Recently, the City of Fort Pierce proclaimed Aug. 3 to Aug. 6 as Narcissistic Abuse Justice Week, in part due to the advocacy of Daniel Ryan Cotler, a Port St. Lucie native who has been pushing for the legal recognition of psychological abuse. He said that the proclamation is a big step.
"Well, first off, it was really validating. Going through the kind of abuse that I endured and everything, there's like this second injury that happens afterwards, where you kind of get erased by the community that you're in because people don't understand it, and they kind of write it off as just a bad breakup or just drama," he said. "I started reaching out to the cities and stuff, because the way that we get this information out there is to get people to start a conversation, and the city of Fort Pierce is willing to have that conversation. I really thank the mayor for issuing the proclamation and taking the time out to listen to what I had to say. Fort Pierce is saying that they stand with survivors of domestic abuse."
In addition to his writing and founding the Heal Loudly Movement, Daniel has advocated for legislation to criminalize psychological abuse, define legal terms for it, and establish legal accountability.
"I have two pieces of legislation that I wrote, which is the Voice of Justice Act and the FRANKIE initiative, which is the federal registry for abusers of narcissism, knowledge, identity and exploitation, which is kind of modeled after the sexual abuser registry, but for psychological abusers. I really just want to get a conversation started, because there's nobody having conversation about this right now," he said.
Above all, Daniel hopes that people can give those who have suffered psychological abuse one valuable resource: Understanding.
"I hope that people walk away from this knowing that when you hear somebody saying that they're going through this, not to minimize that, not to just tell them to get over it and move on. Because this kind of abuse, you don't get over it and you really don't move on. You learn to to move forward. But healing is not something that you just do and you're over, surviving is something that you have to do every day," he said.