Narcissistic Abuse: A Clinician’s Personal & Professional Experience

Foreword.

A heated confrontation unfolds between a couple, highlighting the intensity and tension often present in narcissistic abuse dynamics.

I have really kind of struggled accepting the word abuse. Using it in context of being a grown adult makes the word worse. When I use that word and I associate with myself, prior to ths, I can think of one person, one thing. And it still haunts and lives with me because I have no clue how to talk about it.

The person who I talk about today, they knew it and even had the balls to tell their good friends and confidents about it.

I do not know if people know that they are being abusive. I do know they want you to keep it all a secret.

That is a Part of the abuse.

Part of getting out from the darkness of abuse is to take that power away.

There is truth with power.

There are a lot of behaviors associated with addiction and narcissistic abuse.

I have done a lot for work in addiction. Addicts are trying to numb themselves and avoid their emotional pain. In that process they make poor decision after poor decision until there is some sort of eye opening consequence.

From both my personal and professional experience with people who engage in narcissistic abuse, they are doing a lot of the same things as an addict. They are doing everything they can to avoid emptions, to numb.

The disconnect, the frustrating part is they never seem to acknowledge the consequences. They never actually take accountability and change.

They can. I have seen it. They usually need some sort of court mandate, to be stuck in the dark and feel it. They might start the process kicking and screaming but if they can make the commitment to change, they can be successful.

The biggest take away from successful clients, the amount of work they no longer must do manipulating and feeling guilty about it.

Learning that you can meet your needs and be safe is scary but refreshing.

So now I am going to step outside of the shadow of the abuse, I am going to step into the light.

Part of that light is accepting the role I played. I know I like to have a good time and I know I contributed to the numbing and maybe that and the safety I created added to the codependency.

Yet I also acted within my values, with respect, integrity, kindness and understanding towards the other person in the relationship. As you’ll see, I also copied a lot of their behaviors and treated my supports like shit.

So I am not keeping the secret, but I am also not spilling all my journal entries because there is a lot.

I hope you can get a sense of the chaos and understand you will never be the reason they decide to turn the chaos off. That’s their choice and you do not have to stick around and wait for them to choose it.

Darkness creates embarrassment that can last forever, light makes that embarrassment fleeting.

Narcissistic Abuse- A Clinicians Personal & Professional Experience.

It’s Men’s Mental Health Awareness month and today I want to educate everyone about a chronic toxic and abusive behavior impacts both men and women but we men are more likely to not talk about it and really just suffer in silence.

Narcissistic abuse.

I know about the suffering and silence Part because I have been in denial about being in an on and off again relationship with a partner who’s behavior is clearly Narcissistic Abuse.

When we hear the term narcissism we immediately associate the word with men.

We think of a whole pathology and a disorder. Personality disorders and their symptoms are tricky to unravel and figure out, they don’t fit neatly in a diagnosis.

I have noticed a big difference between the disorder and the behavior. People with the personality disorder tend to do a much better job of not being caught.

There is an aura of confidence with most I’s dotted and t’s crossed. They will not follow the rules but they know them very well. There is also no downtime. You will likely not get a few hours let alone days or weeks of relative calmness.

With the personality disorder they know they function better creating chaos. With the personality disorder, there is a severe lack of emotional empathy.

Emotional empathy is that feeling we get when we just think about doing something and how that something will impact someone.

That’s different from cognitive empathy, where we are aware of other peoples feelings and how they respond. Emotional empathy is like our moral compass, if it does not work at all, chaos will ensue. Which is why maybe we need to reconsider renaming the behavior, to remove the confusion.

People who have emotional empathy and engage in narcissistic abusive behaviors probably fall into the Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder category, a newer category of trauma disorders with various symptoms related to trauma (Courtois & Ford, 2021). We all have heard of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And if I were to make a comparison, which is also the key requirement to PTSD, the event is huge.

Think of it like Superstorm Sandy, you wake up the next morning and the entire coastline has suddenly and destructibly changed. CPTSD is more like erosion. It is a consistent crashing of waves on the shoreline and they are also probably a few PTSD type events to boot.

CPTSD takes your whole life work into the diagnosis, and at some point the life of a clinician will be made easy because we will all use it as your diagnosis.

Most of us grow up in what we may perceive as normal environments. Life isn’t easy, we start creating behaviors the moment we are born.

Attachment Theory may sound simple, but we are a lot more complex than the boxes we check for the theory (Bowlby, 1988).

Independent and secure attachments are what we all strive for. We believe in ourselves, if it goes wrong we don’t fail, we learn. We know we aren’t perfect but we understand that’s Part of what makes us great.

Then we have the insecure attachments.

Anxious attachments are extremely loyal but they can also become very overwhelming as they try to fix everything, especially when they are discarded. Avoidants will break a glass on the floor apologize and runaway. They come back later filled with guilt and will finally offer to help.

Disorganized attachments are a combination of anxiety and avoidant. They rush in to put the glasses away and runaway once they break one. Whether you feel secure or insecure depends on your environment as well. 28 years past my athletic prime one thing remains the same, I still feel a lot more secure in water and in a pool than I do on a basketball court.

Our brains thrive in the familiar hence how we can be secure in one environment and insecure in others (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007). Most of us with emotional empathy develop good old-fashioned anxiety and behaviors that fall into those 4 categories in different environments. And as we go through life our experiences and emotional empathy start to shape how we interact with other people.

Most of us figure out that if someone or something has a firm boundary or limit, no matter how big the temper tantrum, you must accept that’s how it goes or you do it anyway and learn what is called a consequence.

But some people, for a variety of factors that seem to correlate with the narcissistic abuse behavior, they never figure out that temper tantrums do not work.

They never seem to grasp that when you cross these uncrossable boundary and limit the consequence is destructive for themselves and everyone around them. They will upend you and everyone around you and they will hit the bricks the moment that they light the fuse. And it will be maddening because you will see them with the lighter, you will watch them pour on the gasoline, everyone who they allow to see it will see it.

Yet like an addict, and this is addictive behavior, they will deny knowing what the definition of a fire even is. This is because they never learned how to be a Part of a group and meet their needs within a group.

There is also the strong possibility of something PTSD in scope happening, and people reverting into these behaviors. It’s constant survival.

It reminds me of this rescue I have, Dean, he is a little timid runt who gets along with the other cats all day long but once it’s dinner time he goes feral. He is a little monster. The other two cats who are both a lot bigger just get out of the way with zero resistance. And that’s the goal with the narcissistic abuser.

Just instead of a bowl full of wet food, it’s some sort of behavior that will shatter the reality of you and everyone around them. The people who act like this will also leave a lot of breadcrumbs, like they want you to catch them.

If you stick around long enough you will become so desensitized to their behavior that you will not notice that you are doing many of the same things, avoiding, lying, and manipulating others because of the guilt and shame associated with the relationship.

Here are 10 signs common with people who engage in narcissistic abuse:

1. They Have a Sad Unresolved Origin Story.

This is what gets you hooked.

People who engage in narcissistic abuse score very high on the ACES (Felitti et al., 1998) and neglect, abandonment and abuse are common themes. Because they never learned how to build secure attachments, because everyone always leaves or was never there, they do not understand the value in relationships that the rest of us learned.

You will see this pattern, this unresolved abandonment in their adult relationships.

They do not know what to do with people of value because they never had value in their life.

They will consistently gravitate towards unhealthy relationships that share their chaos. This is why when you do see cycles of long term narcissistic abuse, like married with children, you will see the other partner provide that unhealthy guilt focused support. This validates the narcissists “nobody cares about me anyway” attitude.

The longer you remain in the relationship, the more likely you are going to be manipulated into thinking that you are doing the same thing. When you are healthy, the only tool you have is control over your access. When you say, I am cutting back my access because of this behavior, they will angrily tell you that you are guilting them into stuff.

When you protest feeling used they will say they never asked for any of the things that they have constantly asked for.

This origin story will also set off most of our reward systems. The reward system is designed to motivate us to achieve things, and will be touched on more shortly. If you are a helper or a fixer you will get a dopamine rush and that, whether they know or do not know, is how they hook us.

Lastly, some people may experience severe trauma and go into a narcissistic abusive behavior pattern. This is a survival mode where fellow humans around you are dangerous.

I had a client in his late 50’s who never came to therapy before but was at his wits end.

He knew he was a little rough around the edges but his wife was constantly accusing him of affairs, belittling him, and according to the client the living situation was chaotic and stressful. His wife had been assaulted at work by a male. This triggered assaults by her father during her childhood and created this response which had never existed before including olfactory hallucinations from cologne.

The same behavior we call narcissistic abuse suddenly sounds a little tough with the narcissistic abuse label. If you have empathy you are struggling to use the word.

Trauma researchers describe this as repetition compulsion — the unconscious drive to recreate early conflict in search of control (Freud, 1920, van der Kolk, 2014).

Children exposed to chronic humiliation and inconsistent caregiving often internalize both the abuser and the victim, switching between them when triggered (Schimmenti & Caretti, 2016).

This becomes the backbone of what clinicians see as narcissistic defenses — the need to project perfection outward to hide fragmentation within (Kernberg, 1975).

2. Pathological Envy - Money and Attention.

We all have a little bit of this.

Who doesn’t like to talk some shit. It will start off small and feel kind of normal, depending on your values. As things progress, you’ll notice that they have no fucking chill. The theme of money seems prevalent too. Most if not all of us understand the value of money but we, at least in theory, find more value in living life. People who engage in narcissistic abuse have this perverse and all consuming obsession with money.

When you grow up in a world of scarcity, and you struggle to measure the value of the unmeasurable (marginal utility for you economy nerds) money becomes the measuring stick.

They will complain about everyone else and what they have.

They will always be the rising star because they are too insecure to take the risk and be the star. They will also use it, when they have it, as control.

When you get a $1500 Zelle on your anniversary because they tell you that you are everyone elses safety net and now you have your own, them, you feel really weird.

A Part of you has sympathy, like damn the world fucked you up so much that this is where you are at. While the other Part of you is so disappointed because your real need, for them to just show up, and they never show up.

It is also control, here is measurable value, now I can pull my shit and make your head spin.

And it is almost always something they learned during their origin story. Whether by circumstance, divorce or as we are seeing today parents having to work longer hours.

It is also the impact of generational trauma. Here is $20 sorry I can’t fill your need nor care and or know how to address the created emotions in my child.

This form of financial codependency can continue well into adulthood too as that childhood trauma was never resolved.

Poor impulse control often leads to poor financial decisions and anxiety and a repeat of those childhood behaviors.

The other area of envy, your attention.

This is harder for them to measure and you will notice it is very all or none because if you know it or not, you are competing with them.

It will start out as being funny, “do you ever shut up” and that will evolve to being scolded for “talking to everyone.”.

And if you need support and do not show intense gratitude when you ask, they will not show up. Friend dies unexpectedly or family member suddenly falls ill, that’s the time to betray you, you’re distracted.

Clinically, this is the intersection of pathological envy (Klein, 1957) and externalized self-esteem (Kernberg, 1975, Kohut, 1977). It’s the fusion of admiration and resentment — loving what others have but hating what it reveals.

The nervous system can’t distinguish between emotional safety and financial success — both flood the same reward circuitry (Damasio, 2003, Porges, 2011). So when the admiration fades, the craving kicks in. New job, new car, new distraction — same loop.

CPTSD frameworks describe this as externalized regulation (Courtois & Ford, 2021): the attempt to stabilize self-worth through external metrics instead of internal calm.

That’s why peace feels foreign.

3. Poor Impulse Control - Reward Dysregulation Loop.

At first this is going to be dope as fuck because it’s fun!

If you are reserved, they will help break you out of your shell.

If you are a free spirit like me you finally have a partner in crime.

Yet everyone has a point where they have to slow down, no not them. Once they get going, they never stop never stopping.

Try to slow things down, and you will become the enemy. They never grew up and you are not allowed to try to start doing that now.

And whatever it is that they are doing, that secret life that they are protecting, once they have a taste of that they will never stop and protect it by all means.

They act like addicts. It’s sloppy. They leave little breadcrumbs here and there as if they want to get caught.

You will just rationalize it as a cry for help but sadly it is just the sloppiness of the reward system and an excuse to discard you later.

So when you notice an influx of White Claw cans and hope it’s just alcoholism, you will be shamed and belittled for having the nerve to count them but will not be surprised when they finally admit they have been drinking for two, literally.

For most people, impulse control grows with the negative consequences.

You do something reckless, it hurts, and you learn. But in trauma, especially when shame or neglect wired the nervous system early, that cause-and-effect circuit gets distorted.

People raised in chronic chaos don’t connect behavior with safety — they connect behavior with relief. So the risk feels good because it interrupts the discomfort. The brain learns that the rush is the only way to feel anything.

Neuroscience calls this reward loop dysregulation — the same mechanism seen in addiction (Volkow et al., 2016).

The dopamine spike isn’t about pleasure, it’s about regulation. When life feels flat or unpredictable, impulsivity becomes the self-soothing strategy. That’s why these individuals often seem magnetic — spontaneous, exciting, unpredictable. Their chaos syncs with yours before you realize it’s not adventure, it’s avoidance.

In trauma physiology, this reflects reward system hypersensitivity and amygdala overactivation (Porges, 2011, van der Kolk, 2014). The nervous system craves intensity because calm once meant vulnerability.

Even when they say they want peace, peace feels wrong — too quiet, too close to being forgotten. Impulse control failures in trauma survivors aren’t about weak will — they’re about hijacked circuitry.

The prefrontal cortex, responsible for planning and reflection, goes offline under emotional stress (Arnsten, 2009). The limbic system — the seat of emotions and survival — takes over. They don’t think their way through choices, they feel their way into chaos.

Personality theories classify this under impulsive-compulsive spectrum behaviors, common in Borderline, Antisocial, and some Narcissistic traits (American Psychiatric Association, 2022, Millon, 2011).

But the function is always the same: Avoid pain. Seek relief. Repeat until numb.

4. Attachment Collapse - No long term supports.

If you are in the thick or the aftermath of narcissistic abuse you probably feel this way right now.

Every new low in the relationship means you are sucked in more, acting like them. You probably have already said too much to friends and family.

You are avoiding, lying, and gaslighting because of your own embarrassment and shame of being in the relationship. Plus the wrongs being perpetrated are so overwhelmingly embarrassing that you isolate. You are hiding their abuse and protecting them while they constantly disrespect you.

You mention the cheating, drinking, drugging, or gambling once or twice and your supports take your side and challenge your perspective.

It’s hard enough to defend infidelity once, but once it hits two or three times it is basically double digits with real friends and families. Because we associate attachment with safety, we will eat some crow, be called a fucking idiot, or just smile when your family mentions how you seem more relaxed suddenly.

When attachment is unsafe, like with the narcissistic abuser, they crave the chase, but like the dog who finally catches the car, they do not know what to do.

So they self sabotage but call it bad luck with friends. It might even make sense when you first meet them.

Since you are unaware that they go from one self manufactured crisis to another, you just think the last one was a learning experience and starting from scratch is Part true and Part distortion.

No, that last self created clusterfuck was someone else’s chance to finally get off Frye Festival Island.

In trauma theory, this is called attachment dysregulation (Bowlby, 1988, Liotti, 2004).

Connection was never safe, so closeness feels like a trap. It is a sad paradox too. The people who lived a life of abandonment, who fear it, go out and create it.

Clinically, this is known as deactivation and hyperactivation of the attachment system (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2007, Fonagy et al., 2002).

They oscillate between desperate pursuit and cold withdrawal — approach, retreat, repeat.

The moment vulnerability enters, their nervous system hits the eject button. And when the last real support finally gives up, they frame it as confirmation — “See? Everyone leaves.”.

And maybe that’s the saddest Part. They tell the story so well at first that even we start to believe it — until we finally see it’s not misunderstanding keeping them alone.

Attachment collapse often appears in behavioral patterns shaped by chronic trauma, including those marked by emotional volatility, avoidance of intimacy, and dependency masked by control (Courtois & Ford, 2021, American Psychiatric Association, 2022).

The nervous system equates attachment with danger and distance with safety.

Therapy has to rebuild that equation from the inside out — not by proving love, but by helping them tolerate connection without panic or deceit. The goal isn’t to make them attach — it’s to help them regulate while attached. Because to someone who’s only known volatile love, calm connection feels like abandonment in slow motion.

5. The Hidden Crowd.

In retrospect, The Giglio beach Serial Killer being in the networking group is now the tamest part of this whole on and off again experience.

Whatever it is that is the driving force for the conflict, this is the group that validates their behavior the secret cast and crew.

It will start out very small and mentioned in passing too.

You will be perplexed, like how with that face and those teeth in the name of “kink” are is that nepo baby (her words) able to find men who once a month pay the hotel and other expenses for their monthly NYC networking trips.

And no sex. Maybe a tickle every now and then to keep the grift going.

Because they breadcrumb, they have the need to feel important, they gossip and you’ll learn that these men are more like marks, where a husband and wife work together to find and confirm only extremely insecure men who act like they can afford the lavish gifts.

Oh now I get it. They are predators.

If you get enough people together, all engaging in a common theme, whether kind or unkind, the behavior will be validated.

The stories with these groups will constantly slide away from your values too.

It will start as healthy kink, then kink, then open when it’s all just predatory behavior. And you’ll see the person you care about chase this dragon like a puppy. It will infuriate you because you know the value you are showing verse the lack of value offered by the people they seek.

It will be heartbreaking when despite all the chaos this group has created, they are happy because everyone will chip in $100 per person for the group birthday gift instead of the usual $20.

Here is what’s even more heartbreaking, you are doing the same exact thing trying to save the relationship.

You will not realize it until you are totally done, chasing someone who is dismissive and disrespectful, the only difference is you are probably fresh out of supports.

The access you are granting is validating that behavior. Unfortunately, this secret group and secret toxic behavior is an addiction. In the same way you must figure it out, they have to figure it out.

From a trauma framework, this pattern reflects attachment reenactment combined with covert reward-seeking behavior (Courtois & Ford, 2021, Volkow et al., 2010, Fonagy et al., 2002). It’s a defense against shame and exposure — a way to maintain control by hiding vulnerability behind people who model even worse behavior.

Clinically, it overlaps with intermittent reinforcement cycles seen in addiction and covert narcissistic defenses(Kernberg, 1975, McWilliams, 2011). The secrecy isn’t incidental — it’s protective. It keeps them from having to confront how far they’ve drifted from their own values. By oversharing just enough, they maintain the illusion of honesty. By hiding the rest, they protect the addiction.

Here is a common theme I experienced and my clients mention a lot.

These people, their friends, suck.

It starts with bewilderment, they’ll call them good friends and confidants. You will see how they are used and you will totally forget how they are using you.

For me it was the New Rochelle realtor who couldn’t sell a house, couldn’t be a father, couldn’t be husband but he can grow mushrooms and microdose everyday.

I was told over and over “we are just good friends”, until that one night they kiss.

Normally you would leave but you see the person you care about crumble.

He told his wife and his wife told everyone in New Rochelle.

And everyone from New Rochelle is dropping into the person you love’s DM’s calling them a homewrecker.

You become lost and vexed when the person you love accepts and goes to their kid’s bar mitzvah. You know they were just a fucking envelope.

You are not surprised though when you hear how this loser, who needs intimacy coaching and his wife are now “open”.

You are surprised when suddenly, your partner who was normal, shows how much this group has influenced them and they want to be “open”.

You notice the person you love suddenly start pulling back. You’ve been through this before with a guy from Maine who lived on his father’s couch from a mutual iphone video game.

Fuck you they were grieving a previous mistake she said.

You ask about their behavior out of concern because who would betray and cheat on you again.

The person you love says that they are stressed and overwhelmed. That they are in a dark place.

Then you learn that one of the major factors is that good friend doing what any good friend does and invites their friend in need to participate in their open relationship.

And she does, reality crashes.

Your heart will drop shortly after when 2 out of 3 of their toxic friends suggest Zoloft to fix that dark place, the third, the real estate agent, suggests that the person you love should get a hotel room.

You’ll put your foot down, they’ll panic because you’ve finally had it.

Promise it’s over, promise to go to therapy, promise to make and commit to the relationship.

You’ll buy into it. It’s all you want to hear. And two weeks later the same thing will happen again.

And you’ll fall for it one more time. It will be your fault, your firm “no” and it is so firm that I do not want to hear or speak about it again.

This will be interpreted as “if I tell him over and over when I am not with my family I am with you, he will feel secure and not question a thing.”.

I got my fake commitment and fake security!.

Time to be vulnerable.

So when I questioned the empty White Claws cans after family weekends. Well the fucking nerve of me to see if everything was okay.

I really wish it was that kind of cry for help but no it was the real estate agent.

When she told me, I was blamed, I should have known.

My first reply was “so you go on play dates” and that was disrespectful.

I got the old “I broke it off on June 30th” but the bags were still full of White Claws despite me going into survival mode to fix things.

Hades Town is great but I totally understand why Boop got cancelled.

And you sit there afterwards, waiting for the train, waiting for appreciation but instead it’s an itinerary of expensive events.

And one week later, there are the breadcrumbs, that bag is still full, just tied so you can’t see in it. You are pretty positive that their therapist is fake. You realize that you are the pathetic one and you finally feel numb.

This is a battle you cannot fight. It’s theirs.

The more you raise valid points, the more they will dig in their heels and defend them.

They are never going to see the correlation between those people and the destruction and chaos they influence even when that chaos and destruction influence the most innocent people in their lives.

You don’t realize it but you are doing the same thing with your friends and family.

6. They Act Like Human Slot Machines.

They are fucking fun.

At least in the beginning of their destructive cycles. They hit you with a lot of stimuli all at once. That phone call at 5:55am less than 8 hours after your first date ended, that was no accident, that’s to light up the reward system of your brain.

Like the casino, your value is attention, but unlike the casino, where there is at least a minimum daily payout percentage, this social exchange will slide in their favor.

You will become loyal but because they only know abandonment and neglect, they do not understand it.

Normal for them is toxic, and once you show normal, they will start acting out.

They’ll weaponize their need for space, to live their secret life, but attack you when you are exhausted and need the same.

They remind me a lot of heroin addicts.

I have asked plenty of them what is the best Part, and for the most Part it is everything leading up to doing the heroin.

Once they get to that spot, their ritual place to use, they’ll look at the heroin in disgust. They will ask themselves why did they do this and then do the heroin anyway.

That’s why the narcissistic abuser just discards you.

They copy their own experience being discarded and until they do the work will continue to sadly chase those who discard them like a puppy.

For us, that’s cruel and that sends us into a crazy reward cycle. It feels like the dealer pulling 21 after you double down. They won’t flinch. This is different from an avoidant by the way.

A healthy avoidant will communicate they have no bandwidth, take their space, and live with the rules of the relationship. The narcissistic abuser might try this tactic, but that space is just cover for their secret life.

The crisis when their ex mother in law passes will be the spot to ask for space, and you will feel good giving it, partly because they are acting out towards you, projecting their misery in the situation they created onto you and partly because they wanted cover to go on a play date with the realtor.

This is also a spot where you might start to see the difference between this being a personality disorder and a trauma behavior.

The personality disorder will overwhelm you with details. You will be attacked for not paying attention.

The narcissistic abuser will shut down and be very vague and evasive.

You will be attacked for not knowing and asking questions.

This pattern exemplifies intermittent reinforcement—the same behavioral schedule that drives gambling addiction (Skinner, 1953, Schultz, 1997).

Attention and affection arrive unpredictably, producing powerful dopaminergic spikes that condition the partner to seek the next reward. Neurobiologically, the uncertainty, not the pleasure, becomes addictive. In trauma-bonded relationships, cycles of reward and withdrawal mimic substance dependence.

Studies on traumatic bonding confirm that inconsistency strengthens emotional attachment, even in abusive contexts (Dutton & Painter, 1993, Carnes, 2019).

This is reinforced through gradual desensitization, where small boundary tests normalize larger violations (Stark, 2007).

Once the partner begins self-correction—working harder, apologizing more, trying to earn back warmth—the relationship shifts from mutuality to control.

The resulting cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) keeps them invested, leaving would mean admitting the “love” was manipulation.

7. They Find Problems with Everyone, Including You.

This is a Part of their envy and projection.

You will not be able to enjoy a nice politics free Independence Day bar-bq. It won’t be because of their desire to be the center of attention, you are used to them taking the joke too far and turning it into ridicule.

No it’s the walk home where suddenly everyone is too MAGA and they don’t know how much longer they can tolerate it.

Or it’s being invited by one of the many normal people from their networking group to spend a week a few houses down from T Swift on the Rhode Island shoreline.

The nerve of them to have such a huge house and you have your own space. Even worse, you had to do your own food shopping.

This is their toxic envy.

This is them projecting their insecurity.

It will start with others than it will move to you.

It will start with money.

They make double what you make and over extend yourself?

Well don’t have the nerve to be successful and enjoy it, you will be labeled and hounded as irresponsible.

And it will intensify with anyone you say hello to. It will spin over into your close relationships, the goal is to isolate you because they are projecting their own misery of the self-imposed isolation they have created.

It is called splitting.

You will adjust too, you will correct because some of the stuff makes sense and that will freak them out because they do not fix anything about themselves.

The stuff about other people mostly becomes noise.

It was mostly petty until I received the most venomous comment related to saying hello to someone from my childhood.

I tried to write it off as the usual shitty impulse control but they very clearly saw the disdain on my face.

You learn very quickly that if you try to reframe any of it, if you try to encourage them to practice some appreciation, you will be gaslit because you are not validating their feelings.

They do not know how to appreciate anything.

This is where you see it with everyone and everything else but refuse to accept they do not appreciate you.

Clinically, this is projective identification — a defense mechanism where someone externalizes unwanted emotions (Kernberg, 1975, McWilliams, 2011, Courtois & Ford, 2021).

They don’t know how to regulate shame or envy, so they project it onto others and attack it there.

It’s the emotional version of hot potato.

When contempt replaces connection, the brain releases dopamine in the ventral striatum, the same area that responds to power, validation, and reward (Zahn et al., 2009).

That’s why it feels good — for a second. Insulting someone gives temporary relief from the pain underneath. But like any addiction, the crash comes quick. The attack becomes habit. The habit becomes personality.

And eventually, they’re surrounded by people too afraid or too numb to tell them the truth.

The collapse- once they’ve burned enough bridges, the loneliness sets in.

But instead of realizing they caused it, they rewrite the story. Now they’re the victim of betrayal, surrounded by hypocrites.

Everyone left, and no one understands.

It’s tragic because the pattern always ends the same way — they start seeing ghosts of their own behavior in everyone else.

Everyone’s “toxic.” Everyone’s “selfish.” Everyone’s “fake.” And for a while, you start believing it too.

8. The Velociraptor.

They will test everything like the Velociraptors from Jurassic Park. This is how they identify if you will be their victim. At first, they seem apologetic. “It won’t happen again.” “I was just tired.” “You’re right, I should have told you.” It feels resolved — until it happens again. Then again.

Each time, the infraction grows just a little. Each boundary crossed becomes the new baseline.

Soon, you realize they aren’t sorry — they’re gathering data. They learn what they can get away with, and what you’ll rationalize in the name of understanding.

That’s when the manipulation sharpens.

You confront them and they flip it: DARVO — Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender (Freyd, 1997).

They say you’re overreacting, that you misunderstood, that they were only doing it because you made them feel unwanted.

Suddenly, your hurt becomes their excuse.

It is confusing because Part of you wants to believe them.

You remember the version of them who listened, who apologized, who said they didn’t want to hurt you. And that Part of them is still there — just buried under layers of deflection and control.

Every confrontation becomes a mind game. You question your memory, your tone, your reality.

You start keeping track of dates, receipts, messages — proof for something you shouldn’t have to prove.

Your journal even starts scolding you.

It’s exhausting, and that’s the point.

When you’re tired enough, you stop fighting back. That’s when they know they’ve won. Not because they were right — but because you’ve stopped resisting.

This cycle mirrors coercive control and intermittent reinforcement mechanisms seen in abusive relationships (Dutton & Goodman, 2005, Freyd, 1997). Each violation erodes psychological safety and rewires expectation — punishment and reward blur together.

Victims begin to experience cognitive dissonance, defending the very person who’s undermining them (Festinger, 1957).

The DARVO response protects the abuser’s fragile self-concept by shifting blame outward (Freyd, 2018).

It’s not accountability they fear — it’s exposure. To admit fault would mean facing the truth that every fence they test eventually breaks someone who trusted them.

Clinically, this is boundary testing through coercive conditioning — an intersection of trauma-bonding, narcissistic defense, and learned manipulation (Courtois & Ford, 2021, Dutton & Goodman, 2005). The individual uses micro-transgressions to assess control while avoiding overt accountability.

9. Avoidant Discard.

This is the Part that makes your head spin. This is the Part that really crashes reality.

You make a fatal mistake.

After all the bullshit, after all the nonsense, after all the chronic stress and abuse, you tell them you just want normal.

You passionately make the case for how when you both act normal, things actually go very well. And they look right at you, with those sad brown eyes, they tear up.

Maybe they finally are done, but even if they mean it, they do not share your concept of normal.

And you will make that fatal move, calmly, with love and compassion, you will offer to find a way to be non-judgemental and fix it. They might even initiate the idea of change.

And you will have days, maybe a week, and then they will be gone.

You will get off that flight from Miami, they will claim they need a social media cleanse, but no they are just getting rid of you because they find more value in that trip to Europe or to the Grammy’s.

They’ll buy you a beautiful watch, they’ll actually take you out and pay for your birthday dinner and just disappear after without a trace.

The discard would be the cruelest Part of the whole process, but we still have to get to the hover.

And you will not know what to do because technically this is the aftermath from the clusterfuck they created. This is the clean up.

Clinically, this is avoidant attachment deactivation coupled with narcissistic withdrawal (Levy et al., 2011, Fonagy et al., 2018).

The individual experiences intimacy as threat — not safety. So, when connection deepens, their nervous system flips into defense mode.

They justify it as “self-care,” but physiologically it’s a dissociative shutdown — a numbing of emotional vulnerability (Courtois & Ford, 2021).

Avoidant types regulate fear of rejection by rejecting first (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991).

They’d rather burn the bridge than risk standing on it.

Research shows this discard phase often activates shame-driven devaluation — turning affection into disgust to justify the exit (Ronningstam, 2013, Tangney & Dearing, 2002). That’s why they can act cruel right before leaving.

It’s easier to discard someone you’ve convinced yourself deserves it.

Clinically, this phase reflects avoidant defense through relational deactivation — the final act in trauma-bonded behavioral cycles (Fonagy et al., 2018, Courtois & Ford, 2021).

Therapeutic work centers on distress tolerance and secure reattachment — teaching the individual to hold closeness without collapse, and the survivor to see the silence for what it is: not a reflection of worth, but a symptom of their fear. The discard isn’t rejection. It’s retreat. And it says more about the fortress than the person they’re running from.

10. The Hover and Return.

For a woman, this is the scariest Part of the narcissistic abuse cycle.

It is often what keeps them from leaving the relationship.

They’ve tried to leave a few times before and somehow they always come back.

The first time I caught it was a new follower who somehow always saw my Instagram stories as soon as I posted them. @Clarathetherapist quickly became my number one fan.

I guess because I am a guy, it kind of made me feel hopeful. Now when I see it it feels triggering.

They watch and they wait for things to start going well.

You are getting their mojo back.

I do not know if they legitimately get so envious that they come back to crush whatever gains you made, that sounds very personality disorder, but I don’t want to rule out some of the thought process.

They definitely get upset if you show that you are happy without them.

You’ll fuck this up first.

You will be a fool and wish them a happy birthday.

You will reconnect.

Next day they will suggest going to Miami because they want to avoid the DC trip they planned with the new guy.

Oh by the way, that new guy is done, they see the errors of their way and commit to you.

You will think you are smart and they’ll agree to split the hotel and airfare.

You’ll pay for everything else.

3 of the four days will be magical but when they realize they must go home and deal with the mess they created, they will shutdown and discard you after you carry their luggage inside of their house.

A few months later, They will accidently trip and fall the moment they land after the Grammy’s.

And when they know you are not really in the mood to fuck around, they’ll make it an attack, to get a reaction and a respond.

You’ll be accused of driving by and stalking them, that little member of their family who barely knows you, saw you, and you will feel really stupid when you see how clear of a view of the street their Ring Camera has.

This is the hoovering phase of trauma-bonded relationships (Carnes, 1997, Courtois & Ford, 2021).

The abuser senses emotional distance — their nervous system interprets it as abandonment.

So they reach back out, not from love, but from panic.

Research shows this re-engagement triggers the same dopamine pathways that lit up during the early stages of the relationship (Fisher & Brown, 2018). The brain associates contact with relief, not danger.

That’s why survivors often relapse into the relationship despite knowing better.

The behavior itself is compulsive — a form of attachment re-enactment rooted in fear of rejection and need for control (Herman, 2015).

They don’t come back for closure, they come back to reset the hierarchy.

Clinically, this phase reflects compulsive re-engagement in trauma-bonded attachment systems (Herman, 2015, Courtois & Ford, 2021). The drive to return serves to avoid shame collapse and regulate dysphoric affect.

Conclusion.

When someone belittles you over and over again, it is abuse.

When someone cheats on you over and over again, it is abuse.

When someone promises change and lies about it, it’s abuse.

When someone gaslights and manipulates you to coerce intimacy, it’s abuse.

When you put your partner’s sexual health in danger without their knowledge, it’s abuse.

When everything they did, you feel the need to sit in silence and hide what they did, it’s abuse.

Talking about it takes their power away.

Shining a light on abusive behavior is not shame, it’s bringing accountability to the forefront.

I like many people did play a role in this.

We engage in addictive type behaviors trying to either fix them, fix the relationship or both.

Just like an addict we are so hyperfocused with the reward loop that we will not even realize all of the damage we are creating around us until we are left alone to clean up the mess.

We are allowed to feel angry, we are allowed to feel hurt, we are allowed to feel sad.

We are also allowed to appreciate what worked. I know for me it was a lot but I also know that the good distorted the whole picture.

It’s what kept you around longer than you should or could tolerate.

When you do break free, it will be scary.

The abuse stays.

You will second guess everything and everyone.

You will hop in and out different stages of grief and betrayal.

You will get back to normal, the calm you’ve been chasing will actually arrive, just without them.

It won’t be your fault, but you will beat yourself up for it.

You will realize that if they blew up their previous environment, with no thought or care of the collateral, including damaging the most innocent and defenseless that they weren’t going to stop for you.

When you finally accept this and realize your own hubris, you feel even dumber for a little bit but you also realize that there was nothing you can do, this is their battle to fight.

And if this is you, the narcissistic abuser. Hopefully you have gained a little bit of insight into what you are causing and creating. From the inside and outside, I think I can speak for my clients when I say, your behavior is cruel, it is sad, and it is frustrating.

Watching you spiral and self sabotage is both heartbreaking and maddening.

At some point you will hit a rock bottom. If you don’t take advantage of it, you will hit another and then another.

Some point that bottom will either involve a mandated program or the end of your career.

By then it will probably be too late. You will look around and nobody will be there.

Everyone who was rooting for you, believed in you will be gone.

And so will everyone who validated your toxic behavior.

And if you finally recognize that you are in that dark place, the place you’ve created, embrace it and change.

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