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What is Fawning and How to Stop
When I first heard the term fawning, described as a trauma response, it hit me pretty hard. An empathetic and desperately self-conscious kid, I eventually grew into an empathetic and self-conscious adult. Marrying a narcissist did nothing to help, and I soon learned to become a people pleaser as a survival tactic. And for a long time after I escaped from my abuser, I didn’t question it. It had become second nature. I tolerated uncomfortable and even abusive relationships in my work and personal life, often falling prey to what I call quasi-narcissists. These people in our lives are self-centered but occasionally have the grace to feel guilty about it.…
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The Cost of Staying: Narcissistic Abuse
The devastating cost of being in a narcissistic relationship is often brushed over as if once a person leaves such a relationship, the price is paid. Nothing could be further from the truth. An abusive marriage is a bit like a predatory loan. You will keep paying interest long after the price of the loan is paid. I wish more material existed twenty-five years ago when I debated about divorcing. I didn’t realize then that, in one sense, I was already too late. I could escape in body, but true freedom would come much later. So I thought I would put together a list of what staying with a…
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Terror: Snapshots of Narcissistic Abuse
I first experienced terror in a nightmare at the age of 5. I sat on my bedspread, suspended hundreds of feet above the neighborhood below. A string dangled from one corner of the bright green and yellow coverlet, just out of the reach of a horrifying King Kong trying to pull me down from my unsteady perch. I couldn’t move for several heart-stopping moments. When I finally found my scream, I bolted to my parent’s bedroom. Terror feels a bit different as an adult. It is even difficult to write this. My innate dissociative tendencies keep interrupting my chain of thoughts. But it must be noted that victims of domestic…
Healing Through Art & Words
