BROKEN IN BULGARIA!

 Following my arrest after being targeted and set up by Bulgarian police on 4th July 2018 on alleged drug driving offences which I hoped the blood tests that I subsequently had that day would clarify and sort the matter within weeks when the results were received as I was informed would be the length of time for them to be processed but sadly these results as I was informed by the British Embassy recently  had only just been received and had taken over 2 years to come back but still I was not informed whether they were positive or negative and told that I would have to wait until the prosecution case against me was complete to find out the results and what will happen next. I have already been banned from driving pending the blood test results for 2 years and 3 months and my car deregistered all that time and sat there deteriorating when I have not actually been charged with a crime. I have made numerous official complaints through the Embassy to the police about the circumsta...

I have been back in the UK now for 17 months and although I have healed and come to terms with all that happened in the main, I still have days that bring out memories that I had forgotten which can make me feel anxious and angry about it all but these feelings are short lived. As time goes by it does get easier for me to accept that everything that I own is still out of reach and just left there in my home in Bulgaria which is not secure and more than likely has been burgled by the gypsies and more possibly by Valeri who would think nothing of taking whatever he wanted to feed his gambling addiction or to just destroy when in a moment of paranoia and anger and the likelihood of me ever being reunited with my possessions is very slim and with each day that passes even less likely. Initially when I returned to the UK I had hopes  of being able to go back to my home in Bulgaria but as time has gone on these hopes have faded and I cant see it happening now. My life just feels like ...

  At first when I met my now ex narcissist boyfriend, having no real knowledge of narcissism, I misread the signs that were present in hindsight after learning about narcissism. The biggest one being that he was quite bossy and overwhelming at times when he wanted to do something together and he would not take no for an answer but these things were usually very romantic and adventurous like him waking me up in the early hours to go to the beach to watch the sun rise for example or him turning up out of the blue to take me to a local beauty spot regardless of what I was doing at the time.. he would even clean my villa when I was asleep or not home and once rearranged the cupboards of pans, crockery and utensils etc in the kitchen to be more practical for use which although was better organised, I knew where everything was before so it was a little annoying but I saw this as a kind gesture to please me. However in hindsight he was overstepping my boundaries in reality! His dom...

I knew early on in the relationship with my ex narcissist boyfriend that his behaviour was abusive but sadly I believed that he was suffering from mental illness and quite possibly schizophrenia as he would have episodes of paranoid delusions and it was then when he was abusive which I tolerated for a few reasons. These being that I felt he was ill and therefore not responsible for the abuse and that I could help him and not abandon him like he felt everyone else in his life had always done. I was living in Bulgaria at the time where domestic violence is not seen as a crime and therefore not a police matter so I had no protection or anyone to turn to for help. Bulgaria also has a very draconian attitude towards mental illness and therefore there is little to no help or support for that either.. I believed he was suffering unnecessarily from an illness that with the right treatment would enable him to stop having the paranoid delusional episodes and he would not be abusive. After these...

I was one of the lucky ones to a degree as my ex narcissist boyfriend was unable to shake my self esteem or make me doubt who I was despite his constant accusations, criticisms and mental abuse however he was able to make me feel constantly anxious and on edge and in fear of him being physically violent as he had been on previous occasions and I thought that he was quite capable of killing me when he was in these paranoid, delusional rages which would come from nowhere and at any time day or night! His mental abuse I could handle just about as his words did not effect me and everytime he called me a liar, bitch, whore, cheat, selfish, manipulative etc etc I knew without doubt that I was none of those things and he was unable to hurt me with his words as I saw it as his problem in that he had to result to name calling when he wasnt getting the attention he needed which I saw as childish especially when before and after he was telling me how wonderful he thought I was! What I had trouble...

Sadly I have lost faith in love and romance as the one time I thought it was the real thing and that I had finally met the one who was so perfect for me in every way he turned out to be a narcissist…. When he entered my life he was like the most perfect man in the world! He was kind, considerate and loving. He seemed to have the same morals as me as well as the same interests, intellect and outlook on life. He had experienced many hardships in life that I had such as having an abusive childhood and being cheated on by a partner which I had recently been through and so he was a breath of fresh air in that he was very understanding of how painful these things had been having experienced them himself. He wanted nothing from me at first and he would do whatever he could to make me feel special and to let me know he was thinking of me. He would pick fruit and leave it on my doorstep. He would take me to remote beauty spots to watch the sun rise or set. He would leave little notes for me ...

It was the abuse that my ex boyfriend claimed to have suffered in childhood that made me feel a connection with him and the reason why I let him into my life as I felt like I could help him as I too had suffered from very similar abuse in childhood. I had been fortunate enough to move on from this though by getting the necessary help to heal from it by putting myself through years of therapy which was by no means an easy road but worth it as subsequently I was finally able to put it behind me and go on to live a life beyond my greatest expectations in adulthood. My ex boyfriend was still very much in pain and had not been able to process it and as a consequence his life was still being affected by his childhood which I felt certain that he could recover from with the right help and support which seeing as I had been through what he had and had come through the otherside, I was certain that he could too and that I was probably the best person to help him do this. At first he was n...

Although the term has been around since it was first introduced by the ancient Greeks when according to Greek mythology, narcissus fell in love with his own reflection, narcissism is often misunderstood and is seen in general terms to mean a person who is selfish and self absorbed. Some may be more knowledgeable about the cause of this being due to underlying self esteem and an over inflated ego to compensate for it… thats as far as my understanding went and I too had often misused the term to describe the people who I had come across that were selfish and self centred and those who tended to feel the need to boast about themselves and their material riches in favour of acknowledging the qualities and riches of others! I had no idea how much more to it there was or how damaging these people could be until I ended up in a relationship with a narcissist boyfriend! In fact I was so ignorant to what a narcissist was that it wasn't until the relationship was over that I was to realise ...

Narcissists have a basic need to rid themselves of prevailing emptiness. They frequently achieve this by carefully choosing a victim who is then charmed, seduced and trapped. The victim’s energy feeds the stalker and provides what he lacks. Being incapable of love, these narcissistic stalkers are ravaged by the furious envy they feel for those who truly enjoy life. We’re not talking of material assets, but of moral qualities: vitality, empathy, sensitivity, creativity, goals, and life projects. Besides, they’re not so easy to identify. They can easily switch their attitude from being charming and caring, to being ruthlessly critical and dismissive, feeding the victim’s confusion and self-doubt. Narcissist stalkers frequently look for these 5 traits in their victims, some of which might surprise you (but are NEVER the victim’s fault):​ 1. Above Average Intelligence. Emotional stalkers seek very intelligent, really bright, highly skilled, well-trained victims. They look for en...

After everything that my ex narcissist boyfriend put me through emotionally and physically which far ouweighed the good times as well as the times he was being ok to me, not coming anywhere near to making his behaviour balanced or even close enough to compensate for his abusive behaviour, I still had deep feelings for him that would eventually mean that I would go back to him! These feelings were not always there especially when he was dishing out his abuse and for the day or so after in which time I would feel hatred, anger and total disgust for him but no matter what he did, for some reason I would not hold onto these bad feelings towards him for long and would always revert back to feelings of loving him as well as inconsolable guilt for me abandoning him and for the hurt he was going through that had been caused by me leaving him. This was something that I just couldn't understand let alone try to explain to my family and friends who were of the opinion that if it really wa...

I have read many articles about victims of narcissistic abuse losing their identity and doubting their own mind so much  that they start believing that they are the person that the narcissist has constantly told them they are and so they start to blame themselves for the abuse thinking it is somehow their fault.. This did not happen to me as I knew exactly who I was and no matter how many times he would tell me that I was this or that, I always knew that he was wrong and that he was the problem! I never once doubted that either as he was the only person who I had ever met in my life that saw me in that bad light. However I think that this made it harder for me as I would endure hours and hours on end of him constantly trying to brain wash me and break me into believing that I was all the awful things that he would tell me over and over again that I was and when I would not agree and accept it, his abuse continued and stepped up a gear. It was like torture! In the early days I...

When I was in the relationship with my ex narcissist boyfriend I couldn't think straight as I was constantly in fear and anxious and in a state of high alert waiting for the next attack. Also when in the relationship with a narcissist you are not able to express your true feelings and emotions for fear of the repercussions so I wasn't able to think or feel straight and in constant fear in the end. It sends you crazy and your thoughts become disorientated and you start forgetting even basis things as your brain has to function in survival mode and therefore will make head space in order to do this. I was living in fear that he was quite capable of killing me as I had felt close to being killed by him in the past when he had lost control and had raged like a wild animal when he was in a paranoid and delusional state and convinced himself that I was working for the ‘system' to destroy him so therefore felt he would have to kill me first! Once I was out of the relati...

You may not ever know for sure whether your abuser is a narcissist but thats not important!  The one big lesson I had to learn the hard way by being in an abusive relationship with a man who turned out to be narcissistic was that there is no excuse for abuse, its not your problem and not your responsibility to fix his issues and certainly not for you to be used for him to take it out on!  By all means you can support him if he decides to seek help but he has to do it to help himself and if he doesn't want to get help when knowing that he could lose you, he is certainly not likely to seek help while he knows that you will tolerate it and clearly doesn't care enough about what he is putting you through if he is continuing to behave that way towards you and hasnt tried to get help to stop! Therefore this may well mean he is a narcissist but it doesn't matter what label can be assigned to him as it doesn't make it right nor is it going to give him the excuse to abu...

When I was with my narcissist boyfriend and he had beaten me as well as mentally abused me to the point of me feeling that I was going crazy, I had so much anger inside me that I wanted to kill him, even contemplating for a split second about throwing an electrical device into the bath whilst he was in it as well as having thoughts of stabbing him if he hit me again which I couldn't actually go through with when it came down to it but I did on one occasion fight back and I did so as I believed he was going to kill me and it was either going to be him or me. However I did question after these events whether I was any better than him for allowing myself to be pushed enough to lose control and becoming quite capable of acting exactly how he was, especially when I was aware that narcissists are often the way they are due to some sort of abuse that had occurred in their childhood! My abuse was happening to me as an adult and yet still I had been pushed to the point where I too was qu...

I have been out of the relationship with my ex narcissist boyfriend for nearly a year now and I still have no desire to have a relationship with anyone at the moment. What I learned from being with my ex narcissist boyfriend was that I was stronger than I realised and that there is nothing that life can throw at me now that I don't feel like I could survive. I have been through hell and I have lost everything because of it and I was shown very little support from my family and friends during the abusive relationship and after I got myself out of it. I therefore have realised that the only person I can ever count on is me and knowing this has made me feel empowered and that I am enough. I also have learned that I will always put myself and my needs first now and will think twice about helping others in the future as when the time that I needed help came after I had done so much for others, there was noone there for me!

My ex narcissist boyfriend was able to make me feel like the most important person in the world and was loving attentive and caring as well as romantic. During these times, I felt blessed and I was totally in love with him and would have been happy to spend my life with him. When we spoke about marriage and having a family together I had no reservations whatsoever about this being part of our future together. Valeri would refer to me as his wife and would introduce me as his wife on meeting new people. Valeri had the ability to make me feel like the star of my very own romantic movie and like the luckiest girl on the planet. He would arrange candlelight picnics on the beach in summer where we would swim and lay down under the stars. He would take me to remote beautiful places to watch the sun rise or set. He would come to my home and leave love notes or a flower on my pillow in the night when I was sleeping or built a fire so that I would wake up in the warm and there was so...

My time in Bulgaria  where for over a year I was a victim of domestic abuse and violence at the hands of a Bulgarian man, I witnessed first hand the fear and helplessness of knowing there was nowhere to go and noone to turn to for help, not even the police! Instead they saw me as the problem for constantly requesting them to do something about an issue that was nothing more than day to day life in their eyes, branding me a trouble maker trying to make a scandal out of nothing and presuming I was not normal and taunting me.  Subsequently warning me from calling them again with implied threats. This following article sadly illustrates the domestic abuse and violence issues and the challenges in Bulgaria to change a mindset of an entire culture where not only does this occur frequently, most perpetrators and victims (or the police) are not even aware that its abuse or wrong and an infringement of their basic rights as a human being. July 28, 2018 Yoan Stanev Human rights...

Valeri and I  The pages of my blogsite were  written in order of the events that occurred so I recommend that to make sense of it all you need to read them in chronological order. Although they provide an honest, accurate and detailed portrayal about many events that occurred during my time in Bulgaria as I recall them, sadly there were far too many events to possibly include them all and so I have written about the times that my mind brought to the forefront of my memory when I felt the need to write about it to process and heal from it all in a therapeutic way which writing has always helped me to do. I must confess that I have written about it primarily for me and not with the reader in mind so my apologies if you find some parts a little tedious. By doing it this way, without having to consider whether it was going to be of interest to others, I was able to write about it in a brutally honest and raw way, using the exact words and events  that were coming ...

My abuser  It was not until I started to write this blog that I realised that I had been in a relationship with a narcissist and was a victim of narcissistic abuse! Before my relationship with this man, I had an incorrect understanding of Narcissistic Behaviour; There are a lot of misconceptions about what narcissistic behaviour actually is and before my experience, I thought that  narcissism meant nothing more than a person being considerably more selfish and self centred than most, with an over cocky  and over inflated ego that boasted about themselves and perceived themselves as superior having little regard for others. I have added below a link for a more accurate description of narcissism and the traits of a narcissist.. https://fairytaleshadows.com/defining-narcissistic-abuse-pt-1-the-universe-of-false-selves-and-the-construction-of-reality/ https://pin.it/wfw5e4u542x5qe  I have made it my mission to learn alot from being abused by a narcissist and...

I am an English lady who lived in Bulgaria for 18 months which sadly did not turn out as I had hoped. I was not new to Bulgaria's Black Sea Coast region as for 10 years I had owned an apartment there which I used regularly, even staying there for 6 months at a time on occassion on my own. I felt I knew Bulgaria and the culture well. I had learned to speak enough Bulgarian to get by and was familiar with the Bulgarian way of life. I knew Bulgarians, in comparison, to the UK, still had a lot of outdated views and prejudices but I had never felt these were directed at British, German or Scandinavian tourists but was well aware of their dislike of Romanians and darker skinned people who were referred to openly as gypsys and niggers. There also seemed to be some resentment towards Russians who did appear to treat Bulgarians as less superior to them and could be quite demanding! There were some who resented Americans but most had never met one. Being English, you are se...