Glossary — Terminology of Narcissistic Abuse

Codependency: An older term for relational patterns in which one person's identity and self-worth become organized around managing another person's emotional state. Closely related to (and in some literatures replaced by) the trauma-bond and fawn-response framings.
Complex PTSD (C-PTSD): The trauma-response cluster produced by prolonged interpersonal abuse from which escape is difficult. Includes classical PTSD symptoms plus disturbances in self-organization (affect, self-concept, relationships). See recovery/c-ptsd.
Covert narcissism: The vulnerable, inward-coded presentation of pathological narcissism. Wounded surface, hidden grandiosity, controls through fragility rather than through display. See covert/profile.
DARVO: Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender. The signature confrontational move when a perpetrator is held to account. Coined by Jennifer Freyd. See abuse/darvo.
Devaluation: The second phase of the narcissistic-abuse cycle: idealization tapers, criticism appears, withdrawal sets in. Often the longest phase. See abuse/cycle.
Discard: The third phase of the cycle: the relationship ends, often abruptly, often with the inversion of the survivor as the abuser. See abuse/cycle.
Enmeshment: A configuration, common in narcissistic family systems, in which boundaries between family members are systematically violated and individual identity is subordinated to the family unit (or to the narcissistic parent's emotional needs).
Fawn response: A trauma response in which the survivor manages threat by appeasement and accommodation rather than by fight, flight, or freeze. Overrepresented in survivors of long covert abuse. Pete Walker's framing.
Flying monkeys: Third parties recruited by the narcissist — friends, family, mutuals, sometimes the survivor's own children — to deliver pressure or surveillance on their behalf. Named after the Wicked Witch's enforcers in The Wizard of Oz.
Future-faking: Vivid, detailed promises about a shared future used to extract present compliance. Promises rarely materialize.
Gaslighting: Persistent, deliberate undermining of someone's perception of reality. Named after the 1944 film Gaslight. Distinct from ordinary disagreement; the point is to make the survivor doubt their own senses and memory.
Grandiose narcissism: The overt, openly self-aggrandizing presentation of pathological narcissism. The picture the word usually evokes. See narcissism/grandiose-vs-covert.
Grey rock: A defensive strategy: in the narcissist's presence, become as boring as possible. Used when no contact isn't possible. See recovery/grey-rock.
Hoovering: Attempts to draw the survivor back in after a withdrawal, breakup, or no-contact period. Named after the vacuum brand. See abuse/cycle.
Idealization: The first phase of the cycle: a flood of attention, intensity, declarations, and accelerated intimacy. Sometimes called “love bombing” in the original-attraction context.
Love bombing: Early-relationship flooding of attention, gifts, intensity, and declarations of certainty. Designed to attach faster than ordinary intimacy would allow.
Malignant narcissism: NPD plus antisocial features, paranoid traits, and ego-syntonic aggression. Otto Kernberg's term. The most destructive presentation. See narcissism/spectrum.
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD): A diagnosable personality disorder defined by the DSM-5-TR. Pervasive grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy. See narcissism/npd.
Narcissistic supply: The continual flow of attention, admiration, sympathy, fear, or other regulating emotional input that pathological narcissists require from the people around them. The currency varies (admiration in grandiose, pity in covert); the function is the same.
No contact: Complete cessation of communication and exposure. The most reliable recovery strategy where it can be sustained. See recovery/no-contact.
Parental alienation: The systematic turning of children against the targeted parent. Most aggressive after separations. See abuse/triangulation.
Parentification: A configuration in which a child is required to act as the emotional caregiver of a parent — common in households with a narcissistic parent. Damaging to the child's development; often correlates with C-PTSD in adulthood.
Smear campaign: The slow, distributed reputation work conducted in the survivor's absence, often over years. See abuse/smear-campaigns.
Trauma bond: The neurobiological attachment that develops between a survivor and an abuser whose behavior follows an intermittent-reinforcement pattern. Resembles addiction more than affection.
Triangulation: Drawing third parties into a two-person relationship to control or destabilize. Originally from family-systems theory. See abuse/triangulation.
Vulnerable narcissism: The research-literature term for what survivor-facing literature usually calls covert narcissism. Same construct.
Word salad: Mid-conflict, the conversation becomes incoherent — accusations stack, new topics open before old ones close, old grievances surface. The point is exhaustion, not communication.

Terminology.