World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day: 10 Truths We Need to Talk About

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]So June 1st, apparently June 1st is World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day.

[00:00:06]I think there's a lot of a lot of days or something. Well, this one matters here. So I'm going to say a little something about that.

[00:00:13]It's a day of awareness, right, of a very specific phenomenon. And so the question to me is, are we any more about aware about narcissistic abuse than we were 10 years ago? I'd say, yeah, this is one of those cases where actually social media has helped with that.

[00:00:27]There's been more research. There's more been more theoretical work and there's definitely definitely more of all kinds of awareness than there was 20 25 and 30 years ago. We weren't talking about it at all. But is this awareness helping?

[00:00:41]Well, here are nine maybe 10 random thoughts I have on narcissistic abuse to share with you. I wrote them all down.

[00:00:50]It's a sort of rambling stream of consciousness, so bear with me. But it's about awareness. So, let's talk about this. So the number one thing I think we need to reflect on is we've really it's time that we really do start desentering the narcissistic people in this conversation. I know that seems odd, but the more unhealthy and the more rigid a personality is, the more predictable the behavior of a person with that personality. You can almost set a clock on what will upset them, what will lead to a tantrum. You practically have imaginary post-its in your life popping up above their head when you interact with them. Like, there's a gas light.

[00:01:29]Oh, there you go. There's a future fake.

[00:01:32]Yep. Bang. There's that projection. Oh, look. Pop up. There's some blame shifting.

[00:01:38]Listen, on this channel, we have thousands of videos, okay? And I and other people have books on narcissism and what happens in narcissistic relationship.

[00:01:49]There is a sort of simplicity, if you will, to narcissism. They're simple people. That said, what is much more complex is everyone else whose personalities make them a lot less easy to predict, right? The real focus to me really needs to be what happens to people in these relationships. The self-abandonment, the trauma bonding, the confusion, the self-lame, the shame.

[00:02:13]All of this doesn't happen in a vacuum.

[00:02:15]This happens because this is a slow process of attempting to attach to someone unsafe. It's a slow process of indoctrination because our histories normalize this stuff to us and we endure it without questioning because we don't know anything else. Because other people close to us, pe other people in the world at large enable the narcissistic folks. Because the world rewards this and leads people who are in narcissistic relationships to doubt themselves so everyone else can maintain their comfortable status quo. But not just today on June 1st, but every day as we talk more and more about this, let's center the people who are going through the relationships so you can feel more supported. I mean, listen, I understand, I'm guilty of this, too. We're all so fascinated about the narcissism part. It's important to know, but it's more important to talk about the healing. Second point I want to make is that this narcissism stuff isn't going anywhere. Now it's always been a thing in human beings. It's all look at a history book. It's always been a thing. But I have to say now more than ever our economic and other socopolitical systems, capitalism, geopolitics, social media, income inequality, and the influence of tech all mean that narcissism is really having its day in the sun right now.

[00:03:44]These traits are being selected for by the prevailing systems of power. And people with these personalities get more attention. They make more money. They don't care that other people are suffering. So they're never really stressed out, but they do stress out other people. And because they climb up to leadership more often than people with other kinds of personalities, they rig the systems so only they benefit. So that means we must understand the impact of narcissism on on relationships because in this really strange twisted paradoxical way the people we are being told are the most desirable and powerful are likely the least safe.

[00:04:33]Number three thing to remain aware of on this day is narcissistic relationships are bad for your health. Research has come out in the past year. I shared it on this channel that has shown that some of the features we observe in narcissistic relationships, for example, people who cause problems in our life or are difficult in our lives are associated with more rapid biological aging for people who are stuck in these relationships and decreased immune function. Research on autoimmunity suggests associations between being placed in developmentally inappropriate caregiving roles and autoimmune disorders. And a straw poll of people in our healing program, you can get more details on that in the video notes too, showed that 77% of participants in that group had autoimmune diagnosis or noticeable autoimmune symptoms. As more data come in, we are going to keep finding out that emotionally unsafe, abusive, manipulative relationships result in significant physical health impacts.

[00:05:47]Number four thing to be aware of on this awareness day is that the pendulum is shifting out there in that internet slop swamp on content focused on extolling traditional gender roles which often means an asymmetry in power which often means that the dynamics we see in narcissistic relationships are now being held up as a model of what a relationship is supposed to look like.

[00:06:15]Now whether this is translating into the reality of people's lives, who knows? I don't because I don't watch that nonsense. But it legitimizes power asymmetries in relationships, which is the structure of a narcissistic relationship. And these kinds of sort of channels and podcasts have huge audiences, meaning that a lot of folks are buying into this revisionism.

[00:06:42]Number five, we have normalized these patterns and we're afraid to call them out. Journalists and politicians and just about everyone with a public platform is afraid of calling a duck a duck and a narcissist a narcissist. They do the little walkound. Entitled, difficult, demanding, bellose, agitated, uncou, inappropriate. I collect these adjectives. It's a hobby. But they these journalists, politicians, people in power, people with platforms, they don't land the plane and call this what this is. And I get it. People are afraid of being sued by angry narcissists for slander and defamation. The fear is real because narcissistic people are much more likely to be latigious and file frivolous or frankly any lawsuits. This means though that this behavior is increasingly being tolerated everywhere because people are afraid of people with these personalities being tolerated in government, workplace, corporations, communities, schools, and the world at large. Number six, we aren't talking about this enough with young people. Why not teach about antagonism as early as middle schools? Why don't we teach kids the codified definition of an and that the behaviors of antagonistic and narcissistic people are not okay?

[00:08:10]And when you're around people like that and you're made to feel terrible, it's not your fault. Sadly, by the time a lot of kids get to middle school, they've already encountered a narcissistic parent. But at least we can teach young people what is okay and what isn't. what self-abandonment looks like. Well, but the problem there is then the adults would have to be accountable and wouldn't that be uncomfortable for some of them? But if we could start teaching this younger, we might even start addressing relationship violence, which for most people happens to them when they're adolescence for the first time.

[00:08:47]Number seven, we need to keep talking about how to assess dangerousness.

[00:08:53]How do we know when a situation will escalate to violence where someone could get significantly hurt or killed? We have our usual assessments of risk, right? Things like access to guns, use of drugs and alcohol, a past history of violence in the relationship or family, a history of violent behavior in the person that we're concerned about, lack of economic resources, significant stress, isolation. We know that these things in in their fashion can predict, but you need them to all kind of add up a bit, right? It's not just one of them.

[00:09:27]It's usually many of them. We know this and that's all very important to know.

[00:09:31]All of these factors get at something potentially called imminent risk. But we aren't talking about another form of risk that I think is also important, which I call insidious risk or gradual underlying risk. Brad Bushman at Ohio State has along with students of his such as Sophie Kervik and other colleagues not only at Ohio State but at other universities has clearly pointed out the association between narcissism and aggression. And while most narcissistic people are not physically aggressive, most physically aggressive people are likely narcissistic.

[00:10:09]This personality style is a marker for unsafety whether that's emotional loss of safety or physical loss of safety.

[00:10:18]And this also means we have to put emotional violence on the same footing as physical violence. It does the same kind of harm to a person in terms of their their nervous system functioning and it is often a ramp up a prelude to the escalation to physical violence that can come. Insidious risk may not mean danger is coming tomorrow.

[00:10:45]But it is taking a toll on the people in the relationship. It may be a foreshadowing of more significant harm in the future. It may be a foreshadowing of recidivism and doing it again. It may lead people in relationships like this less likely to seek out help. And in general, people in these kinds of narcissistic relationships are gaslighted by institution, including law enforcement, the justice system, and the health care system. Number eight issue to remain aware of on World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day is systems don't understand how narcissism works. Family court doesn't get it. Criminal court doesn't get it. Departments of corrections don't get it. HR departments don't get it. Health care doesn't get it. Education systems don't get it. Kind of most systems don't get it. And that means we lose the opportunity to look for patterns. The association between personality and behavior, the consistency between these associations.

[00:11:50]And the big part though that these systems don't get is the person who can look calm, cool, collected, and even successful to the world is often really good at hiding their harmful behavior in plain sight. charming, charismaing, or even bullying their way through systems, gaslighting, blaming other people, acting like a victim, and turning in Oscar worthy performances as being a great successful person. Or they can also sell the narrative of I'm so sadly misunderstood.

[00:12:33]Number nine thing to remain aware of is that people going through these relationships need therapists who get it. Graduate schools don't train people about this. They don't train on narcissism and they sure as hell don't talk about narcissistic abuse. Graduate schools have to train students, people who are learning to become therapists.

[00:12:50]They have to train them about narcissism, about antagonism, how these patterns show up in relationships.

[00:12:56]It's hard enough to be in one of these relationships, then finally have the courage and the gumption to seek help, but then feel invalidated or that your therapist doesn't quite understand what's happening. And then number 10, let's not overfocus all our time on red flags and warning signs because they do tend to be subtle in most relationships and they're often buried against nice stuff or under nice stuff like attention, love bombing, charm, charisma, success, confidence, or just the re the capacity narcissistic people have at really selling themselves. The red flag conversation puts the onus on all of us to be the assessment police.

[00:13:39]And then we turn around and we ask people like, "How did you miss the red flags?"

[00:13:45]It's a bit of a needle in a haystack situation.

[00:13:49]And over time, the haystack kind of like gets thinner and thinner. The haystack sort of falls apart. Well, then the needle becomes more clear. But a lot of time has passed and dynamics like trauma bonding and cognitive dissonance and confusion have all have all kicked in.

[00:14:08]So here we have to June 1st narcissistic abuse awareness day or world narcissistic abuse awareness day. We don't have to we we can't just be aware of this on June 1st. We need to be aware of this and remain aware of this every day of the year. Listen, I'm not naive or stupid enough to believe that awareness is going to prevent these relationships. This is not going to happen. Love bombing is enticing.

[00:14:32]Charming people are exciting. Trauma bonding is real. And narcissistic people keep having kids. But there are bright spots on the horizon. Words like lovebombing, gaslighting, breadcrumbming, future faking, even trauma bonding. Though I still think people are getting the word trauma bonding wrong or term trauma bonding wrong. These terms are coming into everyday language.

[00:14:58]The world is definitely more traumainformed in some areas than it once was. Though sadly it's often not traumainformed in a lot of the spaces where it really matters. There's interesting films out there that are taking the issue more explicitly of what happens in these relationships.

[00:15:16]documentaries, fictionalized films, romcoms, dramas, horror, mysteries, they're all taking this on. Young people in their 20s are talking about it more and more. And there is more social media buzz that is actually accurate and that's really heartening to see. This is what's getting it into younger generations and hopefully prepare them to make different kinds of choices.

[00:15:40]Listen, Maya Angelou got it the most clear when she said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them." World narcissistic abuse awareness day isn't about labeling people. It's about remaining aware of relationship behaviors that are unacceptable, unsafe, and unyielding and registering them as such and allowing that to help us become more discerning. It's about knowing that these patterns won't change and that this is simply who this person is. This isn't about contemptuous dismissal, but rather it is about awareness and discernment and knowing that you have the agency to use that awareness to inform your choices while recognizing that it's really, really hard. Happy June 1st. I don't know if this is a holiday anyone really wants to celebrate, but at least summer's coming. Thanks again.