The term “love bombing” may sound harmless on the surface. Who doesn’t want someone to bombard them with affection?  Yet narcissist love bombing is very sinister and dangerous. It disarms us and is the first step in an exploitative relationship. Love bombing almost always starts on day one in a relationship with a narcissist. It is part of the indoctrination that sets the stage for everything else that will occur during the rest of the relationship. Our emotions are used to trap us into the relationship and make it difficult to escape this narcissistic behavior. Then it can even spill...

Can a narcissist love us? It’s easy to become obsessed with that question.  Out of all the questions we have, isn’t that one of the critical questions about narcissists that we want to try to answer? [Read Do Narcissists Know They’re Narcissists? And Other Questions] There’s a kernel inside that question of whether narcissists can love that feels connected to almost every other question we have about the relationship.  If we could crack this question about narcissists and love, it seems as if everything else we don’t understand might fall into place. [Read Closure 7 Reasons Why Narcissists Won’t Give...

Narcissist lies are weapons. You may have asked the narcissist to account for their behavior. If you got answers at all, they likely didn’t make sense. There’s poison in their non-answers. It seeps into you a drop at a time until you’re sick with their self-loathing, and they’re drunk with their control of you. This non-reality is the very essence of narcissism. If you’ve interacted with narcissists enough, you’ll know that you can’t make them tell you the truth directly. However, sometimes they’ll tell you the truth indirectly if you pay close enough attention. So when can you tell when...

In the days after you have gone no-contact, recovery from narcissistic abuse feels like an out-of-reach fantasy.   Narcissists leave a part of themselves inside of us after they’re gone. No matter how much you wanted to go no-contact, once they’re gone, it feels as if the narcissist has unceremoniously ripped out a part of your own body. [See The Ultimate Narcissistic Abuse Dictionary to review unfamiliar terms] We’re left sitting in shock, bleeding, wondering how everything that just happened doesn’t affect them.  Yet, despite their absence, it’s as if somehow, they’re not gone at all. In our minds and bodies,...

If you’re in love with a narcissist, I’m sorry to say it, but you’re in a cult. How does it make you feel to read that?  Dismissive of words that sound alarmist?  Angry that I would put victims of narcissistic abuse and cult members in the same category?  Shocked that your experience of narcissistic abuse might have something in common with anything other than, well, others’ experience with narcissistic abuse?  If you feel dismissive of this idea, it may be because you have perceptions of cults that don’t seem relevant to your relationship.  For example, when you think of cults,...

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. Unlike more blatant forms of abuse, such as verbal abuse, the abuser can deny they are 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, this manipulation can create an almost insurmountable threat to our own ability to...

A childhood spent being raised by narcissistic parents who are self-absorbed, manipulative, and have little to no empathy can lead to serious adult life struggles. 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 result from parental narcissism. What is Parental Narcissism?  As J.N. Leggio, Ph.D., states in his doctoral thesis, parental narcissism is...