A Literary Prescription for

Narcissistic Abuse

For the specific, disorienting harm of being in a relationship with someone who made you doubt your own reality.

Narcissistic abuse tends to be invisible to everyone but the person experiencing it — because the person causing it is often charming, credible, and skilled at ensuring the story sounds different from the outside. By the time you leave, or begin to understand what happened, you may be doubting your own perceptions, your memory, and your worthiness of anything better. The books, poems, and words gathered here are for rebuilding from exactly that place.

Books Poetry Quotes & Prose

Books

Books to read about narcissistic abuse

Books that name what happened, and help you understand why it was so hard to see.

Why Does He Do That?

Lundy Bancroft · 2002

Bancroft spent years working with abusive men, and this book — which answers its title question in unflinching detail — is the one recommended most consistently by therapists, domestic abuse counsellors, and survivors. For anyone trying to understand why a person behaved the way they did, and why it was so difficult to leave or see clearly, Bancroft provides the clearest, most honest account available.

Psychopath Free

Jackson MacKenzie · 2015

Written by a survivor rather than a clinician, MacKenzie’s book maps the specific patterns of narcissistic and psychopathic relationships — the love-bombing, the devaluation, the discard — with a precision that tends to produce strong recognition in readers who have been through it. For anyone who has felt alone in the specificity of what they experienced, this book demonstrates that the patterns are remarkably consistent.

Will I Ever Be Free of You?

Dr. Karyl McBride · 2015

McBride focuses specifically on recovery from narcissistic relationships — the after, rather than the during — and addresses the particular difficulty of leaving when children are involved. For readers who are out of the relationship but finding that the effects linger far longer than expected, McBride provides both explanation and practical recovery steps.

Disarming the Narcissist

Wendy T. Behary · 2008

Behary’s book is for readers who cannot simply leave — because the narcissist is a parent, a co-parent, or a colleague — and who need strategies for managing ongoing contact without being continually diminished. She combines clinical insight with genuine compassion for the person on the receiving end of narcissistic behaviour.

Big Little Lies

Liane Moriarty · 2014

Beneath the gloss of beach-town playdates and school fundraisers, Celeste’s marriage to a charming, controlling man is slowly grinding her down in ways even her closest friends can’t quite see. Moriarty writes the specific disorientation of being undermined by someone who looks, from the outside, like the perfect partner, with real precision.

Sharp Objects

Gillian Flynn · 2006

Camille returns to her childhood home and slowly remembers exactly how her mother’s love always came wrapped in control, manipulation, and a need to be the only source of comfort in the room. It is a dark, unflinching portrait of a narcissistic parent, and of how long the disorientation lingers even after a daughter has physically left.

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Poems about narcissistic abuse

For when prose is not enough

Poems for the work of reclaiming your own mind.

“For Women Who Are Difficult to Love” (extract)

Warsan Shire, 2011

you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more, tried to be softer
...you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that.

Shire describes, with unsettling precision, what it feels like to keep shrinking yourself for someone who calls the shrinking still not enough, and the moment of recognising that you were never the problem being solved. For anyone who spent a relationship trying to become smaller, quieter, and easier to manage, this poem is the exact, modern shape of that experience. Find it in Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth.

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“A Poison Tree”

William Blake, 1794

And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree.

Blake traces exactly how a relationship turns poisonous when one person’s feelings are never allowed to be spoken honestly, growing in the dark instead until the whole thing becomes toxic. It is a precise, two-century-old diagram of the dynamics narcissistic abuse depends on — suppression, distortion, and the slow cultivation of something that should never have been allowed to grow.

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“I had been hungry, all the Years”

Emily Dickinson, c.1862

I had been hungry, all the Years —
My Noon had Come — to dine —
I trembling drew the Table near —
And touched the Curious Wine —

’Twas this on Tables I had seen —
When turning, hungry, Home
I looked in Windows, for the Wealth
I could not hope — for Mine —

Dickinson describes the strange, disorienting pain of finally getting the nourishment you went without for years — how plenty itself can feel wrong after long enough deprivation. Many survivors of narcissistic abuse find that real care, when it finally arrives, feels suspicious or undeserved at first. Dickinson names exactly why, without judging the reaction.

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Quotes & Prose

Quotes about narcissistic abuse to keep

For the work of trusting yourself again.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

Søren Kierkegaard

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Trust yourself. You have survived a lot, and you will survive whatever is coming.

Robert Tew

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Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

Nora Ephron

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No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.

Alice Walker

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You are allowed to be both a masterpiece and a work in progress simultaneously.

Sophia Bush

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From Georgia

Pause here, if you need to

A short practice for sitting with narcissistic abuse, whenever you need somewhere to land.

Healing Confidence After Difficult Times

Guided meditation by Georgia Clare

A meditation for rebuilding confidence after something has knocked it out of you, taken gently and without pretending the knock did not happen.

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How to Stop Seeking Validation from Other People

Personal essay by Georgia Clare · The Library

On letting go of the need to have a differently wired mind approved of, and learning to trust your own sense of who you are.

Read the Essay →

Boundaries And Self-Respect Meditation

Guided meditation by Georgia Clare

A calming visualisation practice for setting healthy boundaries without guilt, helping you protect your energy and reconnect with self-respect.

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The Inner Peace Toolkit

Digital Self-Care Toolkit · Georgia Clare

2 guided meditations, an Inner Peace Journal, an affirmations eBook, 10 printable affirmation prints and 10 calming phone wallpapers — small daily practices to come back to whenever you need to slow down and reconnect with yourself.

Explore the Toolkit →

Questions people ask

Reading for Narcissistic Abuse

If I only read one thing about narcissistic abuse, what should it be?

If you only read one thing, begin with Why Does He Do That? by Lundy Bancroft. Bancroft spent years working with abusive men, and this book — which answers its title question in unflinching detail — is the one recommended most consistently by therapists, domestic abuse counsellors… And if a whole book feels like too much today, scroll to the poems below — “A Poison Tree” by William Blake can be read in a minute and asks nothing of you.

What if I cannot face a whole book about narcissistic abuse right now?

Go straight to “For Women Who Are Difficult to Love” by Warsan Shire below. It is short, and it does not need you to be concentrating well. The lines to keep, lower down, ask even less than that. Read a few lines, put it down, come back another day. That counts.

Which quotes about narcissistic abuse are worth keeping?

Quotes about narcissistic abuse worth keeping include “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” (Søren Kierkegaard), “Trust yourself. You have survived a lot, and you will survive whatever is coming.” (Robert Tew) and “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” (Nora Ephron). You’ll find these and more in the quotes section above.

Why read when you’re dealing with narcissistic abuse?

Because it helps you feel less alone. The writers here have lived through narcissistic abuse themselves, and reading them is a little like being handed a lamp in the dark — not a solution, but company, and the reassurance that this has been felt, and survived, before.

Narcissistic Abuse

Books to read about narcissistic abuse

For when prose is not enough

Quotes about narcissistic abuse to keep

Pause here, if you need to

Reading for Narcissistic Abuse

If I only read one thing about narcissistic abuse, what should it be?

What if I cannot face a whole book about narcissistic abuse right now?

Which quotes about narcissistic abuse are worth keeping?

Why read when you’re dealing with narcissistic abuse?

More prescriptions await.