Category: Narcissism
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The stores fill up with holiday decorations, and something in you tightens. Not because of gift stress. But because of the question that comes back every year: “So, are you coming home for the holidays?” For many people, the holiday season is about love and togetherness. For people with narcissistic or toxic families, it’s often…
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You bring something up – and end up on trial yourself. That’s not a coincidence. It’s a pattern with a name. You bring up something that hurt you. Calmly, factually, maybe even with a shaking voice because it took courage. And minutes later, suddenly you’re the one who has to justify yourself. You’re “too sensitive,”…
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You used to love cooking, listening to music, looking forward to the weekend. Now you sit there, everything is “fine,” and yet nothing feels right. Coffee tastes like nothing, your favorite song no longer moves you, and even lovely moments pass you by like a film someone else is watching. If you’ve come out of…
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Fight, flight, freeze – and then a fourth response that looks like kindness but is actually survival. You probably know fight, flight, and freeze. But there’s a fourth stress response that almost nobody names, even though it’s extremely common: fawning – appeasing, people-pleasing as a survival strategy. If you catch yourself instantly backing down in…
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Trauma bonding is not a character flaw and it’s not “unhealthy love” – it’s a biochemical trap. And it can be understood. You know the relationship isn’t good for you. Maybe you’ve known for a long time. And yet you keep thinking back to the good times, missing them, feeling guilty when you pull away…
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You’ve gone no contact. Maybe with your mother, your father, an ex-partner. In your mind, you know exactly why: the repeated boundary violations, the feeling of having to shrink yourself to be loved. And yet — there’s that pull in your stomach as their birthday approaches. That 3 a.m. thought, “Maybe I was too harsh.”…
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You’re in a meeting, and your boss praises you to the skies one week — then tears your work apart in front of the whole team the next, as if you’d never done anything right. You go home thinking: I know this feeling. You’ve felt this exact floor-dropping-out-from-under-you sensation before — with your ex. That’s…
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“They’re still your parents.” “They raised you, fed you, put you through school.” “You don’t just cut off your own mother.” Anyone who has gone no contact with narcissistic parents knows these lines by heart — sometimes from relatives, sometimes from acquaintances who only know half the story, and often from their own inner voice,…
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Grey rocking is everywhere right now. Every other reel, every advice thread: become the grey rock. Show no reaction. Take away the other person’s stage, and they’ll lose interest. It sounds like an elegant solution to a problem that doesn’t really have one. And yes – grey rocking can work. But the question almost nobody…
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A while back, I wrote about why our individualistic culture provides fertile ground for narcissistic traits — and why more collectivist cultures, like Scandinavian countries, rarely show the same scale of the problem. That argument still holds. But it doesn’t answer the question I get asked most often since then: “Was my ex really a…