Psychopathic & Narcissistic abuse can leave deep and long lasting effects on it’s victims, especially when you are involved in long term relationships with these toxic personality types. The aftermath of toxic relationships with Cluster B personality disordered people are best worked through with a qualified therapist or counsellor.

See the video below for a superb summary by Richard Grannon of exactly the kind of help that will be most effective when recovering from a relationship with a psychopath/narcissist/borderline personality.

 

Here are his 5 essential things to look for in a therapist, coach or counsellor:

1. 1. 1. Knowledge of Cluster B personality disorders (especially narcissism/NP), narcissistic abuse and/or Complex Trauma (C-PTSD), preferably both. This is the crucial factor any therapist you work with must have!!
      2. Healing Focused – willing to talk about the past but also focused on moving forward and moving on from the abuse – build new networks, connections, lifestyle, friends, etc.
      3. Approaches the therapy with a compassion and humor when appropriate – adds a lightness of touch to the process.
      4. Down to earth – approachable and treats you like a fellow human and not an object to be studied.
      5. Will when necessary give negative feedback and challenge your thinking and beliefs when faulty – doesn’t just agree with you 100% of the time.

When looking for a therapist, please bear in mind that qualifications/credentials do NOT necessarily equate to competency, especially for this sort of work. Equally, there may be therapists who are competent, but you can’t build rapport with them. Therefore, there will be some work that needs doing to weed out unsuitable therapist and actively choose more suitable ones.

Caution – When seeking to recover from narcissistic abuse, be very careful using humanistic therapists. This idealogy/school is thought is very naive and misguided regarding human nature, narcissists and narcissistic abuse. And if fully adhered to, humanistic beliefs literally do not allow for the fact there could be people out there who deliberately seek to cause harm to others, and that not all people are “basically good”. Whilst rapport is important, it’s highly unlikely a humanistic psychotherapist will be effective in helping someone recover from narcissistic abuse (I speak from personal experience on this).

Finding a Therapist

Here are some links to follow to find a suitable therapist in your area, broken down by country.

• USA – very wide availability and multiple online search directories. Here are a couple:
  • • See the ICEEFT site (also has worldwide search) – search by criteria and location.
    • See also the AIT Therapist search directory.
• UK – two main accrediting bodies for therapist – UKCP & BACP.
  • • BACP Therapist search page
    • UKCP Therapist search page.
    • See also the Counselling Directory UK for a search feature.
• Canada – See Goodtherapy.org site for a search feature by ZIP code and state.
• Australia – See the APS Search Page or Goodtherapy AU page to find a therapist.

There are other search tools as well, and some of them allow you to filter for therapists who specialize in narcissistic abuse.

It’s up to each person how they do this process, but here’s an suggested outline of how you could find a therapist:

1. Use the tools listed above to search for and find therapists who specialize in narcissistic abuse and helping people recover from this (or co-dependency/complex trauma).
2. Pick out 7-10 therapist that you like the look of, based on their profile and stated skills set. If they have personal websites, browse them to get a better feel of whether you’d like to work with them.
3. Narrow this long list down to a shortlist of 3-5 top therapist you most like the look of.
4. Send an email or call each of these therapist, asking a) if they’re available; and b) if they’ll do a 5-10 minute phone or email interview to see you have good rapport and might be a good fit (most therapists will agree).
5. Have some questions ready on what you believe you need to work on most, and see if there’s a rapport and agreement there that you could go forward with.

Understanding the Intersection Between Complex Trauma & Cluster B Personalities

A crucial point to understand for so many victims of psychopathic/narcissistic abuse to understand is how and why the toxic person targeted them in the first place.

This often has to do with unresolved wounds (complex trauma/C-PTSD) the person was carrying, often from childhood, which Cluster B personality disordered people (psychopaths/sociopath/borderlines/narcissists) often unfortunately have an uncanny knack of very quickly “seeing” and honing in on.

Once they find your particular wounds or trauma, this is precisely what they often hammer away at with their toxic abuse, traumatizing you in the present as well as re-opening old wounds from the past.

This is why these toxic personalities can cause so much damage to their victims, requiring so much professional help to resolve afterwards. See the excellent video below by Richard Grannon for more on this fundamental point – it is very important victims of psychopaths/narcissists realize this.

 

Thankfully there is hope – resolve your own emotional wounds and you take away the psychopath’s ability to exploit and poke at those wounds. You leave them nothing to feed off. Use the search features above to find a suitable therapist trained in trauma (PTSD/Complex PTSD) who can help you do that.