More than 60 million people have been in a pathological love relationship with someone who has an impaired conscience. Are you one of them?
Do you feel fiercely loyal toward your partner although your partner has put you through unspeakable acts of cruelty and betrayal?
Has your partner lied so much that sometimes you aren’t sure you know what’s real or who your partner really is?
Have you tried to break off the relationship yet feel powerless to stop your partner from walking in and out of your life?
Do you alternate between believing that your partner is the love of your life and questioning your sanity or even feeling your life may be in danger?
Using the stories of survivors and social psychological research on compliance, cognitive dissonance, and thought control, Why Can’t I Just Leave explains how relationships with pathological partners can create impossible dilemmas that trap you in a distorted dream-state and hijack your thoughts and emotions.
Learn what those who are conscience-impaired don’t want you to know and find out how to wake up and walk out of your partner’s invisible prison forever.
Dear Survivor, this is not your typical recovery book.
I understand the confusion, devastation, and heartbreak you’re going through because I was in a relationship like yours. When it was over, I wanted to learn why I hadn’t been able to leave. Whatwere the barriers to leaving, as expressed by survivors themselves?
I didn’t want to hear anymore about what’s wrong with survivors that they got into these relationships in the first place. I knew that wasn’t the whole story.
Who am I?
My name is Kristen Milstead and I have a doctorate in Sociology, which I received from a university that has some of the most well-known names in criminology across the country. My academic background took me to the core of some of the most heinous acts humans inflict on one another, including serial murder and sexual assault. I interviewed juveniles held in detention centers and taught criminology courses to undergraduates. My research also led me to become a passionate critic of the criminal justice system and the biases in every day life that silence some voices and elevate others.
Years later, I never expected to become the victim myself.
My background gave me an opportunity to search for answers in a way that has never been done before. I conducted a survey of over 600 survivors, and found that the manipulative tactics narcissists use are the same tactics used in other familiar high-control social settings, a fact often left out of most of the articles and books we read about healing, which often focus only on the characteristics of the abuser or on the characteristics we came into the relationship with.
The problem is much bigger than us, and there are things to learn from these situations about how to successfully walk away.
This book connects the stories of hundreds of survivors with sociological research on the group dynamics of high-control environments. To balance out the more heavy academic stuff, I used pieces of my story to highlight that it is possible to come out of the other side and thrive, as well as pieces of the stories of other brave survivors who shared their stories with me.
In the book you’ll find:
- A checklist of 75 signs you’re in a relationship with a narcissist
- Excerpts of survey responses from over 600 survivors
- What the survey shows about the five stages of breaking up with a pathological partner
- The key to understanding what makes narcissists’ tactics so dangerous
- The sociological factors that make people vulnerable to narcissistic manipulation
- How to use the stages of the narcissistic cycle against your pathological partner
- Seven ways that survivors leave their narcissistic partners and which ones are the most effective
- A comprehensive glossary that includes definitions of relevant sociological terms and how they apply to relationships with narcissists
With a foreword written by by Sandra L. Brown, Author of Women Who Love Psychopaths, the book has now been listed in the in the Top 10 of Choosing Therapy’s 25 Best Books on Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder and named as one of the 9 Best Books On Narcissism You Cannot Afford To Miss by The Minds Journal.
2 Comments
SF
I need your help ASAP. I am a victim of Amir in your book.
Kristen Milstead
I don’t think you mean that literally you’ve been victim of the same man, but someone like him? I’m so sorry… my heart goes out to you. I hope you are beginning to heal.