Why I Wrote Covert Damage (And What Healing from Covert Emotional Abuse Really Took)

I didn’t write Covert Damage because I had some perfect insight into emotional abuse or psychology.

I wrote it because I almost didn’t survive what happened.

Like a lot of men in situations like mine, it started with the belief that I could fix it. That if I just communicated better, explained things more clearly, stayed calm, stayed grounded—she’d finally understand. And we could work through it.

There were signs, early on, that something was deeply wrong.

Moments that crossed lines I’d never seen crossed in past relationships.

But I felt sorry for her. I believed she’d been through a lot. I told myself she was just scared—that she needed safety, consistency, love—and if I gave her that, it would all even out.

Instead, I got breadcrumbed. Gaslit. Punished for things I didn’t do. Blamed for things that weren’t mine. And slowly, I stopped trusting my own memory, my own motives, my own worth.

Eventually, we broke up.

And that should’ve been the end of it.

But she kept me emotionally tethered.

Calling me crying. Saying she couldn’t "do this without me."

Telling me there was still hope. Still a future. Still something between us.

And I held onto it. Because by then, I wasn’t just in love—I was emotionally rewired.

And I started believing that maybe I was the problem.

That’s what abuse like this does.

It breaks down your identity and makes you think the collapse is your fault.

And I believed that lie.

I thought I was the one who was messed up.

So I did everything I could to show her that I wanted to fix things and make them work.

What broke me the most, though, came after we got back together.

That second time, I was ready to give her everything she said she had wanted from the beginning.

I was ready to commit.

She had told me, “You're the only man I've ever wanted to marry.”

I believed her. I was ready to move forward.

I was even open to having a child with her—which, according to her, was everything she ever wanted.

We went engagement ring shopping.

I got on a fertility drug to prepare for us to start trying.

I was all in.

But before I stepped fully into that future, I asked for just one thing: accountability.

Not a grand apology. Not full self-awareness. Just… something.

Some ownership of how bad things had gotten.

Some recognition of how deeply I’d been hurt, and how much I’d twisted myself to make it work.

Because as much as she had twisted up my mind at that point, I still knew something was wrong.

I needed her to show me that she could own any part of what was happening between us.

That moment never came. Not even close.

Instead, I was met with insults, deflection, and cold detachment.

Even after helping her move into her new place.

Even after doing everything I could to be kind and generous—even while I was hurting.

It was like she had never seen me at all.

I was still trying to get clarity. Still trying to have a real conversation about where we stood and what was happening.

Because she had made comments like, “People live in two places and work things out all the time.”

But when I pushed for some kind of clarity or understanding, she said things that cut me to the core—things she knew would hurt because they had in past fights.

And somewhere in all that confusion and pain, something in me snapped.

After that, I stopped believing I could fix it.

I spiraled. I shut down.

I had suicidal thoughts.

I didn’t see a way forward.

That’s when I started looking for answers.

And that’s when I stumbled onto articles about covert narcissism and borderline personality traits.

What I read stopped me cold.

Because it wasn’t kind of like my experience.

It was my experience.

From the love-bombing to the gaslighting, the pity plays to the emotional withdrawal—it was all there.

And the more I read, the more the fog cleared.

I started remembering things I had buried.

I realized just how psychologically damaging the relationship had been.

And even though this was the worst relationship I'd ever experienced—an awful emotional rollercoaster where you’re left chasing a high, chasing a version of a person who never actually existed—I still didn’t see myself as a victim.

I knew I had a part to play in all of this.

And I had to start asking the harder question:

Why do I keep attracting chaos?

It was a pattern I had carried with me for years.

A pattern that made me recognize myself every time I met another woman raised without a father—because my father had killed himself.

I saw no right to judge them.

And I felt like people secretly judged me for what my father had done.

I never fully recognized it until after this relationship.

It was a pattern that made me mistake suffering for love.

A pattern that made me ignore the pain I was in—just to avoid being abandoned.

That’s when I started writing.

Not a book—at least not at first.

Just notes. Printouts. Reflections.

I was trying to make sense of everything, because I couldn’t find anything that spoke directly to men going through this.

I started going to therapy twice a week. Doing every self-care practice can you think of to see what would stick.

I went through the full emotional spiral.

The shame.

The confusion.

The aftermath.

So I started building something for myself.

A kind of workbook.

A survival manual.

A way out of the fog.

And over time, that became Covert Damage.

Not just a story—but a resource.

Not just a warning—but a mirror.

Not just a breakdown—but a blueprint.

And as I built that blueprint, something in me started to shift.

The more I wrote, the more I remembered.

The more I remembered, the more I understood.

And the more I understood, the more I began to heal—for real, and maybe for the first time.

Before Covert Damage was ever a book, it was a lifeline.

I was using the practices I now share in its pages—grounding myself, untangling the mental knots, facing the shame, rebuilding my nervous system, and reclaiming my power.

I started learning more about trauma—not just as an abstract idea, but as something that had shaped the way I gave love, sought approval, and abandoned myself.

That’s when I began studying deeply.

Reading everything I could.

Getting certified in trauma-informed coaching.

Walking further down the path of emotional recovery and nervous system healing.

And exploring wellness practices in a way I never had before—not as something to “try,” but as something I finally understood from the inside out.

This wasn’t just about fixing what had gone wrong.

It was about becoming someone I could finally trust again.

And when I started shaping Covert Damage into what it is I knew —I absolutely knew—that I wasn’t the only man who had been through this, and felt like he had no one to talk to about it.

If you're healing from covert emotional abuse: I hope this book finds you before you break.

If you’ve already broken: I hope it helps you rebuild.

And if you’ve made it out: I hope it helps you never go back.

This is the beginning.

Not just for the book—but for something bigger.

That’s what Transmutation Society is here for.

The quiet rebuild.

The honest tools.

The kind of growth that doesn’t need to scream to be real.