Ross Rosenberg's Blog

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

12 Most Frequently Asked Questions About Narcissism

Ross Rosenberg answers the most frequent questions about narcissists, narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), narcissistic injuries, healthy narcissism, boundaries and more...

Disidentifying With the Gaslit Voices In Your Head

Disidentifying With the Gaslit Voices In Your Head

Gaslighting is the systematically applied mind-control strategy that sociopaths and sociopathic narcissists use to covertly prey upon vulnerable Self-Love Deficient/SLD (codependent) individuals. Once the Gaslighter choose their victim, they carefully identify their insecurities and deficits.
The Crushing Double Bind

The Crushing Double Bind

I define the Crushing Double Bind as a strategic and systematic campaign to render the methodically weakened SLD helpless, by making them feel powerless and trapped. This Catch-22-like strategy teaches SLDs that any attempt to stop or escape their narcissist causes worse harm than staying put.

Codependency Personality Types

Codependency Personality Types

The creation of these codependency types help people who normally are in denial about their codependency/SLDD to see themselves in a specific diagnostic “light.” It is impossible to heal codependency/SLDD if you don’t know what it is and how it manifests within you.

I wrote my Human Magnet Syndrome books to help people understand and identify their codependency/SLDD. For the purpose of healing and overcoming what was previously invisible and unknown to them. 

Codependency or Self-Love Deficit Disorder (SLDD) is a problem of distribution of love, respect and caring, within close, and/or romantic relationships. Codependents give the preponderance of love, respect and caring (LRC), with the hopes of having it reciprocated. All codependents believe that their narcissistic partner will realize their mistakes and finally give them the LRC they want and need. It just never happens.

The Observe Don't Absorb Technique

The Observe Don't Absorb Technique

Ross Rosenberg's Observe Don’t Absorb Technique (ODA) provides a person who is manipulated and/or harmed by an individual who derives power and control through the use of emotional domination, capacity to set successful boundaries with Pathological Narcissists.

Induced Conversation is a Narcissist's Most Potent Weapon

Induced Conversation is a Narcissist's Most Potent Weapon

Narcissists will use “Induced Conversation" when trying to break down a no-contact initiative or when trying to hoover the codependent/SLD. This is the most effective of all the narcissists manipulative strategies.

covert narcissist

When You Unmask a Covert Narcissist, RUN, but Quietly!

Covert narcissists are the worst type of narcissists. They thrive by pretending to be something they are not. They pretend to be altruistic, kind, and codependent. Covert narcissists get what they need out of life by creating a false self. And they hurt people in their most intimate relationships behind the scenes. To unmask a covert narcissist can be very dangerous, because of their manipulative nature and that they are often respected by others.

Why Narcissists Need to Have Children

Narcissists Need to Have Children: The Good Parent Narrative

Like everything else in their lives, pathological narcissists need to be parents so they can feel good/better about themselves. Despite their public proclamations, everything is always about themselves, and never the child. Having a child allows them to fictionally repackage their life in which their buried core shame is replaced with candy-coated feel-good illusions.

Narcissistic Injury

10 Tips to Protect Yourself from a Narcissistic Injury

A narcissistic injury occurs when narcissists react negatively to perceived or real criticism or judgment, boundaries placed on them, and/or attempts to hold them accountable for harmful behavior. It also occurs when a person does not accommodate a narcissist’s insatiable need for admiration, special privileges, praise, etc. The “injury” also shows up when the narcissist over-amplifies and personalizes benign interpersonal interactions, or when a person with no mal-intentions does not meet the narcissist’s impossible-to-achieve desires for high levels of praise and admiration.

George Eliot quote it's never too late to be the person you might have been

The Journey to Self-Love: On Becoming a Rose: Poem

Breaking through to self-love
is the most difficult journey
for paralyzed and anxious
rose bud people,
whose roots are deeply
and inescapably implanted
in the inhospitable soil
of forgotten and discarded dreams.
Building Your Dream Home: The Importance of Self-Love

Building Your Dream Home: The Importance of Self-Love

Many of us have lived in or currently live in a metaphorically dilapidated and dangerous home that fools us into believing it protects us from the risk of harm and danger. As much as we may want to blame another person for “building the home”, making us stay inside it, or inoculating us with fear for wanting to move out of it, we must face the fact that we are also responsible. Since we are not chained inside of the house, the captor needs the captured to believe they belong in such a house. Believe it or not, the locks on the outside doors were installed by both partners.  The challenge is to realize that you always carry the keys for the deadbolt locks and the password for the security alarms. 

Codependent Parental Neglect

Codependent Parental Neglect

The aim of this article is to neither shame nor blame codependent parents who participate in their family's dysfunction but rather to provide codependency recovery-specific information as well as to open up a discourse on an otherwise taboo subject.

The codependent abnegation of responsibility to protect their children should never be reduced to a simple "good or bad" proposition. It is simply too complicated to cast a one-dimensional blame net. However, because we live in a society that holds adults responsible for their actions, it is vitally important to understand the consequences and losses that result from Codependent Parental Neglect, even if the person causing the harm is also the victim.

"Empath" Is Not the Same as "Codependent"

I have to be honest, I do not like when the term “empath” is used interchangeably with “codependent.” “Empath,” which has its origins in the spiritual and metaphysical world, was never intended to be a replacement term for codependency. An empath is defined as a person with the paranormal ability to intuitively sense and understand the mental or emotional state of another individual...

"Codependency" No More

“Codependency” is an outdated term that connotes weakness and emotional fragility, both of which are far from the truth. The replacement term, “Self-Love Deficit Disorder” or SLDD, takes the stigma and misunderstanding out of codependency and focuses on the core shame that perpetuates it. However, inherent in the term itself is recognizing the core problem of codependency and its solution.

Invisible Trauma: Unearthing Trauma Fossils

Invisible Trauma: Unearthing Trauma Fossils

When treating trauma victims and survivors, I conceptualize trauma as a metaphorical invisible wound that is shamefully hidden from others. Many trauma victims hold onto the irrational belief that, by telling someone their story, they would be taking an indefensible risk that could have irreversible and lasting consequences. They are also terrified of the consequences of exposing the perpetrator because of real or imagined judgment, rejection from loved ones, and the consequent loss of important loving and supportive relationships — social and familial isolation.