Virtual Therapy · Narcissistic Abuse Recovery
Therapy for Narcissistic Abuse Recovery
The doubt was taught. It can be unlearned.
If you’re searching for therapy for narcissistic abuse, you already know the pattern: gaslighting, criticism, and control that trained you to question your own reality. Our virtual sessions bring EMDR, IFS parts work, and trauma-informed counselling to BC, Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Newfoundland & Labrador.
Free 15-minute consultation · No referral needed · Seven days a week
If you need immediate support
If you or someone you know is in crisis or having thoughts of self-harm, please reach out right away — you don't have to wait for a therapy appointment.
- 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline — call or text 988 (24/7, Canada-wide)
- Emergency — call 911 if there is immediate danger
A note on safety: shared devices can show browsing history — a private device or incognito window may feel safer. We can plan timing and privacy together at your free consultation.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Emotional abuse rarely announces itself. It builds slowly — by the time you start searching for answers, you may already be doubting yourself. Survivors often describe:
Replaying conversations for hours, wondering if you remembered them right
Apologizing constantly, even when you’re not sure what you did
Walking on eggshells to keep the peace at home or at work
Drifting away from friends and family who “just don’t understand”
Being told you’re too sensitive, too dramatic, impossible to please
Missing the person who hurt you — and feeling ashamed that you do
A quiet fear that maybe you really are the problem
If several of these landed: a sustained pattern of gaslighting, control, and belittling is emotional abuse — whatever the other person’s diagnosis may or may not be. Your reaction to it makes sense.
Recovery-focused therapy can help you:
Name what happened without minimizing it — or blaming yourself
Understand trauma bonding, so the pull back stops feeling like proof of love
Rebuild trust in your own memory, judgment, and instincts
Set boundaries — and hold them without drowning in guilt
Process the trauma itself with EMDR and IFS parts work
Reconnect with who you were before — and decide who you want to be now
How we work with narcissistic abuse recovery
Two clinicians, one trauma-informed approach — paced by you.
Trauma-focused therapy with Mohamad
Mohamad Shabib, MACP, CCC, is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO in Ontario, EMDRIA-trained in EMDR and trained in IFS Levels 1–2. EMDR reprocesses the memories you still replay — the rages, the moments you were told never happened — so they carry less charge. IFS parts work is gentle with what abuse installs inside: the inner critic that echoes their voice, the part that still defends them, the part that blames you. He also brings CBT for Trauma and hands-on addictions experience, in English or Arabic.
Book with Mohamad →Trauma-informed support with Rola
Rola Shbib, BSW (Hons), RSW, is a Registered Social Worker (OCSWSSW) whose background is in crisis intervention and suicide prevention — steady support for the rawest stage, when you’ve just left, just realized, or are still deciding. Her trauma-informed approach starts with stabilizing: safety, sleep, and a support system abuse may have shrunk. Her honours degree in thanatology also means she treats the end of a relationship like this as a real grief.
Book a Free Consultation →Trauma bonding
What is trauma bonding?
Trauma bonding is the strong emotional attachment that forms between a person who is being harmed and the person harming them, built by repeated cycles of mistreatment followed by warmth, apology, or relief. It is a survival response to danger from someone you depend on — not proof that the relationship was good, and not evidence of a flaw in you.
If you have ever defended someone to your friends an hour after they humiliated you, or felt physically unwell at the thought of never speaking to them again, you already know it from the inside. People looking for a therapist for trauma bonding usually describe the same split: one part of them knows exactly what happened, and another part still aches for the person who did it. Both are running at once. That is the bond — not confusion, and not a failure of nerve.
Why the bond forms
Three things tend to be doing the work at the same time.
Intermittent reinforcement. Affection that arrives unpredictably grips harder than affection that arrives reliably. When warmth is rationed and its timing cannot be forecast, the nervous system stops concluding “this is unsafe” and starts running a different loop: keep trying, it might come back. The hope becomes the hook.
The cycle of harm and repair. Tension builds, something painful happens, and then comes remorse, promises, tenderness, a stretch of calm — before the tension starts building again. The relief at the end of each turn is enormous precisely because the fear before it was real, and the person who ends the fear is the same person who caused it. Your body files them as threat and comfort in the same folder.
Attachment under threat. When people are frightened, they move toward whoever they are attached to. When the frightening person is the attachment figure, both instincts fire together — go toward, get away — and neither one finishes. Repeated over years, that unresolved pull becomes the ordinary background feeling of the relationship. It is the same machinery described on our attachment-based therapy page, running under pressure it was never built for.
Why “why don’t you just leave?” is the wrong question
Leaving is almost never one decision. It is money, housing, immigration status, children, pets, a lease, a shared faith community, a family that will take sides, a job you got through them. Risk can also rise around the point of leaving, which is why safety planning belongs at the front of this conversation rather than at the end of it.
The question also does its own damage. It asks the person who was harmed to account for someone else’s behaviour, and it assumes staying was a free choice made with full information — when the whole pattern worked by making that impossible. Most people have already put that question to themselves a thousand times, in a far harsher voice than the one asking. Being asked it out loud is often the moment people stop talking about it at all.
Better questions exist, and they can actually be answered. What would you need in order to be safe? What does this person still hold — access, money, information, your children, your sense of who you are? What happens inside you in the hours after you decide to go? Working through those is therapy. Explaining yourself is not.
What trauma bonding is not
It is not love addiction, and it is not a personality defect wearing a kinder name. The bond formed because of what was done to you repeatedly, not because of what you are. It is not the same thing as love either — a trauma bond can outlast love completely, which is why people sometimes feel the pull toward someone they no longer even like. And it is not a diagnosis, of you or of them: as everywhere else on this page, we do not diagnose a person who is not in the room. What we work with is the pattern you lived inside, and what it did to your sense of reality, your body, and your sense of self.
How do you break a trauma bond?
Trauma bonds are usually loosened in stages rather than broken in a single moment. The sequence most therapists work in is: stabilise first — safety, sleep, money, a support system; then make the cycle visible, so the pull toward the person becomes something you can recognise in real time instead of something that simply happens to you; then process the memories and beliefs holding the bond in place. Contact tends to re-intensify it, so much of the practical work is about reducing contact where that is possible and safe, and preparing for the occasions when it is not.
Nobody can honestly tell you how long that takes. Grief comes with it — for the person you hoped they were, for the years, for the version of you who trusted them. That grief is not a sign of sliding backwards, and neither is a week where you miss them badly.
What therapy does about it
Stabilisation comes first, and it is not a warm-up. Sleep, eating, a support system that emotional abuse tends to shrink, a plan for the hours after contact, and a safety plan if there is any ongoing contact at all. This is the ground Rola works from, as a Registered Social Worker registered with the Ontario College whose background is in crisis intervention and suicide prevention, and it is often where the first several sessions go with Mohamad too — he will not start reprocessing trauma with someone whose week is still on fire.
Once there is enough steadiness, the trauma work itself becomes possible. EMDR is used for the specific memories that still run on their own — the rage you can still hear, the moment you were told something never happened, the day you finally understood what you were in. Reprocessing those tends to drain the charge they carry, and that charge is part of what keeps the bond alive. IFS parts work comes at it from the other side: the part still defending them, the part convinced you caused all of it, the part that would answer the phone tonight, and the part that has contempt for the other three. In IFS terms none of those is an enemy — each took its job for a reason, and the pull loosens as they are heard rather than overruled. Mohamad is EMDRIA-trained in EMDR and has completed IFS Levels 1 and 2 training, and offers both in English or Arabic.
None of this comes with a promised endpoint, and we will not pretend otherwise. What it does offer is a way to stop fighting yourself about why the pull is still there. If any of this is happening now rather than in the past, the crisis lines near the top of this page come first — calling or texting 9-8-8 reaches the Suicide Crisis Helpline at any hour, and 911 is the right call if there is immediate danger.
Book a Free Consultation →This kind of harm rarely travels alone
Long-term emotional abuse leaves the same fingerprints as other trauma — hypervigilance, shame, a shaken sense of self. These pages go deeper:
Trauma therapy · PTSD & CPTSD therapy · Self-esteem & identity
Practical details — virtual sessions, six provinces
Questions about therapy for narcissistic abuse
What does “narcissistic abuse” actually mean?
It’s the phrase many survivors use to describe a sustained pattern of emotional abuse — gaslighting, belittling, control, blame-shifting, and hot-and-cold affection. In therapy we don’t diagnose the person who hurt you; we focus on the pattern you lived through and what it did to your sense of self.
Do I have to prove the other person is a narcissist to start therapy?
No. Therapy never requires a diagnosis of someone who isn’t in the room — and we won’t offer one. What matters is your experience: if you were repeatedly manipulated, demeaned, or made to doubt your own memory, that is worth taking seriously.
Why do I still miss them if the relationship was so harmful?
That pull is often trauma bonding — an attachment forged by repeating cycles of harm followed by warmth and apology. It’s a recognized response to intermittent reinforcement, not a character flaw. Therapy can help you understand the bond so it loosens over time.
Can a therapist help with trauma bonding?
Yes — it is one of the more common reasons people reach out after an abusive relationship. Therapy for trauma bonding usually begins by stabilising safety and support, then makes the cycle visible so the pull toward the person stops feeling like proof of love, and then processes the underlying trauma with approaches such as EMDR or IFS parts work. What therapy will not do is decide for you whether to stay or go — that decision stays yours.
How long does it take to break a trauma bond?
There is no set timeline, and anyone quoting you one is guessing. A trauma bond usually loosens gradually rather than ending on a particular day, and renewed contact can bring back an intensity that had already settled — which is common, and is not a failure. What we can do is track it with you session by session, so you can see movement that is very hard to notice from the inside.
How much does therapy for narcissistic abuse recovery cost?
Individual sessions are $150 per 60-minute session; a small number of reduced-fee spots are held — if cost is a barrier, mention it during the consultation. Your initial 15-minute video consultation is free. This recovery work is individual therapy — we do not book it as couples counselling.
Will my insurance cover sessions?
You’ll receive a receipt after every session. Many extended health plans cover services from a Canadian Certified Counsellor (a CCPA certification), a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO in Ontario, or a Registered Social Worker — check your specific plan before booking.
Is online therapy private enough for this?
Sessions run over video on the Jane platform, with Zoom or Google Meet as a backup — and you choose the time and place. If you still share a home with the person who hurt you, tell us at your consultation and we’ll plan scheduling and privacy around your safety.
You don’t have to untangle this alone
Book a free 15-minute video consultation. Bring your whole story, or just the confusion — either is a fine place to start. If we’re not the right fit, we’ll say so.
Book Free ConsultationPrefer to start with Rola? Book a Free Consultation · Or call: (519) 760-5211
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If you would rather ask a question first, write a line or two and we will reply by email. No appointment, no commitment.