Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Therapy
You knew something was wrong. You just didn't always have permission to say so.
The short version
Living with narcissistic traits in a parent, partner, or family can leave you questioning your own reality. Many people spend years minimizing what happened, overexplaining themselves, walking on eggshells, or feeling responsible for other people’s emotions while slowly losing connection to their own.
You do not need the other person to have a formal diagnosis for the impact on you to be real. Therapy helps you understand the pattern, rebuild trust in yourself, and recover from survival mode. Many people come in repeating the stories that they’re too sensitive, difficult, selfish, or somehow the problem. We'll untangle what belongs to you and what was conditioned into you inside the relationship.
I work with adults recovering from narcissistic abuse, emotional manipulation, gaslighting, chronic invalidation, controlling families, emotionally abusive relationships, and the long-term effects of people pleasing, hypervigilance, and self-doubt.
Common Patterns
Self-Doubt & Gaslighting
Constant second-guessing, apologizing, confusion, guilt, or difficulty trusting your own perceptions and emotional reactions.
Manipulation Tactics
Gaslighting, love bombing, blame shifting, DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender), and the nicer version of someone whose harm is mostly done in private.
Hypervigilance
Walking on eggshells, monitoring mood, anticipating reactions, emotional burnout, or feeling responsible for keeping the peace.
Covert & Overt Narcissism
Overt narcissism is loud, grandiose, and easy to spot. Covert narcissism is quieter, playing the victim, fishing for reassurance, or using guilt instead of control.
Relationship Patterns
People pleasing, weak boundaries, fear of conflict, losing yourself in relationships, or repeating familiar dynamics in adulthood.
Unhealthy Boundaries
Enmeshment, becoming a source of narcissistic supply, and triangulation, being pulled into someone else's conflict or used to relay messages between people.
How I Work with Narcissistic Abuse
Many people recovering from narcissistic abuse were taught to distrust themselves long before they realized what was happening. Therapy often begins with making sense of the dynamic itself, recognizing patterns like gaslighting, emotional manipulation, chronic criticism, conditional affection, idealization and devaluation, hoovering (when someone pulls you back in with sudden apologies or crises after you've pulled away), and flying monkeys (people recruited, often without realizing it, to relay messages or pressure you on someone else's behalf).
We'll seek to understand how survival strategies formed like people pleasing, hypervigilance, emotional caretaking, shutting down your anger, overexplaining yourself, or constantly scanning for other people’s reactions. These are often adaptations to environments where emotional safety felt unpredictable. Many people learned to stay connected by shrinking themselves.
Therapy also creates space to grieve what happened to them and the relationship, parent, or sense of safety they needed and did not receive. Over time, it becomes less about surviving the narcissistic dynamic and more about rebuilding a stronger relationship with yourself.
My approach integrates psychodynamic therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), emotion-focused therapy (EFT), accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP), attachment-based work, and insight-oriented therapy depending on what the relationship has left behind emotionally and relationally.
What Therapy Can Help With
Narcissism in the Family Structure
Understanding narcissistic traits, narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and other Cluster B patterns, emotional abuse, family roles, manipulation, chronic invalidation, and ego.
Gaslighting, Self-Doubt & Emotional Confusion
Rebuilding trust in your own perceptions after years of second-guessing, minimizing your experience, or being told your feelings were wrong, dramatic, or too sensitive.
People Pleasing & Boundaries
Understanding survival strategies like fawning, overexplaining, conflict avoidance, caretaking, and difficulty identifying or protecting your own needs.
Grief, Anger & Identity Recovery
Grieving the relationship you didn't have and reconnecting with parts of yourself that had to be quiet to survive, including anger, anxiety, guilt, depression, or self-blame.
Dating, Relationships & Repeating Patterns
Recognizing familiar dynamics in adult relationships, understanding attachment patterns, and learning how to build relationships that feel safer, more reciprocal, and less emotionally consuming.
Low Contact, No Contact & Family Decisions
Making difficult decisions about no-contact, low-contact, or gray rock boundaries, loyalty, guilt, family expectations, trauma bonding, and what level of relationship feels sustainable for you.