This Is Not Okay — The Book Is Coming

“So it’s okay, Mom.”

Those four words came out of my young teenage son’s mouth after his dad handed him a cherry slushie from Sonic.

A peace offering.

A reset button.

A way to make the hurt disappear without ever naming it, acknowledging it, or taking responsibility for it.

And in that moment, something in me screamed:

No. It isn’t. This is NOT okay.

That moment in my kitchen nearly ten years ago is where my book started.

Not the writing of it—that came later.

But the seeing of it.

It was the moment the fog cleared just long enough for me to recognize what I had been living inside for years.

And I knew: This is not okay.

Today, I finally get to tell you something I’ve been sitting on for a long time.

My book, This Is Not Okay: Escaping the Invisible Grip of Covert Narcissistic Abuse, is coming this fall.

And I cannot wait to share it with you.

Why I Wrote This Book

If you’ve been part of this community for a while, you know the Covert Narcissism Podcast began as a place to name what so many of us couldn’t name for years.

The confusion.

The self-doubt.

The exhaustion of loving someone who always seemed just out of reach.

The feeling that their kindness came with conditions.

Being told you were “too sensitive” so many times that eventually you started believing it yourself.

Defending someone to your friends and family, only to go home and wonder why you felt so small.

This podcast has always been about giving those experiences language.

But it has also been about something bigger: community.

The book is the next step.

It’s the fuller version of everything we’ve been talking about here—organized, expanded, and put into your hands so you can return to it whenever you need it.

I didn’t set out to write a book.

I set out to survive a relationship.

I didn’t set out to become an expert on covert narcissism.

I set out to create a family and a home.

I never saw this part of my journey coming.

For years, I did what so many survivors do.

I told myself:

It’s not that bad.

Every marriage has problems.

At least there aren’t police reports.

At least there aren’t broken bones.

I should be grateful.

I minimized everything.

I excused everything.

I stretched myself thin trying to keep the peace, convinced that if I just loved harder, communicated more clearly, and stayed patient enough, everything would finally be okay.

It would finally be enough.

And we would finally be happy.

It never was enough.

Because that’s not how this kind of abuse works.

When Abuse Doesn't Look Like Abuse

Covert narcissism doesn’t always announce itself.

It doesn’t necessarily rage in public or leave marks anyone can see.

It’s quiet.

It’s a slow turn of a dial rather than an on/off switch.

I describe it in the book like trying to catch a ghost.

You see it clearly for one second, but then it blurs.

You grasp it and think, I’ve got it now.

And then it disappears.

You’re left wondering if you imagined the whole thing.

Until it appears again.

Undeniable.

And then it’s gone again.

I wrote this book because I lived in that confusion.

I spent years trying to understand what was happening.

I dug in desperately because I wanted to save my boys from the pain they were experiencing.

Since then, I’ve spent even more years working with clients who are living through the exact same patterns.

And I realized something:

The world needs more than descriptions of narcissism that focus only on the loud, obvious version.

We need language for the quiet version.

For the person who keeps asking:

“Is this really abuse if no one is yelling?”

“Is this really abuse if no one is bleeding?”

The answer is yes.

The Five Stages of the Book

This book moves through five stages, because healing rarely happens in a straight line.

It’s a journey of:

Recognizing. Understanding. Seeing. Untangling. Reclaiming.

Each stage takes you a little deeper into understanding covert narcissism, its impact, and what happens to us when we live inside these dynamics.

1. Understanding Covert Narcissism

Maybe this is where you are right now.

Something is happening in your relationship, but you don’t have the words for it yet.

This stage gives you those words.

Not every covert narcissist looks the same.

Some withdraw into silence.

Some charm everyone around them.

Some quote scripture on Sunday.

Some yell and rage.

There isn’t one single mask.

I describe covert narcissism as a spectrum—not an on/off switch.

The packaging changes.

The harm doesn’t.

2. Identifying the Strategies

This is where we get specific.

Very specific.

We break down the strategies that create the grip: avoidance, reality distortion, emotional manipulation, gaslighting, blame shifting, triangulation, love bombing, devaluing, and the ways control can show up in intimacy and sex.

One concept I explore is what I call the mental list.

It’s the list of things you decide you will never say again.

I’ll never bring that up again.

I won’t talk about that subject.

I’ll wait until they’re in a better mood.

I know what happens when I say that.

The list starts small.

A subject here.

A tone there.

A particular time of day you learn to avoid.

And eventually, you look up and realize how much of yourself you’ve edited out.

Your words.

Your humor.

Your smile.

Your honesty.

Your personality.

I wrote:

“Every expression becomes a calculation: Will this upset them? Will they twist it? Will I pay for this later?”

That realization can be painful.

But it can also be the beginning of reclaiming yourself.

3. Seeing the Invisible Framework

Covert narcissism doesn’t stay contained inside an argument.

It walks with you.

It seeps into the way you talk to yourself.

It affects your children, sometimes before they even have language for what they’re absorbing.

And it shapes how the outside world sees you—especially when other people only ever see the charming version of the person you experience behind closed doors.

This stage explores FOG: fear, obligation, and guilt.

It also looks at what happens to children raised inside these dynamics and how they learn to read a room before they learn to understand what they’re feeling.

If you’re a parent, this may be one of the hardest—and most important—parts of the journey.

Because covert narcissistic abuse doesn’t just affect the person experiencing it directly.

It affects the whole family system.

4. Understanding the Trap

At this point, we stop looking only at the narcissist and begin looking at you.

Not to blame you.

Absolutely not.

But to understand you.

Why didn’t you see it sooner?

Why did you keep making excuses?

Why did you doubt yourself?

Why did you stay?

This is where we begin to understand cognitive dissonance and the ways our minds try to protect us when reality becomes too difficult to reconcile.

This stage also addresses something many survivors carry enormous shame about: reactive abuse.

Maybe you finally snapped.

Maybe you yelled.

Maybe you slammed a door.

Maybe you said something you regret.

And then they stood there calmly and said:

“See? This is why we can’t talk. You’re the abusive one.”

I wrote:

“Reactive abuse doesn’t mean you’re unstable, abusive, or incapable of emotional control. It means you’ve been living in an environment that repeatedly overwhelms your nervous system while offering no repair, no accountability, and no genuine connection.”

Just because you were the one who eventually broke does not automatically make you the problem.

Understanding the larger pattern matters.

5. Reclaiming Yourself

This is the stage I hold with the most hope.

Because awareness isn’t the destination.

Awareness says:

“This is not okay.”

Healing says:

“Now I’m going to do something about it.”

Reclaiming yourself can happen whether you leave or whether staying is the reality of your life right now.

There is no ultimatum here.

There is no single path that every survivor must follow.

There is simply a way forward—at your own pace.

Throughout the book, I also weave in grounding and nervous-system practices because I don’t want you to understand your story only intellectually.

Sometimes your mind knows something long before your body feels safe enough to believe it.

Healing means helping your mind and body get back on the same page.

This Was Never Just My Story

There’s something that matters to me even more than the book itself.

The community.

This was never supposed to be about my story.

From the beginning—before there was a podcast, before there was a manuscript—the mission was always bigger than me.

The moment I realized I wasn’t the only one living this nightmare, I desperately wanted to find the others who were there too.

I wanted to hear their stories.

I wanted to connect through the struggle.

To cry together.

To laugh together.

To finally be able to say:

“Me too.”

My mission became about neighbor helping neighbor.

It became about the idea that none of us are supposed to do this alone.

Because the moment one person stands up and says, “This is not okay,” it becomes easier for the next person to stand up too.

And then the next.

And the next.

That’s how an entire room eventually ends up standing together.

That’s how community works.

This book has my name on the cover.

But it was never mine alone.

It comes from thousands of conversations with people just like you—people who trusted me with their stories so that someone else could finally see their own story reflected back at them.

Every chapter carries pieces of this community inside it.

This isn’t my voice anymore. It’s ours.

You Don't Have to Heal Alone

If you’ve spent time in CNG, you already know what community can look like.

Our Facebook group exists because people needed a place to say the quiet part out loud and be met with:

“Me too.”

Not:

“You’re overreacting.”

Not:

“Why didn’t you just leave?”

Not:

“They seem so nice.”

Just:

“I understand.”

Group coaching exists because healing can go deeper when you’re not doing it in isolation.

And our retreats have shown me something I will never forget.

I recently returned home from our retreat in Colorado, and honestly, it was the best one we’ve ever had.

There is something powerful about survivors sitting across from one another, face to face, and realizing:

I’m not the only one.

I’m not broken.

I’m not too much.

I’m not imagining this.

People walk into these retreats as strangers carrying stories they’ve often never said out loud.

And they leave with real friendships and a community of people who understand.

Watching that happen reminded me all over again why this work has never been about me.

It’s about all of us standing in a circle together.

This Book Is an Invitation

So when This Is Not Okay comes out this fall, I want you to think of it less like my memoir and more like an invitation into our community.

An invitation to bring more people into this circle.

More neighbors.

More voices.

More survivors who no longer have to sit alone in their kitchen wondering if what they’re experiencing is real.

More people who don’t have to cry in the night feeling completely invisible.

The book opens the door.

The community is waiting on the other side.

Whatever has been confusing you in your relationship, whatever you’ve minimized because it wasn’t loud enough to count—it counts.

You don’t have to wait for things to become worse before you’re allowed to acknowledge that something is wrong.

You don’t have to have bruises.

You don’t have to have a police report.

You don’t have to convince anyone else.

If something inside you keeps saying, This isn’t okay, listen.

That voice may be the beginning of seeing clearly again.

And this fall, I get to put the words to that journey into your hands.

This Is Not Okay.

And you don’t have to walk through it alone.

As always, I wish you so much peace on your journey of healing.