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You don’t have to justify to anyone the reasons you didn’t leave right away.

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Philosophies that depict pain as an illusion rather than a legitimate, lived reality can be downright dangerous. They encourage victim-blaming and spiritual bypassing that harms the survivor more than they help. What we have to remember is that our perceptions of trauma are not due to erroneous thinking – they are due to egregiously damaging acts of emotional and physical violence.

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Do you often engage in conversations with your narcissist that leave you feeling like you were talking to a brick wall – or worse, maybe leave you feeling like banging your head against a brick wall?

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They flaunt their indifference. They act as though the relationship meant nothing to them.

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Remember that you deserve a relationship that builds you up, that makes you feel safe, and that brings you happiness and warmth. A person who is narcissistic cannot give this to you.

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“God, he is an asshole.”

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Look for these warning signs and spare yourself the suffering—if the guy you’re falling in love with exhibits many of these traits, you should run, not walk, away from him.

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Narcissists want you to believe that even your best efforts are not good enough. The reason they do this is so they can keep you scurrying about for their approval, but never quite receiving it.

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Gaslighting is perhaps one of the most insidious manipulative tactics out there because it works to distort and erode your sense of reality; it eats away at your ability to trust yourself and inevitably disables you from feeling justified in calling out abuse and mistreatment.

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Starting life over without you and our toxic relationship, taught me that I can actually manage to survive by myself.