Modupe Ladipo: Male Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse

Modupe Ladipo set out to build a program for men. Men kept signing up, and so did women, and he decided that was the answer to a question he had not asked: this is not a men's problem or a women's problem, so the work should not be either.

Our guest this episode is Modupe Ladipo, who runs Renewed Minds from the UK. Renewed Minds is an education and recovery platform for people coming out of narcissistic abuse, built on interviews and lived experience rather than theory, and Modupe came to it as a survivor. He also works as a professional in the corporate world, which shapes how he thinks about the later stage of recovery, and he started the platform in 2020 for reasons he explains near the end.

In this episode, Modupe and Lisa talk about how narrow most people's picture of narcissistic abuse is: that it gets flattened into vanity when it is a pattern of psychological abuse that turns up between co-workers, inside families and in religious communities as readily as in a marriage. They talk about the specific difficulty men face reporting it, from the response they get when they call for help to the pressure to absorb it without complaint, and Modupe raises what that pressure costs.

He describes the eight-week healing and thriving program he built, which deliberately does not stop at recovery: healthy conflict, rebuilding trust in your own judgment, co-parenting, self-esteem, and then getting your ambitions and your working life back, on the reasoning that a life outside the relationship still has to be lived. The line he keeps is one he got from a man he interviewed, that healing is not moving on but moving forward, because the memories are part of the story and are not going anywhere.

As always, this is strategic education, not legal or mental-health advice for your specific situation.

🎓 What you'll learn

• Why narcissistic abuse is not limited to intimate relationships, and where else it shows up
• What happens when a man reports abuse, and why so many decide not to
• Why the common picture of narcissism keeps people from recognizing their own situation
• How isolation works as a tactic, and what changes when someone realizes they are not alone
• What an eight-week recovery structure covers, from healthy conflict to co-parenting
• Why recovery has to include your working life and ambitions, not just your feelings
• The difference between moving on and moving forward

⏱️ Chapters
0:00 Intro
1:00 What Renewed Minds is, and why Modupe built it
4:00 Storytelling as the teaching method, and a 25-year marriage
7:00 Abuse as a human problem, not a gendered one
8:30 What men run into when they report it
10:30 The isolation tactic, and realizing it was never just you
12:00 The healing and thriving program, and getting your career back
14:30 Moving forward instead of moving on, and where to find Modupe

Keep going 💜
Book a free 30-minute discovery call and we'll help you map your next steps: https://beentheregotout.com/call
📘 Been There Got Out: Toxic Relationships, High-Conflict Divorce, and How to Stay Sane Under Insane Circumstances — https://www.amazon.com/dp/194627495X
📘 Been There Got Out: When Your Ex Turns the Kids Against You (our parental-alienation book) — https://www.amazon.com/dp/1967674183

About Been There Got Out
Chris Barry and Lisa Johnson are high-conflict divorce, custody, and co-parenting strategists, and the founders of Been There Got Out. They know these cases from the inside: both have successfully represented themselves in family court. Few attorneys have a playbook for a case like this — Chris and Lisa write yours with you, so you and your kids can get through it as unscathed as possible.