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What makes your heart sing?

What holds most people back is that they do not have a clear, irresistible picture of what they want for themselves. Everybody, pretty much, knows they should have goals and dreams and they do their level best to come up with some. But maybe nobody ever told them that they have the right to explore and choose what makes their heart sing.

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No regrets – “Je ne regrette rien”

If you focus on our capacity for unhappiness and pain, then that is what you will experience most in your life. If you focus on your strength, your courage, your capacity for love, your humanity and your potential, then that is what you will register. These things may be driven underground in an abusive relationship, but they are never lost. They remain as seeds beneath the snow.

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Start With The End In Mind

The truth is that for many of us compromising on the partner we truly want and need has been all but soul-destroying.

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On Shame

We all make the best decisions we can at the time, for the best reasons we have at the time. Whatever decision we make requires tremendous courage. There are no easy options in an abusive relationship. The question is: how can you best protect yourself from further psychological damage?

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Bring Back The Cilice Belt

Yvette is desperate to manage a dysfunctional situation and remain in control of her life. Her dilemma is this: if her partner’s behaviours are unacceptable then she is vindicated… but powerless. Because they are not going to change. If her attitude is to blame, then she is, clearly, losing her grip on the situation but, theoretically at least, she has the power to improve things.

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The Power of Hope

Women in an abusive relationship don’t lose all hope, they just invest it in the wrong place. Actually, hope is one of the great motivators. It’s only misplaced hope that is futile.

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Comfort eating – is it really that comforting?

The suffering of abuse is a terrible thing. The ultimate abuse is being led to believe that all the pain and the scars have to incapacitate you for the longest time. Healing is available and it can take place surprisingly fast, however dreadful the abuse has been, as long as you have access to the appropriate techniques. Extending your love and support to your own inner child is one of them.

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Kick The Cat Syndrome

One reader describes this syndrome more tellingly than I could. Like many of us, after an abusive childhood she fell into other abusive relationships. She writes:
“I’ve had so much anger bottled up in me, and recently it was me who lashed out in anger at someone else .. mostly because he wasn’t being honest with me .. but even so, I don’t want to end up being an ‘abuser’ !”

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On Disappointment

I’d long since stopped caring too much about my own disappointment, yet I’ve been almost pathologically concerned with not disappointing other people. That was what I had learned to do. That is what you do learn to do when you are in an abusive relationship and you get disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. Since you can’t stop the disappointments happening, you learn not to feel the pain. You make yourself go numb to it. That was what I had done.

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The 5 Simple Steps to Healing from Narcissistic Abuse

Over the next 5 days, I'll send you some lessons and tips that I've found have really helped women to heal from narcissistic abuse.  Starting with the basics.

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