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Read 2 days ago and current, but nothing has been published for 10 years.
Being romantically involved with a narcissist can often feel like being on a thrilling ride at an amusement park—full of ups and downs, and incredibly exciting. It’s not just that a narcissist can be incredibly seductive, as Dr. Joseph Burgo notes—making grand gestures, buying you things, telling you that you deserve everything you want because [...]
“Why is this so damn hard?” one woman messaged me after she read my original post. She’s 45, a mother herself, and in what she calls a strong marriage. She continues: “I’m smart, disciplined, and intellectually I know how my toxic mother has affected me. But it sometimes feels like the patterns get the better of me, no matter what. […]
Photo by Brooke Cagle. Copyright free. Unsplash.com It’s a testament to both the centrality and complexity of the mother-daughter relationship that, for many unloved daughters, the recognition of their wounding and its source comes late in life. Some women are in their 30s, 40s, 50s, and even 60s—and, often, mothers or even grandmothers themselves—before they finally begin to understand how […]
Photo by Yaoqui Lai. Copyright free. Unsplash.com In the years since I researched and wrote Mean Mothers, I’ve talked to women about our shared experiences. Every woman’s story is different; perhaps the greatest commonality is the discovery that each of us is not alone, that we are not the only girls or women to have had mothers who can’t or […]
Photo by Monika Koclajda. Used with permission. All rights reserved. It’s true enough that all daughters of unloving and unattuned mothers have common experiences. The lack of maternal warmth and validation warps their sense of self, makes them lack confidence in or be wary of close emotional connection, and shapes them in ways that are both seen and unseen. Keep […]
Your job review is scheduled in two days and, in passing, your boss says, “Well, we’ll certainly have a lot to talk about.” You try to put what he said out of your mind—what did he mean by that?—but it keeps coming back, and now you’re a nervous wreck. You’re sitting in the airport, ready [...]
Trust is the foundation of all human connections, from chance encounters to friendships and intimate relationships. It governs all the interactions we have with each other. No one would drive a car or walk down a sidewalk, or board a train or an airplane, if we didn’t “trust” that other people took their responsibilities seriously, [...]
Elena Sikorskaya/Shutterstock Most of us will, at one point or another, find ourselves reflecting on or recovering from a romantic run-in with a narcissist. Whether it was a short or long-term connection, it’s likely that during the post-mortem on the relationship, you'll ask yourself how you managed to get sucked in by his or her [...]
We all pride ourselves on making considered, well-thought-out decisions, and avoiding snap judgments based on little or no information. But despite our insistent belief in our “reasoning,” the fact is that a lot of the time, we’re doing nothing of the kind. Human beings are actually hardwired to make snap judgments, or to engage in [...]
The self-help genre often offers up solutions to our issues without forcing us to reflect on what we’re actually doing and saying in our lives to cause those problems in the first place. So, in a contrarian mode, I’ve decided to detail what research knows to be some of the most toxic habits we bring [...]
