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Abuse

How Feeling Not Good Enough Makes You Crave Validation


“Emotional validation is the process of learning about, understanding and expressing acceptance of another person's emotional experience. Emotional validation is distinguished from emotional invalidation, in which another person's emotional experiences are rejected, ignored, or judged.” — Kristalyn Salters-Pedneault

Emotional validation is a potent motivation throughout our lives. We seek it from our parents as children, ideally learning how to eventually provide it for ourselves. Of course, even the healthiest, most emotionally well individual will find emotional validation...

Abuse

Why “I Did My Best” is a Worthless Excuse

How It Is Used
One of the most common excuses or justifications for someone’s problematic behavior is the catch-all phrase, “I did my best,” or, ”They did their best,” and their variants. Sometimes, some people use it in the context of explaining why they did what they did, but they still accept responsibility for their behaviour.

Childhood Trauma

40 Self-Care Tips for Better Mental Well-Being

Why Is Self-Care Vital for Your Mental Health?
Life can be overwhelming and demanding. In addition, all of us carry some unresolved trauma from the past that makes it even harder because we are not often prepared for what’s coming, or we react to it in an overwhelming manner. On top of that, this year has been exceptionally challenging for a lot of us.

Abuse

6 Reasons Why Narcissists Try to Appear Caring and Helpful


It’s no secret that a core narcissistic trait is the lack of empathy and care for others. However, people with strong narcissistic tendencies and other dark personality traits (hereafter narcissists) do sometimes act in a caring manner, or try to appear this way. In this article, we will explore the common reasons behind this behaviour.
1. Adulation
Regular people with healthy levels of empathy are generally helpful and thoughtful people. They genuinely care about and like helping others....

Abuse

How Narcissists Try to Avoid Responsibility


A hallmark of people who have strong narcissistic and other dark personality traits (hereafter referred to as narcissists) is the avoidance of taking responsibility for their dysfunctional or incompetent behavior.

Since they already have shaky and low self-esteem, they try to mask it with fake confidence. A significant part of this defense mechanism is never admitting that they are wrong. Some may occasionally admit to some small wrong in order to “prove” that they can, indeed, admit something after all, but it’s a deception.

General

Vital and Helpful Information about COVID-19 (Coronavirus)


The goal of this post is to provide an easily digestible summary of the most important information on the COVID-19 (Coronavirus) situation.

The first version of this article is on March 20, 2020, so it may not include some of the old basic information that I will assume most people interested in knowing already know (what it is, how it started, how it spreads, etc.). I may or may not add some information later.

Abuse

How Narcissists Use Silent Treatment for Manipulation


If you have ever interacted with a person who exhibits strong narcissistic or other dark personality traits, you have likely experienced what is known as the silent treatment.
What Is Silent Treatment?
The silent treatment can be defined as the following: a passive-aggressive form of emotional abuse in which displeasure, disapproval, and contempt is exhibited through nonverbal gestures while maintaining verbal silence.

Abuse

7 Ways Narcissists Make You Feel Inferior


People with strong narcissistic, sociopathic, psychopathic, and other dark personality traits (thereafter called narcissists) have a low and fragile sense of self-esteem. In order to cope, they need to constantly feel better than others. They always compare themselves to others and when they feel threatened, they will try to make the other person feel worse to elevate themselves and feel superior. Indeed, they think hierarchically and this plays out in different ways.

In this article we will review a few common tactics narcissists use to feel better than others, even if it hurts others and, oftentimes, precisely because it hurts others.