Lisa Kroulik's 'Emotional Assault' Becomes Second to Melody Beatty's 'Codependent No More' on Amazon Kindle

This book is borne out of experience. For years, the author didn't understand why she was on pins and needles, trying desperately to please her husband. She was taught to submit to him, to put him first, to do all of the things women are taught to do in the Christian church. While she did this, her husband made her jump through higher and higher hoops and played a barrage of emotional tricks on her to keep her in her place.

The bag of tricks points to an insecure person who only cares about himself and his image. Everything he does is designed to protect his own ego and his partner is only there to enhance his image and ego.

What's even worse is this narcissistic person appears on the surface to be "such a nice guy" to outsiders. They are oftentimes charming, sociable, reasonable and jolly when away from home, behaving like attentive spouses and charming partners in front of others.

The effect of this is to isolate the victim even further. Not only is she to blame for everything that goes wrong in the narcissistic person's life, she is also to blame for asserting her own needs and for the relationship failing.

Perhaps the most lasting insight of all is that the narcissistic person is incapable of truly loving another person. He is only in love with his control of his partner.

There are basically two things women in emotionally abusive relationship can do: One is to accept the limitations of this personality and call him out every time a trick is played. If the person has even a smidgen of conscience (i.e. not 100% narcissistic) this might work. The abused spouse needs to let him know she won't tolerate blame, denigration, the silent treatment and other forms of emotional control. The other option is for the victim to leave, knowing the consequences will be a concerted effort of the narcissistic individual to pool every family and mutual friend against her.

The author doesn't tell readers what to do. This book is a quick read and makes people aware of the problems so they can deal with them head on.

-Clare Chu, August 4, 2013

Emotional Assault: Recognizing the Abusive Partner's Bag of Tricks
Paperback ISBN 978-1482704891
Kindle ISBN 978-1-63003-088-9 Free download for Amazon Prime members

About the Author: Lisa Kroulik works as an online copywriter and is available to help clients with their content creation needs. She had written nearly 10,000 articles geared towards search engine optimization in her 2 1/2 year career. She also publishes online articles on a variety of topics at Hub Pages and Yahoo Contributor Network. Kroulik wrote "Emotional Assault" due to the tremendous support she received on her articles on emotional abuse and narcissism.