Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

Here’s the simple answer: “No!”

Therapy can help narcissists put on the brakes if they go to therapy and the therapists are skilled in their covert aggressive personalities and know how to deal with their perverted thinking including their manipulation, lack of compassion, aggression, combativeness and need to win. However, based on my decades of research and the collective opinions of real experts on character disturbances who have treated thousands of narcs and their victims, I believe there is no cure. Read more at http://drgeorgesimon.com.

Can they have redeeming character traits? Intelligence?

Of course they can.

But they permanently lack the qualities we as humans need to build and sustain integrity of character and building meaningful healthy relationships.

Let’s explore this.

Our characters are built through life experiences and mistakes and successes and are chiseled permanently like sculpture. Our characters, whether they be characters of integrity just like disturbed…

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Five Major Fundamental Healing Truths

11/28/201508/26/20163 Comments

Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

Excerpted from Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips and Tools for Abuse Survivors. Purchase a copy here.

As discussed in detail in Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips and Tools for Abuse Survivors, victims of abuse have been conditioned to think like victims. It is this thinking that hinders recovery. Victims can get so accustomed to living cyclical patterns of seeking and avoiding pain that they do not understand the real extent of their unhappiness and level of dependence on harmful power imbalanced relationships.

You may live and work in environments where these dysfunctions continue, the boundaries of personal respect are habitually violated, and personal rights are not honored. Your self-esteem suffers, and you live to avoid pain rather than pursue and seek joy. Perhaps you do not even know what brings you joy. The distorted thinking and skewed beliefs that create invisible barriers to your happiness can also create barriers to your healing.

So, here are five fundamental truths to help you challenge what I believe are the biggest falsehoods in your thinking that have hindered and will continue to create obstacles in your healing journey.

TRUTH #1

hope Believing lies does not make them true and not believing the truth does not make it a lie. Truth IS truth. Lies are lies. This is indisputable!

TRUTH #2

We manifest in life what we believe to be true!

We live to provide the evidence that our beliefs are true – even if in reality they are not!

Read this again!

We manifest in life what we believe to be true (even if our beliefs are really lies).

TRUTH #3

The human brain cannot process two opposing thoughts.

Let’s break this down a bit more.

Cannot heal at same level as pain If we believe we are the source of our pain, must suffer to be lovable, deserve pain rather than joy and we are powerless to the pain (all lies we were taught to believe in childhood), then when we become adults, we create the lies we believe and become attracted to relationships and people that continue to bring us pain.

This is how and why abuse spreads from our caretakers to us and from us to our children and is perpetuated from generation to generation. Yes, the broken ones before us taught us to believe their lies; we became pain-based inauthentic versions of ourselves who teach the same lies to our children. We attract those who prey on vulnerabilities we developed because we did not and do not live authentic lives based on our personal truth and divinely provided human design.

Read “What You Don’t Know About Dysfunctional Families and Intergenerational Abuse” here to learn more.

In addition, emotional vampires like narcissists and psychopaths who cannot generate their own power, bank on our vulnerabilities and the false beliefs that we are deserving of pain and are powerless to those who trigger it.

TRUTH #4

Abusers find us. We do not find them!!

Sorry to disappoint you, but abusers do not have some magical power over us and no, we are not the source of our pain and we do not deserve to be in relationships with weak, spineless, aggressive, uncompassionate, lazy people who steal our energy from us and who want all the benefits we can provide without any of the work.

Listen and learn more on the “Toxic Tango of Empaths and Narcissists” here.

They are aggressive but the truly weak ones who cannot generate their own power so they steal ours from us. Aggression is not power, folks. Abusers hunt for and prey for those with our vulnerabilities, the false beliefs and fears we were taught in childhood. In fact, they bank on our vulnerabilities so they can feed off of our compassion and benefit from us, like a parasite feeds off of its host, for a very long time. Read more here on the differences between harm, fear and real danger.

TRUTH #5

We can heal. Our abusers cannot.

The good, and really not so surprising news, is that with hard work, self-compassion, and self-care, our brains can rewire. Absolutely they can. We have the divine ability to release the pain and replace these false beliefs (the lies we were taught to believe) with truth, build our self-worth back up to their true levels, take our power back, and then find others whose truth aligns with ours in power balanced mutually respectful relationships we truly are deserving of.

This is how we heal! This is how we thrive! This is how we become the deserving joy-based authentic versions of ourselves we were put on this earth to be!

I explore these truths and share many more lessons, tips, and tools that will facilitate your healing in Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips, and Tools for Abuse Survivors. You can read more about the book and purchase a copy here.

May your spiritual source guide and protect you in your healing and in your search for truth!

Heal Your Children Through Yourself

09/03/201507/21/202016 Comments

Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

Our children will be exposed to narcissists, nasty teachers, bulies, selfish room mates as well as kind generous authentic people every day. Healthy boundaries go in both directions and we can only teach our children how to protect and love and honor themselves and to make wise choices. Why, then, should it be any worse or more dramatic because they have a narcissistic parent? Why do we, the parents, feel we are responsible for putting our children through this? Why are we so hugely emotionally vested and fearful?

Healing Takes Deliberate Planned Action

As a parent and a survivor of narcissistic abuse, I was beside myself with worry every day that not only would narcissists harm my child but that I was powerless to stop it. I learned through my healing that this was faulty learned thinking that I risked transferring to my if-you-dont-heal-your-pain child if I left it uncorrected. Along with it, I carried profound guilt, shame and trauma and believed falsely that I was an ineffective parent. This was my inner critic’s guilt and shame I carried with me from childhood that was projected onto me by my abusers! I came to learn that the pain I was carrying was not even mine and was unhealed pain that had been transferred to me generationally.

I realized soon that focusing on my guilt, shame, pain, angst, and fear and protecting my daughter from harm was just keeping me from healing and preventing my daughter from acquiring the full benefit of my genuine love for her because I was not emotionally healthy and functioning authentically at one hundred per cent. Why should your children and my daughter and our relationships with them suffer because we did? Let’s explore this.

In order for my daughter to thrive (and she is), I and no one else had to own my pain and understand that I was worthy of healing and being pain-free and to honestly express that ownership and my responsibility for healing with my daughter. She and I both deserved better as do you and your children, right? So I focused on my health and wellness, made a plan, and took action. I put on my big girl britches and apologized to her for my poor choices and told her the root causes and what I was doing to course and thought correct. It was not her problem to correct or take on as her own. It was mine! I can only be her mother and she had the right to an emotionally healthy and honest one and to be raised in an emotionally healthy home. Not only did I heal, I thrived and when I thrived, guess what? So did my daughter.

Did I make mistakes when I felt helpless and overwhelmed and lost? Of course. Did that make me a bad mother? Of course not. To the contrary, it made me an awesome one, a powerful one. Did my daughter drive me crazy through her teenage years? Of course. Did that make her a bad child? Of course not. But once again, I took on the guilt of “ruining her.” In times of stress, we go back to what we are comfortable with though it may not be effective. Thank goodness for the National Geographic edition on the teenage brain that explained the teenage years are a sort of “retarded” stage humans have to go through for normal development. What relief I had when the burden of shame was replaced with truth and empowerment.

Do Not Normalize the Abuse

Abuse victims are frequently unnecessarily conflicted about alienating the child against the other parent. Don’t ever think your children are too young to learn the truth about being victimized or exploited or that you are “saying something bad about the other parent.” This is a lie that results in nothing more than normalizing the abuse, teaching falsehoods on healthy relationships and love, shaming the victim and adding to their pain. There is a big difference between speaking crap about a person and speaking truth about a crappy person. Always speak truth because it does set us free.

Healing is your right to act on your free will and to live as you were designed. Healing is all about you, not your husband or wife or partner and a child is never too young to learn about good and evil and what healthy relationships, love, and boundaries are. Love that is unrequited is not love, right? The challenge is teach our children how to relate to all people including relatives without sacrificing self-respect and honor for themselves.

Empowering Life Skills – Critical Thinking, Healthy Reciprocity, and Emotional Intelligence

We, to be effective parents or mentors, must teach our children or proteges life skills that support their emotional and relational health. Brian D. Johnson, Ph.D. and Laurie Berdahl, M.D. report in “Childhood Roots of Narcissistic Personality Disorder” that critical thinking skills help us tell lies from truths and determine when someone is manipulating to take advantage of or scam us. Critical thinking also allows us to reliably distinguish emotionally healthy from emotionally unhealthy behaviors, identify narcissists and anyone toxic, hang tough in our own truth and manage the boundaries with all toxic people even the ones we are related to who we are “supposed to love.”

We can easily teach these empowering life skills by being mindful of unhealthy and healthy interactions and behaviors we observe and pointing these out to our children. Of course, we must walk the talk and fess up to and apologize for our own less than optimal behaviors and reinforce positive behaviors and mirror healthy behaviors and personal accountability as well.

Part of healing and building self-worth is learning what self-love is and what healthy loving relationships of reciprocity are. We are all born lovable however loving relationships are not an entitlement. They are worked for and earned based on honoring each other’s wants and needs in sickness and health and in good times and bad in a respectful manner beneficial to both parties. Emotionally intelligent and healthy individuals know this and live it. They are clear on their personal worth and lovability and the rules of healthy respectful human interactions.

Dr. Travis Bradberry, a renowned expert on emotional intelligence in ourselves and others notes that while all people experience emotions, only 36% of people can do this, which is problematic because unlabeled emotions often go misunderstood, which leads to irrational choices and counterproductive actions for ourselves and in our relationships. People with high emotional intelligence master their emotions because they understand them, and they use an extensive vocabulary of feelings to do so. While many people might describe themselves as simply feeling ‘bad,’ emotionally intelligent people can pinpoint whether they feel ‘irritable,’ ‘frustrated,’ ‘downtrodden,’ or ‘anxious.’ The more specific our word choice, the better equipped we will be on not only what we are feeling and what caused it but also what we can and should do about it.

Learn more on the importance of validating children’s emotions in our emotional health.

Teaching emotional intelligence to our children can be as simple as repeating to them in words what they are feeling especially if pain- or discomfort-based. Then we can help them learn to reliably embrace and sooth their emotions to build sustainable self-reliance rather than fear them and believe falsely they are deserving of the painful feelings and are powerless to them. Again, the best way to teach our children is to support these behaviors consistently in our words, thoughts, and actions and in validating our children’s and other’s emotions and being honest about our own.

Use Stories to Teach

If we are in abusive relationships and have young children, we can easily use stories to teach these lessons in a healthy constructive manner that will hold the abuser responsible for their actions and us accountable to our healing goals.

Take this as as example.

Why not present the situation as a child would understand such as in a fairy tale about good and evil and put yourself in the story. Be creative. The brain is growing and processing and your child is mirroring, seeing herself in you. You are your child’s reflection and you are teaching her how to become as she is divinely intended and to respect herself and to understand her personal worth. You are teaching her to become the best version of herself, to become self-reliant, resilient. You are teaching her to have compassion for her mother, the person who gave her life and for herself and others. You are facilitating your child to become a participant and compassionate witness in your healing and rebirth in the same way you participated and witnessed hers. Your actions validate the lessons you teach and she is witnessing and benefitting from your love that she projects back to you. This is how we live authentically and learn healthy lessons on our lovability, compassion, self-reliance, and personal worth. All support our personal and relational health

Fortunately, tons of children’s books written by competent abuse and trauma therapists like Dr. Lynne Namka now exist to help us reinforce these lessons.

What if My Child is a Narcissist

If we have children with narcissists, sadly we run the risk of having narcissistic children. You did nothing wrong. Nature did and you cannot fix it. Compassion including too much and too little are both inherited and hopefully if our narcissist children are at the lower end of the spectrum we can have some semblance of a relationship with them.

Learn more on what causes narcissism.

That, nevertheless, may not be possible if their toxicity level, combat tactics, and manipulation tactics are severe. Accepting that our children can not love us in healthy ways is extremely painful, but acceptance is empowering. Your safety and that of your other children always come first. If you let them, narcissists will, without a doubt, consume every single bit of narcissistic supply you give them at the expense of your other children, joy, happiness, energy, life, bank account, reputation and whatever else they can exploit from you. We also, remember, run the risk of having empathetic children who are vulnerable to their attacks as well. So we also need to protect our children and teach them to recognize narcissists, manage boundaries, and protect their vulnerabilities. Frequently, empathetic children can have too much compassion so we must focus on teaching them the same lessons and how to use their compassion responsibly and not become overly reliant on others for validation of their worth that makes them vulnerable to narcissistic predators.

The best any parent can do for narcissistic children is guide them with love, compassion, moral-based teaching, and consistency and perhaps they will end up falling at the lower end of the spectrum of less harmful character traits but there are no guarantees. Managing them takes very finely honed skills that very few therapists are even equipped with and are capable of handling. If you notice lack of compassion and serious self-centeredness in them and the failure to thrive, have healthy relationships or self-soothe, and engaging in bullying, get them into competent counseling right away.

In adulthood, the best option may be to follow the TDS (Time – Distance -Shielding) Rule and minimize your time, maximize the distance with them and put shielding between you and learn how to maintain your self-preservation when around them. The rest is in divine hands.

L earn how to use the TDS rule to manage boundaries with toxic people.

Your Children Will Heal Through You

Years ago, in the midst of an unhappy period in my life, my dear friend, Jim, told me, “Evelyn, It is never about the other person.” I, at the time, did not know what he meant but I never forgot that advice. Now I never forget the lesson. Here it is:

Until you own your own pain and shame and get rid of it and stop blaming others for it, you will not heal and you will continue to think like a victim and transfer this angst to your children. Your children will then needlessly suffer collateral damage and abuse will be perpetuated. This was not your pain to begin with.

Learn how abuse is perpetuated generationally in dysfunctional families.

Heed more Melanie Tonia Evans’ healing words of wisdom.

“The true remedy for getting out of this emotional charge is know who you are and have no need to defend it to anyone – especially your children. The truth of the matter is, however, that the more we get emotionally charged, the more we fight back, and the more we try to defend ourself against the narcissist, the atrocities escalate even more, and the more the atrocities work in the narcissist’s favor…There is nothing that an individual’s soul does not co-create that isn’t right for the purpose of the opportunity to create evolution and healing….heal your children through yourself.”

Read more on healing your children from Melanie Tonia Evans here.

Power Imbalance in Abusive Relationships – Part 1

08/26/201503/21/20194 Comments

Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

This is Part 1 in a two part series on power imbalance in abusive relationships, common misperceptions, causes and effects of power imbalance, and how to correct them.

Part 2 discusses further the differences between aggression, power, and control in abusive relationships and how healing allows us to access and rely comfortably on our own personal power in mutually respectful healthy relationships.

This article discusses misperceptions on the relationship between abusers and their victims and describes the predatory aspects of abuse and the not so obvious causes of power imbalance in abusive relationships.

There is a huge misperception on the relationship between abusers and their victims. That is correct…their victims. You will read often that abuse is the need to control and take power over another. While this may be partly true, this does not accurately or completely describe the predatory aspects of abuse and the not so obvious causes of power imbalance in abusive relationships. Not clearly understanding the differences can hinder healing and keep you vulnerable to emotional predators.

Dynamics of Work and Obligation in Healthy Relationships

starving soul hunger The core to healthy relationship are healthy interactions between compassionate people who have healthy views on work and obligation. Simply put, emotionally healthy people work for what they need to benefit and sustain themselves and those they are in relationships with. We expect to periodically self-sacrifice and put in the extra effort to benefit someone else because we know if we do, we will reap the rewards as well. We also expect sometimes to not work so hard and let others put in the extra effort to care for us when we need it. We know that we are paid for the value of the service we provide to others no matter if they are loved ones, customers, bosses, or even strangers. We also work for what we need because we know and are confident we can do so and enjoy working towards our goals. It brings us joy. It sustains our life. It nourishes our souls. It makes us better people. We know that having “skin in the game” builds character. If we reap benefits that are equal to or exceed the efforts or costs to achieve them, then we are happy, content, fulfilled. Why? Because we have literally proven to ourselves through our own actions and hard work that what we believe is true and benefits us and we are worthy of achieving those benefits. This is how we develop self-reliance, reslience, and self-worth.

Dysfunctional Work and Commitment Dynamics in Abusive Relationships

This balance of give and take and work and obligation that fuels normal character development, relationships, and human existence becomes severely skewed in power imbalanced relationships. Why?

Because abusers simply detest putting out effort that might, even in part, benefit someone else. They can work very hard and can spend inordinate amounts of time and energy working purely to get something they want. As most of us very well know, they can put in extraordinary efforts to groom and love bomb a potential mate or spouse. But putting the same amount of energy into finding or keeping a legitimate job, a personal relationship. taking care of a sick family member, demonstrating the loyalty and consistency necessary to be considered for advancement, or making the investment in personal self-development to merit consideration for more advanced positions are completely different matters and very unattractive enterprises to them. They want all the benefits of marriage, for example, without having to work for them or earn them! Abusers resist working to become better human beings more than any other kind of work. So even when it comes to respect and love and admiration, they want to come by them in the same manner as everything else – without having to earn them.

Abusers benefit from the self-sacrifice and work or their victims whom they exploit for their personal gain. The victims are stuck in “hamster wheel relationships” that go nowhere and get nothing back in return for their extreme investments of pain and energy. Their efforts are unrequited. Chronic exploitation leads to chronic emotional pain and trauma, overtaxing of our pain-based emotional mechanisms. They become depleted and emotionally fatigued, depressed, and traumatized. The extreme and long-term imbalance of power and chronic invalidation are the core to the damage from abusive relationship fueled by legacy wounded thinking and skewed beliefs that originated in abusive childhoods. It is this wounded thinking and these skewed beliefs that also makes us vulnerable to these predators.

Abuser Find Us and Prey on Our Vulnerabilities

Abusers find us. We do not find them. In reality, abusers aggressively and offensively target and prey on the vulnerable ones who will easily give up their power and energy to them. Abusers do this because they loathe working on self-improvement, cannot self-soothe, cannot generate their own power and get great enjoyment and emotional fulfillment from taking it from, where else? Others! As discussed above, they want all the benefits others can provide them without working for them.

The abusers shadow their pain on vulnerable victims and use them and play on their vulnerabilities so they defensively give up their power to them. Abusers learned these predatory practices from the same place their victims learned their maladaptive behaviors – in their own families. People who are emotionally fit do not readily give up their power to others. In short, they would simply not be bothered with abusers because they are confident in their self-truth, are resilient, and rely comfortably on their personal power and on their internal cues to define their worthiness. They reserve their self-power for themselves and others they voluntarily choose to share their power with and who treat them with respect. They monitor and protect their personal rights, authorities and divinity comfortably and confidently. They assertively would tell the abusers to go away or ignore them and the abusers would simply move on to the next victim.

Adult survivors of childhood abuse, on the other hand, suffer from low self-esteem and pain addiction because their pain-based emotions lose their protective functions, go haywire, and become toxic. In effect, when we are abused as adults, our exaggerated pain and trauma and accompanying feelings of unworthiness and defenselessness from our youth are triggered. So our shame is old unhealed legacy toxic shame and the beliefs are false wounded beliefs our childhood abusers shadowed on us that we bring with us into adulthood.

How Do Victims Become Victors and Take Their Power Back

Abusers do not hold some magical hold on us or power over us. We are not the source of our shame that drives our self-loathing. We are, however, vulnerable to abusers who target us due to damage from overuse of our pain-based emotions. It is our toxic pain-based emotions and false beliefs of powerlessness that cause us to give up our power to abusers who trigger our pain. We also believe falsely that we must suffer to be lovable, another skewed belief we were conditioned to believe in childhood.

So victims of abuse do not deserve the pain and are not powerless or defenseless to their abusers. We are not the cause of our pain and we are not responsible for it and we are not defenseless to it. We are, however, adults who are thinking like abused wounded children, maladaptive thinking we formulated when our brains and characters were developing and when we were most vulnerable that resulted from abuse and neglect and pain inflicted on us by those we trusted and were dependent on and who were supposed to care for and love us unconditionally. It was not our pain to begin with. This is pain and distorted thinking we shadow on our own children. This is how intergenerational abuse is perpetuated.

It is time to fix our self-esteem, heal our traumas, and TAKE OUR POWER BACK! It is time to break the cycle of intergenerational abuse. And as we heal, our children will heal through us. I explore these issues in much more depth in Part 2 in this series and in my book, Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips, and Tools for Abuse Survivors. You can read a free sneak peek and review of the book and purchase a copy here.

Three Ways to Maintain Your Self-Preservation When Dealing With a Narcissist

08/16/201511/03/201710 Comments

The damage from narcissistic abuse is insipid and insidious and the emotional harm from it can be traumatizing. However, do not think for one second that you are defenseless or powerless to narcissists.

Narcissists are energy vampires. They cannot generate their own power or energy. In fact, they in themselves are powerless.

We fear them because we believe we are powerless and defenseless to them. However, what we fear in reality is not really dangerous. Our perception of danger has been skewed in large part from past harmful or traumatic experiences. We fear narcissists because of what abusers did to us as children when we were vulnerable to them and felt powerless to them. We learned to readily give up our personal power and energy to narcissists and other abusers who trigger our pain and the accompanying false belief of powerlessness.

WHY UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HARM, FEAR AND REAL DANGER ARE FUNDAMENTAL TO OUR HEALING AND WELL-BEING

Narcissists, in reality, however, while aggressive and revengeful, are weak and predictable. This works to your favor since this makes them vulnerable. In fact, they are very easy to manipulate.

CAN NARCISSISM BE CURED?

“Really,” you may be thinking, “how can that be?”

Because in reality, narcissists push the same pain buttons our abusers did when we were children when we were powerless to them. We bring these same fears and beliefs into adulthood. As adults, we overestimate the danger and underestimate our ability to deal with it when, if we were able to look at it rationally, we would see very clearly that we are no longer powerless to these annoying creeps. Read more here.

So our fear of them is really false? The answer is an unequivocal, “Yes!”

We can learn, with practice, to deal with narcissists easily and effectively and not be vulnerable to them or fear them. Once you are able to see them and understand them for who they really are and break through the dysfunctional illusion and heal, you will see they are really more like annoying buzzing insects or whining man and woman babies – bothersome, boring, and predictable.

Here are 3 tips to maintain your self-preservation when dealing with them:

Become a “Gray Rock.” Do not give them any attention, positive or negative. Like this meme states, gray rocks do not attract attention and blend in with the scenery and you can do the same to make yourself less appealing to a narcissist.

If you do not give them your energy, they will go away. They need narcissistic supply to survive. Without it, they cannot live. Practice not reacting to anything they say or do or even thinking about them.

Say to yourself over and over and practice:

I am authentic and powerful in my silence.
I am indestructable.
I show no emotion.
I cannot be triggered.
I offer no supply.
I am invincible.
I am not powerless to anything that triggers me.
I am not defenseless to anything that triggers me.
I am silent.
I am not angry.
I am boring.
I give no clue as to what is going on with me.

Turn the fear triggers into annoyance triggers.

Watch them and map out what you expect them to do and when. You may find it useful to write down each action and how they make you feel. Plan what you will do when the narcissist responds as you predicted. This will help to remove the severity and seriousness from the situation by showing how weak and predictable, yet annoying, they really are, like mosquitoes. It will also make you more mindful and aware of your real power. Taking action (including saying “no”) will help you reset your internal fear threshold and provide you the self power (e.g. narc repellent) to regulate your emotions before they escalate and the confidence in your ability to protect your personal boundaries. Your confidence, self-esteem, and self-confidence will soar!

For reasons of self-preservation (not revenge), learning to manipulate them may be your best option.

Now, I DO NOT recommend this at all to anyone who is in early stages of healing. In addition, it takes time and energy and practice, and frankly, good acting skills to learn how to do this.

So when you are ready and have a legitimate need to benefit, you can learn pretty easily to manipulate them by giving the appearance you are giving up your energy. You can make them think they are manipulating you. Again, I am not promoting deceit for revenge. Rather, I am promoting self-preservation.

I, very far along in my healing, deal with narcissists and other boundary violators like manipulators and covert aggressors and passive aggressive people all the time. I do not fear them because I know how they tick and I no longer believe I am defenseless to them. I no longer fear them because I took my power back and healed and I know how to manage them. For example, I choose to voluntarily interact with them only if I benefit. I always make sure I benefit in some way because I know that they always are using me for something. It is just who they are and it is just what they do. I view it neutrally and not with any fear or emotional investment. If I do not benefit, I do not interact with them or I give up no energy. I just shut down and say nothing. I bank on the fact that they will come back again to “win” just like they bank on others’ vulnerabilities. If and when they come back, I just follow the same rule. If I do not benefit, I do not interact and give up no energy to the interaction.

Narcissists are aggressive and potentially dangerous and can only harm you if you fear them and allow them to do harm to you. In reality, they cannot generate their own power and need yours to survive. This is why they aggressively pursue you. This is behavior they learned in their dysfunctional families. They bank on our weaknesses and only target the emotionally vulnerable, kind, empathetic, generous, conscientious, and trusting people. You can use this information to your benefit and work the interaction with them to your favor.

But make no mistake and do not let your guard down. A narcissist always uses another person for something they need. They are aggressive parasites. Every interaction with them is parasitic. Accept that. It is not because they like you or love you or even hate you. They need you for narcissistic supply and actively go after it. They are predictable and weak and can be managed. They, however, cannot be cured.

How Emotions Go Haywire in Abuse Survivors

08/11/201509/07/201712 Comments

Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

“…our pain-based emotions become faulty and lose their intended design functions of being reliable protective safety measures and providing depth and color to our lives. They go haywire and rather than protect us, do us more harm and our children more harm as we teach the same distorted thinking patterns to them as well. We and our children become vulnerable targets of energy and power vampires.”

th-8 We are not the source of our pain. No one is. We are the source of our joy. Read this again…and again…and again.

Our pain-based emotions exist to protect us. They exist as cues, as lessons for us to put on the brakes, stop, think, course correct or thought correct to heal from wounds and to keep ourselves safe from danger and further harm.

We are not born with pain and we are not born deserving of pain. There are no “chosen people” better than us who are genetically predisposed to deserve joy more than we do. If you believe this, your thinking is not rational and needs correcting.

We are born with only two fears – fear of falling and fear of loud noises. All, yes, all of our pain-based emotions (and the list is long) like shame, guilt, anxiety, grief, phobias, compulsions are learned, every darn last one of them. Some we developed in order to cope with or avoid another greater fear or pain. Our caregivers in our youth should have taught us how to take cues from our pain-based emotions, as well as our joy-based ones and showed us to self-regulate and modulate them with healthy self-coping and self-soothing mechanisms. They should have taught us to accept, use, and rely on our emotions in order to develop our divine miraculous abilities to care for ourselves and nourish our souls and mature these abilities throughout our lives to become the best joy-seeking versions of ourselves we were put on this earth to be.

Instead they taught us to believe the lies they were taught to believe that caused them and us to maladapt. Toxic pain-based thinking in our families today originated generations ago from our great great great great great grandfathers or grandmothers who suffered some traumatic experience and who never healed and shadowed their pain on and taught their wounded thinking to their descendants. Read more on this subject here.

13166007_822039794617518_5597762351778431864_n The truth is that we are all born and designed for happiness and to feel safe, secure, and lovable. When we are abused and betrayed in our youth when we are growing at such a rapid pace, our pain-based emotions, through overuse, become toxic and our beliefs about our self-worth and deserving peace, solace and joy become skewed. We are taught and conditioned, instead, to believe that in loving relationships, we deserve pain, we are the source of our pain, we are powerless to the pain, and only those who inflict pain on us have the power and authority to relieve the pain. We may not be able to see the “good” in normal healthy relationships and sabotage them because we were not taught to relate anything positive in a relationship to love or our worthiness.

When we are abused, our pain-based emotions become faulty and lose their intended design functions of being reliable protective safety measures and providing depth and color to our lives. They go haywire and rather than protect us, do us and our children more harm as we teach the same distorted thinking patterns to them as well. We and our children become vulnerable targets of energy and power vampires.

11825868_789154231210160_5369177878722907305_n-1 We can replace this distorted thinking with emotionally adaptive and healthy thinking and learn to modulate and control our own emotions and bring our self-esteem and self-worth to healthy levels. We can change our pain-seeking/pain-avoiding lives to joy-seeking/joy-filled lives, achieve emotional sobriety, and thrive. As we heal, our children will heal through us. This is how we break the cycles of intergenerational abuse.

I am committed at Yourlifelifter to teach you how to heal and recover.

I explore these topics in much more detail in my book, Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips, and Tools for Abuse Survivors. You can purchase and read a free sneak peek and review of the book here.

Am I The Narcissist?

08/07/201502/12/20194 Comments

Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

I hear frequently from readers who fear they are the narcissist and the one with the personality disorder.

My answer?

“Absolutely not!”

This distorted thinking is a consequence of prolonged abuse that started in childhood and its traumatic impacts on your beliefs, self-worth, self-assurance, gauges of reasoning, and your abilities to trust and regulate your emotions. It also is a consequence of not clearly understanding the differences between being narcissistic which is a normal and adaptive characteristic and being pathologically narcissistic that is personality disorder that has no cure.

The fact that you would even be concerned about this, demonstrates that your emotional capabilities although skewed, are intact.

Prolonged narcissistic abuse is slick invalidation from emotional vampires – carefully planned and premeditated efforts to stealthily through covert aggressive combat maneuvers, take everything valuable that you have to offer (your love, trust, compassion, beauty, generosity, child-bearing abilities, finances, or whatever) that they can manipulate from you to provide an illusion of grandeur and greatness to the world without any of the work.

When we do, we give up our power and energy that per our divine design at conception, were intended to be used by and for us to nurture our souls and become the best versions of ourselves as we search for internal truth – truth that we choose to share with others in relationships of mutual respect.

So, “no” you are not a narcissist. You, however, are a wounded victim of one or more who steal energy from you they cannot generate on their own. And perhaps you picked up some of their bad behaviors that will pass once you are away from them.

The good news is that you can fix your skewed thinking and heal and as you do, so will your children and you will thrive. You will make memories and people will love you just for being you. You will release the pain that made you vulnerable to them in the first place and become a stronger more self-assured version of yourself.

th-14 You will take your power back and thrive. I explore these topics in much more depth in my book, Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips, and Tools for Abuse Survivors.

Narcissists will be forever evil and when they are done and gone, the only person anyone will miss is the one they will never be.

Read more below on the topic from one of my favorite Facebook Pages of “Truth,” “Sanctuary for Awareness and Recovery:”

Sanctuary For Awareness And Recovery

Paradox with several Personality Disorders and mental illnesses: since the ego and perception are both affected, it is common for those with some personality disorders and mental illnesses with narcissistic traits to actually perceive those they are treating poorly as the ones who are narcissistic, because of their reactions to their behavior, or because they have healthy confidence and boundaries. The root cause is usually a lack of boundaries, and a lack of respect or awareness for other people’s boundaries.

So the person who insults your teeth might call you “narcissistic” if you don’t just let them insult your teeth. Apparently you were supposed to agree with them or hang your head in shame, not stand up for yourself against a blatant insult. So therefore in their mind the insult was perfectly fine, it was your reaction to the insult that was “narcissistic.”

Another example of this may be when someone enters your home or room without knocking or without waiting for an answer when this has not been established as the “norm” for them in your home or room, in other words you have not told them to “don’t knock, just come in.” They’re already showing a lack of boundaries with this behavior, so one shouldn’t be surprised that they react very defensively and emotionally when asked not to do that.

Saying and doing things that display hostility, arrogance, coldness, aggression, superiority or hatred are blatant displays of poor or absent boundaries, so when such a person’s behavior is confronted, disagreed with, or disapproved of, (speaking in a respectful manner that is), they are most likely going to react defensively and perceive it as arrogance, control, or an attack, and if they have some level of narcissism they may rage.

Why are Narcissists Self-Righteous and Manipulative?

07/24/201503/28/20197 Comments

Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

th-12 Have you noticed that the most toxic people have the biggest and the most fragile egos?

Ever wondered why?

They are part of the facade, the illusion of smoke and mirrors masking a core of deep-seated shame and self-loathing and powerlessness. They are crude covertly aggressive parasitic attempts at taking others’ power for selfish self-serving purposes by those who cannot and do not want to generate their own. Oh, they may try to pass it off as power, however aggressiveness and the needs to control and charm and be self-righteousness and manipulate are not power.

Why Narcissists Lie and Why We Should Care More Than We Do

Truly powerful and influentially people do not manipulate others and are not self-righteous because, simply, they do not have to. However, generating our own power takes hard work including putting our egos aside for not only our own good but for others’ as well. And what key character qualities does this require? You got it – selflessness, conscientiousness, commitment, compassion and empathy: qualities these broken personality disordered people lack and have replaced with self-righteousness and manipulation and a sick desire to make others lose.

th-10 Now they cannot show their true colors to the world. Can they? How would they survive? How would they get others to give up the energy they starve for and need for emotional sustenance, for glue to mend their cracked psyches?

Of course! Why not portray a false image (e.g. ego) of charm and aggression (covert or overt) they need the world to see and prey on the vulnerable? Why not defend and perpetuate the false spineless weak persons they really are by judging others to prove their own power to themselves and to others and use whatever or whomever they can including religion to do so? Why not recruit personal assistants, “flying monkeys,” to help them th-11 create the magical illusion of power and grandeur and create their own “Land of Oz?” Why not commit the worst of “sins” in the name of God, America, or Buddha or Muhammed or for whatever reason or lie they can muster to justify what is really pure depravity and evil? Why not worship false idols – their own selves!

They want all the benefits we the virtuous folks work for and that the narcissists feel entitled to such as love and marriage and children and recognition without any of the work! In fact, they hate self-improvement! This is why they flock to and frequent churches and religious communities and politics and even companies and “do good” fund raising organizations that are driven by unethical “group think” cultures.

Why are So Many Politicians Pathological Narcissists and What Can We Do About it?

th-13 Now, evil lies on a long spectrum, however evil is evil. It is like being pregnant. You are or you aren’t and being a little bit is irrelevant to the greater purpose. So rather than work to become virtuous people of integrity and character and develop grace, tolerance, kindness, and generosity (which they loathe doing, by the way), these depraved people mask their weaknesses and prey on the vulnerabilities of others who truly are people of virtue.

Narcissistic Harm by Proxy

07/14/201502/06/20163 Comments

Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

“People who sincerely care about you will actively listen and follow. Those who don’t will not. Healing is a time of self-evaluation that provides a great opportunity to clean your closet of legacy unhealthy relationships that are supporting the narcissist’s dirty dealings and preventing your healing and hindering your happiness.”

I read frequently from viewers here and at many other sites who maintained no
contact but watching their children and friends be targeted continued to cause th-1 them great fear and pain.

They also experience great pain from those they believe care about them who do not believe them or “do not want to get involved.”

Narcissistic harm by proxy perhaps?

No contact with abusers and especially narcissists is critical to healing. Narcissists, however, frequently target their own children and others you love and use them as pawns to get to you, their primary narcissistic supply. After all, if they cannot have our love and attention, why not settle for our angst, contempt and negative attention by using those we love and care about the most and turning them against us? Negative attention is attention after all, right?

What can we do to support the no contact rule for ourselves and protect ourselves AND our children and others we care about under these circumstances? Personally, this was my greatest fear for my child and my greatest challenge.

But no longer.

Here are some tips and recommendations that I use that I hope you find useful to keep you, your children, and loved ones on a path of emotional health and safety and your relationships intact.

We have options and choices ALWAYS. You are no longer a victim or a target of what the narcissist COULD do in your personal relationships. You can only remain a victim or target if you continue to live in fear. There is a huge difference between REAL danger and fear of what COULD harm you. Remember always to call the police immediately if you are in any real physical danger or threat of physical harm. Use the legal system to acquire restraining orders if needed.

You can also only remain a victim or target if your self-worth is not strong and is dependent on validation from others. This is no longer the case. We learn to use our compassion and empathy, what attracts narcissists to us, to benefit and protect us. Your innate emotional intelligence and new knowledge on emotional health and boundary management provide you with renewed personal power founded on new truth.

The new family dynamic provides you opportunities to use your renewed personal power in your children’s and your favor. You most likely were raised in families where there were no boundaries and healthy rules of engagement or regard for your personal rights or authorities. I call this the “family amoeba,” the family glob. The glob no longer exists and has been replaced with new relationships and dynamics. Your spouse is no longer your spouse, rather the Ex. Your children are still your children. You are still the parent. Those, now, remember, are three or more DISTINCT relationships you are engaged in and that you have the right and authority to manage as you choose with newly established boundaries and the rules of engagement that support emotional health.

Remember your personal power includes the ability to parent and educate your children and influence and educate your loved ones. Teach your children, friends, relatives EVERYTHING you can about narcissism and how to protect themselves from harm. This is an insipid and insidious disorder that needs to be brought into everyone’s levels of consciousness. Share with your children, no matter what their age, EVERYTHING you have learned, signs of narcissists, and especially how to manage and protect personal boundaries with everyone including you and the other parent. TELL THEM THE TRUTH ABOUT THE HARM OF ABUSE AND YOUR CHILDHOOD AND UPBRINGING. Teach them self-respect by demanding it in all your personal interactions and paying honor to your own personal rights and authorities. People who sincerely care about you will actively listen and follow. Those who don’t will not.

Healing is a time of self-evaluation that provides a great opportunity to clean your closet of legacy unhealthy relationships that are supporting the narcissist’s dirty dealings and preventing your healing and hindering your happiness.

Why Understanding the Differences Between Harm, Fear, and Real Danger is Fundamental to Your Healing and Well-Being

07/14/201502/17/20198 Comments

Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

images-2 I write frequently about the differences between aggression and power. I’d like to expand on this topic as it relates to harm, fear and danger a bit more because understanding this is critical to your healing

We Believe Falsely that We are Defenseless

After we are repeatedly harmed, our fear and other pain-based responses can malfunction and go into overdrive because we have been traumatized and our perception of our personal power falsely and temporarily squelched by years of abuse. Consequently, our coping and defense mechanisms that define and nourish our personal power never develop and the trauma and pain becomes chemically programmed into our brain cells. We become trauma addicted. We become heavily dependent on others rather than ourselves to define our worthiness, lovability, and personal power. This is not adaptive and does not support our emotional health or healthy relationships! Rather, we stay subconsciously trapped to irrational pain and fears (our neuroses) which keep us vulnerable to narcissists and other covert aggressors who hunt for and feed off of our vulnerabilities.

Emotional vampires are experts on identifying targets with these neuroses-based vulnerabilities. In addition, once we are in relationships with narcissistic abusers, we can end up grossly overestimating danger based on past harm and grossly underestimating our ability to deal with it. What we perceive as “dangers” can really be “triggers” that are pushing our childhood trauma buttons and our childhood feelings of pain and powerlessness! Read this again. Our fears can be false! In reality, our desire for our abuser is an addiction to the trauma they create. Now this does not mean that a narcissist cannot ever pose a real threat to you or your children or even your pets and can never harm you. If you ever feel you are in real danger, leave and call 911 or your local authorities immediately. However, what it does mean, on the other hand, is that:

You can falsely fear them because you think they are more powerful than they are and
You can falsely think you are defenseless when in reality you are not.

Small mosquito So that big bad wolf narcissist, that vampire whom you think will suck your life’s blood dry is in actually just a weak manipulative annoyance, an aggressive mosquito that has learned to push the right buttons just like the weak coward behind the curtain pretending to be the all powerful Oz by creating an illusion of smoke and mirrors. Aggression, abusing authority, and exploiting vulnerabilities are not synonymous with power, strength, love, or danger, folks! The result?

We can think we are weak, unworthy, unlovable, and defenseless and panic ourselves unnecessarily when in reality, we are safe. We are fearing a powerless being who cannot generate their own energy and who learned to exploit power from other humans. We can remain trauma addicted and mistake it for love for our abusers! Our neuroses and low self-esteem allow us to become complicit in our own abuse and in the abuse of our children! We remain victims of abuse because we were conditioned to think like victims in our childhood. We end up with skewed perceptions of what harm, fear, and love really are and falsely think we are unable to deal with them. We can even go so far as to choose staying with an abuser that we fear less than, for example, being single because we relate that to abandonment that we fear more!

Our Irrational Fears Can Perpetuate Abuse

if-you-dont-heal-your-pain It is this irrational thinking that allows us unknowingly to let abusers who cannot generate their own energy target and exploit us and is the origin of how abuse is perpetuated from generation to generation as we teach our children to think the same way. Understanding this is necessary for your healing so read this carefully and process this and bring it into the forefront of your thinking. Until we are able to deal with these false beliefs, we can stay emotionally connected to the abusers even if we have no contact and this is why.

Energy vampires feed on our responses not only fueled by ego-driven need for revenge and justice but also our personal fears. We end up keeping the narcissistic supply going and keeping ourselves connected to them and they continue being our and our children’s emotional puppet masters. When we fear someone or something, we give them the power to control us!

“When you can shift the pain and fear out of your cells of what the narcissist is doing, or may do, you stop feeding his or her energy.” ~Melanie Tonia Evans

We Need to Take Our Power Back

imgres Remember that the ex-girlfriend, boyfriend, sister, father, mother, co-worker are nothing more than weak bullies, nothing but simple predictable energy vampires. Without you and your attention and energy, they shrivel up and die like the Wicked Witch of the West on the Wizard of Oz. A bucket of water destroyed her. The “Great and Powerful Oz” was a weak coward presenting an illusion of greatness and power. Dorothy and her entourage had the brains, heart, courage, and answers all the time. And so do you!

But in order to take your power back, you need to acknowledge and release the pain, shame, and fear first – those deep seated pains from repressed childhood wounds that raise their ugly heads when our trauma buttons are pushed. In addition, our own egos can keep us trapped in this pain. Is your personal pride and fear of shame keeping you from admitting the truth? Those of you who are reading this (who do not have personality disorders), and you know who you are, who claim that they were not abused in childhood are lying to yourselves. Abuse and aggression can be covert or overt. Passive and covert aggressors do just as much psychological damage as overt abusers. Neglect is abuse. Invalidation is abuse. So stop fooling yourselves so you can move forward to uncover your past to recover your future. The point is this, folks.

Narcissistic abusers have aggressive manipulative personalities. They are born wired that way. They search for and find victims who they are able to manipulate to get what they need because that is just what they do. They are human predators, human parasites. Abusers are everywhere! They find us. We do not find them. In addition, aggression is not synonymous with strength or danger. Remember, however, they do not prey on emotionally fit people because emotionally fit people do not have the vulnerabilities abusers know their victims need in order for their manipulation efforts to be successful. But we have the power and option not to let them. That is once we embrace and release our pain and take ourselves and our power back. Once we learn narcissists are aggressive but weak and we are not powerless or defenseless to them, once we stop thinking like victims, once we learn to regulate our own pain, we no longer become victims not only to narcissists but also to our own thinking. The narcissists, I promise you, disappear like the wind. So stop feeding the beasts and take your power back. Your children will heal through you! This is how we break the cycle of intergenerational abuse. This is how we heal. This is how we thrive.

Yourlifelifter Launches New Website

07/12/201508/07/20152 Comments

Alexandra Ryan, Yourlifelifter

Yourlifelifter, a web-based life-coaching and information center that supports emotional health and well-being is happy to announce the launch of its new website at https://yourlifelifter.wordpress.com to complement its growing Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/yourlifelifter.

Yourlifelifter is successfully helping tens of thousands of people from across the globe address life, career, self-esteem, and emotional health issues.

Included on the website is the Yourlifelifter Blog and a new and growing product line that includes life coaching and career coaching services, Sevenpoint2 and Earth’s Living Clay nutritional health supplements, essential oils, and Melanie Tonia Evans’ Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program.

Evelyn Ryan, the Founder of Yourlifelifter, is the author of Take Your Power Back: Healing Lessons, Tips, and Tools for Abuse Survivors that is scheduled to be released for international distribution in Summer 2015.

Welcome to the Yourlifelifter Community!

Thank you for your continued support.

Together we heal! Together we thrive!

Yourlifelifter is Now Offering Life Coaching and Career Coaching

07/11/201507/13/2015Leave a comment

Emotionally fatigued? Scared? Stuck in your job or career?

Need direction?

Has therapy not worked for you?

Get PERSONALIZED coaching from Certified Professional Life Coach, Career Coach, and Abuse (including narcissistic abuse) Recovery Expert, Evelyn Ryan.

Evelyn tailors coaching to YOUR individual needs and goals!

Life Coaching packages include:

1. FREE self assessment.
2. FREE half hour session with Evelyn to review results.
3. Unlimited emails.
4. Compassionate accountability to healing goals from someone who has been where you are and who has successfully healed.
5. Unique recovery approach with a 20 year success in addressing hidden traumas.
6. Flexible packages and schedules to meet your needs
7. Worldwide correspondence how you choose by telephone and/or Skype.

For more information on life coaching packages and to request self assessment questionnaire, click here.

For more information on career coaching packages, click here.

Understanding Why Narcissists Targeted You is Fundamental to Healing

07/11/201502/23/201750 Comments

Evelyn Ryan, Yourlifelifter

1098228_1187695837924727_3159249499669189930_n Are you compassionate? Empathetic?

Well, if you are, you are one of 40% of the population who are a prime target for scapegoaters, bullies, narcissists, con-artists, and sociopaths who comprise a subset of the remaining 60% of the population. So being a “nice” person is your double-edged sword and most likely why you are reading this.

According to Dr. Jane McGregor, empaths are ordinary people who are highly perceptive imgres-6 and insightful and belong to the 40% of human beings who sense when something’s not right, who respond to their gut instinct, and who take action and speak up. They frequently like the child in the The Emperor’s New Clothes, will tell the truth and expose lies and wrong doing and are targets of scapegoaters, bullies, narcissists, and sociopaths who are driven by exaggerated envy and fear of shame, lack of compassion, and the inability to self sooth.

LISTEN TO THIS PROVOCATIVE DISCUSSION ON “THE TOXIC TANGO OF EMPATHS AND NARCISSISTS.”

In the 1990s, researchers suggested that there was a positive relationship between empathy and emotional intelligence. Since then, that term has been used interchangeably with emotional literacy. What this means in practice is that empaths have the ability to understand their own emotions, to listen to other people and empathize with their emotions, to express emotions productively and to handle their emotions in such a way as to improve their personal power.

Dr. McGregor describes that people are often attracted to empaths because of their compassionate nature. A particular attribute is that they are sensitive to the emotional distress of others. Conversely, they have trouble comprehending a closed mind and lack of compassion in others. This is a limitation that empathetic “nice” people have and that you need to bring into your level of awareness and glue into your memory banks.

imgres-2 This inability to see the “bad” in others also significantly enhances their vulnerability to attacks from emotional vampires throughout their lives. As a result, empaths can be targeted easily by energy vampires such as scapegoaters, bullies, narcissists, and sociopaths who enlist other uncompassionate and apathetic people in their wrong-doing. So in actuality, abused children and adults in the world are some of the “nicest” people in the world. This is crazy making, folks, and is the heart of scapegoating and abuse in families and in my opinion, one of the main causes of evil in society today. The number one reason people seek counseling is because they were scapegoated as a child and suffer post traumatic distress. This is psychological trauma! Read on.

Empaths use their ability to boost their and others’ well being and safety. Dr. McGregor found it interesting how often people see empaths in problematical terms. Dr. McGregor in her research found that most people, the 60% majority, prefer the easy life. She explains that some of us admire people who make a bold stand, while others feel uneasy about them.

Listen to and learn more on this compelling and provocative topic discussed with Evelyn Ryan on Mental Health News Radio here.

images-3 Problems escalate for empaths, however, when apaths are in the vicinity. Empaths can be brought down, distressed and forced into the position of the lone fighter by the inaction of more apathetic types round them. This is also how school and work group bullying and scapegoating works. The bullies enlist the apathetic, fearful, and defenseless ones who are the ones most likely to go with the flow, to agree that the emperor/empress is wearing new clothes. Apaths behave defenselessly because they want to avoid unpleasant or harmful circumstances [including the bully turning on them]. Apathy is an avoidance strategy that contributes to abuse…by proxy!

Listen and learn more on “The Toxic Tango of Empaths and Narcissists.“

images-2 Kim Saeed, a narcissistic abuse recovery expert, says that narcissists prey on empaths and highly sensitive people. Empaths operate predominately from love, humility, and giving. They have a natural capacity for healing and teaching others. However, until they learn how to responsibly use those gifts, they are often taken advantage of…not only by romantic partners, but people in general. Further, empaths have a track record of developing codependent behaviors in childhood to deal with the overwhelming unfairness in the world and to please others, which they usually carry into their adult relationships. It is easy to see, then, how empaths who were abused as children can develop exaggerated codependency issues and dependence on others to define their worth.

Kim further explains that when the empath and narcissist enter into a relationship together, it becomes hyper toxic. It creates a magnetic, yet vibrationally dysfunctional union. The empath’s sole purpose is to facilitate healing in others. Narcissists are insatiable and incurable. The empath gives to the point of complete and utter exhaustion. Because of these natural tendencies, the unaware empath often finds themselves not only being targeted by a narcissist but staying in a relationship with a toxic personality for too long and the damage to them is compounded.

So, all you empathetic and empathic people who suffered and are recovering from abuse as a child, childhood bullying, adult bullying and went on to marry a narcissist or more than one narcissist, bring this into your level of awareness during your healing. Educate yourself, your children and others on their inability to see the “bad” in others, the wolves in sheep’s clothing. This significantly increases your vulnerability to 60% of people, who not only comprise narcissists, bullies, and psychopaths but also the weak ones who join these abusers or harm you further by doing nothing (inaction) because they lack the heart or courage (that you have) to just do the right thing.

I hope you find this useful in your recovery and search for truth!