When a narcissist or psychopath uses the word, ‘love’, they don’t mean what we mean when we use it. Highly narcissistic people can only relate to the world by how it affects them personally. Love is just a word to them.

Narcissists have learnt over time to develop a charming, sophisticated public persona. Often, they don’t just appear as ‘normal nice’. But as everything you ever admired, respected and liked in a person. Unbelievably ‘nice’!

Recovery from interpersonal psychological and emotional abuse perpetrated by people on the narcissism spectrum (exploiters and manipulators) can take much longer than your average split.

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

Psychologists have done us all a great disservice by referring to healthy self-love as ‘healthy narcissism’. Let’s ditch the term!

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.

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.