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It is a familiar territory many women have found themselves in.

Humiliation, betrayal, cheating, deception, abuse.

For many, even violence.

These are not just life experiences. These are incremental moments that have the power to leave scars.

Many women ask the same question, was I attracted to this behaviour? Did I somehow invite this behaviour? She analyzes herself like she can with the gentle tap of a wand invite her own unbecoming.

Yet I do not blame us women for those types of self-defeating thoughts.

Still, when she arrives at a place far from expectations she is left to wonder, was this the path one made from her own internal decision making capacity?

These questions are not a signal of her weakness or a signal of where the blame lies. When one encounters suffering the brain always tries to make sense of the pain.

Remember the brain is not an idle thing, it is a meaning making powerful force that lies within all.

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The path was not chosen by the wounded woman. There is something more cunning at play. A quiet deception becomes the path that leads to the ultimate acts of cruelty.

At the start of many relationships there are moments that are experienced to be positive.

During the courtship many individuals will be on their best behaviour, showing their most positive traits. Many women will be smitten by the attention and the care they receive.

The initial pull is not towards the cruelty, the mistreatment, or the humiliation. The initial pull is to the kindness, attention and connection.

Isn’t that normal human behaviour to lean into kindness, and a deeper connection?

Those are the moments one craves

Human connection, kindness, attention.

And those moments become the green light for every woman who has experienced such a beginning. Like Jay Gatsby, she is constantly chasing that green light - the positive and healthy moments. Even when the cruelty takes hold.

Let us open a page from the history books. Let us take the example of when courtship goes beyond kindness, and connection to such a declaration of love that challenges social conventions.

The initial behaviour in courtship can also go beyond kindness and a deeper kind of appreciation and a public declaration of love enchant. History has pages of these stories.

King Henry VIII chased Anne Boleyn for 7 years, defied the church to marry her. Yet his powerful actions suggesting a greater love did not last. It was followed by the ultimate betrayal, Anne lost her life. King Henry VIII had her beheaded for false rumours. Some may say he simply wanted to indulge in his constant affairs so having her beheaded may have made this easier. Others suggest it was a response to Anne being unable to produce a male heir.

Regardless,

the warmth was replaced with cruelty.

Behaviour is always subject to change. The question was never why was I drawn to the pain?

Because you weren’t.

You were drawn to the moments of warmth, to the glimpses of care, to the version of love that felt real in the beginning.

What followed was not a reflection of your desire, but a pattern designed to confuse it.

This is how the cycle holds: not through constant cruelty, but through inconsistency. Through moments of kindness scattered just enough to keep hope alive.

And hope can be a powerful tether.

But understanding this changes everything.

Because when you see the pattern clearly, you stop blaming yourself for staying and you begin to understand what you were truly holding onto.

Not the person.

But the promise.

The green light.

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Not searching for anyone in particular. I was not prepared for who I would find, or what type of ancient practitioner I would find. That is one way you can refer to him. Who I found?

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It was a spell-casting guru following me; not the kind that tells your future, not the kind that lays down cards. The image in the persons social media and content gave the impression that this was a person who believed in collecting items to cast his “spells”!

Oh my.

Now my faith of Sikhism stops me from believing in these spells or spell casting gurus.

However, this persons following of my account did do enough to send a chill up my spine. The thought that someone could “want” to change the trajectory of someone’s life was horrifying. A persons life is too sacred to be changed by human interference despite it being achievable or not.

However, the concept of magic has existed for decades.

Sometimes people go to astrologers in a quest to “know”. To know their future, to know what might be going on behind what their eye can see. This is not an ancient practice I have indulged it but I can understand the pull when someone is desperately seeking answers or a positive resolution to a problem that is deeply hurting them. Too often individuals with their backs against the wall are pulled by another human being who presents the idea that they can resolve the individuals family issue, personal issues and even health issues with their astrologer magic.

This vulnerability can also create entry points for unregulated healers or practitioners who promise certainty where none exists.

But let’s stick with the astrologers.

They don’t just live in homes and offices, but they also live on social media, yes even on TikTok.

My lack of indulgence in this astrologer practice comes from the fact that - I simply do not want to know my future. South Asian fortune tellers scare me. They create books about all your life’s details, your job, your marriage, all the way to how you will die. I don’t want to know these details ever.

That’s not to say I have not indulged reading a Libra horoscope of the month. Those are light, and can be fun.

What is more comfortable to me? Spirituality, prayer, and psychology.

Yet spirituality and prayer is not necessarily rooted in science, although science does suggest it can have benefits.

So where do we draw the line in what we practice and the practices we need to shield others from?

This takes me to the do no harm principle.

The problem lies in knowingly lying, knowingly taking something of value from a person who is in a desperate point in their life.

What unsettles me most is not whether these practices are real, it’s the possibility of vulnerable people surrendering power, money, and peace to those claiming supernatural authority.

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Spirituality, prayer? The harm exists when a person attempts to take the position of a religious leader to harm others, or attempts to manipulate religious principles to do harm. And that does occur in religious institutions.

Harm exists in spaces where we are comfortable such as religious institutions and spaces where we experience discomfort such as astrologers offices.

Magic allows for an enjoyable play to unfold our mind when we think about books such as Harry Potter. Yet what about when it goes wrong or to harming others? Remember the Salem witch trials? Harm is done when magic is taken to such an extent where individuals are persecuted, harmed, outcasted- and even killed like the days long passed in history.

We can go further down the road of ancient beliefs. What happens when these beliefs are cultural? Can we also analyze and critique those beliefs?

How about the fears of nazaar or the evil eye in the South Asian culture. As an individual who comes from the South Asian culture that often believes in nazar I would contend that such a belief system can divide. The division is created when nazaar divides individuals between the “haves” and the “have nots”. Nazaar or the evil eye is inflicted upon those who “have “ beauty, possessions, or blessings by the “have nots”. Once again the line is drawn, and harm is inflicted by this belief on to the have nots. This is done by suggesting that it is important to stay away from those who have less than you.

At the end of the day where do we draw the line? Is there space for both science and ancient practices?

I like to think about the do no harm principle when it comes to these questions. Not all beliefs need to be true but they must not cause harm.

Licensed clinicians and medical professionals need to honour the spiritual practices and beliefs of the individuals we assist.

Dangers are there. However at the same time we can all appreciate the childlike playfulness with concepts of magic. The Harry Potter books will continue to exist, so will spirituality and religion.

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Perhaps the line between science and ancient belief is not drawn at belief itself, but at harm. The moment fear, manipulation, or exploitation enter the picture, curiosity becomes dangerous. Yet history also reminds us that humans have always searched for meaning beyond what can be measured. Maybe the challenge is not choosing one world over the other, but learning how to navigate both ethically.

Maybe there needs to be further exploration of what draws individuals to these practices. Do they serve as a kind of medicine to the control, uncertainty, and anxiety experienced by individuals navigating a not so certain world? Regardless, of the reasons why we need to navigate this terrain in an ethical, and culturally sensitive way.

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Yet there is a pain in my heart that won’t go away.

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That pain lies NOT in my being 37 and not having any kids - yet.

You know the ways things go in life. I am at peace with that reality.

However, the reality that I am not at peace is with the loss that still lives.

The ache that won’t go away.

The puppy that captured my heart and then was no longer part of my life. He was a husky, his name was Rex and he brought out a different part of myself than I had ever known. My ex and I had gotten him shortly after getting married after one of my previous family dog had tragically died.

Yet out of all the dogs I had this one was different - I was responsible for him. Taking him on his daily walks, putting him to sleep in his crate when he was just a pup, teaching him to go “potty” outside and giving him his treats when he successfully did so.

He was the first to make me feel something of a mother.

He captured my heart.

However, due to the marriage ending I may not see him again.

The end of that marriage meant an additional loss - the loss of Rex.

It gets more complicated - because he hasn’t died like my other pets who I often mourn.

He still lives,

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and I hope he lives with joy and the mischievous nature he always had. At one point having us chase him around the whole neighbourhood.

I miss him though, I miss him so immensely.

Social media allows for complicated and complex relationships with motherhood, but it does not touch the ache of the pup that brought you the closest to the mother feeling and then got away due to the end of a marriage.

I want to remember Rex publicly, to post his picture to honour him.

But how?

When this loss is not often acknowledged on the internet.

And so today, on Mother’s Day, I remember him.

Rex — the dog who made me feel like a mother.

Wherever you are, I hope you are still running free, still a little mischievous, still bringing joy to the people around you.

You are loved. You are remembered. You mattered to me, and you still do.

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However not as freely as that one time in which I,

Created a podcast about my ex.

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It makes me giggle a bit. I’m not completely embarrassed, and nor am I mad at myself. Ask do I feel sorry for him? Not really, why would I? I spoke the truth. The truth of all the ways he hurt me, betrayed me, and placed seeds of doubt in my mind about the ways he was hurting me.

How do I feel about myself?

I almost feel a kind of empathy and liking for that woman I was, the one who had the courage to create a whole podcast series on all the ways her ex betrayed her and hurt her.

That girl was courageous and also a bit spontaneous. She was raw and unfiltered.

She was pouring her heart.

Could I see myself doing the same thing now? Not really, I feel I am in a different space in my life, more healed then I was then.

At that time, although I was expressing my deepest wounds to the world via a podcast channel, that many and I mean many individuals listened to (all around the world might I add). I was at the same time hurting and deeply cut off from my core self.

Or you can say I was cut off from my wise mind. DBT calls it the wise mind - the synthesis between the emotional mind and the rational mind.

Regardless. Cut off from my core self, or my wise mind. At the end of the day those words that were coming out of my mouth, although they were true, were not coming from a completely healed place. They were coming from a deeply wounded heart.

I was out of that abusive relationship which was encompassed by horrendous betrayal, but the wounds, the damage had been done and I was carrying so much. People think that after a woman leaves a relationship that all is well, but it is at this point that she enters the starting of her healing. She begins to touch all her painful wounds in her mind if she is ready to, and that readiness might take years to encounter.

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My new therapist I found at this time was quite delighted and never offset about my adventures in podcasting about my ex to the world. He actually was very encouraging, and would be the merrier if I continued. Yet I had to let him down slowly, letting him know that talking so much about the trauma of that relationship was too heavy for me. I had to put it away at times.

The podcast came to a conclusion, and was eventually deleted in its entirety. After all it was my story, and my decision to make in regard to whom, when and whether I wanted to tell it.

I sit in a space now that feels lighter now. More healed than I ever have been in regard to that relationship.

Yet I still hold that broken hearted girl with warmth and pride.

She did something that was amusing, shocking and I feel a great deal of love for her.

She told my story to the world, and I’m not even mad.

I didn’t wait until I was healed to tell my story.

I told it while I was still breaking.

And maybe that wasn’t polished.

But it was honest.

And it was the beginning of everything that came after.

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Yet I am not sure I was ever meant to wind up in this chair.

When I was young my first dance with therapy was one that left me shook.

It was a counsellor who was a white woman. Facing me, a brown girl.

I did not feel the therapist truly could not see my world clearly, and understand me or my world. Yet the therapist within me reminds myself of this truth; therapy is always a therapeutic connection with a trusted professional. Therefore, knowing this truth how could I possibly connect to her?

Therapy is a space where the power dynamics are attended to and a two way relationship takes sprout.

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Effective therapy is not possible if room for trust, vulnerability and honesty is not created.

Yet when cultural understanding is missing, that power imbalance does not disappear.

During this time many therapists in counselling were white.

The first counsellor to create my first rupture against therapy was followed by a career counsellor who somehow came to the limiting conclusion that I would never be able to attend university. This lady was white as well.

So who did we as young South Asian girls visit when pain was pouring into our lives - yet connection with the white counsellor in school was not a trusted option.

For many of us - and even our parents, our first therapist we connected with was not the one that sat in a school’s counsellors office. She did not carry a therapists license. Yet we all attended to the space she created for every individual of all backgrounds. We did not go to her office, our space became her office. It was the empowering woman on the tv screen - Oprah Winfrey. She brought many struggles faced by BIPOC women and men, individuals and families to light, allowed for pain to be named in a safe way,

and there was just enough distance - to make therapy seem less scary, and safe to say less white.

Things have changed in this profession, there are now a lot more brown individuals filling the therapeutic rooms that are known as a counsellors office.

However, there is still much that has not changed.

The dominant voice in the realm of social media is still of the white Caucasian male or woman. BIPOC voices exist but they are extinguished for the more digestible Caucasian voices that have long dominated the therapy field.

Many South Asian woman in the field not only have to contend with this dominant caucasian voice in the field of psychology, they must also contend with the fact that the field and research in the field has been dominated by white men and women to put it bluntly.

In addition, the conundrum faced by many therapists, possibly including the therapist who was my first interaction with the field of counselling itself, is the fact that much of the research on therapy and best therapeutic approaches have been done on the white Caucasian population. We currently have a lack of contextualized frameworks for south asians yet the research is generalized to the entirety of the population on the planet. Another question that rises is where is the space for values held by BIPOC individuals?

To add to the hurdles faced by brown south asian therapists is that many of us can and do struggle with imposter syndrome. However, the explanation to this syndrome lies in the fact that historically we simply have not seen many therapists who were brown. This explanation gets even complex when we consider that many south asians daughters and sons have families that emigrated from India into a different country where much of the fields of psychology were dominated by caucasians. Their immigration status minimized the value of their education, and glorified the education of the white man or woman, disadvantaging themselves, and then their youth who often had to carve their own path into the wild west of psychology.

So now, I sit in this chair as the therapist.

Carrying not only my training

but the memory of what it feels like to sit on the other side,

unseen, misunderstood, and trying to make sense of a space that was never designed with me in mind.

And I also carry something else.

An awareness of how history, migration, and representation shape who feels entitled to speak,

and who learns to question whether they belong at all.

What we often call “imposter syndrome” does not exist in isolation.

For many of us, it is rooted in not seeing ourselves reflected

in classrooms, in research, in positions of authority.

So the question is not simply whether we belong in this field.

It is whether this field is willing to expand enough to truly hold us.

Because therapy is not just about technique.

It is about whose stories are centered,

whose knowledge is valued,

and whose humanity is fully seen.

And until that shifts,

there will always be people sitting across from us

still wondering if they can be understood.

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Reaching out to a therapist poses a dilemma to South Asians. Reach out and get support, but reach out and also maybe

betray the family. That is a scary thought to most South Asians.

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What is emphasized is loyalty to the family.

It is time this fear is tackled, so why not do it in a blog?

What if I argue that one is not harming the family when going through therapy. What if I present the idea that healing oneself is giving a gift to one’s family members. The gift?

A healed self.

And what a gift that is. A healed self - can also impact the rest of the family system.

Yet you may argue that is still not enough to convince you.

Let’s play with dialectics a bit shall we?

Dialectical behavioural therapy is based on the idea that there can be a kernel of truth to two opposing truths.

Therefore, can love for your family coexist with attending therapy for healing? Absolutely.

The problem is we often think in black and white, believing in absolute truths when it comes to opposites. Dialectical behavioural therapy pushes us to think in terms of and both, and not but or. When we say but, or we are asking to choose a side. We need to understand that two things can be true at once.

You can value and love your family deeply

You can also reach to someone outside the family to get help to heal

This is not to say there won’t be some discomfort when trying to reach out to a counsellor, or when sitting in the office of a counsellor wondering what words to say. The discomfort will be there. The echo of the messages received in communities for decades to not go outside of the family to discuss family matters will still play in the background.

The idea is to sit with the discomfort, evaluate it, identify the level of threat, and try to see opposing truths in every situation.

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The idea is that holding on means we are continuing to point to the person that hurt us, or the memory that caused the hurt. We are the ones that have been hurt and they are the wrong ones. The hardest part becomes letting go.

Here’s the truth:

Holding on doesn't change the past. It only keeps us trapped within the past. That's where radical acceptance comes in.

To get to radical acceptance we need to realize that two opposing thoughts or two opposing truths can exist at the same time. This is what we call dialectics.

This is when we hold two opposing truths at the same time within our mind's eye. It is true that you were hurt and it can also be true that at the same time, you can let the past pain go. It is true that they were wrong in hurting you and it is true that it's up to you now to make changes in your life, to make a life worth living.

That gives you power, that gives you agency. It moves them out of the captain seat and allows you to steer the boat of your life.

Now, a wonderful analogy is The Lion King.

It is a great illustration of story of radical acceptance. You know, as the story goes, Scar causes Mufasa's death but blames Simba for it. Simba runs away from where he lived, indulges in food, sings, has fun with his pals, and living in Hakuna Matata vibes.

Simba, when he does this runs away psychologically from his past through food, indulgence, and by looking away from the past. When what he is doing is he is not creating real changes to make a better life for himself. He is just living a life with no worries, thinking about today, not about tomorrow.

Later on, he goes to Rafiki, after engaging us, the viewers, in sort of a denial with his pals. He goes on to Rafiki, and Rafiki hits him in the head with a stick, and Simba goes, oh, that hurts.

Rafiki goes, oh, but it's in the past.He says, with the past, we can run from it, or we can learn from it.

In that moment, Simba engages in this beautiful thing called radical acceptance, acceptance of what has happened, but that does not mean that he's not going to fight the injustice later on. In fact, the only way he is able to challenge this current and fight the injustice is by accepting the present day reality.

Think about it, if you're so trapped in the past, your mind is within the past, and therefore you won't be able to function in the future, and you won't be able to create meaningful changes in the future and in the present. So you have to engage in full acceptance to fight the injustice of tomorrow, which is what Simba does. He is only able to be present fully and fight the injustice of scar fully once he engages in acceptance and stops running away from his friends.

Some of us fail to accept the past. We hold on so strongly to wrongdoings of others that our nails start to hurt our palms, wrongfully convincing ourselves we are hurting the wrongdoer when we are only exerting so much energy into holding our hand in a fist when we can let our clenched fist go and become much lighter. However, in order to let go of the past and create a life worth truly living, we sometimes have to look into a memory where we felt some level of hurt.

Oftentimes, when an event is painful, what happens is we push it away in our mind, but it is still there in the back of our mind. Radical acceptance requires that we look at the event without judgment at first, then with compassion for ourselves.

Radical acceptance also requires for us to accept there being a level of truth to each opposing viewpoint, and requires for us to hold these opposing truths in our mind. This is called turning the mind. Truth, they hurt you.

True, you also display strength and agency in those hurtful events. Truth, you let the painful event go. Truth is that they hurt you. Truth is it is now you who is suffering, and it is now you who needs to make changes. Truth, they cause you pain. Truth, it is you who has to make changes in your life to create a life worth living.

See the gray area. Hurt, strength, letting go, change, can all coexist at the same time. When you try to emotionally run away from a painful event, the more power the event holds

When you hold on to one truth without looking at the whole event, your brain knows you're lying to it. Your brain, your mind's eye needs to see the complete truth, and that requires turning multiple truths within your mind and looking at the painful event from different angles. Yes, it was true that the person who hurt you also did at a point make you laugh. Yes, that person also hurt you too.

Radical acceptance is hard, but when we resist a stream of water in a river, we feel the pressure of the stream. And when we allow it, the river, the water from the stream to pass, it moves between the rocks and turns and bends across this path, transforming, moving and bending.

So are the painful events. Rejecting builds pressure, but acceptance allows for transformation in how our minds hold painful events. Radical acceptance is so hard to do.

Yet radical acceptance is so hard to do.

However, when it is done radical acceptance also gives us a gift. It gives power back to ourselves.

It gives control back to ourselves. Something we called agency back into our hands as a gift. In fact, acceptance means to receive something.

If you walk into the castle of acceptance and let go of what could have been, what should have been, what might have been, and just accept that you will walk away with a gift, a gift that is a higher wisdom.

At the end of the day, denial says the past shouldn't have been that way. Acceptance says, oh, but it was.

Let's try to accept it mindfully and unlock a gift in the castle of acceptance, a higher wisdom of knowledge.

This question, it can become so confusing, right? Because you can only get to move towards that goalpost of loving yourself, the more insight you develop about yourself. So in order to truly move towards loving yourself, you need to really get to know your own self.

If you don't have that insight, you won't be able to peel back the layers of the onion, that is yourself, to see your true self.

Honestly, loving oneself is a journey. It's not a final destination, because life is ever changing.

The question is, how do we get walking on the Yellow Brick Road that is self-love? Because self-love, not a final destination.

Well, it might be easier to talk about what self-love is not.

Self-love is not moving towards perfection. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

It's learning to accept yourself with all your imperfections that you have. You see, perfection is a lie that is sold to all of us.

The truth is, the more we run towards perfection, the goalpost of perfection will keep moving further and further away. It's unreachable. We can never reach perfection, but we can try, and we do try, and we feel bad about ourselves, and it's not a good thing to try to move towards or try to chase this idea of perfection, because we can never reach perfection.

Trying to look perfect, trying to be perfect, trying to behave perfect, we might try all these things, but it's all in unreachable an illusion.

It's a terrible illusion, because when we strive towards this perfection, people will gravitate away from us. Not only is perfection harmful to us, but it also hurts our relationships when we are always trying to be perfect.

True self-love is the opposite of holding on dearly to the concept of perfection and letting it go to learn to love all of one's misdirections, errors, and learning to accept embarrassing moments we all have had. Because to be human is to have these moments of misdirections, errors, and embarrassing moments. Because to be flawed is to be human.

To be human is not to be perfect. To be flawed does not mean we intentionally hurt others and accept that behaviour, but it means we treat our errors in the same manner we would treat our friends' errors, with loving kindness and compassion. Ultimately, to be loving towards ourselves, we need to be really brave.

We need to be brave enough to be flawed and to show that we are flawed. However, we need people who are also brave enough to be flawed around us. Only then can we truly be our authentic selves.

Self-compassion in all its forms, from soothing loving statements we tell ourselves in difficult times to loving statements we tell ourselves when we have our wins. Self-love includes when we use the power of touch to comfort ourselves in those difficult moments. It's when we mirror the love that we deserve back to ourselves, instead of looking for that love and support outside of ourselves.

Honestly, practicing self-love is being there for yourself, instead of ignoring your hurt and pain by distracting yourself. So many individuals try to distract themselves with external things when they experience hurt, such as shopping, gambling, alcohol, drugs, and so many other different external distractions. However, when we are doing this, we are ignoring the cries of our mind or cries of our body, cries that deserve to be heard and responded to.

Self-love means giving yourself the basics. Getting up and getting your water intake. As basic as this is, so many of us ignore this self-love aspect. Listening to our body, giving ourselves the basics. Taking a warm bath when you're feeling stressed. Getting enough hours of sleep in. Taking some time to rest. It means listening to what your body needs in that moment. That is a part of self-love.

If you're trying to do self-love, yet you're not listening to your body, you're not getting your water intake in, you're not resting your body, how are you really engaging in self-love? You see, you may accept your outward appearance. You may be happy with your appearance, but if you are not responding to the tune of your body, are you really engaging in self-love?

This can be so difficult to do, and you may feel this difficulty because we are so wired by society to treat our bodies as if they are machines at the mercy of the bigger goals of society and the goals that we have. We put our system, our body, behind these bigger goals created by society and the bigger goals that we might have. For example, we might have career goals, and so we may neglect our body.

We learn to sacrifice our bodies for these bigger goals. For those of you who have experienced childhood neglect or trauma, you may have become used to ignoring your needs. So self-love may look like learning to listen to your body and learning to provide what your body needs at that time.

Because we need to love and care for our bodies just as we love and care for our minds and our souls, because it is all connected. Our souls feel the love and the care when we care for our body. You see, we go from loving ourselves by meeting our basic needs, such as water, safety, and housing.

Then we go to meeting higher-order needs, such as engaging in the passions that we love, such as writing, reading, art, poetry, etc., making something. We go from meeting the needs of our body to the needs of our mind to the needs of our soul.

How do we satisfy the needs of our mind and soul? By being in sync with our own values.

Because what about when our values are not in line with what someone is asking of us?

In these situations, we need to learn how to draw boundaries. We must learn to once again listen in and tune in to our body. We need to tune in to the feelings in our stomach when someone makes a request asking us of something.

And we need to feel that feeling in our stomach that we are having and respond accordingly to that request in regard to how we feel. So the feeling in our stomach may be saying, no, don't go through with this request. It doesn't feel right, and we need to listen to that.

Or a feeling in our stomach, in our heart, may be feeling really good, and it may be feeling like it's telling you to go ahead with that request, and then you would go through with it. Once again, the mind, body, and soul is all interconnected, and we must be constantly listening to the tune of all those different parts of us. Ways you can do this is making a habit of checking in with yourself, asking yourself, what does my body need right now?

What does my mind need right now? What does my soul need right now? Making a mental note to check in, and check in often.”

Self-love comes from embracing our imperfections, realizing that to be human is to be imperfect, lending ourselves to self-compassion in all moments from pain to joy, listening to the tune of the mind, body, and soul, and resisting the impulse to distract oneself with external things. Self-love means loving and responding to our entire being from our body, mind, and her soul. Self-love is hard.

It's not a destination. It's a yellow brick road we walk on. When we get to that destination, we hold our hands out to get that token that proves that we have achieved self-love.

But the truth is we've been building it all along within while we've been walking that yellow brick road.

This may look like a client avoiding the real hurt, the real traumatic memories and prioritizing discussions of everyday life matters in the allotted therapy hours. Talk therapy may be prioritized or prolonged, in comparison to taking on processing work such as EMDR. In other cases, it may be simply storing a painful memory to a far away cabinet where it is has been simply forgotten and left. For far too long.

At the end of the day the brain is doing what it knows best, it is showing the client the highest form of love, protection.

And yet, healing asks for something that seems to contradict that instinct. Painful memories often need to be acknowledged and processed in order to lose their hold.This is the paradox: the same mind that protects by turning away must, at some point, feel safe enough to turn toward what it has been avoiding.

In the corner of a counselling office, when a clinician witnesses a client experiencing all these self protective self loving measures by the brain the clinician may inaccurately believe they are failing, failing to bring forward a breakthrough deep healing for the client. Yet the clinician must realize the clients brain is simply operating in the way it is meant to in dear love, protection and survival of the individual.

For clinicians, this moment can be deceptively challenging. When a client moves away from processing, appears “stuck,” or cannot access key experiences, it can evoke a sense of therapeutic inadequacy. The absence of visible progress may feel like failure.

It is not.

What is being witnessed is a system operating with precision, prioritizing safety over exposure, protection over vulnerability. Resistance, in this sense, is not opposition to therapy, but an expression of the client’s history.

The clinical task, then, is not to override or confront these protective responses, but to understand them, respect them, and work in collaboration with them. Progress is not measured by how quickly a client confronts pain, but by how safely they are able to approach it.

When a client moves away from processing, resists, leans into protective behaviours, or simply can not remember what shook them so badly it is not a sign of failure. It is a reflection of a system doing exactly what it has learned to do, preserve, protect, and survive.

The takeaway is this when it comes to trauma- the brain is always an ally - it is always attempting to work in service to the client. The brain is never the enemy when it comes to healing from trauma.

Sighs of relief come from those who finally have a term to explain what they experienced. Cue the range of books and so called experts dedicated to help individual's recover from narcissists.

However, the current clinical understanding is that the term may not fully encompass the realities of domestic violence or abusive behaviour. This leads to the understanding that social media has failed when it has ultimately coloured abusive relationships with the same brush as narcissism or narcissistic personality disorder.

Narcissism and Abuse

While the term “narcissism” can provide a starting point for meaning-making, it does not always fully capture the realities of domestic violence or abusive behaviour. What is often presented on social media as narcissism may, in fact, reflect a broader and more complex pattern of harm—one that includes coercive control, manipulation, intimidation, and at times, physical or emotional violence. By framing these experiences primarily through the lens of narcissism, there is a risk of narrowing our understanding of abuse to a single, personality-based explanation.

This reflects a broader limitation in how social media engages with psychological language. Complex relational dynamics are frequently simplified into digestible, shareable terms. Narcissism, in particular, has become a kind of umbrella label—used to describe a wide range of behaviours that feel hurtful, dismissive, or self-centered. While this may increase accessibility and relatability, it can also blur important distinctions. Not all abusive individuals meet the criteria for a personality disorder, and not all individuals with narcissistic traits engage in abusive behaviour. When these nuances are lost, the conversation shifts away from patterns of behaviour and impact, and toward assumptions about identity or diagnosis.

This distinction is important. Abuse is not defined by a label, but by patterns of behaviour that involve power, control, and harm. When we focus too heavily on identifying someone as a “narcissist,” we may unintentionally overlook the specific dynamics that sustain abusive relationships. This can limit a person’s ability to fully understand what they have experienced, and may even affect how they seek support, resources, or legal protection.

There is no argument with the fact that there is a limitation in how social media engages with psychological language. Complex relational dynamics are frequently simplified into digestible, shareable terms.

Abuse

Calling someone a “narcissist” can feel like clarity, but it often skips over what actually drives abusive behavior: beliefs of power and control.

At its core, abuse is rooted in entitlement and control—the belief, whether stated or not, that one person has the right to override, diminish, or dominate another. That mindset can take shape early, be reinforced by environment, or grow in spaces where power is rewarded and empathy is optional.

People also learn how to relate by watching what’s modeled around them. When manipulation, intimidation, or control are normalized, those behaviors can carry forward—not because they’re inevitable, but because they were practiced and never challenged.

What sustains abuse isn’t just isolated incidents—it’s the cycle surrounding them. The tension, the harm, the minimization, the temporary repair. That pattern is what keeps the dynamic in place.

Traits linked to Narcissistic Personality Disorder can overlap with abusive behavior, but most abusive people don’t meet criteria for a diagnosis. Focusing on labels can distract from what matters most: what someone consistently does.

Because that’s the through-line.

Abuse is a learned and reinforced pattern that continues because it works—it secures control, avoids accountability, and maintains power.

Understanding where it comes from isn’t about excusing it. It’s about seeing it clearly enough to name it, respond to it, and stop minimizing it.

Not every harmful person is a narcissist.
But every abusive pattern is built on repeated choices that prioritize power over respect.

And that’s what needs to be recognized.

Are we accurately and with precision identifying narcissists or are engaging in a self serving bias by labelling individuals we see problematic or with a stigmatizing label?

Short answer: often, no—we’re not identifying narcissism with much precision. What’s happening more frequently is a mix of overgeneralization and self-serving bias, especially outside of clinical settings.

In clinical psychology, narcissism isn’t just “someone who hurt me” or “someone selfish.” A diagnosis like Narcissistic Personality Disorder has specific criteria laid out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It requires a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy across contexts, beginning in early adulthood and stable over time. It also requires impairment in functioning. That’s a high threshold, and most people we casually label as “narcissists” would not meet it.

What’s more common is that people are identifying narcissistic traits (e.g., defensiveness, entitlement, low empathy in certain moments) rather than a personality disorder. But social media tends to collapse that distinction. The result is a kind of diagnostic inflation, where the label becomes shorthand for “someone who caused me distress.”

Self-serving Bias

This is where self-serving bias can quietly shape interpretation. When we’re hurt, it’s psychologically protective to locate the problem entirely in the other person—especially with a label that implies a fixed, pathological flaw. It can reduce ambiguity and validate one’s experience. But it can also oversimplify complex relational dynamics. Not all harmful behavior stems from narcissism; it can arise from attachment insecurity, trauma responses, poor emotional regulation, cultural patterns, or situational stress.

There’s also a moral dimension embedded in how the label is used. “Narcissist” has become less of a clinical descriptor and more of a character judgment. That shift can stigmatize individuals and obscure the difference between abusive behavior (which should be named and addressed clearly) and personality structure (which requires careful assessment).

None of this means people are wrong about being harmed. It means the explanation we reach for isn’t always accurate or precise. In fact, over-relying on the narcissism label can sometimes hinder clarity: it may prevent a deeper understanding of patterns, boundaries, and relational roles.

At the end of the day, not all abusive individuals meet the criteria for a personality disorder, and not all individuals with narcissistic traits engage in abusive behaviour.

When these nuances are lost, the conversation shifts away from patterns of behaviour and impact, and toward assumptions about identity or diagnosis.

At the same time, it is important to hold space for the function that this language serves. For many individuals, identifying narcissism is not about clinical accuracy, but about validation. It offers a framework that helps make sense of emotional pain and relational confusion. In this sense, the issue is not that people are using the term, but that the conversation often stops there. Without further exploration, the complexity of abusive experiences can become flattened into a single narrative.

What emerges, then, is a tension between accessibility and accuracy. Social media has made psychological language more widely available, but in doing so, it has also contributed to a kind of conceptual oversimplification. If we are to support a deeper understanding of abusive relationships, it becomes necessary to move beyond labels alone and toward a more nuanced exploration of behaviour, context, and impact. Only then can we begin to more fully understand—and respond to—the realities of abuse.

Research increasingly supports the concern that social media–driven uses of “narcissism” can oversimplify the dynamics of abuse. Clinical literature distinguishes clearly between traits of narcissism and the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, noting that relatively few individuals meet the threshold for diagnosis, and that abusive behaviour is not dependent on the presence of a personality disorder.

At the end of the day abuse is defined by patterns of behaviour involving power, control, and harm—not by labels.

There is no lab result for Narcissistic Personality Disorder. There is no objective medical test that confirms it. Instead, diagnoses such as Narcissistic Personality Disorder are constructed through clinical classification systems like the DSM, which rely on observed patterns of behavior, reported experiences, and functional impairment over time.

That fact alone should change the way these terms are used in public discourse.

Because what we are really dealing with is not “detection” in a medical sense—but interpretation within a framework.

And frameworks are not neutral.

They are shaped by:

evolving psychological theory

cultural assumptions about personality and behavior

shifting definitions of what is considered “normal” or “pathological”

and consensus among professional bodies at a given point in time

This is not a flaw in psychology—it is how the field operates. But it does raise an important issue: these constructs are often treated in public conversation as if they are fixed biological realities rather than evolving interpretive models.

That gap becomes especially problematic online, where terms like “narcissist” are increasingly used as if they are definitive explanations for behavior rather than clinical descriptors of long-term patterns of functioning.

In practice, this flattens complexity.

It turns:

patterns into identities

behaviors into diagnoses

and difficult relational experiences into single-label explanations

The result is a kind of psychological shorthand that feels precise but often isn’t.

In clinical contexts, these diagnoses are meant to describe enduring patterns of thinking, emotion, and interpersonal functioning—not to serve as global explanations for every harmful interaction a person has.

Yet in social discourse, the label often becomes the explanation itself.

And this is where the problem deepens: once a label becomes an identity, it stops being used as a tool for understanding and starts functioning as a conclusion.

This is why many contemporary approaches in psychology are moving toward dimensional models of personality, where traits are understood along continuums rather than as fixed categories. People do not simply “have” or “not have” a trait—they vary in expression across context, time, and relationship.

The issue is not whether personality disorders exist within clinical frameworks. The issue is how easily those frameworks are detached from their scientific and clinical grounding when they enter public conversation.

Because once that happens, psychological language stops describing behavior—and starts replacing it.

And when labels replace understanding, complexity is usually the first casualty.

In recent years, the term “narcissist” has become widely used across social media platforms, often in a loose and non-clinical way. It is frequently applied to describe behavior that is experienced as selfish, hurtful, dismissive, or emotionally difficult. While increased public awareness of mental health concepts is valuable and important, many of these interpretations are not grounded in clinical training or psychological research.

As a result, complex patterns of human behavior are often reduced to simplified labels. This creates the illusion of explanation, but can actually limit understanding.

At the end of the day, what does it say about us when we are throwing around a term that is deeply tied to clinical classification systems such as the DSM, while often stripping it of its original context and meaning? To be precise, Narcissistic Personality Disorder has remained part of the DSM framework, but the way personality disorders are understood has evolved significantly over time. Contemporary psychology increasingly emphasizes dimensional trait models and contextual understanding, rather than rigid, simplified interpretations. The key issue, then, is not whether the diagnosis exists, but how far everyday usage has drifted from clinical meaning.

In clinical psychology, personality constructs are not moral labels or catch-all explanations for behavior. They are structured frameworks used to understand patterns of thinking, emotion, and interpersonal functioning over time. When these frameworks are removed from their clinical context and used casually, they risk becoming substitutes for understanding rather than tools that support it.

This is especially important when discussing harmful or abusive relationships.

Abuse is best understood through observable and repeated behavioral patterns, such as coercion, manipulation, isolation, intimidation, control, and boundary violations. These behaviors can occur across different relational contexts and are not dependent on a single personality profile or diagnosis.

When we explain abuse primarily through labels such as “narcissism,” there is a risk that we unintentionally shift attention away from the specific actions that occurred. This can blur accountability, reduce clarity about what actually happened, and oversimplify dynamics that are often gradual, and patterned.

In some cases, label-based explanations can also create confusion about responsibility. They may suggest that harmful behavior is best understood primarily through personality structure, rather than through choices, reinforcement patterns, learned behaviors, or relational dynamics. In reality, harmful behavior can emerge through multiple pathways, including social learning, emotional dysregulation, power dynamics, and environmental reinforcement—without requiring a specific diagnostic category.

From a psychological standpoint, traits such as empathy, guilt, and remorse exist on a spectrum and can vary depending on context and relational dynamics. No single label fully captures this complexity.

Even clinically, personality disorders are not defined by a single trait or behavior. They involve persistent, pervasive patterns across multiple areas of functioning, and diagnosis is intended to describe patterns of impairment—not to serve as a moral classification of a person.

This is why precision in language matters.

In professional, educational, and community settings, the way we use psychological language shapes how we understand responsibility, behavior, and interpersonal harm. When clinical terms become simplified into social labels, they lose specificity and can unintentionally distort understanding rather than improve it.

Awareness of psychological concepts is valuable. But awareness without accuracy risks turning complex human behavior into simplified narratives that may feel satisfying in the moment, but are less useful in understanding reality.

At the end of the day what does it say about us when we as clinicians choose to chase clout on social media by throwing out labels such as narcissism generously instead of presenting accurate, clear and grounded information?