Prevention and Protection Month

September 2026

Healing from Narcissistic Relationships

Month Overview:

Bad things happen.  And there is no moral reason for it – bad things don’t just happen to bad people, good things don’t just happen to good people, there is no reason or sense in what happens.  It happens to us. There is no karmic wheel – we can be good people, and still terrible things happen, and we can look at some pretty rotten people and stuff just keeps going their way.  We can try our best, but we cannot always prevent bad things from happening in our lives. When it comes to the harm caused by other people – this gets a lot messier -because someone did something to us – betrayed us, abused us, deceived us, manipulated us – and so much of what we talk about in this program is the why, and how it affected us. This feels more preventable than a hurricane, or a random stranger stealing our purse, or a car accident, and yet…

Then there is the big issue that people raise all the time – how do I prevent this from happening? This is a tricky question – as it puts the onus on us to prevent behaviors in other people that are often enabled and rewarded by society – good luck with that. 

Dr. Gabor Mate makes the point that the traumatic event is the thing that happens, and trauma is everything that happens afterwards.  And amongst the most traumatic things that can happen is - bad things happens to us, and then afterwards – we may be blamed, shamed, questioned, ignored, people may turn away.  Above all else – we may not be protected. 

This month is about prevention and protection – how it is impossible to prevent these relationships in many if not most cases, how most people in narcissistic relationships or experiencing any kind of emotional abuse rarely are protected during or after these relationships, what this does to us, and how this affects us as we heal and move forward.