It’s Not You
It’s not always easy to tell when you’re dealing with a narcissist. One day they draw you in with their confidence and charisma, the next they gaslight you, wreck your self-confidence, and leave you wondering, What could I have done differently?
As Dr. Ramani Durvasula reveals in It’s Not You, the answer is absolutely nothing. Just as a tiger can’t change its stripes, a narcissist won’t stop manipulating and invalidating you. To heal in the aftermath of their abuse and protect yourself from future harm, you first have to accept that you are not to blame.
Healing and thriving after or even during a narcissistic relationship can be challenging, but it is possible. It’s Not You shows that the first step is to stop trying to change the narcissistic person, stop blaming yourself, and start giving yourself permission to foster your autonomy and sense of self outside of this relationship.
To Be Loved
Rarely does a trauma therapist disclose their own trauma history…yet it’s the untold, brutally honest, incredibly heartbreaking story of Dr. Frank Anderson that made him the world-renowned trauma expert he is today.
Known for his magnetic and radiant personality, Frank spends his time training thousands of clinicians around the world on how to help clients with complex trauma make sense of their suffering. But underneath this charismatic exterior are his dark family secrets, including the marks of child abuse from his father and the invisible scars of shame.
In To Be Loved, Frank shares his confusing experience of growing up an outsider in a typical Midwestern Italian American home that was at one turn fiercely loving, but at the same time unaccepting, abusive, and rife with secrets.
After enduring six years of therapy as a child in the 1970s, he was programmed to be something that he wasn’t for decades, and became driven to create the perfect life—until it all fell apart.
It was only then that he realized resilience, forgiveness, and facing his trauma were the keys to living an authentic life—and finally knowing what it feels like to be loved.
Ramani Durvasula, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical psychologist in California, the founder and CEO of LUNA Education, Training and Consulting, and professor emerita of psychology at California State University Los Angeles. She is the New York Times Bestselling Author of It’s Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People. She is also the author of multiple other books including “Don’t You Know Who I Am”: How to Stay Sane in the Era of Narcissism, Entitlement and Incivility and Should I Stay or Should I Go: Surviving a Relationship With a Narcissist. She has lectured and trained therapists around the world on best practices on working with clients experiencing narcissistic abuse and has developed a 36 hour virtual training and certification program in conjunction with PESI to train clinicians on how to use an Antagonism-Informed approach with clients experiencing narcissistic relationships. Dr. Durvasula hosts a popular YouTube channel with over 1.6 million subscribers, hosted the critically acclaimed podcast Navigating Narcissism, and is a featured expert on the digital media platform MedCircle. She has also been widely involved in the governance of the American Psychological Association, including the APA Leadership Institute for Women in Psychology and the APA Minority Fellowship Program. Dr. Durvasula received her M.A., and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from UCLA, and completed her internship and post-doctoral training at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. She completed her Bachelor of Science Degree in Psychology, with a minor in sociology in 1988 at the University of Connecticut. She resides in Los Angeles, CA.
Frank Anderson, MD, is a world-renowned trauma treatment expert, Harvard-trained psychiatrist, and psychotherapist. He is the acclaimed author of Transcending Trauma, upcoming memoir, To Be Loved: A Story of Truth, Trauma, and Transformation, and the coauthor of Internal Family Systems Skills Training Manual. As a global speaker on the treatment of trauma and dissociation, he is passionate about teaching brain-based psychotherapy and integrating current neuroscience knowledge with the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of therapy. Dr. Anderson believes that traumatic events can have a lasting effect on the well-being and life of an individual and that addressing these events will help lead people down a pathway of healing and forgiveness.
Dr. Anderson is the co-founder of The Trauma Institute and Trauma Informed Media, organizations that promote trauma awareness, education, integration, and healing. He is a lead trainer at the IFS Institute under Richard Schwartz and has a long affiliation with Bessel van der Kolk and the Trauma Research Foundation. Dr. Anderson maintains a private practice in Harvard, MA, where he lives with his husband and 2 sons.
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