has passed. She passed in 2020 and so since she passed, I decided that it would be good to have a recognition for her in this book, and so I dedicated the book to her.
Dr. Jim Price: And that’s something that a lot of times, a lot of people have difficulty just even getting into any kind of expression or even being able to take the first step toward being able to go toward that idea of healing childhood trauma. And even when you talk about narcissistic tendencies, you think about the cycle of abuse with that. And with the love bombing, and the discard phase, and I forget, I know there’s a cycle within that. But even with that being said, those are all prevalent in society today. And I think a lot of that has changed how a lot of people look at even relationships and things of that nature, their interaction with their family, friends and stuff. When you think about that narcissistic cycle and childhood trauma, those are so prevalent and stuff. And even working within the school systems, you see a lot of kids who are dealing with a lot of those concerns. Not just maybe within themselves, but also within the family structure of maybe their caregivers, family members and stuff like that. Something that everyone definitely needs. The audience definitely needs to hear some kind of understanding of how that influences, infects people’s lives. Talk about the abuse and things of that nature, I know those were challenges. And in terms when you were getting towards writing the memoir, what do you feel were some of the challenges when you were putting that together that you felt like were maybe hurdles in that way.
Patricia Grenelle: I guess I was a little bit leery of writing about sexuality, and I wasn’t exactly sure how much I should put in there. But I thought, well, okay, this is part of the story, so I need to put it in there. And I did.
Dr. Jim Price: I know that a lot of times, that is the thing that happens. You think about the family structures, family dynamic, and how all those things kind of influence and shape how we choose to interact, especially when we talk about unhealed childhood trauma. Because a lot of times the childhood trauma actually can influence how people respond and react in their adult years and stuff.
Patricia Grenelle: Definitely does. Yes.
Dr. Jim Price: What would you say about that a little bit in terms of that aspect of things, and the influence that out setting that?
Patricia Grenelle: Whatever happens to a kid as a child, he’s going to grow up to be, whatever, but he’s going to have to learn to associate with other people. And that means that he’s going to have a good relationship. And if he didn’t have a good relationship as a child with either of his parents or anybody, then the likelihood of him having a good relationship with adults is not very good. Every 68 seconds, a child is abused. Somebody in the United States is abused, sexually abused. Every 9 times, that person is a child. And people, I think, don’t realize that they don’t recognize that it is such an epidemic.
Dr. Jim Price: I didn’t even realize that statistically that was like that. That’s definitely profound and a major concern right there. And you think about children that they’re growing and developing in the early stages of their lives and stuff like that. It’s almost like they’re going through these stages of development. And then all of a sudden, everything becomes stunted and influenced by all these negative aspects of sexual abuse, trauma and all that stuff. I always am a firm believer that when things like that happen, and you’re trying to navigate a lot of those things and get to the point of actually being even to converse or talk about it, or even take that first step toward whatever might be helping, and that’s always something. And we talked a little bit about the narcissistic abuse aspects of it, the narcissistic tendencies, can you speak a little bit upon that? Because I know I mentioned a little bit about the cycle, and I probably miss one part of the cycle. But just share with our audience a little bit more about that. What is in the narcissistic aspect of things like, what is it about? And maybe things you may see in the cycle and stuff like that.
Patricia Grenelle: The narcissism that I felt when I was a child was with the perpetrator, who was my brother-in-law. And he also was a misogynist. He felt that women were not supposed to be around. Really, basically, they were just playthings. And that’s how he treated them. So the narcissism that I got from him, it tended to really get to me. There were times when he would say things to me, and I would just totally ignore it. It was once during my 12th birthday party where I wanted to have a certain thing, and I told my mother that I wanted to have chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy. And she said, okay. So at the dinner table, I use a knife and fork for my chicken because I don’t like to have my hands sticky. And he said, stop doing that. You’re not supposed to eat chicken like that. You’re supposed to eat chicken with your fingers. That’s what’s normal. And I didn’t even try to say anything different. I just thought, well, I’ll just let it go. That’s the kind of thing that I had experienced with him.
Dr. Jim Price: So it was the cycle of the narcissistic love borrowing phase, the devaluation phase. The love borrowing phase is the narcissistic tendency to try to make the connection and mirror to the person what they probably want, feel they want to mirror to make them seem like the perfect situation where there’s connection, real connection when it’s really not. And then you have the devaluation stage when, for the audience that probably doesn’t understand that aspect of it, where the person starts to maybe say belittling things, starting to say things that challenge the person’s self-esteem and self-worth. They call that the devaluation stage. Further circles on to the discard stage. So that’s when whatever that situation is, whether it’s family dynamic, relationship dynamic where the person just discards the person and stuff like that. And in a lot of cases, there can be aspects where there’s a re idolizing former supply or something like that, depending on what the dynamics of that relationship was, whether it’s mother, father, sister, brother, and romantic relationship, whatever those things may be, and those things can definitely have an impact. And people who don’t always recognize the cycles can definitely put themselves in a situation where they can be hurt or whatever the case is, or feel let down, or whatever the case is about a lot of those aspects of things.
Patricia Grenelle: My brother-in-law used to say things about women, derogatory comments about women that were very disturbing to hear. And it was something that I carried with me for my first 27 years until I realized when I was 27 years old, I was in therapy. My therapist said, you were sexually abused. And I said, no. I came from a nice, normal family. And he said, no, you were sexually abused. So that was at the point where I began to start working towards getting better, relieving myself of the CPTSD, and trying to be more healthy in my relationships.
Dr. Jim Price: And for you at least, I know everybody’s path to healing and making progress is different and looks different. Some people’s journey might include journaling, and some people might feel like, the therapy path, process path, the therapeutic path, everybody has their own journey in terms of when they go through those kinds of things, and they’re going toward trying to heal internally and stuff like that. Because a lot of times, especially in child abuse situations, a lot of time, the victim can tend to blame themselves and feel like it was their fault when it wasn’t. And you see that a lot. And so speak in terms of you get on your path and of the process of trying to work through and everything, how was that process for you when you started that process? How did you keep pushing forward with that process?
Patricia Grenelle: Well, I was kind of shocked at the moment because I read about child sexual abuse and thought, gee, that’s too bad that kids are sexually abused. And then when my therapist told me that, I was like, oh, my gosh, I’m a statistic. So I started processing that information and looking back on my past and the relationship with my brother in law, and with my parents, and with the people in my family, and that’s when I began to start realizing that that wasn’t what it was supposed to be.
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Dr. Jim Price: Like I said, that all ties in together. Also with the narcissistic aspects too. And a lot of times, like I say, people don’t always understand what the cycle is when you talk about the love bombing, and then devaluation, and discard phases of things and stuff like that. Sometimes, people who maybe go and don’t understand what they need, wonder what’s going on and what’s happening and confused and all that kind of stuff. But a lot of times, a lot of that stuff can make people feel confused, even if they’re not feeling like, you know. You think about the devaluation stage and how it’s designed to try to tear away at self esteem, self worth, and things like that, make you feel indifferent and stuff like that. You know what I mean? But being able to like people who go through that and are able to recognize things, I’m sure, even with relationships as you go forward, you see red flags, situations and stuff. Do you feel like even after you’ve gone through the process of maybe healing or trying to heal, and going through the therapeutic process, do you feel like it brings more of awareness when you’re interacting socially with people, you feel red flags or a heightened sense of awareness? Do you feel that way?
Patricia Grenelle: Yeah, I do. I still have a couple of symptoms that I haven’t been able to get rid off. One of them is being hyper vigilant. If my husband walks in the room, I go, oh. Because I don’t expect him to. And he always goes, it’s just me. And there’s another thing, I get really angry when I realize that I don’t have control over something. And I get very frustrated. Amazon has a habit of putting boxes inside of boxes, and they put them in there really tight, and you can’t get them out. Well, I got a box one day that had something in it. I was trying to get the box out of the box, and I couldn’t get it out. I finally dropped the thing on the floor, and kicked it across the room. When my husband came home, he opened it for me. But I had to realize that that was because I was feeling traumatized. And I was feeling frustrated because I was not in control of what was going on, which was from my childhood.
Dr. Jim Price: Yeah. I think, absolutely, that’s something that, like you said, certain aspects of things stay with you. Even if you’re going through the process of healing and trying to process everything that has happened and stuff like that, there definitely can be a point where a lot of that does stay with a person. And I’m sure there’s a lot of families and children out there who are currently going through those things and figuring out how to find a way out, and how they work to get to the point of trying to process everything that’s going on in that regard and stuff like that. In terms of the memoirs, the one memoir and stuff do you have like maybe advice for the audience who maybe have friends or family that are going through turmoil in that way? Does a memoir also include tips toward trying to get to the point where maybe they’re taking that first step toward being able to want to go through the healing process, or try to go through the healing process?
Patricia Grenelle: Yes. That’s one of the really important things that I want to get across to people. Because the book talks about all of that, and it talks about the symptoms and a lot of the problems that people have. And I think it’s very informative. I have a special section in the back where I have additional statistics and things, and I think it’s very helpful for people who have gone through it. And from the reviews I’ve read, people really have accepted it and really are positive about what they read.
Dr. Jim Price: And that is definitely a much needed book too. Because like I said, a lot of times, there’s no real resources. Just in general, there’s a lack of resources for a lot of things and stuff like that. And in a situation, Patricia, where you’re sharing your story and you’re being open and honest about your process, and how you go through the process of healing through the therapeutic process and still having some lingering aspects of that influence your life currently. Still, a lot of people just, unless they don’t have that understanding of the bigger picture of that, and how all that. And even when you talk about the narcissistic cycle, when we talk about the love bombing, devaluation, and discard phases of that, all those things are real things. And those are diagnosed things that have people who are, if you’re not aware of that, of course, you wouldn’t really know how to proceed with all those things. Your book is definitely something that’s so important. Could you share with our audience how they could connect to ordering and purchasing your book?
Patricia Grenelle: It’s on Amazon, and it’s soon to come out on Audible. People can find me on my website, which is patriciagrenell.com. And I have a lot of information about the book and about myself on the website, and I’d like people to take a look at it and sign up. I’ll send them out a little freebie, just a thing on trauma. And that would be great if they would do that. I’m also on Facebook. I’m on Instagram. I’m on LinkedIn. And Substack.
Dr. Jim Price: We always make sure that we give our audience some advice, what will be your own idea? What advice would you give our listeners and our audience out there, viewers?
Patricia Grenelle: Be aware. Really be aware. Take a look at your childhood. There is a test that is free on Google. It’s called the ACE test. You’ve probably heard of it. It asks questions about what happened to the child, and it determines whether or not you were traumatized as a child. It is helpful if you just take that and start out from there. Go and look at it, and say, okay. There is something there that I need to look at, and then start researching and studying. I think that would be very helpful.
Dr. Jim Price: That is so wonderful. And the audience, I definitely encourage you to purchase her book, her memoir, because it’s definitely something that can help people who are going through childhood trauma, and maybe narcissistic abuse or anything like that. I think the book would definitely be a great resource, and a great help to help you get on that path of healing, help you get on that path of understanding yourself personally, and just grow in that way. It’s definitely been great to have you on the show, Patricia. You’ve shared wisdom, a lot of wisdom. And I’m so grateful that you’ve been able to share your story here on The Purpose And Progress podcast. Like I always say, we always share inspirational stories of inspirational people who are doing great things, and this is no different. Patricia shared her story. And the audience, once again, please purchase the book if you have loved ones or anyone who’s going through these kinds of ordeals and trauma in their lives, it definitely can utilize the books as a reference of healing and having a better understanding of everything. So like I always say, stay prayed up, and stay blessed. And once again, this is The Purpose in Progress Podcast Show. I’m your host, Dr. Jim Price, and we’ll see you next time.
Thank you for joining me on this episode of The Purpose in Progress Podcast. I hope today’s conversation gave you insight, inspiration, or a fresh perspective to help you move forward with purpose. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who could use a little encouragement. You can also support the podcast through the donation link in the show notes. Every contribution helps us keep sharing stories that uplift and inspire. Remember, your purpose is waiting, and progress never stops. I’ll see you next time.