The Lindsay Clancy case brings forth a tsunami of people talking about narcissistic abuse, gaslighting, and the weaponization of psychiatric and legal systems. This happens to be the core subject matter I have focused on in my writings since 2000.
What strikes me about this increased awareness worldwide is the language people are beginning to use to describe the impact of being in a narcissistically abusive relationship.
How one is systematically drawn into self-doubt, annihilation of personal rights, loss of one’s inner wisdom… terms all essentially describing the way a narcissistically abusive relationship can destroy your very self from the inside out.
If you have ever been in one of these relationships, you know exactly what I’m referring to here.
Meditation and Narcissistic Abuse
Many people reading my essays and eInsights (which I have affectionately called them) have concluded that I turned to meditation to deal with the stress and inner deterioration arising from living in a narcissistically abusive relationship. But I actually think it is the other way around.
Meditation is what kept me connected to the aspect of myself that my ex could not touch. It allowed me to drink from the well of wellbeing daily and, as a result, afforded me incredible resiliency.
The practice did not arise from the abuse, as a way to cope with it. It was already part of me, providing a place within myself to which I could return again and again. And perhaps that is what mattered most. At a time when the relationship was continually pulling me away from my own perception, inner wisdom and sense of self, meditation kept returning me to them. There remained an inner ground of reality that the abuse could not completely overtake.
I had been meditating a full decade before entering into that relationship. My meditation practice was well established and maintained throughout my time with this person…and continues to the present. In fact, there are meditations I have in which I wonder why more people don’t give themselves the gift of this utter joy and ecstasy.
Meditation Scorn
This person I’m referring to hated my meditation practice and used the fact that I meditated as his alleged cause to fight me for sole custody of our three minor children. Nothing was actually litigated in these four years of legal stalking. What was accomplished was a positioning of the courts to re-victimize me with the threat of stripping me of my freedom and parental rights.
This was strategically done to discredit the court’s findings of spousal and child abuse, which inspired the threat of weaponized institutionalization. Saving face became the order of the day for years…into decades.
I used to think he hated my meditating because it was time to myself. He called me selfish and self-absorbed. But I suspect what he really hated was that his arrows did not pierce me and his hooks did not cripple me, as he would have enjoyed, because of the meditation. Who knows, as I cannot be in another person’s head.
Why Meditate
Over the last couple of decades, I have been teaching patients in abusive relationships how to meditate. What amazes me almost every time is how this changes the person’s relationship to the abuse they are subjected to in their homes.
It’s like building a fortress from within while discovering the sanctuary that is already there. It’s why I named our website InnerSanctuaryOnline.org.
If you are living in one of these toxic relationships, my prayer for you is that you learn to meditate. And over time, you come to discover the grace, peace, and inner strength that this practice provides.
©2026 Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D. Mind Matters Media LLC
Clinical Psychologist | Trauma, Coercive Control, and Family Systems Dynamics
Dr. Jeanne King, Ph.D. helps people worldwide recognize, end, and heal from narcissistic domestic abuse.