Recovery worksheets for coercive control.
Gaslighting recovery, trauma bonding, DARVO, love bombing cycles, triangulation, grey rock scripts, no contact planning, a coercive control inventory, and self-trust rebuilding. Printable, PII-free, and written for clinicians working post-separation.
Narcissistic Abuse Recovery
Name the tactics, hold the cognitive dissonance, plan the next interaction
A trauma-informed worksheet for survivors of narcissistic parents, partners, or family members. Covers common tactics (gaslighting, love-bombing, silent treatment, DARVO, triangulation), what was lost, the both/and of remembering good and bad, and a no-contact / grey-rock plan.
Gaslighting Recovery Worksheet
Rebuild the record one incident at a time
Works a single gaslighting exchange end to end: what happened before it was rewritten, which move was used (denial, minimising, pathologising, memory attack), the certainty rating before and after, and how the client keeps a record no one else can edit.
Reality Log
Written the same day, before it can be argued with
A seven-day log of facts, what was said about them afterwards, and how sure the client felt — then the pattern that only becomes visible across rows. Includes a safety note on where the log is kept.
Trauma Bonding Worksheet
Intermittent reinforcement, made visible
Maps the good phase, the turn, the harm and the reconnection, then rates the pull back, names what the client hopes for and how often it has actually been met, and pre-plans the twenty minutes the pull is loudest.
Love Bombing Cycle Worksheet
Idealise, devalue, discard — at the client's own pace
Looks at speed rather than content: what arrived faster than normal, what was set aside to keep the pace, when warmth became conditional, and the pace the client actually wants when trust builds well.
DARVO Worksheet
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender
Names the four-step reversal that follows accountability, maps one exchange through it, and rehearses the single sentence the client returns to when the subject changes and the apology is reversed.
Triangulation Map
Who carries the messages, who never hears my account
Maps the roles around the relationship — messengers, invoked witnesses, people kept from the client's account — then decides who is spoken to directly and what will not be re-litigated with anyone.
Grey Rock Method Plan
For contact that cannot be ended
Pre-written scripts for logistics, provocation, flattery and ending an exchange, plus the bait the client is most likely to take and a cost check on hours spent recovering from contact.
No Contact Plan
Settled in advance, while the client is steady
Defines what no contact means channel by channel, maps five predictable pressure points with a planned response for each, and scripts the first twenty minutes after something arrives.
Coercive Control Inventory
A pattern of restriction, not a list of incidents
Nine domains — money, movement, contact, sleep and health, monitoring, work, documents, threats, unspoken rules — ticked where they applied, then the rules the client learned and one restriction to test safely.
Rebuilding Self-Trust Worksheet
Evidence, not reassurance
A six-row log of small calls, predictions and what actually happened, used to test the claim that the client's judgement cannot be trusted — plus the body signals worth listening to again.
What this cluster covers
Clients recovering from a narcissistic or coercively controlling relationship rarely present with a single traumatic event. They present with a shape: certainty that has drained away, a social world that shrank, an unshakeable pull back toward the person who caused the harm, and a habit of ending every complaint by apologising. These worksheets treat that shape directly.
The cluster splits into three jobs. Orientation — naming the tactics so the client stops explaining them as their own failures. Contact strategy — grey rock for the contact that cannot be ended, no contact planning for the contact that can. Rebuilding — a self-trust evidence log that works by accumulation rather than reassurance.
Where to start
Run the Coercive Control Inventory first, then the Gaslighting Recovery worksheet or Reality Log depending on whether contact is ongoing. Save the trauma bonding page for the point where the client can hold that the good phases were real without concluding the harm was not.
DARVO and the Triangulation Map are the pages to use before a specific conversation — a mediation, a family event, a co-parenting exchange. Rehearse the return sentence out loud in session; clients can name the reversal accurately and still lose the thread once it arrives.
Safety before insight
Screen for current risk before any behavioural change, including reduced reactivity. Where a written record could be found, keep the Reality Log in session. Where physical risk, stalking, threats about children or immigration status are present, route to specialist domestic-abuse advocacy alongside therapy — these worksheets support that work, they do not replace it.
Frequently asked questions
What are narcissistic abuse recovery worksheets used for?+
They give post-separation recovery a structure: naming the tactics that were used (gaslighting, DARVO, love bombing, triangulation), rebuilding a record the client can trust, planning contact that cannot be ended, and accumulating evidence that their judgement is sound. The work is orientation and evidence rather than diagnosis of the other person.
Which worksheet should I start with?+
Start with the Coercive Control Inventory. Clients routinely arrive believing nothing serious happened because no single incident looks severe, and an inventory of restriction across money, movement, contact and monitoring shows the pattern that individual incidents hide. Follow it with the Gaslighting Recovery worksheet or the Reality Log.
Why does the trauma bonding worksheet not argue that the relationship was all bad?+
Because insisting on that is what usually sends clients back. Intermittent reinforcement means the good phases were real and are precisely what makes the pull strong. Holding both — real warmth, real harm — is more durable than a case built on the relationship being uniformly awful.
Is grey rock safe to recommend?+
Only after risk screening. Withdrawing reaction can escalate someone who relies on it, so where physical risk is realistic, safety planning and specialist domestic-abuse advocacy come first. Grey rock is a tactic for specific unavoidable exchanges — co-parenting, shared work — not a way to live.
Do these worksheets diagnose narcissistic personality disorder?+
No, and they deliberately avoid it. Diagnosis of an absent person is not clinically possible or useful; the worksheets describe behaviour the client experienced and its effects, which is what treatment can actually work with.
Is there any personal information on these sheets?+
No. Every prompt refers to the other person by role only, and no names, dates, places or contact details are ever requested — which also matters because these pages are sometimes kept somewhere they could be found.
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