Now I am using it to help others — I have always considered myself “artistic”, but I was never good at drawing or painting. Music and writing were my passion. In school, I loved writing essays, especially creative ones. In my spare time, I would write poems, I even started a few books. That was up until 15 years…

No, Tony Stark is not a narcissist. — He is a hero and sometimes also a little bit villain. He is handsome, charismatic, highly intelligent, and successful. He is Tony Stark. He is Iron Man. If you are female and enjoy Marvel, why wouldn’t you fantasize about dating him? Or someone like him. Of course, he is a…

Why leaving an abusive relationship is so incredibly hard to do. — “Why don’t you leave?”, “How can you love someone who treats you this way?”, “You need to stick up for yourself”, “I wouldn’t allow anyone to treat me this way”. Anyone who has experienced any form of domestic abuse will probably have heard these sentences in one form or another…

Sometimes abuse victims need to dwell on the tiny scraps of justice — “Please ignore the pillows, they are hers,” this was the caption on one of the early selfies he sent me. Of course, I couldn’t stop staring at the pillows. They were white with pink faded roses. They were pretty, just not what I would have expected to see in the…

And I nearly cried over his reaction — I had been given the rare opportunity to interview my future boss, together with the 2 other direct reports he would have. Since it was a new process we had to come up with ideas on what we wanted to do. We decided to pose a fictional problem and see…

My revenge is raising awareness — Today a friend contacted me to tell me that my abusive ex has deleted his LinkedIn account. It was the last of the social media accounts he had kept after information about his behaviour got leaked earlier this year (not from me). Now he is completely off the radar. Or…

You’d be surprised how many straight women are watching male gay porn — 10 years ago a distant acquaintance liked a page on Facebook. It came up in my feed, and out of curiosity, I followed the link. The post itself was removed shortly after, as I am sure the individual didn’t mean to share it. The website was a photography portfolio of…

And why this can be a vital clue for spotting a narcissist — It must have been the third or fourth time that I had spent all day in a hotel room with Andy*. We had taken the day off work and didn’t leave our room from the moment we checked in until we had to leave in the evening. It was exciting…