The Long Journey Home

 As a part of Narcissistic Abuse Awareness, this month, each day I will be sharing in detail about aspects of narcissistic abuse. Today's topic is about an emotional abuse tactic called Gaslighting.  Have you come across this term before? What does that even mean ?  Oxford dictionary define gaslighting as manipulating someone by psychological means to doubt their own sanity. This is a very commonly used tool by an abuser to control their victim's sense of reality. An abuser may deny what they did or said to confuse the victim's reality or they may deflect blame back to the victim. They may drag the victim into nonsensical arguments called word salad leaving their victim in a state of confusion and feeling like they are going crazy.  Most victims of narcissistic abuse feel mentally unfit , start self doubting themselves and also feel they are being over sensitive or over reacting when in reality they have every right to feel that way for being treated badly by the n...

 What is Narcissistic Abuse all about?  DSM-5 categorizes narcissistic personality disorder as a cluster B disorder. It seems to be the buzz word around where sometimes any toxic behaviour/mental disorder like borderline personality disorder or bipolar disorder also gets diagnosed unofficially as narcissistic abuse.  The differentiating factor between a narcissistic person and other disorders is that someone who is a narcissist is inherently evil and would never acknowledge their own faults . They would immediately point a finger at anyone around to project blame and can even pretend to be a victim if required to protect their own self image. Overt narcs are easy to spot by their aggressive verbal and physical abuse.  Covert narcs are the hardest to identify as they come across as good people with honest intention to love you and take care of you but may turn out to be your worst nightmare.  They use guilt tripping to manipulate their victims. They pretend...

  As a narcissistic abuse recovery life coach, I have been helping my clients to get out of the victim mindset and transform their life through self healing techniques. During the process of coaching a recurring theme that has come up especially in the context of Indian Culture is the enmeshment that Parents have sometimes with their Adult children which in turn negatively impacts the Adult child's marriage.  It is normal for a child to grow up and shift priorities to their partner especially once they are married. But what happens in enmeshed parent-child relationships is that the adult child struggles with a lot of guilt to shift their priority to their partner and this causes a lot of strain in their marriage.  Having gathered inputs from my clients and having done my research in this area, I can safely say that if you dig deeper into divorces and couples falling apart, there will be an enmeshed parent who has a big role to play. Not all divorces happen because of enme...

Very often we are focused on how others are toxic for us and how they may have caused harm to us knowingly or unknowingly. But how often do we stop to process if our behaviour is hurtful for those around us? What are our toxic behaviours which may affect our close relationships? How can we cope with such toxic traits? Read on to know more. Monopolizing the conversation: If someone shares something that is hurtful or disturbing or challenging in their lives, do you immediately take the opportunity to redirect the conversation to yourself ? For example, a close friend of yours recently had covid and they come to you to share their challenges. Instead of hearing them out, you may jump in and start telling them that even you had covid recently and it was no big deal or you may start talking about how difficult it was for you as well. Your friend may end up feeling unheard and may next time choose not to share their challenges with you. This is a toxic trait that you could be having in your...

  Did you know that our minds are hardwired to look for the negatives more than the positive things in life ? If I share a positive and a negative story right now with you, it is more likely that your brain will recall the negative story later more easily than the positive one!  This is an evolutionary protection to ensure that we remember dangerous incidents so that we don't repeat them! As cavemen it was pretty useful but do we still need this type of protection now a days ? Not really.  This is a part of the unconditioning and unlearning that I do with my clients in our coaching sessions. We take a close look at your belief systems that are holding you hostage to the past. Yes we need to hold onto the lessons when things go wrong or when someone toxic manipulates us or hurts us , but we do not need to stay stuck in the victim mindset forever. We can learn those lessons and keep evolving into better and truer versions of ourselves.  Every step in life offers you ch...

  Disclaimer : This post is not to shame parents/in laws -Parents are our role models and our first love and for those of us with good set of emotionally mature parents- We are blessed ! Yes even the best of parents would also have made their share of parenting mistakes which is absolutely fine. We are all human and mistakes are bound to happen.  But there are also generations of toxic parents out there who need to be called out for their bad behaviour , else the generational trauma and dysfunction may never really stop. My post is made for this purpose so that there is more awareness about this trend of toxic parents who destroy their kids' lives and relationships using guilt tripping and emotional manipulation.  With more awareness , this toxic cycle can be broken and more marriages can be saved before it is too late !  Sadly some of the divorces happen because one of the spouses have an enmeshed relationship with a parent who is toxic or has made the child a carbo...

 No one is perfect or toxic free including our own selves ! Yes you read that right! Have you ever paused to think what are your own toxic traits which you are either aware of or maybe someone has told you about it. How have you reacted when someone says that your behavior is toxic for them?  Do you respond with defensiveness or acceptance? Do you feel attacked or do you look at it as an opportunity to grow and make amends in your life? The reason why we are all here is to learn our lessons and finish our Karmic accounts with others around us. So when you come to know that your words or actions are repeatedly hurting another person, what do you do about it? My suggestion is to take a deep look at yourself without shame or judgement and see if what the other person is saying about you is true. Do this without defending yourself and  your actions. Tap into your own inner voice (intuition) to get the answers for this. If you are always only listening to your conscious mind a...