The 4 Fs of reacting to a narcissist

don't don't get upset at yourself recognize the function it served and serves don't blame yourself don't shame yourself recognize that you were not responsible for the invalidation that occurred during your childhood let's talk about this let's talk about the fight the fight response with a narcissistic person this is part now of a brief series that I'm doing on the sympathetic nervous system and narcissistic relationships we've talked about this briefly in past videos but I'm recognizing the more I do this work research it talk about it and work with clients that the more that people understand their sympathetic nervous systems the better they are to manage the challenges of narcissistic relationships so let's open up at the top of the series what is the sympathetic nervous system I don't want to bore you so I'm going to get through this quick the sympathetic nervous system is a part of something called the autonomic nervous system which is a part of something called the peripheral nervous system and all of that really tells us that this regulates the stuff that's reflexive the stuff that we don't have to think about if I were to pick something up that's voluntary reflexive stuff is stuff like heart rate or breathing or digestion or urination or arousal things that happen in our body but we don't think about it we don't we don't voluntarily do them the sympathetic arm of the autonomic nervous system is always working to keep us in good physiological balance and it regulates our response to stress under conditions of extreme stress traditionally we see the sympathetic nervous system response and many of you know this the fight or flight system in the years since we now know it's a lot more complicated than that it also includes something called the freeze response and Pete Walker famously and wisely writes about something called the Fawn response in this series we're going to in a very specific way talk about all of these responses My Hope Is That You by you understanding this what happens to you when you're in the face of the narcissist will feel less mysterious when the sympathetic nervous system gets turned on it's actually a really well designed system it's designed to get us the hell out of Harm's Way and back to homeostasis all that stability to get everything in Balance the problem is that if we are enough under enough difficult stress a lot of the time we're always running this system which really is nothing more than an emergency generator that's not meant to be used on The Daily and it's going to wear out and wear us out if we rely on it all the time which is what any of us who are regularly stressed do all the time while we are under extreme threat or extreme stress the sympathetic nervous system basically takes non-essential systems like digestion or sexual arousal it takes those systems offline and gives all the energy to the systems that keep us safe or get us out of Harm's Way that's why when we encounter a sudden and particularly frightening stressor or like a Mugger or um or or someone who's come into our house our mouth goes dry our heart races we may experience a sort of clenching in our gut and we may feel dizzy the sympathetic nervous system in action but what it's trying to do is help us get to safety now in this brief series we're going to talk about the four sympathetic nervous system responses and how they function in narcissistic relationships being in one of these relationships is incredibly stressful I can actually think a few things more stressful than a narcissistic relationship and these relationships take a tremendous toll on us we are constantly off balance and that sympathetic nervous system is always running which over time takes a toll on our health today in our first episode we're going to talk about the sympathetic nervous system response of fight all mammals me you dog cat all of us have a sympathetic nervous system when that system gets threatened or stressed it responds just like that so when we are threatened or stressed for some people for some mammals the response is to fight a person is walking down the street at night someone comes up behind them some people then when that person comes up behind them may go into full fight mode and actually find themselves stronger than they expected while they fight their perpetrator a person is in a store and someone might keep saying some really nasty nasty and even threatening things to them while they're in line and then that person who's being threatened walks up to them and starts cussing them out fight now while that fight is happening that person's heart is racing the sympathetic nervous system is in full action in a narcissistic relationship if someone is yelling at you is verbally abusing you is or is attacking you or somehow you feel threatened or even baited early in the relationship just as the sympathetic nervous system would have you do some of you thought you fought back maybe you yelled as well maybe things even came to blows maybe you said strong strong words you fought you fought because that is what your sympathetic nervous system would have you do in the most classical sense the fight response does tend to be physical but in human beings with our big old brains and anyone in a narcissistic relationship knows words can actually often hurt more than fists so we may Mount those words up when we are hurt in one of these relationships we may fight back verbally when someone narcissistically abuses us manipulates us and just lies to us baits us now this is where it gets tough in some ways this is where sympathetic nervous system isn't doing you any favors fighting in a narcissistic relationship gets you nowhere or even worse it takes you backward in that relationship you end up with a racing heart pupils wide really physiologically aroused and it takes a toll on you and let's face it you've got to always remember it the narcissist is always a better fighter since they don't have the empathy they get off on the fight and the stuff that makes a fight psychologically exhausting they love that stuff and they will use your fight response against you once you get Frost up and you're yelling and you're shouting and you might get physically agitated then they start to Gaslight you and they calmly say hey whoa someone's a little bit crazy here you need to calm down what's wrong with you and just to hear that may feel threatening and you might want to fight more as you all know well as part of the deep technique I talk about don't defend don't explain don't engage don't personalize all of the deep technique really simply translates to is please don't take the fight but the sympathetic nervous system that response is very automatic it can be really difficult to get ahead of it but over time once you understand the narcissist's game techniques like mindfulness can help you catch yourself so you can disengage that fight will still be coercing through your nervous system but you can translate that into a workout or into something else that doesn't involve engaging with the narcissist and an unwinnable and psychologically exhausting fight I'll be honest with you when I go through that my fight responds I kind of go on these rants sometimes to myself sometimes to my unwitting staff but I'm a Ranter not to The Narcissist though the fight response in a narcissistic relationship can mean that these relationships are quite volatile basically the narcissist baits you take the bait you fight they Gaslight and the cycle never ends the best way to stick it to a narcissist is to not take their bait and then they just get more and more frustrated and bait harder and harder and if you can avoid engaging you may have won this battle and I'm not sure that anyone ever really wins this war the fight responds in a narcissistic relationship it makes sense but it rarely gets you anywhere remember these sympathetic nervous system responses are reflexive your body doing what it needs to do to get you safe and back to normal but unfortunately your sympathetic nervous system doesn't know about narcissistic abuse it only knows about threat the sympathetic nervous system interprets threat as threat a lion chasing you a Mugger falling following you down the street a person about to punch you in the face a person trespassing on your property a narcissist messing with your mind the sympathetic nervous system treats all of these the same and this is why many people feel that these relationships have literally left them feeling out of their minds and that that they're overreacting to The Narcissist you really aren't your sympathetic nervous system for a variety of reasons May interpret the invalidating difficult behaviors of the narcissist as a threat big threat like any other and if these threats are reminiscent of the types of baiting and invalidation and other narcissistic behavior you had to endure as a child it can feel even more sympathetically activating the fight response may sometimes work depending on the threat but with a narcissistic person you may need to take that fight and channel it into something better for you than a futile argument with a narcissistic person this is a fight you cannot win now we've talked about fight right that's understandable why you'd want to fight but you know that's not going to get you anywhere with a narcissistic person so let's take on flight in its simplest terms flight would be when you run away a snarling tiger is chasing you what do you do you run fighting wouldn't really make much sense the nervous system then mobilizes to send blood to your legs and anywhere and and away from places you don't need it to get you the hell out of there now flight makes lots of sense when we think of it as I need to run away and get away from this thing that's dangerous but what about in a narcissistic relationship the stress of that relationship consistently activates our sympathetic nervous system doesn't it now flight in that situation isn't literally running away from them from them but it sure as hell is tempting to do that instead flight is really about wanting to get out of the situation it may be because you are feeling like you can't breathe that you're panicking that you're getting raged at and you don't know what to do and it feels like the only safe thing would be I need to get out of here it's not a bad strategy getting out would stop you from having to listen to the Raging or gaslighting it would get you safe except it's never that simple is it the narcissistic person may follow you as you try to step away or raise it you louder or some more and say that you're disrespecting them by walking away or not listening to them even though that they're yelling you or that you're being a coward and honestly how many times can you realistically keep walking away from someone when they do this on the daily or you live with them especially when you're also simultaneously having to manage practical factors like small children or you're in a moving car or this is happening in the workplace if you can get away from this screaming and the yelling and the invalidating and the gaslighting your nervous system will calm down it will be rewarded right and so many people just figure out how they can get out of the situation as quickly as possible though the flight response means that they really want to run out of there I wish more people would go with flight but I also recognize it's not always possible for example if it's late at night and you have kids in the house with you or it's not safe for you to leave a situation you're in or when you were a child enduring a narcissistic parent and you've had that flight Instinct but you simply may have had nowhere to go other than to hide in a closet or some other hiding space you may have had interestingly narcissistic people do not like it when you flight they want you to finish the fight the antagonism of narcissism is such that fighting is their thing it's a tension release for them and you flighting well that doesn't work for them and interestingly you stepping away can escalate their abuse in a given situation in addition your flight means their abandonment issues get activated so you walking away can activate that abandonment rage and make the situation worse our sympathetic nervous systems just can't win nothing we do can really keep us safe now it's interesting I have observed survivors of narcissistic abuse who may have actually gotten out of their primary narcissistic relationship or gotten out of narcissistic family systems and now they find it very difficult to remain present sort of mentally present in any situation when a narcissistic person is Raging or invalidating or manipulating if it is not happening to them for example in a workplace or at a social event or even among strangers just seeing it happen just even to someone else you may quickly feel the need to get out of the situation the strong sympathetic nervous system reaction evoked by a reminder of an old narcissistic situation can lead people to just say as they're breathing faster and faster I gotta go and they get out what's interesting is that if you are a flighter especially if you regularly leave during fights or other kinds of antagonistic episodes with narcissistic people and for example you are in couples therapy you may get called out for being the one who is stonewalling or blocking communication because you keep stepping away in that case the flighter the person who flights will actually be the one who might end up getting pathologized more in therapy than the Raging narcissist would I would argue that flight isn't always about getting up and running away it may also be about sort of mentally cutting out of a situation it may be about a person just shutting down and not interacting anymore and almost sort of pulling yourself out of the situation psychologically your body is still there you can hear what they are saying to you but you don't participate it could almost be experiences almost a mild dissociative experience now again please always welcome your comments please drop a comment in your experience how do narcissistic people react when you aren't reacting when you're just sort of sitting there but you're not really there now this form of psychological flight can result in the narcissistic person becoming more enraged because you won't go to battle with them and is more likely to be met with the narcissist saying oh here we go again you're just going to shut down and not talk right I can't say anything to you because all you do is just go quiet on me they of course take no ownership for their raging and for their terrifying anger it's just not satisfying for them if you aren't becoming worked up and yelling the same way they do but remember why they want you to get so agitated so they can tell you so they can Gaslight and say wow you need to calm down that ultimate Gaslight painting you as the agitated one after they froth up and bait the situation but the Quiet Flight as it were no matter what you do with these folks you're still gonna get put In Harm's Way your sympathetic nervous system is your friend it just wants you to be safe but it is no match for a narcissistic person who's coming at you lions tigers muggers car accidents your sympathetic nervous system has all of that covered but the manipulative gymnastics of the narcissistic relationship forget about it whether you fight or whether you flight you're sort of screwed okay so let's start with this the narcissistic person in your life approaches you maybe you're talking about an event that's coming up in the fall or later in the year whatever and they say ugh why are you wasting so much time and money having this get-together for your family whatever so you didn't see each other for a few years because of the pandemic they never do anything for you and I thought we agreed to keep expenses down what is wrong with you your heart is racing you feel sick you feel tears well up in your eyes this meant so much to you you hadn't seen people who mattered to you for such a long time your throat is dry and there's a lump in your throat as though anything would be blocked from coming out of you especially words the narcissistic person sneers that you contemptuously they push back loudly from the table and they shake their head at you they say whatever do whatever the hell you want I'm not going to be a part of your stupid charade so you can get attention again they leave you hear the door close the car pulls away you're home alone now the tears come and you cry then the rage comes and all the things you wanted to say come to your head as clear as day and then you get mad at yourself you think oh great now now I'm the eloquent genius who can come up with all kinds of things to say but when that ass was talking at me in that cruel way I just sat there like a fool silently this video is to remind you to not be so hard on yourself you aren't a fool you did what many do when a narcissistic person gaslights or is cruel or as menacing or is invalidating you froze this again is part of that sympathetic nervous system series remember fight flight freeze fawn well this is part of that and this is the freeze video so we know that narcissistic relationships create that sympathetic nervous system response so let's talk about that and as always I always appreciate if you could give this video a thumbs up if you do find it helpful it really helps this channel to continue to grow reach new people and make more and more people narcissist resistant now anyone who has ever dealt with a narcissistic person has had the freeze experience where it's like an hour or two after you have an interaction with a narcissistic person and you think ugh bro I didn't say anything I wish I had said this I wish I had said that it can feel like a mental freeze a mental hiccup you have when you're in the face of someone who may be I don't know very grandiose or very charismatic or very rude or arrogant or critical or just ick so has this ever happened to you have you ever had that freeze response in the face of a narcissistic person please drop a comment share your freeze experience I think once we realize we're all in this together it helps everyone heal so this is what the sympathetic nervous system sometimes does when we're under threat if you think remember what the sympathetic nervous system is meant to do a lot of people have always thought of it traditionally as fight or flight right that's always been sort of the sympathetic nervous system brand but then if you say just fight or flight you miss another freeze that we've really learned about in the last many decades which is freeze the freeze is when something scary is coming at you and you freeze and you can't find the right words and you're not able to move it may be that ordinarily you think I know what to say and yet you find yourself completely tongue-tied and graceless and you might even afterwards almost feel a little bit angry at yourself by how awful the narcissistic person left you feeling with their terrible words or actions and you just sort of sat there a little bit wide-eyed and silent listen freezing is something that we see mammals do when they are under attack as though they are playing dead it's just part of the repertoire of the sympathetic nervous system for many people the freeze response might have been something that they did in childhood for example if you had a particularly rageful narcissistic parent you might have responded by freezing up because you wouldn't know what to do you wouldn't want them to focus more of that anger on you you'd be afraid of getting them more Angry by saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong thing as a child it's really hard to do the flight and get yourself out of the situation because where would you go and you weren't going to fight back so as a child that frees response may have been conditioned in the face of narcissistic behavior so as an adult that same conditioning that same kind of circumstance from childhood almost programmed you again conditioned you to have that sort of narcissistic freeze I'm going to share with you the personal example before I really a personal example before I really got heavily into this work and sort of my early early years of doing this I started doing this work about 15 plus years ago I was still actually relatively vulnerable to the freeze response when I would meet people that were pompous and grandiose sadly I've only graduated to Fawn we'll get into that later but I'd freeze when I'd meet people who are pompous and grandiose and arrogant and privileged and sort of fancy I consider myself to be a fairly articulate person yet in the face of their arrogance I would just sort of smile awkwardly and say very little and an hour later I would think what the hell were you doing Romney you had like a thousand really interesting things to say but given my history the freeze kicked in I I've been doing it for as long as I remember even as as a kid even in school I don't do this anymore and it took a lot of work for me but the freeze remains a popular sympathetic nervous system go to for me in the face of narcissism or other threats now please again drop a comment how does experiencing this freeze response make you feel if you've ever done it in the face of a narcissistic threat in a relationship now the freeze response often results in self-blame and self-anger after this response we are often angry at ourselves and regret that we did not speak Our Truth the freeze response gives us insight into what consistently happens in narcissistic relationships our sympathetic nervous system kicks in and as we are being dominated or controlled or yelled at or invalidated we shut down and later once our nervous system returns back to Baseline are we able to then consider the things that we wished we had said now in some of the work that I have done with clients and in workshops in the past we actually do role playing and we will spend time practicing how a conversation may go down so that they've actually practiced going into the conversation and maybe flexed that muscle that they would use in a conversation with a narcissistic partner so at least that they've thought it through and then at least when the situation comes up they're a little less vulnerable to that freeze response but since sympathetic nervous system responses happen so quickly it can be really difficult to get ahead of them and it can keep this problematic cycle in sort of place where we continue to feel diminished in these relationships and we continue to feel really sort of unskilled not only in these relationships but sometimes sort of overall socially unskilled because the narcissistic person sort of uses their arrogance as a hammer and they overwhelm us and the lack of empathy we see in narcissistic people would mean that they would never notice our discomfort and sadly Not only would they not notice it they may even poke fun at it the freeze response often plays out in the workplace especially if you work in a very sort of stratified hierarchical workplace where there's levels and people may get promoted up a leadership change that people hire have more power than the people lower right it's quite possible that in those cases if you meet some or someone in particularly if they're significantly higher in leadership even if they're not narcissistic but certainly if they are narcissistic and then they're not warm or they're Larger than Life that you might find yourself sort of freezing up and that could actually potentially hold you back from opportunities in those cases I mean who knows maybe you would have made a different impression if you weren't as vulnerable to that freeze response it may have opened you up to different opportunities or or chances in that particular workplace but then again maybe that freeze response if it didn't get you in closer proximity to that narcissistic leadership you may have dodged a bullet because you may not have wanted to work with that narcissistic boss anyhow so it's maybe just as well you weren't such a smooth talker in the person who freezes this freeze response can often reinforce that sense of being not good enough or thinking of themselves as being socially unskilled it's not true that freeze response as part of the sympathetic nervous system it's just a normal response to something that's threatening now believe it or not the freeze response could potentially be your friend it doesn't feel good but it may stop you from defending engaging explaining and by staying quiet and then obviously once the narcissistic person is gone or stops yelling or Screaming or talking then the freeze melts a little bit you didn't engage with someone you didn't engage with someone who's baiting you and you remained quiet sometimes letting the narcissistic people just keep talking and letting them dig a deeper and deeper hole is the way to go less is more when you're talking with a narcissistic person so interestingly the freeze response may ultimately keep you safer than the fight response now some things that you can do to manage the freeze is first to reflect on your history especially if you had a narcissistic parent or caregiver or other family member who is a significant player in your early life and recognize how the freeze response kicked in for you and also recognize that you are no longer still a five-year-old kid cowering in fear of a parent's anger you want to protect that little five-year-old that's still inside of you but that you are an adult who has something to say second and by the way that five-year-old child had something to say too now second practice saying what you have to say and prepare yourself because that can sometimes help you break out of that reaction third reflect on your narrative about this person where you're freezing up in front of them give it a minute and do some internal self-talk what do I think will happen if I talk are they dangerous have they been invalidating in the past fourth if it's possible in the situation it may not always be but if it is take notes sometimes when I deal with a difficult person especially when it's on Zoom you can take notes it helps me to write people it helps me to write things down that people say and as that thought freezes I have my thoughts a little bit more organized so if I do have a chance to speak I can it's important to break out of the idea that the freeze pattern means that you are slow-witted or socially awkward or cowardly it actually means you're a human being with a functioning nervous system it's a reminder that you do not feel entirely safe or at least there's something that you are not comfortable with and so you freeze so you meet a narcissistic person maybe it's something you made at work or maybe it's someone you meet socially or maybe if it's even a first or second date maybe it's a family member or someone you don't see that often in your family the person the narcissistic person strolls in with their imperious arrogant Swagger they start talking their usual grandiose clap trap and you find yourself nodding eyes wide you throw in a few words like wow that's amazing whoa that's really cool but there's a war inside of you there's one voice inside of you that's shaming you literally saying to you what the hell are you doing you do a toxic fool what Rock why are you making this worse what is wrong with you why are you telling them they're so great and then yeah there's this other part of you that's just sort of smiling and pleasing and soothing this narcissistic person in front of you what the you know what but the fact is we've all been there haven't we so let's talk about the fourth F in the sympathetic nervous system response and this F is called the Fawn response now this series takes on the issue of the sympathetic nervous system and how it's affected by narcissistic relationships and narcissistic abuse our sympathetic nervous system is a great system like an emergency generator but like an emergency generator it's not meant to be your sole source of power so this series sort of breaks that down to help you have better command and understanding of what's happening to you and as always please oh please don't forget to give this video a thumbs up if you actually find it helpful and please don't forget subscribe to this channel join this great Community sometimes you might say damn the comments are more worthwhile than the video and I'm fine with that because I tend to agree so please do join us so I've really enjoyed reading and sharing the work of Pete Walker he's a therapist who's based in Northern California and he writes extensively on trauma post-trauma and complex trauma and if you're interested in his work if you're interested in these kinds of topics I do suggest that you check out his website you can find the link to his website in the top right corner of the screen and he really does have some extensive writings and things on that website now he's the one who I first saw adding this sort of fourth F the Fawn now to Fawn or fawning is characterized as appeasing someone pleasing them giving in not questioning them and loosening your boundaries in their presence and doing it almost instantly without thinking it takes me back I remember once meeting someone who was sort of a powerful muckety muck in the industry that they worked in and were in and and in our encounter this person started saying things that were actually sort of offensive not sort of were offensive to me they were classists they were elitist and this person really was an ass now you know I've been honest I got me my trauma and narcissism issues and I gotta tell you I almost felt mildly dissociated as I watched trauma fawning Dr Romney shaking her head as this fool was talking furrowing her brow saying um wow gosh that's really interesting and I wanted to beat her for doing that my authentic self wanted to look at this guy and say read a book get some therapy be self-reflective for one minute of your miserable life and recognize that you are the human equivalent of a pile of crap stinking up every space you are in but no I didn't do that I gotta say my fight response is notoriously weak I go as I do I went right to Fawn and after that interaction with this guy I felt actually more disgusted with myself than I was with this dude and in the future when I had the misfortune of seeing this guy around I would turn to flight and I would get the hell out of there better than fawning I guess right now I would love to know if any of you ever had a fun experience when something similar might have happened to you how did you feel about yourself afterwards if you fawned and the next time you saw this person did you find that you were still a fauner or did you go to one of the other apps drop that in the comment let's make that a conversation for all of you to have to sort of see are there other fauners out there a lot of us do it now the fawning like all sympathetic nervous system responses is safety Behavior Walker argues that it is something that is learned by people early on who grow up in abusive childhood environments and my read on his stuff is that he really is describing narcissistically abusive homes now think about it a child can't really fight when they're going to get harmed they can't really flight they can barely freeze so what do they do they learn to survive by appeasing pleasing and fawning he goes on to make the really strong argument that as a child grows up in one of these family systems that he sees what so many of us observe in those who come from narcissistic family systems the child often in these systems tries to grow up to be helpful which is the ultimate Fawn in one of these family systems it doesn't even become a response to they're always trying to be helpful because it becomes a child's way of being safe they'll do things like they'll do the chores they'll get good grades they'll abandon their own needs in favor of what they think their narcissistic parents want or need and they avoid ever being a bother to their parents just like in an adult trauma-bonded relationship where you feel that in order to stay or keep this relationship you become all things to your partner right you become their friend you become their partner you're their personal assistant you're their cook you're their Butler you're their mechanic you're their emotional punching bag you're their therapist right to do all that to stay in one of those relationships the same thing happens for the fawning child who takes on every role with the parent they become the house cleaner the personal assistant the best friend the therapist they help with younger siblings they prepare meals now be interesting to know if any of that that was experienced for any of you with a narcissistic parent please again drop that comment how has fawning played out in your relationships now the Fawn response means the person protects and safeguards themselves when the sympathetic nervous system kicks in because the threatening narcissistic person shows up and that's when we Fawn and the way we find we do that by admiring and appeasing the narcissist it even looks to the world if somebody's watching sort of a whole fawning thing happen it looks to the world that you're actually really interested in the other person that's how convincing our Fawn response is to other people going back to that initial point though remember that our sympathetic nervous system responses are about safety and doing what we need in that instance when our sympathetic nervous system gets turned on to be safe fawning is no different now I know some of you right now may be thinking hey Dr Romney what's the difference between fawning and fluffing fluffing is intentional and it's what we call agentic it's a short-term strategy it's something you're kind of in control of you're aware of and you're doing it actively to get something done so for example you may be in a job with an atrocious narcissistic boss and you need to get through a deadline so you fluff and you say things like oh gosh you know I'm so lucky to work with you you are so smart oh my God your experience in this area is amazing I feel I feel so lucky to be a part of this team and then you fluff them you get past the deadline without too much tyranny and hopefully after that deadline you get transferred to a new division or find a new job and if you're fluffing you may find yourself disgusted at the whole situation and having to say these things each night when you go home from work fluffing really does take a toll on your authenticity and it's really only good for short-term Sprints or births nobody can do that in the long term now fawning is involuntary and it's reflexive like all sympathetic nervous system responses you go there or it happens when you feel threatened and it tends to be a sympathetic nervous system response like I said that gets cultivated in childhood when a child has narcissistic parents and the child is just trying to survive the nightmare of that kind of childhood and just as a side note those that don't Fawn the children who don't Fawn and instead they're the ones who may be the fighters or the fighters in a family system those are the kids that often turn to Rebellion as their way of sort of managing the sympathetic nervous system of it all and they may have greater risk of turning to drugs alcohol sexual acting out acting out at school instead of being the straight a dishwasher emptying model citizen child and some people don't do both they may start as perfect funders and then later on do the fight flight kind of Rebel thing now the challenges I see it is when people Fawn in the presence of a toxic person or a narcissistic person they end up getting angry at themselves afterwards they will feel ashamed at themselves for not just walking away and not getting into the ooh ah you're so amazing but remember these Fawn responses are ancient they started in childhood Early Childhood so there's a little you that is just trying to stay safe and sometimes when you can think of that child you you may be less likely to get as angry at yourself and recognize that that little kid is just trying to protect themselves now and then and ultimately once you recognize that the sympathetic nervous system reaction is coming up in yourselves when you're in the face of a narcissist and you recognize what you're up against you hopefully learn to gracefully step away because there's no point in engaging now don't get mad at your sympathetic nervous system all you can do is consider it sort of your overprotective overzealous security guard but if you are a fauner it's important to know that about yourself don't don't get upset at yourself recognize the function it served and serves don't blame yourself don't shame yourself recognize that you were not responsible for the invalidation that occurred during your childhood healing from narcissistic abuse starts with surviving and you have to do that first if you're going to graduate to thriving so thanks again as always for tuning in I am Dr Romney I hope you know that and if you're new to my Channel That's introducing myself then please consider subscribing and turning on the notifications so you don't miss any of the daily videos they may be on exactly the topic you want to understand when it comes to narcissism and got to give me a little validation right everyone needs some please give this video a thumbs up if you did indeed find it helpful thanks again

Channel: DoctorRamani

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Id: hEawk6PVCFM

Length: 42min 55sec (2575 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2023