In the early days of trying to figure out whether my ex-boyfriend was a narcissist and/or whether I was being abused, I would search the Internet and devour article after article, reading about the signs of narcissism and patterns of abusive narcissistic behavior. Now, here’s the crazy part.  This is the typical way one of these evenings would go:  I’d read an article, going straight down the list of warning signs.  Check.  Check.  Check.  Hmm, I’d think.  That is exactly what’s happening.  But I’d better read another one just in case.  So I’d find another article and do the same...

Narcissists and psychopaths are magicians. They get away with the things they do because they don’t just manipulate the people they target–they manipulate everyone. This is important to recognize because their behavior is often framed as an individual problem, between the narcissist and his or her partner.  In actuality, however, it is a societal problem, for the reasons described below.   This isn’t to say that the damage they inflict doesn’t affect individuals.  I can attest that it is very real and it can have devastating consequences that can harm us for years and, in some cases, can cost us things...

There seems to be no logical reason why narcissists manipulate us when they could so easily have everything we have to give without going to all that trouble. What hurts so much is the fact that the horrible things they do to us are coming from someone we love. But why? Why do narcissists want to hurt us, if we love them so much? Narcissist do not want the same things from relationships that we do because they do not view themselves and the world the same way that we do. They even go out of their way to ruin...

Hi I am Tai Chi teacher and a Mindfulness teacher. This was my sort of being caught by a narcissist after a divorce. My empathetic nature and open mindedness made me a target. It has been an amazing journey and without my training I am not sure I would have come out so positive. I hope this article gives an insight to the minds of a narcissist and gaslighter and how easy it is to become prey to it. I am so grateful for my friends and my training to bring me out the other side.

When we talk about narcissistic abuse, we’re talking about something that happened to our minds, something that people can’t see. I’ve found that sometimes, by using metaphors and ideas from popular culture, it’s easier to explain to people who have not experienced a relationship with like this one what the relationship was like or why it hurt so much. Even then, however, I have still found myself asking the question, should  I tell people I was abused by a narcissist? As a general rule, the answer I’ve come up with is “no,” but the reasons are many.  There are times, however,...

Do narcissists know they hurt you? For the entire relationship, we denied, rationalized, suppressed, excused, or wrote off the inexcusable things that they did to us in order to remain there in the relationship with them. And yet it’s one of the questions that remains even after the relationship ends. Did they know? Shannon Thomas, who wrote the book Healing From Hidden Abuse, puts the answer like this: “Psychological abusers know when and where to turn off their manipulative games. They know precisely how to push all the right emotional buttons to get the victim’s frustrated response that the abuser...

Lies are not the same for narcissists and psychopaths as they are for the rest of us. When a narcissist lies, it splits the world off into two realities and forces us to choose the one in which we want to live. In the article “16 Faces of a Psychopath,” the author writes that in their world, “they don’t lie because lying is not a relevant issue for them. The idea or image of truth doesn’t exist with the psychopath, so he cannot lie…. there is for him no difference. He says what’s convenient, what comes to his mind, but...