We have grown past the necessary self-focused stage of trauma recovery and are looking outwards again, noticing things we previously took for granted. We might experience horror, aversion or renewed despair when we see the world as it really is, now that our bubbles have burst.

There is a lingering factor in the aftermath of abuse that is difficult to grasp. Shame. Why does our culture shame victims? One woman's take on dealing with being shamed by others and shaming ourselves. A case study and method for healing shame.

How does the family scapegoat recover from narcissistic abuse

How to use mindfulness (Grey Rock) and keeping a healthy distance from a narcissist instead of ‘pandering’ or ‘co-dependent’ behaviours.

Trauma feeds the tendency towards distorted thinking leading to emotional disregulation. The antidote is in mindful awareness (being able to notice our thoughts and tolerate our emotions) and choosing self-compassion and the Middle Way (from Buddhist Psychology) instead.

Recover your sanity by recovering your core values after narcissistic abuse. PTSD is a moral injury sustained from attacks to our core values by a person of no conscience.

Learn how to set healthier, more protective boundaries. after narcissistic abuse. Protecting ourselves from further damage. We need our own protection, strength and self-compassion more than ever before in our lives.

Survivors of narcissistic abuse can develop anxieties that they have developed a personality disorder as a result of their abuse. Causation is the difference. Trauma can heal, narcissism is pathological.

Break ups from narcissists and psychopaths induce a unique form of grief - disenfranchised grief. This is why.

The principles of a man devoid of empathy, conscience and morals are very simple. I’ll take whatever I want, no matter what the harm to others.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that character disorders such as narcissism and psychopathy explained every instance of bad behaviour under the sun.

Before we go casting every person we know as highly narcissistic, we need to discern the difference between character disorder and seasonal mental illness.

Education. Serious and painful study. Coming to terms with the fact of Dark Triad humans. Caution. This stage can take a long time (years), and be extremely triggering, running parallel to phases to come. Tread carefully.

Peeling the layers of the onion after a relationship with a narcissistic sociopath keeps you crying until the very last layer has been peeled away. It's the maze of smoke and mirrors he has employed over an extended period of time to wrongly convict you that sinks you. The pain of the shame snare is perhaps greater than the original loss.

There is a weird phenomenon. By blaming the victim. By pointing out how they brought it on themselves. By telling them to 'get over it'. By telling them we don't want to know about their troubles because we have troubles of our own. By relieving ourselves of our duty as family and friends to support and empower rather than belittle and demean, we can cause secondary trauma.

Betrayal trauma is one of the most severe forms of psychological trauma that a human can undergo, yet it is un-acknowledged in our culture (aside from childhood betrayal). This lack of recognition can lead to those betrayed having their trauma minimised and demeaned, thus leading to secondary trauma. Betrayal is a wound to the soul: a deep moral injury.

Traditionally, there are thought to be three stages to trauma recovery across the spectrum of survivors of rape, domestic abuse, torture, and combat. The first stage is restoration of safety. The second stage is remembrance and mourning. The third stage is reconnection with ordinary life.

If we try to answer this question through the lens of Buddhist psychology, we could distil the answer down to one word: resistance.

For almost all of us, the crisis is not only circumstantial but existential. We have lost our innocence and woken up to the fact that the world (including humankind) is not the way we thought it was or the way we’d like it to be.

Many victims are unconsciously drawn again and again to reconstruct the circumstances in which the original trauma occurred. It is as if the victim tries to re-write the story of their past so that it didn’t happen the way they remember it (as having a devastating and debilitating outcome).

You are not to blame! On the whole, narcopaths prey on the kindest, most loyal and generous people. They prey on innocents!