Gaslighting is one of the most dangerous types of emotional abuse, yet gaslighting examples can be difficult to spot in everyday life. Why? It’s a covert form of abuse.  It only works because it’s invisible.  No one comes out and says they’re gaslighting you and, unlike more blatant forms of abuse, such as verbal abuse, the abuser can deny they’re doing something harmful to you. This is why gaslighting is so effective.  If we have any emotional investment at all in a person who frequently gaslights us, their manipulative gaslighting can create an almost insurmountable threat to our own ability...

A childhood spent being raised by narcissistic parents that are self-absorbed, manipulative, and have little to no empathy can lead to serious struggles in adult life. Narcissism is a broad term that describes not just a clinical diagnosis. It’s also a set of behaviors, attitudes, and language that involves a sense of entitlement, grandiosity, aggression toward others, and shallow emotions. If this description already reminds you of one of your parents’ behavior, continue reading to check if your adult emotional issues are the result of parental narcissism. What is Parental Narcissism?  As J.N. Leggio, Ph.D., states in his doctoral thesis,...

Healing from narcissistic abuse is a process and there are many stages on the way to recovery.  To leave a narcissist, it takes having some realizations about who your partner is and what is happening in your relationship. The journey toward healing then takes having additional realizations that you just can’t have while you’re still under the influence of a pathological partner.  There are things that can hold us back from having these realizations we need to heal. Below are seven things we should try not to do so we don’t get stuck on the way to a full recovery. ...

If you’re with a narcissist, you may be dreading the holidays. You may already be familiar with some of the ways they try to ruin any festive or fun plans you’ve tried to make.   Here are some ways to survive the narcissist during the holiday season and make it through to the next year with your sanity intact. Even if you’re in no-contact, it’s important to keep in mind that holidays are a prime season for trying to pull ex-partners back into the web. Therefore, I’ve included a special section on how to arm yourself against the holiday hoover....

A native of Ontario, Canada the author enjoys being a cat mom, a full time freelancer and fiction writer. She has written for plenty of blogs: The Canadian Stutter Society, The Haven, Aroga Yoga, The Hisdoryan, Women Writers Women's Books, Visibly Affirming, Rebelle Society, Historic UK, A Tribe of Women, The Good Men Project, and Elephant Journal. She has also contributed to the No Shame Mighty newsletter and the pandemic made website View From My Window.

Trauma doesn’t go away as if it never happened; it is something you absorb until one day you aren’t thinking about it in emotional terms anymore, until whatever caused it is just something that happened to you. Once upon a time, I thought the emotional hell of breaking up and going no-contact with a narcissist would scald me alive.  Then the intensity faded to a slow burn and now the entire relationship feels almost like a fever dream.   Was that actually me back there? Yes… and no. Oh, if he could see me now. Too bad for him — he never...

My name is Chelsie and I'm 36 years old. I was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, I have no kids or pets and I like to scrapboook and write on my free time. I'm the oldest of 5 kids, I grew up in foster care and I am a survivor of narcissistic abuse.