Narcissistic Abuse for Therapists: Empower Clients to Break Free and Recover from Gaslighting, Emotional Manipulation and Coercion

CPD

Planning Committee Disclosure - No relevant relationships

All members of the PESI, Inc. planning committee have provided disclosures of financial relationships with ineligible organizations and any relevant non-financial relationships prior to planning content for this activity. None of the committee members had relevant financial relationships with ineligible companies or other potentially biasing relationships to disclose to learners.  For speaker disclosures, please see the faculty biography.

Handouts

Speaker

Amy Marlow-MaCoy, LPC Related seminars and products

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Amy Marlow-MaCoy, LPC, focuses her practice on treating complex and developmental trauma in adults raised in narcissistic, emotionally immature, and toxic families of origin.

She is the author of the Amazon best-selling book The Gaslighting Recovery Workbook: Healing from Emotional Abuse (Callisto Media, 2020), a workbook designed to help individuals identify, understand, and begin to heal from emotional trauma and abuse caused by gaslighting in interpersonal relationships.

Amy has been trained in Level 1 Internal Family Systems therapy. She also provides supervision to LPC candidates and regularly consults with other clinicians regarding treatment of adult children of narcissists. She earned her Mast of Education in counseling psychology degree from Temple University.
 

Speaker Disclosures:
Financial: Amy Marlow-MaCoy maintains a private practice. She receives royalties as a published author and receives a speaking honorarium and recording royalties from PESI, Inc. She has no relevant financial relationships with ineligible organizations.
Non-financial: Amy Marlow-MaCoy is a member of the American Counseling Association.

Alternate Options

Objectives

1. Analyse how abuse from individuals with narcissistic personality disorder in the context of romantic relationships, friendships, and family relationships can lead to long term effects for clients.
2. Differentiate narcissistic abuse from other forms of emotional abuse to improve your ability to recognise the subtle signs that clients may be victims.
3. Employ in-session psychoeducation approaches to help clients become aware of narcissistic behaviour in their lives and recognise the consequences.
4. Analyse common mistakes made by practitioners in the treatment of survivors of narcissistic abuse.
5. Employ exercises to help survivors of narcissistic abuse build assertive communication skills.
6. Investigate the current research and treatment limitations surrounding work with survivors of narcissistic abuse.

Outline

A Clinician’s Guide to Narcissism:
Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the Spectrum of Narcissistic Traits

• DSM-5™ criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder
• Social and culturally acquired definitions
• The spectrum of narcissistic traits
• Narcissistic traits without meeting criteria for NPD
• Psychoeducation for survivors about NPD, narcissistic behaviour and its consequences

• Goals of perpetrators of emotional abuse vs. narcissistic abuse
• Cycle of abuse in narcissistic relationships
• Gaslighting and other tactics of manipulation and coercion
• What is narcissistic supply?
• Subtypes: engulfing and ignoring/neglecting

• Romantic/intimate relationships/sex addiction
• Co-parenting vs counter-parenting
• Friendships and frenemies
• Family of origin – the golden child, black sheep, scapegoat, and invisible child
• Lack of self-esteem, difficulties trusting others, C-PTSD and other effects of narcissistic abuse

• Everyone’s a narcissist (over-pathologizing problematic behaviours)
• No one’s a narcissist (dismissing client reports because you can’t diagnose NPD)
• Pushing for reconciliation or family therapy
• Inadvertently gaslighting clients by questioning hard-to-spot emotional manipulation
• Not focusing enough on calming the underlying trauma triggers

• Building assertiveness and individuation – strategies to help clients be their own individual
  • Exercises to help clients discover their own preferences, interests, desires, and goals
  • Teach clients to distinguish between assertiveness, aggression, and passive aggression
  • Counteract internalized messaging that assertive communication is harmful, cold, cruel, or harsh
  • Prepare clients for the backlash that often attends increasing autonomy and agency
  • Cultural sensitivity considerations
• Exploring levels of contact and clients’ wishes regarding contact
  • Developing healthy boundaries -- how to best protect themselves within the relationship parameters they choose
  • Processing guilt/shame over setting boundaries and saying no
  • Coping strategies for when contact is inevitable

• Trauma competency – an essential for working with these clients
• Inner child work to heal attachment wounds
• Is family therapy advised?
• Specific modalities to explore - AEDP, IFS, EMDR, SE, BSP, Gestalt
• Research, risks and treatment limitations

Target Audience

• Counsellors
• Social Workers
• Marriage & Family Therapists
• Psychologists
• Physicians
• Addiction Counsellors
• Psychiatric Nurses