#domestic abuse, #narcissism, #narcissistic personality disorder, abusive relationships, avoiding predators, bullies, mental illness

The Problem with Warning Victims of Psychopaths and Narcissists

Just because we point out the hole someone is about to fall into, does not mean we are being cruel to the person who dug the hole.

We are just trying to keep the person from falling in, because we recognize the hunter who is patiently watching them.

When the prey sees the hunter through the rose colored glasses he gave them, they think we are demonizing the hunter. But we are more concerned with watching our friend fall into the nasty, jagged pothole that is just a few more inches from their toes.







no contact ribbon





















Do what I say, not what I do…..







Just do not play. Trust me.

addiction, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, emotional healing, life, mental abuse, mental health, mental illness, narcissist, narcissistic abuse

Keeping Sane After an Abusive Relationship

love is calm

This is an important one. Love is calm and understanding. There is no reason for someone who really loves you to rage at you. There is no reason for them to give you communication that is confusing  or hurtful.

Saying cruel words to someone, in order to make them feel bad, so that they can be manipulated, is not love. Having battles of who is better at what, who is right, who is in charge…none of this is love.

We love our friends and we support them. We may point something out for their own good, if they are heading down a dangerous road. That is our job as a friend.

If someone reacts to this kindness of your offering a different perspective about them and their situation, in a violent angry manner…this is not love either.

If your partner is telling you his opinions about something and then gets angry or calls you stupid when you offer your opinion..this is not love. Someone should value your intelligence and respect your right to have an opinion. They should also appreciate when you offer words of guidance that are given with care and not judgement.

When someone seems to have one set of rules for themselves and a different set for you and other people….this is a Red Flag of an abuser.

If they can come home whenever they wish and not call you to let you know they are running late…but you get raged at for not checking in every hour with them….this is abuse.

Narcissistic abuse becomes like a two person cult. They control you and they manipulate your perception of reality. The aftermath of this cult like abuse, is severe. It takes a long time to begin to regain your perspective of reality, your self esteem and your confidence to move forward.

If you are in the aftermath stage of an abusive relationship here are a few things I have learned that I offer in kindness and no judgement.

1. Do not do anything RASH. Major life decisions should be left until you are more mentally stable. The abuse caused you to develop some mental illness which needs to be tended to. Making major life decisions life moving to another state or getting engaged or married to someone else during this period are ill advised. Wait several months first.

2. Pay particular attention to your health, even when you do not feel like. Make eating, exercising and keeping a proper sleep routine like a prescription. Do it as if a dr, prescribed it for you. Be consistent as much as possible. Eat out of all four food groups, even if it is small portions because you have no appetite.

Your immune system can easily crash from the stress that your brain is putting on your body. Be your own parent and tell yourself when and what to eat, take your vitamins and get rest.

3. Try not to isolate for too long. At the very beginning you may have to isolate because the damage is so severe that you cannot interact with anyone. During that period, at least interact with other abuse survivors on line.

After a few weeks, you need to get out of the house. Staying in the cave will add to your feelings of devastation. Get out to places where you can interact with some people. It does not have to a bar. In fact , the bar is ill advised.

Go places where you like the activity. Comic book shop, bowling, swimming, library, book store, cafe…and say hi to people and have some conversation. It will help you to begin to  adapt back into the regular world, that is not like the cult you were in.

4. Learn. Read, watch youtube videos and talk to survivors about narcissistic abuse and how to heal. The more you learn, the better you can put things into perspective.

5. NLP training. Learn about NLP. You can use some of the techniques on yourself, but it is even better if you get a life coach or a therapist trained in narcissistic victim abuse syndrome. I will write some posts about NLP and you can learn more about it in the next couple of weeks. I am studying to be an NLP practitioner at this time.

6. Self love. You must begin to love yourself again. Take care of yourself like you are your own parent, life coach, therapist, friend etc.

7. Seek help when needed. You may get a few weeks of therapy or life coaching and then you are fine for a month or two. Suddenly you can relapse or crash back into a depression or severe anxiety. You may think. well I already got help. No, if you need help again then you need help again. There is no shame in needing help.

8. Be careful about who helps you. No one who has not been victimized by a narcissist or a psychopath can really understand. Anyone who you confide in should have been through it and has time to recover their sanity. People who do not understand narcissistic abuse will re-traumatize you by telling you that you are exaggerating, paranoid or lying about the abuse. People just cannot understand this experience if they have not been through it. You will sound really crazy to them and the abuse is invisible so they will not see what your problem is.

9. No Contact

no contact

10. Learn to set boundaries


kindness, life, mental abuse, mental health, mental illness, people pleaser syndrome, psychology, self-esteem, self-help

People Pleaser Syndrome

If you are always finding yourself at the bad end of unfair and unbalanced relationships, then you might have People Pleaser Syndrome. Most people who have People Pleaser Syndrome, including myself, have come from a background of being emotionally and mentally abused, manipulated and scapegoated.

It may not be readily apparent to you that you had emotional abuse as a child, because this syndrome will cause you to question any abuse that you have experienced. People may have manipulated you into thinking that your childhood was free of abuse, as part of the mental abuse itself.

Gaslighting a person into doubting their own feelings of being abused, is mental abuse. When you feel like you are being treated unfairly and cannot communicate about it, your reality about the abuse can become confused.

I have done a lot of research recently about People Pleaser Syndrome. There are many lists that you can find that will describe various characteristics and qualities of people that suffer from it. I have also gone through my own situations in my mind, to identify what characteristics that I have tended to demonstrate over the years.

I recommend that you do your own research about this topic, if  many of things on this list  seem to ring true for you.

I have written this list off if the top of my head. Some of these characteristics have been brought to my attention from articles that I have read.

Some of them are direct examples from my own life. All of the things on this list have caused me problems in my own life over the years.

I have not intentionally copied anything on this list from any other site, although you will see other lists of compilations of characteristics.  These are all in my own words and from my own life examples.

Characteristics of People Pleaser Syndrome

1. You take on the feelings of others as if they are your own.

2. You feel the need to fix the problems of other people

3. You feel responsible for other people’s problems and guilty about them

4. It is easy for other people to make you feel guilty

5. You can easily be forced by others to feel shame

6. You carry toxic shame

7. When other people are unhappy, angry or disappointed with you, it makes you feel like you have the responsibility of fixing their feelings

8. You have trouble doing, not-doing or saying anything if it will get a negative reaction from the other person

9. You want people to always approve of you, your beliefs and your actions

10. You feel the need to always justify your actions and decisions to others

11. You have great difficulty in saying “no” to people

12. You are often talked into doing things you really do not want to do.

13. You are talked into not doing things, that you do want to do

14. You tend to do whatever will keep the peace, even if it is not good for you

15. You have trouble standing up for yourself, but always listen to other people who are standing up for that they want

16. You give other people their way, much more often than you just do things the way you want to

17. You question the validity of your personal wants and needs, when it conflicts with those of others

18. You often put your own dreams and goal on the back burner, in order for someone else to fulfill their dreams

19. You do not express your anger about being treated unfairly by others

20. You tend to allow your partner more benefit of the doubt than they allow you

21. You cover  for other people,  even if they would not cover for you

22. You have C-PTSD from some sort of childhood abuse

23. It is sometimes unclear to you how you feel about things and if your feelings / thoughts are being “put into your head” by the other person

24. You allow other people to tell you “how you should feel” about some things

There are a few reasons that you need help for People Pleaser syndrome. If you are recognizing very many things from the above list, then I encourage you to do some further research, get materials which will help you and work on a plan of overcoming this.

In some cases, professional mental health treatment may be appropriate. I am not a therapist and this article is not intended as a replacement for professional mental health treatment. I am just validating your experiences with my own and hopefully helping you to take a look into your own tendencies and patterns.

If you have the characteristics of People Pleaser Syndrome, then you are likely to be a target for predators that will take advantage of your good intentions. There are narcissistic people and other toxic personalities that look for people that are easy to manipulate with guilt and shame.

There are people that actively seek “people pleasers” in order that they can subject their will upon them. If people can easily push our anxiety buttons about confrontation, then you are the type of person that can end up in domestic abuse situations and abusive relationships.

People pleasers try to avoid confrontation that makes them feel guilt or shame. Abusive personalities will sense this about you and deliberately force you into anxiety, in order to manipulate you.

Other problems you probably experience are in work situations and social situations. Dominating people will overcome you at work and in social circumstances. It is just the way they are.

It is hard to compete and get ahead at work if people take advantage of you. Even if there are nice, kind people where you work, there is always one that will destroy you, when they realize that they can use you as a means to get ahead.

It is nice to want to believe that the world is full of people who are compassionate and caring, but as we grow up we realize that this is not the case. You may be around many good people in your situations, but it only takes one person to really injure you.

We will talk more about this issue and ways in which we can retrain ourselves to have different habits. These are habits that are rooted into us, but they are not unbreakable.

The most important things are to be able to identify when we are being treated unfairly and not to feel guilty for standing up for ourselves, or otherwise protecting ourselves from abuse.

You have a right to your boundaries, your self confidence and your self esteem. In fact these things are necessary for you to live and thrive well. Your dreams matter and your happiness matters, just as much as anyone else’s.

Blessings to all,