You are not crazy.
You may be in an antagonistic relationship and you deserve real support.
Antagonistic abuse most commonly referred to as narcissistic abuse is one of the most confusing and emotionally destabilising forms of relational harm. Unlike physical abuse, it leaves no visible marks. Yet the damage to your sense of self, your trust, and your emotional wellbeing can be profound and long-lasting.
It can occur in intimate partnerships, marriages, family relationships, or professional environments. In the UAE’s multicultural, high-pressure social landscape, these dynamics are far more common than most people realise and they remain deeply misunderstood.
🔴 Gaslighting : being told that your memory, perception, or feelings are wrong, until you stop trusting yourself
🔴 Emotional manipulation : love, approval, and affection used as tools to control your behaviour
🔴 The silent treatment : withdrawal of communication used as punishment or emotional control
🔴 Walking on eggshells : constantly monitoring your words, tone, and behaviour to avoid their reactions
🔴 Emotional invalidation : your feelings are dismissed, minimised, or ridiculed
🔴 Trauma bonding : cycles of idealisation, devaluation, and discard that create intense emotional dependency
🔴 Control : over your finances, social life, appearance, or daily decisions
🔴 Emotional confusion : never quite knowing what is real, what is your fault, or where the truth lies
🔴 Self-esteem erosion : a gradual, systematic destruction of your confidence, worth, and sense of identity
You do not need a diagnosis. You do not need to be certain. If any of the following resonates with you, this program was created for you.
"I have been told I am too sensitive, too emotional, or that I overreact."
You are not too sensitive. Your reactions make complete sense given what you have been through.
"I stay because I cannot leave financially, legally, or for my children."
You do not need to leave to begin healing. We meet you exactly where you are.
"I left, but I cannot stop replaying the relationship, doubting myself, or feeling broken."
Leaving the relationship does not automatically end the trauma. Real recovery requires targeted support.
"I am not sure if what I experienced is 'bad enough' to call abuse."
If your sense of self has been eroded or your reality questioned — that is enough. You deserve support.
"I feel completely alone. Nobody around me understands what I have been through."
You are not alone. This is exactly why this program exists.
"I am a professional, an expat, or someone who 'has it together' on the outside."
Antagonistic abuse does not discriminate. High-functioning people suffer in silence every day — often the most isolated of all.
After Navigating an Antagonistic or Narcissistic Relationship
Whether the relationship is romantic, familial, or professional, your nervous system and sense of self may have been deeply affected. Please know: these conditions are real and you are not making them up. The following experiences are not signs of weakness — they are signs of what your mind and body have endured.
At Positive Living UAE, we take this type of relational harm whether it involves a romantic partner, a family member, a boss, or a colleague with the utmost seriousness and the most comprehensive support available.
Luz Maria, founder and Clinical Director of Positive Living UAE, has personally experienced psychological abuse of this nature. What she witnessed in her own life and in the lives of hundreds of clients over 28 years in Dubai compelled her to create a full recovery program dedicated to healing the trauma of antagonistic relationships.
Because this is not simply about understanding behavioural patterns. What happens to the victim of an antagonistic relationship is profound and far-reaching. Your brain changes. Your nervous system changes. And not in ways that serve you in ways that damage your mental health, your self-trust, and your ability to feel safe in the world.
The Positive Living Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP) is about healing the nervous system that was conditioned to survive the abuse. It is about recovering and rebuilding the sense of self that was doubted, gaslighted, and slowly eroded. It is about learning to trust yourself again.
Our methods are holistic, non-invasive, and trauma-informed. We combine somatic work to release trauma stored in the body with educational and deeply personal therapeutic tools. We do not offer a one-size-fits-all protocol.
We take into consideration your culture, religion, and values. Our therapists are comprehensively trained on the specific dynamics of antagonistic and narcissistic abuse.
At Positive Living UAE, we meet you exactly where you are with compassion, cultural sensitivity, and deep respect for the courage it takes to reach out.
| Approach | How It Supports Your Recovery |
| Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy (Dr. Ramani Durvasula) | Our certified psychotherapists are trained directly by Dr. Ramani Durvasula, a world authority on antagonistic and narcissistic abuse. Sessions create a safe, non-judgmental space to process what happened, understand its impact, and begin healing at your own pace. |
| Compassionate Inquiry (Dr. Gabor Maté) | Our Compassionate Inquiry practitioners gently uncover the belief systems and wounds formed in childhood, releasing trauma stored in the body with grace, compassion, and ethical care allowing clients to feel vulnerable and to heal without blame or shame. |
| RTT Clinical Hypnosis (Marisa Peer) | Accesses and rewires the subconscious mind, transforming limiting beliefs formed through childhood experience or trauma beliefs such as ‘I am not enough,’ ‘I don’t deserve happiness,’ or ‘Love is not available to me.’ |
| Neurofeedback Therapy | Directly heals the dysregulated nervous system left by chronic stress and trauma, reducing anxiety, hypervigilance, and emotional reactivity through the latest brain-training technology. |
| Imago Couples Therapy (Harville Hendrix & Helen LaKelly) | For couples where toxic patterns are present rebuilding genuine emotional safety, communication, and conscious connection through one of the most respected science-based couples therapy approaches in the world. |
| NLP & Inner Child Work | Heals deeper identity wounds, rebuilds self-worth, and breaks generational patterns through neuroscience and neuroplasticity teaching you to speak to yourself with kindness, love, and to quiet the destructive inner critic. |
The UAE is one of the most diverse, ambitious, and high-pressure environments in the world. While it offers extraordinary opportunity and beauty, it also creates specific conditions that can make unhealthy relationship dynamics harder to recognise, harder to escape, and harder to heal from.
demanding work cultures, long hours, and performance pressure create emotional depletion that makes manipulation harder to identify
one partner’s visa often tied to the other’s employment creates genuine practical barriers to leaving
different cultural frameworks around gender roles and emotional expression can be weaponised as tools of control
being far from family and longstanding support networks leaves individuals more vulnerable and more dependent on their partner
the curated, aspirational culture of Dubai can make it deeply difficult to acknowledge that a relationship is harmful
cultural or religious pressure to ‘make the marriage work’ can trap people in harmful situations
unresolved wounds from early attachment relationships often replay in adult partnerships, particularly under stress
accessing quality mental health care in the UAE has historically been limited, leaving many without the professional help they need
We want you to hear this clearly. Recovery from narcissistic abuse is not only possible for many of our clients, it has been the most profound and transformative journey of their lives. Not because the pain was not real. But because of what emerged on the other side of it.
We want you to hear this clearly. Recovery from narcissistic abuse is not only possible — for many of our clients, it has been the most profound and transformative journey of their lives. Not because the pain was not real. But because of what emerged on the other side of it.
Nervous system regulation
Your body learns that it is safe again. The hypervigilance, anxiety, and constant low-level fear begin to soften.
Rebuilding self-worth
You begin to rediscover your own value — not through someone else's validation, but from within yourself.
Learning to trust yourself
Your instincts, your perceptions, and your emotions begin to feel reliable again.
Establishing healthy boundaries
Not walls built from fear, but boundaries built from self-respect and self-knowledge.
Emotional regulation
Developing the capacity to feel your emotions without being overwhelmed by them.
Healing attachment wounds
Understanding the early patterns that shaped your relationship blueprint and consciously rewriting them.
Breaking generational cycles
So that these patterns do not pass to your children or into your next relationship.
Creating emotionally safe relationships
Learning what real love, real partnership, and real emotional safety feel like.
Confidential & Safe
Everything shared in our sessions remains completely confidential. Your story is safe with us.
Non-Judgmental
We do not judge, advise, or tell you what to do. We hold space for you to find your own clarity.
Culturally Sensitive
28+ years in Dubai. Deep understanding of Middle Eastern, Asian, and expat cultural dynamics.
Holistic Approach
We heal the mind, nervous system, and soul — not just the surface symptoms.
Trusted Reviews
4.8 stars on Google. Hundreds of clients whose lives have genuinely changed through our work.
Personalised Care
No two journeys are the same. Every therapeutic plan is tailored entirely to you.
To whoever is reading this first, I want you to know something important, something I mean with every part of my heart:
You are not the problem. You are not crazy. You are not too sensitive.
I know this because I have lived it. I, Luz Maria, am a survivor of narcissistic abuse. I know firsthand what it is to question your own reality, to feel that no one around you truly understands what is happening, to feel completely alone inside a relationship or even after leaving one. I know the helplessness. I know the exhaustion. I know the deep shame of wondering whether it is somehow your fault.
It is not your fault. What I also know because I have walked this road myself and because I have sat with hundreds of people in this city over the past 28 years is that healing is real. It is possible. And you do not have to have all the answers today, or know exactly what your next step is, in order to begin.
I created the Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program specifically because I did not want another woman, another man, another human being to feel as invisible and as alone as I once did. I wanted there to be a place truly specialised, truly trauma-informed, truly compassionate where someone experiencing this kind of pain could come and be believed. Fully. Without judgement. Without being told they are overreacting.
I also want to say something that I believe matters deeply: you do not have to leave in order to begin healing. I understand, perhaps better than most, that leaving is not always possible. Financial dependency, cultural pressures, visa status, children, family expectations these are real. And they are not weaknesses. They are the complex reality of life, particularly in a place like the UAE.
Whether you are still in the relationship, navigating a separation, or rebuilding your life on the other side there is a path forward. Your nervous system can heal. Your sense of self can return. Your capacity to trust yourself and others can be restored.
If you are the person who has been hurt: I see you. I believe you. And your healing, your safety, and your sense of self will always come first in this space.
If you are in a relationship where toxic patterns are present and both of you are willing to look honestly at what has been happening that courage deserves to be met with equal honesty and care, and we can offer that too.
This work is not easy. But it is the most important work you will ever do for yourself, for your children, and for every relationship you carry into your future.
You are not alone anymore.
When you are ready I am here. 💚
With warmth, empathy, and deep respect,
Luz Maria Villagras Surco
Founder & Clinical Director, Positive Living UAE
RTT Clinical Hypnosis | NLP Master | Imago Couples Therapist | Compassionate Inquiry Practitioner | Neurofeedback Specialist
Yes deeply and genuinely. Trauma-informed therapy, Neurofeedback, and RTT work together to heal both the psychological and neurological impact of narcissistic abuse. Many clients experience significant improvement in anxiety, self-worth, and clarity within weeks of beginning their therapeutic journey.
If you consistently feel confused, guilty, exhausted, and unsure of your own reality in a relationship and if your sense of self has gradually diminished over time these are significant indicators. A therapeutic assessment with a trained professional can help you understand your experience clearly and without judgement.
Yes. Neurofeedback directly addresses the dysregulated nervous system left by chronic stress and emotional trauma. It reduces hypervigilance, anxiety, sleep problems, and emotional reactivity creating the neurological foundation for deeper therapeutic healing.
Yes. Positive Living UAE offers both in-person sessions in Dubai and online sessions for clients across the UAE and internationally. Please contact us to discuss the best format for your needs.
Absolutely. All sessions at Positive Living UAE are strictly confidential. We operate within professional ethical standards and your privacy is our absolute priority.
In some cases, yes particularly where both partners are genuinely committed to change and where the dynamic has not caused irreparable harm. Imago Couples Therapy can be profoundly transformative. However, individual safety and wellbeing always comes first, and we will always be honest with you about what is genuinely possible.
Every journey is different. Some clients experience significant shifts within a few sessions. A deeper recovery rebuilding identity, nervous system regulation, and healthy relationship patterns typically unfolds over several months of consistent therapeutic work. We will always work at your pace.
