Since the beginning of this year, I've been hearing that 2026 would be the year of the fall of the narcissist. And I'll admit, there was a part of me that thought — yes, bring it on.

But recently I've started noticing something else: people we've placed in positions of authority being publicly questioned, challenged and exposed. I'm not diagnosing any of these people as narcissists, but it made me question how we give people so much power in the first place — particularly when they're charismatic, convincing and appear to have the answers we're searching for.

In this episode, I talk about some of those stories and about binge-listening to investigative journalist Isla Traquair's The Narcissist's Playbook, which explores serious allegations surrounding Sam Vaknin. Listening to the women describe their experiences brought an unexpected recognition of my own — particularly the belief that I could see the wounded child underneath the behaviour and somehow save or teach a grown man how to behave.

What surprised me most was being able to recognise so much of my own past without the energetic pull that once came with it. The connection had gone.

So perhaps the fall of the narcissist isn't only about watching people being exposed. Perhaps it's also about what happens when we stop feeding the dynamic — when we protect our energy, stop supplying the attention and stop waiting for their downfall before allowing ourselves to be free.

Whether 2026 brings the downfall of the person who hurt you or not, perhaps the real power shift happens when you break those ties, reclaim your energy and no longer need to wait and see what happens to them. #narcissistsplaybook #Isla Traquair #samvaknin

This week I talk about the grief that comes after emotional abuse — grief for the relationship, yes, but also grief for the version of me that existed before it, and for the future I thought I was building. I share my own experience of the manipulation that continued long after the relationship ended, through two divorces and the games that came with them, and how oversharing personal details became something used against me later. I talk about reprogramming, ancestral wounding, and the parts of ourselves that step outside of us to survive trauma — and why those parts need to be found and brought home. The episode closes on a powerful reframe: once you can see the script you were written into, it stops being your story and starts being theirs. And that's when you get to put it down.

ROADMAP TO HEALING

Lost. Confused. Numb. If that's where you are right now, look at your thumb. That fingerprint hasn't changed once through any of it.

This week I talk about coding — the beliefs, rules and conditioning we're handed before we're old enough to tell what's ours and what isn't, and how an abuser can get into that same code and rewrite it from the inside.

I talk about recognising the wounding of people who mirror our own childhood, and how I used my ex's own patterns against the lies he told me — including one moment in couples counselling neither of us saw coming.

Whatever was recoded was never erased. You were always underneath it.

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