Complicity Cosplaying Care

The “narcissistic abuse” that the influencers and educators on “narcissistic abuse” won’t discuss

Who do you mean when you say “survivor?”

When we hear the word survivor, many of us immediately think of someone who has endured domestic abuse, intimate partner violence, child abuse, or sexual assault. These experiences are devastatingly real, and they demand deep recognition. And yet, surviving interpersonal abuse rarely happens in a vacuum.

How often do we also consider the broader systems that so many people are forced to survive, such as cis-hetero white supremacy, racism, ableism, classism, carcerality, and generations of colonialist violence and erasure? How often do we name the ways interpersonal violence is shaped by institutional betrayals, exploitation, displacement, human trafficking, police brutality, war, genocide, and other forms of systemic violence, devaluation, dehumanization, and discard? And how often have those who educate us about narcissism and narcissistic abuse ever even acknowledge oppressive systems or survivors of systemic oppression within their books, articles, videos, and resources?

Terms like narcissistic abuse, survivor of narcissistic abuse, and narcissistic abuse recovery did not originate from the early theoretical frameworks on narcissism developed by renowned psychoanalysts like Sigmund Freud, Otto Kernberg, Heinz Kohut, or Erich Fromm. The term “narcissistic abuse” was only introduced in the mid-90’s by psychologist and self-identified “narcissist,” Sam Vaknin, and it has become increasingly popular for describing the constellation of behaviors that comprise emotional and psychological abuse such as love-bombing, grooming, gaslighting, invalidation, stonewalling, isolation, intimidation, coercion, degradation, devaluation, deflecting, blame-shifting, smear campaigning, ghosting, and discarding.

You might be all too familiar with these behaviors if you are Black, Brown, Indigenous, queer, trans, and/or disabled—having been forced to learn how to cope with and navigate them for your whole life while existing in a system where political leaders and entire institutions behave in these ways toward you, and while surrounded by people who hold more societal privilege, power, and protection from accountability who devalue your insights and opinions, invalidate or minimize your painful experiences, idealize or tokenize your identities for their own gain, pathologize your responses to oppression, gaslight or rage to avoid accountability when you call them in for saying or doing something offensive, or shift blame onto you for mistakes they make because they ultimately know they have the power to get away with it.

I read a striking post on Instagram yesterday, created by Christabel Mintah-Galloway, that illuminates this reality of survivorship for Black people and people of the global majority in relation to whiteness. She writes:

Your “No Contact” boundary is a luxury of whiteness not afforded to people of the global majority. In the West, the standard advice is: ‘Do not remain in a relationship with people who abuse you.’ We call it healing and protecting our peace. But for Black people and people of the global majority, ‘peace’ is not a choice. We are in a forced, non-consensual relationship with Whiteness every single day.

And in the caption of her post, she reminds us, “Black people and people of the global majority don’t get to ‘divorce’ Whiteness.”

Take a moment to consider all the titles of popular books about narcissistic abuse that imply some kind of attainable power over the “narcissist” or the power to leave: Psychopath Free, Disarming the Narcissist, How to Leave a Narcissist, Don’t Poke the Bear, Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare…

How does one become free of a psychopathic system? How does one disarm an entire system that is targeting them? How does one leave a global system? How does one avoid poking a system that is everywhere? How does one become a nightmare to a system that never sleeps?

Maybe you haven’t yet considered these behaviors in this way—as abuses endured on the regular from everywhere rather than just from a “pathological” few. But once you do, it becomes difficult to call all these behaviors “narcissistic” because then we might have to see ourselves as narcissistic, or at least much larger groups of people than we imagined as narcissistic. And who would want to do that when we have been told that narcissistic is pretty much the absolute worst thing a person could be? It would also trouble the binary “narcissistic/non-narcissistic” frameworks we’ve been relying on to help us understand what happened to us. And letting go of this framework that helped make meaning of our pain can be excruciating.

But the raw truth is—we all cause harm. Sometimes. Often, for some.

Another raw truth is—excluding the painful experiences of survivors of systemic oppression from books and discourse about relational abuse and trauma is one of the ways we cause harm. It is invalidating, devaluing, and gaslighting (aka what is often referred to as narcissistic abuse) to survivors who are the most vulnerable to and negatively impacted by relational abuse and trauma.

We were all born into hierarchical systems and structures that have informed our relational dynamics, with others and with ourselves. This is why I will keep on saying: It’s not narcissism causing all the chaos, dysfunction, and destruction in our relationships, families, communities, and institutions—it’s supremacism. And narcissistic abuse is just a white-washed, decontextualized, individualized term for tools of domination that are rooted in colonialist logics. Simply put— Colonized and colonizing systems create colonized and colonizing relationships.

BUT—if we are going to continue using the term narcissistic to describe behaviors associated with the emotional and psychological abuse and trauma that colonialism injected into our lives and our relationships, we are going to have to radically accept what every psychoanalytic theorist has tried to tell us for almost a century: We are all narcissistic; we can all succumb to our narcissistic defenses; we are all tasked with keeping our narcissism in check. AND—we really do need to learn what narcissism IS and ISN’T so that we are able to accurately differentiate between narcissism and supremacism…and start NAMING supremacism when we see it, rather than just calling it narcissism to avoid the difficult and uncomfortable conversations about supremacism.

Renowned psychoanalyst, Heinz Kohut, explained that narcissism is often misunderstood, and misrepresented, as only and always bad, thus painted with a negative bias by those who discuss narcissism outside of the intended context of psychoanalytic theory. In his own words, “In theoretical discussions it will usually not be disputed that narcissism, the libidinal investment of the self, is per se neither pathological nor obnoxious, there exists an understandable tendency to look at it with a negatively toned evaluation as soon as the field of theory is left”. ¹

And Kohut discussed and defined narcissistic injury as “disturbances of narcissistic balance”² ; disturbances that can manifest in the uncomfortable but familiar feelings we ALL experience, “easily recognized by the painful affect of embarrassment or shame which accompanies them and by their ideational elaboration which is known as inferiority feeling or hurt pride” ³. In other words, moments of embarrassment, shame, and hurt pride are ordinary expressions of narcissism, thus narcissism is NOT a pathological deviation but rather a universal human experience.

In “leaving the field of theory,” the popular mainstream discourse on narcissistic abuse has abandoned the nuanced theoretical understanding of narcissism, in favor of a fable: “the narcissist and the empath.” Thus, nuance, complexity, and analytic theory are dissolved, and those arbitrarily labeled “narcissist” are collectively demonized, dehumanized, and discarded while those anointed as “empaths” are absolved of the responsibility of critical self-reflection and assumed intrinsically harmless and morally superior.

Perhaps this tragic trajectory wasn’t entirely out of left field, as the term “narcissism” itself originates in a fable, the story of Narcissus and Echo. However, early psychoanalytic theorists used the fable metaphorically to illuminate aspects of human self-investment and relational dynamics. In the fable, Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection while Echo is doomed to repeat his words, a dynamic that highlights self-absorption and unreciprocated attachment. The early theorists were not presenting a literal template for behavior, but rather a lens through which to understand universal patterns of self-focus, attachment, ego-strength, and vulnerability.

Over time, however, the discourse on narcissistic abuse has treated this fable far more rigidly and literally. In the narcissistic abuse narrative, the story becomes a blueprint: the “narcissistic” abusers are Narcissus, the “empath” survivors are Echo, and the nuances of human psychology are flattened into a moralistic dichotomy. This literalization mirrors what sometimes happens when popular texts like the Bible are interpreted without attention to metaphor or context: the symbolic, heuristic value gets lost, and what remains is rigid, prescriptive, morally loaded, and often harmful. By treating Narcissus and Echo as real-world templates rather than metaphorical illustrations, the mainstream narcissistic abuse discourse dissolves the depth, complexity, and universality of narcissism that psychoanalytic theory has tried to illuminate.

Psychoanalyst Daniel Shaw, On Traumatic Narcissism, exemplifies the universality of narcissism discussing his own narcissism, in the context of the analyst/analysand dynamic, in his book Traumatic Narcissism and Recovery: Leaving the Prison of Shame and Fear. He writes:

In my own case, when I feel that my love, in the form of my best analytic effort, is being rejected, I can then find myself tempted to focus on how the analysand ‘provoked’ or ‘elicited’ my aversion. This is usually a sign for me that I am narcissistically wounded and preoccupied. In that state, I am at a disadvantage in terms of considering all the possible meanings of the analysand’s behavior. ⁴

What Shaw is describing here is how when his own feelings of rejection become centered during a clinical session, his empathy for the analysand’s feelings and experience becomes diminished and derailed by his narcissistic defenses.

But Shaw isn’t “a narcissist” deserving of demonization—he is human. He is an excellent, ethical, and insightful psychoanalyst. He has a high capacity for critical self-reflection and personal accountability. And he has genuine expertise on what narcissism actually IS…which isn’t something as fixed or absolute or dichotomous as the influencers and educators on narcissistic abuse would have us believe.

Shaw discusses the myriad complexities and contradictions embedded in the psychoanalytic research and writings on narcissism in his book, Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation:

Are we talking about ‘healthy,’ ‘normal,’ or ‘pathological’ narcissism? Is a narcissist deflated, overinflated, thick- or thin-skinned, overt or inverted? Is narcissism characterized by entitled grandiosity, or by primitive idealization, or both? Is it a line of development of the self, leading in maturity to empathy, wisdom, and humor; or a primitive infantile developmental stage to which schizophrenics regress? Is narcissism more broadly the dimension of mental activity concerned with maintenance of self-esteem? A pathology caused by an excessive endowment of aggression, or envy, or an extraordinary vulnerability to shame, or by traumatic impingements at crucial developmental stages? What about problems with making fluid transitions from subjective to objective states, and back—isn’t that characteristic of the narcissist as well? All of the above is the answer, and a great deal more, when we go by the rich, complex, and sometimes contradictory psychoanalytic literature.⁵

To assuage the confusion surrounding the definition and etiology of narcissism, and to relieve the burden of having to hold so much nuance, the disseminators of narcissistic abuse resources and frameworks cherry-pick from the extant literature on narcissism what can easily be packaged and sold, and simply discards the rest.

Survivors are, thus, not being educated on actual narcissism but rather, they are being sold a constructed narrative that reduces narcissism to only a pejorative term, that frames narcissistic as the worst personality trait a person could ever have, that dehumanizes anyone arbitrarily labeled “a narcissist,” and that promotes the concept of the narcissist/empath dichotomy, overtly conveying the message that certain people are inherently narcissistic and abusive while others are inherently non-narcissistic and non-abusive, and that it is the survivor’s high capacity for empathy and compassion that attracts the “narcissist,” and consequently the abuse—“If I was abused by a narcissist then, by default, I’m an empath, and therefore I’m not narcissistic at all, and I’m never abusive.”

What better way to attract (and attach) a massive (and vulnerable) population to a lucrative “wellness” industry than to promote a narrative that convinces help-seeking survivors that our victimization evidences our inherent goodness and moral superiority? And what better way to perpetuate the cycle of relational abuse and trauma than to relieve survivors of the “burden” of critical self-reflection, personal accountability, course correction, and civic responsibility by assuring us that we could never possibly victimize others?

This is one of the most infuriatingly harmful byproducts of the Narcissistic Abuse Industrial Complex (NAIC). By peddling the marketable myth of the narcissist/empath dichotomy, survivors are flattered rather than freed. And by failing to acknowledge and address the realities of systemic oppression within its frameworks and discourse, the NAIC is enabling white, and otherwise privileged, survivors to avoid confronting the ways so many of us might be participating in the very systems of domination we decry.

It seems that what has likely happened is a kind of pedagogical “splitting”⁶ —there are those who write about actual narcissism, which is grounded in evolving psychoanalytic theory, and those who pontificate about narcissistic abuse pop-psychology ideas that placate white supremacy by propagating reductive, decontextualized, individualistic, and binary “us versus them” narratives.

In their article, Whiteness as Pathological Narcissism, Arianne E. Miller and Lawrence Josephs wrote, “To confront someone about one’s repudiated white privilege is analogous to confronting the person about their defensive grandiosity; the person feels attacked and responds with denial and counterattack”.⁷ When a person holds white privilege, “the advantages of being white, whether acknowledged or not”,⁸ or the ultimate unearned privilege—“White-Patriarchal-Christian Privilege, which is a particular kind of narcissism”⁹ —their capacity for critical self-reflection is compromised.

When a person’s white privilege is coupled with a strong attachment to being perceived as highly empathetic and good (as to not be perceived as a “narcissist”), their defensive grandiosity can reach even greater magnitudes, causing them to become an incredibly difficult person to confront about even the slightest grievance, thus causing others to walk on eggshells. And what I cannot unsee is that the result of this tragic trajectory is potentially an army of mobilized and righteous self-proclaimed “empaths” so gripped by their own narcissism and defensive grandiosity that they—likely without full awareness—become the very kind of people they are trying so hard to prove that they are not.

Because here’s the thing—even if we have endured relational abuse ourselves, it is highly possible that the ways many of us are showing up in the world (often without our full awareness) are experienced as love-bombing, grooming, gaslighting, invalidation, stonewalling, isolation, intimidation, coercion, degradation, devaluation, deflecting, blame-shifting, smear campaigning, ghosting, or discarding to someone…or to many someones.

These harmful behaviors can show up in the ways we go about getting what we want or need, in the ways we protect ourselves or “protect our peace,”¹⁰ in the ways we relate to people in our lives who hold less privilege and power than we do, in the ways we consume resources, in the ways we decide who is worthy of our trust, grace, and support, or to recognition, safety, and security, and even in the ways we vote. And harm shows up in the ways we try to rationalize or justify our complicity in systemic oppression and large-scale harm, especially when someone tries to bring our complicity to our attention.

This is the “narcissistic abuse” that the influencers and educators on narcissistic abuse don’t discuss.

Because here’s the other thing—in the words of anti-racism and collective liberation educator myisha t hill, Heal Your Way Forward: The Co-Conspirator’s Guide to an Antiracist Future: “Our culture of whiteness prioritizes the psychological and emotional safety and comfort of white folx over all others.”¹¹

hill explains, “While we may have many unique experiences, we often play out our individual oppression in our interpersonal relationships.”¹² For example, a white woman could be abused by her spouse or partner—and enduring the oppression of patriarchy in both private and public domains—AND she could be gaslighting, invalidating, or devaluing her Black, Brown, or Indigenous colleagues at work.

Abuse is abuse.

hill expands on the universality and intersectionality of systemic oppression:

We are all oppressed and we have all been taught to uphold oppression, which minimizes our ability to pursue our own identity and purpose toward personal and interpersonal development. When we are living within an oppressive framework—when our decisions, choices, and life path are rooted in the ideals of the oppressor—we unconsciously cause harm in every aspect of our lives. Our interpersonal, professional, and personal relationships suffer as we continue to run on the hamster wheel of domination, of power over instead of power with.¹³

Sonya Renee Taylor, author of The Body Is Not an Apology, The Power of Radical Self-Love, aligns with hill’s insights and assertions, discussing how oppressive and subjugating behaviors are not only personal choices, but patterns rooted in long histories of colonization and systemic inequities that give some bodies default power while subjugating others. She writes:

In most of the Western world and nations impacted by colonization, bodies that are coded as “White” are given default status and the privileges and systemic power of said status. People of color, whether they be Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander and all others, have been systemically discriminated against globally, resulting in disparate outcomes in wealth, health, education, and most other social markers of capitalism. ¹⁴

Dr. Akilah Cadet, community leader and storyteller working at the intersections of organizational change and systemic justice, and Founder and CEO of Change Cadet consulting firm, illustrates what it means to live under systems that continuously invalidate, devalue, gaslight, and subjugate—profiling and targeting people based on race, disability, and other intersectional identities in her powerful and timely book, White Supremacy Is All Around: Notes from a Black Disabled Woman in a White World.

Cadet’s experiences illuminate the daily realities of systemic violence, showing how survivorship is not limited to enduring interpersonal abuse, but extends to navigating oppressive structures that impact every aspect of life. She writes:

As a Black disabled woman, I never get a break. I could literally be on vacation and be discriminated against from the airport to the hotel. As I go through TSA, my hair is patted down because the machines cannot see curly-textured hair. At the gate I am judged for boarding during pre-board because ‘I don’t look like I have a disability.’ In first or business class I am asked if I am in the right seat. I am a proud Virgo who checks my seat number an unhealthy number of times before I get settled. Upon arrival to the four- or five-star resort, the front desk staff is shocked that I am Dr. Cadet. And then, finally, when I make it to the crystal-clear saltwater pool overlooking a cerulean blueocean, I am asked to show my room card to get a towel when white people before and after me are greeted with a towel and a smile. When I am on a literal break, I do not receive the comfort I deserve, which is the benefit of white supremacy. The safety and support white supremacy offers to rest and not be always on guard and alert. Taking a pause from advocating for myself and fellow BIPOC is a privilege I may never see in my lifetime. Especially if white people only want to be allies. ¹⁵

Cadet’s narrative names an essential truth: true survivorship work must include recognition of systemic harm, validating the pain caused by that harm, and doing the work CONSISTENTLY to dismantle the systems causing the harm. Understanding this brings us to the critical distinction between allyship and accompliceship. Cadet describes allyship as:

Immersing yourself in the community you want to advocate for. It is learning how to speak up for the least represented to be represented. Allyship is asking how to help with caution, or not putting the burden on the person who you are supporting to educate you. It is actively listening, reading books, listening to informational podcasts, attending workshops, and having discussions about how and why it is needed to be an ally for others. ¹⁶

And while all of this is well and good, Cadet also breaks down for us that “allyship is an illusion” to solution,¹⁷ like “watering the plant when the soil and roots are fertilized by white supremacy,”¹⁸ because the solution to dismantling white supremacy isn’t just learning about what it is and how we can help to reduce its harm, and walking away from all the work and the helping when we get tired or uncomfortable or bored—it is a committed daily practice of dismantling the problem from the root—as an accomplice.

Many influential educators and influencers on narcissistic abuse present themselves as allies to and advocates for all survivors by offering guidance, validation, and strategies for navigating abusive individuals, families, and work settings, yet they are largely neglecting the root—the supremacist systems that shape, enable, and perpetuate all that abuse—abuse that is endured by so many survivors almost everywhere they go. Thus, they fail to even be allies to survivors who are the most vulnerable to and the most negatively impacted by abuse…by oppression. If they are listening to and learning from the books and podcasts about white supremacy and systemic oppression at all, they are not integrating the lessons into the information they share with the survivors who follow their platforms, read their books, or sit across from them in clinical or coaching sessions. And Cadet’s book, as well is this very essay written by a queer therapist, are clear examples of placing the burden on marginalized survivors to educate them. And rather than “speaking up for the least represented,” they are silent. Barely an ally, far from an accomplice.

As Cadet explains:

An accomplice is someone who uses their privilege to dismantle racism, oppression, and white supremacy. An accomplice questions why things are done one way for white people and another for Black people. An accomplice uses their privilege as a road map to know how to show up for others. They are unafraid of what their fellow white peers will say as they embrace being the odd one out. An accomplice is comfortable being uncomfortable learning and unlearning. They really do the work. An accomplice brushes their teeth, puts on their deodorant, and dismantles white supremacy daily.¹⁹

True survivorship work is accompliceship work—working to dismantle the oppressive systems that inform, enable, and even encourage the abusive dynamics that can show up in even our most intimate relationships. And it means doing the work DAILY, even within our own families, and NOT exercising our white privilege to avoid or abandon that work when it becomes “too uncomfortable.”

Christabel Mintah-Galloway makes this clearer than clear in her post:

When you go “No Contact” with your bigoted family members to “protect your peace” those people don’t disappear. They go to work. They legislate. They hire. They enact the abuse of Whiteness on the rest of us because you were too tired to face them. Who is supposed to fix the abomination? If it isn’t the people in a relationship with the abusers, then who is it? Are the victims of Whiteness supposed to be the ones to face the evils of Whiteness? If you are in relationship with these people, the responsibility is yours. And to the person who asked me how long they should keep trying, I say for as long as people of the global majority are disproportionately harmed by their bigotry.

When survivorship spaces and resources don’t even name the systems that oppress disabled people, queer and trans people, Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, it is not accompliceship, and it is barely even allyship—it is complicity cosplaying care.

References

Cadet, A. (2024). White supremacy is all around: Notes from a Black disabled woman in a white world. Hachette Go.

Hill, M. T. (2025). Heal your way forward: The co-conspirator’s guide to an antiracist future. Row House Publishing.

Kohut, H. (1971). The analysis of the self: A systematic approach to the psychoanalytic treatment of narcissistic personality disorders. International Universities Press.

Miller, A. E., & Josephs, L. (2009). Whiteness as pathological narcissism. Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 45(1), 93–119.

Mintah-Galloway, C. [@christabelmintagalloway]. (February 7, 2016). Your “No Contact” boundary is a luxury of whiteness not afforded to people of the global majority. [Instagram Post].

Shaw, D. (2022). Traumatic narcissism (Reprint ed.). Routledge.

Shaw, D. (2025). Traumatic narcissism and recovery: Leaving the prison of shame and fear. Routledge.

Taylor, S. R. (2021). The body is not an apology: The power of radical self-love (2nd ed.). Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

1. Kohut, 1971/2016, p. 2

2. Kohut, 1971/2016, p. 3

3. Kohut, 1971/2016, p. 3

4. Shaw, 2025, p. 179, emphasis added

5. Shaw, 2022, p. 17, emphasis added

6. Splitting is a psychology term referring to “all or nothing” thinking which is a psychological defense mechanism where a person is perceived as either all good or all bad, ignoring and dismissing the contexts and complexities of human behaviors and personalities.

7. Miller & Josephs, 2009, P. 93

8. Miller & Josephs, 2009, P. 93

9. Shaw, 2022, p. 92

10. Callback to Christabel Mintah-Galloway ‘s post

11. hill, 2022, p. 59

12. hill, 2022, p. 30

13. hill, 2022, p. 23

14. Taylor, 2018/2021, p. 121

15. Cadet, 2024, p. 58

16. Cadet, 2024, p. 58

17. Cadet, 2024, p. 58

18. Cadet, 2024, p. 59

19. Cadet, 2024, p. 60