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.

People high on the narcissism spectrum and coercive controllers tend to use similar tacticsto manipulate and control targets.

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.

It is easy to compensate for fawning by a 180 swing into defensive self-righteousness, grief-driven anger, and mistrustful avoidance of others through self-isolation.

The dance of one step forward and two steps back in trauma recovery encapsulates the essence of resilience and growth. Survivors move through this intricate dance with courage, embracing progress and setbacks as integral parts of the journey.

Among the many painful ways in which narcissistic abusers continue to cause distress to their ex-partners, ex-friends, ex-employees or children is the smear campaign.

Narcissists will shame us as an act of overt cruelty, gaining gratification from the sense of personal power that gives them.

Training in Mindful Self Compassion gives us powerful new tools - short daily mindfulness practices – that can change the mental habits of a life time with persistence and repetition. We can heal our shame.

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!

Written over the entrance to the Ancient Temple at Delphi were words which could easily form the basis of modern trauma-recovery therapeutic interventions. Know Thyself. They are an exhortation to look first within our own character in order to understand our world.

The in-built grandiosity and entitlement of the narcopath is so huge it is likely they genuinely experience the most minor of challenges or disagreement as a gross invasion to their superior self-image – a narcissistic injury.

The narcissist will claim the fight/race/election was rigged, rather than accept defeat. They must win at all costs.

Triggers can be directly addressed when our nervous system is in a relaxed and safe enough environment to do so. The traditional Tibetan practice of Chod is the perfect visualisation method for us to take the sting out of things we fear.

The chaos and despair that victims of narcopaths feel after sudden abandonment can resemble conditions other than trauma –including Depression, Generalised Anxiety Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder – and especially if the therapist is quick to judge the presenting issue as “just a break up”.

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.