Therapy for Narcissistic Abuse
Authentic Connections Therapy and Wellness provides therapy for people recovering from narcissistic abuse — the erosion of self-trust that follows a relationship built on manipulation, criticism, and reversal of blame. Several of our doctoral-level clinicians specialize in relational trauma and work with survivors using EMDR, Internal Family Systems, and attachment-based therapy. We see clients in Denver and Greenwood Village, online across Colorado, and in PSYPACT states. Book a free 15-minute phone consultation to get matched with a therapist.
You spent the relationship being told you were the problem
You have probably replayed a hundred conversations trying to find the moment it turned. You raised something small. Within minutes you were apologizing. You left the conversation certain you had been unfair, and it was only hours or days later that the original concern came back to you, still unanswered.
That pattern has a name. It is called DARVO, which stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender, and it is one of the most reliable signatures of this kind of relationship. Your concern gets denied. Your character gets attacked. And by the end, the person you confronted is the one who appears wounded, and your instinct is to comfort them.
It works because you are someone who takes responsibility. People who are highly empathetic, who are good at repair, who were taught early that keeping the peace was their job are the people this dynamic holds onto longest. Being susceptible to it is not a character flaw. In most cases it is the same capacity that makes you a good partner, aimed at someone who used it.
Why is it so much harder to get over than a normal breakup?
Because it was not a normal relationship, and grieving it does not follow the normal arc.
Most breakups hurt in a way that gradually loosens. This one tends to do something different. You feel relief and devastation in the same afternoon. You miss someone you also know treated you badly, and that contradiction makes you doubt your own judgment all over again.
There is a reason for that. The relationship almost certainly ran on intermittent reinforcement, meaning long stretches of criticism or coldness broken by intense warmth. That pattern is one of the most powerful forms of attachment conditioning there is. The warmth was unpredictable, so your nervous system learned to stay oriented toward it, scanning, working for it. When the relationship ends, that orientation does not switch off just because you have decided the person was harmful.
Then there is what you lost that was not the person. You lost your own read on reality. When someone has spent months or years telling you that what you saw did not happen, the damage is not only to the relationship. It is to the instrument you use to evaluate every relationship after it.
What survivors most often describe
Second-guessing your own memory of events, even ones you documented
A persistent, low-grade sense that you are "too much," meaning too sensitive, too needy, too intense
Anxiety that arrives in new relationships before anything has gone wrong
Difficulty naming what you want, because wanting things was treated as a problem
Grief that keeps restarting, often after contact from your ex
A flat, worn-down feeling that looks like depression and is often mistaken for it
Reluctance to call what happened abuse, because there were no bruises and there were good years
The text that arrives right when you are finally steady
Almost every survivor we work with describes this. You go weeks feeling more like yourself. You stop rehearsing arguments in the shower. And then a message arrives, casual and warm, sometimes an apology that sounds almost like the one you spent years waiting for.
The healing does not actually reset. It feels like it does, and that feeling is worth preparing for rather than being ambushed by. Part of the work is building a plan for that moment before it happens, so that a single text does not get to relitigate everything you have rebuilt.
Clinicians have a name for this particular injury. Betrayal trauma describes what happens when the person who hurt you is also the person you depended on for safety. It does not resolve the way other trauma does, because the thing you would normally reach for when you are hurt, meaning a trusted person, is the thing that was damaged.
What we actually do in therapy for narcissistic abuse
Getting your reality back
Before anything else, we spend time reconstructing what actually happened. This is not to build a case against anyone. It is because you need your own account of your own life back. The work often involves naming specific interactions and working out, carefully and without rushing, what you actually observed. For many clients this is the first time anyone has taken their version seriously without qualification.
Treating the memories that will not settle
Some moments from these relationships do not file themselves away. They intrude. You are driving and you are suddenly back in a specific argument, with the same heart rate you had then. That is a trauma response, and it responds well to trauma treatment.
Several of our clinicians are trained in EMDR, which helps the nervous system finish processing memories that are stuck in the present tense. Clients often notice that the memory becomes something they can recall rather than something that happens to them again.
Separating their voice from yours
After a long relationship of this kind, the criticism tends to have moved inside. The voice that tells you that you are too sensitive no longer needs your ex present to speak.
Internal Family Systems is particularly useful here. Rather than arguing with that inner critic, IFS helps you understand what it is trying to protect you from, which is usually further humiliation, and build a relationship with it that does not require you to believe it. The goal is not to silence the voice. It is to stop taking it as the truth about who you are.
Understanding what made you reachable, without blaming you for it
This is the part clients are most nervous about, and it is the part that changes the future rather than only settling the past.
We look at your attachment history: how connection worked in your family, what you learned to do when someone you needed was unpredictable, and what you have historically been willing to tolerate for closeness. We often map this across five significant relationships to find the pattern rather than pathologizing any one of them.
This is not an exercise in fault. It is how you stop being reachable by the same dynamic next time, and how you learn to recognize the difference between chemistry and activation early enough to act on it.
What therapy for narcissistic abuse cannot do
We would rather say this plainly than let you find out six sessions in.
Therapy cannot diagnose your ex. We have not met them, and we will not assign a personality disorder to someone who is not our client. That is both an ethical line and a clinical one. A label applied from the outside is not evidence, and it is not what makes you better.
Therapy cannot make them accountable. If part of you is waiting for an acknowledgment that names exactly what happened, we understand why, and we will work on what it costs you to keep waiting.
Therapy cannot make the grief efficient. Recovery from this is usually measured in months, sometimes longer, and it is not linear.
What it can do is give you back your own judgment, reduce the intrusive memories to a manageable size, and help you build relationships where you do not have to audit yourself constantly. That is a realistic outcome, and most of our clients get there.
A note on the word "narcissist"
Most people find this page by searching for narcissistic abuse, and that is the language we have used here, because it is the language that describes the experience accurately.
It is worth knowing that "narcissistic abuse" is not a clinical diagnosis, and that narcissistic traits exist on a spectrum that a great many people sit somewhere on. The behaviors that harmed you, including the denial, the reversal, and the contempt, are real and nameable whether or not the person meets criteria for a personality disorder.
That distinction matters for a practical reason, not an academic one. Your recovery does not depend on correctly diagnosing someone else. It depends on trusting your own account of what happened to you. We can help with the second regardless of the first.
If you are still in the relationship
Some people find this page while they are still deciding.
If you are in physical danger, or if leaving feels unsafe, please contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or text START to 88788. They are available 24/7 and can help with safety planning in a way a therapy website cannot.
If you are not in danger but you are unsure whether to stay, that is a legitimate reason to start therapy. We will not pressure you toward a decision. Clarity usually comes from having one place where you are not being talked out of what you perceive.
What can therapy for narcissistic abuse help with?
Rebuilding self-trust so you can rely on your own read of a situation again
Intrusive memories and hypervigilance by reducing the moments that put you back in the relationship without warning
The internalized critic by separating their voice from your own
Grief that keeps restarting including a plan for re-contact
Anxiety in new relationships by telling real warning signs apart from a nervous system still braced
Boundaries that hold particularly with co-parenting, family, or a workplace you cannot simply exit
Naming what you want after a long stretch of treating your own preferences as an inconvenience
Deciding whether to stay with support that is not pushing you either direction
Frequently Asked Questions About Therapy for narcissistic abuse
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Individual sessions at Authentic Connections are $135 to $200, depending on the clinician. We also offer a reduced-rate tier with our advanced doctoral trainees, who are supervised by our licensed clinicians. Sessions are typically 50 minutes. We will confirm the exact fee with you on your free consultation call, before you book anything.
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We are in-network with Aetna for individual therapy. For all other plans we are out-of-network, and we provide superbills you can submit to your insurer for possible reimbursement. Many plans reimburse a portion of out-of-network mental health care. We also accept HSA and FSA cards. If cost is the barrier, ask about the doctoral trainee rate on your consultation call.
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Yes. We see clients online across Colorado, and through PSYPACT our licensed psychologists can work with clients in 43 additional states. Many survivors prefer virtual sessions early on, particularly when a shared household or co-parenting arrangement makes an in-person appointment hard to arrange privately.
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Mostly listening. We will ask what brought you in and what the relationship was like, but we will not push you into the hardest material on day one, because that tends to be counterproductive. We will also talk about what you want to be different, and start orienting toward which approach fits. Trauma processing like EMDR usually begins after we have spent some sessions building stability first.
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Yes. You do not need to have left, or to have decided to leave, to start. A good deal of our work with clients in this position is simply providing one place where their perception is not being argued with, which tends to make the decision clearer on its own. If safety is a concern, we will talk about that directly and can connect you with domestic violence resources alongside therapy.
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It varies more than we would like to be able to tell you. Clients often notice a meaningful shift in intrusive symptoms within two to three months of consistent work, while rebuilding self-trust and changing relationship patterns typically takes longer. The length of the relationship, whether you still have contact, and whether there was earlier relational trauma all affect the timeline. We will give you a more honest estimate once we know your situation.
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Because the relationship almost certainly ran on intermittent reinforcement, meaning unpredictable warmth between stretches of criticism, which is one of the strongest forms of attachment conditioning there is. Missing them is not evidence that you were wrong about the relationship, and it is not a sign you should go back. It is a predictable consequence of how the relationship was structured, and it fades.
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DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It describes the sequence where you raise a concern, the concern is denied, your character is attacked, and the other person ends up appearing to be the injured party, leaving you apologizing. It is often an automatic protective response rather than a calculated strategy, which is part of why it is so disorienting to be on the receiving end of. We wrote a longer piece on how to recognize it in the moment.
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No, and we would be suspicious of a clinician who would. We have not met them, and diagnosing someone who is not our client is outside what we can ethically or accurately do. What we can do is help you name specific behaviors, understand their effect on you, and stop needing a label to validate your experience.
Experienced Therapists for Narcissistic Abuse
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Dr. Rebekah DePretis
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Dr. Courtney Crouse
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Dr. Courtney Phillips
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Dr. Mallaree Blake
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Dr. Brittany Woolford
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Karina Ernst, MA
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Dr. Annalise Floody
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Dr. Rachel Hughitt
Find Out How Therapy for Narcissistic Abuse Can Help You
If you've done the work but still feel like something’s missing, Therapy for Narcissistic Abuse might be the missing link that helps everything finally click into place. To schedule a free 15-minute consultation to find out more about in-person or online Narcissistic Abuse Recovery therapy with us, please visit our contact page.
If you think Therapy for Narcissistic Abuse could be helpful for you, reach out to us! You can use our convenient online therapy scheduling.
We encourage you to get to know a little bit about our therapists, their specializations, and credentials. Get to know our therapists here.
Jump start your healing journey with quick and effective treatment.
We hope to hear from you soon!
In-person and Remote Options for Therapy for Narcissistic Abuse in Colorado
We have offices conveniently located on the North Denver (Lower Highlands) , South Denver (Denver Tech Center), and Colorado Springs. Can’t make it into the office? No worries – we’ve got you covered with virtual therapy.
Therapy for Narcissistic Abuse in Denver Tech Center, Greenwood Village Co
Our Denver Tech Center (DTC) office is located at 5350 S Roslyn St in Greenwood Village. It shares a parking lot with the Landmark near Comedy Works South, Hapa Sushi Grill and Sake, and JING Denver.
Therapy for Narcissistic Abuse in Lower Highlands, Denver Co
Our Lower Highlands office is located at 2460 West 26th Avenue in Denver. It is right on i25, across the street from the downtown REI, and a few blocks from the Empower Stadium, The Downtown Aquarium, and Elitch Gardens
Therapy for Narcissistic Abuse in Colorado Springs, Co
Our Colorado Springs office is located at 2720 E Yampa St in Colorado Springs. It is 3 miles from downtown Colorado Springs and an easy drive from the highway.