Have you ever started a conversation about something quite simple and, ten minutes later, found yourself defending your character, your memory, your motives, something you did six months ago and something somebody else supposedly said about you? You...

The Little Door Doubt is one possible result of that interference. But the interference can begin long before you consciously doubt yourself. Your reading of what is happening becomes disrupted, muddied, slowed or pulled off course. You may find you...

Narcissism: Why Is Enough Never Enough? The Red Queen has everything arranged exactly as she wants it. Everyone complies. Nobody challenges her. The roses are being painted red. The work is being done. Her instructions are being followed. She has wo...

Following the White Rabbit (5/6 minute read) Alice did not intend to fall down a rabbit hole. She saw something that caught her attention. The White Rabbit was going somewhere. He was late. He had his own urgency. And Alice followed him. That is an ...

(5 minute read) The Mad Hatter is a walking contradiction in a world where Alice keeps trying to apply ordinary sense to nonsense. And perhaps that gives us a useful way of looking at something that can happen in difficult or narcissistic relations...

(4–5 minute read) In Through the Looking-Glass, Alice meets Humpty Dumpty. He tells her, in effect, that a word means what he chooses it to mean. Alice is left trying to work out the rules of the conversation. It is a surprisingly familiar feeling. ...

(8 minute read) When maintaining their reality means recruiting other people into it You know what happened. Perhaps you were there. Perhaps you have the messages. Perhaps you remember the conversation perfectly well. And yet, somehow, the story has...

(3 minute read) A trauma bond is not the same as love. It may feel like love. It may feel urgent, consuming, painful, hopeful, addictive, and impossible to explain. But underneath, a trauma bond is often a survival attachment. I In narcissistic rela...

The Portrait That Keeps Updating: Narcissism and the Ageing Process (4–5 minute read) Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray gives us an extraordinary split. Dorian remains apparently unchanged. His portrait does not. While Dorian continues to see...

(3 minute read) The internet likes certainty. It likes neat explanations, clear villains, and tidy endings. Spend enough time online and you might begin to believe that certain kinds of people are entirely one thing or entirely another. The narcissi...

(3 minute read) Few words provoke as much discussion in therapy as the word narcissist. For some survivors, hearing the term for the first time is profoundly validating. It can explain years of confusion, self-doubt, circular arguments, shifting goa...

(A 4 minute read) This article is written for people recovering from narcissistic, coercive, or emotionally confusing relationships who continue to feel pulled back long after the relationship has ended. How attachment, co-dependency and trauma bond...

One of the most painful questions survivors of abuse ask themselves is: “Why do I keep having the same conversation?” They explain. They clarify. They provide examples. They answer objections. They correct misunderstandings. Yet somehow they find th...

Skim read: 3–4 minutes Thoughtful read: 5–7 minutes Sometimes we find ourselves responding to a version of reality that is no longer true. A friend may be responding to a version of us that exists in their mind rather than the person standing in fro...

(4 minute read) When you find yourself in an argument with a narcissist - do you feel understood or heard? What happens when explanation becomes survival - and why thoughtful people become tied in knots. Have you spent years analysing them? Have you...