Another School Shooting in the United States
Yet another school shooting in The United States. Ohio of all places. It really is getting to the point where it isn’t a matter of will this happen again, but where and when. We don’t even seem to spend as much time on the whys anymore. Does the formidable and far-reaching nature of the answers [...]
The Precious Mistakes Made In Choosing Toxic Relationships
Most people when they realize they are in a toxic relationship, at some point or other, come to the conclusion they have made a mistake. A mistake that is likely a series of mistakes in reality. This is a crucial fork in the road of your understanding actually. This point of painful realization is a [...]
Toxic Relationship Recovery
Are you in a toxic relationship? Are things chaotic, dramatic, with lots of conflict? Did you ever think love could be that complicated? Well, guess what, love is not really that complicated at all.
What is felt and shared in toxic relationships is not healthy love. It is toxic love. It is more often than not a kind of codependency. It can be likened to an addiction. Only the addiction in a toxic relationship (while one or both partners may have other addictions as well) is in and of itself an addiction to the other person and to this relationship or to being in an relationship.
Toxic relationship recovery rarely means that such a relationship can survive or be saved. Each person in a toxic relationship needs to learn to take a little more responsibility for him or herself and each will also benefit from focusing on him/herself instead of putting an inordinate amount of focus, time, and energy onto the other.
The fact that a relationship is toxic means that it really needs to come to an end. Sometimes toxic relationships result from the mix of each partner’s unresolved past issues. Other times toxic relationships are at base reflective of major incompatibility.
10 MYTHS ABOUT VERBAL ABUSE
Verbal abuse has become so common for so many that victims can take years to finally question the way they are treated when they are being constantly verbally abused. It is then difficult, especially after so long, for the victim, whose self-worth, self-esteem, and confidence have been beaten down for so long to believe that they do not deserve the abuse that they have been subject to and to feel helpless in the face of it and hopeless about escaping it or insisting it stops.
Verbal abuse is insidious. It is proliferating. It is damaging and dangerous. It wounds and has tremendous emotional impact for those who are the victims of it. Verbal abuse leaves so many of its victims confused and insecure. It results in them not even easily being able to identify that they are in fact being verbally abused. There are so many myths about what verbal abuse is, what causes it and whose fault it is.
Abusers Are Imposters – The Masks of Power and Control
Abusers are impostors to the reality of who they are. They wear a the mask of charming when really they are insecure and controlling. Abusers wear the masks necessary to get their own way. Masks of charm, masks of rage, masks of caring, and masks of competence – all to hide who they are. Verbal [...]
Self Mutilation is the Language of Pain Associated With Borderline Personality Disorder
Self-mutilation, for many who have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), is a learned language of profound pain. It is a primordial scream for help. It is
the apex of needing to be heard, validated, and soothed. It is one of the most
prolific and anguished expressions of borderline pain, pain that has otherwise been abandoned. It is self-defeating and holds you hostage to the pain of the false self – to the pain that you can’t heal by further wounding and re-wounding your body and your precious soul.
Self mutilation is the way many with BPD transfer the abandoned pain of BPD from its deep intra-psychic (subconscious) roots to the light of day. Borderlines channel this intolerable emotional pain that they do not know how to cope with into physical pain which is much more understandable. Borderlines understand suffering. The self abuse of self mutilation takes the borderline’s abandonment trauma (Masterson) from the mind to the body. Borderlines use their bodies to express what is too unsafe and what feels annihilating to even begin to absorb in a conscious psychological way. Sadly, however, this transfer of psychological pain into physical pain does nothing to actually begin to get in touch with abandonment trauma in ways that can mean learning, through therapy, to learn the skills necessary to first tolerate the distress of the pain, and then secondly, work at resolving it.
Abuse In Lesbian Relationships
One of the greatest challenges arising from the reality of abuse in lesbian relationships is the difficulty that can unfold when one or both women try to get help. Many women fleeing from an abuser seek refuge in and help from women’s shelters. When the abuse victim is a heterosexual woman abused by a man the system has a clear mandate help and support the woman. However, when both the abuser and the victim of abuse are women, the system is confronted with the difficult task of figuring out which woman to help. It is not always easy to distinguish which woman is the victim and which is the abuser a) because they are in fact each both they are abusing each other and the victim of each other’s abuse or b) because the woman who is abusive may present herself as the victim of the woman who is actually her victim to keep her partner from being able to be helped which is in and of itself, abusive.
Recognizing and Coping With Narcissistic Abuse
Narcissism, to varying degrees, is a common trait of all personality disorders. Those with personality disorders and any substantial degree of narcissism are not capable of healthy age-appropriate adult intimacy. They are emotionally unavailable people who are emotionally child-like and who more often than not relate in a dysfunctional, toxic, and abusive ways.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder – Bordelrine Personality Disorder – Compassion for the Narcissist?
Narcissist are in pain. Their humanity must be recognized. © 2007 A.J. Mahari NPD has become synonymous with pejorative vilifying stereotypes that paint everyone diagnosed with it as monstrous. No one is the sum total of any diagnosis. Narcissistic Personality Disorder has become synonymous with pejorative vilifying stereotypes that paint everyone diagnosed with it along [...]
