The stuff of Mills and Boon and other romantic novels! But here’s the thing, they do exist for those who have done sufficient work on themselves for this trip to Earth School.

So many people long to find the soulmate, thinking their life will finally be complete with this person. A soulmate is someone, almost certainly a lover, with whom you have shared many lives.

“Relationships are the juice of life. If you do not experience them as an elixir, then they probably have become a poison.” - Chuck Spezzano

Narcissists create a false self to protect their fragile persona. They have a collection of habits that serve them well growing up and choose to take those habits into adulthood with them.

You may have become unknowingly addicted to your narcissistic partner. If you keep asking yourself the question “Shall I go, or shall I stay?” when you know the relationship is damaging you, then it’s likely that you are addicted to the narcissist through a trauma bond.

The son of a powerful river god and fountain nymph, Narcissus was the most beautiful being in all the world. His beauty was so strong that it seemed to hypnotize those around him, and he grew up showered with constant praise and admiration.

It was nothing for him to reject the affection of his admirers with cruel words, or worse. The way he saw it, no one was good enough to match his stunning beauty. Yet his cruelty didn’t sway others from their love for him.

The word hoovering comes from the Hoover vacuum cleaner, an appliance that sucks up. It is a common tactic used by narcissists when they have lost their supply and want them back. Unfortunately, they want their supply back for all the wrong reasons, not because they truly love them and can’t live without them. What they can’t live without is a constant supply of energy and attention from their victim. There may well be other things the victim supplies that enhance the status of the narcissist like money, or meets their needs like lots of sex.

If you doubt your worth at all, a narcissist will hone in on this and take every opportunity to shatter your self-confidence and self-esteem. This is especially true if you’ve had an adverse childhood where emotional and psychological abuse became your norm. A relationship with a narcissist can become your comfort zone even if it is destroying you, as you try to resolve your childhood abuse with a different perpetrator.

I want to share a story I wrote for a women’s empowerment book a few years ago. It is my own story.

As many of you know, I have been working with energy for many years. Here’s the thing, everything is energy. We, as human beings, have an energy field around us. To quote Albert Einstein,

“ Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy, this is physics.”

You did it, you got out. It may have taken a long time, perhaps even a lifetime, because it’s not always easy or practical to ‘just leave’.

The control is subtle at first. Think of a frog in a pot of water that starts off cold and gradually comes to the boil. It takes a while to realise that the heat is ramping up in the kitchen. Every aspect of your life may be controlled. Perhaps you recognise some of these:

What you wear - If the N thinks it makes you look attractive to someone else, they will want you to change it or accuse you of getting dressed up to meet another man or woman. All this because you wanted to look smart or professional.

Maybe they're building houses for the poor, rescuing animals or children, designing a sustainable eco retreat or organising gather events for charity, all of which is posted all over social media.

The posts will be full of hashtags like #peoplesavingpeople to make them look good when really their hash tag should say #Iwantattentionforpretendingtobekind …

There’s a very true saying…”no one knows what goes on behind closed doors”. This is very true of abusive relationships. Just as you can never judge a book by its cover, you can never judge the health of someone’s relationship by how they present it to the world.

However, friends and family may notice that you’re not acting like yourself.

Has anyone ever blamed you for getting into a relationship with a narcissistic, toxic, controlling or difficult person? It’s quite common, I hear it often. Here’s the thing, it’s not your fault. You are not standing there with a huge placard saying ‘narcissist wanted’. If you asked these same critical people for a heads up on what to look for to avoid an abusive relationship, they wouldn’t really know. Especially when dealing with con artists such as narcissists and other toxics.

Let’s look at the Idealise phase first aka the Honeymoon Period. I remember briefly dating a narcissistic man once and after he’d nearly let our puppy get run over and my daughter and myself expressed our extreme displeasure, he actually said “well the honeymoon is over”. Needless to say the relationship was over for me. The Narcissist’s Idealising Agenda …

When we go into a job we have rights and responsibilities and a procedure to follow if we have a grievance with our workplace. Of course, not all places we work are a good fit for us but we can resign and move on to a workplace culture that fits us better.

In personal relationships people have their own agendas and expectations …

I’ve always been interested in what makes people tick or as my teacher Tony Robbins would say “what makes people do the things they do”. Many people have had terrible childhoods but not everyone lashes out wanting to hurt others because of this. Many abused children grow up to be caring adults who devote their lives to helping others. So, what makes a narcissist create havoc in other people’s lives.

When I was young and in a narcissistic relationship, I didn't recognise that I was being abused, because emotional abuse was part of my childhood. To me it was only normal.

Luckily a good counsellor picked up on this and made me aware that this was not okay. Before this I thought the word, abuse meant physical violence and I know a lot of people still think that!

So today we are going to talk about emotional abuse and some of the following descriptions of emotional abuse.

They may be familiar to you, and perhaps there will be some “ah-ha” moments as you recognise these behaviours in people you know.

I really want to emphasize that none of them are okay and all of them have adverse effects on your well-being. So, let us talk about emotional abuse.

In 1958 I was adopted by a respectable couple aged 50 the adoption was privately arranged through a Catholic priest who knew my adoptive family.
My birth mother was a married woman whose husband had deserted her and left her destitute with two young children. My biological father is unknown. My young years were fairly restricted but not too bad as I knew nothing else. However, as I approached the teenage years things began to change. I wanted to hang out with friends and do normal teenage things. This was a complete no-no.

A person in an abusive relationship may be suffering from any or all of the following types of abuse:

• Emotional

• Psychological

• Physical

• Financial

• Verbal

• Sexual abuse

Some/all of the above