Erin Berk, LPC, ATR

04/01/2026

04/01/2026

…….””Most of us have been on both sides and remember what was said to us. We carry it. And we’ve also said things carelessly to people who loved us and thought nothing of it. A friend who stopped confiding in you and you’re not sure why or a sister who became more guarded over the years. It’s easier to remember yourself as the one who was hurt than as the one who did the hurting without noticing. Adam Phillips has written that love is always partly composed of what we fail to give each other, and Roy is writing about exactly that failure. The love that fades because someone wasn’t paying enough attention.

The trouble is that carelessness isn’t always obvious. Careless words come wrapped in ordinary moments, in tiredness, in distraction, in the assumption that you’ll understand, that you’ll let it go, and that it didn’t really mean anything. And often the person saying them believes that too. They’re distracted, tired, and elsewhere in their head. And maybe that’s what hurts. The discovery that you weren’t being thought about at all.

There’s no recovery point for this, no conversation that undoes the accumulation. You can’t go back and unknow what you learned about how someone responds when you tell them something that matters to you. Once the nervous system has learned to brace, it keeps bracing. And the people who said the careless things may never understand what happened, why you became more distant and why you stopped telling them the real things. They only know that something changed and you won’t say what it is. Because how do you explain that it wasn’t one thing, it was all of it, that slow fading of love that happens when words aren’t handled carefully enough.

04/01/2026

“Thank you, Governor Evers, for supporting trans kids and standing for LGBTQ+ rights. You have built your professional life on doing what is best for kids, and you made good on that commitment by vetoing five bills; with these vetoes, you protected health care for trans kids and made sure they know they belong and are safe in our schools and welcome on our teams. These bills were always about more than health care, or the makeup of a sports team, or the use of pronouns in a classroom – they were about excluding trans people from public life, and we cannot allow that, especially when our trans community is being attacked by so many levels of government. But today, you made your support of Wisconsin’s trans community visible and meaningful. Our trans kids and their families are facing so much hate right now, and you have consistently chosen to lead with love. Thank you.”

Gov. Tony Evers has on multiple occasions pledged to veto any anti-LGBTQ+ bill that crosses his desk. Now, on Trans Day of Visibility, he delivered on that promise again, issuing five vetoes against anti-trans bills.

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03/31/2026

This is one of the clearest explanations of narcissistic abuse I’ve ever heard.

What’s so tragic about being on the receiving end of narcissistic abuse is the way the narcissist flips their own behavior, rejects any responsibility, and then projects it onto the victim as if you are the one who has harmed them. Over time, that reversal makes you feel completely gaslit—pushed into believing that you’re the problem. And when you hear that narrative again and again, it starts to feel like truth.

But when you can step outside the dynamic, you begin to see it for what it is: the narcissist’s inability to hold their own hurtful choices or actions. They cannot tolerate the discomfort of accountability, so they offload it onto the person closest to them.

Understanding that doesn’t make the pain any less. It still hurts deeply to be treated that way—especially when you are a human being with real feelings and real needs. And in a narcissistic system, your feelings and needs simply do not matter. It is never about you. It is always about their pain, their fragility, and their inability to self-reflect.

Please stand in your power. Breathe. Get the support you deserve so you don’t keep choosing relationships where you sacrifice yourself just to maintain connection. You deserve relationships where your humanity is honored, not erased. Where your heart matters to another, with empathy, curiosity—and compassion.

03/30/2026

Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.

Translated from Persian by Coleman Barks and John Moyne, from The Essential Rumi, published by HarperCollins. Copyright © 1995 by Coleman Barks. Reprinted with the permission of Coleman Barks.

Erin Berk Photography

03/29/2026

03/29/2026

After my book signing today , I met up with a friend who asked me why therapists can’t recognize narcissists. Or why they seem to take their side. I get this question often. Sometimes the question is: “does therapy work?” Or “does it do more harm than good?”

Therapy is a business. Therapists provide a service and clients are customers of that business. Like all businesses, when you hire someone for a service, you’re seeking something.

Some people hire a therapist to face themselves. They want to hear difficult things. They want practices outside of sessions. They want somatic work to actually heal their body. They want a person outside of a situation to give them feedback. And they grow because of it.

Therapy helps so many people. It helps people who want to help themselves.

No therapist can control, change, or get through to a client who does not want to change. No therapist can force someone to do the work.

People with high narcissistic traits have high levels of shame and disconnection. They’re disconnected from family, from friends, and from themselves. Their therapist becomes a validation source. Someone who is paid to listen to their narrative and to confirm things they want confirmed. An attuned therapist immediately knows when a client doesn’t want to be pushed. They know when they don’t want to be activated. They know when a client just wants to talk to a listening ear. This is what someone with a high level of narcissistic traits will seek in therapy. For them, therapy helps strengthen their narrative, even if that narrative isn’t reality.

They’re not trying to heal themselves. They’re trying desperately to have someone mirror back to them that they are victims of circumstance. That they did not play a role in what they’ve experienced. And most importantly, they will often misunderstand or weaponize things their therapist says because they’re not trying to heal. They’re trying to be right

03/27/2026

03/26/2026