Today, we’re going to talk about the six stages of healing from hidden abuse. Otherwise known as psychological abuse. The steps I’m going to list come from a wonderful book titled ” healing from hidden abuse” by Shannon Thomas. I find that her steps very accurately describe how I healed, and I often recommend her book to my coaching clients.
At the core of narcissistic abuse is psychological abuse. What is psychological abuse exactly, you might ask? Psychological abuse is gaslighting, the silent treatment, love bombing, word salad, victim-blaming, or blame-shifting, triangulation, projection, the smear campaign, and so many other things that all narcissists do. Those are all examples of psychological abuse, tactics, and manipulations.
In its simplest definition, psychological abuse is essentially anything a person does to distort your understanding of reality or your perceptions. It’s what you would call mind games. And in the book, the author tells us, psychological abuse of predators is people with narcissistic personality disorder and or anti-social personality disorder. So we are referring to narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths, or some combination of all three.
Before we jump into the stages of healing from hidden abuse, I would like to read you a quote from the author’s book because this is a critical component for victims to understand before healing can take place, in my humble opinion. The author states:
“Psychological abusers damage others not out of impaired judgment but because they enjoy the control they gain from abusing people ”. Psychological abusers play games with their targets and know precisely what they are doing. Some will even admit they enjoy being the puppet master and keeping people off balance for their entertainment. Others don’t outwardly disclose it, but their enjoyment comes bleeding through with a casual smirk or hateful chuckle.”
This is telling you that if you have been a victim of psychological abuse, your abuser is very much aware of exactly what they’re doing.
Psychological abuse is intentional. So hopefully we can end the confusion for those of you who are struggling to know if the narcissist in your life knows what they are doing because they know. They know because it’s intentional.
So now let’s get into these specific six stages to recovery from psychological abuse as Shannon Thomas explains in her book, “ healing from hidden abuse”.
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