Some years ago, I experienced something that split my life into a ‘before’ and an ‘after’. A close friend exploded into a terrible rage, and there were ugly scenes that left me reeling. I didn’t know what to make of it or if an apology would ever be enough to make it all OK. But what happened next was even more surprising and left me deeply confused: my friend denied it all. The terrible scenes I and others had witnessed… they never happened.

Like others who have experienced such encounters, because I had a close relationship with my narcissist, I was blindsided by the deluge of lies that followed. I was aware I was being gaslighted, and I pointed this out, but my friend refused to change their stance. It. Never. Happened. No apology, just the expectation that I should get on with things and pretend that the rage I had witnessed was a figment of my imagination.

I prefer the term ‘psychological warfare’ over ‘gaslighting’, a word that is now used so commonly that it doesn’t do justice to the absolute binfire that a narcissist lights in your brain as they try to twist, subvert and rewrite reality. It’s rare to merely ‘encounter’ a narcissist; instead, you’re often left climbing out of the wreckage left in their wake and wondering what the hell just happened.

“After experiencing a narcissist’s rage, I wrote a book about a psychopath”