Loneliness is difficult at the best of times, but during the holidays, being alone can be excruciating for those attempting to put their lives back together.  Going No Contact with toxic friends and family members is often a part of the healing process, while one learns who they want in their front row, who they need to remove and how to create and enforce healthy boundaries, with those that are left.

Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates accomplishments, talents, skills, contacts, and personality traits to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements) – One of Nine Narcissistic Personality Disorder Criteria DSM 4

Once a person has gone through the process of ridding themselves of the toxic people in their lives, they will often find themselves all alone, or at least with a lot fewer bodies around. As they start to heal, they will seek out new companionship, looking for both new friendships and relationships.  One of the many benefits of going through the healing process is that once you learn what dysfunction looks like in people, you tend to start seeing it everywhere, which leave most wondering, if emotionally healthy people aren’t some kind of mystical creature, like a unicorn or a white buffalo.

At the age of 23, Karla Homulka was arrested, along with her husband, Paul Bernardo, for the murders of 3 women. Homulka agreed to testify against her husband, who orchestrated the abduction, rape and murders, in exchange for a 12-year sentence.

When you are in a place of needing someone to the point of obsession you are on very dangerous ground. Not only have you surrendered your power, you have also traded your inner peace for chaos.

Being all-in in a relationship doesn’t mean surrendering your identity and allowing yourself to become lost in it. It means that you are committed to the relationship and your partner, while still maintaining your autonomy, interests, hobbies and other meaningful relationships.

One of the tell-tale signs of low self-esteem is how one reacts to rejection. Do you pick up and move on quickly? Do you beg and plead and try to change their mind? The way you behave depends upon where you lie within a spectrum of three different types, the Move-Oners, the Validation-Seekers, or the Revengers.

So much time, energy and emotion is spent trying to understand why emotional manipulators do what they do. The answer has never been a secret. It’s always been in plain sight, but perhaps due to its simplicity and our inability to relate, we shrug it off and continue the search for some way where we can blame ourselves.