Is using the phrase "Narcissistic Abuse” inherently ableist, and even if it's not, is it even helpful? A nuanced take, some history, and a perspective change.

A very long (over ~13k word) article that has taken me a while to pull together. I am posting this both on Tumblr and Substack.

Preface: A Journey of Uncomfortable Questions

I’ll be upfront about the thesis of this article (which I’ll repeat later) so that people know upfront what my stance currently is: “I have come to realize that the usage of the word ‘narcissist’ may be doing more harm to both survivors and abusers, to people who are living with and managing diagnosed disorders, according to the DSM-5, and to people outside of the Western clinical system.”

A Note to Readers

This piece contains discussions of emotional abuse, trauma, and mental health. While I’ve tried to approach these topics with care, please prioritize your well-being as you read.

This is also a piece in process—not a final proclamation but an invitation to think together about language, harm, healing, and the stories we tell about all three. You may find yourself disagreeing with parts of my journey, feeling defensive about the language you use, or recognizing yourself in unexpected places. All of these responses are valid. I ask only that you approach this exploration with the same spirit of curiosity and compassion that I’ve tried to bring to it.

Statement of Positionality

I am not a medical doctor or a psychologist. I’m a naturalized U.S. citizen and a Bengali American. I’m a brown, queer, non-binary, disabled person who grew up in a low-to-middle-class immigrant family and now find myself solidly middle-class with five college degrees, many of which are in healthcare. I am able to parse through clinical research and understand it, even if I’m not a medical doctor.

I name these identities because they shape how I understand harm, healing, and language. My experience of marginalization informs my sensitivity to how diagnostic labels can become tools of oppression. My educational privilege gives me access to academic discourse, while my lived experience keeps me grounded in the messy realities of trauma and recovery. My cultural background means I’ve seen healing frameworks beyond Western psychiatry, while my American life means I’ve been immersed in individualistic approaches to mental health.

All of these perspectives inform what follows.

The Personal Stakes

When I left my ex-spouse back in 2022, I was so shocked by the experience I had gone through and how much I tolerated, at the expense of my health.

Even with all of the chronic lifelong health issues I had, my health was significantly worse prior to my leaving. I lightheartedly (but I’m also being so honest) tell my friends, “Now I only go to the Emergency Department roughly once a year!” I used to go to urgent care and the Emergency Department… constantly. I was in a state of perpetual infection, inflammation, and severe pain. I don’t know how I made it. I really don’t. I also don’t know how I managed to get through my academic career and survive while all this was happening.

The relationship had been slowly killing me (as had my relationship with my parents), though I couldn’t see it that well at the time. Those relationships were also grounding me here, because I loved them so much. Love, I learned retrospectively, could coexist with profound harm. Care could be weaponized. Reality itself could become a battlefield.

My Confession

I want to make a confession, after I left, I called my ex a “covert narcissist,” and I highly related to the narcissistic abuse survivor community. The current therapist I have and the past therapist I’ve had both use these terms with me, and it has been helpful in my healing.

However, I also used these terms in my social media writings and conversations with my friends. Friends who have gone through similar relationship patterns and childhood patterns as I’ve had also benefited from the conversations we had when we used the term.

While the term was helpful in my immediate post-trauma state, I don’t know if it is helpful for me anymore.

This shift—from finding salvation in a term to questioning its implications—is at the heart of this exploration. How do we honor the frameworks that help us survive while also examining their potential for harm? How do we hold gratitude for the language that saved us while acknowledging it might also be limiting us?

The Weight of Love and Its Aftermath

After I left, I was extremely fatigued to the point of exhaustion in getting my ex help… and in getting the both of us help. In addition to managing the multiple chronic health and inflammatory conditions I have, I had already been in individual therapy for years and had been seeing a specialized trauma therapist for roughly a year and a half or so. I had gone through multiple psychiatric medicine changes, and I finally started getting close to a set of meds that stabilized me. I was begging them to get any form of individual therapy or counseling, even if it wasn’t clinically based. I was begging them for us to go to couples counseling, even before we got married.

But the longer my ex and I let our relationship issues fester (and not resolve), the more I became emotionally reactive as a means of survival, which only made things worse. I would either be sleeping for most of the day or not sleeping at all. I would be crying hysterically. I would be trying to escape my reality in many different ways.

I loved my ex until the end. I really did. I loved them so much.

But I was eroding my sense of self to accommodate theirs, and they were eroding, too. They were in a lot of pain, and I knew that. I wanted to help them, and I helped them as much as I possibly could.

They helped me too.

I still think our relationship was toxic and abusive. And while I don’t think I was abusive (they may disagree), I was toxic, and I want to admit that. Leaving the relationship was the healthiest thing I did for both of us.

The Evolution of Understanding

And now, after a couple of years, I don’t think it’s useful for me to use the word “narcissist” to describe them anymore (at least in a public setting unless it is a way for people to come together to heal).

This is a nuanced post, and it probably won’t be “the end-all” post on this topic. After multiple conversations with therapists (not my own, but colleagues, friends, and ex-friends), people living with diagnosed cluster B disorders, reading books, even going through workbooks that were specifically geared toward narcissistic abuse survivors….

I have come to realize that the usage of the word “narcissist” may be doing more harm to both survivors and abusers. And of course, to people who are living with disorders.

The Complexity of Healing

I’ve written this in a previous Substack blog article (and, honestly, in multiple blog articles but not on this Substack), but in a different context: “I refuse to feel shame about this situation, and I don’t want to shame others, even in my upset.”

But I also feel conflicted, because survivors who can’t put words to the experience that just happened to them… do find refuge in “narcissistic abuse” survivor communities, just as I did. They find resources, help, solidarity, and a place to learn how to heal from their experiences, finally.

But how the word “narcissist” can target highly vulnerable populations who are trying to use Western clinical terminology to help themselves and functionally live in our society… is harmful. It is.

It’s a very complicated situation, and it’s not an easy topic to discuss.

What This Piece Attempts

What follows is my attempt to hold all of these truths simultaneously:

• The reality that certain patterns of emotional manipulation and harm desperately need naming and recognition

• The fact that clinical language used as moral categories can perpetuate stigma and prevent healing

• The understanding that both survivors and people with personality disorders deserve dignity, support, and pathways to wellness

• The recognition that language shapes reality, and the words we choose matter deeply

Through personal narrative, clinical research, and cultural analysis, I’ll explore how we might develop more nuanced ways of discussing psychological harm that validate survivors’ experiences without demonizing entire groups of people. This isn’t about finding perfect language—it’s about engaging in the ongoing practice of using language more thoughtfully, more carefully, more lovingly.

An Invitation to Journey Together

If you’re a survivor who has found healing through the concept of narcissistic abuse, this piece isn’t meant to take that away from you. If you’re someone with NPD or narcissistic traits who’s felt wounded by how these terms are used, this piece sees you too. If you’re a clinician, an advocate, or simply someone trying to understand these complex dynamics, welcome.

My hope is that by the end of this exploration, I (and you, the reader) will have a richer understanding of how language can both heal and harm, and how we might wield it more wisely in service of collective liberation.

The journey begins with a Facebook post that I hope will be a good segue on why I’m writing about this topic.

Part I: The Language Debate - Why This Matters

This internal conflict I’m experiencing—finding healing through a term while simultaneously questioning its impact—reflects a much larger debate happening across trauma survivor communities, mental health spaces, and disability rights circles. As I’ve wrestled with my own use of the word “narcissist,” I’ve discovered I’m far from alone in this struggle.

The complexity of this conversation hit home when I encountered a post on Facebook that stopped me scrolling. It was being publicly shared:

Here’s the text from the image:

Poster: “Anarchist Jew” May 8 at 11:31 PM

leftist spaces need to have a serious reckoning with their ableism—especially toward cluster b disorders.

it’s not just individual ignorance. it’s a pattern.

you say you’re trauma-informed, but pathologize anyone with intense emotions or attachment wounds. you say “abolish the carceral state,” but you socially exile people with bpd or npd like it’s justice. you preach “community care,” but treat certain neurodivergent people as disposable.

this isn’t healing. it’s scapegoating.

and it mirrors the same systems we claim to fight.

if you’re serious about solidarity, you need to unlearn the reflex to demonize people just because their symptoms look messy, threatening, or unfamiliar. start interrogating where your language comes from—why does “narcissist” live in your insult toolkit? why is “toxic” your go-to label when someone is dysregulated or in pain?

stop centering comfort over care. real community means making space for people who challenge your assumptions—not just the ones who fit neatly into your idea of “safe.”

cluster b folks aren’t the enemy. we are already in your spaces. we’ve just learned to mask, hide, shrink, because we know what happens if we don’t.

you want to build something liberatory? include us.

because if you vision for justice doesn’t include cluster b folks, it’s just another hierarchy dressed in radical clothes.

Reading this post felt like looking in a mirror I wasn’t quite ready for.

Here I was, someone who considers themselves progressive, who fights against systemic oppression, who understands the importance of language in shaping how we treat each other—and yet I’d been using “narcissist” SO readily. The cognitive dissonance was uncomfortable.

The poster’s words particularly stung: “why does ‘narcissist’ live in your insult toolkit?” Because, if I’m honest, it did live there. It had become my shorthand for explaining the inexplicable, for making sense of behavior that had left me confused and hurt. But at what cost?

This isn’t just about political correctness or semantic debates. This is about how we understand harm, healing, and humanity itself. When we use clinical terms as explanations for abuse, we’re doing several things simultaneously:

We’re seeking to understand our experiences through available frameworks. For many survivors, learning about narcissistic personality patterns provides that “aha!” moment—suddenly, the gaslighting, the emotional whiplash, the feeling of being erased in our own relationships has a name and a known pattern. This naming can be profoundly validating.

But we’re also, perhaps inadvertently, contributing to the stigmatization of mental health conditions. We’re taking a diagnosis that affects real people—people who may themselves be trauma survivors, people who may be working hard in therapy, people who deserve compassion—and turning it into synonymous with “abuser.”

And perhaps most challenging: we’re potentially obscuring the real dynamics of abuse by focusing on presumed pathology rather than on behaviors and choices. After all, abuse is about actions taken, boundaries violated, and harm caused, not about what might be happening in someone’s neural pathways.

This tension—between the need to name our experiences and the risk of perpetuating harm through that naming—sits at the heart of why this conversation matters. It’s not abstract or academic for those of us who’ve lived through these relationships. The language we use shapes how we understand ourselves, heal, and relate to others who might be on different parts of this journey.

Part II: Understanding the Clinical and Historical Context

To wrestle meaningfully with whether “narcissistic abuse” is ableist or helpful, we first need to understand what we’re actually talking about when we say “narcissist” or “narcissistic abuse.” The history is more complex—and more human—than you might think.

From Myth to Modern Psychology: Etymology and Evolution of “Narcissist”

The story begins, as so many psychological concepts do, with the Greeks. You probably know the myth (by the poet Ovid in Metamorphoses): Narcissus, the beautiful youth who fell so deeply in love with his own reflection that he wasted away, unable to tear himself from his own image. What strikes me about this myth now, after everything I’ve experienced and learned, is how it captures both the tragedy and the trap of narcissism—the person most harmed by Narcissus’s self-obsession was, ultimately, Narcissus himself.

For centuries, this myth served as a cautionary tale about vanity and self-love. But it wasn’t until 1898 that the term entered medical literature, when English sexologist Havelock Ellis used “Narcissus-like” to describe what he saw as a form of autoeroticism. The German psychiatrist Paul Näcke coined the actual term “Narzissmus” (narcissism) a year later, in 1899, still in that early sexological context that seems almost quaint by today’s standards.

The concept truly evolved when psychoanalytic thinkers got hold of it. Otto Rank, one of Freud’s inner circle, published the first psychoanalytic paper on narcissism in 1911, shifting the focus from sexual self-obsession to vanity and self-admiration more broadly. But the game-changer came in 1914 when Freud himself wrote “On Narcissism: An Introduction.”

Here’s where it gets interesting—and more compassionate than you might expect. Freud didn’t see narcissism as simply bad or pathological. He distinguished between what he called “primary narcissism” (the normal self-focus we all need to survive, especially as infants) and “secondary narcissism” (when that self-focus becomes defensive and problematic). In Freud’s view, we all start life in a state of total self-focus—it’s how babies survive. The problem arises when something disrupts our normal development, when trauma or unmet needs cause us to retreat back into that self-protective shell.

Please consider and think about that for a moment. Even Freud, writing over a century ago, understood narcissism as potentially a response to hurt, a retreat into the self when the world becomes too threatening. This isn’t so different from what trauma researchers tell us today.

The concept lay relatively dormant for decades—partly because Freud found that traditional psychoanalytic therapy didn’t work well with narcissistic patients. It wasn’t until the 1960s and 70s that two major thinkers revolutionized our understanding. Heinz Kohut saw narcissism as stemming from early developmental deficits—when caregivers fail to provide adequate empathy and validation, the child’s natural grandiosity never transforms into healthy self-esteem. Otto Kernberg emphasized how harsh or inconsistent early experiences could make it difficult to integrate positive and negative self-images.

Both were essentially saying: narcissism is what happens when early relationships fail to provide what a developing self needs. It’s not a character flaw so much as a developmental arrest, a stuck place where the psyche tried to protect itself and never found a way to move forward.

By 1980, Narcissistic Personality Disorder entered the DSM-III as an official diagnosis. And this is where our modern confusion begins, because what started as a specific clinical term has exploded into popular usage. Today, we call anyone selfish or vain a “narcissist.” We diagnose our exes, our bosses, our politicians. The word has traveled far from its clinical origins, accumulating judgment and moral weight along the way.

Clinical Basis: Narcissistic Personality Disorder vs. Narcissistic Traits

So what exactly is Narcissistic Personality Disorder in clinical terms? Let me break this down, because understanding the distinction between traits and disorder is crucial for our conversation.

According to the DSM-5-TR, Narcissistic Personality Disorder is characterized by a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy. But here’s the key: to qualify for diagnosis, someone must meet at least five of nine criteria, and these patterns must cause significant impairment in their life or relationships. The criteria include:

• Grandiose sense of self-importance

• Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

• Belief that they are “special” and unique

• Need for excessive admiration

• Sense of entitlement

• Interpersonally exploitative behavior

• Lack of empathy

• Envy of others or belief that others envy them

• Arrogant behaviors or attitudes

Reading this list, I imagine many of us recognize someone—maybe several someones (maybe ourselves!!). But here’s what’s crucial to understand: having some narcissistic traits is not the same as having NPD. We all have moments of self-centeredness, entitlement, or lack of empathy. What makes it a disorder is when these traits are inflexible, maladaptive, persistent, and cause significant functional impairment.

The prevalence data is striking: only about 1-2% of the population actually meets criteria for NPD. Yet how many people do we label “narcissists” in our daily lives? This disconnect between clinical reality and popular usage is part of what makes this conversation so fraught.

Research also recognizes subtypes that complicate our stereotypes. There’s “grandiose” or overt narcissism—the classic braggart we might picture. But there’s also “vulnerable” or covert narcissism, characterized by defensiveness, insecurity, and hypersensitivity. Both share the core of self-centered preoccupation and struggles with empathy, but they manifest so differently. The grandiose narcissist might dominate a room; the vulnerable narcissist might play the perpetual victim. Some people swing between both presentations.

Here’s what really challenged my thinking: the research on childhood origins. While over-pampering might lead to grandiose narcissism, childhood abuse or neglect correlates more with the vulnerable form. In other words, different types of early wounds may lead to different narcissistic adaptations. This brings us back to trauma, to the ways we learn to protect ourselves when the world feels unsafe.

Perhaps most importantly for our discussion: NPD and abusive behavior are not synonymous. Not everyone with NPD is abusive, and not all abusive people have NPD. Abuse is abuse, no matter the diagnosis.

This is where I had to confront my own assumptions. When I called my ex a “covert narcissist,” was I describing a clinical reality or using a diagnostic label to make sense of harmful behaviors? Was I conflating explanation with excuse, or worse, suggesting that their presumed psychology was more important than the actual harm caused?

The clinical literature is clear: while certain narcissistic traits (like lack of empathy or entitlement) can predispose someone to harmful behaviors, they don’t determine them. Behavior is still a choice. A diagnosis might help us understand patterns, but doesn’t abdicate responsibility.

As I dove deeper into this research, I began to see how the term “narcissistic abuse” sits at this complex intersection of clinical knowledge, survivor experience, and popular understanding. It attempts to name something real—a particular pattern of emotional manipulation and harm—while using language that carries all this historical and diagnostic weight.

The question remains: Is this naming helpful or harmful? Does it illuminate patterns that help survivors heal, or does it further stigmatize those struggling with a genuine mental health condition? As we’ll see in the next section, the answer depends very much on how we use it.

Part III: The Case for “Narcissistic Abuse” as a Valid Term

Given this clinical foundation, many mental health professionals and survivors argue that “narcissistic abuse” serves a crucial purpose. As someone who initially found refuge in this term, I want to present their perspective—the perspective that was once fully mine, and that I still partially hold even as my views have evolved.

Origins in Clinical and Survivor Contexts

The phrase “narcissistic abuse” didn’t emerge from thin air or from a desire to demonize people with mental health conditions. It arose from clinicians and survivors trying to name a very specific pattern of harm that didn’t quite fit other categories.

The conceptual roots trace back to 1979, when psychoanalyst Alice Miller published “The Drama of the Gifted Child.” Miller described how narcissistic parents use their children as extensions of themselves, effectively denying the child’s own emotional needs and reality. While she didn’t use the exact phrase “narcissistic abuse,” she laid the groundwork for understanding how a parent’s narcissism could systematically harm a child in ways that were subtle yet devastating.

What Miller observed was different from physical abuse or simple neglect. It was a form of emotional annihilation where the child’s authentic self was erased in service of the parent’s ego needs. The child might be well-fed, well-dressed, even seemingly doted upon—but their actual emotional experience was consistently invalidated, their boundaries dissolved, their identity subsumed.

By the 1980s, therapists were identifying similar patterns in adult relationships. Psychologist Elinor Greenberg recounts that when she “first started working with victims of narcissistic abuse in the 1980s,” she had several clients whose spouses clearly fit NPD criteria and whose behavior followed predictable patterns: the cycle of idealization and devaluation, the gaslighting, the projection, the rage when challenged.

What made these cases distinct wasn’t just that the abuser was difficult or cruel—it was that the abuse seemed intricately connected to their narcissistic features. The manipulation wasn’t random; it specifically targeted the victim’s sense of reality and self-worth in ways that maintained the abuser’s inflated self-image.

The Emergence of the Term

Mental health professionals initially coined “narcissistic abuse” to describe the psychological abuse inflicted by narcissistic parents on their children. However, as more survivors began sharing their stories, it became clear that these same patterns appeared in adult relationships, romantic partnerships, friendships, and workplace dynamics.

By the 1990s and 2000s, a growing body of literature emerged. Authors like Nina Brown, Eleanor Payson, and Sandy Hotchkiss began documenting the specific tactics: gaslighting (making victims question their own perceptions), projection (accusing others of their own behaviors), love-bombing followed by devaluation, the extraction of “narcissistic supply” (attention and admiration), and the narcissistic rage that erupted when that supply was threatened.

What struck me when I first encountered these descriptions was the uncanny accuracy. It wasn’t just that my ex was mean or selfish—it was that their behavior followed such a specific template. The way they’d rewrite history to make themselves the hero or victim in every story. The way they’d fly into inexplicable rages over perceived slights, then act as if nothing had happened. The way they’d systematically undermine my confidence, interrogate me on my behaviors, while demanding constant validation for themselves.

Survivor Communities and Validation

Perhaps the most powerful argument for the term comes from survivors themselves. The subreddit r/raisedbynarcissists, founded in 2013, grew to over 300,000 members. Support groups, both online and offline, sprouted up around the world. Terms like “gray rock” (becoming as uninteresting as possible to avoid narcissistic attention), “hoovering” (attempts to suck victims back into relationships), and “flying monkeys” (people manipulated into doing the narcissist’s bidding) entered survivor vocabulary.

For many of us, finding these communities was like coming home to a reality we’d been denied. As one survivor described: “Most victims search for answers online,” and these forums became “a great source of validation, education and a sense of belonging.”

I remember my own experience of finding these communities. After years of being told I was “too sensitive,” “imagining things,” or “making a big deal out of nothing,” suddenly I was reading story after story that could have been mine. The specific phrases my ex used—sometimes, word for word—appeared in other survivors’ accounts. The bewildering behavior patterns that had left me feeling crazy were documented, analyzed, and recognized.

This validation isn’t trivial. Gaslighting—a core component of narcissistic abuse—specifically targets the victim’s sense of reality. By the time many of us seek help, we’ve internalized the idea that we’re the problem, that we’re too difficult, too needy, too much. Finding language that accurately describes our experience can be the first step in reclaiming our own perceptions.

Clinical Recognition of the Pattern

The mental health field has increasingly recognized that prolonged exposure to narcissistic abuse can lead to serious psychological consequences. Many survivors develop symptoms consistent with Complex PTSD: emotional flashbacks, hypervigilance, disrupted self-concept, and difficulties with trust and emotional regulation.

What makes narcissistic abuse particularly damaging is its invisible nature. Unlike physical abuse, which leaves marks, or even verbal abuse, which involves clear attacks, narcissistic abuse often operates through subtler means: the withdrawal of affection, the rewriting of history, the thousand small cuts to self-esteem, the cultivation of dependency followed by contempt for that dependency.

Dr. Ramani Durvasula, one of the leading clinical experts on narcissistic abuse (and someone who is often criticized for how much of a proponent she is of the term), describes it as “death by a thousand cuts”—no single incident that you can point to as definitively abusive, but a pattern that slowly erodes the victim’s sense of self.

Why the Term Matters: Describing a Distinct Pattern

When clinicians and survivors defend the term “narcissistic abuse,” they’re not trying to demonize everyone with NPD. They’re trying to name a specific constellation of behaviors that tend to occur together and create a particular type of harm.

Consider how we use other qualifying terms for abuse. We say “financial abuse” when someone uses money as a tool of control. We say “spiritual abuse” when someone weaponizes religion or spirituality. We say “sexual abuse” when someone violates sexual boundaries. Each term helps us understand not just that abuse occurred, but how it operated and what specific harms it might have caused.

“Narcissistic abuse” similarly specifies a pattern where the abuse serves to maintain the abuser’s inflated self-image at the expense of the victim’s reality and selfhood. It involves specific tactics like:

• Gaslighting and reality distortion

• Cycles of idealization and devaluation

• Projection of the abuser’s flaws onto the victim

• Extraction of constant admiration and attention

• Rage or punishment when narcissistic supply is threatened

• Systematic undermining of the victim’s self-worth

• Exploitation of the victim’s empathy and desire to help

Understanding this pattern helps survivors make sense of their experience and helps therapists provide targeted treatment. It’s not about diagnosing the abuser from afar—it’s about recognizing a specific dynamic that requires specific healing approaches.

The Empowerment Argument

For many survivors, having language for their experience is profoundly empowering. As one survivor shared: “Finding the term ‘narcissistic abuse’ felt like I finally had the language to describe the specific abuse that happened to me… It felt validating and healing, simply learning about the term.”

This empowerment extends beyond personal validation. With language comes community, resources, and targeted help. Therapists who understand narcissistic abuse can provide specialized treatment. Support groups can offer specific strategies. Books and resources can address the particular challenges of healing from this type of relationship.

Without this language, many survivors struggle in isolation, unable to articulate why their experience feels different from other types of relationship problems. They may be told to “communicate better” or “try couples counseling”—advice that can actually be dangerous with an abusive partner who uses vulnerability as ammunition.

The Clinical Precision Argument

Defenders of the term argue that when used properly, “narcissistic abuse” is descriptive, not derogatory. It describes what happened in the relationship, not a universal statement about all people with narcissistic traits.

Dr. Elinor Greenberg emphasizes: “Narcissistic abuse is real. No one in the field doubts that people who meet the criteria for NPD can be abusive to their partners. Anyone in a long-term intimate relationship with a narcissist is likely to experience some form of emotional abuse.”

The key phrase here is “can be”—not “will be,” not “must be,” but “can be.” The term describes a potential pattern, not an inevitable outcome.

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As I write this section, I’m aware of my own conflicted feelings. Everything I’ve just described was my lifeline when I was drowning in confusion and self-blame. The validation, the community, the framework for understanding—all of it helped me reclaim my sense of reality and begin healing.

But I’m also aware, now, of who might be reading this and feeling wounded by these words. The person with NPD who has never abused anyone, who is working hard in therapy, who already faces stigma and rejection. The survivor of abuse who also has narcissistic traits and feels doubly damned—victim and potential perpetrator at once.

This is the tension I’m trying to hold: the term “narcissistic abuse” has been genuinely helpful for many survivors, myself included. It names something real, provides community and resources, and enables healing. But does that utility justify its potential harm? And is there a way to preserve what’s helpful while addressing what’s problematic?

Part IV: The Trauma-Informed Counterpoint

And yet, as I’ve sat with this term longer, I’ve come to see another layer. What if we understood narcissistic traits not as character flaws but as survival strategies? This shift in perspective has fundamentally changed how I think about my ex, about the people we label as narcissists, and about the nature of harm itself.

The Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn Framework

To understand this perspective, we need to talk about how humans respond to trauma. When we face threats, our bodies and minds have a limited repertoire of responses, often summarized as the “4 Fs”: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.

These aren’t conscious choices—they’re hardwired survival mechanisms that our nervous systems deploy automatically. Fight means confronting the threat with aggression or force. Flight means escaping or avoiding. Freeze means shutting down, becoming invisible, playing dead. Fawn means appeasing, people-pleasing, trying to neutralize the threat through compliance.

Here’s where it gets profound: trauma therapist Pete Walker argues that when children experience chronic trauma, they can become stuck in one of these responses as their primary way of navigating the world. What starts as a survival strategy becomes a personality style.

And according to this framework, narcissistic personality represents an extreme fight-type adaptation.

Sit with that for a moment. The grandiosity, the entitlement, the rage, the need for control—what if these aren’t signs of someone who thinks they’re better than everyone else, but of someone who learned early that the only way to stay safe was to never, ever be vulnerable again?

Narcissistic Traits as Armor

When I started understanding narcissism through this lens, pieces began falling into place. The narcissistic traits we find so difficult—the arrogance, the dismissiveness, the inability to acknowledge fault—they all serve a protective function. They’re psychological armor, a way of saying, “I am powerful and superior, so I cannot be hurt.”

Consider how these traits align with the fight response:

• Grandiosity: “If I’m special and superior, no one can make me feel worthless”

• Entitlement: “If I deserve everything, no one can deprive me”

• Lack of empathy: “If I don’t feel others’ pain, they can’t manipulate my feelings”

• Rage at criticism: “Attack anyone who threatens my self-image before they can wound me”

• Devaluation of others: “If everyone else is beneath me, their opinions can’t hurt me”

One study found something fascinating: when people high in narcissism were socially excluded in an experiment, they reported feeling fine. But brain scans showed activation in the same regions that light up when we experience social pain. Their brains registered the hurt, but their conscious experience denied it. They were, quite literally, fighting off the feeling.

This isn’t just emotional—it’s neurobiological. The narcissistic defense happens at such a fundamental level that the person may genuinely not consciously feel the vulnerability they’re defending against.

The Other Trauma Responses in Narcissism

While fight is primary, I’ve come to recognize elements of the other trauma responses in narcissistic patterns too. The emotional coldness and detachment I experienced with my ex? That could be understood as a form of freeze—a shutting down of emotional systems that might lead to pain. When things got too intimate, too real, they would simply… disconnect. Not consciously, not maliciously, but as automatically as your body pulls your hand back from a hot stove.

The flight response shows up too. The deflection, the denial, the rewriting of history—these are all forms of psychological flight. When confronted with their own behavior, my ex would literally flee the conversation, change the subject, or deny that events had happened the way I remembered them. At the time, it felt like gaslighting (and the effect was certainly gaslighting). But what if it was also an unconscious flight from any reality that threatened their defensive self-image?

Even fawn makes an appearance, though in a twisted form. The initial love-bombing phase that so many survivors describe—the intense attention, the mirroring of our interests, the “you’re perfect, we’re soulmates” intensity—could this be a strategic fawn response? A learned behavior from childhood where they discovered that by perfectly reading and meeting someone’s needs, they could secure the attachment they desperately needed while maintaining control?

My ex was brilliant at the beginning of our relationship at being exactly who I needed them to be. Only later did I realize I’d fallen in love with a mirror, not a person. But what if that mirroring wasn’t calculated manipulation but a survival strategy learned so early it became automatic?

The Research on Trauma and NPD

The data increasingly supports this trauma-informed view. Multiple studies have found high rates of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in people diagnosed with NPD. A 2024 case analysis concluded that “ACEs are the primary risk factor for the development of NPD in adulthood. Dysfunctional household environments and parenting practices compound the association between ACEs and pathological narcissism.”

What’s particularly striking is that both neglect and overindulgence can lead to narcissistic adaptations. A child who is emotionally neglected might build a grandiose false self to cover feelings of worthlessness. A child who is told they’re special and superior might cling to that identity because anything less feels like annihilation. In both cases, the authentic self—with its needs, vulnerabilities, and ordinary human qualities—gets buried under defensive armor.

The trauma doesn’t have to be obvious or severe by conventional standards. Sometimes it’s the absence of something crucial—what therapists call “empathic failure.” If a child’s emotions are consistently dismissed, their authentic self repeatedly rejected, they might learn that the only safe self is an invulnerable one.

The Neurobiological Evidence

Brain imaging studies add another layer to this understanding. Research has found structural and functional differences in the brains of people with high narcissistic traits, particularly in regions related to empathy and emotional processing.

One study found reduced gray matter in the left anterior insula—a region crucial for empathy and emotional awareness. Another found differences in the prefrontal cortex related to emotional regulation. These findings could be interpreted in multiple ways, but through a trauma lens, they might represent the neurological footprint of chronic early defensive patterns.

When you spend your formative years in fight-or-flight mode, when you learn early that vulnerability equals danger, your brain develops accordingly. The neural pathways for empathy and emotional connection might be underdeveloped, not because the person is inherently uncaring, but because those pathways were too dangerous to develop fully.

Understanding Without Excusing

I want to be absolutely clear about something: understanding narcissistic behavior as trauma-driven doesn’t excuse it. My ex’s probable trauma history doesn’t erase the harm they caused me. The fact that their behavior might have been unconscious or defensive doesn’t make it less damaging. And the same goes for me.

But this understanding does complicate the narrative. When I called my ex a narcissist, I was, in some way, reducing them to a diagnostic label. I was making their behavior about their presumed pathology rather than about the dynamics between us, the systems we were both operating in, and yes, the choices they made regardless of their history.

Dr. James Masterson observed that narcissistic rage and arrogance are defenses against underlying self-doubt and shame. The more I’ve sat with this idea, the more I’ve recognized moments where I saw behind my ex’s mask—brief flashes of such profound insecurity and self-loathing that it took my breath away. At the time, I didn’t know what to do with those moments. Now I understand them as glimpses of the wounded child beneath the armor.

The Tragic Cycle

What makes this all so tragic is that the very defenses that protect the narcissistic person also prevent them from getting what they most need: genuine connection, acceptance of their authentic self, and healing for their original wounds.

By maintaining an inflated false self, they can never experience being loved for who they really are. By devaluing others, they ensure that no one’s care can truly reach them. By denying vulnerability, they lock themselves out of the very experiences that could help them heal.

Knowing all of this breaks my heart now in a way it couldn’t when I was actively experiencing abuse and healing from my own wounds.

The Both/And of Trauma and Harm

This trauma-informed lens doesn’t simplify things—it makes them more complex. We’re asked to hold multiple truths simultaneously:

• Narcissistic traits often stem from trauma AND they can cause tremendous harm to others

• The behavior may be unconscious or defensive AND it is still the person’s responsibility

• Understanding someone’s pain AND maintaining boundaries against their harmful behavior

• Having compassion for someone’s wounds AND protecting ourselves from being wounded by them

One psychologist described narcissism as “PTSD of the self”—an injury to the very core of identity that the person defends against at all costs. This framing helps me understand why traditional approaches often fail, why confronting a narcissist directly often backfires, why they seem unable to simply “choose” to be different.

If your entire sense of self depends on maintaining a defensive false image, then anyone who threatens that image—even by loving you authentically—becomes an existential threat. No wonder my attempts to have honest, vulnerable conversations with my ex felt like battles. I thought we were discussing our relationship; they were fighting for their psychological survival.

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This trauma-informed understanding has changed how I think about the language we use. When we say someone is a “narcissist,” we’re collapsing their entire being into a label. When we say someone has “narcissistic traits that likely stem from early trauma,” we’re acknowledging both the behavior pattern and the human pain beneath it.

But does this mean we should abandon the term “narcissistic abuse”? Does understanding the trauma behind narcissistic traits mean we can’t name the specific patterns of harm they can create? This is the question I’ve been wrestling with, and it’s what brings us to the next part of our exploration: the ableism critique and its implications for how we talk about abuse and mental health.

Part V: The Ableism Critique - A Deeper Dive

This brings us back to the disability rights critique that started my whole journey of questioning. Now that we understand both the clinical basis and trauma roots of narcissism, let’s examine why some advocates see the term “narcissistic abuse” as inherently problematic. And I’ll be honest: these critiques have fundamentally challenged how I think and talk about my own experiences.

The Weight of Words: When Diagnosis Becomes Insult

The first time someone suggested I was being ableist by using the term “narcissistic abuse,” I felt defensive. How could I be ableist when I was the one who had been harmed? But as I’ve learned repeatedly in my journey through various social justice movements, impact matters more than intent, and our language shapes reality in ways we don’t always recognize.

The disability rights critique starts with a simple observation: we’ve turned a clinical diagnosis into a moral judgment. When we say “narcissist” in everyday conversation, we’re rarely making a neutral statement about someone’s mental health. We’re making a character assessment. We’re saying this person is bad, toxic, evil, irredeemable.

Think about how we use the word compared to other mental health terms. We might say someone “has depression” or “lives with anxiety,” using person-first language that separates the individual from their condition. But with narcissism? We say someone “is a narcissist,” as if it encompasses their entire being. And we say it with venom, with disgust, with the kind of totalizing judgment we’d hopefully never apply to someone with any other mental health condition.

This linguistic pattern reveals something deeper. We’ve collectively decided that some mental health conditions deserve compassion and others deserve condemnation. We advocate for understanding when someone’s depression makes them withdraw from relationships, but we demonize when someone’s personality disorder makes them difficult to relate to. Where’s the consistency in that?

The Stigma That Prevents Healing

One of the most compelling arguments I’ve encountered is that the widespread demonization of narcissism actually prevents people from seeking help. If you’re struggling with narcissistic traits—maybe you recognize your difficulty with empathy, your defensive reactions, your need for constant validation—where do you turn when the entire discourse around your struggles paints you as a monster?

I’ve since connected with people who have NPD or narcissistic traits and are actively working on themselves in therapy. Their stories have been eye-opening. One person shared (paraphrased): “I knew something was wrong with how I related to others, but every resource I found talked about people like me as if we were irredeemable predators. It took me years to work up the courage to tell a therapist about my narcissistic traits because I was terrified they’d refuse to treat me.”

Another person described the double bind they face (paraphrased): “I’m working so hard to develop empathy and healthier relationship patterns, but I can’t talk about my journey because admitting I have NPD means people immediately assume I’m dangerous. The stigma keeps us isolated, which just reinforces the disorder.”

This stigma doesn’t just harm people with NPD—it potentially harms their future partners, friends, and children by preventing them from getting treatment that could interrupt cycles of hurt. If we truly care about preventing narcissistic abuse, shouldn’t we want people with narcissistic traits to feel safe seeking help?

The Problem of Armchair Diagnosis

Perhaps the most widespread issue is how freely we diagnose others with narcissism based on limited information. I did this myself—I became convinced my ex was a “covert narcissist” based on articles I read online, validation from clinicians and friends alike, and my interpretation of their behavior. But I’m not a psychiatrist. I never saw my ex in a clinical setting. I was viewing them through the retrospective lens of my own hurt and searching for explanations.

The neurodivergent community rightfully points out that this armchair diagnosing is both scientifically irresponsible and potentially harmful. When we label someone a narcissist without proper clinical assessment, we’re:

• Potentially misidentifying the source of harmful behavior

• Reducing complex human beings to a single label

• Spreading mental health misinformation

• Contributing to stigma that affects everyone with that diagnosis

As one advocate put it: “In recent years, people tend to armchair-diagnose people they dislike with NPD… The popularity of the term ‘narcissistic abuse’ is one example. It’s often used when a victim or bystander assumes an abuser has NPD.”

How many of us in survivor communities swap stories about our “narcissistic” exes without any actual knowledge of whether they have NPD? We’re using clinical language to process our trauma, but in doing so, we might be perpetuating harmful stereotypes about a mental health condition.

When “Narcissist” Becomes Our Generation’s “Crazy”

I’ve started to notice how “narcissist” functions in our discourse similarly to how “crazy” or “psycho” were used in previous generations—as a catch-all dismissal for behavior we don’t like or understand. Your ex was selfish? Narcissist. Your boss takes credit for your work? Narcissist. That influencer posts too many selfies? Narcissist.

This trivializes both the genuine mental health condition and the serious patterns of abuse some of us have experienced. When everything is narcissistic abuse, nothing is. When everyone difficult is a narcissist, the term loses its meaning and its utility.

But there’s something even more insidious happening. By making “narcissist” our go-to explanation for bad behavior, we’re locating the problem in individual pathology rather than examining larger systems and patterns. What role does our individualistic, capitalistic society play in encouraging narcissistic traits? How do systems of oppression create environments where some people learn that domination and lack of empathy are survival strategies? When we reduce everything to individual diagnosis, we miss these bigger pictures.

The Intersection with Other Marginalizations

The critique becomes even more complex when we consider how psychiatric labels have historically been weaponized against marginalized communities. Women expressing anger have been labeled hysterical. Black people asserting boundaries have been labeled aggressive or antisocial. LGBTQ+ people have had their identities pathologized.

Given this history, we should be deeply cautious about how we deploy psychiatric labels, especially in ways that could further marginalize already vulnerable people. Some people with NPD are also survivors of abuse, are also from marginalized communities, and are also struggling with multiple intersecting challenges. When we paint all people with NPD as irredeemable abusers, we may be compounding their marginalization.

One autistic advocate shared how this intersection played out in their life (paraphrased): “I was abused by my parents, who probably had narcissistic traits. But I’m also autistic, and I’ve been called narcissistic for my autistic traits—for needing things a certain way, for struggling with cognitive empathy, for talking about my special interests. The way people throw around ‘narcissist’ as an insult makes me feel unsafe in survivor spaces and neurodivergent spaces alike.”

The “Abuse is Abuse” Argument

Perhaps the most straightforward critique is this: abuse is wrong because of what is done, not because of the mental state of the person doing it. When we prefix “abuse” with “narcissistic,” we risk implying that:

• This abuse is somehow special or different because of the abuser’s presumed psychology

• Other forms of abuse are lesser or more acceptable

• The abuser’s mental health status is relevant to the victim’s healing

As one advocate argues, “There is no such thing as narcissistic abuse. It’s just abuse.” From this perspective, adding the qualifier “narcissistic” only serves to stigmatize people with NPD while adding nothing useful to our understanding of the abuse itself.

This argument challenged me deeply. Was my need to call it “narcissistic abuse” actually about understanding my experience, or was it about making my ex into a certain type of person—a “narcissist”—to help me make sense of what happened? Was I locating the problem in their presumed pathology rather than in their choices and actions?

The Personal Impact of These Critiques

I’ll be honest: encountering these critiques sent me into a spiral of self-doubt. Had I been perpetuating ableism while trying to heal? Was I no better than people who use “bipolar” as an insult or “OCD” to describe their tidiness preferences? The cognitive dissonance was intense—I consider myself someone who fights against oppression, yet here I was potentially contributing to the stigmatization of people with mental health conditions.

But I also felt a flare of anger. These critics didn’t know what I’d been through. They didn’t understand how the framework of narcissistic abuse had helped me recognize patterns, find community, and begin healing. It felt like they were prioritizing the feelings of potential abusers over the needs of actual victims.

This anger was informative. It showed me how attached I’d become to this narrative, how much I needed my ex to be a “narcissist” rather than just someone I loved deeply who had deeply hurt me. And that attachment, I realized, might be preventing me from fully healing and moving forward.

The Challenge of Multiple Truths

As I’ve sat with these critiques, I’ve come to believe that multiple things can be true simultaneously:

• The term “narcissistic abuse” has helped many survivors, AND it contributes to mental health stigma

• People with NPD deserve compassion and access to treatment, AND their behavior can cause serious harm

• We need language to describe specific patterns of abuse, AND we need to be careful about how that language impacts marginalized communities

• Survivors deserve to name their experiences, AND we should be thoughtful about the names we choose

The challenge is holding all of these truths at once without defaulting to simple answers or binary thinking.

Moving Beyond the Binary

What strikes me most about this debate is how it mirrors the very black-and-white thinking that many of us developed as a survival response to abuse. Either narcissists are evil abusers OR they’re misunderstood victims of ableism. Either the term narcissistic abuse is helpful OR it’s harmful. Either we center survivors OR we center people with mental illness.

But what if we need more nuanced thinking? What if the path forward requires us to hold complexity, to resist easy categories, to find language that validates survivors’ experiences without demonizing entire groups of people?

This is the question I’ve been grappling with: How do we honor the reality of specific abuse patterns while also treating mental health conditions with the respect and nuance they deserve? How do we create spaces that are safe for both survivors and people with stigmatized conditions—especially when those categories overlap?

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As I prepare to share my conclusions in the next section, I find myself thinking about the person I was when I first started using the term “narcissistic abuse”—desperate for understanding, hungry for validation, needing language to make sense of my experience. I don’t want to shame that person or others in that position. But I also think about the person with NPD who might be reading this, seeing themselves reflected only in the sections about harm and abuse, never in the sections about healing and humanity.

How do we hold space for both of these people? How do we create language and frameworks that serve healing rather than perpetuating cycles of harm? These are the questions that led me to my current, still-evolving perspective.

Part VI: Finding a Middle Path

So where does this leave us? Can we hold multiple truths simultaneously? After months and months of wrestling with these questions, I’ve come to believe that the answer isn’t to choose a side but to find a way to honor the complexity of human experience—both the experience of being harmed and the experience of being harmful, often within the same person.

The False Binary We’ve Created

As I’ve engaged with both survivor communities and disability rights advocates, I’ve noticed we often fall into an impossible binary. Either you support survivors by using terms like “narcissistic abuse,” or you support people with mental health conditions by avoiding such language. Either you validate the harm caused, or you acknowledge the humanity of those who cause harm. But this binary thinking—this splitting of the world into good and bad, victim and perpetrator, us and them—ironically mirrors the very patterns many of us are trying to heal from.

What if the path forward requires us to develop more sophisticated thinking? What if healing—both individual and collective—demands that we hold paradox rather than seeking simple answers?

I think about my ex-spouse. In my anger and pain, I needed them to be a villain. The label “narcissist” served that purpose perfectly. It explained their behavior in a way that located the problem entirely within them, their pathology, their disorder. But as I’ve healed and gained distance, I’ve started to see them more wholly—as someone who caused me tremendous harm AND as someone who was likely operating from their own unhealed wounds. This doesn’t excuse what they did. It doesn’t mean I would ever choose to have them in my life again. But it does complicate the narrative in ways that feel more honest and ultimately more freeing.

The Both/And of Accountability and Compassion

One of the most profound shifts in my thinking has been recognizing that accountability and compassion are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I’ve come to believe that real accountability requires compassion, and real compassion requires accountability.

When we demonize people who cause harm, we actually make it easier for them to dismiss accountability. If they’re monsters, if they’re fundamentally different from the rest of us, then change becomes impossible. The shame becomes so overwhelming that the only option is denial. But when we can say, “You are a human being who has caused serious harm, and you are capable of making different choices,” we open the door for genuine transformation.

This doesn’t mean we minimize harm or make excuses. In the relationship, I had already spent years making excuses for my ex’s behavior, trying to heal them with my love and understanding. That wasn’t compassion—it was enabling. Real compassion means seeing someone clearly, including their capacity for harm, and believing they can do better while protecting ourselves from being harmed in the meantime.

Describing Patterns Without Diagnosing People

So how do we talk about our experiences without contributing to stigma? I’ve been experimenting with different approaches, and here’s what I’ve found helpful:

Instead of saying “my narcissistic ex,” I might say “my ex who showed a pattern of emotional manipulation and lack of empathy.” Instead of “narcissistic abuse,” I might describe specific behaviors: “I experienced gaslighting, emotional manipulation, and cycles of idealization and devaluation in my relationship.”

This might seem like mere semantics, but I’ve found it profoundly shifting. When I describe behaviors rather than diagnosing people, several things happen. First, I stay grounded in my actual experience rather than in my interpretations. Second, I avoid contributing to mental health stigma. Third, I actually give more useful information—telling someone my ex was a “narcissist” doesn’t tell them much about what I actually experienced, but describing specific patterns does.

I’ve also started using phrases like “narcissistic patterns” or “narcissistic dynamics” rather than labeling people. Or even replacing “narcissistic” with “antagonistic.” This acknowledges that certain behaviors tend to cluster together while avoiding reducing any human being to a diagnosis. It locates the problem in patterns of relating rather than in fixed identities.

The Power and Limits of Diagnostic Language

Through this journey, I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for both the power and the limits of diagnostic language. Diagnoses like NPD serve important purposes—they help clinicians recognize patterns, guide treatment approaches, and advance research. For some people with NPD, receiving a diagnosis has been validating and helpful, giving them a framework for understanding their struggles and accessing appropriate treatment.

But diagnostic language was never meant to be a weapon, and it was never meant to capture the full complexity of human experience. When we use clinical terms in casual conversation, we often strip them of nuance and turn them into moral categories. We forget that diagnoses describe patterns of symptoms, not whole human beings.

I think about how different our discourse might be if we remembered that personality disorders are fundamentally about patterns of suffering—the suffering of the person with the disorder and often the suffering of those around them. What if instead of using these labels to create hierarchies of “good” and “bad” mentally ill people, we used them as invitations to deeper understanding?

Creating Survivor Spaces That Don’t Perpetuate Harm

One of my biggest concerns in moving away from the term “narcissistic abuse” was losing the community and validation it provided. But I’ve discovered that we can create survivor spaces that validate our experiences without alienating entire groups of people.

In the smaller, more informal support groups I now participate in, we’ve developed community agreements that encourage describing behaviors rather than diagnosing partners. We share our stories, identify patterns, and support each other’s healing without needing to label our former partners as narcissists or sociopaths or any other diagnostic category. Yes, sometimes those terms come up, but in very very nuanced ways (more akin to using language that pre-dates the formation of the NPD diagnosis). Surprisingly, this has made our discussions richer, not poorer. When we focus on specific behaviors and dynamics, we often find more commonalities across different types of harmful relationships.

We’ve also made space for the complexity of our own behaviors in these relationships. Many of us developed our own survival strategies that weren’t always healthy. Some of us recognize narcissistic traits in ourselves. Creating space for this complexity has been profoundly healing—it’s allowed us to take responsibility for our own growth while still holding others accountable for harm.

The Question of Utility

When I consider whether the term “narcissistic abuse” is helpful, I keep coming back to the question: helpful for what? If the goal is to quickly communicate a complex pattern of experiences, then yes, it can be helpful. If the goal is to find community with others who’ve had similar experiences, it can serve that purpose. If the goal is to understand the dynamics of certain types of emotional manipulation, it provides a framework.

But if the goal is to heal—truly heal, not just transfer our pain into anger at a diagnosed other—then I’m less convinced of its utility. In my own healing journey, I’ve found that the more I move away from diagnostic labels (or inflammatory labels that people use in wildly different ways) and toward understanding human behavior in context, the more freedom I find. The more I can see my ex as a complex human being rather than a “narcissist,” the less power they have over my emotional life.

And if the goal is to create a world with less harm, then we must consider how our language might perpetuate cycles of stigma, shame, and isolation that prevent people from getting help and making changes.

A Proposal for Moving Forward

So where does this leave us? I don’t have perfect answers, but I have some proposals for how we might move forward:

We can validate and support survivors without using diagnostic labels. We can describe patterns of harm, share resources, and build community around our experiences without reducing complex human beings to psychiatric categories.

We can advocate for better education about emotional manipulation and psychological abuse without attributing these behaviors to specific mental health conditions. These patterns exist across many contexts and don’t require a personality disorder to manifest.

We can push for more research and resources on personality disorders that center the humanity and potential for growth of people with these conditions. The current discourse too often assumes people with NPD are untreatable, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

We can develop more nuanced language that captures the complexity of harmful relational dynamics. Terms like “emotional abuse,” “psychological manipulation,” “empathy deficits in relationships,” or even “narcissistic relational patterns” might serve us better than “narcissistic abuse.”

We can hold space for the fact that many people—perhaps most people—will at times exhibit narcissistic traits, especially when under stress or threat. This doesn’t make everyone a narcissist, but it does remind us that these patterns exist on a spectrum and arise in context.

The Personal Work This Requires

I want to be honest about how difficult this shift has been for me. Letting go of the “narcissistic abuse” framework has meant letting go of a certain kind of certainty about my experience. It’s meant tolerating more complexity and ambiguity. It’s meant examining my own need to locate the problem entirely within my ex rather than looking at larger patterns and systems.

It’s also meant confronting my own capacity for harm. If narcissistic traits can be understood as trauma responses, what are my own trauma responses? How have I developed defensive patterns that might hurt others? This isn’t about false equivalencies—the harm I experienced was real and serious. But acknowledging my own imperfections and potential for growth has been essential to moving beyond a victim identity.

Perhaps most challengingly, it’s meant developing compassion for someone who hurt me deeply. Not the kind of compassion that excuses or enables, but the kind that recognizes shared humanity even across profound difference and harm. This compassion isn’t for my ex’s benefit—they’re not in my life and never will be again. It’s for my own freedom.

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As I write this, I imagine readers in different positions. Some of you might be thinking, “But what about accountability? What about justice?” Others might be thinking, “Finally, someone who sees the humanity in people with NPD.” Both responses are valid, and both point to the ongoing work we need to do.

Creating language and frameworks that serve healing for all people—those who have been harmed and those who cause harm, recognizing that these categories often overlap—is not easy work. It requires us to resist simple narratives and hold complexity. It requires us to examine our own biases and assumptions. It requires us to believe in the possibility of change while maintaining appropriate boundaries.

But I believe this work is essential if we want to break cycles of harm rather than simply perpetuating them with different players. And it starts with how we talk about these experiences—with the language we choose and the stories we tell.

Part VII: Moving Forward - A Personal and Collective Reckoning

After all this research and reflection, I find myself in a different place than where I started. Not a place of certainty, but perhaps a place of more thoughtful uncertainty. The questions that brought me here haven’t been answered so much as deepened, and I think that might be exactly what needs to happen.

How My Language Has Changed

I want to be concrete about how this journey has changed the way I talk about my experiences. When I first left my relationship in 2022, I would say things like, “My ex is a covert narcissist who subjected me to narcissistic abuse.” The certainty in that statement felt protective, like armor against the gaslighting I’d experienced. If I could name it, categorize it, diagnose it, then maybe I could make sense of it.

Now, two and a half years later, my language has softened and become more specific. I might say, “I was in a relationship where I experienced emotional manipulation, the silent treatment, boundary pushing, physical experiences that harmed me, gaslighting, and cycles of idealization and devaluation. These patterns deeply harmed me and seemed connected to my ex’s inability to tolerate vulnerability or criticism.”

This shift isn’t about minimizing what happened. The harm was just as real, the trauma just as valid. But by describing behaviors and patterns rather than diagnosing my ex, I feel like I’m honoring both the truth of my experience and the complexity of human psychology. I’m locating the problem in what was done rather than in who my ex fundamentally is.

I’ve also started acknowledging more readily the ways I contributed to our dynamic—not in a self-blaming way, but in a way that recognizes relationships as systems. Yes, my ex’s behavior was harmful and unacceptable. And yes, I had my own patterns of enabling, of conflict avoidance, of seeking validation from someone incapable of providing it healthily. This doesn’t make the abuse my fault, but it does give me more agency in ensuring I don’t repeat these patterns.

The Challenge of Community and Connection

One of the hardest parts of this shift has been navigating survivor communities. Many of these spaces saved my life—they gave me validation when I was drowning in self-doubt, language when I couldn’t articulate my experience, and connection when I felt impossibly alone. How do I honor that while also evolving in my understanding?

I’ve found that I can still participate meaningfully in these communities while being intentional about my language. When someone shares their story of abuse by someone they identify as a narcissist, I don’t correct them or launch into a discussion about ableism. That would be cruel and inappropriate. Instead, I focus on validating their experience: “That sounds incredibly painful. Gaslighting is so disorienting, and it makes sense you’re seeking to understand what happened.”

I’ve also sought out and helped create survivor spaces that use more neutral language while still acknowledging patterns. We talk about “emotional abuse,” “manipulation tactics,” “trauma bonding,” and “healing from toxic relationships.” We discuss specific behaviors and their impacts. Surprisingly, these conversations often go deeper than when we used diagnostic labels, because we’re forced to really examine what happened rather than falling back on shorthand.

But I’ll be honest—it’s sometimes lonely. When I see posts about how “all narcissists are evil” or “narcissistic abuse is the worst form of abuse,” I feel disconnected from communities that once felt like home. I understand the pain behind those statements, but I can no longer participate in that kind of totalizing discourse.

What Does Healing Look Like Now?

My understanding of healing has fundamentally shifted. Initially, healing meant understanding that I was the victim of a narcissist’s abuse. It meant clearly delineating good (me) from bad (them). It meant joining communities of other survivors who understood that narcissists were dangerous and needed to be avoided at all costs.

But that framework, while initially protective, eventually became limiting. It kept me in a victim identity. It located all the pathology outside myself. It made my ex into a fixed entity—a narcissist—rather than a human being who made harmful choices. And perhaps most importantly, it didn’t actually help me understand why I had been drawn to and stayed in that relationship, which meant I remained vulnerable to repeating the pattern.

Now, healing looks different. It involves:

Understanding my ex as a complex human being who likely developed defensive patterns in response to their own wounds. This doesn’t excuse their behavior, but it helps me see them as human rather than monster, which paradoxically gives me more freedom.

Examining my own patterns with curiosity rather than judgment. Why was I drawn to someone who offered intense validation followed by withdrawal? What in my history made that feel familiar? How did I participate in cycles of conflict and reconciliation?

Developing compassion for both of us while maintaining firm boundaries. I can have empathy for my ex’s likely pain while also knowing I will never allow them back into my life. I can have compassion for my younger self while also taking responsibility for my growth.

Focusing on building skills rather than avoiding narcissists. Instead of trying to spot and avoid all potential narcissists (an impossible and paranoia-inducing task), I focus on developing better boundaries, communication skills, and self-awareness.

Understanding abuse as emerging from complex systems rather than individual pathology. This includes examining how cultural norms, family systems, capitalism, and other factors create conditions where harm flourishes.

The Collective Healing We Need

This brings me to the collective level, because I don’t think we can fully heal individually without addressing larger systems. We live in a culture that often rewards narcissistic traits—look at who we elevate to positions of power, who we follow on social media, who we’re told to emulate. We live in economic systems that require us to self-promote, to brand ourselves, to compete rather than collaborate.

Is it any wonder that narcissistic traits are common? Is it surprising that people develop defensive patterns of grandiosity and entitlement in a world that often feels threatening and scarcity-based? This doesn’t excuse harmful behavior, but it does suggest that individual healing must be accompanied by collective change.

I dream of a world where:

Mental health treatment is accessible to everyone, including people with stigmatized conditions like personality disorders. Where seeking help for narcissistic traits is seen as brave rather than shameful.

We have better models for accountability that don’t rely on punishment and exile but on genuine transformation and repair. Where people who have caused harm can find paths to making amends and changing their behavior.

Survivors of abuse have access to support that doesn’t require them to diagnose their abusers or participate in stigmatizing discourse. Where we can hold the full complexity of our experiences.

We recognize that most of us will, at some point, cause harm to others, and that the capacity for both harm and healing exists within all of us. Where we approach each other with humility and commitment to growth.

We examine and transform the systems that cultivate narcissistic defenses—cultures of scarcity, competition, and disconnection. Where we build communities based on interdependence and genuine care.

A Letter to Different Readers

As I near the end of this reflection, I want to speak directly to different people who might be reading this:

To survivors who feel invalidated by my shift away from “narcissistic abuse” language: Your pain is real. The harm you experienced is valid. You deserve support and healing, and whatever language helps you make sense of your experience right now is okay. My journey is not a judgment on yours.

To people with NPD or narcissistic traits who are trying to heal: You are not a monster. You are a human being with the capacity for growth and change. The path may be difficult, but healing is possible. You deserve support and compassion, even as you take accountability for any harm you’ve caused.

To therapists, researchers, and healers: We need more nuanced approaches that can hold the humanity of all people while still addressing harmful behaviors. We need treatments that don’t write people off as untreatable. We need to examine our own biases about personality disorders.

To all of us trying to figure out how to talk about these things: It’s okay to not have perfect language. It’s okay to be in process. What matters is that we approach these conversations with humility, curiosity, and care for all people affected.

Where I’ve Landed (For Now)

So, to return to my original questions: Is using the phrase “narcissistic abuse” inherently ableist? I’ve come to believe that it can be used in ways that contribute to ableism, particularly when it’s used to demonize everyone with NPD or when it becomes our primary lens for understanding harmful behavior. But I also understand why survivors find it valuable, and I don’t think the answer is simply to ban the term.

Is it helpful? That depends on what we’re trying to achieve. If we’re trying to quickly communicate a pattern of experience or find community with others who’ve experienced similar dynamics, it can be helpful. If we’re trying to deeply heal, transform systems of harm, or create a more just world for all people including those with mental health conditions, then I think we need more nuanced language and frameworks.

My thesis remains that the usage of the word “narcissist” may be doing more harm than good—not because the patterns of behavior it describes aren’t real, but because diagnostic language used as moral categories inevitably creates hierarchies of deservingness that undermine our collective healing. When we locate the problem in individual pathology rather than in behaviors, choices, and systems, we miss opportunities for transformation.

But I hold this thesis lightly, as one perspective among many. I offer it not as the final word but as an invitation to deeper reflection. How can we validate the experiences of survivors while also holding the humanity of people who cause harm? How can we maintain accountability while cultivating compassion? How can we heal individually while also transforming the systems that create conditions for harm?

These are not questions with easy answers. They require us to sit with complexity, to resist the allure of simple narratives, to keep choosing growth even when it’s uncomfortable. They require us to believe that all people have the capacity for both harm and healing, and to create conditions that nurture the latter.

My journey with these questions is far from over. Language is always evolving, understanding is always deepening, and healing is not a destination but a practice. What I know is that I want to be part of conversations and communities that hold space for the full complexity of human experience—the ways we hurt and are hurt, the ways we heal and help others heal, the ways we’re all fumbling toward something better.

Perhaps that’s what moving forward looks like: not perfect answers but better questions, not fixed positions but ongoing practice, not simple stories but the messy, beautiful, difficult truth of being human together.

Conclusion: The Both/And of Trauma and Language

As I reach the end of this exploration, I find myself thinking about the nature of language itself—how it both illuminates and obscures, how it can heal and harm, often simultaneously. The words we use to describe our experiences shape those experiences in profound ways. They create communities and boundaries, offer validation and perpetuate stigma, provide clarity and sow confusion. The term “narcissistic abuse” embodies all of these contradictions.

When I began this journey, I was looking for answers. Was the term ableist or not? Helpful or harmful? What I’ve discovered is that these binary questions miss the point. The more important questions might be: How does our language shape our capacity for healing? What stories does it allow us to tell, and what stories does it foreclose? Who is included in our narratives of harm and recovery, and who is exiled?

Returning to the Thesis

My thesis—that the usage of the word “narcissist” may be doing more harm to both survivors and abusers, to people living with diagnosed disorders, and to people outside of the Western clinical system—feels both true and incomplete.

It’s true in that our casual use of “narcissist” as an epithet creates real harm. It stigmatizes people with NPD who are trying to heal. It reduces complex human beings to diagnostic categories. It locates pathology in individuals rather than examining systems. It can keep survivors trapped in identities of victimhood and abusers trapped in identities of monstrosity. It exports Western psychiatric frameworks in ways that may not serve global communities with different understandings of self, relationship, and healing.

But it’s incomplete because for many survivors, myself included, this language provided a crucial lifeline. It offered recognition when we were gaslit into doubting our own perceptions. It created communities where we could share our stories and find validation. It gave us frameworks for understanding patterns that had left us confused and self-blaming. To simply say the term causes more harm than good erases these very real benefits.

The Paradox of Necessary but Insufficient Language

Perhaps what I’ve really discovered is that “narcissistic abuse” represents a category of language that is sometimes necessary but ultimately insufficient. It’s like a cast we might need when healing from a broken bone—essential for a time, providing structure and protection, but eventually something we must remove if we want to regain full mobility.

The danger comes when we mistake the cast for the healing itself, when we become so attached to the protective structure that we forget it was always meant to be temporary. When “narcissistic abuse” becomes our permanent lens for understanding relationships, when “narcissist” becomes an identity rather than a description of patterns, when diagnostic language becomes moral categorization—that’s when the cast becomes a cage.

Toward a More Spacious Language

What would it mean to develop language spacious enough to hold all of our truths? Language that could validate survivors’ experiences without demonizing people with mental health conditions? Language that could acknowledge patterns of harm while maintaining the possibility of transformation? Language that could be precise about behaviors without reducing people to fixed categories?

I don’t have perfect answers, but I have inklings. This more spacious language might:

Describe behaviors and impacts rather than diagnosing people (“I experienced gaslighting and emotional manipulation” rather than “I was abused by a narcissist”)

Acknowledge patterns while maintaining complexity (“My ex showed narcissistic patterns that seemed connected to their own trauma” rather than “My ex is a narcissist”)

Center accountability without foreclosing transformation (“This person caused serious harm and needs to take responsibility” rather than “This person is irredeemably toxic”)

Recognize our collective implication in systems of harm (“We live in cultures that often reward narcissistic traits” rather than “Some people are just narcissists”)

Hold space for the ways we all cause harm and all need healing (“We all have the capacity for narcissistic defenses under stress” rather than dividing the world into narcissists and empaths)

The Ongoing Practice

As I finish writing this, I’m aware that my thinking will continue to evolve. Next month, next year, I may see things differently. This is not a failure of analysis but a recognition that healing—individual and collective—is an ongoing practice rather than a fixed destination.

I think about my ex-partner now with something approaching peace. Sometimes forgiveness but sometimes not forgiveness exactly—I’m not sure they would want my forgiveness, and I’m not always sure it’s mine to give. But a kind of releasing. They were a person in pain who caused me pain. I was a person seeking healing who sometimes participated in harmful dynamics. We were both products of systems that taught us maladaptive ways of relating. We both have the capacity to grow and change, though we’ll do that work far apart from each other.

I think about the language I use now—more careful, more nuanced, sometimes more cumbersome. It doesn’t have the satisfying clarity of “I survived narcissistic abuse.” But it opens doors rather than closing them. It invites questions rather than providing final answers. It maintains the possibility that all of us—survivors and those who cause harm, the diagnosed and the undiagnosed, the healers and the healing—might find our way to something better.

An Invitation Rather Than a Conclusion

So, I suppose I’m ending another article not with a conclusion but with a series of invitations:

Let us be curious about the language we use and the work it does in the world. Let us notice when our words create connection and when they create exile, when they heal and when they harm.

Let us hold our stories lightly enough that they can evolve. Let us be willing to complicate our narratives when complexity serves truth and healing.

Let us approach each other with the radical belief that transformation is possible—not naive optimism that ignores harm, but grounded hope that refuses to write anyone off as irredeemable.

Let us build communities and movements spacious enough for all of us—those healing from harm and those working to be accountable for harm caused, those with diagnoses and those without, those for whom psychiatric language is liberating and those for whom it is constraining.

Let us remember that the goal is not perfect language but more whole relationships—with ourselves, each other, and the world we’re creating together.

The word “narcissist” and the phrase “narcissistic abuse” will continue to evolve in meaning and usage. My hope is that we can be intentional about that evolution, shaping language that serves collective liberation rather than perpetuating cycles of harm and exclusion. This is not work that will be finished in our lifetimes, but it is work worth doing.

In the end, perhaps the most powerful shift is from asking “Is this term good or bad?” to asking “What kind of world does this language help create, and is that the world we want to live in?” The answer to that question is always unfolding, always calling us to greater wisdom and compassion, always reminding us that our words have power and we must wield them with care.

To everyone reading this who has been harmed: Your pain is real, your healing matters, and you deserve language that honors your experience.

To everyone reading this who has caused harm: Your humanity remains intact, your growth is possible, and you deserve pathways to accountability and transformation.

To all of us: May we find words that heal more than they wound, that connect more than they divide, that open possibilities rather than closing them.

The conversation continues. The practice deepens. The healing unfolds. Sigh.

And I continue to keep choosing, word by word, the world I want to co-create with all of you.