Elle Stübe

03/10/2025

Narcissistic abuse has become a buzzword online. Over recent years, an overwhelming amount of content has spread on social media, that proposes various methods of recovery from narcissistic abuse – from new age notions to rampant pathologizing.

Missing from most content however, is the contemporary, trauma informed and nuanced understanding of narcissistic abuse that is necessary in order to truly recover from the experience.

In a contemporary understanding, narcissistic abuse is a form of relational trauma. In relational trauma, the relationship itself is the vehicle of abuse and relational needs are weaponised to provide the narcissist with a sense of control and empowerment.

Narcissists use very specific tactics within the relational space, to disrupt, dysregulate and disorganise the other person. To make sense of this form of abuse, it is vital to use contemporary lenses such as interpersonal neurobiology, psychoanalytic relational theory and attachment theory that illuminate the deeper dynamics and provide vital insight.

Making meaningful sense of our experience is a critical step in the process of relational trauma recovery. The contemporary ‘new paradigm’ provides a powerful new take on narcissistic abuse and solid foundation for the process of recovery.

22/01/2025

Relational trauma is the single most common and most impactful form of trauma that exists. Because we rely on safe relational experiences in order to develop and thrive, unsafe relational experiences can cause untold damage to our mental, physical, emotional and relational health.

Relational trauma most commonly occurs in childhood, where a child experiences unsafe caregivers or other adults; but relational trauma can also occur where there are unsafe relational experiences between adults.

20/01/2025

Recover at last from past unsafe relational experiences and build a life of meaningful connection with your Self, others and the world around you. Our books are open for a small number of motivated clients to begin their relational trauma recovery journey in 2025. Book your free 15 min online consult at www.ellestube.com

18/12/2024

I am saddened to hear of the death of the great Australian teacher and writer John Marsden. I was immensely fortunate to have John as my English teacher throughout high school, where he taught me the power of language through his passionate, spontaneous and unorthodox methods. John had a penchant for playing Leonard Cohen songs during class and gave thrilling readings of texts with his trademark lisp. You could hear a pin drop during English class, such was the intensity of his presence and the profound engagement of our developing minds. I studied writing with John, who taught me the art of stream of consciousness practices that I maintain to this day. John had an innate and authentic empathy for young people and understood the importance of adolescent experience. He had struggled with his own mental health and this was evident in the conscious care and deep compassion he showed us. Far more than just teaching us, John fostered true connection with his students as humans in our own right. John went on to found two schools of his own and to become our country's most celebrated writer for young people.

As a therapist specialising in early relational experience, I often hear from clients that a particular teacher changed the course their life. John Marsden altered the course of mine.

Vale John.

Alice Miller School and Candlebark

17/03/2024

24/02/2024

"Children can feel but they cannot analyse their feelings and if the analysis is partially effected in thought, they know not how to express the result of the process in words".

- Charlotte Brontë, in Jane Eyre (1847)

03/02/2024

These days social media is awash with content addressing the bodily aspects of trauma and proposing various forms of body work such as vagal toning, somatic releasing and other attempts to include the body in trauma recovery.

This understanding of the impact of trauma on the body and the vital importance of including the body in any trauma therapy, is an important development.

However, a body inclusive approach is still only part of the picture when it comes to treating trauma.

Less understood or acknowledged is the importance of addressing the impacts of trauma on the Self.

For beyond the body, is a PERSON who is impacted by traumatic experience and at the heart of that person, is the SELF.

We now know that trauma can be profoundly damaging to our sense of Self. And can drastically alter how that Self relates to others and to the people and environment around us.

Early life trauma can have a particularly devastating impact on the Self – as in our early years the Self is still in development.

Our earliest experiences directly inform how we see ourselves, others and our place in the world. If those earliest experiences are in unsafe in even subtle ways, this can prevent the healthy development of the Self - with life long consequences.

Working with the impact of trauma on a person's Self requires a particular approach. In understanding the relational aspects of trauma, contemporary trauma treatment pays as much attention to the signs of trauma reflected in a person's Self, as it does to those reflected in their body.

The exact impact of their trauma on a person's Self can often be witnessed in how that person engages in relationship - not just in relationships outside of the therapy room, but within the therapeutic relationship itself.

By paying close attention to the relational dynamic between therapist and client, trauma's impacts on the client's Self and 'self in relationship' can slowly be identified.

Over time, with compassion and patience, these previously hidden impacts of trauma can be processed and integrated to allow for a healthier sense of Self, more meaningful relationships and the possibility at last, for fulfilling our potential.

This is why a contemporary trauma approach is not just an embodied one, but an embodied RELATIONAL one.

👉 FOLLOW US for the more insights into trauma and our cutting edge, best practice approach to treating it.

02/01/2024

In our latest newsletter article https://www.ellestube.com/post/relational-trauma-misunderstood-misdiagnosed-and-the-missing-link, we reveal why relational trauma is misunderstood, misdiagnosed and often, the missing link in trauma recovery. Subscribe to our newsletter here: https://www.ellestube.com/resources

23/01/2023

Humans have regarded the new year as auspicious, for more than 4000 years. Contrary to the hopeful, exciting and inspiring time it is billed as, the truth is that many people experience the new year with heightened anxiety and depression. Far from a joyous period brimming with potential, many enter this time of year with fear, shame, aloneness, hopelessness and dread - and none more so, than people living with trauma.

How trauma prevents change - even at new year.

05/06/2022

On this World Environment Day, it is important we remind ourselves of the critical role our natural environment plays in supporting our mental health and wellbeing. As humans we are wired not just for connection with one another, but also for intimate connection with the natural world. The degree to which we become separate from nature is the degree to which we lose touch with our own humanity. The degree to which we destroy nature is the degree to which we destroy humanity. By connecting deeply to our natural environment, we are reminded of the organismic reality of being human and our fundamental dependence on planet Earth. We cannot hope to heal our own trauma until we heal the natural world - our very lives depend on it.

30/03/2022

Trauma robs us of any control over how we respond to what happens to us.

Not only does trauma dictate how we respond to the original threatening event – plunging us into fight, flight or freeze states - if left unresolved, it goes on to dictate how we respond to anything we perceive as a threat thereafter.

When unresolved trauma is controlling our life, we find ourselves reacting to things in ways that are often not commensurate with the situation at hand.

We may find ourselves under reacting to a situation. We may find ourselves overreacting to a situation. Either way, we can often feel that something is getting in the way of our responding in the way we would like to.

This lack of control in how we respond to life and other people, often leaves us feeling embarrassed, humiliated or ashamed. This then only further embeds our trauma patterns, leaving us feel helpless.

Trauma-informed therapy aims to identify those unresolved past experiences that continue to inform your mental, emotional and physiological responses to life. When you bring a trauma informed (neurobiologically informed) lens to your experience, you can finally make sense of yourself and your reactions in compassionate and clinically sound ways.

Trauma informed therapy aims to gently integrate the toll past traumatic experiences have had on your body and mind - and free you from the hold those experiences have had over you.

By getting to the root cause of your why you react in ways that no longer serve you, trauma informed therapy restores your capacity to no longer react, but to consciously respond - liberating you at last to choose what you will do with what was done to you.