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’!

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.

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!

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.

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.

There can be repercussions in our social circles when we start to set boundaries after a lifetime of people-pleasing.

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.

What are we up against when we decide to embark on a journey to heal our shame with self-compassion?

In a word: DOUBT.

(One of the Five Hindrances in Buddhist Psychology. The others are aversion, attachment, restlessness and sloth)

Our minds are reason-making machines. We only have to witness how they bully us into worrying, ruminating or obsessing to understand that. In accepting paradox - we learn to live with, “I don’t know” as well as, “I don’t understand”, rather than, “there has to be a reason for this”.

One of the most painful lessons from narcissistic abuse is the shock of discovering that the person in whom we invested the very best of our nature (love, kindness, generosity, loyalty) actually had a narcissistic hidden agenda.

Moral injury is the deep inner wound that opens up when we experience things that we know to be unfair, unjust or wrong.

Avoidance, projection and denial are basic human strategies for avoiding pain. Narcissistic liars are unable to recognise the difference between Truth and Lie.

The Split from a narcissistic partner can create so much chaos as to be overwhelming for some people.

Survivors often must grapple with serious survival threats, as well as deep moral injury.

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!