If you’ve spent time trying to explain your relationship to a friend, a therapist, or even yourself, you already know the problem: the words run out. “He was controlling” doesn’t quite capture it. “She made me feel crazy” doesn’t either. This narcissistic abuse terms glossary exists because having the right language changes something. It’s not about diagnosing anyone, and it’s not a checklist to prove you’re allowed to feel the way you feel. It’s about finally having names for patterns you’ve been living inside of, often for a long time, often while wondering if you were imagining them or making too much of “small” things.
There’s a specific kind of relief that comes from reading a definition and thinking, “that’s exactly it — that’s the thing I couldn’t describe.” Survivors describe this moment often: the fog doesn’t lift all at once, but a single accurate word can be the first crack of light. That’s the purpose of this page. Not to hand you a diagnosis for someone else, and not to turn your relationship into a case study, but to give you back some of the clarity that confusion tends to take away.
You don’t need to memorize this page or use these terms perfectly. Some will land immediately — you’ll read a definition and feel your shoulders drop an inch. Others might not fit your situation at all, and that’s fine too. Take what’s useful and leave the rest. Below are some of the most common terms survivors ask us about, each with a plain-language definition, a small example of how it tends to show up, and a note on why recognizing it tends to help.
DARVO
DARVO stands for Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. It’s what happens when you bring up something hurtful someone did, and instead of acknowledging it, they deny it happened, attack your credibility or character, and then recast themselves as the one who’s been wronged — by you, for bringing it up. If you’ve ever left a conversation about your own pain somehow apologizing to the person who caused it, you’ve likely experienced DARVO. It can happen in seconds, which is part of why it’s so disorienting — one moment you’re describing something that hurt you, and the next you’re defending yourself against accusations that seem to have appeared out of nowhere. Naming it can be strangely relieving: it’s a recognizable, well-documented pattern, not a sign that you’re bad at communicating or too easily thrown off balance.
Flying Monkeys
Borrowed from The Wizard of Oz, this term describes people the narcissistic person sends — knowingly or not — to pressure, guilt, or monitor you on their behalf. A flying monkey might be a mutual friend who keeps relaying messages, a family member who insists you “just talk it out,” or a coworker repeating things back to the person you’re trying to get distance from. Flying monkeys aren’t always malicious; many are simply being used without realizing it, having only heard one carefully edited version of events. Recognizing the pattern helps you decide, with a clearer head, who gets access to information about your life right now — and it can take some of the sting out of feeling “ganged up on,” since the pressure is often coming from one source relayed through several mouths.
Hoovering
Named after the vacuum cleaner, hoovering is any attempt to “suck” you back into contact after you’ve pulled away — a sudden loving text, a crisis only you can help with, a gift, a nostalgic memory brought up out of nowhere, or a heartfelt-sounding apology that arrives right when you’ve started to feel steady again. Hoovering often intensifies right after you’ve set a boundary or gone no-contact, which can feel confusing: why now, when you finally started to feel steadier? The timing isn’t a coincidence — distance tends to trigger it. Understanding hoovering as a pattern, rather than a sign the person has truly changed, can help you evaluate the next approach with clearer eyes, and can make it easier to recognize a familiar move for what it is rather than what it’s dressed up to look like.
Triangulation
Triangulation happens when a third person — an ex, a friend, a new partner, a coworker, even a child — is pulled into the dynamic to create jealousy, competition, or self-doubt. “They never complained about this” or “even your own mother agrees with me” are classic triangulating lines. The goal, intentional or not, is to make you feel replaceable or outnumbered, so your own perspective feels less valid, and so you’re left measuring yourself against someone who was never actually in the room for the comparison. Once you can spot triangulation, the comparisons tend to lose some of their sting, because you can see the mechanism instead of just feeling its effect.
Gaslighting
Gaslighting is a pattern of making someone doubt their own memory, perception, or sanity — small denials at first (“that never happened”), then bigger ones, until you’re the one apologizing for “misremembering” your own life. It’s one of the most disorienting parts of narcissistic abuse precisely because it targets your trust in yourself, the one instrument you rely on to make sense of everything else. Over time, this can make even simple decisions feel harder, because you’ve learned to second-guess your own read of a situation before anyone else even weighs in. If you’ve started keeping notes just to prove things to yourself, that instinct makes complete sense — it’s covered in more depth in our post on documenting what’s happening.
Love Bombing
Love bombing is an early-stage flood of affection, attention, and grand gestures — constant texting, fast declarations of love, talk of a shared future almost immediately, gifts that feel disproportionate to how long you’ve known each other. It feels wonderful in the moment, which is exactly what makes it effective; most people don’t have a natural defense against being adored. Love bombing sets a high-water mark of “how good it can be,” one the relationship later uses as a lure to pull you back during the cycle of devaluation and discard, and one that can make the eventual coldness feel even more jarring by comparison.
Trauma Bonding
A trauma bond forms through a repeating cycle of intense highs and hurtful lows, reinforced unpredictably — sometimes called intermittent reinforcement (more on that below). The unpredictability itself is what deepens the attachment; your nervous system stays alert, hoping for the next good moment, in much the same way it would stay alert waiting for any uncertain, high-stakes outcome. If you’ve ever wondered “why can’t I just leave” and felt ashamed of the answer, trauma bonding is very often the honest, non-shameful explanation, and understanding it as a physiological response — not a character flaw — is often the first step toward loosening its grip.
The Grey Rock Method
Grey rocking means making yourself deliberately uninteresting to engage with — flat, brief, unemotional responses that give a reactive person little to work with. It’s a protective communication strategy, not a personality change, and it’s usually reserved for situations where some contact is unavoidable (co-parenting, workplaces, family events) rather than a way of relating to everyone in your life. Done well, it tends to reduce how often you get pulled into circular arguments, simply because there’s less for the other person to grab onto. We cover exactly how to do this, with sample scripts, in a dedicated post on the grey rock method.
Smear Campaign
A smear campaign is when the person spreads rumors, half-truths, or outright fabrications about you to mutual friends, family, or coworkers — often preemptively, before you’ve said anything about the relationship yourself. It can feel devastating to realize people’s opinions of you have shifted based on a story you never got to respond to, sometimes from people who once seemed firmly in your corner. Many survivors describe this as one of the most isolating parts of leaving, and it is not a reflection of anything true about you; smear campaigns tend to say far more about the person running them than the person they’re aimed at.
Narcissistic Supply
This term describes the attention, admiration, control, or emotional reaction a narcissistic person seeks from others to regulate their own sense of self. It can be positive (praise, admiration, being needed) or negative (anger, tears, panic) — either can function as “supply” if it produces a strong enough reaction, which is part of why calm sometimes gets treated as an insult and conflict sometimes gets manufactured out of nothing. Understanding this can help explain why calm, low-reaction responses (see: grey rock) sometimes reduce how often someone escalates, even when it feels counterintuitive in the moment.
Intermittent Reinforcement
Borrowed from behavioral psychology, this refers to rewards (affection, praise, calm) being given unpredictably rather than consistently. Unpredictable rewards are, counterintuitively, more powerfully reinforcing than steady ones — it’s the same mechanism that makes slot machines compelling, because the brain keeps anticipating the next “win” even after many losses. In relationships, it’s a major driver of trauma bonding, and it’s a big part of why logic alone (“I know this is bad for me”) often isn’t enough to create distance on its own — the pull isn’t about logic in the first place.
Scapegoat and Golden Child
In families affected by narcissistic dynamics, roles are often unevenly assigned: the scapegoat is blamed for problems, criticized, and held to impossible standards, while the golden child is idealized, praised, and sometimes used as a comparison point against the scapegoat. These roles can shift unexpectedly — a golden child who starts setting boundaries can suddenly become the new scapegoat — and both come with real, distinct wounds. Being idealized is not the same as being safe, and being blamed is not evidence that anything is actually wrong with you.
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is the discomfort of holding two conflicting beliefs at once — for example, “this person loves me” and “this person keeps hurting me.” To ease that discomfort, the mind often unconsciously reshapes one belief to fit the other, which is part of why people minimize or explain away harmful behavior for far longer than makes sense from the outside looking in. This isn’t weakness, and it isn’t a failure of intelligence or insight. It’s a well-documented, near-universal response to prolonged inconsistency, and recognizing it in yourself is often what finally interrupts it.
Breadcrumbing and Future Faking
Breadcrumbing is offering just enough attention or affection to keep you hopeful, without ever following through consistently — a warm text after weeks of distance, a small gesture right when you were about to give up. Future faking is a close cousin — vivid talk of a shared future (a trip, a wedding, a home) that never quite materializes, but keeps you invested in what’s “coming.” Both keep you oriented toward a version of the relationship that exists mostly in potential, rather than in what’s actually happening day to day, which can make it hard to evaluate the relationship on its real, current terms.
The Silent Treatment
Sustained silence — being ignored, stonewalled, or frozen out, sometimes for days — used as a punishment for a perceived slight, often one that’s never clearly named. Unlike a healthy need for space, which usually comes with some acknowledgment (“I need a minute, let’s talk later”), the silent treatment is typically open-ended and designed to unsettle, leaving you scrambling to figure out what you did wrong and how to fix it. If this pattern sounds familiar, know that the anxiety it produces is a normal response to an unpredictable, withheld connection — not evidence that you’re “too sensitive” or asking for too much.
Projection
Projection happens when someone attributes their own uncomfortable traits, behaviors, or feelings to you instead — an unfaithful partner who constantly accuses you of cheating, a controlling person who insists you’re the controlling one. It can be genuinely disorienting because the accusation is often delivered with real conviction, which can make you start scanning yourself for a fault that isn’t actually there. Recognizing projection doesn’t mean assuming you’re always blameless in every conflict — it means noticing when an accusation seems to describe the accuser’s own behavior more accurately than yours.
Boundary Testing
Boundary testing describes small, repeated pushes against a limit you’ve set, to see whether it actually holds — showing up five minutes “late” to a no-contact window, sending one message “just to check in,” bringing up a topic you asked to leave alone. Each individual push can seem minor enough to let slide, which is exactly what makes the pattern effective over time. Naming it as boundary testing, rather than a series of unrelated, small missteps, can make it easier to hold the line consistently instead of re-litigating the same boundary again and again.
You don’t have to sort this out alone
Language is a tool, not a test. You don’t need to identify every pattern perfectly, and you don’t need any of these terms to validate what you’ve been through — your own sense that something has been wrong is enough on its own. What these words can do is make the fog a little easier to navigate, and connect you to a wider community of people who understand exactly what you mean without a long explanation.
