Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

“Self-Love Deficit Disorder” (SLDD) has been officially trademarked by Ross Rosenberg!

Hallelujah! We can all stop being labelled “codependents.”

The last thing abuse survivors need is to be labelled. Becoming dependent on others to define our self-worth and soothe our repressed pain is a consequence of abuse not a cause of it.

This is a major theme in my book Take Your Power Back and in this article “Codependency Does Not Cause Abuse.”

Self-Love Deficit (SLD) much more accurately describes what happened to us and the consequences of the abuse we suffered. It points to the causes of the damage, not to us personally as having a flawed condition that causes the abuse that is promoted by addressing people as defective “codependents.”

Personally I refer to abuse consequences as “pain addictions.” Others refer to it as “Narcissistic Abuse Syndrome” and “Narcissistic Victim Syndrome.” The point is not what we call it but that we…