Am I being abused? Conscientious, agreeable people sometimes don’t recognise another person’s patterns of behaviour as abusive. How to tell if you are in an abusive relationship.

It’s shorthand for the inevitable harm caused by individuals who might qualify for a diagnosis of narcissist, sociopath or psychopath. Here’s the catch. Such individuals rarely receive a diagnosis.

Other things can cause people to behave in self-centred, disorganised, chaotic or maladaptive ways. The most obvious of these many possible causes is trauma.

If you’re the target of a bully, you’ve seen what their dark side is like, but don’t expect everyone else to see that side of them. Bullies will use ‘plausible deniability’ to deny, deflect or reframe their actions to look as if they have positive motivations.

When Personal Power comes up against Positional Power, and the person with the Positional Power has many narcissistic traits, the drive to diminish the Personal Power of the other becomes almost an obsession – which is subsequently why the target of bullying feels targeted – because they are!

PTSD is notoriously difficult to treat. We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and try a treatment that we've not yet tried. Keep Trying Everything

Mental health changes such as depression, anxiety, grief, trauma or PTSD can lead to abnormal behaviour. Abnormal behaviour is a normal response to abnormal learning conditions.

The term, Complicated Grief implies that there must be such a thing as simple grief. Whilst no grief is simple and there are as many ways of grieving as there are mourners, some grief can involve loss which is life changing and devastating.

Jeanette’s experience of unengaged parenting and poor familial communication is anything but unique. Many people grow up as “the black sheep” of the family because they have learned differently to their parents or siblings.

Let's allow ourselves, for our own sakes, to see that people change. Let's assume that everything is impermanent - that we are inside a human existence inside a universe that is constantly shifting.