Willow Life Coaching and Counseling
Non-Medical Coaching and Christian counseling via phone or video chat
• Do not respect your need for privacy or independence
• Become obsessively involved in your life
• Try to control your choices, thoughts, and goals
• Place you in a parental or caretaker role
• Make love, care, or support dependent on your compliance
• Use guilt messages such as “If you loved me…” or “If you really cared…”
• Shame you to control your behavior
• Frequently portray themselves as the victim
• Try to get even for perceived wrongs
• Attach strings to gifts or acts of kindness
• Show little genuine interest in your thoughts or feelings
• Display little or no genuine empathy
• Respond with resentment when you are hurt or sick
• Minimize or dismiss your emotional experiences
• Tell you that you are crazy, confused, lying, or remembering things wrong
• Deny things that clearly happened
• Create conversations or situations that make you question your perception of reality
• Frequently reinterpret events so they appear innocent or misunderstood
• Compete with you
• React with anger when something good happens to you
• Take credit for your accomplishments
• Minimize your successes or achievements
• Change how they treat you when other people are around
• Confide in others about you in ways that damage your reputation
• Pit family members against each other
• Show favoritism toward one child
• Need constant attention or affirmation
• Make conversations revolve around themselves
• Turn situations back to how they are affected
• Lie frequently
• React intensely to criticism
• Show silent or passive-aggressive anger
• Create ongoing conflict and misunderstandings in relationships
• Act resentful when you are hurt or sick
• Disrespect your need for space and privacy
• Make it difficult for you to live your own life or pursue your own goals
• Undermine your respect for your own time and needs
• Ignore you unless they want something from you
• Claim to know what you are thinking or what is best for you
• Show little interest in your feelings or perspective
• Demonstrate little desire to truly know or understand you
• Show little or no genuine empathy
• Use fake empathy to manipulate
• Send guilt messages such as “If you loved me…” or “If you really cared…”
• Shame you to control your behavior
• Tell you that you are crazy, confused, lying, or remembering things wrong
• Tell you that you are too sensitive or dramatic and should just get over it
• Project their own behavior onto you
• Gaslight you around sexual issues or intimacy
• Initiate conversations or situations that leave you confused or questioning your reality
• Insist on always being right
• Turn conversations back to themselves
• Demand constant attention and expect your life to revolve around them
• Minimize your accomplishments by comparing them to their own
• One-up you or disguise insults as compliments
• Give backhanded compliments or smug remarks
• Use the silent treatment to punish or control you
• Express anger through silence or passive-aggressive behavior
• React intensely to criticism
• Use threats or dramatic ultimatums
• Try to get even for perceived wrongs
• Rage when something good happens to you
• Give less effort to the relationship than you do
• Force you to beg or plead for communication or care
• Create situations that leave you constantly on edge
• Pull so much focus onto themselves that you begin to lose your sense of self
• Frequently position themselves as the victim
• Treat you differently when others are present
• Pit people against each other
• Triangulate relationships
• Confide in others about you in ways that damage your reputation
• Appear generous or altruistic mainly to influence how others see them
• Appear very likable at first but leave behind a pattern of broken relationships and “misunderstandings”
Survivors of prolonged relational trauma often struggle with intense, confusing, or unpredictable emotional responses.
• Excessively intense emotions
• Feeling emotionally numb in situations that would normally evoke a response
• Difficulty identifying or understanding emotions
• Avoidance of emotional experiences
• Persistent sadness
• Explosive anger or anger that feels inaccessible
• Suicidal thoughts
• Chronic emotional numbness
• Inappropriate emotional responses in certain situations
• Difficulty managing sudden emotional shifts
• Struggling to calm down after intense emotional highs or lows
• Emotional reactions that are disproportionate to the present situation (emotional flashbacks)
Long-term abuse can deeply distort how survivors see themselves.
• Believing they are fundamentally flawed or “all bad”
• Taking personal responsibility for what happened to them
• Believing they caused the abuse and therefore do not deserve kindness, love, or help
• Defining themselves primarily by what happened to them
• Feeling like they are a burden to others
• Believing they are completely different from other people
• Believing the person they were before the abuse is gone forever
Trauma can disrupt memory, perception, and connection with one’s own body.
• Poor or incomplete memory of traumatic events (even events previously remembered)
• Remembering traumatic events in a different sequence than they occurred
• Feeling disconnected from one’s own body or thoughts
• Experiencing unreality or altered perception (for example, colors brighter, objects larger or farther away, feeling like life is a movie)
• Losing chunks of time
• Chronic, often intermittent memory difficulties
• Emotional flashbacks
• Body memories
Relational trauma often makes connection with others confusing or unsafe.
• Profound feelings of isolation and difficulty relating to others
• Difficulty trusting others or knowing who can be trusted
• Trusting others too easily or indiscriminately
• Constantly searching for someone to rescue them
• Unintentionally seeking out hurtful or abusive people
• Abruptly abandoning relationships that are going well
• Remaining in relationships that are hurtful or abusive
Trauma bonding and psychological conditioning can distort how survivors perceive the person who harmed them.
• Surrendering control to the abuser
• Believing they will always remain under the abuser’s control
• Believing the abuser knows what is best for them
• Experiencing deep sadness or guilt after leaving the abuser or even thinking about leaving
• Feeling deeply attached to the abuser’s charming or public persona
• Believing that because others like the abuser, they must be the problem
• Believing it is wrong or shameful to think negatively about the abuser
• Longing for the abuser’s love and approval
• Excessively working to gain the abuser’s approval
• Persistent anger or hatred toward the abuser
• Recurring thoughts of revenge
• Experiencing conflicting emotions toward the abuser (such as love and hate)
Long-term abuse can profoundly alter how survivors see life, people, and the future.
• Difficulty believing that justice will ever be served
• Doubting that genuine goodness or kindness exists in others
• Believing that all kindness is motivated by selfishness
• Believing they were meant to be someone who is only hurt in life
• Profound despair
• Difficulty finding meaning in suffering
• Difficulty believing life can improve
• Dramatic shifts in beliefs about life
I work with adults navigating narcissistic abuse, spiritual abuse, and complex relational trauma. These dynamics often leave people silenced, confused, or caught in patterns that are difficult to untangle. Whether the harm unfolded within a relationship, family system, or a group context, I provide a steady, trauma-informed space where truth can be named without pressure, defensiveness, or shame. Together, we clarify what is happening, begin to unwind the layers, and build a thoughtful path toward real restoration.
For those who desire a Christ-centered approach, Christian counseling is integrated carefully and trauma-informed, with attention to the harm you have experienced.
Willow Life Coaching and Counseling, LLC does not provide clinical services or medical care. If you are in need of diagnosis, medication, or treatment for a medical or psychiatric condition, please consult a licensed medical provider.
