Narcissism - the Lure, the Loss and the Law

How to find a divorce lawyer who really understands Narcissism

Mon, 17 Mar 2025 12:23:12 GMT

All divorce lawyers are not created equal

Do I actually need a lawyer?

You may be wondering whether you need a lawyer if you are divorcing, as it is possible in some countries, including in the UK, to apply for a divorce online. However, here in the UK at least, there are three bits to the process – the paper exercise of the divorce, which you don’t need a lawyer for, and the other two parts – the finances and the children.

Settling the finances with a narcissist is unlikely to happen without legal input, sadly, as narcissists have a huge sense of entitlement, a need to ‘win’, a lack of empathy regarding your circumstances, a need for narcissistic supply through causing drama and conflict, a belief that you (once you have split up) are ‘all bad’ and deserving of punishment, and a need to draw out the process for as long as possible, by continually shifting goalposts. Add to that the fact that they are practised liars, and will not tell the truth about their finances, and you can see why successfully sorting things out on your own with them is highly unlikely (and probably impossible).

If they decide to cause conflict with the children, as they often do, lawyers may well also be needed here. Note that it is possible to represent yourself in court, without a lawyer, but that this tends to work best later on, when you have gained experience in how the system works, and are feeling emotionally stronger. I discuss the benefits of being a ‘Litigant in Person’ in Chapter 28 of my book Narcissists in Divorce: From Leaving to Liberty - The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth.

In the UK there are two types of divorce lawyer – the ‘solicitor’ who does the day-to-day work and liaises directly with you, and the ‘barrister’ (who speaks on your behalf in court, and gives more complicated legal advice). If your barrister has been instructed by your solicitor you can only contact them via your solicitor. However, some barristers (‘direct access barristers’) can be instructed directly by clients, without a solicitor being involved.

I need to be brutally frank here, and tell you that far too many lawyers will not disclose the reality of the dysfunctional court system to clients, and they have a vested commercial interest in protracted cases, which narcissistic divorces often become. The wrong lawyer can easily rack up your legal bills but leave you with little to show for it. This is particularly true in the UK for solicitors. So, if you happen to be a UK father, whose narcissistic wife is preventing you from seeing your children, you might want to contact Fathers 4 Justice (www.fathers-4-justice.org) before deciding on whether to instruct a solicitor.

Unfortunately, no such cost-effective organization exists exclusively for mothers battling abusive fathers in the UK. However, the UK charity Familes Need Fathers (fnf.org.uk) does provide resources to parents of any gender, for a membership fee.

But regardless of where in the world you live, most of you will need to know how to go about finding the right lawyer. The fact of the matter is this: most lawyers do not understand Narcissistic Personality Disorder to the extent they need to, to be able to help you effectively. And many will simply pooh-pooh the idea that your partner is a narcissist, because this is a term that commonly gets bandied around incorrectly, especially in break-ups.

I recently gave a talk to 250 lawyers about NPD, during which I asked how many of them had been told by a client that their ex was a narcissist, within the last 2 months. Every single hand went up. I then asked how many of them, having spent a bit of time on these cases, now thought that they were dealing with a ‘real’ narcissist. Only five hands remained in the air, and as I gave my talk, I could see these lawyers nodding their heads vigorously, as I described true narcissistic divorce behaviors. So you can see the problem – the ‘buzzword’ use of the narcissism word, in the general population, means that lawyers are unlikely to take your concerns seriously, until significant emotional, legal and financial damage has already been done.

This means that, unless you have a strong recommendation of someone who specifically understands NPD, you are going to have to interview quite a few lawyers (they will often offer free initial consultations) until you find the best one for you.

It may be that you have to settle for a lawyer who understands domestic abuse and coercive control instead, but only if they are willing to learn about NPD, and will take all of your concerns seriously.

It may also serve you to choose a lawyer who is not in your local area, especially as, since Covid, most consultations can be carried out remotely. You may have a distinct advantage if you do this, as an out-of-area lawyer will not have a reputation of ‘being reasonable’ to maintain with your local judges, and is more likely to actually fight for you, rather than trying to tiptoe around or placate the judge. Lawyers care deeply how their local judges view them – and this can be to your detriment.

How to interview a potential lawyer

When interviewing potential lawyers, you will need to:

Explain the narcissist’s behaviors
Explain how you have been affected
Ask the lawyer specific questions

Explaining your partner’s behaviors

Describe the behaviors that you (and any children) have been subjected to during your relationship, with specific examples of each behavior. It’s definitely worth writing these down, to keep you focused. Include examples of:

Physical abuse (often not present at all in NPD, however).
Rape or sexual boundary violations.
Repeatedly putting you down, criticizing you, or calling you names.
Isolating you from friends and family.
Manipulative behaviors.
Exploitative behaviors where they have used you for their gain.
Passive aggression (such as silent treatments or stonewalling you).
Projection (accusing you of things that they themselves are doing or being, for example accusations of affairs or flirting).
Favoring a ‘golden child’ over a ‘scapegoat’, and having an ‘invisible child’.
Going through repeated cycles of being nice to you, but then being nasty (the ‘cycle of idealization and devaluation’).
Lovebombing at the start of the relationship.
Low empathy towards you and the children.
Entitled behavior.
Controlling behaviors such as:

Controlling your finances, or preventing you from having a job.
Restricting your access to transport.
Threats, including of blackmail (e.g. revenge porn).
Threats if you leave them (including threats of suicide).
Monitoring how you spend your time.
Monitoring your communication with others.
Exerting control over your everyday life, such as dictating where you go, who you see, what you wear and preventing you from sleeping.
Stopping you from accessing support services, such as medical services or specialist support (including for the children).
Forcing you to take part in criminal activity such as taking the blame for their offenses (e.g. speeding tickets).

Destroying or damaging household goods, or cruelty to pets
Gaslighting such as by:

Telling you that you are ‘crazy’.
Telling you lies that make you question your reality.
Rewriting history so that you question your memory.
Invalidating your feelings (e.g. telling you that your feelings are ‘wrong’).

Explaining how you have been affected

Include examples such as:

Walking on eggshells.
Continually trying to please them with ‘fawning’ behaviors.
Anxiety, depression, panic attacks, complex PTSD.
Any physical illnesses.
Loss of confidence/self-esteem/support systems.

Asking the lawyer specific questions

You will want to know:

What they understand by the term Narcissistic Personally Disorder. If they tell you that they ‘don’t believe in labelling people’, that ‘everyone thinks their ex is a narcissist’, that narcissists are ‘just another word for high-conflict’ or that it ‘makes no difference whether your partner is a narcissist’ to the legal process and your divorce, get out of there, immediately. If they blithely tell you that they are completely au fait with dealing with narcissists, make sure they tell you the specifics of how narcissists behave in divorce. (A client of mine was once duped by his lawyer into believing that he understood NPD because he had written a blog post on his firm’s website about it. £85,000 later, and no further on in the case, it became patently clear that his lawyer’s blog post had simply been a way to jump on the NPD bandwagon, to attract clients, and in fact, he didn’t really have a clue.)

How much experience they have of narcissistic divorces, and what they think the chances are of settling things out of court (through negotiation through lawyers or mediation, for example). If they pride themselves on never or rarely having cases that end up in court, they probably do not have the experience that you need, as the fact is that most divorces like this end up in court.

Whether they think narcissists ‘calm down’ over time, and become more reasonable as the divorce progresses. The correct answer is that they do not. If they get this wrong, they have failed the interview.

Whether narcissists have the best interests of their children at heart. If they tell you that ‘all parents love their children, whether narcissists or not’ they will not be right for you, and they will enable a lot of damage to be done before they work out the truth.

Whether they will help you write any witness statements for court, and put together your financial disclosure, or whether they will just leave this to you.

Whether they will go through your partner’s financial disclosure (such as their bank statements) in detail with you, looking for discrepancies and missing information, or whether they expect you to do this without them (most simply do the latter).

Whether they are willing to learn about NPD (on their own time) and take on board what you tell them about it, so that your case runs more smoothly.

Key takeaways

It may take a while to find a lawyer who fits the bill. But whatever you do, don’t choose a ‘nice’ lawyer (with little experience of domestic abuse, coercive control or NPD) over a less personable one who does have the required experience. So often, my clients admit to me that they gave their kindly lawyer repeated chances, because they ‘liked them’, and because they thought that they could learn about NPD during their case, and so help others later on.

I’m going to be stern here: you do not just need ‘nice’, ‘understanding’ and ‘sympathetic’ – you need effective too. And as to educating your lawyer so that they can help others (if this is part of your thought process) – again, this may go against the grain, but now is the time for prioritizing your needs and those of your family.

I also have to caution you that a senior lawyer who seems very experienced may actually be too stuck in their ways to be effective in your case, although that’s not always true. Conversely, a very junior lawyer might find themselves overwhelmed by everything that comes their way during your case, but be unable to be honest about this with you, and carry on regardless. I’ll warn you now – you may well have to change lawyers at some point in the process, and I explain this further in Chapter 31 of Narcissists in Divorce: From Leaving to Liberty - The Truth, The Whole Truth and Nothing But The Truth , from which this blog post was adapted.

Getting a Personality Disorder Diagnosis for the Family Court

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 10:15:53 GMT

A blog post for family lawyers

Family lawyers: Is it possible to make a Part 25 application for an assessment where you think one of the parties in Child proceedings has a personality disorder? Absolutely, yes.

What most #familylawyers don’t know is that it is a cost effective way (much much cheaper than legal fees and repeated litigation) to inform the court of the true issues at play. Many legal professionals still believe that getting an expert #psychologist or #psychiatrist report will be ‘disproportionate’ and cause further delay to the case - but the delays in the system are so huge that such specialist assessments don’t really add to them.

But what about if the #Section7 report says it isn’t warranted? I’ve been involved in a number of cases where the social worker has been duped by the personality disordered individual, as the expert assessment has subsequently shown. A social worker failing to recognise personality issues or disorders (in which they receive no training) should be no bar to a formal assessment, in my view.

Thankfully, more and more judges are ordering these assessments, but there are various things you need to know to make this effective.

Which expert?

Firstly, choosing your expert: I’ve seen a number of CVs of psychiatrists and psychologists claiming to make personality disorder diagnoses for the courts in child proceedings, but many do not actually have the requisite training, and their reports are often non-committal and unhelpful to the court. Relatively few clinicians are able to make these diagnoses adequately for the court.

To be clear, you do not want a global ‘mental health assessment’ - if you suspect that a personality disorder or issue at the core, don’t muddy the waters by getting a general adult psychiatrist to exclude things like depression, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, addictions etc, unless these are also factors. Get a personality expert - preferably a forensic psychologist or forensic psychiatrist.

You want an expert who uses scientifically validated measures of personality testing, and who use various methods to assess the subject, only one of which is via semi-structured clinical interview. You want one who isn’t going to meet the subject over Zoom for an hour, but who will meet them in person and do more than one interview. You want one who will speak to other relevant people in the case to get a true picture of what is happening. Ask them how exactly they will make their assessment, and don’t shortlist anyone who doesn’t fit these basic criteria.

Also note that you cannot expect that, once you have a psychologist or psychiatrist lined up to make an assessment, they will somehow magically be able to see through the subject’s lies and manipulations - they will need evidence of those those lies and manipulations, and you will have to make sure that there is a mechanism for them to see that evidence. The subject being assessed will, of course, not agree to this, so you need to put as much evidence as you can in the bundles the expert will have access to, and make provision for them to be able to ask for additional evidence in your letter of instruction.

What to ask for

And what should you be asking for when you make your preliminary enquiries to find an expert? Many lawyers make the mistake of thinking that expert psychologists and psychiatrists will undertake parenting assessments, but this is not what they do. You are not instructing them to find out if they can change a nappy and fit car seat - you are asking them for their opinion on the potential emotional, psychological and physical effects upon the child (in the short medium and long term) of being parented by someone with the personality difficulties they have identified.

If you ask for a parenting assessment, the experts will run a mile.

Some other things to remember:

It is not for you to to request a diagnosis of a specific personality disorder - you just want to know about about personality difficulties/disorders relevant to the case.

A person can have personality issues which would not qualify for a full blown personality disorder diagnosis, but would still be a problematic parent for their child. You need an expert who can explain what these are likely to be to the court.

You do, however, want to be very specific about exactly what you need to know when it come to the relevance of any diagnosis. Is it treatable? How long would treatment take? What is the prognosis untreated? How would you know that treatment has worked?

What is the likely effect upon the child of being parented by a person with these difficulties (eg on their emotional and psychological development and wellbeing)?

You may be interested in specific traits, such as empathy (decreased in psychopathy and narcissistic personality disorder), and specify these. You may want to know what any diagnosis would mean regarding the parent’s ability to recognise and prioritise the needs of the child (narcissists see children as extensions of themselves, not as individuals, and rarely see or prioritise their needs).

What would any diagnosis or personality difficulties mean for the child’s safety? (Car seats, cycle helmets, risk taking behaviours in the parent such as risky driving may be relevant here).

If you are going to make an application of this nature within child proceedings and you want to know more, please do get in touch via my website, Thelifedoctor.org.

And if you suspect that your partner is a narcissist, and want to know more about how Narcissism plays out in the divorce, my book, the first of a series is available now: Narcissists in Divorce: from LoveLocked to Leaving. body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.

The #1 Narcissism Myth: "Narcissism isn't real".

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 11:02:00 GMT

Narcissism isn't real. Or is it...?

You already know that narcissism is a buzzword. You’ll have heard it being thrown about with abandon, to mean anyone who is disagreeable in some way. How many weeks have gone by when you haven’t chanced upon the word in a news or magazine article? Not many, I’ll wager.

And how many people have jumped on the narcissism social media bandwagon in the last few years? It’s astonishing to see how much content (note that I didn’t call it ‘information’) is available on the internet on the subject today. It’s mostly geared to appeal to our newly shortened attention spans, and often put together to play to algorithms which maximize visibility.

Punchy video shorts about narcissism have made their way onto every social media platform you can think of. You know the ones - “The top 10 things that narcissists don’t want you to know”, “5 ways to annihilate a narcissist”, “Why narcissists are pure evil”, and the like. Online forums such as Quora are flooded with stories and opinions about narcissists.

Even self-professed narcissists themselves are telling us what they are really thinking, how they are really feeling, and how we should really deal with them. In noticeably grandiose ways they lecture us about how incredibly complicated, or messed up, or clever they are (or whatever else works to give them narcissistic supply). It's easy to believe them, as you probably already know from your own brush with the narcissist in your life.

You'll also find hurt victims publicly ranting about their experiences, in real time, in understandable anger and frustration. And now even professional platforms, like LinkedIn, are also becoming swamped with narcissism ‘recovery’ content (which, ironically, usually features filtered photos of the creator, pouting and posing in something tight and flattering).

It’s all a bit much. Because an awful lot of this stuff is at best unhelpful, and at worst, just plain wrong . True narcissism is actually not complicated, once you get to grips with the basics. And the first, and most important point I want to make here is this – when I use the word narcissism, I am referring to a specific, real diagnosable personality disorder. And when I use the word ‘narcissist’, I am talking about someone who would qualify for a diagnosis of that disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (or ‘NPD’).

So to be clear - there is narcissism the adjective (used by the man in the street to mean anyone mean, vain or selfish), and narcissism the diagnosable personality disorder (NPD). Narcissism, in the way that I mean it, is definitely ‘real’, let me tell you. And it's surprisingly common -in people's home, at work and just about everywhere else.

If you want to know more about true narcissism, from a former medical doctor with a deep understanding of NPD, feel free to visit my website DoctorSupriya.com or check out my books . The podcast , 'Narcissists in Divorce' is another popular free resource that might help you. I'm also available for 1:1 sessions, if you wish.

The Reluctant Warriors

Mon, 01 Jan 2024 21:34:18 GMT

Let's talk about you

As we say goodbye to 2023, I’d like to thank my clients, all of whom it has been a such privilege to work with.

As time progresses I am always stunned by how much I see you grow and change. I see you, even when grief stricken and emotionally wrecked, learning ‘the narcissist rules’. I see you stand up and fight for your children in the face of a legal system that is abusive by proxy (because of the absolute lack of training of social workers , judges , lawyers and C afcass officers in personality disorders ). I see you do that despite knowing that the charming, plausible, victim-playing abuser may well fool these professionals, with serious, adverse, long term consequences for your children and yourselves.

I see you deal with unending false allegations of abuse, alcoholism, drug use, poor parenting and parental alienation . I see you deal with stalking & harassment (as the narcissist desperately tries to see or contact you to get their fuel from you) under the guise of wanting to ‘coparent’ with you – which no one else can see through.

I see you simultaneously turn into forensic accountants, detectives, house 'doer-uppers', child counsellors and narcissism educators of your friends, family and legal team. I see you deal with scoffing, eye-rolling and worse from the people who should support & believe you the most.

I know you cannot sleep, and can barely do your job, because you are doing the job that you thought your lawyers would do for you – poring over your ex's bank statements, working out how they will emotionally and financially abuse you next, defending your reputation from their smear campaign, writing court statements, gathering evidence and trying to keep your children safe.

I know how you panic when you get another abusive lawyer's letter from ‘the other side’. How sick you feel, how your thoughts rush and how heavily that sense of dread weighs upon you. I know you wonder how lawyers are even allowed to act in such unprofessional, abusive ways towards parents and families.

I know how it breaks your heart to have little choice but to end your marriage being cross examined on a witness stand, as if you are a criminal, and how far removed that is from the day you made your commitment to each other, with such joy and hope. I know how wrong it feels that the very fabric of the family law system is designed to perpetuate innocent people's trauma, in this, and other ways.

I know you wonder how you are supposed to give your lawyer your ‘instructions’ with so little advice from them. I know you wonder why they are unable to predict what is coming next, and seem so surprised by every turn of events instigated by your ex – these people who are supposed to do divorce work for a living. I know you wonder how everyone in the system can be so blind, and so utterly ineffective right up to the final order (and even beyond, opening you up to more post-divorce abuse).

And eventually, I see you learn how to reduce how much money you are haemorrhaging on legal fees. I see you learn that narcissists are not held to account for flouting court orders , lying brazenly and for perverting the course of justice with their manipulations. After 18 months or so of delays, I often see you represent yourselves, as there is no more money left to defend yourselves, and even if there is, you won’t be handing the narcissist more ways to financially abuse you.

And I see you do all of this when you are completely and utterly broken.

But, contrary to popular belief, victims of narcissistic abuse aren’t weak – quite the reverse. And the longer you stayed with your narcissist, the stronger you must have been to have coped with their behaviours.

But let me tell you this. After divorcing a narcissist, at some point, you will develop armour and weapons of your own. And if anyone, particularly another narcissist, dares to cross you, in any capacity, they will seriously wish they hadn’t. What doesn’t kill you makes you so, so much stronger. But let's be clear – you didn’t ask for this, it’s not a blessing, and no, you do not have to forgive your abuser to heal.

You, the reluctant warriors, are inspirations to me. It has been, and will continue to be an honour to do this work with you.

Happy New Year.

Dr Supriya McKenna offers 1:1 strategy coaching and support for the victims of narcissistic relationships by Zoom, and can work with their lawyers on their divorce cases. Inspired to write by the many people she has worked with over the last few years, the first book of her brand new book series, Narcissists in Divorce , From Love-Locked to Leaving , is out now.

Communication tips for your divorce lawyer

Mon, 14 Aug 2023 10:37:33 GMT

Most lawyers don't know what drives a narcissist

If you are divorcing a narcissist, it’s likely that you have a divorce lawyer. And it’s likely that the narcissist is running rings around them. But, even if your lawyer is informed enough to understand that narcissistic personality disorder is a real, diagnosable condition (and many aren’t), how they communicate with your ex (and their lawyer) is crucially important.

What many divorce lawyers fail to appreciate is that the normal rules of communication simply don’t apply when communicating with a narcissist. Narcissists aren’t driven by the same things that non-narcissists are, and they are wired completely differently. You may be aware of my phrase, ‘Narcissists are from Neptune’- inspired by the title of the classic book, ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’, which describes the different brain wiring between the genders, and what that means for effective communication.

"Narcissists are from Neptune..."

Well, the same is true for narcissists. If they were 3ft tall and had green heads, it would easy to remember to communicate with them in Neptunian. But of course, they look just like you and me, and they appear to be speaking the same language as us. But in actual fact, they are not.

Firstly, your divorce lawyer needs to understand what drives your narcissist so they do not feed into it , to your family’s detriment. Narcissists are driven by the need for narcissistic supply - the fuel that keeps them feeling emotionally safe. They are addicted to this fuel, but they do not know it. They cannot survive without it, and you, as their former partner, was their best source of it. When you left them (or when they left you), their biggest supply lines were cut.

No addict does well when their drug of choice is removed - and they often will do anything to get it back.

Usually without knowing why, a narcissist uses the divorce process, you lawyer, their lawyers and the courts to procure this fuel, which they obtain from:

Your emotional reactions
Drama
Conflict
Your fear

"Narcissists are driven by the need for narcissistic supply - the fuel that keeps them feeling emotionally safe"

Narcissists want to cause delay

The first point that your lawyer needs to be aware of is that a narcissist wants to cause delay. They want to keep you locked in this divorce battle for as long as possible, so get as much fuel from you. Enter the lawyer’s first mistake: Trying to explain a narcissist how if they can ‘achieve a quick resolution’.

In doing this, they are telling the narcissist exactly what to avoid doing. Trying to sell arbitration or hybrid mediation to a narcissist on the basis that it will mean that things get sorted out quickly is entirely counterproductive. Absolutely do not let your lawyer do it.

Instead, try to coax the narcissist into these quicker methods by playing on their sense of superiority. This is what the clever/rich/high status people are doing. These methods really mean that their points of view will be heard. That the professionals involved can be chosen from a list of really highly qualified people, rather than just being randomly allocated a judge (who may not even have a background in family law) or magistrates, who aren’t even legally trained.

"Enter the lawyer’s first mistake: Trying to explain a narcissist how if they can ‘achieve a quick resolution’."

Narcissists feed off your emotional reactions

Secondly, don’t let your lawyer write anything about your emotions in their letters to your ex’s solicitor. This is asking for trouble, and can only make things worse for you. “My client is shocked by your clients assertions…” “My client is disappointed/hurt/upset/ troubled by/concerned/outraged by your clients behaviour…”

No, no NO. In doing this your lawyer is telling the narcissist the very thing they want to hear. They will be receiving narcissistic supply from your emotions (even in writing). They will think, ‘Excellent - what I am doing is working! I will do more of the same!’

I’m not sure why lawyers feel the need to write emotively like like this, but they all seem to. Perhaps they think it will ‘look good to a judge’ (a judge won’t care, and will be going on the facts, not someone’s emotional reactions). Perhaps they think that it will appeal to the narcissist’s empathy (it won’t - narcissists are very low in empathy, and view their ex as ‘all bad,’ as they are unable to see people as a blend of good and bad traits). Perhaps they are simply doing what they’ve been taught to do, without questioning the detrimental effect of it. Or perhaps they are doing it because YOU want them too, because you want the narcissist to know how they are hurting you (pointless, and counterproductive, for reasons above).

Regardless of why your solicitor is writing like this, it has to stop. When communicating with a narcissist whether directly or via their solicitor, the aim is to stop feeding the narcissist narcissistic supply, so that they have to get it in another way - preferably from a new partner (though their adoration and attention).

I do carry out joint strategy sessions with clients and their lawyers, if this is something you are struggling with, and can even vet lawyers’ letters for them until they learn the strategies for themselves. To understand narcissistic personality disorder, your lawyer should also be willing to read ‘ Narcissism and Family Law - A Practitioners Guide’ on their own time.

And if your lawyer refuses to listen to the advice above, get another, who will. You do not need an inadvertent enemy in your own camp, no matter how understanding and nice they may seem. You need someone effective , who has the humility to learn how to best represent you, and your family.

What is a Narcissist?

Thu, 03 Aug 2023 10:43:51 GMT

The word "narcissist" is ubiquitous, but are we using it correctly or is it just a buzzword? Expert Dr Supriya McKenna explains what real narcissism is

Do you know a narcissist?

If you think of your everyday acquaintances, who springs to mind as being a possible narcissist?

Your housemate, who is too selfish and lazy to do her own washing up? Your sister, who has never left the house without full make up on? Your work colleague, who is obsessed with designer clothes? Your partner, who cheated on you? Your best friend, who insists on driving a sports car he can’t afford? That date, who ghosted you?

But are these people actually narcissists? Well, maybe—but having these traits in isolation doesn’t tell us much.

How to recognise a narcissist

True "narcissism" is actually Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), a real, diagnosable personality disorder, and there is a precise range of very specific behaviours that result from having it.

These behaviours go well beyond being just mean, vain or selfish—undesirable and irritating though these are.

"You (or someone you know) will definitely know a real narcissist—but it might not be who you think it is"

As a society, we have collectively misappropriated the narcissist word—and in using it incorrectly we are downplaying the seriousness of what real narcissism (NPD) is. And worse, because of this, we are missing the true narcissists in our midst. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is estimated to affect up to one in twenty people, although exact figures vary.

Each narcissist affects several people to some degree—their partners, children, extended family, friends, work colleagues and even their casual acquaintances.

What is Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

NPD is fundamentally a condition of low empathy, where the person has a very limited ability to step into another person’s shoes and feel their pain or joy (or any other emotion).This means that narcissists relate to people on a very different level to an empathic person. Essentially, they cannot deeply care about you, other than in the context of what you can do for them. Confusingly, narcissists are usually able to feign empathy.

If we add this low empathy to another hallmark feature of narcissism, a sense of entitlement, you can see how narcissists are able to exploit people for their own gain.The narcissist you know may be exploiting different people for different things. They might be taking credit for other people’s work, using their partner as a domestic slave or provider of sex, and using their children as a way to gain admiration from others.

"Narcissists are good at feigning empathy, but they cannot truly feel it"

Narcissists see people merely as objects, and their exploitation of others often tips into psychological (and sometimes also physical) abuse.

Are narcissists born or made?

NPD is partly genetic, but it mostly results from how, as children, the person adapted to a difficult upbringing. As a child, the narcissist developed coping strategies which became "wired in".

It’s this wiring that leads to the specific patterns of behaviour that adult narcissists exhibit.

The vast majority of people with NPD cannot be cured, although a few specialised psychotherapists report some success.

At the core of every single narcissist is a feeling of low self-esteem and shame. But these are feelings which a narcissist cannot bear, so they construct a false persona that they hold up to the outside world to hide behind.

"At the core of every single narcissist is a feeling of low self-esteem and shame"

This false persona is a shield. It protects the narcissist from feeling their true feelings—and it is very convincing to the onlooker indeed.

But a narcissist’s protective false persona can only survive in the presence of external validation.

"Narcissists need attention from others, at all times, preferably through admiration and adoration."

In the absence of this, they secure attention by causing drama and conflict—and even by instilling fear into others. When a narcissist is getting enough attention their false persona is strong, and they can believe that they are special and unique.

The most important thing to know about narcissists is that it is their desperate need to feel special that drives all of their behaviours, and that their need for attention (which is known as "narcissistic supply") is constant—their armour will crumble without it.

Types of Narcissistic Personality Disorder

There are four major types of false persona to look out for, which can overlap:

The Exhibitionist Narcissist appears to be devastatingly charismatic, and may be clever, funny, or very sexy. They relish attention.

The Devaluing Narcissist is openly toxic. They put people down in order to feel better about themselves through ridiculing, shaming, badmouthing and name-calling.

The Communal Narcissist presents themselves as a do-gooder—needing to be seen by others as the most generous, most kind or the most caring.
And the Closet Narcissist, the hardest type to spot, shies away from the limelight, but often associates with people who are special to feel special by association. They get their attention in much more sneaky ways than the other types of narcissist—often through playing the victim, and they appear quiet, shy and effacing.

"But, regardless of outward type, all narcissists exploit others,

and no matter how much love they receive,

they cannot be "loved better". "

Signs of narcissistic behaviour

Telltale behaviours of narcissism

"Love bombing" at start of relationships
Repeating cycles of niceness and nastiness
An inability to be alone
Lack of deep, long term friendships
Inability to take the blame or responsibility, blaming others instead
An inability to apologise and mean it
Violating boundaries
Lying and gaslighting
Episodes of rage
Jealousy
Accusing others of what they themselves are doing
Moral hypocrisy
Playing the victim
Lack of empathy
Entitlement
Exploiting others
Aggression (including passive aggression)
Devaluing and badmouthing others (putting them down, ridiculing them)
Manipulating and playing people off against each other
Selfishness
Conditional, shallow love
A need to control others

"Lying, gaslighting and manipulation are all hallmark traits of

Narcissistic Personality Disorder "

A true narcissist will exhibit nearly all of these behaviours and, the closer you are to them, the more of them you will see. But because they intersperse them with nice times, playing what I call "Nice Narcissist, Nasty Narcissist’" you are likely to find yourself sucked back into the relationship repeatedly.

This is what real narcissism looks like, and it’s unhealthy, toxic and hard to escape from. But it’s not so hard to recognise—once you know what to look out for.

This article originally appeared in Reader's Digest - you can read it here .

What you might not know about many divorce lawyers (until it's too late).

Wed, 17 May 2023 14:30:31 GMT

Let's talk about language

I’m pleased to see the 'Language Matters initiative' here in the UK, supported by the President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane. The aim is to combat the use of adversarial language in divorce, to help couples to resolve things more amicably. Moving away from the “Kramer vs Kramer’ type of language, using first names instead of ‘Applicant’ and ‘Respondent’, not referring to the ‘other side’, avoiding words like ‘battle’ are examples.

But what surprises me is how this is hailed as being ‘insightful’, ‘revolutionary’ and ‘forward thinking’, when in fact it is blindingly obvious to the average non-legal person. (Lawyers, if you don’t believe me, just go out on to the street and ask the first person you see what they think).

Why is it that the use of this appalling language has not been called out before?

Is it because that’s just how lawyers were taught to communicate, and they just never questioned it? (Surely not - lawyers are known for their high IQ’s).

Is it because that is what all the other lawyers do, and they don’t want to appear ‘weak’ to their clients, by using more appropriate language, when the other lawyer is not? (Hmm. I’m not convinced by this - a poll of my clients indicates that they would prefer the opposite, regardless of how the other solicitor is communicating).

Is it because it sounds ‘clever’ to write in ways which sound ‘legal’ and scary? (Possibly - but lawyers - surely someone else’s divorce shouldn’t be about patting yourselves on the back for sounding clever. Write a novel instead.).

Or is it because it suits most lawyers to increase the conflict, because it ramps up the costs to the divorcing couple?

We are always being told that family lawyers went into their jobs to help people. And some certainly did, and they are the ones that behave professionally in ways which are congruent with those values.

But the vast majority of UK family lawyers haven'y bothered to train in (or even know about ) out of court methods of dispute resolution. And they are not even members of Resolution, an organisation which provides further training to family lawyers.

How many of the lawyers who don’t belong to professional bodies, who do their own thing, who make court applications that they know can’t possibly succeed, who don’t bother to learn about domestic abuse, coercive control and narcissism - how many of them are going to have even heard of the Language Matters initiative? How many of them are going to be guided by it, when it will reduce their earnings by reducing conflict? Not many, I’ll wager.

"The general public do not know what they are getting into when they instruct a family lawyer."

The general public do not know what they are getting into when they instruct a family lawyer. They do not know that any conversation they have with their lawyer will be rounded up to the next 6 minutes (with no discernible justification - can’t you just bill for the actual minutes you spend instead?).

If they are in a high conflict divorce with a narcissist, they don’t know that it’s most likely that the person they hired to protect them will be completely unequipped to deal with their spouse, through a mind boggling lack of self-education. They don’t know that having the ‘protection’ of their own lawyer actually means that their spouse’s lawyer is actually enabled to hurl unfounded allegations at them, whereas being a litigant in person reduces how abusive the other lawyer could be towards them.

They don’t know that lawyers don’t have to get their clients to behave, but can become weapons of their abuse instead, and that there is no regulation that stops this. They don’t know that lawyers can write pretty much whatever their client asks them to write, on the grounds that they are 'following their client's instructions' and that the truth is irrelevant.

They don’t know that lawyers can advise their clients incorrectly, and make court applications on their behalf that are bound to fail - and then simply blame it on the judge, when it all goes wrong.

They don’t know that their lawyer can easily run up their costs by responding to every irrelevant letter that their ex has sent them through their solicitor, when in fact they don’t need to, preying on their client's fear of a judge believing the allegations.

They don’t know that the mass exodus of lawyers from family law might be related to all of this. They don’t know that the very lawyers that went into the job with principles and values are the ones most likely to throw in the towel, to do something more meaningful instead.

So yes, the Language Matters initiative is important. But more important would be to properly regulate the emotional and financial abuse by proxy that family lawyers engage in when writing letters to ‘the other side’. That’s what I’d like to see the President of the Family Division tackle next.

And, on the subject of language, at the moment, in the context of divorce, it is actually misleading to call most solicitors ‘family’ lawyers. It’s far too cuddly and empathic sounding, and doesn’t nod to the fact that the client’s family is not the priority - reaching their firm’s targets is.

‘Divorce lawyer’ is way more honest - and yes, I’m calling it out.

Let’s hope this changes. And quickly.

Gaslighting

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 16:30:17 GMT

What is Gaslighting?

Gaslighting is a key feature of narcissistic behaviour. The problem is that if you are immersed in a narcissistic relationship it can actually be very difficult to spot that it is happening to you - for very good reasons. And once you leave the relationship and look back, you are likely to be shocked at the level of gaslighting that occurred without you even recognising it.

So what is gaslighting? To give its proper definition, it's the ‘act of undermining someones reality, by denying facts, denying the environment around them, or denying their feelings.’

But let me simplify that. Basically, if someone is lying to you in a way that makes you question or stop trusting your own perceptions, memories or beliefs, then they are gaslighting you.

Gaslighting versus lying

Now you may be wondering what the difference is between gaslighting and just lying, so here’s an example to illustrate.

If we’d agreed to meet for dinner at 7pm, but I’d left the house late because I just couldn’t get my act together, I could lie to you and tell you that the traffic had been awful, and that that was why I didn’t arrive until 8pm. Here I’m not making you question or doubt yourself - I’m just telling you a lie.

But, if I was gaslighting you, I could tell you with absolute conviction that you had got the time wrong, and that we had agreed to meet at 8pm. I might then embellish that further by telling you that I’d noticed that you seemed to be forgetting small things, and losing your thread in conversations. I could even then ask you whether you’d considered talking to a doctor about it.

That’s gaslighting because it would make you question yourself , and make you doubt whether you had got the time right, or whether you are in fact making mistakes and forgetting things. Gaslighting is actually a two step procedure - first you are made to think that your thinking or feelings are distorted, and then the gaslighter tries to persuade you that their ideas are the true and right ones.

The term gaslighting originated from a 1938 thriller in which a husband makes his wife think she is 'going mad' by dimming the gas lamps in their home to just a flicker, and then denying that they are flickering when she questions him. So in this example, the husband was denying that her environment was what she thought it was, by telling her the lights that she could see flickering weren’t actually flickering.

As it happens, narcissists do both things - straight lying and gaslighting, and they do them both utterly convincingly. You probably already realise that the truth, to a narcissist, is what they say it is, at the time that they are saying it . They completely believe their own lies, which is how they get others to doubt themselves. And if you think about it, lying and gaslighting actually come very easily to narcissists because it’s essentially what they do all the time anyway - if you look the essence of narcissism, the narcissist hides their low self esteem behind a false persona, which they need other people to believe in so that they can believe in it themselves. None of this is conscious - it’s just what they do. This false persona is basically a lie - it's not a true representation of who they are. So you can see why it is so easy for them to effortlessly lie about other, smaller things too.

"If someone is lying to you in a way that makes you question or stop trusting your own perceptions, memories or beliefs, then they are gaslighting you."

Gaslighting using another person's memory and feelings

One of the most common forms of gaslighting is when a narcissist denies a person's memory of events by saying something along the lines of ‘That didn’t happen’. This is incredibly common, and narcissists are known for rewriting history, completely denying that things have happened. They might say "I never said that - actually what I said was this...” Or "I never did that - actually what I did was this,” Or “He or she never did or said that...actually what they did or said was this".

A client of mine told me that her narcissistic ex would make himself a cup of tea in front of her, and then tell her with absolute conviction that it was actually coffee he was drinking, and that she had remembered it wrong. After years of this she began to doubt herself although, after she eventually left, she came to understand how bizarre this was.

But how can gaslighting be applied to a persons feelings ? You are probably familiar with expressing your emotions to the narcissist and then having them trivialised, minimised or invalidated.

So for example, if were upset because your dog had died, a narcissist might say - “Oh you’ll get over it - it’s not such a big deal - people are starving all over the world” Or “You shouldn’t be that sad - it’s only a dog.” Or, "I’m the one who should be sad, because I can’t take time off work and just fall apart when the dog dies - I’ve go to keep going - you should feel sad for me .”

Can you see how the narcissist is making you question your reality here (the reality of your being sad) and is trying to change it to another reality? Well - that’s classic gaslighting.

How is the victim affected?

So what effect does gaslighting have on the victim? Well, as you probably already know, the narcissist turns up the volume on their abusive behaviours so slowly that the victim barely notices. Gaslighting is no exception - so you can see why, in a relationship that has gone on for years, the victim believes what the narcissist is telling them - even though anyone looking in from the outside would find the narcissist's assertions utterly ludicrous.

Make no mistake - this really is a very dangerous form of psychological abuse.

I’m reminded at this point of the true story of the famous opera singer whose narcissistic partner eroded her beliefs and thinking about herself and the world so much that she actually came to believe that she couldn’t sing. Even though the whole world celebrated her ability, the narcissist had managed to get her to question herself. The years of gaslighting had led her to accept what he was telling her as reality.

And that is actually one of the major points of gaslighting - it enables the narcissist to get you to doubt yourself so much that you start to rely on them - they become your 'voice of reason '. That means that you might start wearing what they tell you looks good, rather than what you think looks good. It means you might not be able to make decisions, even little ones, without their input. It means that you might become quiet in social situations because you have been gaslit into believing that people find you irritating or boring, or that you talk too much. The ramifications of being gaslit are really quite varied.

"Make no mistake - this really is a very dangerous form of psychological abuse..."

But the point is this - because you stop trusting yourself, you start trusting the narcissist instead - and this gives them immense control. Remember that a narcissist doesn't want to abuse you so much that you just get up and leave - they usually need you to stay to give them narcissistic supply. So if they undermine you just enough, and destroy your confidence in yourself just enough (especially if they are dressing things up as 'looking after you’ or ‘only telling you these things to help you’) you will stay with them , and they will have successfully kept you in play as a source of narcissistic supply.

So having control over you is one the major reasons why narcissists gaslight. But they also do it to hide their bad behaviours from you, or to minimise thair bad behaviours so that they don’t have to face up to the consequences of their actions. So for example, imagine the scenario where a narcissist has been caught in a compromising postion, perhaps with a prostitute, perhaps on a works night out.

Quite justly, their partner will feel betrayed and upset - but a narcissist might tell them that all the men who work in his office regularly do this, and that it is normal. They might tell their partner that they are thinking about this incorrectly, and that they are not being unfaithful because they are paying for the service, and actually, they are helping someone in need (the prsotitute) to pay their bills and make their way in life, and that this should be seen as a good thing. They may tell them that just because they have visited a prostitute that has no bearing at all on how they feel about their partner, and the two things are completely separate. They may even try to make their partner feel guilty by saying telling them that they are a bad person for not allowing to help the prostitute to do her job an earn money to keep her family in food. They may accuse their partner of intruding on their private life, or they may blame them for needing to visit prostitutes in the first place because they always seem too tired to service their needs themselves. They may the even demand an apology - and if the victim has ben gasight enough, for long enough, they may actually feel guilty and do just this - apologise, even though in their heart of hearts they know that this is wrong.

And the final reason why narcissists gaslight others is to try to change them into what they want them to be. Remember that narcissists, due to their fundamental lack of empathy are able to exploit others and have a sense of entitlement. So if a narcissist wants a partner who is a blonde, for example, they may gaslight you into believing that your brunette locks make you look pasty and unattractive, and that you would look much better with blonde hair. They will make you feel that you are not good enough as you are, and they won’t let up - and if you believe that they know best (which you will, if you’ve been gaslit for long enough over a variety of different things) you will probably concede - at least for a time, and go blonde/ start wearing heels/ start doing spin classes/ start drinking alcohol / give up your vegetarianism etc.

Gaslighting often happens in conjunction with other narcissistic behaviours as well, like projection. I remember a client of mine telling me that her husband, in a narcissistic rage, was repeatedly punching the wall, whilst screaming at her and telling her that it was her who was breaking his hand. Here he was trying to gaslight her into believing that it was her fault, at the same time as projecting the blame onto her.

"Because you stop trusting yourself, you start trusting the narcissist instead - and this gives them immense control."

Sadly, gaslighting is also extremely common during divorce and separation. A narcissist might make offers (perhaps financial ones, or ones to do with the living arrangements or the children) and then claim that they never did, and that actually they had said something completely different. They will gaslight the couples therapist, the mediator, your lawyer, their own lawyer, the social worker and even the judge.

And very often, especially as the relationship is unravelling, the narcissist can distort reality so much that you find yourself wanting to record every conversation to prove that what you heard was true. It does seem that in the final stages (where the narcissist is decompensating due to the narcissistic injury of the relationship having broken down) many narcissists completely lose control of their gaslighting. Here it becomes so extreme that even their spouse can see it for what it is.

Some red flags of gaslighting to look out for

If your narcissist tries to persude you to doubt the evidence of your senses, or your thoughts, or your feelings.

If they never accept that you can have a different opinion to them - and won’t stop trying to persuade you that you are wrong.

If, when they are called out on something, they use flawed logic to turn the tables on you, making out that you are at fault and they are actually the victim, or the hero.

If you find yourself relying on them to make decisions for you or to tell you how to behave or what to wear.

If find yourself apologising and feeling guilty for things that you have been accused of that you know deep down that you haven’t done.

If you feel more and more confused in your relationship, and feel as though you might be going crazy.

If you stop expressing your emotions to the narcissist because you know that your feelings will always be ‘wrong’.

If there is a big imbalance of power between you and your partner.

The more of these things that resonate with you, the more likely it is that you have been gaslit.

Should you call the narcissist out on their gaslighting ? Honestly - probably not. The best thing to do is to write down the examples somewhere where the narcissist can’t find them and remind yourself of them often, until you’re able to leave the relationship. Even if you can’t leave, this tactic will at least allow you to keep a firm hold on your own reality - your own truth. Whether you stay or go, this is a really good first step in taking back your power and gaining clarity about your situation.

How to spot a narcissist when online dating

Sun, 13 Nov 2022 16:07:18 GMT

How to spot a narcissist when online dating

This article, published in The Reader's Digest can be viewed here .

How does a narcissist choose their victims?

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 16:45:20 GMT

What was it about you that attracted the narcissist to you in the first place?

A closet (or covert) narcissist is the type who does not want to be seen to be openly chasing the limelight, so they tend to choose victims who makes them look good by association. They’ll usually go for successful people - those with high status who others admire. They can then bask in the reflected specialness of that person, which makes them feel good about themselves.

However all narcissists will be drawn to admirable qualities in their victims - good looks or intelligence perhaps - anything that can add to their image of being successful and a winner. But all types of narcissists will also go for someone who is vulnerable to their narcissism in some way - so victims may be:

Rescuers - who want to save the narcissist, and so forgive them over and over again. These people need to rescue to feel good about themselves.

People who believe that ‘love conquers all’ - again these people believe that if they can just love the narcissist more, things will be OK. A narcissist will keep them hooked by asking them to try harder to love them better.

People who believe that all people are ‘basically good’. If they don’t believe in narcissism, this is great news for a narcissist.

Codependents - these types put other people’s needs above their own, and so give and give to the narcissist, who just takes and takes. They need the narcissist to feel OK in order to feel OK themselves . Prime fodder for a narcissist. Be particularly careful if you’ve been in relationships with substance addicts, because you may be drawn to a narcissist next, as a result of your codependent nature.

People with poor boundaries. Narcissists have a sense of entitlement, and so they will exploit those with poor boundaries over and over again. If you are someone who says no, but then gives in anyway when pushed, you will be a magnet for a narcissist.

People pleasers - with some overlap with the above categories, people pleasers want to give rather than receive. They focus on what people think about them rather than what they think about others, and so narcissists can easily slip under the radar with these types.

'Echoists' (after Echo, from the Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus). These people are on the opposite end of the spectrum to narcissists, and so are highly attracted/attractive to them. They have an aversion to feeling special, and, like codependents, try not to have any needs.

Empaths. Empathic people just keep on forgiving, and their empathy for the narcissist lets them get away with appalling behaviours. They will make excuses for them, and justify, deny and minimize their abuse, and fall for their pity plays over and over again.

Those who have been brought up in toxic, abusive or narcissistic households. To them, being treated badly feels normal, like ‘home’, and they are strongly attracted to the narcissist because subconsciously they are feeling the pull of the familiar - a pull that is incredibly strong and feels like 'chemistry'.

People who need ‘saving’ - the underdogs, those who have been hurt in the past, the victims of life’s cruel circumstances. Once saved by a narcissist, they will feel indebted to them, and find it too hard to leave.

This blog post is adapted from an answer first written for Quora. To see the original answer, see here .

Things a narcissist will never do in a relationship

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 16:25:04 GMT

The unfortunate limitations of narcissistic relationships

Narcissists will never be able to:

Love you (or their children). All love is transactional and conditional for a narcissist. No matter how much you love them. No matter how many hoops you jump through to try to please them. No matter how much you give and give. It’s not your deficiency - it’s theirs.

Cherish you (whether they vowed to or not). Find me a victim of narcissistic abuse who felt cherished after the initial lovebombing stage and I will eat my metaphorical hat.

Respect your boundaries. You’ll say no, they’ll do it anyway. Boundaries are just things to be trampled over to a narcissist.

Say sorry and actually mean it. Narcissist’s cannot be wrong, ever. It goes against the point of their narcissism, which is to protect them from shame and low self esteem. Being wrong isn’t an option, and so nor is saying sorry.

Put the other person first. The world revolves around the narcissist, period. They simply cannot put anyone ahead of themselves, including their own children.

Cheerlead you and encourage you in your hopes and dreams. After all, if you succeed you won’t need them as much (in their minds), and they might lose you (and your narcissistic supply).

Listen to you (unless they are trying to get you to reveal your vulnerabilities to them, for them to weaponise and use against you later, or unless you are in the lovebombing stage).

Be consistent. You’ll be idolised one day, and devalued the next. Prepare to be emotionally exhausted - its all part of the cycle of narcissistic abuse.

Care about your feelings. You are simply an appliance, like a toaster or kettle. Your function is merely to provide narcissistic supply. No matter how much they profess love whilst staring deeply into your eyes, to keep you in play. You are replaceable. You are nothing but a toaster. Remember that.

Make you feel secure. You’ll be on edge all the way through the relationship. It’s all part of the game plan.

Accept you as you are - warts and all. You are either ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’ to a narcissist. Hero or zero. You’d better lose that weight/gain that muscle/stop being so talkative/ be funnier/be more sympathetic/want to do the same hobbies as them/go blonde. Remember - you will never be enough as you are. Try harder. After all, the narcissist deserves the best version of you.

Tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Prepare to be lied to and gaslighted - with impressive conviction. The narcissist’s false persona is a lie - the person they pretend to be every single day, so it’s no wonder they are pretty practised when to comes to fibbing. You will be fooled at some point - because everybody is.

Let go of you easily. You, my friend, once in a relationship with a narcissist, are their property . They will never let you go, not completely, and certainly not without a huge fuss, the likes of which you won’t believe. Expect to be stalked, harassed, hoovered, badmouthed, threatened, stolen from and blackmailed. They will keep on coming back to you even for years after your split, because they need the narcissistic supply that they get from your fear, from the drama and from the conflict. If you can’t change identity and disappear then expect them to come back at some point, under the guise of wanting a reconciliation or merely to openly cause havoc.

This post is adpated from an answer written for Quora. To view the original answer, click here .

How can you take revenge on a narcissist?

Tue, 26 Apr 2022 16:04:14 GMT

Your options for revenge

You can tell everyone who knows them that they are a narcissist, and tell them what they have done. (This won’t work because the narcissist is likely to look like the plausible charming one, and will have been playing the victim for years, having started to lay the foundations to discredit your claims ages ago. And besides, most people don’t really know what a narcissist is, and frankly, if they haven’t directly been affected by one, don’t care. Basically, you’ll end up looking like the nutter).

You can burn their house down (But what if they are in it, or an innocent victim is in it at the time, and you end up in jail, with a criminal record, and everlasting guilt for your terrible crime? Maybe best avoided?).

You can make sure they see all the damage they have done to you, so that they see the errors of their ways, and feel incapacitating guilt and shame and sorrow for wronging you. Look sad and broken when you walk past them, let yourself go physically so you look like a shadow of your former self, refuse to ever date and find love again. Move to the worst house you can, in the least desirable area to really show them what they have done to you. (A definite possibility, were it not for the fact that narcissists don’t feel guilt or shame - the whole point of their narcissism is to prevent them from having to feel such negative feelings. Add to that the fact that they have no empathy (so they can’t feel your pain, which is why they can’t care about it) and you can see why this is a completely impossible solution.)

You can use social media as a way to get back at them. You know those audio recordings you made of every nonsensical word salad conversation you had with them towards the end of your relationship? The ones where they gaslit you, threatened you, made false accusations about you? The videos you surreptitiously took of them shouting and smashing things? The emails, text messages and ranting solicitor’s letters they sent you? Well, simply upload them to social media and let the likes and outraged comments flood in. (And expect a lengthy, expensive defamation battle, which will further reduce your capacity to heal which you may well lose. Again, maybe leave this solution too?).

Write a book telling your story in all its gory detail, and publish it. Everyone will flock to read your depressing tale of woe, and will hate the narcissist as a result, losing them friends and influence, and you will be rich. That’ll show them. (Except it won’t - you probably won’t ever finish the book, it’ll be utterly traumatizing to write, and will set you back in your healing. You’ll be lucky if you get many readers, because generally more people want to tell their own story than hear another person’s, so there are loads of these books out there, and again, sadly most people really don’t care about your story, unless you are a celebrity. Also see previous point about defamation/libel).

Stop them from seeing the children (if you have children with them). This will really show them. They will be bereft, realise what they did to you, and will never get over it. This has the added benefit of everyone knowing that the children don’t want to see their parent, and the narcissist will be judged harshly by everyone around them. (But the children will resent you as the alienating parent, the narcissist will take you to court for parental alienation, and this will completely backfire on you - and the children may end up in their care for much more of the time than had you not tried this tactic. Absolutely do not go there).

Heal. Yes, I know. It sounds moralistic. It sounds like empty words. Like some motivational nonsense. Much better to be bitter, right? To seek revenge in it’s traditional ‘dancing upon their grave’ kind of way. You will never get revenge on an individual narcissist, not in the true sense. But you can take the precious life that you were given, and engage in it fully. You can let the narcissist show you your wounds, so that you can heal them over. It’s normal to hate the narcissist who took your dreams, your future, your happiness, your money, your home, your soul, your trust, your faith in humanity, maybe even your children. Normal . So fantasise about getting revenge on them for as long as you have to. Let your anger come out. Scream and cry and whatever else you need to do. And then, when you are ready, stop. And start the healing journey. It’s really all you can do, and you will happier than you ever thought possible.

This blog post is modified from a question answered on Quora. To read the original answer click here .

Should narcissists lead the country? When pathological narcissism meets high political office.

Wed, 19 Jan 2022 13:14:22 GMT

Should narcissists lead the country? When pathological narcissism meets high political office. Opinion.

This is the question many people are asking today, as ‘partygate’ hits the headlines once again, and continued calls are made for the Prime Minister's resignation. Well, even if Boris Johnson wouldn’t qualify for a diagnosis of NPD, he’s certainly a useful way to highlight problematic narcissistic traits - and to raise the question of how appropriate it is for those who can fundamentally only consider their own interests to be in positions of political power.

Here are a few things that may be giveaways:

He has a false persona, which he puts out to the world. He needs the world to believe in it, so that he can believe in it himself, so that he can use it as a defence against feeling his own true deep feelings of shame, worthlessness and low self esteem. Once a shy young boy, he reinvented himself, as one biographer puts it, into one who ‘combines comedy with erudition’, becoming a ‘gaffe prone buffoon.’ His need to be adored comes across in bucketloads and, as he might say himself (with his penchant for sounding erudite), ‘Ut ameris, amabilis esto’ (if you want to be loved, be lovable). But is witty, lovable Boris who he really is, or just an invented image he hides behind, in order to get external validation?

He lies. The truth, to a narcissist, is whatever they say it is at the time they are saying it. They believe their own lies completely for the duration of the lie - and of course that is why they are utterly convincing (for a time, at least). I’m sure we can all think of many well documented examples here, but given that the false persona itself is a lie, you can see why those with NPD find it so easy to lie about the smaller things too.

"But is witty, lovable Boris who he really is, or just an invented image he hides behind, in order to get external validation?"

He blameshifts - narcissists cannot truly take the blame for their mistakes, as to do so would weaken their protective false persona, and make them feel their own true underlying shame. Feeling this way feels like an existential crisis to a narcissist - to be avoided at all costs. So when Mr Johnson claims that ‘no one told me it was against the rules' to have a party in lockdown, even though he himself stated what the rules were to the nation, it certainly does seem to tick the blameshifting box.

He exploits others to achieve personal gain, throwing others ‘off the bus’ (including by forcing resignations of colleagues he has scapegoated for his own errors). Interpersonal exploitation is a hallmark sign of narcissism.

He is unwilling to empathise with the feelings, wishes and needs of other people - his numerous extramarital affairs would have caused immense pain to his wives. His allowing late night revelling in Downing Street (breaching Covid restrictions), whilst the nation and the Queen mourned Prince Philip’s death, and his failing to personally apologise to the Queen for it, could easily also be a sign of low empathy.

"The driving force of needing external validation (narcissistic supply) from others is a powerful one, and can bring great success to those with NPD"

He is fixated on fantasies of power, success and intelligence - which in his case have become realities. The driving force of needing external validation (narcissistic supply) from others is a powerful one, and can bring great success to those with NPD. Even as a child he wanted to become ‘world king’.

He believes he is exempt from normal rules and laws. Partygate. Not wearing a mask when visiting hospitals in spite of repeated requests to do so. Claiming that he didn’t need to self isolate after coming into contact with confirmed cases of Covid because he was ‘trialling a new system’ - the full list is a long one.

He has a sense of entitlement. Even as a 17 year old he was described by his classics master, Martin Hammond, at Eton as believing that he "should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else" and being "surprised" that he "was not appointed Captain of the School" Having a sense of entitlement is a defining characteristic of those with NPD. The expensive refurbishment of his Downing Street flat might also fall into this category.

He needs to believe that he is superior, unique and special - again, suggested by his schoolteacher Mr Hammond - “I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception..."

He needs continual admiration from others. Might Mr Johnson’s need for admiration be seen as a bucket with a hole in it - continually needing to be topped up with ‘narcissistic supply’ from everyone around him?

He deprecates and treats his former idols with contempt - Dominic Cummings, Jennifer Arcuri (his former mistress) - there is a long list here. This is known as ‘splitting’ - narcissists are unable to see people as a blend of good and bad, and see them as only ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’, and, once they have fallen off their pedestals, they are treated accordingly.

He had the sort of upbringing that can lead to the development of NPD. Narcissists are ‘made’ and not born. His father Stanley was a self obsessed dad, and a violent and unfaithful husband, whose wife (Boris’s mother) suffered a nervous breakdown and was admitted to the mental health hospital, The Maudsley, for eight months when Boris was just a child. Even she has been quoted as saying that his childhood ambition to become ‘world king’ was to “make himself unhurtable, invincible...”

His father would pit the three young children off against one another, in what could be seen as the common narcissistic tactic of the dynamic of the golden child, the scapegoat and the invisible child - all of the above suggesting that Stanley might be narcissistic himself, which is a big risk factor for the development of narcissism in his children.

Narcissists cannot care about other people because they are unable to step into their shoes and actually feel their pain, or joy, or any other emotion. They are self focused, and are exploitative by definition. They are driven by a need to feel superior and special, so that they can avoid feeling their true underlying feelings of shame, of worthlessness and of inadequacy - and they become this way as a result of an adverse childhood.

So, are those with NPD fit to lead the country? Probably not, as their motives are not pure, they cannot not have the best interests of the nation’s people at heart and they need to believe themselves to be superior above all else.

As famed Personality Disorder psychologist, Theodore Millon put it: "Were narcissists able to respect others, allow themselves to value others’ opinion, or see the world through other’s eyes, their tendency towards illusion and unreality might be checked or curtailed. Unfortunately, narcissists have learned to devalue others, not to trust their judgements, and to think of them as naive and simpleminded. Thus, rather than question the correctness of their own beliefs, they assume the views of others are at fault. Hence, the more disagreements they have with others, the more convinced they are of their own superiority and the more isolated and alienated they are likely to become."

Well, narcissist or otherwise, this last sentence certainly seems to be panning out for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. Perhaps it’s time all those who are considering running for Prime Minister undergo personality disorder testing from now on?

That's one thing that would definitely get my vote.

'Narcissistic abuse' vs 'domestic abuse' and 'coercive control' - and why it matters to know the difference.

183:789868267 (Supriya McKenna) — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 17:02:51 GMT

Not all Domestic Abuse or Coercive Control is Narcissistic Abuse - but some is.

Are you, or have you been, a victim of domestic abuse or of a coercively controlling partner? If you have answered yes to this question, there is a possibility that your partner may have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) - and I’m going to explain in this article why it matters.

Now before we delve into this let me make one thing clear - at present it can actually harm your case to mention Narcissism, NPD or the term ‘personality disorder’ in the areas of child protection or in Court, because, incredibly, in these arenas these words are not properly understood. Because of this I still very strongly advise against using these terms in these contexts. However, from your own personal perspective , if your abusive relationship has actually been with a narcissist, fully understanding NPD gives you an awful lot more power than perhaps you previously realised you had.

Now let’s state some facts - not all domestic abusers are narcissists. And nor are all coercive controllers. But a proportion of abusers who carry out specific patterns of behaviour are doing so as a result of narcissism, and do fall into all three categories. Does this let them off the hook? Absolutely not - abuse is abuse regardless of what underlies it, and getting away from the situation permanently, and to the best of your ability, is paramount.

Why, if your abuse has resulted from narcissism, do you have more power than otherwise? Well, to understand this let me go back a step, and explain what Narcissistic Personality Disorder is.

Firstly, you have to be aware that NPD is a real, diagnosable personality disorder , as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the manual that mental health professionals use to diagnose it.

"Narcissistic behaviour patterns are very specific indeed - once you know what they are, it isn't difficult to determine whether you have been in a relationship with a narcissist - or whether you haven't."

There is a great deal of misinformation and ignorance about the terms Narcissism or NPD in the world, and the un-informed may tell you that narcissism ‘isn’t real’, is just ‘jargon’, or is ‘psychobabble’, ‘psych lingo’, or even just ‘a buzzword.’ Many may also tell you you shouldn't ‘label’ people, without a professional diagnosis, and even say that doing so is ‘harmful’. Sadly, these types may inadvertently be doing more harm than good to those who really have been in a relationship with a narcissist. I have even heard of campaigners who work in the field of domestic abuse dismissing NPD as a real entity or downplaying it's importance to individuals - so it's not just the Courts and child protection agencies who do not yet understand it. Clearly, when it comes to education there is a long way to go.

But here’s the thing - if you really are dealing with someone who has NPD, getting them in front of a mental health professional who is qualified to make the diagnosis is going to be an uphill struggle - especially as a narcissist isn’t likely to have awareness of their condition. And even if they are one of the rare ones that do, they are not going to want to change. After all, the condition allows them to exploit others for their own gain, and so is seen as a good thing by them.

But that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn to spot the very specific patterns of behaviour that narcissists carry out for yourself - after all, it’s just pattern recognition, and if this is the only option you have then could it be worth pursuing? Narcissistic behaviour patterns are very specific indeed - once you know what they are, it isn't difficult to determine whether you have been in a relationship with a narcissist - or whether you haven't.

So what is Narcissism?

Narcissism is a condition characterized by low empathy, with an addiction to needing to feel special and a sense of entitlement, which results in behaviours which harm others. There is always covert emotional abuse, but physical abuse can also be a feature of it.

It results from the way the person’s brain became wired as a baby and in childhood, in response to a difficult upbringing - and the abnormal wiring results in them behaving in ways which are abusive towards others.

But here’s the key point - actual narcissists all have intrinsically low self esteem (although if you don’t know them well you might not be able to see that). They can’t bear to acknowledge their true feelings of worthlessness, of shame and of inadequacy, so they hide behind a false persona, which they put out to the world. Very often their false persona is charming, or charismatic or ‘nice’, and they need other people to believe in it so that they can believe in it themselves. They need external validation from other people to keep the false persona going, precisely so they can hide behind it, and fool themselves that it is real, protecting them from their real feelings. And the external validation which they constantly need from others is called ‘ narcissistic supply ’. It’s like fuel to a narcissist - they need it to keep going, and they get it from attention, adoration, drama or conflict and from instilling fear into others.

"Actual narcissists all have intrinsically low self esteem"

One person will never be able to provide enough of this narcissistic supply to the narcissist, and the narcissist will need to get it from multiple sources. This is very important to understand - a real narcissist behaves (often subtly) badly to everyone around them, except towards the people who are sycophantic towards them (who are therefore giving them great narcissistic supply). Narcissism is a pattern which is 'pervasive' - it happens in all areas of the narcissist's life to some degree, and not just behind closed doors.

Narcissists are difficult at work and at home, and they can’t maintain long term deep friendships - eventually pretty much everybody detaches from them once they have been exposed to them for long enough. You, as their partner will, most likely, have borne the brunt of their abuse, but if they are a real narcissist, aside from their sycophants, everyone will have felt the heat to some degree.

"Narcissists are difficult at work and at home, and they can't maintain long term deep friendships"

Why it matters to know if your abuser is a narcissist

I talked earlier about the power you might not have realised you had - and it’s all down to this concept of narcissistic supply. You see, a narcissist needs something from you . They need your narcissistic supply - that’s why they abused you and controlled you, and why they continue to do so post separation via the children and the legal system. They feed off your fear, off the way you fawn over them to placate them, and off your reactions when you try to stand up for yourself. I repeat - they need your narcissistic supply - and you don't have to give it . So if you refuse to give them that supply, they eventually have to go elsewhere for it - because they need it to function. This is key to breaking free from narcissistic abuse, and the Grey Rock Technique, which I talk about here , is a great way to make this happen.

"A narcissist needs something from you . They need your narcissistic supply - and you don't have to give it."

So, if you are or have been a victim of domestic abuse or of coercively controlling behaviour, and you are wondering whether your partner is actually a narcissist, help is at hand. Our book (written with top UK family lawyer Karin Walker) “Divorcing a narcissist - the lure, the loss and the law” will take you step by step through the process of identifying the narcissistic behaviours in your relationship, and then guide you through the separation and divorce process, pre-empting the specific behaviours that a true narcissist will subject you to during the divorce and beyond.

And if you want to understand more about the vital concept of narcissistic supply, you can learn more by listening here , or by watching this video .

The Certainty Project - a new way to avoid court delays in divorces involving a narcissist.

183:789868267 (Supriya McKenna) — Tue, 03 Aug 2021 11:17:56 GMT

The Certainty Project

- a new way to avoid court delays in divorces involving a narcissist.

If you are currently going through the court system to divorce your narcissistic spouse in the UK you will doubtless be tearing your hair out. The overstretched, underfunded court system was on its knees even before the COVID-19 pandemic. But now, sadly, things have reached a whole new level and the system, as most lawyers will tell you, is well past breaking point.

But what does this mean for you and your divorce? Well, in a word, it means delay.
Sorting out the finances and the children’s living arrangements used to take a year to 18 months, but now you could easily be waiting two years to get to a final hearing and a resolution of matters, and this doesn’t do anyone any favours (except your narcissistic spouse).

There are three main court hearings for the finances - the FDA, the FDR (where you try to reach a resolution through negotiation) and the final hearing (which you only get to if you can’t reach an agreement at the FDR). At the final hearing (a highly stressful affair, during which you and your spouse will be put in the witness box and cross examined by each other’s barristers) a judge will decide your financial fate.

"Only around 3% of all divorces end up at a final hearing - but the majority of narcissistic divorces do."

And it’s even worse if you also can’t agree on the children’s living arrangements or schooling. A completely separate court route will be taken here, in addition to the financial path, with yet more hearings. If allegations of abuse or parental alienation have been made (as they so often have been where a narcissist is involved), there will be expert reports to be done by CAFCASS or social services which can take months to be completed, and which may favour the narcissist, who is a master of impression management. If the allegations are about you, you may not be allowed unsupervised contact with your children, and you may even have to pay for an agreed person to supervise the time you spend with your children. And all of this can go on for literally years, until the final decision is made by a judge.

The problem with judges

Judges, who are chronically overworked, may not even have a background in family law. They may not have time to read the paperwork before the trial and may be unfamiliar with your case. They too might be taken in by the plausibility of the narcissist. Although they try hard to put any biases to one side, they are not infallible and, like everyone, are affected by their unconscious biases - they may not realise that you remind them of the aunt they used to loathe, or that your former spouse is like their long-lost brother. And, because judges are in short supply, you may even end up with lay magistrates, with no legal background, hearing your case instead.

The problem with delays

The long months that stretch out between your court hearings are also a problem when your spouse is a narcissist. Remember that narcissists need 'narcissistic supply' as fuel, and keeping you in a battle for as long as possible gives them just this, from the drama and the conflict. Narcissists don’t want to settle things quickly - they want to eek things out. It gives them the opportunity to mess around, changing jobs or reducing their earnings, hiding or giving away assets and turning up to the marital home to take items when you are out. It gives them the opportunity to try to turn the children against you, or use them as weapons of their abuse. It allows them plenty of time to send you nonsensical ranting accusatory emails and texts which send you into an emotional tailspin, or to threaten you or your loved ones with blackmail. It gives them time to send your solicitor pointless letters, via their own solicitor, if they have one, about trivial matters, just to make you spend money on legal fees in responding. It gives them ample time to wear you down, and to teach you a big lesson - that they 'own' you and always will, and that they will do everything they can to ‘win’ at all costs.

The problem with Court

If you are hoping that the court system will deliver retribution for the narcissist’s bad behaviour, I am afraid it will not - that is not what it is there for. If you are hoping that it will be fair - well, you may be disappointed there too - the judge can only go on what they are given, and the narcissist will lie and withhold evidence at every turn.

In short, going to court with a narcissist and allowing a judge to decide the fate of your finances and the fate of your children after a long and acrimonious battle is likely to be a very bad idea indeed for your finances, your sanity, your ability to parent and your healing journey from narcissistic abuse. Narcissistic divorces cost each spouse tens of thousands of pounds, often reaching the hundred thousand pound mark, precisely because of the delays which the narcissist uses to financially and emotionally abuse you.

So what can you do?

Well, all is not lost. The Certainty Project is a brand new method of reaching a resolution which can work for both child arrangements and sorting out the finances. It is cheaper (costing a third to two thirds of the cost of going to court), quicker (lasting around sixth months) and fairer than the court process, and it works beautifully with narcissists.

"In a few years from now The Certainty Project may well be the go-to-method for resolving difficult divorces but, for now, its new and it’s cutting edge - and that is precisely why you might be able to convince your narcissistic ex to agree to it."

Because it is new, your solicitor may not be fully familiar with it, and it may well be outside of their comfort zone - but this is no reason not to engage in it. (Being slightly cynical, your solicitor stands to gain a lot more financially from a long drawn out court case then a six month process - although of course not all solicitors are this unscrupulous). Here you may have to do something you are not used to (you have, most likely, a fairly compliant personality, given that you have found yourself in this current situation). You may have to stand up for yourself and insist that they consider it as a serious option. You may even have to go against their advice, and instruct them that this is the route you wish to take. Not easy, I know, but your if you are brave enough to divorce a narcissist, you are brave enough to tell your solicitor what to do, believe me.

So what exactly is it? The Certainty Project is a private route, as opposed to the state route. It involves the combination of mediation and the hiring a private judge, called an Arbitrator, who will be in charge of keeping everything moving. You first start out by undergoing a specialist form of meditation called Hybrid Mediation (where you and your narcissistic ex sit in different rooms with your respective lawyers and a specialist Hybrid Mediator moves between the rooms, trying to negotiate an outcome). This Hybrid Mediation is the only form of mediation which works well with narcissists, and an agreement can be reached in around 80% of narcissistic divorces using this method. The Hybrid Mediator is a lawyer themselves who has been further trained in the technique of Hybrid Mediation. If you cannot reach an agreement, or can’t agree on everything in mediation, you then move into the ‘arbitration’ process, where the case is presented to the Arbitrator (here you might use a barrister exactly as you would in the court process) and the Arbitrator makes a decision, acting as a private judge. The final stage is that the decision made by the arbitrator is sent to the court to be approved by it, which is the quickest bit of the process. That decision is now enforceable by law.

The Certainty Project gives you the chance to try to reach a negotiated outcome with your narcissistic ex, with the sure knowledge that - if you cannot - a sensible and decision will be made for you.

Arbitrators differ from state appointed family law judges in that they all have to have a very high level of training in family law, and will have undergone specialist training to become Arbitrators. You can be sure that your Arbitrator will have read the papers and be properly acquainted with the details of your case, unlike with some overstretched judges in the state system. You can feel reassured by the fact that an Arbitrator’s reputation for fairness is an important factor in them securing further work, and that being fair matters to them. And you and your ex get to choose your Arbitrator rather than being assigned a judge or lay magistrate over whom you have no say.

In a few years from now The Certainty Project may well be the go-to-method for resolving difficult divorces but, for now, its new and it’s cutting edge - and that is precisely why you might be able to convince your narcissistic ex to agree to it. This kind of method will appeal to their ‘specialness’ - it’s certainly not for the ‘riff raff’, as they might see it. They might also like the fact that it will cost them less money than going to court - but the speed of it is not something to be emphasized when you are trying to convince them to agree to it - remember that narcissists love delay and want to keep you in play as a reliable source of narcissistic supply for as long as possible.

So, even if it means going against a reluctant, late adopter solicitor, give it a try - your mental health, your bank balance and your children could all benefit.

For more information, including information for your solicitor on how the process works, visit www.thecertaintyproject.co.uk .

For The Lawyer - Have You Represented A Narcissist?

183:789868267 (Supriya McKenna) — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 13:00:30 GMT

Have you represented a narcissist? This checklist will help you decide.

"Those with Narcissistic Personality Disorder don't just save their difficult behaviours for their spouse. In fact, to a greater or lesser degree, everyone a narcissist comes into contact with will be subjected to their behaviours, whether they realise it or not, and that includes you, as the divorce lawyer."

It's usually difficult to tell in the early stages that you may be dealing with a narcissistic client, and it's often much easier to understand what happened after the fact. The process of divorce provides fuel to a narcissist in terms of narcissistic supply , and the legal system, with its delays and inefficiencies, is a playground for a narcissist. Recognising past narcissistic behaviours that you may have been subjected to will help you to recognise the patterns when they occur in the future, so that you can be prepared for what is to come and make contingencies for it.

The 30 point checklist below will help you to identify the most common characteristics of a lawyer-client dynamic where a narcissist is involved. Whilst not every one of these behaviours will occur with every narcissist, a pattern should emerge, nonetheless.

1. Did they seem highly charming, plausible and very likeable in your first meeting?

2. Did you feel flattered by the high regard in which they seemed to hold you at first?

3. Did they initially present themselves as a hard done by victim, gaining your sympathy?

4. Did they begin to monopolise you, chatting about unrelated matters on your billable time?

5. Did they expect you to respond to them/consult with them out of normal working hours?

6. Were they late to your appointments and/or court appearances?

7. Did they need to be chased up for paperwork repeatedly?

8. Did you find yourself providing incomplete disclosure to the court and to the other side?

9. Did you feel that they were not interested in your advice unless it agreed with their own views?

10. Did you feel that your professional boundaries were being blurred or overstepped and you were made to work in a way which was outside of your normal working practice?

11. Did they insist upon specific wording, of their own choice, be used in correspondence with the other side against your advice?

12. Did you eventually feel like a mere mouthpiece for their views?

13. Did you find yourself drafting and re-drafting letters to the other side for them?

14. Did you find yourself not charging for all the hours you spent on their case?

15. Did you find yourself denying allegations of bullying or undesirable behaviour on their behalf to the other side?

16. Did you gain a sense of them wishing to annihilate their former partner, which was out of proportion to the circumstances?

17. Did they argue with or not pay your bill?

18. Were their offers to the other side unfeasible, unreasonable and unfair, giving a sense that they felt entitled to everything and their spouse to nothing?

19. Did they constantly change the goalposts when you felt you were close to agreeing in negotiations with the other side?

20. Did you feel that you were made to work in a way that was unprofessional?

21. Did you notice the tone of their correspondence was accusatory, ranting and contradictory?

22. Were you surprised at how the case you originally thought was straightforward in nature became unnecessarily drawn out and difficult?

23. In the later stages of their case, did you find your heart sinking/or notice a feeling of dread when communication with them was imminent?

24. Had they instructed other lawyers prior to you which had not worked out, with no good reason given?

25. Were they rude or standoffish to your secretary/PA on the initial telephone call, but then unduly charming in person once you were instructed?

26. Did they focus on minutiae when it came to their spouse, refusing to look at the bigger picture?

27. Did they start to criticise you and question your professionalism and your competence?

28. If they went to mediation, did the process breakdown, causing only delays and expense?

29. Did they seem keen to go all the way through the court system, especially to a final trial?

30. Did they make a formal complaint about you or threaten to do so?

If you would like to learn more about how to deal with narcissistic clients please do take a look at our book (co-authored with family lawyer, mediator, arbitrator and collaborative lawyer Karin Walker ) "Narcissism and Family Law - a Practitioner's Guide".

Our Podcast series, "Narcissists in Divorce - the lure, the loss and the law", is also packed full of information for the family lawyer as well as for the general public.

'Diagnosing' your narcissist. The facts.

183:789868267 (Supriya McKenna) — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 16:07:37 GMT

Diagnosing Narcissism

Is my partner a narcissist? Why are they behaving so hatefully/coldly/cruelly towards me? How, after all these years together, are they able to treat me so terribly? Did they ever love me? How could they have changed persona so much? Are they mentally ill? Do they have a brain tumour? What has happened to the person I once knew? Have they disappeared? Was it all an act? How could they have kept it up for so long? Where did all the rage come from? Can they be diagnosed?

These are just some of the questions that I regularly get asked by my clients.

If you are in the initial phases of a breakdown of a relationship and suspect that your spouse or partner might be narcissistic, you may need help to identify certain typical patterns of behaviour that may have been present in your relationship.

I suspect my partner is narcissistic - how do I get them diagnosed?

The short answer is with some difficulty and, most likely, not at all.

Narcissistic individuals don’t typically request a diagnosis by specialists themselves, as their personality adaptation often works to their advantage in life, although the diagnosis does more often get made in forensic populations. You can’t ‘force’ someone you suspect to be narcissistic to get a diagnosis and, if you even tell them of your suspicions, you are likely to be labelled as the narcissist by them, as a result of projection and gas-lighting, which are hallmarks of the condition.

"It is not for you to try to get your narcissistic partner diagnosed - that is simply a matter for them."

Complicating matters further, here in the UK, we use use a tome called the ICD-10 to categorise all medical diagnoses, and narcissism only gets a brief word mention here, with no detail at all, although other personality disorders are described in detail. The new edition, ICD -11, is on its way, but this classifies all personality disorders into a single diagnosis called "Personality Disorder" which is further described as 'mild, moderate or severe". So it seems that NPD is further lost in translation here, although it does fit the criteria as a personality disorder despite the fact that it isn't specifically defined as a separate entity.

However, over in the USA, the DSM-5 (the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition) is the authoritative guide to the diagnosis of mental disorders. In this manual, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is described in some detail as one of ten distinct diagnosable personality disorders. Specialists in the UK can use the DSM-5 to make diagnoses but most often don't.

All of this makes finding a medical professional or psychologist who is trained in diagnosing NPD harder over here in the UK.

Even if you were able to find a suitably trained specialist, who the narcissistic individual did agree to see for diagnosis, they are likely to see this as a challenge. A narcissist's charm, plausibility, and ability to play the victim can have even a specialist fooled. The years of specific behaviour that you will have been experiencing that are actually likely to be far more telling, but of course, you may not even be involved in the process.

Add to this the fact that the only treatment option for Narcissistic Personality Disorder is several years of expensive super-specialised psychotherapy, which the vast majority of narcissistic individuals would not be committed enough to try or complete, and you can see why getting a formal diagnosis is likely to be a non-starter and, frankly, pointless. Even in the context of your divorce, bringing up in court the fact that your partner is narcissistic is a tactic that can only backfire on you, and is best avoided, as judges, also untrained in NPD, are easily fooled by the beguiling charisma and calmness of a narcissist in the witness stand.

It is not for you to try to get your narcissistic partner diagnosed - that is simply a matter for them.

"There comes a time when you may have to make the decision to put your own mental health ahead of your narcissistic partner's, and leave their toxic behaviours behind, regardless of whether they have a formal diagnosis."

Becoming informed yourself

This is why, ludicrous though it might seem, it falls on to you, as the recipient of difficult, toxic unexplained behaviours, to make a judgement call as to whether your spouse or partner is exhibiting behaviour patterns which may be consistent with narcissistic personality disorder.

The occasional psychiatrist or psychologist will take great umbrage at this, and will often say that it is impossible for a lay person to make a diagnosis, and therefore wrong for them to even try. But let’s be honest here. At this time in the UK there is no feasible facility for getting your partner formally diagnosed. And you need to have a reasonable idea of what you might be dealing with. No one is saying you can make a diagnosis . But to reiterate, you CAN identify whether or not certain behaviour patterns have been present in your relationship, in order to protect yourself from further behaviours of this nature.

"No one is saying you can 'make a diagnosis'. But you CAN identify whether or not certain behaviour patterns have been present in your relationship, in order to protect yourself from further behaviours of this nature."

Divorce behaviours of narcissistic people are predictable - very predictable - as a result of their underlying personality disorder. And having a clear idea of whether your spouse might be exhibiting the telltale signs at the beginning of the break-up period of NPD will be invaluable to you in your divorce. It will inform everything that you do, from finding the right lawyer to how you communicate, to how to best stay out of court. Having the right knowledge to build the right team around you to take you through your divorce can preserve your sanity and your back balance, putting you in a much better place from which to restart your life post-divorce.

Here’s some feedback I received from a client yesterday.

“Thank you so much Supriya. Talking with you has helped find a missing piece in this jigsaw which has really helped to put the picture together for me. I could not make sense of it before. I think talking it through with you to understand how I got here, what signs there were along the way (that I clearly had missed) will help move me towards acceptance. Now I can see the situation as one impacted by underlying and deeply ingrained behaviours neither of us were previously truly aware of. Your guidance will help me to better understand how I need to approach this new phase, now the mask has dropped and the relationship we had has gone. I’m more realistic about next steps through the divorce and feel on firmer ground with the knowledge you’ve shared.”

If you feel that I might be ale to help you gain clarity on what you might have been experiencing, please do contact me for an initial free chat. Further sessions can be regular or on an ad hoc basis, depending on what works best for you, and all sessions are carried out remotely.

How To Leave A Narcissist And Stay 'Gone'.

183:789868267 (Supriya McKenna) — Mon, 15 Feb 2021 18:34:42 GMT

How to leave a narcissist and 'stay gone' - Dr Supriya McKenna explains

"It is widely quoted that it takes an average of seven attempts to leave an abusive relationship."

Narcissistic relationships usually begin with covert emotional abuse (perhaps just mild criticisms to start with) which slowly ramp up as the recipient grows accustomed to it. As time goes on put downs, invalidation, gas-lighting and all the many other behaviours typical of narcissistic abuse can become quite pronounced.

Physical abuse may also be a feature of a narcissistic relationship, but this is far from always the case.

So why does it take so long to finally leave?

Well, there are lots of reasons.

The cycle of 'idealise/devalue'

Targets commonly find themselves in an alternating cycle of ‘idealisation and ‘devalue’ in their relationship, but they very rarely recognise it until they look back on it. Here the narcissistic individual behaves badly towards their partner (perhaps with a long silent treatment, cold emotional withdrawal, jealousy or even flirtations carried out in front of them - whatever that particular narcissist’s brand of abuse is). You, as the partner, are thrown off balance by this, and start trying to please the narcissist, to try to prove that you love them. Without warning, just as you are about to give up, hurt, confused and frustrated, the narcissist begins the 'idealisation' phase.

In this phase they generally act as if nothing is wrong, and as if the previous behaviour never happened, as they re-idealise you and your relationship. Suddenly you are flavour of the month again, and can do no wrong. You are relieved to be back in their good books, and bask in the glory of their apparent ‘love’. You make excuses for their previous behaviour, either taking the blame for it yourself, denying to yourself that it ever happened, justifying in your mind why it happened (they were tired, stressed etc), or minimising the impact it had on you, perhaps telling yourself that it wasn’t that bad. All is well - for now.

However, the devaluation phase is never far away, and these alternating cycles will repeat ad infinitum. The cycles will be of varying length (sometimes lasting hours, sometimes months), and the devaluing behaviours are of varying size. All of this keeps you confused, on your best behaviour and on high alert. Tiptoeing around their fragile ego and walking on eggshells becomes the norm, and you daren’t be critical of them, or try to assert your needs and wants, in case the behaviour starts again. Eventually, you don’t even feel you can express your normal human feelings of pain or sadness without a narcissistic partner taking it as a personal slight against themselves.

Hoovering

Most people will consider leaving during one of the many devaluation phases they experience, and may even tell the narcissist of their intention. And this is when the narcissist will pull out all the stops to get you back. This type of idealisation, which is specific to imminent abandonment, is called ‘hoovering’. It’s just as it sounds - a way to suck you back into the relationship so that you don’t leave.

"Narcissists struggle with being abandoned even more than most ordinary people, and they will do anything to avoid it."

In hoovering the narcissist will employ a variety of tactics to get you back, depending on what works most effectively on you. Here a few possibilities:

If you are a ‘rescuer’, or a highly empathic individual, someone who believes in giving endless chances, or someone who believes that ‘love conquers all’, you will be subjected to the ‘pity play.’ Here the narcissist will tell you how difficult their life has been. There may be tears. Suggestions of depression and suicidal thoughts. They might tell you how stressed they are. How hard they are working. How their family or friends are treating them badly. How worried they are about their health. How much physical or mental pain they are in. How only you can help them. Your natural empathy will kick in, and, feeling guilty, you will rush back to save the narcissist, resolving to be more understanding/more forgiving/more self aware/ kinder etc. The narcissist will be profoundly grateful, you will be relieved and the high drama will be over. You may believe that your relationship is healed, and stronger than ever. Unfortunately, with a narcissist, this is not likely to be true.

Guilt tripping is another common ploy that will be used against you, especially if you have children with the narcissist. The narcissist might tell you that you are ruining the children’s lives by leaving. That they have spent years working hard to give you a good quality of life and that you are ungrateful. That they have put their own aspirations on hold for you, or given up their dreams for you, and you are throwing this back in their face. If you are married they may use the marriage vow card or the ‘in sickness and in health’ vow against you. With guilt tripping tactics, there are endless permutations for a narcissist scorned. The narcissist may also try the love-bombing tactic to get you back, if you threaten to leave. They may apologise profusely, profess their undying love, and do all the things they used to do at the beginning of your relationship (when everything was perfect, they were your soulmate, and you had the best relationship out of anyone you knew - all characteristic feelings at the beginning of a narcissistic relationship). Again, relief will wash over you and you will return to the relationship, delighted to be the ‘luckiest person in the world’ once again.

If that fails, a narcissist may try to scare you into staying in the relationship. Here the mask of their false persona will drop, and you will see the angry, vengeful, entitled person that lies beneath. This is often a terrifying moment for the recipient. There may be threats of different kinds - perhaps to ruin you financially, to blackmail you, to shame you or publicly humiliate you, to smear your good name, or to burn the house down or remove your pets. If you have children, they may threaten to turn the children against you or move out of the country with them. They might threaten allegations of child abuse, alcoholism or substance misuse so that you are fearful that you might lose access to the children. You might well feel that you are trapped, and have no choice other than to stay, in spite of your unhappiness.

Is it any wonder you might keep going back?

"Narcissists need to appear perfect and special to the outside world, so that the external validation and adoration they receive from others as a result stops them from having to face their own underlying feelings of shame and unworthiness."

Being abandoned does not fit with this need to ‘be the best’ and ‘have the best’. People with perfect lives do not get left, in the mind of a narcissist. This hugely public failure lead a narcissist's defenses (their false persona) to come crashing down. This is called ‘Narcissistic Injury.’ Suddenly the narcissist is forced to feel their shame and low self worth. This can either result in a depression (depending on the type of narcissist) or an episode of ‘Narcissistic Rage’. This can manifest as anything from punching through a wall, to physical abuse, or to a chilling, quiet psychopathic kind of fury. One thing is for sure - you’ll know it when you see it.

So how do you stop yourself from being sucked back into the relationship?

Well, awareness is key. Look at the tactics above and see if you recognise them from previous attempts to leave. The narcissist will know exactly which of your buttons to press to get you to stay in the relationship - if you are one step ahead, you have a fighting chance of not being manipulated into staying again.

Go No Contact

This is absolutely critical. Don’t think that you will be able be friends with the narcissist without becoming their puppet on a string, dancing to their tune once more. At the very least, if you stay in touch, you may be drawn into their harem of admirers and sycophants, to be toyed with whenever they need an extra boost of narcissistic supply. No Contact may be impossible to do if you work with them or share children with them, in which case you will have to minimise contact with them as far as possible. But if you do not have these constraints then committing to having absolutely no contact with the narcissist is key.

"Committing to having absolutely no contact with the narcissist is key."

Block them from all methods of contact - email, phone, WhatsApp, Facebook messaging. Block them from all social media - Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, even Pinterest. Don’t give them the opportunity to see your posts and ‘like’ them or comment on them. This will only destabilise you and put you back in your recovery.

Don’t be tempted to look at their posts - even though they won’t know you are doing this, it still mentally counts as reaching out to them - obviously blocking them will also remove this temptation from you as an added bonus.

"A relationship to a narcissist is an addictive one. The cycles of idealise and devalue, with the unpredictable, varying ‘wins’ plays havoc with your brain chemicals, causing what is known as ‘trauma bonding’. You are, quite literally (from a neurochemical perspective) addicted to the narcissist."

Not only are you undergoing the pain of the grief of the loss of the relationship, but you are withdrawing from heroin (figuratively speaking) at the same time. Portia Nelson’s poem, below, is an incredibly powerful metaphor that beautifully describes the process of disengaging from your addiction to a narcissist, and stopping yourself from going back (‘falling into the hole’).

There’s a hole in my sidewalk - Portia Nelson

Chapter 1
I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost… I am helpless. It isn’t my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2
I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend that I don’t see it. I fall in again. I can’t believe I am in this same place. But, it isn’t my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I still fall in … it’s a habit … but, my eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter 4
I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.
Chapter 5

I walk down another street.

For now, it’s enough to walk around the hole but, one day, you too will be able to walk down another street. This is a momentous decision you have made - congratulate yourself for stepping away, and stay strong.

The Narcissist And Their Children

Wed, 10 Feb 2021 14:53:30 GMT

Narcissists and their children - what you need to know

The relationship between a narcissist and their children is a unique one, full of contradictions. You see, not only will a narcissist subject their children to all the usual abusive behaviours that they subject everyone else to, but at the same time, they view their children as extensions of themselves; as not being separate from them.

"This means that a child should want what they want, should be who they want (preferably a ‘mini - me’) and should do what they want."

They should enjoy what they enjoy, eat what what they like to eat, be good at what the narcissist is good at, and generally subjugate who they are as an independent, unique person to the desires of their narcissistic parent.

If the child wants a scooter for their birthday, the narcissistic parent might suggest a mountain bike instead, because they they want one. If the child wants to play the piano, the narcissistic parent might insist they learn the violin, like they did. If the child wants to be a nurse when they grow up, they might suggest the job they always wanted to do, or do do, instead, whatever that may be, no matter how vastly different it is from what the child wants. It’s subtly different from just being controlling (which of course narcissists also are). Their demands on their children are often wholly unreasonable, coming from a place of pure self-interest with no ability to put themselves in their child’s shoes and view things from their perspective.

This is a complicated relationship. Because they don’t see the child as being separate from them, they violate their boundaries, even more than with other people. They might read diaries, go through their belongings, read their emails, or enter their room without knocking. They might vet their friends or attempt to become too ‘pally’ with them, perhaps even flirting with teenage children’s boyfriends or girlfriends. They might track them closely using their phone, or demand to know where they are at all times. They might become over-involved with their hobbies, intrusively so. A narcissistic parent will expect instant replies to messages, and if these are not forthcoming, especially when they can see that a message has been read, or that their child is online, this will induce narcissistic rage, as it challenges their version of reality of being one with their child.

This over-identification with the child also means that narcissists can find it very difficult to tolerate ‘imperfection’ (which can really be anything that is different to how they want them to be) in their child. It’s extremely common for narcissists (if they are the sort who have a need to appear invincible) to deny illnesses or conditions in their child, either not allowing them to be diagnosed in the first place, or not allowing them to be treated, as treating them would be an admission of imperfection. Asthma, dyslexia, even broken bones can be swept under the carpet by the narcissistic parent, in their own need to be all-perfect, and special. This is more than the child’s ‘weakness’ reflecting badly on them - it is an admission of weakness in themselves, which they simply can’t tolerate. They are their child, and their child is them. This is personal - quite literally.

(Note that some narcissists play the victim card and are riddled with illness, pain and disability, which they use an tool to gain sympathy and attention, so that they don’t have to openly hog the limelight. These narcissists may also use any illnesses in their children as a means to secure narcissistic supply and attention from others, mollycoddling them, and inventing or hyping up illnesses in them to this end). Some even go as far as full blown Munchausen’s syndrome by proxy, instigating hospital investigations and treatments for their children’s false illnesses.

"The strange thing is that at the same time as seeing their children as extensions of themselves, narcissists will treat their children in the same abusive ways as they treat others."

Their children are not immune from being at the receiving end of the narcissist's cycle of ‘idealise and devalue’, where they are alternately lovebombed, (showered with praise and attention), and then subtly devalued, criticised, withdrawn from and put down. This leaves them confused and hurt, and they start jumping through hoops to please the parent enough to re-enter the idealisation phase again. This is a cycle that repeats ad infinitum, over and over again, even when the child becomes an adult themselves.

Narcissists’ children will be triangulated and played off against others (often their own siblings or cousins), and will find themselves vying for the narcissist’s attention. They will be gas-lighted - lied to by the narcissist to the point where they their own reality is dismissed as false, so that they stop trusting their own perceptions of reality. They will be demeaned and shamed. If they are particularly good at something, behind closed doors they may find themselves on the receiving end of the narcissistic parent’s jealously. Confusingly, the narcissist may then, in front of an audience, hold up their child’s talent as a source of pride, as just another way to gain positive attention for themselves.

Now add to that the variant of triangulation that narcissistic parents often engage in - the dynamic of the ‘scapegoat’, the ‘golden child’ and the ‘invisible child’, and things become even more destabilising for the child. The children are assigned their roles, either as the one who can do no wrong, the one who can do no right, or the completely unseen and unheard one. Each resents the other, either secretly or openly, and each craves to be in the position of the golden child. And suddenly, often without warning, the roles change. Role shifts can occur every few days or every few years, keeping the children on their toes, on high alert. And even worse, the other parent often turns a blind eye, and enables the narcissistic parent in their appalling behaviour. They often even join in with the abuse, themselves as they try to curry favour with their narcissistic partner, themselves a hapless victim of covert emotional abuse.

In households where the narcissistic parent is single, children may find themselves being parentified, expected to discuss and look after the parent’s emotions or finances, to be their confidante, and have have household responsibilities inappropriate to their age. Guilt and responsibility sits heavy on the shoulders of these youngsters.

Children are often expected to vie for the role of ‘primary adorer’, and live in awe of their narcissistic parent. And they, almost inevitably will find themselves subjugating their own needs in preference for the needs of the parent, in order to keep the peace and avoid their parent’s narcissistic rage. Walking on eggshells becomes the norm for these children.

It is no wonder then, that children of narcissists very often become narcissistic themselves, having ‘learned’ narcissism from their very own beginnings. In developing ‘work arounds’ to appease their narcissistic parent, they are actually wiring these patterns into their brains as normal. This is also true of those children of narcissists who do not go on to become narcissists themselves. These children tend to become adults who exist to please others, and who see toxic behaviour from others as normal - a baseline. They go on to attract narcissists into their lives as partners and friends, and may go on to endure anything up to a lifetime of narcissistic abuse.

The tragic reality is that narcissists don’t (and can’t) love their children in the way that ordinary people do. They will tell you that they do (and most likely they will believe that they do), but their love can only be of the transactional, conditional type, even with their children. Narcissism is a condition of low empathy, entitlement and interpersonal exploitation. These, very sadly indeed, do not form the solid foundation required for unconditional, deeply felt love. And although the narcissist’s professions of love for their children might look convincing to the outside world (but more often, they look a little over the top), whatever feelings they do have are shallowly held, and changeable.

In short, and to put it bluntly, narcissists do not have what it takes to be good parents. They cannot put another’s needs first. They cannot care enough about another to have their best interests at heart (unless they gain narcissistic supply in some form from giving the appearance of caring). They can pretend, and they can pretend well, because pretending lies at the very core of their personality disorder. Every day they pretend to be the false persona, the outward image, that they project to the outside world. They do this because they have to - they cannot bear the feelings of shame that would result from having to face their own feelings of unworthiness and inadequacy that are actually simmering under the surface. They can even fool their own children, even into adulthood, in many cases, that they are a the best parent a child could have, and that they should feel lucky.

"Don’t forget that grandiose, overt narcissists can be immense fun. They can be the life and soul of the party. They can turn heads and deploy devastating charm. Their charisma will likely have their children’s friends telling them how very lucky they are to have such a ‘fun’, or ‘cool’ or ‘nice’ dad or mum. This type of narcissist can be simultaneously brilliant and awful. Flashy and irreverent. Delicious rule breakers, with numerous sycophants in tow. It’s easy to see how a child, who understands none of this, has little chance of protecting themselves from abuse that they cannot even recognise."

How narcissists treat their children in divorce

In divorce or separation, where children are involved, things can get even more complicated. Here, a narcissist will weaponise the children, turning them into instruments of abuse against the other parent. They will badmouth the other parent, lie about them in order to alienate the child from the parent, stop paying for the child (eg stop paying school fees or for after school activities) so that the other parent has to pay, using them as tools of financial abuse. They will try to be seen as the ‘winner’ by trying to get the child to primarily reside with them, regardless of the practicalities of this, inflicting a painful blow on the other parent. The child will be seen as a way to cause suffering on the other parent, who they wish to annhilate, as a result of their narcissistic rage caused by the breakdown of their relationship. They will refuse to cooperate on anything at all, and co-parenting becomes a tiring game of counter-parenting. And all the while, the narcissistic parent will be lovebombing the child, giving false justifications for any of their actions which might otherwise arouse suspicion in the child. All this will be delivered to the child with trademark conviction and magnetic allure.

"Being the child of a narcissist is hard, but so is being the non-narcissistic parent."

As the non-narcissistic parent you have an important job to do in setting up your child for a heathy future. Whilst badmouthing the narcissistic parent is a no no, and will mostly likely back-fire against your relationship with your child, you have a fine line to tread. If you are badmouthed by the narcissist, you should (if the content is age appropriate) provide the truth to your child, without actually accusing the narcissist of lying. When the narcissist is late picking up or returning the children, you should stress the importance of being on time, and respectfulness, again without being openly critical of the narcissist. But mostly, you need to lead by example. Be the parent who encourages the child’d hopes and dreams. Be the parent who supports them. Be the parent who listens to them and takes them seriously. Who celebrates them as an individual. Who loves them unconditionally, but who sets firm boundaries and rules. The stability of your love, and the equality of it with your other children will be eventually be noticed as contrasting with the narcissist’s behaviour.

Teach them empathy from an early age by discussing other peoples’ feelings. Even when reading bedtime stories you can pause to ask, ‘and how did you think the character felt then?’ If you can build empathy in your child, a skill which can be learnt, then you have effectively stopped your child from becoming a narcissist as an adult. So much narcissistic behaviour comes from the inability to care about others because they cannot feel things from another’s perspective, because they were never able to learn empathy. But, like all things, too much empathy is also a bad thing - it can lead a person to give and give to another, and set them up for being preyed on by users. Encouraging you child to learn how to recognise and express their own needs, and how to exert their own boundaries will also be important here. Again, leading by example is the way forwards.

"Parenting, as we all know, is a tough job, but it is twice as hard when you have to counteract the damage that is being (often covertly) inflicted on the child by a narcissistic parent."

Even years post separation or divorce from the narcissistic parent, you will be battling them regarding the children, feeding their narcissism through the drama, conflict and sympathy they will use the situation to garner from others. There is no such thing as co-parenting with a narcissist, and ‘Parallel Parenting’ is the best model to adopt, where you severely limit your contact with the narcissist to only the essentials regarding the children, and accept that the children live by the rules of whichever house they are staying in at the time. No school or family events are attended jointly, and you use the grey rock technique to communicate with them (see my communication tactics blog posts). Your own healing is important here too, and the closer you can get to the gold standard of ‘no contact’ with the narcissist by reducing contact to the absolute bare minimum, the faster you can heal.

As regards parenting, you’ll never do it perfectly, and you’ll always beat yourself up about it. You’ll even end up unwittingly inflict some damage on your children yourself, as all parents do, by definition, but at least with awareness of what you are facing, you stand a great chance of helping your children towards a healthy future.

The Narcissist's Prayer

183:789868267 (Supriya McKenna) — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 18:24:52 GMT

The Narcissist's Prayer

That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.

The Narcissist's Prayer (by Dayna Craig) beautifully illustrates the inner workings of the narcissistic mind. Denial, gaslighting, minimising poor behaviour, blameshifting and shamedumping all feature in this one simple verse, all hallmarks of covert emotional abuse. To a narcissist the 'truth' is not seen as a finite, fixed entity, but as being malleable - as being whatever the narcissist says it is, at the time they say it. The truth is simply whatever serves the narcissist at that particular time.

Let’s take a closer look:

“That didn’t happen”

Here we have denial , mixed in with history rewriting - both classic narcissistic behaviours. If you’ve been in a narcissistic relationship you will recognise this instantly. Narcissists need to feel good about themselves. This is an essential part of the personality disorder. They have a desperate need to feel special or perfect, in order to distract themselves from their core wound - which is an underlying feeling of worthlessness. They can’t accept the blame for bad behaviour, as it would challenge this image that they need to project to the world, so they simply deny it.

“And if it did, it wasn’t that bad”

Minimisation is another tactic that is hardwired into the miswired narcissistic brain as a result of how they reacted to their upbringing. Here they diminish the topic concerned, to make it seem unimportant. And to a narcissist, if it doesn’t serve them, it is unimportant. Narcissists will minimise all manner of things, from their own bad behaviour to another’s achievements, to an ill person’s symptoms, to someone else’s problems. Narcissists are intrinsically controlling - they have to control their image and how others see them, and they have to control others in order to escape from the reality of their own fragile egos. Here they are trying to control how others see external situations.

“And if it was, that’s not a big deal”

Of course, this is also minimisation again, but here I want to mention the idea of ‘ gaslighting. ’ Gaslighting is a specific narcissistic behaviour in which the narcissist denies another person’s reality, by making them think that they are perceiving something incorrectly. ‘You are thinking about it all wrong’ is a common narcissistic refrain, in one form or another. If this happens enough times, eventually the victim stops trusting themselves, and starts to rely upon the narcissist in their lives as the ‘voice of reason’ or as the barometer of what is good or right. I knew of a narcissist whose gaslighting was so severe that he would tell his wife that he was drinking tea when actually he was drinking coffee, which she had watched him make. Although she knew somewhere in her heart of hearts that this wasn’t right, she found herself questioning everything she thought she knew. This keeps the victim exactly where the narcissist wants them to be - trapped in their metaphorical cage where they can be manipulated and used to give attention, adoration, drama or conflict to the narcissist, whenever they need it - the oxygen that keeps the narcissist feeling whole and alive.

“And if it is, that's not my fault.”

Another easily recognisable narcissistic behaviour to anyone who has been in a narcissistic relationship - here we are looking at the phenomenon of “ blameshifting” . Narcissists cannot take the blame for anything at all, again, because in doing so they have to admit to themselves that they are not perfect and special, as they have to be in their own minds. Even just letting in the tiniest bit of accountability, through the smallest chink in their armour of superiority, will cause the entire false persona that they project to the outside world to come crashing own, leaving them exposed, ashamed and vulnerable. All narcissists play the victim when they need to. Nothing can ever be their fault - it is always someone or something else’s fault, and they are just the helpless and hapless victim of circumstance.

“And if it was, I didn't mean it”

Again, accountability issues come to the fore here. Narcissists do not apologise and mean it. Not ever. An apology will only come if it benefits them in some way - apologies are transactional, as everything is to a narcissist. Narcissists cannot be seen to be the bad guy, and they cannot bear shame. That feeling of burning shame, the humiliation of it that healthy people learn to take on, unpleasant though it is, is simply not something a narcissist can allow themselves to feel. To them, shame feel like an existential crisis. It must be batted off at all times, usually on to another.

“And if I did, you deserved it.”

Here we have both projection and blameshifting . This transferring of your feelings onto another person so that you do not have to feel them yourself is called ‘projection’, and narcissists are masters of it. If a narcissist incorrectly accuses you of feeling something or doing something, or being a certain way, it is likely that they are projecting on to you, and it is they who are actually feeling that feeling, doing that action or being that way. In this line of the verse the narcissist is projecting their shame onto you. They are blaming you for what they did, so they do not have to bear the shame, and their shining false external image can remain intact and whole. The narcissist often uses illogical arguments to persuade you that something is your fault, or that you have got it all wrong, but delivered with such convincing fanfare that you find yourself fooled. They will often change the direction of their arguments so quickly that you are left utterly confused.

The incidence of narcissism is said to be on the increase, and cultural narcissism is embedded in society. Those with a high prevalence of narcissistic traits flourish in today's climate, where prosperity, success, grandiosity and entitlement are largely seen as positive attributes. Consider the world of politics, which is rife with narcissism, and consider the far reaching implications of this. Sadly the profound negative effects on society and those at at an individual level can be stigmatised and are often swept under the carpet.

Figures vary, with some studies indicating that up to 6% of the population qualify for the diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). The chances are that even if you do not directly know a narcissist, you know someone who does, and who, most likely, has suffered to some degree at a narcissist's hands.

NPD is known to occur as a result of environmental factors. In other words, narcissists breed narcissists due to the way they bring up their children, and the abused become the abusers.

I believe it falls upon all of us to break these generational chains by raising awareness of narcissistic abuse, and de-stigmatising the experiences of those who have been affected by it. The unique challenges to healing faced by those who have been through the trauma of narcissistic abuse needs to be understood by as many people as possible, as does the fact that mere time, on its own, does not heal these wounds.

The narcissist’s new partner - to tell or not to tell.

183:789868267 (Supriya McKenna) — Fri, 25 Sep 2020 09:19:08 GMT

The narcissist’s new partner - to tell or not to tell.

You are probably a kind person. A rescuer, perhaps. You may have been the sort of person who believes in giving people chances over and over again, believing that all people are intrinsically ‘nice’, because you know that you are. You are probably very empathic, and feel other people’s pain. You are most likely someone with co-dependent traits, putting your own needs behind meeting the needs of other people. You tend to trust people straight off the bat.

These qualities are, of course, what made you so attractive to the narcissist in your life, because they make you easy to exploit. They make you someone who will give and give - and tolerate, deny or justify poor behaviour from others. Someone who will try harder to be a better partner, friend, coworker, neighbour, parent, child or sibling, even in the face of (often very subtle to start with) narcissistic abuse. And if you are this type of person, a narcissist magnet, it is likely that your replacement, the narcissist’s new partner, is too.

Assuming you have left or been left by your narcissistic partner, it is more than likely that they will have moved on to a new partner with breathtaking speed. Narcissists rarely have a gap between partners, and may have been grooming several potential replacements for you during your relationship. It is more than likely that within weeks, or a few short months, they will have used their charm and charisma to secure their new source of narcissistic supply.

(Remember that everything a narcissist does is to get ‘narcissistic supply’, their oxygen, which is the external validation they need to bolster their lacking self-esteem. They need to divert themselves from the truth of how they really feel about themselves by propping up their false identity, their external image, and they do this by getting attention, adoration, drama or conflict from those around them. Remember that even though they may appear to believe that they are special, and act correspondingly, inside they feel worthless and empty. And although this may be a sad state of affairs for them, change is unlikely, and their abusive behaviour should not be tolerated, or enabled).

Their new partner will invariably have been swept off their feet, as you had been, when you first met the narcissist. They will not stop to consider how short the time frame was between you and them, in the first heady flush of dopamine, oxytocin and serotinin fueled love. They will believe every word of the lies that the narcissist has told about you. They don’t know that the smear campaign is one of the hallmarks of narcissistic behaviour, following a relationship breakdown. The narcissist will play the hard done by victim, purporting to have been preyed on by you, who they will portray as the unreasonable abuser. They may even tell their new partner, their fan club/harem, and anyone else will listen, that it is you who is the narcissist, and due to their charm and plausibility, they will probably be believed. As if this isn’t bad enough, the narcissist’s ‘enablers’ may even be enlisted to also badmouth you, even to their new partner, making them even more of a sitting duck, and even more sympathetic to their plight.

But, as all this happens, instead of just feeling sorry for yourself, as you have every right to feel, you probably find yourself feeling sorry for their new partner. After all, you now know the playbook. You know the drama cycle of the narcissist - the method he or she uses to rope you in and keep you in the game. Lovebombing you at first, acting the role of the perfect partner, being everything you could have dreamed of. You know how this is followed by tiny, subtle criticisms as the devaluing behaviour begins, and you’ll remember how your heart would sink, and how you would try to ignore it, telling yourself that you were just being sensitive. You can probably now see now, just as you were starting to question the narcissist’s behaviour, or doubt their love, how they would plunge straight back into lovebombing mode, and how you would breathe a sigh of relief, blaming their previous behaviour on stress/ tiredness/ life or whatever else helped you to justify it. Most likely, you now see how these cycles would repeat, sometimes over hours, sometimes over days, and sometimes even over months, making you tiptoe around their egos, making you walk on eggshells, making you too weak to call them out on their behaviour. Making you want to get back that perfect first few months, when you felt like you were living in a beautiful dream.

It’s likely that you look at your narcissist’s new partner and see them as you were - a lamb to the slaughter, drawn in by promises of perfect love, of an incredible future. You probably see how, out in the world, the new partner plays their role with aplomb, deliriously happy, blissfully in love, as you may have done. But you know that underneath it all, somewhere, there’s the tiniest niggling doubt, a gut instinct that all is not well, which they are burying deep within them, not wanting to face.

Cognitive dissonance, the brain’s discomfort at having to hold two opposing beliefs at the same, will be at play. On the one hand, their new partner will know that all is not quite right, and on the other, they will want to believe that they are loved, that everything is ok, and that their partner is a nice person. The brain will want to relieve this discomfort, and so it will make a choice as to which belief to hold, by denying, minimising or justifying the other, so that it can be discarded. It happened to you too, and is one the things that the narcissist capitalises on when luring in and keeping a partner.

Most former victims of narcissistic abuse, once they understand the complexities of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, will want to help the narcissist’s new partner (or, more accurately, the narcissist’s ‘new supply’). They will want to warn them, to prevent them from having to go through the horrific discard and relationship breakdown that they went through. They will want to spare them the pain that they will feel if they stay, only to realise that the narcissist, in spite of all proclamations of adoration, couldn’t truly love them, or anyone at all. They will want to save them from the narcissist’s future faking, to tell them how the things they were promised that really mattered to them were just a lie, and would never really materialise, not in the way they thought they would.

The narcissist’s new supply, just like you, initially thinks that they have won life’s lottery. It can be agonising to watch. You may even have moments of doubt, thinking that perhaps the narcissist has changed, and this love affair is the real deal. It isn’t.

But here’s the rub. No matter how tempted you may be to warn them of the truth - don’t do it. Don’t try to save the narcissist’s new supply. They will never believe you, just as you wouldn’t have believed anyone if they had tried to warn you, all that time ago. It will only backfire on you. You will be made to look vengeful and bitter, and the narcissist will garner even more sympathy from their new partner. You will probably even be accused of harassment.

Walk away. Say nothing. Accept that they are on their own journey, and that if that includes narcissistic abuse then that is a matter for them. Stop trying to save them or rescue them, cruel though it may feel. Put your own needs first for a change. It’ll be good for you. Stand back and watch the inevitable fireworks, through your fingers, if you have to, but do not approach .

Now is a time to focus on you, and your own healing. The incredible growth that can be achieved as a result of surviving narcissistic abuse is nothing short of transformational, and although the journey is a difficult one to undertake, it will set you up for a truly happy, contented life, filled with love and possibility. And, if it makes you feel any better, if this is true for you, then it is also true for the narcissist’s new supply. In turning away and allowing them to walk the path of narcissistic abuse, with all its pain, you may, in fact, be handing them a gift. But whether they choose to unwrap it is their choice - and theirs alone.

You Are Not Your Thoughts

Tue, 17 Sep 2019 17:47:24 GMT

You Are Not Your Thoughts

As many of you know, I am a great believer in the effectiveness of mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT) in helping one to find a sense of peace, balance, contentment and happiness in life. I consider mindfulness to a be "a process of becoming familiar with the workings of your mind, so that you can become a master of your thoughts, and not a slave to them" - a slightly different definition to the usual one.

As humans we have a tendency to identify with our thoughts, assuming that because the busy cerebral cortex (the part of the brain in which conscious thinking happens) is constantly spewing out thoughts, these thoughts must somehow be true, relevant and meaningful. And therefore, they must be an expression of who we are . One of the key parts of MBCT is the recognition that, in truth, YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS and, moreover, THOUGHTS ARE NOT FACTS (even the ones that tell you they are).

Or, as I like to say, " I am, therefore I think ."

Today I share one of my poems on the subject, which I hope you can relate to, entitled 'The Kitchen.'

The Kitchen

I’m not looking forward to today - I am looking forward to today

There’s a change I can make in my mind.

Superhighways of ingrained thought

Hijacking my happiness

Chattering and clattering in my head

Caterwauling, throwing pots and pans

Smashing plates against the walls of the my internal kitchen,

Spitting out my culinary attempts at life, in disgust.

Try again. Do better.

Who is this reprehensible beast that lives inside me?

This hypercritical narcissist, always beating me up?

I need to stop cooking for it. I need to stop feeding it.

It never said that it was me, so why did I think it was?

It is time I fed myself instead.

Quietly. At my table. Just as I am.

So let the beast jabber on and vie for my attention

I’m tasting my food for the very first time.

And as I savour it, he fades.

©2019 Dr Supriya McKenna

Leaving A Narcissist? How to prepare.

Fri, 06 Sep 2019 11:30:48 GMT

Leaving a narcissist? How to prepare.

Like non-narcissists, narcissists do not like rejection.

But if you are planning to leave a relationship with a narcissist, be prepared for the fallout. Because narcissists (and by that I mean those who qualify for the diagnosis of Narcissistic Personality Disorder as defined in the DSM-5) will do quite a bit more more than simply throwing their toys out of the pram upon being left. And if you were ever in any doubt about whether your beau or belle was a true narcissist, you will most certainly know once you’ve walked away, in the most unequivocal terms.

You see, rejecting a person with narcissistic personality disorder triggers a variety of highly predictable responses, born out of what is termed ‘narcissistic injury.' As we have discussed in other articles, although certain types of narcissists (the overt types ) may appear to have high self regard and self-esteem, in actual fact all narcissists actually suffer from highly unstable self-esteem.

Healthy adults derive their feelings of self-esteem largely from their own intrinsic sense of self-worth (around 70%), with much less coming from what other people think of them (external validation), at around 20%, and from how they feel they compare to others (10%).

But narcissists show a very different pattern - with a very much reduced sense of intrinsic self worth. A much greater proportion of their self esteem comes from external validation and also from how they feel they compare to others.

This is why they need to appear perfect, or to appear to have the perfect life. This is why they have to believe themselves (overtly or covertly) to be superior to others. This is why they often have to believe that others are envious of them, and that those who are not, simply do not understand their brilliance and uniqueness.

A narcissist will have become used to wearing whatever mask works best for them, to ensure they get the right kind of attention as their source of ‘narcissistic supply.’ (‘Narcissistic supply’ being the sustenance that their self-esteem requires). That could be the mask of the altruist, the grandiose superior being, or the vulnerable victim . Narcissists have often been compared to mythical vampires, the difference being that where a vampire needs feeding with blood to survive, the narcissist needs feeding with narcissistic supply just to feel whole and alive.

Although a narcissist may be predominantly one of the 3 types above for the majority of their life, it is very possible for a narcissist to play all these roles in varying amounts at different times in their lives, depending on what their situation calls for. These roles are simply strategies to enable them to top up their shaky, continually draining self-esteem. It’s like their self-esteem is contained within a bucket with a hole in it, constantly needing a steady stream of narcissistic supply gained from admiration, attention, jealousy etc to stay full.

But one thing is common to all types of narcissists - when you reject them, their already fragile, artificially propped up self esteem takes an enormous beating, and they spectacularly fall off their own self-made pedestals. And what happens next, which can last for months or even years, is a desperate attempt to claw-back their sense of self worth. When a narcissist is rejected, and their supply is withdrawn, they are suddenly forced to actually feel their own pitifully lacking low self esteem and their shame, and this unbearable for them - the avoidance of it being the whole reason why they constructed their protective false persona in the first place. It is this intense emotion that the narcissist feels as ‘narcissistic injury’. It’s even worse if they suffer the humiliation of being left publicly.

But before you feel too sorry for them, just be aware that the callous, cold, manipulative, controlling, vindictive behaviour that results from narcissistic injury can be so shocking that you may find it hard to believe that any human being could be capable of it.

Very often people who have been in long-term relationships with narcissists find this the hardest to believe, incredulous that after years of loyal servitude, they could be treated which such ice-cold heartlessness. Of course, due to arrested emotional development, the narcissist has never developed the ability to feel genuine empathy (although most can convincingly feign so-called ‘cognitive empathy,’ if it is in their interests to do so). This explains why they simply cannot care about the pain that they are inflicting on you as a result of their response to their narcissistic injury. Your pain is irrelevant, unreal, and if it is real, deserved. And most importantly, they can’t feel it, and therefore can’t feel guilt or remorse about it.

In addition, narcissists have a problem with ‘whole object relations’. What this means is that they are unable to see people (and themselves) as having a mixture of good and bad attributes. They are only able to you as being ‘all good’ or ‘all bad’ at any one time, depending how they perceive you are acting towards them. Obviously, if you have left them, you will have severely slighted them, and this will make them see you as ‘all bad,’ meaning that any punishment they inflict upon you as a result of their narcissistic injury will be entirely justified.

Even more sadly, the narcissist is not capable of loving in the unconditional, accepting, reciprocal way that typifies healthy love, no matter how convincing their love seemed at times. There is no sweetening this - the love for you that you thought you saw was never real. It was merely your own love reflected back at you by the narcissist. The narcissist did not adore or love you, she adored or loved the way you made her feel, and what you did for her. And that is another reason why the narcissist’s reaction to you leaving can seem so inhumane and cruel.

In short, if you leave a narcissist, expect no mercy.

Which type of narcissist they predominantly are ( covert, overt , altruistic) dictates which (and how many) of the following strategies they will employ in response to their being left by their significant other.

So, here are the 9 behaviours of the rejected narcissist you can expect:

1. Guilt Tripping

The narcissist is a natural master manipulator, and will often threaten suicide or even carry out an act of deliberate self harm, to make you feel guilty for thinking about leaving. They are keen to make you think that their blood will be on your hands if you go through with abandoning them.

They can use out quite high drama tactics in front of you - examples include actually taking an overdose, jumping into traffic so that you are forced to hold them down, repeatedly punching walls with their hands until they bleed, or even head butting walls until they injure themselves.

They will often tell you that they have been suffering with undiagnosed depression or stress, and that that is the true reason why have they have been difficult to live with.

If you are married, they may pull the ‘in sickness and in health vow card’ in conjunction with this last ploy.

They may go through the motions of having therapy to appease you, or suggest couples therapy. Reading self-development books is another manipulative method they use to try to show that they have changed.

If you have children they will use this to their advantage, most likely telling you that leaving will ruin the children’s lives. (It is ironic that many people leave their narcissist partners to improve their children’s lives).

Guilt tripping is classic of the victim (covert) narcissist, although all types can use it.

2. Threats

A common strategy to make you rethink you position is to threaten to make you suffer financially, or in some other way, if you go through with walking away. Custody threats regarding any children or pets, threats to smear your name, threats to destroy your possessions (eg to burn down your house) are all common, and delivered which such conviction that you will find them believable and scary. Unfortunately, these threats may not be empty, and you should consider legal advice regarding them. Although you may be expecting such threats, they can still come as a big surprise to many.

3. Playing on your insecurities

If you’ve had a relationship with a narcissist you will be familiar with the ' idealize, devalue, discard cycle' that all narcissists employ to keep you off-balance, hooked into the relationship and unsure of what is coming next. If you look back, this is the pattern that will been present throughout the bulk of your relationship.

When you threaten to leave a narcissist they quite often tend to ramp up these cycles to quite alarming levels, so you may find yourself in the ‘devalue’ stage once more.

Here the narcissist may play on your insecurities, by telling you that you will be alone forever if you leave them and that you are unlovable, unattractive, boring, unintelligent, fat or whatever else they have learned you may be insecure about.

4. Hoovering

This is the term used for when the narcissist tries to suck you back into the relationship by promising to change, and showering you with love and affection.

This is when the narcissist revisits the ‘idealise phase’ of the narcissistic abuse cycle of 'idealise, devalue, discard'. They will pull out all the stops to suck you back in, on the grounds that they love you so much that they cannot live without you.

You will doubtless have tried to explain to the narcissist what it is about the relationship that you cannot live with anymore, and they will be able to change some of these things in the short term to demonstrate their love for you, so great is their fear of abandonment.

These tactics are often hard for the victim to resist, and you may well be drawn back into the relationship, pulled by the magnetism of the empty promise of true love, and the demonstrable improvements that the narcissist has been able to make.

The inevitable demise of the relationship will not be far away however, when the devalue phase is upon you once more.

5. Replacing you first

Most narcissists will already have a number of adoring fans waiting in the wings, who they have been triangulating you with during your relationship. This stems from their insatiable need for admiration and attention, as a source of narcissistic supply (see above). It is simply impossible for one person to be enough to provide all that the narcissist needs supply-wise, so the more people they have orbiting around them, ready to jump into their arms, the better.

The absolute hallmark of the narcissist is their inability to be relationship-less for any length of time, as without a relationship their narcissistic supply needs are simply not being met. They cannot run the risk of having to feel the reality of their empty self-esteem, and so you will be replaced instantly, sometimes within hours of you saying that you are leaving.

Expect your narcissist to be on a dating website within hours, dating within days and in another relationship within weeks, no matter how long or serious you thought your relationship with them was. And do not expect subtlety. You may well know about their new relationship, and how perfect it is, practically from the outset.

This is behaviour common to all types of narcissists, so I urge you to mentally prepare yourself for it. Of course, a leopard cannot change its spots, and you can be sure that once the initial lovebombing phase is over with the new source of supply, they will be being devalued, just like you were, regardless of the image that is bring portrayed to the outside world.

6. Stealing

If you have a joint mortgage or bank accounts, tell your bank or mortgage lender that you’re relationship is ending and that you would like the accounts frozen, so that money cannot be withdrawn without both parties consent, and mortgage loan amounts cannot be increased to free up cash for the narcissist to take.

It is almost standard for narcissists to try to buy expensive new cars or similar, or to simply withdraw huge sums of moneys from accounts as soon as they catch wind of your impending desertion. They will also attempt to cut you off from the finances as soon as possible, so you need to be ready well in advance.

If you have a joint credit card for which you are liable, make sure that the narcissist cannot max these out, by informing the credit card company of the split.

Change all your passwords for your online bank accounts well before you tell the narcissist you are leaving.

Take any treasured belongings and photographs to a safe place, even ones that the narcissist has never liked, as you can be sure that they will try to take anything from you of sentimental value or that you hold dear.

Before you mention leaving, make sure you have enough funds in your bank account, so that when you actually leave you can swiftly separate everything you need to before the narcissist can steal from you.

The narcissist will also attempt to financially abuse you in indirect ways, as well as in the direct ways above. For example:

They may stop paying their share of the children’s school fees or for extracurricular activities, so that you will have to pay them, thus reducing your available funds. Using the children in this way is typical narcissistic behaviour, and clearly separates them from healthy, loving parents.

They may stop paying their share of the mortgage again, forcing you to pay it.

If you are divorcing, they may try to make unreasonable requests of you via their lawyers so that you spend a huge amount on lawyers fees replying to these requests.

It is a standard ploy for narcissists to deliberately and significantly reduce their earnings as soon as they get wind of your dissatisfaction with the relationship.

Also, attempting to hide and sell off assets is very common.

Once the narcissist has spent or given away money, it has gone. UK courts generally don’t include it in the financial pot when deciding on the final financial settlement, so be aware of this, so you can protect yourself early.

Narcissists do not play by the rules, even the rules of the court, so be aware that in divorce cases the narcissist is likely to lie or twist his or her financial statement, hiding assets and lying about, or deliberately reducing, income. They may delay returning forms, and drag out procedures, so that you are emotionally drained further.

7. Intimidating mind games

If you have moved out, they may make a point of slowly driving past your new house, so that you can see them. This can progress to proper stalking, and you may well need to seek legal advice on this.

They often threaten to bug, or actually do bug the house/car of the partner who left.

It is common for narcissists to threaten to take their ex-partners pets, so be prepared.

Expect the narcissist to leave abusive messages for you, send abusive texts and emails and ring you repeatedly. It is best to avoid all direct communication with them in these cases, ignoring all but written communications from their lawyer.

A bizarre, but oddly common tactic the narcissist may use to destabilise the person who is leaving is to deliberately spell your name wrongly in communications.

If you are getting divorced, expect the narcissist to try to convince you to go to meditation with them for your own best financial interests - but be aware that unless your mediator understands NPD , this may not work for you, as the narcissist will be good at wearing you down emotionally, pushing all your buttons, and misinforming and influenecing the mediator with characteristic charm and lies. If you do have to go to mediation, you may wish to ask for 'shuttle mediation', where you do not sit in the same room as the narcissist, but the mediator goes between you in different rooms.

If the narcissist moves out and you are remaining in the former home, be prepared for them to come and go as they please, taking with them whatever possessions they want. I suggest changing the locks early in these circumstances, for your own peace of mind.

The narcissist may tell you that they have called the police and told them that you have been physically abusive, and you that should leave the house if you want to avoid arrest. (They may be lying, or they may indeed have done so. If you need to stay, and it is safe for you to stay, then do so, and present yourself calmly in the event that the police do arrive).

8. The smear campaign

This is another expected narcissistic move, which most types of narcissists will pull. You may find it difficult to believe, but these happen consistently and predictably.

Expect to be labelled a prostitute, drug addict or alcoholic.

Expect the word on the street to be that you were having an affair, or several affairs, and that was the reason for the split. Any infidelities of the narcissist will be absolutely denied ( See The Narcissist's Prayer Blog Post ).

Expect to be called an inadequate or abusive parent and to potentially have a custody fight on your hands. Sadly, the narcissistic parent will sacrifice what is in the best interests of the children, in order to exact revenge on the non-narcissistic parent. You will need to stay calm in the face of this, as the narcissist will be able to appear to be the rational, caring parent in court, whilst your fear could make you appear less stable. Document everything including all late and cancelled pick ups of the children, all innappropriate behaviour towards the children and the all ranting communicatons that you will be recieving from the narcissist. ensuring that you have a time and date stamp on this evidence may also be important, so emailing yourself the evidence on the same day is a good idea. This hard evidence will stand you good stead should you need it in court.

Expect your family and friends to be contacted and lied to about you, with characteristic convincingness. The narcissist will play the victim here, and crocodile tears will fall.

The narcissist will also badmouth you to work colleagues and acquaintances.

Expect to lose friends, and respect in the community initially.

Expect the narcissist to recruit their 'flying monkeys' to help with the smear campaign (the flying monkeys are the narcissist’s fan club, who would do anything to curry favour with him or her, including spreading malicious gossip). They are usually subordinates, as narcissists are usually unable to sustain meaningful friendships with people at the same intellectual level as them, who generally do not provide them with enough unconditional admiration or attention.

If you share children with the narcissist be prepared for them to attempt to alienate the children from you with a mix of charm, victimhood and lies about you. This is a particularly challenging thing to deal with, particularly if the children are not old enough to understand the narcissist's true personality. Take heart - all will become clear to them in the fullness of time.

Narcissist's often call the police and try to have you arrested for 'physically abusing them'. Particularly if you are male, it is not uncommon for the police to believe the narcissist, and in many cases you may even find yourself in police custody for a night or so. This is far too common an occurence, sadly.

9. Physical violence

If the narcissist has a history of being physically abusive and, sometimes, even if they do not, this is a very real danger. You will need to remove yourself from the situation immediately and involve the police.

In summary, leaving a narcissist may be one of the most traumatic experiences of your life, but it can be one of the most worthwhile. If you can avoid triggerring narcissistic injury in the narcissist, this may make the process less painful for you, but this may come at a cost. The narcissist may exhibit less of the behaviours above if you allow them to discard you first, by withdrawing slowly from them and giving them less and less of your attention and energy (ie your narcissistic supply), so they move on to another source. Using the Grey Rock Technique can help with this.

Know that if you can prepare for the worst in the ways above, you will survive it, although it is rare to emerge unscathed. Leaving a narcissist can rock the very foundations of your world, but it is possible to grow and reconfigure from the experience (so called ‘post traumatic growth’). Seek professional help, rely on those close to you, and try to stay strong in the face of adversity.

There is a price for freedom, but it's a price well worth paying.

Why Me? Making Sense Of Narcissistic Abuse and The Real Way To Move Forwards

Mon, 19 Aug 2019 21:49:51 GMT

Why Me? Making Sense Of Narcissistic Abuse And The Real Way To Move Forwards.

One of the commonest questions I get asked by the victims of narcissistic abuse is “Why me? Why did the narcissist pick me as their victim?”

We are all wounded by our childhoods, our parents, our pasts. Every single one of us. It’s part of being human, and no one escapes this woundedness, no matter how hard your parents tried with you, how perfect they tried to be.

“You find the person whose teeth fits your wounds” is my answer to this question. And it doesn’t apply to just relationships with narcissists, but to the vast majority of people’s relationships with their significant others.

We are all subconciously drawn to people who remind us of our primary caregivers from our infancies. The person you fall in love with might be obviously like your father on some level, or it might be much more subtle - perhaps an amalgamation of some of your mother’s controlling, distant personality, and your father’s gregariousness, for example. The partner you choose might superficially bear no resemblance to your parents or primary caregivers from those very early years, but if you look much deeper, you may well be surprised.

It’s what the primitive parts of our brains are programmed to do - search out and recreate the familiar.

Remember that feeling as if you’d known your partner-to-be for years even though you’d just met? That instant ‘chemistry’ you felt, that we give such importance to when looking for a partner? Be aware that these feelings stem from familiarity . And if you were brought up in a dysfunctional way, by narcissistic or neglectful parents, familiarity might not be the best thing for you. And, unromantic as it sounds, 'chemistry' might not be a reliable indicator of compatibility, either.

You find the person whose teeth fit your wounds.

A former relationship with a narcissist is an opportunity to look at your past, and establish what your wounds are, and where they came from. It’s a dark tunnel, filled with ghosts and ghouls from the past. Buried memories. Shadows. Putrid holes in which to fall. Rocks on which to scrape yourself and stumble. It’s scary. It hurts. You’ll want to turn back. But if you wish to heal these wounds, and move forwards with your life without repeating the patterns of old, it’s a journey well worth undertaking. It’s cliched, but there really is light at the end of that tunnel.

And one day, although it may seem impossible now, you may even thank the narcissist for holding up that mirror to those wounds, and ultimately allowing you to heal and live your life conciously and authentically, filled with meaningful and fulfilling relationships.

For those of you who are still in a dark place following a narcissistic relationship, I leave you with this poem, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley. It's my belief that we all have it in us to be master of our fates, and captains of our souls, if we take the journey through the tunnel with appropriate help.

You may be surprised, one day, by your own fortitude.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

Practical solutions for communicating with a narcissist - Part 2

Mon, 12 Aug 2019 11:27:27 GMT

Welcome to Part Two of Practical Solutions For Communicating With A Narcissist.

In this post I look specifically at written communication from the narcissist and outline a surprising, but effective, tool to help you evaluate the narcissist’s messages.

As we discussed in Part 1 of this series, a narcissist’s style of communication, particularly when the narcissist has been ‘outed’, challenged, or abandoned, can leave one reeling in disbelief. It’s common for messages to be full of the following:

Contradictions (even within a single message)

Threats, which can be aimed directly at your Achilles' heel, or at the people you care about

Character assassinations

Unfounded accusations

False justifications

Blameshifting on to you or others

False logic, or pseudologic, which often makes no sense, and can be used to justify certain behaviours

Lying

Rewriting of history

Playing the victim

Grandiosity (if the narcissist is an overt narcissist).

Smugness and assertions of superiority.

Controlling dictatorial orders

Projections, where you are accused of doing or being what the narcissist is actually doing or being

Shame dumping on to you or another person (a form of projection)

If you’ve ever been in contact with a narcissist who isn't getting their way, you may have noticed toddler-style tantrums , and rants and rages - behaviour which eerily resembles the throwing of toys out of the proverbial pram. And there’s a very good reason for this.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder results from the the way that the narcissist was brought up. It’s nuture, that formed the problem, not nature.

A large part of the development of the personality disorder happened even before the narcissist-to-be could even speak, resulting from the way in which the narcissist formed ‘attachments’ to his or her primary caregiver.

The future narcissist, as an infant, was forced to orbit around caregivers (parents) who were unreliable, abusive, absent or neglectful. Sadly, this failure to attach in a healthy way to a caring, loving, stable parent causes big developmental problems for the child, who never learns to connect healthily with others and fails to develop empathy.

Developmentally, all normal children go through an essential, healthy narcissistic stage, during which they are all about the immediate gratification of their own needs, and are unable to consider or see the needs of others. This stage normally lasts from birth to around the age of 7-9, when you will see empathy starting to develop in healthily attached children.

Tragically, for all involved, the narcissist never emotionally develops beyond the normal narcissistic stage of childhood, because the developmental foundations upon which the subsequent emotional stages are supposed to form are simply not there.

It’s not uncommon for people to refer to the narcissist in their lives as ‘Peter Pan’, or within marriages, as being ‘as emotionally needy as one of the kids’, and there is a sound develop mental reason for this.

So, I’ll leave you with this one simple trick, as a first step, to help you to interpret any written communications you receive from the narcissist in your life (Part 3 of this series will give you further, more detailed methods).

Before reading written communications from a narcissist:

Copy and paste the email or text into your word processor program and then

Change the font into a five year old font (www.1001fonts.com have a variety of free children’s fonts to choose from).

Whilst this might sound frivolous, it is actually a remarkably powerful, visual way of reminding you of what you are dealing with. It takes the heat out of the situation, and helps you to see that replying in an in-depth way, as if you were dealing with an adult, may not be relevant or useful.

To illustrate, below is a genuine tweet from a well known alleged narcissist, in the changed font.

I do hope you'll join me for Part 3 of the series for more in depth communication tips to help when dealing with narcissists.

Feeding The Beast And The Grey Rock Technique. Practical Solutions For Communicating With A Narcissist.

Wed, 07 Aug 2019 16:50:06 GMT

Taking back control when communicating with a narcissist

When one is on the receiving end of a narcissist’s raging outbursts, one’s mind can spin, particularly during the final breakdown phase of the relationship. It is normal for victims to find themselves questioning their own sanity at these times, as they desperately try to explain themselves, to correct the narcissist’s outrageous claims and to respond to the narcissist’s unreasonable demands and threats.

This is often made even more difficult by the fact that the victim may still be struggling cognitively with the true nature of the narcissist, which may have only recently been revealed to them, and so be full of their own disbelief. Depending on the situation, the the victim may also be grieving the loss of the relationship or be fearful about the future (perhaps worrying about their job prospects if the narcissist is their boss), or just be full of self-doubt, confusion and misplaced guilt.

If you are finding yourself coming away from conversations with a narcissist (whether your boss, coworker, family member, significant other or friend) wondering what on earth they were talking about, whether you imagined all their fast paced contradictions, or whether they realise how senseless and illogical their justifications seem, fear not. Communication help is at hand.

(And no, you are not going mad. You are simply responding in a normal way to a well documented, highly predictable series of narcissistic behaviours).

Knowledge is power, and here’s what you need to know:

Firstly, it’s important to understand that narcissists need ‘narcissistic supply’. They need to be fed with attention. Whilst they prefer admiration and adoration, if they can’t get this, then drama-filled, negative attention will do just as well. Indeed, this plays to the narcissist’s mild enjoyment of manipulating other’s emotions, which temporarily distracts the narcissist from their underlying sense of boredom and emptiness.

You see, the narcissist’s core wound, which results from his or her upbringing, is that they have no self-esteem - no true sense of self. The false persona they create acts simply as a shield between them and the world - an attempt to hide this internal void.

But the narcissist’s natural state is to feel empty, and attention from those around them acts to temporarily fill this vacuum. However, in narcissists, it is like trying to fill a vessel which is constantly leaking. The vessel will never be full, and attention (‘narcissistic supply’) will always be continually required. If you were one of their better sources of supply (perhaps their significant other), and you have recently withdrawn this, the narcissist will often go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that supply from you continues, even if it is from negative attention.

If you have gone as far as to leave the narcissist, you will also have triggered ‘narcissistic injury’ in them. In other words, your abandonment of them will have forced them to look internally, and actually feel their own inner emptiness and sense of unworthiness. This is a very difficult, raw place for a narcissist to go, as it exposes the entire false sense of self that they have carefully constructed over their lifetime. Not only that, but the public humiliation of being left threatens the narcissist’s externally projected image of success. It threatens how the narcissist is seen by others, which is absolutely crucial to their own fragile sense of self-worth.

The resultant narcissistic injury then leads them to react in extreme ways. This could be anything from severe rage, to manipulative threats of suicide, to seeking cold, callous revenge against the person they see as the perpetrator of their misery. Seemingly bizarre behaviours, such as stalking, bugging, and making defamatory claims about the victim are common, and, sadly, hateful, ranting communication becomes the norm at this point.

In an ideal situation, the best thing to do would be to be able to simply stop ALL CONTACT in any form with the narcissist, and commit to this 100%. However if you have to communicate with the narcissist (for example, if you share young children with them, or work with them) my advice is to:

Stop all face to face or spoken (phone) communication as far as possible.

Communicate only when absolutely necessary (trying to defend your position or explain how you feel do not count as reasons to communicate with a narcissist - you will be wasting your time, inadvertently feeding them supply, and be putting your mental health at risk).

Try to communicate only via email or text.

Give yourself at least a few hours, preferably a day, before you respond to their communications, allowing yourself time see things objectively and to work out whether a reply, to what is often a nonsensical rant, is even necessary.

Employ the ‘Grey Rock Technique’.

So what is the ‘Grey Rock Technique’?

The premise of this technique is simple, but if properly and consistently executed, the effects are profound. The idea is to simply become as interesting to the narcissist as a boring, large, grey rock.

Silent. Immovable. Dull. Unattractive. Bland. Inedible. A poor energy source. Devoid of emotion. Unreactive. Inanimate.

If you can do this effectively, you become a poor source of narcissistic supply, and the narcissist will slink off in search of other sustenance surprisingly quickly. In other words, you will have stopped feeding the beast with your attention and emotion.

There are various levels on which one must work with this, and they all feel very strange, and socially rude, at first.

If you ever have to see the narcissist face to face, make no eye contact at all.

If you have to speak to the narcissist, make your tone of voice very flat and uninteresting, a little like a robot. Slow your speech down, so that it sounds boring.

Try to keep your facial expressions as neutral as possible, and become as unanimated as you can. Absolutely no raised eyebrows, shaking of the head in disbelief, looks of surprise or eye rolling, all of which will give the narcissist clues as to how you are feeling.

When speaking or writing to a narcissist, use the fewest number of words and syllables you can. Answers should be monosyllabic - of the yes/no variety, with no justifications or explanations.

Avoid being conversational. Do not use pleasantries or niceties. Just stick to the bare essentials. Imagine you are writing an old-style telegram, in which you are being charged for every word.

Try not to ask questions, which could open up a discussion but instead tell the narcissist what it is that they should do. eg Instead of “What time will you be dropping the children home?” write “Bring the children home at 6pm.”

Impart NO EMOTION AT ALL. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this one. Do not even allow the merest suggestion of irritation, frustration, sadness, passive aggression, happiness, cheerfulness etc into your communications. Do not try to appeal to the narcissist’s sense of duty, morals or sympathy. You are opening yourself up to further unproductive communications if you allow even a chink of light through your grey rock armour. For the purposes of this, you are emotionally dead. Think Mr Spock, only even more Vulcan.

Once you have written an email or text, re-read it a few hours later, looking for even implied ‘in between the lines’ emotion, and erase any you find before you send it. At first, it may be useful to enlist an objective friend to help you with this, to take any remaining heat out of your responses.

Only respond the the bits of the narcissist’s communications that you absolutely have to for legal or organisational reasons. Ignore the other parts , no matter how inflammatory and outrageous they may be.

The key point with the Grey Rock Technique is consistency. The narcissist will try to goad you into reacting emotionally, once they sense that their supply from you is dwindling, and it is exceptionally difficult to refrain at first. But the quicker you are able to, the faster the narcissist will leave you alone, and seek alternative sources of supply. I have seen extraordinary results with this technique in many cases, and cannot recommend it more highly.

I hope this article has been of use to you, and invite you join me for my next blog piece in which I explain other essential tactics for communicating with a narcissist. As always, do feel free to leave a comment in the box below.

Understanding The Concept of Truth From A Narcissist's Perspective

Tue, 06 Aug 2019 21:48:54 GMT

The Narcissist's Prayer

That didn't happen.

And if it did, it wasn't that bad.

And if it was, that's not a big deal.

And if it is, that's not my fault.

And if it was, I didn't mean it.

And if I did, you deserved it.

The Narcissist's Prayer (author unknown) beautifully illustrates one aspect of the inner workings of the narcissistic mind. Denial, gaslighting, minimising poor behaviour, blameshifting and shamedumping all feature in this one simple verse. It is clear that 'truth' is not seen by the narcissistically disordered person as a finite, fixed entity, but as being malleable - as being whatever the narcissist says it is, at the time they say it. It seems that the truth is simply whatever serves the narcissist at that particular time.

The incidence of narcissism is said to be on the increase, and cultural narcissism is embedded in society. Those with a high prevalence of narcissistic traits flourish in today's climate, where prosperity, success, grandiosity and entitlement are largely seen as positive attributes. Consider the world of politics, which is rife with narcissism, and consider the far reaching implictions of this. Sadly the profound negative effects on society and those at at an individual level can be stigmatised and are often swept under the carpet.

NPD is known to occur as a result of environmental factors. In other words, narcissists breed narcissists due to the way they bring up their children, and the abused become the abusers .

Trusting After Narcissistic Abuse

Sun, 14 Jul 2019 10:32:34 GMT

Back To Basics - Learning To Trust

So perhaps you are one of those who has done your research, and plenty of it, since that fateful day of The Lightbulb Moment, when you were finally able to face the truth that your partner, parent, sibling, friend, co-worker or boss fitted the criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Sociopathy, or even Psychopathy.

Perhaps you googled everything you could find. Bought books, joined abuse forums and online groups. Commented on other people’s stories. Told your own story to anyone who would listen and tried to educate everyone you came across about the horrors of these personality types. Perhaps you even tried (inevitably unsuccessfully) to save the narcissist’s hapless next victim, the new ‘chosen one’, by attempting to tell them the truth.

Or perhaps yours was a series of slow realisations, brought on by a chance comment that struck a chord with you. Maybe you still haven’t trawled through the information that you know is available. Maybe you don’t want to. Maybe you can’t bear to open up that can of worms, because of what it says about you, the co-dependent, the endless giver, the ‘foolish victim’. Perhaps you told no one, and completely withdrew into yourself, paralysed by the shame and disbelief.

If you have opened up to those around you, perhaps you’ve been met with some sympathy. But you may have mostly got the feeling that you were being perceived by others as being too bitter, too angry, too unreasonable, or just plain nuts. (Try to take heart - people can’t understand what they don’t know, what they’ve never encountered, and they often don’t realise when they are not in a position to give advice).

You’ve probably have been shocked by the level of support and sympathy that the narcissist has received. Been dismayed at how successfully the perpetrator can portray themselves as the victim, their likeablity, charm and effortless acting often winning a them sizeable fan club. Perhaps you cringe at the memory of being their number one fan yourself, when you were the one who they chose to shine their light on. That’s normal too, as hundreds of thousands of people can attest to.

Maybe you’ve lost your job, your relationship or your family as a result. Maybe you wasted years or decades of your life, stuck in a cycle of drama that eventually spiraled out of control. Narcissistic abuse often has devastating results - the nightmare dressed as a daydream. Perhaps you, as many do, still shudder as you remember the awful day the affable mask of the narcissist finally dropped.

In my experience of dealing with the victims of narcissistic abuse, one of the hardest things to regain is knowing who and how to trust again. It’s often the case that victims have been unknowingly surrounding themselves with toxic personalities for years, and have had an inordinate number of personality disordered individuals in their lives. Being treated badly then becomes normalised, and one accepts poor behaviour without question.

So, if you are stepping out of your old life, into the new, you may well be in the process of clearing the cupboard of all those toxic relationships, and wiping down the empty shelves, ready to restock with healthy, boundaried friends.

So, when re-learning who to trust, remember this - trust should be earned, not freely given and then withdrawn only when it becomes clear that it is being abused. Here’s Dr Brene Brown’s wonderful explanation - The Anatomy of Trust.

Narcissists Are From Neptune

Sat, 13 Jul 2019 21:48:53 GMT

Making Sense Of The Narcissist's Behaviours

There are many incredibly difficult things to deal with during the breakdown of a narcissistic relationship, but a major one (that can prevent you from healing and moving on) is continuing in the cycle of trying to make sense of the relationship and the narcissist’s confusing behaviours.

The key fact is this - although narcissists are all superficially different, at their core, they are the same. They have all been programmed with the same hardware. They all operate from the same instruction manual. And unless you are aware of this manual, you assume that their behaviours are governed by the same rules and morals as your own. Once you understand that this is simply not the case, you can begin to stop the cycles of rumination in your mind, in which you wonder why (and how they could have) done or said certain things.

To coin a phrase from the John Gray analogy, if men are from Mars and women are from Venus, Narcissists are from Neptune. And Neptunians are fundamentally wired differently from you .

At the beginning of the process of emotionally disengaging from the narcissist (whether they are your boss, partner, parent, sibling or co-worker), victims are often full of questions - the ‘But Whys’, as I call them.

“But why would she use our children as pawns? But why would she lie about me? But why would he try to take the possessions that he knows matter to me, when he doesn’t even like them? But why would he blatantly take credit for my work? Steal all our savings? Praise me one moment and shame me the next? Have such double standards when it comes to morality? Try to get custody of the children when he doesn’t even have time for them? Play work colleagues off one another by spreading rumours? Suddenly go cold on me, giving me the silent treatment? Tell me to go for the promotion but then block me from even being shortlisted? Tell people that I am an alcoholic/prostitute/abuser? Tell people that I am the narcissist? Threaten suicide if I leave whilst having an blatant affair? Commit insurance fraud? Blatantly lie about something to someone in front of me? Suddenly seem to prefer my sibling over me? Keep me hanging with the promise of a relationship but then move in with someone else? ” The list of seemingly bizarre behaviours is endless, and exhausting.

But the answer to all these questions is a simple one: Because he (or she) is a narcissist.

Yes. Read it again, and imprint it into your mind, so that the next time you notice yourself asking a But Why question, in complete confusion, the real answer comes to you straight away. Because he (or she) is a narcissist.

No matter how charming the narcissist seemed at first. How affable they seemed. How helpful and kind. How vulnerable. How altruistic. What a fine, upstanding member of the community they seemed to be. Over the course of my work I have come to realise that there are as many different masks as there are narcissists, if not more. Narcissists are wired to effortlessly wear these masks, and change them whenever it suits their agenda to do so. It’s notoriously hard to reconcile the version of themselves that they first portrayed to you with the contradictory behaviours they slowly start to exhibit. This is made even more difficult as they alternate the ‘good’ behaviours with the ‘bad’, keeping victims in a state of utter befuddlement.

But Narcissists are from Neptune. It’s just what they do on Neptune. It’s the way they were brought up. They cannot help it (which doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t protect yourself from their harmful behaviours, or give in to misplaced compassion). And these behaviours become particularly prounounced during the relationship breakdown process, when the narcissist has been called out, and is suffering from what is known as 'Narcissistic Injury', which triggers their 'Narcissistic Rage'.

But here is the really important bit. The more you allow yourself to think about the narcissist, and their confusing behaviours, the more you set up addictive habits of thought patterns, which then become incredibly hard to break.

These negative thought patterns intrude on your conscious thoughts more and more, as a result of what neuroscientists call “neuroplasticity”. Basically, every time you have a certain thought, or patterns of thoughts, certain nerve cells (neurons) in the brain connect together forming ‘neural pathways’. The more you think the thought, the more neurons are recruited into this particular thought pathway.

What started as a trodden-down path in the grass turns into a shingle pathway. Then into a country lane. Then into a dual carriageway. And before you know it, there’s a superhighway of ingrained thought, a thick bundle of wired-together nerves, that your brain hurtles you down at the slightest provocation, before you even have a chance to realise what is happening. These thoughts about the narcissist’s behaviour become automatic, reflex, go-to defaults, hijacking your emotional wellbeing, and getting you stuck in that cycle of unhelpful rumination which can last for months or years.

So how can you prevent this from happening, and what can you do if you recognise that it is already happening?

Awareness is the key. Make a pledge to yourself to notice every time a thought about the narcissist, including a ‘But Why’ thought, invades your mind.

Count the number of times this happens in a day for several days in a row. At first you may be shocked at how many times it can happen in an hour, let alone a day.

Every time it happens, remind yourself to not engage with the thought . Immediately break the chain of thought by saying to yourself “Because he’s (she’s) a narcissist” or “Narcissists are from Neptune,” or whatever phrase works for you, as appropriate.

Make a point of practising self-compassion. If you have a bad day, when your thoughts run away with you, do not judge yourself harshly. Tomorrow is another day. This is going to take some time.

And remember this: Be kind to yourself. Although hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of people worldwide have experienced what you are going through, the chances are that very few people around you will understand. You are not alone, no matter how isolated you feel. And, with appropriate expert help, this too shall pass.

Narcissism - the Lure, the Loss and the Law

How to find a divorce lawyer who really understands Narcissism

All divorce lawyers are not created equal

Getting a Personality Disorder Diagnosis for the Family Court

A blog post for family lawyers

Which expert?

What to ask for

﻿

The #1 Narcissism Myth: "Narcissism isn't real".

﻿ Narcissism isn't real. Or is it...?

The Reluctant Warriors

Let's talk about you

Communication tips for your divorce lawyer

Most lawyers don't know what drives a narcissist

Narcissists want to cause delay

Narcissists feed off your emotional reactions

What is a Narcissist?

The word "narcissist" is ubiquitous, but are we using it correctly or is it just a buzzword? Expert Dr Supriya McKenna explains what real narcissism is

Do you know a narcissist?

How to recognise a narcissist

What is Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Are narcissists born or made?

Types of Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Signs of narcissistic behaviour

Telltale behaviours of narcissism

What you might not know about many divorce lawyers (until it's too late).

Let's talk about language

Why is it that the use of this appalling language has not been called out before?

Gaslighting

What is Gaslighting?

Gaslighting versus lying

Gaslighting using another person's memory and feelings

How is the victim affected?

Some red flags of gaslighting to look out for

﻿

How to spot a narcissist when online dating

How to spot a narcissist when online dating

How does a narcissist choose their victims?

What was it about you that attracted the narcissist to you in the first place?

Things a narcissist will never do in a relationship

The unfortunate limitations of narcissistic relationships

How can you take revenge on a narcissist?

Your options for revenge

Should narcissists lead the country? When pathological narcissism meets high political office.

Should narcissists lead the country? When pathological narcissism meets high political office. Opinion.

"But is witty, lovable Boris who he really is, or just an invented image he hides behind, in order to get external validation?"

'Narcissistic abuse' vs 'domestic abuse' and 'coercive control' - and why it matters to know the difference.

Not all Domestic Abuse or Coercive Control is Narcissistic Abuse - but some is.

"Narcissistic behaviour patterns are very specific indeed - once you know what they are, it isn't difficult to determine whether you have been in a relationship with a narcissist - or whether you haven't."

So what is Narcissism?

"Actual narcissists all have intrinsically low self esteem"

"Narcissists are difficult at work and at home, and they can't maintain long term deep friendships"

Why it matters to know if your abuser is a narcissist

"A narcissist needs something from you . They need your narcissistic supply - and you don't have to give it."

The Certainty Project - a new way to avoid court delays in divorces involving a narcissist.

For The Lawyer - Have You Represented A Narcissist?

Have you represented a narcissist? This checklist will help you decide.

'Diagnosing' your narcissist. The facts.

How To Leave A Narcissist And Stay 'Gone'.

How to leave a narcissist and 'stay gone' - Dr Supriya McKenna explains

The Narcissist And Their Children

Narcissists and their children - what you need to know

The Narcissist's Prayer

The Narcissist's Prayer

The narcissist’s new partner - to tell or not to tell.

The narcissist’s new partner - to tell or not to tell.

You Are Not Your Thoughts

You Are Not Your Thoughts

Leaving A Narcissist? How to prepare.

Leaving a narcissist? How to prepare.

Why Me? Making Sense Of Narcissistic Abuse and The Real Way To Move Forwards

Why Me? Making Sense Of Narcissistic Abuse And The Real Way To Move Forwards.

Practical solutions for communicating with a narcissist - Part 2

Welcome to Part Two of Practical Solutions For Communicating With A Narcissist.

Feeding The Beast And The Grey Rock Technique. Practical Solutions For Communicating With A Narcissist.

Taking back control when communicating with a narcissist

Understanding The Concept of Truth From A Narcissist's Perspective

Trusting After Narcissistic Abuse

Back To Basics - Learning To Trust

Narcissists Are From Neptune

Narcissism isn't real. Or is it...?