Strategies Narcissists Use To Minimize Your Self Trust, featuring Dr. Ramani Durvasula

[Music] hey team healthy well all right you know that I like to get some good guests here to talk about the subject of narcissism and uh we've got the best of the best here with us today uh okay Dr Romy deaso we're so glad to have you with us here so I just want to uh say you've been on the program here before with our team healthy it's surviving narcissism you're back again you have a brand new book we're going to be talking about that but thanks so much for being with us once again I hope things are well with you they they're great Lessa the book my book just came out and you know again I'm so happy became a New York Times bestseller which for me is happy at two levels one you're always happy you write a book it gets out out there in the world but the other reason I'm happy and I think it's something you'll resonate with is it means this issue is finally getting some attention and traction I think a lot of folks who go through this feel very alone in it people saying is this even really a thing it's got to be a thing if this many people are turning their head towards it to me this it's almost like this commercial indicator that this is an issue and people have to start paying attention to it and so I'm really in a I'm sad it's happening but I'm heartened to see it's getting attention because I want people to feel less alone with it well and and I Echo your thought on that it's just so amazing that as you and I and others talk about the topic I mean it it it hits a raw nerve with a lot of people doesn't it yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I mean it is I think it's for many people it's the puzzle piece that once it clicks into place so much else makes sense in their lives because they've invested so much of themselves in trying to rationalize these harmful behaviors or make sense of them or take the blame onto themselves all the usual stuff but once this sort of this this guide book is given to them they're saying oh my gosh like how could they're like they're like well you haven't been living in my house so you wrote a book which means this is not about just me and I think people will say just knowing this had a name it has an architecture to it it has it is a it's a thing was enough for some people to say okay number one because I always say this and something I've been coming back to more and more we often talk about people having a broken heart after a narcissistic relationship and broken hearts are painful don't get me wrong but a brok broken heart is no match for being made to feel crazy and that's what happens to people in narcissistic relationships they're like the broken heart piece that they're like that that ship has sailed a long time ago but they're like I literally feel insane and to me the work of helping people with narcissistic who've gone through narcissistic relationships is to return them back to the sense of you're not crazy there's not something you're not crazy and you're not alone you're not alone and now you feel okay now you're on more stable ground like I said broken the one advantage shrinks always have I say in the broken heart Marketplace is I'm like give a broken heart 6 weeks to eight weeks maybe even three months they're always going to resolve but the feeling crazy part that doesn't go away until somebody gives you again a blueprint a map a way to kind of navigate out of the mess speaking of blueprints now for those of you who have been living under the rock for the last month and haven't picked up on the book yet uh Romy you got the the new book it's not youy I I've got to tell you a funny story okay um I mean this is like two three days ago I was talking with my wife Jennifer about a topic that I wanted to to put a put together with a video and so as I began talking with her about the video you know what her comment was well I just saw a video that Dr romeny did and she started talking about all the stuff that you were doing and she just went on and on and what I want to say um honey back to my original topic thanks Jennifer for being a fan you're inside my house and you're getting you're you're it's like okay Jennifer Honey okay just just know that I have a little bit of an ego still give Jennifer a big hug from me though thank you so I thought you'd get a kick out of that but sure enough you've got your new book and I wanted to to talk with you about some of the things that you bring out in the book and um obviously I mean you're going to give the U the uh beginning description what we're talking about with narcissism but one of the things I wanted to discuss with you today because there are so many subcategories to this and that is narcissists uh use strategies if you will they have tactics they have their patterns that they uh get into going back to your term that that take you into your crazy making and I'd like for you to just kind of walk us through some of the things that they'll do that's part of their strategy to make you think well it's all about you your nuts your crazy what would and the first strategy you mention in the book uh is is the strategy of gaslighting but let's talk about that and then I want to add to a whole lot more of what you have there in the book so can can you help us understand that yeah so remember these are these are relationships that you know Dr Jennifer fried put it beautifully when she said they're asymmetric relationships narcissistic person never wants a relationship where you're on equal footing so let's say you start there right you're equally empowered to them in the world you're doing well they're going to try they're going to try to change that leveling up because narcissistic folks are very much motivated by power dominance and control in a relationship now if you're not aware of that and you're coming into a relationship wanting affiliation connection and love you the one of you is playing checkers or one of you is playing chess let's put it that way so it's very very different set of rules and probably the most classical way that a person can create a sense of domination in a relationship by destabilizing someone is by gaslighting them right you're not only doubting perceptions reality experience and memories you're then telling someone that there's something wrong with you but we also have to remember less that there's a a chapter one in the narcissistic relationship nobody's opener is gaslighting their opener is charm Charisma confidence connection there actually can be very attuned in the beginning of a relationship now it's actually is a part of the gaslighting though right I I agree Prelude to it let's say it's a Prelude to it because what they're doing is one of the essential ingredients to gaslighting gaslighting is predicated on trust or or connection or attachment we want to be close to the gaslighter it's the only way it can work because if a stranger gaslighted me or someone I don't care about I'm like no not true like leave me alone get the hell away from me I could take that stance but if it's someone I love or care about I'm not going to be as dismissive and in fact because I trust them there's going to be some plausibility I would assume to what they're saying so that frontend approach I agree with you it's like a takeoff ramp they're there they're they're kind of getting the the feel ready they're fertilizing it and tilling it to be able to get it ready to be able to Gaslight you so that that trust building whether it's through love bombing whether it's through idealization even if it's whether them selling you a Sad Sack story and you feel the need to rescue them however they create that connection with you it all depends on who we are and what leads us to connect then that sets the ground for where we are now someone who when they start to Gaslight us even initially though we do know that when people in the early phases of gasl people initially fight back they'll say uhuhuh that that is absolutely not true and we push back the problem is and if you look at Robin Stern's work she's you know she's written a lot about gaslighting the gasl light effect and all of that you she also talks about this process I talk about a similar process but really how it's in generally in narcissistic relationships she talks about gaslighting regardless of what the personality is of the person but we do push back the challenge is that when we push back gaslighting isn't lying right if we catch someone in a lie and we give them the evidence of the LIE then the gasl the liar is going to say okay you got me I'm sorry all right and and they'll sort of cop to it gas cider is never going to cop to it because they're running a different game they're not trying to deny evidence they're trying to dismantle you so you'll fight back and they will push back but here's where it gets interesting in a narcissistic relationship especially one that you want to have sustained is that if you push back a lot especially early in the relationship as many of us do they will then doubt your commitment and may even say like H you know what like maybe we're not compatible maybe we're not vibing and they threaten abandonment and that threat of Abandonment is one of those gaslighting tools that they're almost testing the waters now if you knew what narcissism and gaslighting were and somebody's gaslighting you and having that argument with you and then saying they're going to go if you were lucky you'd say bye and then you would have that's it it's all over they're probably going to come back though but most of us don't want it to end and our own abandonment wounds get activated so many of us at that point will start to relent the first time we relent now the gaslighter knows I got I got a live one here and they're going to keep pushing this game but over time we start doubting ourselves we start believing the things they say to us like we're crazy and all of that and that's how that pattern sticks actually I I I highlighted a quote and you were almost saying it word for word word there uh you were saying that gaslighting is not a disagreement it's not lying anyone who's ever tried to show a gaslighter evidence such as text messages video footage Etc uh knows that it doesn't lead to the narcissist person narcissistic person taking responsibility and uh what you're what you're wanting to do is you you're uh particularly if you're in an earlier phase with that narcissist it's like hey look let's just you and me uh have some good understanding of who we are I'll be responsible for me you be responsible for for you and that's a mistake right there U you assume mutuality and it's not going to happen they don't want to have to be responsible for themselves they want to make you responsible for who they are and that of course is just right at the heart of what we're talking about absolutely and and I think that that's why it is such a core Dynamic but it is a form of manipulation I think the bigger umbrella that gaslighting lives under is manipulation and not all manipulation is gaslighting gaslighting form manipulation but not vice versa okay now you you you talk about another strategy that they use and you call it the dimmer strategy di mme tell us what that's all about so dimmer I I came up with it because these narcissistic relationships dim our light but it's it's the dismissiveness the invalidation the manipulation the minimization the entitlement the rage what these things do is they basically indoctrinate a person in a narcissistic Rel relationship to basically turn down our true selves because we're going to constantly be shut down now you might think some of you might think well I'm a fighter I would fight all this stuff okay then the relationship will remain volatile but there's going to be a point at which most people are going to get exhausted and the manipulations will feel plausible and you just and again it's not their opener by the time these patterns start showing up in Earnest the devaluation the ization all of that we've sort of got some Buy in it's that sunk cost we're in relation Y and the trauma bonding has really sort of set in I always say like the Jello-O is no longer liquid it's holding its form and that's really sort of that trauma bonded State we we we're sort of now starting to fight for this and keep in mind too unless this is a distinction I make in the book I'm sure it's something you've encountered in your work the mistake we make is when we keep asking the question of who is attracted to a narcissist and who are narcissistic people people attracted to it's the wrong question because this is not happening at the attraction level the bigger question is who's getting stuck in these relationships because that's where the problems begin right attract who's not going to be attracted to someone Charming confident and charismatic and they're attracted to us because we're Supply but the people who get stuck tend to be people who are more empathic and flexible and um forgiving and optimistic and believe in the potential of people to change might be Rescuers and fixers and who keep trying to make it better folks like that are going to stay in it and actually also be more vulnerable to things like the gaslighting because of that mental flexibility kind of hurts us in this circumstance we'll say well I guess I could be responsible for that somebody who might actually not have those qualities might be a little more likely to say I'm out of here like this is no I'm not doing this and so those it's not about getting in it's about the staying in and those qualities in us that are actually very healthy qualities and pro-social like empathy like warmth and kindness and compromise those things actually hurt a person immeasurably in one of these relationships and when we think even of things like minimization a great example of minimization something we see in gaslighting which is mockery they'll tease there's a lot of teasing that happens like you know oh you think you think you're all that or like gosh anyone can do that rooll I roll and a person will think it's like this kind of feels mean but if you bring it up to the narcissistic person they'll say oh get over yourself grow up I'm just I'm just having some fun and now you feel ridiculous because you were getting hurt by a joke and they said yeah I told you you were too sensitive so these things again that feel plausible then all of a sudden we are able to internalize as um yeah maybe I am too sensitive maybe I'm being ridiculous maybe I need to be more thick skinned and then they got you all the while they're they're whittling away at your own well-being you know one of my books is when pleasing you is killing me yep and you get into that high appeasement mode and it's like hey look if we're having tension I don't really like to have tension and and you you want to be a pleaser and you want to be a bridge builder and best case scenario that can be good until the narcissist thinks I can make this work for me yep and that's what we have there so so when you talk about the the dimmer pattern you talk about all the diminishment ETC but then what about the uh the dominance theme that they go into know that's on its way yeah yeah so the dominant the dominance patterns are it's it's very much about control right it is about it's going to be my way and some of this happens through isolation now we know Les that this is all on a Continuum at the extreme ends of of narcissism and narcissistic abuse we're seeing malignant narcissis relationships coercive control that kind of thing but even in the middle really what my book's about these more moderate narcissistic relationships isolation is part of the story and the isolation may be for example them dropping in little sprinkles about like I don't know if you should trust that friend or like your friend doesn't like me or you know why do you put up with your mother talking to you like that but these are actually often solid sources of support and the narcissistic person will often try to put small or big wedges between you and validating voices in your life and especially in early days when you're trying to preserve the relationship with the narcissistic person these again you buy into the wedges and you get more and more isolated from the most important anti- gaslighting tool we've got which are validating voices let me ask you something because what you said just um sparked something for me what one of the things that makes it most difficult when you're trying to discern is this person I'm with healthy or not is um like you say you may be picking up on something that you don't like you know the complaining about your mother Etc um but somehow The Narcissist has a really good skill if you want to call it that of making you doubt your good perceptions and over a while over time it's like how did you come up with that or no no no no you were misreading that and I guess when you're exposed to those kind of invalidating comments over time it has its effect uh in to The Narcissist benefit and that's that's part of the whole main thing they want to maintain they want to maintain that dominance by getting you to not trust your intuitions right because but they hit but the narcissistic person is hitting two parts of us a healthy part and an unhealthy part the unhealthy part is our self-doubt right people who stay in narcissistic relationships longer either have a standing history of self-doubt or it's been developed in the relationship the healthy part of us though they're hitting is our flexibility right fle mentally flexible people are able to see situations from different perspectives but when you put the self-doubt and the flexibility together when the narcissistic person starts putting in those plausible doubts you're able to see the plausibility like well yeah my mom can be a handful and maybe he's right maybe I'm holding myself back because I keep spending time with my mom and so things that might even even be very fuzzy hypotheses for you because no relationship's perfect that all of a sudden now they start becoming more concrete but the big problem problem is the more isolated we get the more dominat we get and also narcissistic folks are very much they're menaces they they're very um and they're very vindictive and even before you get to that part of the relationship with them where things are falling apart you'll see their vindictiveness come out towards other people they'll even say it they'll like oh let me tell you this nobody wants to get on the wrong side of me or they're going to have hell to pay and there's this sort of sense of like well that's not applicable to me but then one day you're like oh my gosh this is I'm next exactly and I think that that vindictiveness which is very much an ego thing for narcissistic people that they they cannot tolerate that idea of an ego injury so they're going to rage as cohat would write they're going to rage at that person who brought up that ego injury and that feels and it is it's revenge and post-separation abuse is very often perpetrated by narcissistic people when relationships don't go the way that they want so gas lighting the Demming the domination and then what you're describing there is another of the patterns that you highlight in your book and that is the just the ongoing disagreeable pattern yeah where it's like yeah the arguing and the bickering and the griping and no no no I don't know why you would think that and you did that yesterday I mean yeah talk about how that begins to emerge yeah so I mean I think that that narcissistic people love fighting they're good at it because conflict is a place to win right narcissistic Folks by Nature are very competitive and so in order to keep that upper hand conflict actually sets up that opportunity so these relationships will be very argumentative and many people in narcissistic relationships will say conflict is not it actually feels very unsafe for them some people like conflict but a lot of folks stuck in these relationships don't narcissistic people also engage in a lot of baiting if you're not argumentative they're going to pull you into an argument right so they're going to just sort of poke until you finally pop and frankly when you pop is exactly when they'll turn around and say gosh you're so sensitive and so that's more it's almost like they're setting the gas light up they're teeing it up there's also a lot of blame excuse me let me just stick there's also a lot of blame shifting so they will you will they you will ask for accountability again in the early days of a narcissistic relationship ship we navigate it as though it's a normal healthy relationship so we expect people to take responsibility for when they do things and repeatedly you'll start to see they will blame you for everything I mean even if it's a physically abusive relationship they'll blame you for them hitting you or if they are unfaithful to you they'll blame you they'll say well you weren't paying enough attention to me they will blame you for their betrayal or their transgression or their harm there's also a lot of criticism in these relationships and these can be big digs or small digs it feels like you can't do anything right and a lot of that is also a byproduct of the projected perfectionism that a narcissistic person places on a partner or someone close to them like you really start to believe if you got it perfect enough then this would work out and these are also relationships that are riddled with contempt there's overtime especially when you start cycling more into the discard phase it's almost like they're disgusted by you like GH can't believe I have to listen to you talk to you be with you but they don't cut you loose because you're a source of supply yeah yeah well and uh you mentioned also there's a betrayal pattern too where because because everything you're talking about has just this U dishonest stench to it yes and uh of course if you call them out on that they're going to say well if anybody's dishonest in this equation it ain't me uh so but when we talk about betrayal uh there can be a lot of lying or um you know misrepresentation of what happened and then you you also mentioned that there's future fake what's all that about so it is again the the future faking is when the narcissistic person makes a promise that is linked to a future date um I'm going to go to therapy and I'm going to change um we're going to have a baby once X Y or Z happens um we will go visit your next year we'll have Thanksgiving with your family what they what what's so diabolical about these relationships is the narcissist I IC person is listening enough to know what matters to you they do they're listening to it but they're filing it away like data so when they need something from you they retrieve it and they weaponize it as a future promise and that's going to keep you in the relationship another six months another year heck sometimes for 20 years once I retire then we will and that could be 20 years down the road and people again who are kind and agreeable and warm who in these relationships will think well I can't expect them to go to therapy tomorrow and change overnight and now you've bought into it and now they'll take they may not ever go into therapy it'll take five months to find someone and if you question them then we see the disagreeableness again really do you expect I'm G to make these changes overnight God you're so unrealistic and demanding Gaslight now you're the problem you're the one who's demanding but going back to the general sense of betrayal you know again looking at Dr Jennifer fried's work she's written beautifully on this whole idea of betrayal trauma this idea that the the betrayals the accumulated betrayals by a person Who had who we believe or who has proclaimed to trust that we that they love us and that we trust them when betrayals are committed by someone whom we believe loves or trusts us it has a very specific series of psychological effects on us and it creates a tremendous sense of loss of psychological safety and people who go through betrayal trauma almost invariably start to blame themselves and cord and off and almost dissociate from the repeated betrayals because it's the only way to maintain the attachment in the relationship so when you understand betrayal trauma you understand one of the core sort of dynamics of what's happening in an narcissistic relationship and many people won't even sort of code it as betrayal or Cod ah relationships are hard or H I haven't been available since the kids were born or you you people take it on but more than anything they also sort of file away but put away in a place they can't find those sorts of betrayal experiences but all of these things from the false promises to the moving the goalpost to to whatever it is there's also again that sunk cost piece stuck to the trauma bonded piece where you now feel like you've put so much time into this that you keep trying to fix it but the fact is Les the more we're betrayed even if we cut off those betrayed pieces we we dissociate from them we file them away we put them away what fried calls gen what fried calls betrayal blindness that doesn't come without a cost the more we do that the sicker we get we get anxious we get depressed we we feel disconnected from ourselves we may get physically ill so those accumulated betrayals like I said we don't always register them because it might mean then we have to step away or reassess the relationship we then get sick well and the sad thing is as you begin to illustrate or show some of those um reactions whether it's the anxiety depression and very often the anger and the agitation then guess what happens look at you I mean it's it's the ultimate gotcha game it's exactly exactly yep yeah and then in the end so many times and I know you mentioned this also in your book one of the things that begins to happen as a result of so much of what you're describing already you wind up feeling more and more isolated you begin like you say you begin to doubt yourself you pull away from those that would love you or have been part of your support system and the narcissist is thinking this is working for me and and it's it's all part of that pattern of disregulated you but you know so much of what you're saying today here Romany the implication is it's so important for the narcissist to uh to more or less imply you need to learn how to trust me and if that's not happening you're not trusting me well enough and and it's it's like if you have a different opinion or preference or interpretation it can't possibly be right and I know one of the things that you and I both we uh we work with people to to uh to capture is no if you're if you're picking up on something you need to start listening to what your gut's telling you as opposed to what's being placed in it by this highly disregulated person and that's so why it's so necessary for us to be able to see these patterns in the first place so that you can uh go back and recoup assuming you ever had it to begin with self-trust absolutely and I think again like you said it's that it's that game of cat and mouse of human beings have a natural tendency to want to trust and the fact is we almost need to trust and we trust more than we think we do if we didn't trust we wouldn't leave the house we wouldn't get in a car because we wouldn't believe the other person's going to stop at a stop sign right we couldn't function in our lives and now here is someone we believe we love so when they're saying you you you need to trust me you have to trust me at some level we want to trust them yeah right and then it's that again that chronic destabilization it's what Dan Shaw calls that loss of inter subjectivity that you're not allow owed to have a separate reality from mine it is if I'm cold you're cold if I'm hungry you're hungry if I believe in this you believe in this and if you if you vary off of that script you will be shut down so it is a slow indoctrination where over time a person is they I I I'm sure you've had this experience too last I've got clients who' have said to me I don't know what I want the thermostat set at I actually don't know what I want to watch on TV they'll sort of look at all you know these days there's a million things to watch and they'll have the remote in their hand they'll say I don't know what I like anymore and that to me one of the biggest pieces of healing from these relationships is starting small from pizza toppings to comedy shows you like to thermostat temperatures it's the old Death By A Thousand Cuts yeah when you've been Whitted away at for so many different times at first you want to come kick back but over time it's like well maybe I am the problem cuz it just has that that cumulative effect um talk with us a little bit more about the whole um buildup that becomes what we refer to as the trauma Bond so the trauma Bond it's it's a a term that's been used by V various people of the years people like Patrick KS and others have talked about it as this this almost seemingly unbreakable emotional connection that is created between us and another person because of the alternation between good and bad experiences now trauma bonds not not surprisingly often can get created in childhood and it's a sort of a very sort of distorted attachment pattern with a parent where the parent often is unavailable it's chaotic they subjugate the child they bring them into their own service to meet their own needs but every so often the parent gets it right and the child has no choice but to sort of f create a narrative that the parent is good and that they're bad because of that survival need of attachment now fast forward into adulthood narcissistic relationships sh are unique in that alternation between some good and bad and I always say the trauma Bond starts when we start in love bombing we're almost at like 99% good 1% bad it's like this person comes and fills all these things we want as the devalue phase starts we're at 90% good 10% bad 80% good 20% bad that slowly comes down to 5050 to me at 50/50 is really when the trauma bond is forming because it's really as bad as it is good and now you're going to 4060 3070 and one day you're at about 10% good 90% bad but now that trauma bonded sense of that that the intermittent reinforcement right the good old slot machine that the one good thing even if it's a breadcrumbed tiny thing feels like a payout so people buy into that relationship like look look they said hello to me when they came home today and you're like okay good and so it's a it's the it's the littlest thing create the buyin and people will say yeah we do keep having you keep having the same fights about the same things that never resolve people become everything in that relationship they becomes the narcissistic person's life coach personal assistant Butler cook you name it they're serving every role in essence they're becoming every reason it works they've become pulled farther away from their identity and then what we see is people will say even as they intellectually understand like this is super unhealthy and I've written all the list listen I know this is bad for me but there's this almost physiological pull they say however the thought of ending this relationship is filling me with a sense of panic hey romeny when when you were uh back in uh college did you have the the same did you did you have to do a Skinner box with a with a rat and do the experiences because never did I learned where I first became familiar with the term uh intermittent reinforcement where you teach the rat to to push the liver lever so they get their drop of Sac and then you you make it very predictable at first but then you make it super erratic and it's amazing uh how they would just they would go into real yeah exactly and they would just be so tense and anxious and all and uh of course then you have to do your write up and and project it into humanity and all like that but I mean I'm I was just thinking of my rats in my box when you were talking about that it it becomes crazy making doesn't it oh it's I mean listen walk into a casino floor and look at people with glazed eyes dropping their their weekly paycheck into a machine and pressing a button why because of that payout and at least the slot machine isn't verbally abusing them I can actually get behind the casino people and understand that so but that intermittent reinforcement schedule in a relationship is lethal because listen Les if it was bad if it was 100% bad yeah I still think there'd be some trauma bonding but there'd be nothing to hold on to but it's that when you go from like almost 99% good to to 10 and less percent good that's where people they hold on to the old days I remember working with clients who would say but 30 years ago we had this wonderful time in Miami I'm like honey it doesn't even look like that in Miami anymore like it's and yet that one night like but we dance so well that night night it it it that memory is almost held in time like we see in trauma survivors right in trauma survivors the memory of the past is still held atically and physiologically as though it's happening now yep um okay now let's talk in terms of getting away now you and I both agree that you know people say well what you need to do is just go no contact well yeah I mean if you if you could that would be nice but often there's um there's so many residual elements that go along with it that it's not possible so U when a person is saying I need to get away I need to break free from from all of these patterns that the narcissists throwing at me uh going back to your uh the title of your book it's not you I need to remind myself this is not about me uh I need to remind myself who I'm dealing with here you can't go no contact necessarily but what other options might there be if that's the case yeah I mean I think I'm so glad you brought up that point about no contact is that yes it's sort of this it's held up as this possibility that isn't accessible to most people I think one of the biggest Crossroads number one is where a person is still working through do they think they're going to leave the relationship or they're going to stay in it now this can look differently depending on whether it's a family relationship or an intimate relationship we always have to remember L not everyone has the luxury of stepping away there are reasons ranging from the Practical the financial safety minor children family court is a mess in these cases um from to again trauma bounded reasons hope I always tell folks I'm not pulling the pieces of the scaffold away until you're ready so people still have to make that decision and from there I say you know listen I think the low contact kind the um strategies can be good but above all else it's disengagement in fact I often tell clients one of the sorry it's ni it's nice to have a moment where we see that we're we're human aren't we oh I my got a cough W St but when we think of the one thing I tell clients is I tell them don't go deep and by that I mean don't defend don't engage don't explain and don't personalize this yes because I'm saying like when you get into the mud you will never going to get out of it's like quicksand and so just don't engage with them and conversations where you'd go all the way into the rabbit hole you're really keeping it a lot more surface level not that you're capitulating but you're like okay sure or you don't even bring up the tricky topics in fact another thing I tell folks is you don't share good stuff with them you don't share bad stuff with them if you have good news share it with the loving people in your life first your friends people who get you might even only be might you're even your therapists and let those people show the sheer joy and happiness for you and at some point by the narcissistic person may find out but you've already experienced the joy of the news and the same with the bad news like they will they will often not be supportive the way you need take it to the places where you can get that support so you're making a series of decisions well it also means that you can't afford to isolate that's right that's exactly right so the the the strategies and tactics are really about disengaging so this relationship is just really kind of like you recognize that the relationship is a bridge to something that matters to you maybe to other family members you care about maybe for now because you don't want to you don't want your minor children to have to split custody time that these are tactical decisions on your part You're Now using your wise mind to make choices and you're but you're also not having to deal with like trying to do something as Extreme as no contact which may feel intolerable simp the disengagement and seeing it clearly that radical acceptance you and I and all of us talk about is that means you engage with it very differently and you're not again repeating the same thing over and over again and some people will say listen I was doing great and I slipped and it went right back to the old you know it went exactly the way you said and I said I don't think slipping is a bad thing because I think sometimes the slip reminds you this is not changing yeah yeah you know U at a time like this when we're talking about this topic you hear the word boundaries and a lot of times people think boundaries means you get to tell people no a lot and sometimes that happens uh I would I would constantly remind my patients though boundaries begins with one enormous uh step and that is first you have to decide who you're going to be you have to get a definition of who you are from the inside out and one of the things you've been talking about so heavily in our discussion here is narcissists want to rob you of that and they want to whittle away at your sense of trust not just the in the relationship with with within yourself and so it's going to be so essential for individuals to kind of go back to the basics with the idea that says uh now when I Define what it means to be a healthy Les Carter a healthy romeny devasa or whoever it might be what what does that mean and what ingredients and in what circumstances and then you start getting more and more particular and specific uh and I'm assuming that uh that that would be something that you would underscore heavily uh when when you're trying to break away uh getting them out of your head but getting you back into the driver's seat and I think that the getting you back into the drivy is is it healing is I think a lot of people miss that healing isn't just you either disengaging from them or getting them fully out of your lives to me that's not even that's the first maybe 40% of the journey the rest of this is like said putting you said putting yourself in the driver's seat fully occupying yourself knowing what you're about understanding your own vulnerabilities giving yourself time listening to your sympathetic nervous system understanding the messages it's sending to you and I think that we often shame ourselves for what were very basic psychological safety responses in ourselves but they were simply trying to keep us safe and instead of shaming ourselves for them understand how the patterns and relationships how these responses evolved be curious about them welcome them in and then don't feel like we are sort of um we are we are only they we are in their service that they these responses run us like and these relationships are psychologically unsafe places so we are often doing things I don't think anyone's anyone who's being run by their sympathetic nervous systems never having their best day let's put it that way and so that right and so we're we're always like I did not like that I said of course you didn't like that because it was not you were under threat and no one that's never going to be our best look you know I real quickly before we wrap here I go back toh to Parenting you you talk about uh building trust well that's obvious vious ly an incredibly necessary tool when uh you know the the parents are connecting with the child they show empathy they they let it be known I you I want you to trust me but then the the healthy uh engagement from there goes because I want you to learn how to eventually trust yourself and and one of the the jobs of parenting is to work themselves out of a job it's it's a long procedure and when you begin realizing okay that narcissist it's it's not a parenting relationship now but they want me to trust but they're not doing it in the the context of bringing out the best in me and when you pick up on that that's when you know you're with a manipulator not someone who's truly motivated by love so uh it's it's just so necessary for us to see those kind of Trends and patterns oh absolutely and if a person's also had a narcissistic parent that Journey back into self-trust is a journey that never began in the first place from the very beginning even preverbally the child that none of the child's needs or wants were validated and the child was very quickly being treated by a parent child parent was literally personalizing the child's Behavior as the child trying to aggravate them when the child was simply being a child and the child is pathologized at every turn and really learns that their needs and wants and hopes are all shameful and foolish hey you know I'm I'm sure we're going to wrap this but I'm sure that you get the same question I get and that is why do you keep doing all these different talks and and coming all all these new es and my answer is because I'm excited about growth and uh if I can be somebody that is able to you know pull together some ideas and thoughts and Concepts that might be helpful to someone else obviously I wanted to make sure that I'm consistent with what I'm talking about but it's so exciting when you get to be on the front edge saying may I share with you some things that I believe could work for you and then you begin to see some of the uh uh the results of that that's got to be super rewarding isn't it I think for both of us I mean I so admire your work and and and the work you do and what you talk about what you write about and others of us in this field doing this is that I think that what it is though to me Les is where I feel like mental health has come up short is we've often told people you can figure this all out yourself it's all inside of you I'm like no no no no there's a context happening outside of you and we need to be able to call that context what it is it's not that I want people to swim in that forever I want them ultimately like you said putting them in the driver's seat but we have been asking people to make these changes within themselves without them understanding what they're up against and I think that's a huge paradigm shift in the field of mental health Dr Romney thank you so much for being on the uh the surviving narcissism podcast with us uh you're such a treasure and you're a friend of our program and I just know that uh there's a place for you anytime you want to come over here and by the way congratulations New York Times bestseller and uh I know it's going to the book is going to help and then it it just uh increases your sense of being known out there so congratulations to you and thanks for spending your time with with us and our team healthy group that we have here was my absolute pleasure unless I I I wish I had a dime for every person who said I have been so helped by you and Les Carter like we're often spoken together and they like just the two of you you say similar things but you also say enough different things that it gives us more wisdom so I think together we've actually helped lot of folks even though even though we've never physically been in the same room so I'm honored I'm very honored thank you so much for having me I'm it's my pleasure and we'll do it again okay I hope so I hope so Thank You Les thank you

Channel: Surviving Narcissism

Views: 96,169

Keywords: Dr. Ramani, gaslighting, self esteem, NPD, covert narcissism

Id: p9DyAeeST5Q

Length: 42min 40sec (2560 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024