Have you ever noticed that sometimes when you try to explain to other people how you were abused in narcissistic relationships, they either minimize what happened or they don’t believe you? It all comes down to a lack of understanding of a narcissist’s motivations and what they are “in it” for. The typical understanding of a narcissist is someone who stares in a mirror all day, and the typical understanding of a sociopath is a crazed killer with a butcher knife. People often fail to understand that there are those who lack the brain structure for remorse or empathy who...

Learning how to distinguish whether someone is a narcissist, sociopath or psychopath means understanding the subtle similarities and differences.  Imagine waking up in the morning and going into the kitchen before work. You pour yourself a mug of coffee, open a drawer and grab a spoon to stir in some sugar. After dropping the spoon into the sink, you head out to your car, kissing your wife or husband goodbye before you leave. Most of us regard objects differently than we do people. In fact, it seems almost ridiculous to have to point that out. We regard human life differently than...

Brainwashing sounds so dramatic.  I really don’t have any other word to describe it– and yet it is the case that I was not in full control of myself.  I take responsibility for my actions during that time because they were mine and no one else’s.  I was acting with my own free will. Yet I was not making decisions based on the decision-making skills that I normally use.  I was unable to rationally take care of myself the way I normally would.  Both somehow are true. I was acting against my own best interests while dating a narcissist to...

“Why are you so beautiful?” I never knew quite what to do with it when he said that to me. How do you answer a question like that? It wasn’t something he asked me a couple of times.  It was one of his favorite compliments.  I mean, I guess it was a compliment. I remember the first few times he asked, I would laugh and shake my head in amusement. It was a silly thing to say, really. A silly thing to ask. I always had the impression though that he was waiting for me to say something in response....

“This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.” -Sean Spicer, Press briefing, January 21, 2017 I was lounging around on my couch in the living room that Saturday night, exhausted after a long, strange weekend in the District, where the one-two punch of Donald Trump’s chaotic inauguration followed by the record-breaking Women’s March had brought the city to a point of fatigue and uncertainty.  The news was on and I, like a lot of the rest of the country at that time, could not stop watching it. It...

When we get out of relationships with narcissists, we are sometimes hard on ourselves about how we could have let ourselves get involved in the relationships or why we stayed for so long. In addition, others outside the relationship who have never been involved with a narcissist may believe that there was something about us that attracted the narcissist. It turns out that they are right.  It may not be quite what they expect, however. Narcissists have a strong need for admiration and adoration. They also have fragile egos and when the people around them have differing opinions, they often view this...

“…Conscience…is an intervening sense of obligation based on our emotional attachments–including most especially love, compassion, and tenderness… Fortified with potent emotions, conscience is the glue that holds us together…”                                                                        -Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door   I sit here reading this book The Sociopath Next Door for research into people who lack empathy, remembering vividly when the book was released. I was in graduate school and I...