Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse

That flash of something is wrong you couldn't quite explain? Your body caught it before your mind could argue you down.

In this Viewers' Stories episode, Dr. Kerry McAvoy reacts to a so-called "prank" a husband pulled on his wife — secretly serving her breast milk in their guests' coffee, then bringing her breakfast in bed: toast smeared with their newborn's poop in place of peanut butter. The wife wondered if she was overreacting. Too sensitive. Unable to take a joke.

This is everyday sadism — cruelty dressed up as humor — and it runs on the same engine as narcissistic abuse and gaslighting: make you doubt what you felt, and you'll never confront what they did. That's the trap. Everyday sadism doesn't hide in the shadows. Your own decency blinds you, because you can't imagine someone who claims to love you could be this callous. So instead of confronting the person who hurt you, you turn on yourself — convinced you must have gotten it wrong. That self-doubt isn't a side effect. It's the point.

In this episode:

What everyday sadism and sadistic behavior actually look like

Why your body registers danger before your mind can rationalize it away

The exact mechanics of how cruelty disguised as humor enables gaslighting and coercive control in narcissistic abuse

Why survivors are conditioned to question their own reactions and not their abuser's

For more on everyday sadism, be sure to check out Dr. Kerry’s interview with Joe Navarro. Watch it here:
Key Moments

00:00 — No file folder labeled cruelty

02:52 — Why kind people can't see sadism

04:16 — "You're a chronic over-reactor"

08:08 — The effort is the proof

09:32 — She spat it out before she knew

12:37 — "Am I overreacting?" is the wrong question

(Original clip aired on It's Just a Prank Bro on Smosh Pit — watch it here.)
Have you experienced this? Your story may be exactly what another survivor needs to hear. Submit yours via the link below.

#NarcissisticAbuse #Gaslighting #NarcissisticAbuseRecovery

Resources

ReclaimYou: Dr. Kerry's AI-powered coaching app

The Complete Recovery Collection: Narcissistic abuse resources

First Steps to Leaving: Online self-paced digital course

Toxic-Free Relationship Club: Live coaching & community support

Follow Dr. Kerry!

Youtube

Instagram

TikTok

Facebook

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist & author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism.

As an Amazon affiliate, commission is earned from qualifying purchases.

This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or your local emergency number.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The most dangerous narcissists don’t go ballistic: they peck you to death.

After spending decades studying dangerous personalities, former FBI agent Joe Navarro has learned that the cruelest narcissistic abuse almost never looks the way we expect.  It hides behind the withheld compliment, the public put-down disguised as a joke, the silent treatment and the affection that never comes.

In this conversation, Joe and Dr. Kerry McAvoy name the covert sadism living inside everyday relationships with a narcissist, and why it leaves lasting damage.

Podcast Extra Exclusive Segment 

Want to go deeper? 

In this Members-Only Interview — Joe walks through the practical steps to breaking free. Learn exactly the first step on how to get started. Find the exclusive second segment and weekly newsletter here.

JOE NAVARRO, a former FBI agent and one of the world's foremost authorities on reading human behavior, has spent his life learning to spot dangerous people before the rest of us see them coming. Recruited into the FBI at just 23 — one of the youngest agents ever — Joe spent 25 years in counterintelligence and counterterrorism, catching spies by decoding the nonverbal signals most people miss, and went on to train both FBI agents and the wider intelligence community in the science he helped refine. Since retiring from the Bureau in 2003, he has become a sought-after speaker, consultant, and author — including the landmark Dangerous Personalities — helping people everywhere recognize the predators hiding in plain sight.

Website

Navarro Dangerous Personality Inventory

Latest Book:

Mastering Connections, and the digital Navarro Dangerous Personality Inventory

Dangerous Personalities: An FBI Profiler Shows You How to Identify and Protect Yourself from Harmful People

Key Moments

00:00 — What sadism really looks like (not whips and chains)

01:17 — Stabbed at seventeen: Joe's first dangerous person

02:55 — The wound that outlasts the knife

05:17 — The insidious cruelty hiding in plain sight

06:35 — Why your brain replays the pain on a loop

08:38 — "Try not to screw this up": humiliation as a weapon

10:06 — The abuse the DSM barely names

13:03 — Mortificar: the word for being pecked to death

14:48 — The put-downs we mistake for "just bullying"

18:02 — The compliment that never came

21:03 — Trust your gut: the questions that reveal the truth

This episode discusses emotional abuse and includes references to suicidal thoughts. If you're struggling, you're not alone — in the US you can call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline), and the National Domestic Violence Hotline is 1-800-799-7233.
Resources

ReclaimYou: Dr. Kerry's AI-powered coaching app

The Complete Recovery Collection: Narcissistic abuse resources

First Steps to Leaving: Online self-paced digital course

Toxic-Free Relationship Club: Live coaching & community support

Follow Dr. Kerry!

Youtube

Instagram

TikTok

Facebook

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist & author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism.

As an Amazon affiliate, commission is earned from qualifying purchases.

This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or your local emergency number.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It's your special day. Your birthday. Maybe the narcissist participated in the build-out or maybe they pretended not to notice. But you knew. And you got your hopes up. Perhaps this birthday will go differently.

What you didn't expect was to spend the rest of your birthday managing their feelings.

In this Viewers' Stories episode, Dr. Kerry shares submitted accounts of birthdays that ended in tears, anniversaries engineered to fail, and being asked to comfort the person who hurt you.  Toxic and character-disordered individuals refuse repair the damage they've done because receiving your forgiveness would put them one-down. If you've ever found yourself crying in the bathroom, then walking back out to smile through the candles — your confusion was data, not weakness.

Key Moments

00:00 — "He needed to be the one who had a bad day" (cold open)

01:20 — The paper doll: candles blown out with eyes sore from crying

02:17 — When the effort is the setup: "people forgot him"

03:16 — The rising bar — engineered to fail

04:22 — Why your help threatens them: the sun and the Earth

06:21 — Nursing the wound (Gollum's ring), and why confusion is data

Resources

ReclaimYou: Dr. Kerry's AI-powered coaching app

The Complete Recovery Collection: Narcissistic abuse resources

First Steps to Leaving: Online self-paced digital course

Toxic-Free Relationship Club: Live coaching & community support

Follow Dr. Kerry!

Youtube

Instagram

TikTok

Facebook

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist & author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism.

As an Amazon affiliate, commission is earned from qualifying purchases.

This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or your local emergency number.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The ruined birthday. The wrecked anniversary. The gift left in a drawer. It wasn't thoughtlessness.

Dr. Kerry sits down with psychodynamic psychotherapist Lynn Strathdee to break down one of the most painful — and least-named — patterns in narcissistic relationships: the deliberate destruction of special occasions.

Lynn identifies the core drive as pleasure at being the cause — a compulsion rooted in early development that, in character-disordered adults, becomes a form of covert manipulation. Your emotional pain isn't collateral damage. For a narcissist, it's the reward.

Reference: Shawna the Mom: https://www.youtube.com/@ShawnatheMom

In this episode:

Why narcissists specifically target birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries

The "pleasure at being the cause" drive — and how it escalates on your best days

Dry begging: the manipulation tactic hiding in plain sight

How devaluation becomes a source of narcissistic supply

Why you kept making excuses — and what this pattern reveals about NPD

Podcast Extra Exclusive Segment
If the sabotage only makes sense in hindsight — can you learn to see it in real time?

Kerry and Lynn unpack the quieter signal most survivors train themselves to override: the "something feels a little off" whisper — and how to turn its volume up without becoming paranoid. Plus: the chat-history article that's been haunting Kerry about an ordinary couple, and what one partner had actually been thinking all along.

Find the exclusive second segment and weekly newsletter here: https://substack.com/@breakingfreenarcabuse

LYNN STRATHDEE is a UK-based psychodynamic psychotherapist specializing in echoism, narcissistic abuse recovery, and the unconscious patterns that keep survivors stuck in repeating relationship cycles. A former educator turned therapist, Lynn brings both clinical training and lived experience to her private practice, where she works with clients online and in person. Her approach goes beyond surface-level psychoeducation to the deeper identity work that creates lasting change.

WEBSITE: https://echoismrecovery.com/

Key Moments

00:00 — "That was the point"

00:29 — The birthday he set out to ruin

02:24 — Cozumel, the cheesecake, and every plan sabotaged

03:11 — "A retreat to decide if he still wanted to be married"

03:48 — The pleasure of being the cause

07:03 — Double whammy: the act and the emotion it creates

09:15 — The gratitude trap: why they can't let it go well

14:56 — What gifts reveal (and the lotion re-gift)

17:38 — "Dry begging" and the gifts he never used

20:33 — The bracelet he came home wearing

21:07 — Naming the sadism: "go to the feeling it gave you"

23:00 — The mania of secret knowing: "you don't know, I do"

25:26 — Recognizing it in the moment, not in hindsight

Dr. Kerry's Resources


ReclaimYou: Dr. Kerry's AI-powered coaching app


The Complete Recovery Collection: Narcissistic abuse resources


First Steps to Leaving: Online self-paced digital course


Toxic-Free Relationship Club: Live coaching & community support

Follow Dr. Kerry!


Youtube


Instagram


TikTok


Facebook

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist & author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism.

As an Amazon affiliate, commission is earned from qualifying purchases.

This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or your local emergency number.

#NarcissisticAbuse #Narcissism #ToxicRelationships #NPD #NarcissisticAbuseRecovery
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this Viewers' Stories episode, Dr. Kerry unpacks the psychological damage done by narcissistic abuse, especially when you’re living with a partner who’s keeping a secret life.

Learn how cheaters use gaslighting, lies, and calculated reality distortion to conceal their betrayals. They want to make you question your own mind so completely that you stop listening to your instincts, destroying your self-trust.

If you've ever felt like you were going crazy, re-reading old texts to prove to yourself what was real, then you’ve experienced this kind of manipulation. And healing from narcissistic abuse begins when you discover your instincts were right all along.

This is the Thursday companion to Monday's interview with therapist Cheryl Camarillo, "Sexual Addiction Looks Nothing Like What You Think"

Key Moments

00:00 — Married to a master of reality distortion

01:24 — "I can no longer trust myself"

03:32 — Superhuman dissociation and the secret sexual basement

04:56 — Becoming the detective: hunting for the second phone

06:42 — Minwalla's three-pronged model: 17 women in 21 days

08:14 — Three truths to anchor your nervous system

To go deeper into rebuilding self-trust after betrayal, the members-only Podcast Extra covers exactly that. Join Substack & watch it immediately when you become a paid subscriber here.
Have a story of your own? Share by emailing Dr. Kerry at clients@kerrymcavoyphd.com or use this link.

Resources

ReclaimYou: Dr. Kerry's AI-powered coaching app

The Complete Recovery Collection: Narcissistic abuse resources

First Steps to Leaving: Online self-paced digital course

Toxic-Free Relationship Club: Live coaching & community support

Follow Dr. Kerry!

Youtube

Instagram

TikTok

Facebook

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist & author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism.

As an Amazon affiliate, commission is earned from qualifying purchases.

This podcast/video is for educational purposes only. It does not constitute therapy, counseling, or professional mental health advice. If you are in crisis, please call 911 or your local emergency number.

#covertnarcissist #cheating #doublelife #gaslighting #betrayaltrauma
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.