I understand everything now. It feels like a grenade just went off. The shrapnel is falling, scattering, and all of the clues are flooding into the right cracks all at once, but too quickly for me to absorb each in isolation. I begged you for answers so many times. But how could I have expected you to give them to me when you did not understand any point of view other than your own? You could not find the disconnect between our perspectives anymore than I could, so how could you provide any answers other than the ones you had...

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 warning signs of narcissism and patterns of abusive behavior in relationships with narcissists.  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...

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,...

It can make us feel crazy trying to figure out how to tell when narcissists are telling the truth and when they are lying. We know they’re not being honest, and yet we may spend hours researching how to figure out when or how to make a narcissist tell the truth.  One of the core features of narcissistic abuse is false reality construction, consisting of a variety of tactics that spin a counterfeit world where the narcissist’s chosen target can be completely controlled. These tactics include love-bombing using a manufactured persona, pathological lying, gaslighting, future-faking, and other methods of using...