Did you tend to feel any of these ways with a parent or a partner? Never sure what to expect from them? In certain moments they would seem thrilled with life and you but at other moments would treat you with such hostility, contempt and rage such that they could seem like two different people? Caught up in the drama?…They …
Cinderella might be thought of as the story of how a woman survived and recovered from narcissistic abuse. Here you have a very kind and beautiful woman who’s scapegoated and treated like the scourge of the earth by her narcissistic stepmother and stepsisters…forced to clean up after them all and deserving of nothing good in return. It’s clear in the …
When you’re a kid and you have no choice but to bond with a narcissistic parent and that parent uses you as a receptacle for their own feelings of worthlessness that they cannot tolerate, then you can walk around having to believe some pretty terrible things about yourself. Life can feel like it’s rigged against you. As if nothing you …
I recently saw an incredible video that went viral where a young girl is getting her hair done and she tells the woman doing her hair that she thinks she’s ugly. What happens next is really heart warming AND it’s a beautiful illustration of how good therapy works for scapegoat survivors of narcissistic abuse. In today’s blog I want to …
Do you notice that you find yourself to be inadequate almost without cause? Do you perceive yourself to be inadequate in comparison to others? Are you surprised or in disbelief when someone praises you for your adequacy in some regard? If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions then you may have had your sense of basic adequacy attacked …
Do you find your moment to moment experience to hinge on what thought you’re thinking right now? Do you carry around a feeling of inner pain, malaise, or otherwise suffering? Do you find that the more you learn about and think about narcissistic abuse, the less free from it you feel? Do you find yourself having to operate more like …
Do you find yourself feeling low or down after periods of feeling good, proud, or effective? Do bouts come over you where it feels like you’ve done or are something wrong even though you can’t point to anything? Do you carry around a sense that the other shoe is going to drop? It’s a matter of when not if? Many …
I remember that my favorite school days in elementary school were when we got to do ‘show and tell’. These were days where the teacher would devote 30 minutes for our class to sit in a circle and around so that each student got a turn to show some thing or skill that they wanted to tell the class about. …
There is a form of psychological abuse committed by narcissistic parents that is hard to identify for a child. It is a psychological process that is designed to mess with the child’s sense of himself or herself. In fact, therapists sometimes get paid the ‘big bucks’ so that they can bring all of their professional and personal training in therapy …
One of the grave impacts of being scapegoated by a narcissistic parent is the sense that at your core you are not real. Survivors often feel this way from early in life and have found a way to live with it. This can be a terrifying feeling that is often not discussed with friends, partners, therapists, or even oneself. It …
