This is going to be the first personal post I’ve written in a long time. For those who have been reading for a while, you might have noticed that many of my posts for months have been more objective rather than subjective, although I often use my own experience as examples because I don’t want to violate anyone else’s privacy. There was a very good reason for that, I realize. My recovery has been happening in real time. In the earliest days after no-contact, I wrote articles about what it felt like to be in a relationship with a narcissist...

Where are you in your relationship with a narcissist? Are you in a half-alive state in that shadowy area beyond the relationship periphery, slowly smothering in their death grip where they won’t release you and give you back your life but neither will they reel you in and breathe into you the golden spectacle, the private delusion that existed only for the two of you? Are they killing you by putting your own hands around your throat and telling you it’s for your own good? Or is it all over– and are you shivering in the aftermath, trying to understand...

One of the things that helped me the most in the aftermath of the long, strange, exhilarating, painful relationship I had with my ex-boyfriend was learning to think as he did. It’s not easy and it’s not pretty, but it has been crucial in my recovery from the relationship. At first, it made me literally physically sick and I rejected the reality of what I learned because it was too horrible to consider even when the truth of it was standing right in front of me screaming in my face and all I had to do was accept it. Then,...

Act One “I made her believe that I understood needs and desires that she had kept hidden from most everyone else out of fear and shame, that I looked at everything about her and wasn’t scared of what I found. It’s true that I did… I can read every word of your soul, become deeply engrossed in the study of it until I’ve comprehended every word and detail… My desire to know every layer of you isn’t feigned, but interest isn’t love…”  -M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath “I became the perfect partner, complimenting you, praising you and loving you in...

Elinor Greenberg, a psychologist who specializes in Narcissistic Personality Disorder and has a strong understanding of what motivates narcissists, wrote a very good article on recovering from narcissistic abuse recently. In it, she describes an exercise that survivors of narcissistic abuse can take to start healing from it. The main premise behind the exercise is that we must stop isolating the good times and our positive view of the narcissist from the abuse that occurred. This has been my view all along, as well. We cannot merely go no-contact–that’s only half the battle of recovery; we must also stop romanticizing...

Not long ago, I went skydiving for the first time. The whole ordeal included a long, shaky ride in a tiny plane that zig-zagged 10,000 feet into the air. I had about twenty minutes to contemplate my stupidity as I watched the earth flattening out below us from the clear door shuddering next to me. But really, I felt not stupid– just accepting of the fate I had chosen for myself. My body intermittently thrummed with danger, then flooded with waves of endorphins that numbed me into solemn silence at what was about to happen. As my instructor opened the...

Relationships with narcissists keep us in a state of confusion and doubt–even after they end.  Understanding their behavior can help release us from this confusion and help us to move on. [Read: Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse Must Stop with the Questions] Top 8 Questions About Narcissists and Narcissistic Abuse 1. Do narcissists know they are narcissists? To answer this question, we have to consider what narcissism is. Narcissism is a spectrum, with healthy levels of narcissism on one end and pathological levels of it on the other (more on this below).  Pathological narcissism can warrant a diagnosis by a professional...