High Conflict Divorce Expert

Many survivors assume abuse will end when the relationship ends, only to discover that separation merely creates new avenues for control. For personality-disordered or coercively controlling individuals, the underlying entitlement to control others remains intact. What is encouraging, however, is that when these dynamics are understood, targets of abuse stop personalizing the behavior and begin anticipating patterns more effectively, enabling them to employ strategies that reduce vulnerability to ongoing manipulation and post-separation abuse.

Projection is one of the most confusing and hurtful elements of a relationship with a personality-disordered individual. The disordered person unconsciously disowns their own unwanted traits, attributes those traits to you, and then devalues or attacks you for supposedly possessing them. You may feel devastated that anyone could believe such negative things about you and wrack your brain trying to understand where the accusations came from, not realizing they were never truly about you.

There is plainly no "syndrome" that afflicts children based on a parent's bad actions in this regard. Stop pathologizing and punishing children for adults' dysfunction. Let them be. They'll turn 18 and figure it out. The damage that quack "reunification counselors" do to these kids with discredited modalities often does far more damage to them in the long run.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DYCHq5DDP5F/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

This really is a huge milestone and the result of years of activism, advocacy and efforts by so many people and organizations who have been shedding a light on the tactics used by abusers to perpetuate violence within the legal system. We still face a long and challenging road ahead to effectively protect children and women from violence and abuse, specifically within family courts, but we have to do the work it takes to move forward. There is hope and work to do, and yes it’s exhausting and hard and too many times overwhelming, but it matters too much to stay silent. Please continue to share and advocate. The combined efforts of ordinary people matter more than what we tend to believe. Please tag your national politicians in the comments.

Narcissistic parents often experience their children less as separate human beings with independent emotional needs and more as extensions of themselves. The parent’s attention is chronically redirected back to their own needs, feelings, image, grievances, or control, causing the child’s inner world to be drowned out by the parent’s self-focus and emotional reactivity. The parent may hear the child’s words, but they do not register or respond to the child’s emotional reality.

Some children who grow up in dysfunctional family systems adopt the narrative of the narcissistic parent, and hold on tight to the system and roles their unwell parent assigned to everyone, because they have little coherent identity outside that narrative and system. Sadly, these siblings can spend their entire lives inside the mental universe of the parent who abused the family, even after that parent is dead. These siblings may never individuate or become their own person and often perpetuate the cycle of abuse they observed, either against their more healed adult siblings, their own children, their spouses or others.

Keep these people at arm's length, or go no contact, and be grateful you aren't them. They aren't well.

Too many people expend energy trying to foster insight or accountability in someone whose identity is organized around rejecting both. With high-conflict individuals, the goal is not to persuade them to suddenly think clearly or compassionately. The goal is to strategically protect yourself, your children, and your pocketbook.

In high-conflict situations, disordered and impulsive people provoke and create noise. Strategic people create records, consistency, and credibility. The long game is rarely loud.

Accurate.

In narcissistic families, the child who can’t be controlled becomes the child whose reputation must be destroyed. The one who dares to challenge the authority, the one who refuses to bend to manipulation, becomes the target. Instead of nurturing their independence or understanding their perspective, narcissistic parents or family members see this child as a threat to their control. Their only course of action is to tarnish the child's reputation, undermine their achievements, and create a narrative where this child is painted as the villain.

This destruction is subtle at first—small comments, passive-aggressive remarks, and innocent-seeming gestures that chip away at the child's self-esteem. But it escalates. The narcissist will twist facts, fabricate stories, and involve others in the smear campaign. They will lie, gossip, and manipulate the family dynamic to isolate this child, turning relatives, friends, and even strangers against them.

What the narcissist fails to understand is that the more they try to destroy the reputation of the child, the more they reveal their own toxic patterns. The true character of the narcissist becomes exposed to anyone paying attention, but by then, the child may already have been broken, left doubting themselves, their worth, and their sense of reality.

Many of my clients wonder if the person they are with, or leaving, is "a narcissist." I study psychology formally, and believe it or not, there is only one - optional - undergraduate course at most universities that covers narcissism. I have also consumed dozens of books, articles, and podcasts about narcissism and other Cluster B personality disorders. The BEST source of information outside of a textbook that I have found to understand narcissism from a clinical standpoint is Diana Diamond, Ph.D., psychoanalytic clinician, professor, and researcher in the Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology at the City University of New York. Fortunately, YouTube fed me one of her videos one day and I began to voraciously consume every one I could find. If you want to understand people with NPD and BPD at a clinical level, watch her interviews. There are many.
Here are a couple to start.

https://youtu.be/RrzDG4aBqo0?si=nHEbaak_nVJXzGin

https://youtu.be/3PoZtEX8PKE?si=i_VhYOMUpg3W-HOn

https://youtu.be/oy-2eDCZaQY?si=pcHGQ0CC6Lt3nHVc