In our fast-paced, impersonal world, we all need to love ourselves a little. We need to find some worth within us, to believe that we are capable of loving and being loved. We need to know we have a reasonable chance of achieving our goals and making our way through the maze of life's challenges. But what happens when our view of ourselves becomes totally distorted from reality? What happens when we falsify who we are and create an image that, while grand and important, has no root in reality? We become narcissists and the line between our fantasy world and our real world blurs. Left...

Emotional and verbal abuse has devastating consequences. Self-esteem is broken, new and often harmful behaviors are formed and lives are changed forever, and not for the better. Emotional and verbal abuse affects people from all walks of life. It affects children, the elderly and impacts both women and men in relationships when one partner victimizes the other. Emotional and verbal abuse is also prevalent in the workplace and many institutions. In fact, in any group of people where one assumes power over the others and exercises it with hurtfulness and cruelty of words, the abuse destroys...