#covert abuse

[melblogsgfreethruptsd]

[trekahouse]

Do yourself a huge favor, and run as fast as you can from people who are running from their healing. Behaviors never lie. People who deny themselves in the mirror, will deny your reality and cause you your sanity.

Treka L. House

— when the mask slips, don’t talk yourself out of what you see. trust your intuition.

[healingwgabs]

If you're ever struggling to get the final ick to get over someone who's abusive, deeply manipulative, never gave you any dignity, and who you're trauma bonded to, unraveling and bringing to light the things they've done to you over the years like I recently have and realizing how vile it is can rlly do the trick ✨✨🌷

[family-trauma]

This one is all too close for me. It's a constant mental battle at this point.

[midnightandmarigold]

Predatory behavior isn’t gender exclusive. It never was. Harm doesn’t care about pronouns. It wears whatever face will get it through the door—charming, silly, soft-spoken, maternal, brotherly, helpful, harmless. It’s not the act alone. It’s the tone. The micro-expressions. The body language. The behaviors meant to groom, triangulate, and calculate. It’s the glance that scans your nervous system for entry points. It’s the joke that tests your boundaries. It’s the question that feels like a trap but sounds like concern.

It’s the man who flirts with cruelty and calls it banter. Who jokes about trauma. Who pushes past your no and calls it persistence. Who “accidentally” overshares to see how much you’ll tolerate. Who turn you into the punchline in front of people they want to impress—because your discomfort is their currency. Who touches you without consent and acts confused when you recoil. Who tells your secrets to someone who’s already hurt you. Who studies your reactions like a game and smiles when you flinch.

And it’s the woman who helps him. Who laughs when he mocks you. Who tells you to calm down. Who says he’s always been nice to me. Who shares your secrets. Who triangulates. Who fans herself with innocence while watching you unravel. Who wants proximity to power more than she wants to protect you. Who weaponizes softness. Who weaponizes plausibility. Who weaponizes the assumption that women are inherently safe.

They know exactly what they’re doing.

This isn’t awkwardness. This isn’t misunderstanding. This is strategy. This is cruelty dressed as charm. This is harm that hides behind social fluency. This is the machinery of abuse.

And when you speak up? You’re labeled dramatic. Paranoid. Unstable. Because covert harm doesn’t leave bruises—it leaves confusion. It leaves shame. It leaves silence. It leaves you isolated while everyone else praises the predator’s charm and the enabler’s innocence.

So let’s stop pretending.

Let’s stop pretending that men don’t know what they’re doing when they joke about your trauma. Let’s stop pretending that women don’t know what they’re doing when they laugh along. Let’s stop pretending that charm is character. That plausibility is proof. That softness is safety.

Let’s name it.

Let’s name the glance. The tone. The question that felt like a trap. Let’s name the man who tried to violate you. Let’s name the woman who helped him. Let’s name the system that protected them. Let’s name the silence that followed. Let’s name the truth.

Because until we do, survivors will keep being erased. Not because they weren’t harmed. But because their harm didn’t look the way we wanted it to.

And if you’ve lived it, you know: the predator doesn’t need to convince you. They just need to convince everyone else.

And they do.

[valenciamidknight]

“Act Natural” (2024) alongside the original photo ft. Lee Sherman and an unknown woman at Radio City Music Hall (1947).

Collage inspired by image-obsessed parents and covert abuse

[skeptisystem]

friendly reminder that "you cannot tell me i hurt your feelings" and "don't tell me that my friend abused you" are not valid boundaries :) that's just rude and enabling <3 just because you don't want to drop your best friend of however many years, does NOT make it okay to ignore and belittle victims. we did not violate your boundaries, you violated our trust.

[lifewithnpd]

something i want to make very clear: i do not enjoy being a narcissist. i do not want to be a narcissist. it does not bring me joy to hurt others. i do everything in my power to avoid doing so. i am not an abuser. i am an abuse victim. i will never abuse someone. if i fuck up, i apologise for my mistakes. like a decent human being does. some people clearly can't get their heads around the fact that npd is a DISORDER and not just a thing you choose to have, that makes your life better or because you enjoy hurting people.

i was horrifically abused. i was devalued, over and over and over again. i learnt to protect myself, as a child, by believing in my own self importance. that's literally it. i learnt to survive by believing i was greater than everyone around me, because if i was greater, then maybe i wouldn't be abused. for fuck's sake, guys. get a fucking grip, please.

i'm not saying you weren't abused. ofc i'm not. and i'm not invalidating your trauma. all i'm saying is, have a bit of compassion, for the kids that were abused just like you. just because you developed cptsd (which i also have) instead of npd, doesn't make you magically better than me, or a better survivor, or kinder or in any way stronger. likewise, me having npd doesn't make me an abuser, or magically weaker than you, or sitting there plotting every empath's demise.

so, if you're one of those people who talks about narcissistic abuse, please: just have a think. not all people with npd are the same. and not all of us are abusers. tarring us all with the same brush is damaging to trauma survivor community- because the majority of people with npd are trauma survivors.