The BIG SIGNS You’re Dealing With A Narcissist & How To SET BOUNDARIES! | Dr. Ramani

even if you try to teach them how you want to be treated they ain't listening because they have no empathy they don't care you're merely an object to get them what they need i've heard you give examples which i always find very powerful because it really is like almost acknowledgement like oh okay dr romani said that if they say this it's a red flag so i love being able to identify very specific red flares and you have said which i would love to talk about a quote of yours you said benefit of the doubt is code for enabling um so is that you should never give anyone the benefit of doubt can you explain that and break that down for me i listen you know i'm a big fan of the rule of threes you know you can try something three times and if after the third time it it is you keep giving someone a lot of benefit of the doubt that's on you that's on you at that point to say okay you know but if you're at your 55th benefit of the doubt you're now an enabler right right but you know yes one time a person may be late okay and they may even tell you they may even text you and say my my whatever my work meeting went long i'm going to be 30 minutes late so they communicate clearly or maybe they don't you might say to them hey you know what when you're gonna be this late because my time is really challenged it would actually be helpful for me to know i might have actually gone back to my car run an errand then they show up 30 minutes delayed again and then like ah they did tell me they live on the other side of town so you could say listen it seems like being late is an issue so maybe what we should do since you have all this traffic let's always budget this one hour full time and so maybe we can shift the time you they show up late again at that point you're saying this person's always late there's no more benefit of the doubt at that point you have the conversation with yourself and say i'm either going to go and accept the lateness and if the lateness doesn't work for me this isn't going to work so then you're having that's what i'm saying is that the benefit of the doubt maybe once maybe then there has to be communication on what is happening here the person may say i'm never going to be on time i'm telling you that right now that's i'm that's not my group so if we could set things up that i show up when i show up and you might say no that doesn't work for me that doesn't respect my time that's fine game over i think the problem is people want it the way they want it they're like well i don't i i want to give the benefit of the doubt and i want them to be on time like that's not an option they're not going to be on time and i think everyone almost becomes a child they want what they want wanting what you want is fine wanting it from something get that can't give it now we're back to the drawing the water from the empty well and i think it really then it's the responsibility we have to hold for ourselves and this is where the ancient issues people have of feeling they don't deserve more so from childhood people might have gotten the lesson that you don't matter um we don't value you you're not important so when that trails us into adulthood we think like we don't deserve someone to show up on time or who am i to question somebody on whether they're late but this resentment is growing up in us in us it's okay to ask for what you want and then you have to accept that you may not get it from this particular person oh my god that's so true and like that's like one message that i remind myself every single day it's communicate but just because you're communicating doesn't then mean that you actually get it but there is some form of well if i've said it then it means that you have to acquiesce and like that it just doesn't happen like that yeah no and especially with some of narcissistic because they're not listening so that you're saying how do you identify these red flags once you've communicated about something three times okay and it has been dishonored devalued not listened to or invalidated that's it you're done and if you're staying at the table after that it's then time to recognize what are this is why i'm saying education about narcissism is so important because for many people they don't get it so now a person is out there saying three times i give someone benefited out three times this we had the same issue now i know there's there's no there there and but again it's then if that work of devaluation and understanding that about yourself that you might say i don't deserve better that's your narrative that's you needing to go to therapy that's you figuring it out because if the be you deserve someone to be on time if that is what you value you deserve that if you're staying in it because you think you don't deserve better then if you've now you're in a cycle because especially someone narcissistic is never going to change that and so that's what i'm saying that doing the deep dive on yourself becomes really really important and the fantasy always has been for the child when a person is a child my parent is going to end up stepping up and being a good person when the parent never turns around and in adulthood we play that fantasy out in our adult relationships i want them to turn around and it doesn't happen and so it's really about giving people the knowledge about what this is so once they're in it they can say this isn't working because with a narcissistic person the earlier you leave the easier it is to extract right if it's after just a few dates or a few times then you're sort of like nobody has that much skin in the game the problem is early in the game the narcissist doesn't like to lose so they will try to suck you back they'll try to hoover you back and that is very seductive so this person who wasn't on time is all of a sudden sending you flowers or sending you a lot of text messages or doing and saying exactly the things you want because it just turned into a game for them it's not about them oh i heard this person i want to be on time it's more of oh i'm not going to lose at this game and they'll suck them back in and they'll go back to not being oh my god so you just open another can of worms so then how do you identify that instead of going oh well they heard me and now they're making an effort because that's what i would i think maybe even revert to initially it's like oh i've voiced my concern i've said that you know they're not um on time and that's okay tell me no at least i'm pushing back because you communicated with them three times and said please be on time and they did not listen to you only when you said you know what this isn't really working time really matters to me it's you leaving that that wasn't you talking that wasn't changing behavior it was you leaving and for narcissistic people they're actually very sensitive to abandonment and what happens is that sets in a very unhealthy cycle because people say oh if i'm not getting what i want from this person i'm just going to threaten to leave well that's an insanely toxic relationship cycle you're leaving because they're not listening and now you're threatened to leave and now they're on time it's not because they're listening to you it's because they don't want to lose and then it becomes a vicious cycle right because then you've noticed that by threatening to leave they then give you attention and love but it's not for the reasons you're hoping it's what oh my god that's such a freaking massive breakthrough okay well like you've just hit me i just need like a second to regroup um there's another thing that you said i'm so loving this by the way there's another thing that you said which is uh that wasn't my intention and the funny thing is that's the strategy i now have been using for the last few months when i'm apologizing to someone i'm literally saying oh my god i'm so sorry that wasn't my intention because even i need them to know that i didn't want to upset them or hurt them but then i heard you say if someone says it wasn't my intention then that is a big red flag okay it's a red flag when they're not showing any care and concern for your feeling so if somebody gets very upset you've done something okay whatever it may be and they are upset and you say i effort no matter what you always want to start with empathy always open with empathy that's a rule people should hold and say i hear you you're i can hear you're very upset and i'm so sorry and and even worse i can see that i was i'm responsible you know it was our interaction that's you know that's contributing to this you know please tell me how you're feeling always give that person a chance to share because what we do is we're so uncomfortable with other people's discomfort with us we tend to cut that conversation off because we don't want to hear it but they need to say it and if they feel safe and we're holding space for them they'll share it and say i fell hurt i felt unheard i felt devalued and you'll say i am so sorry i want to tell you it wasn't my intention however that doesn't matter because you're hurt you see the difference between then somebody who just opens up with the person says you hurt my feelings and then a person says well that wasn't my intention you see what i'm saying so it's it's like it's sort of these words get their power in terms of placement and whether or not the person's building empathy in there so if you're really of it because at that point after you've heard someone and held a safe space for them and empathized with them and really took it in as hard as it was to do that they have now they've soothed a bit they recognize you are safe so when you say that wasn't my intention after all of that they'll say no no i get that it wasn't your intention i understand that and they feel safe enough to share an emotion that means that relationship can now go to the next level of intimacy because it's safe but if you shared something with me you say hey dr robert i'm you know i'm hurt because and i opened lisa and i said well that wasn't my intention i've just shut you down i've not opened the door for you to share and that's what narcissistic people do they shut the lines of communication through manipulations that wasn't my intention through gaslighting there's nowhere to go at that point so the relationship lacks intimacy because there's no sharing how on earth do you have that discussion with somebody so let's say you do say that and they shut you down um as the person on the other side that's talking to a narcissist how would you con continue a conversation you don't don't i mean see that's the thing there's no work around on this one because now they've shut you down they're basically saying your emotional world is of no importance to me you're of no importance to me where do you go and i think the whole the thing that i'll never get behind is people saying no no no there has to be a way forward no no no there's not because at this point you're disrespecting yourself staying in this conversation and it is just going to get more abusive so there is no way forward so i want to talk about when you first start meeting someone because you said it's easier to kind of identify and i don't know if you actually use these words but it's a little simpler to identify maybe you're not as close as you can let's say pull away from them if you're dating you notice certain characteristics but i heard you talk about charisma now charisma to me is intoxicating when someone's around you and they're charismatic like i i love being around them but i heard a cry you're shaking your head i want to read this quote that you said that i love charisma is like heavy perfume or cologne that someone wears when they don't take a shower it's probably covering covering up something else talk to me about that because i like to kind of think i'm charismatic but i don't like to think of myself as being you know a narcissist or you know very heavily perfumed so here i mean here's the thing with charisma it is a um charisma think of it think of the letter u upside down okay when a person has no charisma let's face it there's no interest there's a it's sort of like it's a lot of work i get that then there's that mid-level charisma right it is a somebody who is a a good listener a good talker but they're not sucking all the oxygen out of the room you know somebody who's at the far end of that u the other side of the curve when it's too much charisma it feels like you're at a performance and it's exhausting but i will say especially for people who survived narcissistic relationships i'll say to them you know what you don't get to play in the deep end of the charisma pool like we're not going to swim on that side of the pool because those folks more often than not are a problem and i wonder is all that big charisma why the need for the attention why do they need all eyes on them why are they are they letting other people talk because there's people who can be incredibly charismatic but also very engaging but one of the challenges with charismatic people is they have an ability they they don't look at people they look through people so even though they're looking talking you're they're listening to you and they're looking at you and they're talking to you it really does seem that they're literally looking right through you to see if someone more interesting is coming through the door that's a real signature piece of charisma what's the next better thing than the persons who's in front of me and so you know charisma to me i always say charisma is like an amusement park nobody's going to an amusement park every day but it sure is fun on the day it happened so i always say keep the charismatic people around for about two weeks have some fun have a fling but this is probably not a long game because the charismatic people that is a very almost a cultivated pattern that's designed to draw attention and in the rarest of cases charisma accompanies the empathy kindness respect christmas also um conflated with something we call extroversion extroverts are people who like being with other people they draw their energy from other people they like crowds they like gathering that's in contrast to the blessed introverts and the introverts do not get their energy from other people they're they introspective they spend a lot of time in their head they actually prefer their group small they're loyal as heck to those people and absolutely lovely but you put them in a crowd of 500 people and they're actually gonna look like a deer in the headlights they're not enjoying themselves not because they're anxious it's just not what they enjoy and i'm gonna be frank with you i'm an introvert yeah and i do not like crowds of people very introverted like on any given day i would rather be home either with my child or with my partner or with a small group of friends but not with groups of people they and when i spend time with groups of people i'm as depleted as if i've been up for 24 hours like when i give a big speaking like i speak to sometimes thousands of people at seminars i'm exhausted even though it's on zoom i'm exhausted when it's done so that but can a person be a charismatic introvert i think actually a charismatic introvert might be where charisma might be a little bit more healthy because then they might be able to sort of be engaging and really sort of connect in all of that but charisma is a tricky pattern because we always assume lisa that it's it's a good thing and i think people have to be discerning about charisma they have to say is this charismatic person actually listening are they are they you know are they participating in an equal way are they expecting everyone to fawn over them like charisma is like wine you got to know what you're drinking i love that do you think then people who are more insecure are drawn more to charisma i think everybody is vulnerable to charisma because we've been taught it's a good thing what we've never thought is that maybe it's not very how often is somebody say hey you're dating look for the least charismatic person look for somebody who doesn't have much charisma that's not what anyone is telling anyone when they're dating when you think about online dating platforms people are a little more charismatic and look more like that they tend to get more of the hits right so i think that we have so overvalued this quality societally that i don't necessarily think it's that insecure people are drawn to them i think everybody is drawn to them and i will tell you i'm a rare person when i meet a charismatic person i actually have no interest i walk away i find them depleting exhausting troublesome i really will look for that person who seems much more centered less attention seeking and i'm always a winner you know it's always a better conversation god that's so powerful i actually heard you say though that um people narcissists can't change so unhealthy or what we call pathological personality patterns are by definition rigid okay so these are the reason these patterns are so rigid is because people with these rigid personality patterns like narcissism are not introspective they don't look inwards people who are narcissistic because they're so unaware of what the driver is this deep unprocessed insecurity and they're dysregulated they're very impulsive so what many narcissistic people will say is you'll sometimes get and this is what confuses people in these relationships they know what's right and they know what's wrong so they'll throw one of their tantrums and they'll be very cool and mean and reactive afterwards they'll know they did the wrong thing but that reactivity reduced their tension right it worked for them the nurse is like oh i feel relieved that i got out but everyone else has been devastated by their tantrum they're like okay i feel better now i let it out i'm sorry now and how many times you're gonna have someone blow up on you and then say i'm sorry and the resistance to change is because the reactivity of the narcissist is almost like a reflex they basically want a world where they're like can't you just let me have my tantrums and then i can say sorry afterwards and you have to say that's not how the world works these people are hurt and everyone's not designed to be your pacifier you're not i mean nobody gets mad at a six-month-old baby for crying because it's a baby but in essence a narcissist wants to be treated like a six-month-old have their tantrums and still have people snuggle them afterwards right that's not how life works so that's what i mean by they don't change some people who are narcissistic will look up and say okay i get it this pattern is toxic i am not behaving well i am not being a nice person i've lost the love of my life i've become isolated from my family i've lost my job they know something's up and then they might come into therapy and the therapists like me would say okay what we need you to be is very mindful you need to be aware of how you your impact on other people you need to breathe and be present with them and they'll be like what i have to care i have to care about their feelings ugh this is exhausting and they're actually kind of put off by what's being asked of them but they know they need to do it's almost like i hate to say it it's almost like trying to lose weight someone's like oh in order to lose weight you can't eat sweets and you can eat hamburgers and you can eat french fries and you have to eat this and they're like that's what it's going to take and you're like yeah you can't keep eating this when they'll say i don't know about this and so they stay heavy or they stay at an unhealthy weight okay same thing with the narcissist they're like if this is what it's going to take a lot of them say i don't think we can do this so the narcissist does not recognize the need for change until stuff falls apart for them okay they lose their partner their kids aren't talking to them they lose their job they publicly ashamed for something they don't until that point they're going along their lives just sort of making a mess of everything and so then they get called out and there's real consequences like sometimes they get called out there's no consequences so they don't care consequences might be going to jail consequences might be a divorce consequences may be losing their money consequences may be a whole number of things and so those consequences feel real to them especially if they're public consequences i'm no longer married or i don't have my partner i no longer have my money and then somebody do have to start taking the deep dive saying nobody's around anymore like i'm losing everyone and then for and even then those many narcissists are much more likely to blame other people for their failures and problems then take responsibility so they're still playing this is my wife's fault this is the world's fault this is this person's fault this is this this is this at some point that they're going to say they blamed everyone nothing's going their way and a small percentage of people with this pattern will say okay maybe i am responsible for this and i don't like what my life looks like right now you tell them what it means to take responsibility and that's actually something that feels incredibly uncomfortable for them but all change to a healthier place from an unhealthy place is uncomfortable whether it's a person dealing with anxiety whether it's a person dealing with depression whether it's a person dealing with panic attacks they have to go to therapy they have to tolerate the discomfort they have to talk about the uncomfortable stuff to get to a healthy place it's no more different than with narcissism the challenge is is that the narcissist is very very resistant to doing introspective insightful work yeah and what you just said so it's basically it's what's happening to them so they've lost the people so that they're feeling empty so they think okay maybe i need to do something about it versus oh my god i can't believe i just hurt the love of my life correct got it that's very powerful very powerful um and i've heard you somewhat um evolve your data on um the the stats between um how many men and women are narcissists obviously it's a very hard thing to um identify on like the data but i know that you were initially saying it was 80 20 and then you said over time you're starting um to to realize that now it's actually becoming like 70 30 potentially 60 40. what do you think that is is that just us understanding it more and it displays differently in a man or woman or are you seeing that more women are becoming narcissists i think men are more socialized for narcissistic traits we devalue emotion in men they're mocked and made fun of if they're vulnerable like so the way boys are raised away men are raised they're always going to be more vulnerable aggression has a very different like if a man dominates that's considered more normative it's not normative for women so all of these qualities like you know we devalue empathy in men um we men have more privilege so they're going to be more entitled all of that means that just from a socialization perspective you're always going to have more male narcissists there's no two ways about it however interestingly as women do get in some in some places of their lives some a little more power some women do have privilege those women are going to be more vulnerable to being narcissistic it's just that for men they tend to have more of the overt symptoms of narcissism the the big grandiosity the big arrogance the dominance the control those are sort of very male kinds of patterns women may have more victimized passive aggressive patterns so they may not be as in your face but they're still narcissistic and so it's not because we don't it's not a word we use with women as much but oh they're definitely out there and i think that sadly as people get more power in a society there's a greater vulnerability of it but there's also it's also a very developmental pattern too narcissism doesn't spring up when somebody's 30. it's something that was developed through childhood so girls and female children are going to be as affected by this as male children and so we're going to see that those impacts of parenting are there but it could very well be that as as as girls go through um go through their childhood they have more opportunities to develop the emotional muscles because it's more part of their play you know whereas for boys if they're crying they're made they're a you're a loser boys don't cry girl cries it's actually permitted and so we actually create we have to create more permission for men to be emotional that would actually be a big part early young and early parents should not chastise a son for crying we should create spaces for boys to cry that's a big socialization piece that's linked to to sex and gender that we really have to pay attention to and we're not good at that so all of that's also playing a role in this too wow that's so powerful so thinking about a young boy being grandiose or over the top is almost rewarded for it and if a girl is she's told to not do it so over time as we become adults um where the narcissist male is just almost forgiven but the female has somewhat um you even said passive aggressive so it's very different behavior right than being overtly um overpowering overbearing yeah it's very so a woman would not have been those those traits would not have been shaped and socialized in her in the same way and so um you know and unless it was a whole new world of conversations it's going to come up with with people who are trans right who were who who grew up socialized to a to a set of gender roles and they themselves are struggling with that and they're saying no no no you know that like please allow me to be the the gender that's right for me so we're not we're just beginning to explore these issues and trans people and queer people so you know it's i think we've always viewed this through a very heteronormative kind of a lens so but when we think of it in that traditional lens of boys and girls men and women is that definitely that when a woman somebody's viewed as a woman is speaking more um assertively clearly in a commanding manner much more likely to be pathologized for that be called aggressive to be called unattractive and then if a man is speaking in that way he's viewed as a leader he they'll use the word assertive there they'll view him as authoritative but remember these are developmental traits that come out of insecurity that sometimes come out of trauma boys girls are both differentially affected by this it's just how we value emotion and things like that in the face of it that might mean that more boys go in that direction than girls assume that somebody is either with a narcissist or has someone in their lives and i know that you have almost like certain rules that you advise people so there's one phrase that you use which is and don't give your psychological passwords to them i love that can you talk to me about it yeah so it's actually brilliant again i always make sure that so many of this so much of this is accumulated wisdom was actually somebody i've worked with who said to me instead of calling it gray rocking why don't you call it firewalling somebody who works in the tech industry and i thought interesting say more and we talked about it and her husband's a big tech guy and and we find i said this is you're absolutely brilliant because when you think about a firewalled computer right it's very restrictive on what it lets in right it'll say this is this is a virus don't let this in and it's also very restrictive on what you let out like you know and they'll even ask you are you sure i say don't part of firewalling is you know i don't give you all my passwords i adore you but i wouldn't give you all my passwords right right yes exactly and so we don't hand we're so we're literally more protective of the password we have for some game on our computer than we are with the most sacred parts of our psyche like what you know i mean that doesn't even make but that's it doesn't make sense but everyone does that they just hand it over and so this idea is that you wouldn't just give away your normal passwords don't give away your psychological passwords your deep vulnerabilities your because i'll tell you why they'll use them against you narcissistic people will always weaponize your vulnerabilities so a lot of times early in a relationship people open up and they share their vulnerabilities something that's really really sinister about narcissistic relationships is during that love bombing phase to look at someone and say tell me tell me the thing you least like about yourself and you're like ooh we're sharing they're putting that in some sort of evil vault in their brain that then when either you're in the devaluing cycle or the discarding cycle you're having an argument they'll pull that vulnerability out it could be about anything could be about body image it could be about something that happened to you in childhood it could be about your family a dream you have and they will use it against you and for a lot of people it feels like the air has been sucked out of them the most vulnerable thing that a person could share they've shared with them and it's like in fact in in a cult structure it's often called collateral like it's like i'm we're gonna get we've got to get something from them so we can almost blackmail someone down the road it's like that maybe not at that level but it's it's that ability to say now i've got something on you so i know i can hurt you and so that's what i mean about don't hand away your psychological passwords don't give away those most vulnerable parts of yourself until someone really gains that trust people might be sitting there saying well doesn't that are you telling people not to be vulnerable oh absolutely not i'm saying learn your people again it's that two sets of ways of engaging in the world and it's about taking a moment to get to know someone if red flags are coming up pay attention and hold back you will get to the vulnerabilities if this is a healthy person you'll get there but you don't need to get there in the first week but i think so many people want to be heard and seen and understood that they rush to that moment like let me tell them everything and now we're in love and i have watched people be destroyed having people take those vulnerabilities they shared with someone and having them be used against them in all kinds of terrible ways yeah i very much believe that vulnerability should never be weaponized in absolute situations but i do understand that other people accidentally may use a vulnerability in a heated moment and then regret it so is it how they then handle it afterwards that dictates which i'm not asking anyone to hear to be super human you know we've all done it you've done it i've done it in a moment you know said something and say oh my goodness it is that very rapid attempt at making amends doing the reparations and not doing it again right you see what i'm saying so you can't just keep doing it because one thing narcissistic relationships often consist of is the apologize cycle it's like the rinse lather repeat like apollo i'm sorry oh and they do again i'm sorry do it again i'm sorry no i mean i'll give you one you know saying i never should have said something like that then don't do it again and when they do it again it feels like then i'm sorry it's just like a get out of jail free card like okay i'm just gonna use this again and so it really it it's it's the intent and it's how quickly the reparations take place that a person immediately says i had no no place doing that and i got to tell you lisa in some cases there are no fly zones like i you know i'm a parent for example you say anything to me you go after my kids we're done and when i work with clients i tell them it's okay to have those no-fly zones it's because some say i'm being too extreme right i'm like oh do i really shut someone off you i said you're okay with doing that if they went to a place that feels sacred to you that feels untouchable to you and it went there that's abuse that's a violation of a primal boundary it's okay to say never again does that apply to everyone in your life like your parents as well as a partner it gets tricky there lisa because i think especially if you had a narcissistic parent one of the most painful legacies of a narcissistic parent is that they do they will use those vulnerabilities against a child one thing i've classically heard with narcissistic parents and their children is they go after appearance they go after weight they go after how someone looks they um because it is a superficial personality style right and they often want their child to be a reflection of how they want to be in the world and if it may not be straightly appearance it might even be things like inability it might be things like soccer or school or whatever it may be right and so in those cases the parent knowing that the child struggles with whatever will actually use that as a way to manipulate the child or get the child to do what they want and then the child sort of lives in this sadness like or they'll try to be what the parent wants them to be the kiddo's like if i could play tennis really well my parent would pay attention and maybe there's just not a natural tennis player and then the child really goes out and tries to hit a tennis ball or whatever and then the parents like really like you want me to waste my time playing tennis with you like this is way below me thinking like oh my gosh this poor kid's killing themselves to get you to notice them but this will fast forward into adulthood they will continue to do this to their child in adulthood parents are tricky narcissistic parents are tricky because a lot of people for example may love one parent and really have had a difficult other parent some people will feel as though really had a difficult parent but i love my siblings i love my grandparents so and those other people in the system don't want you to distance from that one parent i always say to people once you identify the difficult people in the system you can still be in that system but you've got to be mindful so it really does about maybe limiting the time finding time away from the narcissistic parent to be with those other people like your grandparent or your sibling or your other parent or whatever and also to recognize you were the child they were the parent they dropped the ball it's not your job to go back there and teach them and i think a lot of people contin i've seen 50 year old people still be hoop jumping to get and trying to show off for a parent no different than a six-year-old trying to juggle in the living room just to get their parents to notice them it doesn't stop but the hurt that a narcissistic parent can inflict on an adult child is just as potent as if that person was five years old have you noticed a correlation between people that have had narcissistic parents that then go for a narcissistic partner yeah there's an incredible vulnerability and i talk about this i talk about people who sort of are narcissism magnets without knowing it like and one of the things on that list of magnets is exactly what you're saying having had come from a system characterized by this there's a couple of reasons one of the most intoxicating tragically intoxicating things a person can experience is familiarity when we say oh we have a magical connection and i'm having a deja vu i kind of put my head in my hand saying no no no this is not good for you because the things that are familiar to you are actually quite toxic and poisonous and that sort of familiarity of for example it's something we call working through i couldn't win over my narcissistic father but i'm going to win over this guy ah right and so then they go right into that same cycle and because it's so familiar it's almost hard to get that that that view to say this isn't healthy for me or to get out because the whole life almost becomes this activity of trying to get this um to trying to do all the things i'm going to jump through the hoops i'm going to win this time and a lot of times people will convince themselves like if i can get it right here then it'll be okay then i would i would have you know sort of figured out what i needed to figure out from childhood but the fact of the matter is this adult narcissistic person is going to treat you as badly as your narcissistic parent and this time it's going to get uglier because it'll be things like the gaslighting and the manipulation and the rage and for some people that inner dialogue i'm not enough i'm not good enough i um i have no right to be doing this who am i to be pursuing my dreams i need to stay in my lane all of that stuff that kind of inner dialogue when it gets reinforced by a partner people actually really get stuck in relationships that's what i was going to say you just listed a few um can you repeat those actually and what are the things that essentially interesting it never dawned on me that this is the language we say to ourselves i'm not enough what are you doing stay in your lane is that the same language and a narcissist would also say to you as like a red flag you stay in your lane absolutely they say stay in your lane you should and you know what it is it's a it's more they do it more masterfully than that they plant just enough of a seed of doubt that you're the one who ends up cultivating that seed so they'll say things like really that job like okay you know i get why you'd want to do it but you sure that's not you getting ahead of yourself so it's just enough like okay go ahead and do it but you sure about that that's the kind of thing that they'll do so now this thing you thought you could do already they've put this new seat of doubt in there are saying you know things like i don't know other people at that job they seem to have gone to some really fancy universities like it's cool that they want you but you sure about that and then for many people that's when they'll give up on themselves yeah can you actually truly be happy in a narcissistic relationship because not sharing your vulnerabilities with someone not listening when they give you advice because you don't trust them because you're worried that they're trying to oh you sure you should go for that job like i really want to be able to take my husband's advice for true advice and so not being able to share that not being able to um i've heard you say that um not to share your wins with your narcissist not your wins not your losses and not your vulnerabilities don't share any of them okay so i want to go down that actually not sharing the wins but um if you don't mind like can you actually then truly be happy such a it's such an it's almost a philosophical question isn't it right i don't know that a person would ever be fully happy or satisfied or nourished in that relationship i have seen people amazingly so figure out workarounds where they derive i don't know joy from their kids their pets their hobbies their jobs their other supports in their world if if provided the narcissistic person in their life isn't super controlling obviously all of that gets very difficult if the narcissistic person has someone on a really sort of a short tie they say like you can't do this you can't do that and really isolates them from their world when that dynamic is in place i do not think it's possible to be happy but if you're in a situation where you're kind of able to do some things that matter to you i've seen people sort of carve out moments of happiness but if this person's a day-to-day fixture in someone's life not so much i mean i do think it takes a toll and i've worked with people who've been in these relationships 30 40 50 years and it hollows them out is that inevitable i do think it's somewhat inevitable how many times are you going to be invalidated how many times is somebody going to walk around in the world and feel completely unmirrored in what is to be a loving relationship and especially if they aren't able to build up those other spaces in their lives some people figure out the workarounds and they recognize like okay this is not what i would have loved for myself or wanted for myself but i will try to make the most out of what i can and then they take almost a very existential point of view this moment's beautiful i'll be in this moment kind of thing and so they do their best at sort of deriving the joy from a given moment here and it's again that's the sort of high level existential work it's hard to do because you look around at other people and they are in love and their partners are appreciative of them and they are in a loving space and their experience has absolutely no resemblance to that they feel very alone and keep in mind lisa most people don't get this i've worked with so many folks who they go out and they're like finally i figured out why this relationship's so difficult my partner's really narcissistic they have no empathy the whole laundry list and people like i don't get that like you look good in pictures together or it seems like you're both at the dinner together and so it's this people not getting it like well it can't be that bad can't you just explain to them what's going on no because they're not listening and that's hard imagine a child child growing up with parents who never see them who never hear them when i say see them like notice them never hear them never have empathy for them never have interest for them a lot of people grow up like that now jump that into an adult relationship it takes a tremendous toll on a child as an adult you're not immune to those same effects especially in what feels like supposed to be your primary close relationship yeah god and how many of people though actually in those 30 40s because you said some people stay like for the rest of their life still try and change them because i i love it when you're like you can't change it but how many people just like yes but if i only did this and is that how much of that is why people stay in those relationships well there's there's kind of a standard there's a short list of reasons people stay in the relationships hope fear guilt and lack of information okay hope that it'll change and we've thrown that hope out fear of being alone some people say that the devil i know is better than the angel i don't like they're saying i know this i know how this works i know our respective families i have a routine they're scared they're scared they're scared of living alone they're scared of having their role in society change or scared of no longer perhaps being in a marriage or something like that then there's guilt remember not all narcissism is just the big exploitative grandiose person like kind of holding court and sucking all the oxygen out of the room in many cases nurses there's what we call vulnerable narcissism and that's more of this sort of sullen resentful angry victimized form of narcissism so instead of the entitlement coming out as hey i should be the vip in the line the entitlement comes out more as nothing ever works out for me i deserve so much more because i'm such a smart person it makes me sick to watch all these other people succeeding when i'm so much smarter see that's a different feel of entitlement right and no that vulnerable narcissistic style actually takes a tremendous toll in relationships but when people want to leave those relationships they feel really guilty because there is this sort of very anxious depressed feel and then there's lack of information the number of people out there saying well maybe if i just learn to communicate maybe if we go to a couple's retreat maybe if we do this maybe if we do that and i'm like oh my gosh you're about to spend a hundred thousand dollars i'm telling you for free this is not going to change make your decisions accordingly not never telling anyone to leave i'm saying this it's like a person moving to a really hot climate and wanting to wear a downed parka i'm like that's not gonna work you're gonna have to get a new wardrobe like the whole this is not what you think it is that's it oh good i love that and i've actually heard you say speaking of the guilt thing um that do never empathize with a narcissist i'm going to put i'm going to push back on that okay because i believe in empathy i think empathy is something that we are losing in this world quickly and yet it is so crucial to me to to actually saving this world literally down to climate change empathy is everything right the biggest thing in fact right now it's actually one of the videos in pre-production we're working on right now is this idea of people feeling like they have been through so much in multiple narcissistic relationships that they're they're starting to lose their empathy across the board in fact there's a name for it it's called compassion fatigue that we save that more for healthcare providers psychologists that kind of thing after a while there's so much empathy you can put out unless there's some coming back in right but compassion fatigue is a little different than just feeling like i'm empathied out like i am being treated badly every day 20 times a day i don't believe truly empathic people lose their empathy i think people get worn out and they get sad and they they feel more isolated from people but i actually do believe we can have tremendous in fact we must have tremendous empathy for narcissistic people otherwise we lose our we lose the best part of ourselves and i'll be damned if somebody who's toxic is going to be the reason the most beautiful part of myself gets turned off and so and i feel that for everyone do not ever pawn that off but empathy doesn't mean being a sucker empathy is understanding whatever happened in your story that brought you here i am so sorry and i really hope the path forward takes you to a place where you can work on this i really do but not on my time again another brilliant suggestion sent by people who watch the channel and they were basketball fans and i'm a basketball fan too i think it's such an elegant sport and that moment that hang time is that moment when a player is coming up to the hoop and it almost feels like they're flying right before they put the the ball in in the basket and sometimes hang time feels like it's really long like it's almost eternal if you're watching it and they were using hang time as an analogy of that moment you're suspended and trying to figure out like what is this like is this person really toxic is this really a narcissistic kind of personality style like what is happening here and it's when you're continuing to give second chances like maybe i'm reading this wrong or what what's going on here i don't want anyone watching this thinking it's black and white like one day it's a process i always say that there's the click moment there's a moment in your mind you're with some and you're like okay i'm now a little uncomfortable it's often a red flag but it's a little more than red flags my by now you've probably seen 5 10 even 15 red flags and it is it's like an audible click like okay now i'm uncomfortable what do i do at the moment of the audible click people are still saying okay maybe i'm reading this wrong but we're starting to step out of the room backwards like we're creating more and more distance like okay this isn't cool this is not an affiliation i want this is not a relationship i want whatever slowly start stepping away that moment of starting to identify it and then get out that's what's being called hang time here's where it gets tricky if you are the one who decides to leave a narcissistic relationship i can guarantee you it's going to go badly it'll always go badly we don't always realize this but people who are not who have narcissistic difficult personality style struggle with abandonment because it means they've lost control of the narrative so if somebody tries to leave them all hell is going to break loose all hell is going to break loose if they decide to leave you they're just going to go but if you decide to leave them and they don't want you leaving you are in for the fight of your life and this is why it's important to identify and get it out of it get out of it early the earlier you get out the less the harm but if you're in for a while and they don't want out they it will be an absolute mess which is why hang time's an interesting moment because for some people during that suspension they're hanging in there saying how big a mess is this going to be when i leave so some people stay because they're so afraid of the disaster that's going to ensue when they leave and when i work with folks who are about to start for example embark on a divorce from a narcissist i said i'll tell them for as bad as you think this is about to be it is going to be ten times worse we are going to battle and i will not so i will not soften this for you and every single time whether it's a marriage whether it's workplace whatever it is it is it almost like these people look shredded when it's over and a couple of them have said i'm so glad i'm out but had i really known how bad this was going to be i don't know that i would have had the courage to do this in order for us to be able to identify so that when we either go in a relationship start a relationship or continue a relationship we just do it with our eyes wide open and so where i would like to start is for you to break down the four types of narcissist uh narcissists i don't think there's actually more than four so you're gonna you're asking for more than your bargain for um so they're sort of the classical grandiose narcissist and this is often what we think of as sort of the textbook arrogant charming charismatic confident you know sort of really holds the room and while initially they're incredibly enticing right because they're so much larger than life they can often be quite successful before long probably in anywhere if you're dating them between 4 and 12 weeks the blush is going to fall off the rose kind of thing and it's going to be that they're much more you'll see that they're getting bored with you that their superficiality really becomes problematic they are very contemptuous and dismissive and invalidating largely because they're so insecure we go then to the covert narcissist the covert narcissist is much more vulnerable sullen angry at the world and instead of the big arrogant entitlement what you tend to see more of is it's an angry victimized entitlement like the world never gives me what i want everybody's against me everyone's out to get me and so there's just sort of it gets heavy and tiresome but initially covert narcissists feel very anxious like you want to rescue them then there are the malignant narcissists the malignant narcissists are probably the most dangerous of the narcissist not only do they have all the usual qualities of narcissism the lack of empathy the entitlement the grandiosity all of that they also are very exploitative they can be paranoid they're sadistic there is a there is a much more deliberate cruelty you're more likely to see sort of if not physical violence a lot more emotional abuse in these relationships people feel very menaced and unsettled you might see more coercive control here the fourth kind of narcissist is someone we call a communal narcissist the communal narcissist cares very much about being viewed by the public as a as a savior or a rescuer i'm rescuing animals i'm doing i'm making this important documentary i'm so important what i do for the world is so important and so the world often they get their validation the communal narcissist has all the usual stuff of narcissism but they get their validation by being viewed as a do-gooder or a humanitarian or something like that but they're actually just as interpersonally difficult as any of the other narcissistic people but people will often miss it because they're so they look so wonderful there's the neglectful narcissist these are the narcissistic relationships where you're literally not even seen it's as though unless they need you it's almost like my coffee cup i'm not going to notice my coffee cup unless i need my coffee but otherwise i'm not going to pay attention to it all day they tend to view people through that lens of seeing them as conveniences and objects they turn to when they need them they almost have very little need for people unless it's forwarding their cause and people in these relationships will literally feel as though they're invisible and completely unseen then there's the self-righteous narcissist the self-righteous narcissists actually initially seem really moralistic and loyal whether that moralism comes through like religion or commitment to like the cause and there's a right way and there's a wrong way to do things they're incredibly judgmental of other people self-righteous narcissists tend to live very well ordered lives so they'll mock the way other people eat the way they dress if they didn't go to the right school if they don't live in the right place and so people in relationships with self-righteous narcissists feel like they're always the 12 year old child who's being scolded for their bad habits so there's actually more than yeah that was so amazing i have so many questions so let's even just take the last the last one as you were describing it i also think of it as like wow that's also the behavior of someone that's extremely insecure in themselves so they're putting someone else down because they're insecure but would you say that if someone's insecure they're directly a narcissist how would you separate the two and go wow they're a narcissist or they're just wounded they're insecure and so they're doing that to um protect themselves okay so everybody's insecure i haven't i've i can count on one hand the number of human beings i've met on this planet who are just simply secure in themselves because here's the bottom line secure people don't lash out at other people right secure people will say i know who i am and i know what i stand for and they know they're not always going to get it right they're not always trying to overcompensate they apologize when they wrong they're wrong and they'd never deliberately you know again lash out or attack another person they have empathy so the right you know i always say it's the difference between the pathologically insecure and the conventionally insecure the conventionally insecure is all the rest of us right it's the people who have we all have wounds and those wounds are often where we're not graceful or we get really stressed out or we get upset the difference is is when you're conventionally insecure and you say the wrong thing maybe you bite someone's head off maybe you are um you respond in a way that's very reactive and unkind maybe you don't check in on someone's feelings a conventionally insecure person will detect that rather quickly and say i should not have said that and will attempt to make amends very quickly and say you know if i let's say you and i had an argument and i snapped your head off and i call i'd call you back and say lisa what i did i'm so sorry that was not your responsibility or your problem i had a tough day but that wasn't your problem and i'm so sorry and again my excuse is not even meant to be a way to get out of this i'm telling you about my day but at the end of the day i hurt you and i'm sorry that's what a conventionally helpfully insecure person would do a pathologically insecure person that ends up getting coupled with all this narcissistic stuff the lack of empathy the entitlement the grandiosity the validation seeking all of those narcissistic defenses they protect that insecurity that's not processed a conventionally insecure person will say i know what my insecurities are i'm insecure about my weight or the amount of money i have or my job i know that about myself and so i know that when i'm in certain groups of people i'm not at my best and a conventionally insecure person might even make decisions accordingly saying ah i don't know if i want to go to your fancy party tonight like that's not my that's not my crew i don't feel good and they'll make their choices according right so that a conventionally insecure person can be reflective they can be empathic they can be aware of what their wounds are they can they can make amends for when they get it wrong you see the difference so yeah i agree that narcissistic people are wounded i will never disagree with that in fact more than a few of them have had traumatic backgrounds but that doesn't is that's not an excuse for your present behavior you don't get to say i'm wounded and that's your get out of jail free card it doesn't work that way i understand that you're wounded go do the work okay go do the work before you take this out on other people and expect everyone to be your enabler while you lash out at them because of your wounds that's not acceptable god i love how you break that down because there is sometimes such a fine line it was kind of like what i was saying in my intro where there are really true narcissists and it can be very detrimental to a person if they're in a relationship with them but then there's also the side of people now just kind of labeling anybody that shows one trait of a narcissist so what do you think are misconceptions that people currently have on what narcissism is or how to even identify someone that is so traditionally a major misconception about narcissism is that it was self-love that these are people who are in love with themselves and love to look in the mirror they even look at the myth of narcissists and how he fell in love with his reflection and all of that nothing could be farther from the truth they don't love themselves in fact they despise themselves more than the rest of us might actually not like ourselves like they really really it is a disorder of of sort of self-hate of deep insecurity of dysregulation and everything is about this fear of sort of their their deficits getting found out of the world seeing that they ain't all that right but they're not in touch with any of this so you can't play to that and say i get it you know you have these vulnerabilities and they'll say how dare you tell me i have vulnerability so you can't connect with them right so the misconception is that they love themselves well that let's clear that off the decks they they look in the mirror a lot to play into that validation seeking because they're so superficial their emotions don't go deep right and because if their emotions went deep that's too much of a threat to them so they're very superficial and shallow and everything so looking at themselves a lot in the mirror is part of that shallowness now what people don't understand about narcissism is it is it's a very very you know sort of insecure primal state where the person almost isn't fully formed they're very emotionally stunted they don't know how to self-suit they don't know how to regulate they don't know how to be present with other people they think the rules don't apply to them and they they're sort of like a child eyes a little towel around their neck and runs around the house and says i'm superman the reason a child ties a cape around their neck and says i'm superman is because children don't feel powerful so they have fantasy play in which they're powerful but as a child goes through healthy development they start to realize that they don't have to be a grandiose hero they just need to be themselves but since many children never get that lesson that they're loved for just who they are that is there's a risk of then developing into the narcissistic adult where honestly instead of six tying a towel around their neck at 46 it's like look at my car the towel around the neck you know it's the same thing it's just doing it's different in adulthood because they need to feel like a superhero and so when we think about narcissism it's a laundry list of things it's like i said lack of empathy entitlement grandiosity superficiality validation seeking inability to regulate their moods when they feel frustrated or disappointed it's arrogance it's control it's sensitivity to criticism just because someone's not nice to you doesn't make them narcissistic old package and and at the end of the day narcissism to me is like a bucket right if i need to get water from one side of a place to another it's certainly much easier to put it in a bucket than putting it in 20 individual glasses but the the issue then becomes as we oversimplify those 20 individual glasses or all the different patterns and symptoms and maybe a person would say well actually i'm calling this person narcissistic because they don't hear me and then i say break that down like is it that they don't have empathy like what's happening before people use the label because it is very dismissive and but i have to say lisa for a lot of people who are struggling through these relationships it takes a long time before they use the word they're saying and now i get this like now i have a word for this i do some people do use it very quickly and they're probably not using it properly but the people who've been in it for years and say oh this is a thing and now i get it then that's a different issue yeah it's really been more at least from my perspective a recent thing that's come on my radar of a lot of people um just white labeling people as narcissists so i really like the way you broke that down um what about the people that think that it's somebody else so it's they're doing this they're a narcissist they called me too sensitive because i've heard you say if someone calls you you know says um oh you're just you're taking it personally you're just way too sensitive it's a sign that that could be a potential masters person but what on the flip side if you are too sensitive um how do you differentiate between i'm insecure and i am being too sensitive and i don't feel good about myself and so you say something and i take it insultingly or that person really is gaslighting you putting it on you and it actually isn't your fault well i think that it's here's the thing in a relationship everybody has to take accountability okay i really don't ever really like calling anyone too sensitive i think it's that we take in our experiences like even when i say that a narcissistic individual is sensitive to criticism maybe what i should say the better way to put it is not sensitive to criticism they're hyper reactive to criticism so when they somebody criticizes them they'll yell at the other person in a really almost terrifying way that's very different than somebody who's like oh why don't they like me and this and that and then you talk it through with that person they'll often to really they'll hit the other person with a wave of rage so it's a hyper reactivity maybe that's the better way to put it i think people take things in the way they take him and that some people will say that it's almost like a it's like a calibration like a little sensitivity meter we have on us and for some people based on their their experiences in life they may tend to maybe it's not even sensitivity as much as you're putting as personalizing right one of the most important things in the world is say they said something and i'm having an experience of it but it's it's not about me they said it and then i have the right to ask them say can you tell me more about that you know and um they'll and they might even not think anything of it but you can ask for clarification that's why i'm saying yeah obviously in any relationship in any transaction if you will in a back and forth between two people is that you both have responsibility and the responsibility people have when they talk to each other is respect empathy and clarity okay so respect empathy and clarity every time so when you're saying something to someone you want to say okay am i saying this in a way that's respectful am i actually hearing them am i aware of how i may be impacting them and am i really going you know ensuring that i'm being very clear and checking in with them to say you know is what i just said does that make sense am i clear and then the other person has the same responsibility of respect empathy and clarity okay that and if you have the sort of basic rules of this so i think one of the and where this starts getting challenging is is that a real danger is that most people who are in narcissistic relationships blame themselves they blame themselves for what's happening that you you open you know you open the show with i'm not enough i'm not enough where do you think that comes from they're blaming themselves for somebody else's behavior so i'm very very very careful to never blame someone for saying well gosh you know this person was um you know they're they're really short in their texts to me and if i was working with someone i'd say okay they're very short in their texts can you resp um communicate with them and say you know i'm say i'm struggling a little bit with your text they're very blunt they're very short um you know and i'm can you give me some clarity on that because i'm sort of experiencing them in an uncomfortable way if you're that clear and the other person says what is wrong with you red flag but if you say that to someone the other person says you know i apologize i'm managing three kids at home i have a lot going on so yeah my texts are short i can understand how they would feel uncomfortable so i apologize for that but i am really busy then they've given you context now it's on you they've just told you they're busy okay they're telling you they're giving you some back they're respectfully acknowledging your concern then it's if you're gonna then keep complaining to them oh you know they just told you they've got three kids and you then you need to move on because obviously then this you need someone who's able to give you something very different but i think too many people try to draw water out of empty wells they want people to communicate with them the way they want this isn't working for you then leave do not try to transform someone into something they can't be so what ends up happening is years they tried they're like this is bothering me you're too sensitive i'm struggling with this what's your problem you know when you said that i never said that you know they're going through 20 years of this this isn't them misinterpreting one thing this is them having gone to this 10 000 times and so at that point they're not going to change what are you going to do well i want them to change i said that option is not on the table they're not going to change what are you going to do and so when i say listen you can stay that that's that's not my call to make for you that's your call to make for you you need to put on your big big person pants and recognize like this is your call the thing i'm not gonna ever support you like i'll stay if there's no if this is it this is who this person is you stay and this is how it is if there's like let's say you come home and say i got this promotion and because of this promotion we're going to be making the same amount this is great it doesn't mean like i'm going to have to commute a little longer that which that's what i was saying remember i think don't share your good news your good news nine times out of ten will trigger the narcissistic person's feeling of inadequacy and then they feel shame and then they rage so is communication does it always then need to be surface level really always always yeah yeah yeah and so where it gets confusing is many people with narcissistic personalities are very smart they'll know a lot about one thing they'll often be well read i mean this is what's so such a confusing style it's a very high functioning dysfunctional personality style right so you'll think you're having a deep conversation with them because you go deep on a topic right you have this deep philosophical conversation with them but it's not really a personal conversation it's almost like a theoretical conversation but then people will confuse that thinking we're having these deep conversations so i'm going to talk about myself my stuff my story well that's what they want you to do again they're going to use those vulnerabilities against you down the road but it's not a deep conversation now sometimes the narcissistic person will tell you what they are saying are vulnerable things about them to draw your vulnerabilities out either theirs aren't true so you've been kind of given a sham vulnerability if you will or a um a thing they know and people confuse that because the conversation will go on for hours and hours or they'll share a lot about their dreams and their aspirations right like i'm going to be at this and i'm going to do with that it's all very grandiose which feels sherry right right yeah so if i was you know i was sharing hey you know lisa i'm excited i want to do this this that and the other and you'd say i don't think that's really going to be very possible that's often what the narcissist so if you sometimes if you would ever give them that feedback they'd lose it but if you share your dreams they will often give you that feedback just as they're going on about their whole grandiose prancing about talking i'm going to do this and i'm going to do that so then you feel emboldened to share your dreams and they'll laugh at yours i was literally about to ask you what's the difference about someone just kind of warning you like oh you may want to be careful because sometimes i think people warning you of something is like okay there might be some gems in here they might actually be right and there might be a warning here of like oh you may be careful there so i was gonna ask how do you know when someone genuinely cares about you and is warning you because they care about you versus warning you because you make them feel bad and i think you just answered because you said they laugh at you they'll and they'll have contempt for it like oh please you know versus wow you know i've actually worked in that industry and one thing i would actually highly recommend is that you know that's such a cool idea however i do have a concern that if you do it this way and they're good pieces of guidance even though you might think like what they're saying is probably not realistic i don't think it's anyone's place out there to piss all over someone else's dreams now unless they want to hire a consultant to do that and then that's a different that's a financially brokered kind of a relationship right but the idea that um if somebody shares with you especially in a new friendship or a new intimate space you're probably not the person who should be doing that but it is the contempt that's the ring yeah that word really hits me um so what do you do in those moments because again it just feels really shitty you've just shared your dream with someone i'm gonna do this i'm so excited and they're like oh god what do you know i go back to like i wanna always talk to them like um discuss it or like try and persuade them there's no point talking to someone contemptuous if we could convince everyone that your dreams your aspirations are sacred spaces within you why would you put that sacred space in front of somebody who's having contempt for it it's sacrilegious right if you want to put it that way it's a really divine important part of you and to recognize they're not able to be present with this i need to find a more worthy audience that this is not the person to because you will never convince them because baiting is a huge part of the narcissistic relationship dynamic they want the fight you know they're prized fighters they they know how to fight the rest of us really kind of don't and so they will bait you they will be like really do you think that's going to happen or like come on they're like boy you sure do like to talk about yourself when you're not even a person who likes to talk about themselves but someone else at a gathering might say and i remember this happening to me once in the presence of a narcissistic person i was at a gathering and i'm not i'm not going to be the one who's going to yammer on about herself it's not my way and then somebody said hey i saw you doing this cool thing can you talk a little bit about it and i was like oh sure you know i was playing it down like oh it's nothing and interestingly as i was just about to share it someone who was quite narcissistic in that room said oh here we go getting to hear from her and i was hurt like it hurt and i said yeah it's not that big a deal like i'm just going there and i'm doing this thing blah blah blah so i minimized it because i was not at all going to give that that narcissist was looking for the fight later in that event i got that person one on and say i love i i'd be happy to share with you what i'm going to do the big question becomes lisa is in a milieu like that in a situation like that do people notice that whole dance right watching someone get shut down by somebody who's so antagonistic and i went with it i did not say wait a minute there's about i think i was no that's debating you don't take the fight because they want you to take the fight right i'm looking i am not giving you the satisfaction because me taking the bait is you getting your validation and that is not happening on my watch but that also takes confidence in that moment yeah you know what it's not a big deal and confidence because you're not demeaning yourself right right like you know having known you as much as i do now it's like i know that you it's freaking awesome like what you're doing and but because sometimes it's i think it's dangerous when you say oh what i'm doing isn't that big a deal right right i think yeah it can be and it can affect yourself talk and unfortunately that is my self-talk it's like i'm not i'm not all that i'm not that important i'm not that valuable that's very much my because i've i've been i mean you don't do what i do without having been through you know this this narcissistic territory and being hurt by people like this more than a few times so my tendency is to not be like oh aren't i great i'm doing all this stuff so in that situation when that happened actually a bit of hurt got activated in me but at the same time i have my toolbox and i think i'm not giving this i'm not taking this person's bait but i did know that the person who asked the original question was genuinely interested so when i got private time with her i said you know what now that it's just the two of us i'd love to share with you more about what i'm doing and just do it that way thank you for sharing that because that's actually really beautiful to hear that you know even when you know everything you know doesn't mean you don't get triggered doesn't mean that it doesn't all the time doesn't mean that it doesn't actually go i still get played yeah girl i get old i played all the time i just got played recently like i get played and i get played hard like and i i realized like how romney are you getting played this far into the game and i know what it is it's a when i view somebody as for lack of a better way when i feel bad for them does that almost pity i guess maybe that's the word when i pity someone i do tend to keep trying even when i'm feeling red flags and that's something i've got to work on because it's actually trying to take care of people i pity has actually resulted in me getting harmed so i am very i have to catch that one and if i sense that somebody's sort of pitiful to me i've got to cut bait because that has gotten me into probably most of the really horrible narcissistic situations not all of them but a lot of them they it pulls for pity there's something almost pitiful and pathetic and they're trying too hard and they're often not good at what they're doing like because i was that person right i was once the kid who just wasn't always that good and i would have loved it if somebody you know would have had my back so i think it's i think we're also a lot of us spend a lot of our lives trying to rescue the childlike versions of ourselves our child versions and when we see it manifested in someone i think we want to rescue before we catch ourselves and say i'm not a child i'm an adult i got her i got my child version and i don't need to let pity be what drives a human relationship oh that was a ton of bricks right there because again like i even myself are looking like you know so much you're so knowledgeable on this subject i bet you never get tricked by not i bet you literally they walk around like a big red dot and you see them so it's actually beautiful and wonderful that you said that yeah because i i really do think that it's never one and done even when we like anything like anything partners spotting all of this we're talking about and i think that that's important to know because i do worry that some people beat themselves up over going yeah i can't believe i ended up with a narcissist again i've watched all her videos and i'm still falling in this trap so like you even saying that i think just gives grace to other people absolutely there's so much shame and self-blame in this space like the number of folks have said to me i am so embarrassed and humiliated that i let this happen i'm saying something you're blaming yourself for someone harming you and so for people i should have known they said no because you've got to remember we carry this whole map of our lives inside of us and that map isn't always good it's like i think every one of us our our compasses are a little bit off right because of the things the bad things have happened to us the hurts we've incurred so we don't don't always get to make the we don't we don't always make the best choices for ourselves and people feel foolish especially if it happens to them more than once right like how do i keep doing this and it really is that your willingness to do that deep dive like what are the illusions and the delusions we fall into take responsibility for those try to find out where they come from but somebody abusing you is never your fault just kind of projecting myself i was in a bad relationship before i met my husband i was young i had never really had a boyfriend before i was teased for my look so finding a guy that liked me was so important and like literally gave me validation gave me the confidence and so it was a very unhealthy relationship so a lot of what you're saying is like oh yeah he did that oh yeah he did that you know you're not going to find anyone that loves you as much as i i love you and all of those sorts of things and then starting to think about um i absolutely was like oh my god but he's paid for dinner that one time and he bought me the teddy that one time in four years and i so i totally understand what it feels like to be in that situation um and then just trying to come out of it and break out of what they have taught you i think you call it the infecting what they've infected you with what they've infected you with because it becomes a belief system that you have within yourself and so i'd actually love to really talk about that about how like if at least for myself when i noticed i was in these this relationship afterwards there were triggers that i took with me so how do we start to um tear down that like the triggers that we've built up from this this unhealthy relationship the defense mechanisms that we've built up so that when we go into another relationship that we don't then bring those bad habits that we've built to to protect ourselves that we actually don't do that in the new relationship because it won't serve us so number one something i call the 12-month detox after you leave any form of even approximating a narcissistic relationship you got to be single for a year and i mean single no dating no sex no nothing and people like why i'll say because when you're in a narcissistic relationship you lose yourself people lose track of their own preferences what they like to watch on tv what they like to eat they've learned to censor themselves so much that they don't know how to uncensor themselves they forget who they are maybe they never even learned it in the first place a lot of people very quickly want to get into another relationship and the quicker they do that then they're not going to do that deep dive figuring out their own inner worlds and then they're gonna literally reproduce that cycle with the next person unless you get super lucky and the next person you meet is just a superstar kind loving person but i gotta tell you if you haven't worked out all that trauma bonded stuff you're probably going to look at the super kind person and say kind of boring not very interesting and actually start poking holes in them because they're not evoking that trauma bonded sort of sizzle if you will that year alone to me is everything because i want a person to go through a year of holidays birthdays anniversaries the leaves churning color snow falling rain falling and have to experience that on their own their own experience of it not someone telling them about it not someone making fun of them about it i want you to go out to dinner alone and order what you want and people like oh my gosh this feels so lonely and then i tell them does it because i want you to remember when you sat in this restaurant and they were sitting there and humiliating you does this dinner feel better because i'm guessing it does but you want to romanticize that night you were there with them but let's really talk about what that god that was so true and i i almost call it a trauma tour but i do think that for me like sort of like i would love to take some of my clients to the places that caused them the most harm i actually remember working with one person who her um her her former partner would make fun of certain dishes she cooked and she loved making them he and she and so i said you're going to make a meal of all the foods he hated and have a bunch of people over to eat it she did one person was telling me he they were the partner they had a next partner who hated films with subtitles like this is the stupidest thing and this person happened to love i know it was french films or something like that i said you need to have a french film festival and like every night you're going to watch french films but it's even little things like asking people to pay attention they'll say oh i feel so lonely in the airport or i still feel so lonely in the hotel room i'm like okay so i cuz as a therapist you kind of have to have a really steel trappy kind of mind and say i do remember two years ago you telling me how he screamed and humiliated you all the way down the concourse as you walked to your gate and then yelled at the gate agent which completely embarrassed you do you remember that now tell me how this airport experience feels like i'm actually having a really good airport experience yes you are that's the breaking the shrama bond i love it the true mature you say yeah the trauma tour like i i for people who can do so safely and i mean this and i almost shouldn't use the word trauma i think almost like the discomfort tour because i never wanted because i know for some people trauma might be physical assault and things like that might require more help to go to those places but if it was something more like psychological abuse like you were being humiliated yelled at um i remember once you know i had been in a narcissistic kind of a situation and the person really really really um just uprated me and humiliated me in this bar i've never gone back and i've driven by it and actually felt sick and i thought to go into that bar maybe with a bunch of friends and i would say to someone like let's say it was a restaurant you went to and that's the place you learned that your husband was cheating on you your wife was cheating on you that it was there that you had the conversation about um how they lied to you about this or they screamed at you i'd like to see you go back to that restaurant with your best buddies or go alone if you feel up to it but go with someone you feel safe with and have the best time it's a way to sort of feel like i'm taking my life back but all of that has to be done not in a relationship there's something very unique about the intimate relationship that pulls for all that trauma bonded stuff a lot of people don't like this guidance in fact some people have said up to my own clients they're like your therapist is a hack like you need to go out there and fall in love you need a rebound person i really don't believe it i think people have been through narcissistic relationships they that solitude is so healing this isn't about loneliness this is about you recognizing you're such a great person to spend time with and you were told for years that you're not and i and and it takes people a minute and it doesn't mean not friends i mean you want to do things with friends in fact a lot of people when their narcissistic relationships get isolated from friendships they get isolated from beloved family members reconnect with them it's almost like some of the processes you see even in 12-step programs like to make amends sometimes it's not about necessarily making amends but saying i've been terrible about being in touch i was in this abusive relationship whatever can i'd love to can we start again some people might say no like you disappeared years ago and that's part of the wound of the of the people you lose but many people say of course and you start recognizing like wow i can laugh out loud with this friend my ex person used to criticize me or tell me this friend was no good and you realize this friend always did have your back they were just trying to isolate you so they'd have more power over you so it's about taking your life back to me that time of becoming reacquainted while you're not in a relationship is where you find out that your legs can stand on their own and then when that next person comes around and says i don't like subtitles and you say well then this isn't going to work for me that's interesting um so actually as you were talking i was wondering so that restaurant thing i actually totally understand you get like the anxieties you're like driving past because it just brings up the memories and so i love to like go with your friend have a great time do you actually advise though when you're there to talk about what happened there or is it like i actually shouldn't i want you to have fun i i mean i think that you'll have an internal process of looking around and you might even think like think about it like let's say let's say this is a restaurant okay you and i are like and we're having an abusive relationship maybe during that abuse of like you screaming at me and gaslighting me and yelling at me and whatever i fixated on that tree in the corner because that's what a lot of people do and the narcissist is like just psychologically banging them up they'll often they i've seen this happen a lot the person just sort of focuses on something else and they're just sort of staring at the tree or the wall now let's see you go back to that restaurant you see that tree it may really bring up some strong feelings for you because that's the tree you were staring out of the wall or the decoration or whatever it's okay it's okay if it feels okay to talk about it talk about it it is gone that thing that harmed you that person's not in the restaurant with you anymore your feelings will not kill you they will not break you trust them to flow through you like your your memory systems are holding on to something and you can look at that tree and say i remember this and you can self-talk and say they're not here anymore they're not saying these things to me anymore i'm here i'm safe you can say those things out loud and have a friend with you there that can won't say like what are you doing who are you talking to and say like have that person be there or do it alone you know i've done that i've been in situations like no one's yelling at me right now wow this is really i'll be i would walk into an airport talking to myself so maybe people will be judging me and i'm sure they are but i've done that but in that situation who cares right you're working on yourself yeah and i'm like i'm good i'm safe no one's yelling at me now yeah and you're like wow sometimes i've even cried you know is that like catholic you're letting it go and and i've i've seen people have said like whether it's cooking all the dishes they didn't like or watching the movie they wouldn't want you to watch or just laughing with friends in a silly way or whatever celebrating on a holiday in a specific way um that you it's important not that you just do it but you stop and realize pay attention to how different it feels to be doing this without someone screaming at you humiliating you berating you and devaluing you oh my god yeah like as you're talking i remember actually it really hit me when you were saying it that there were certain clothes that my ex-boyfriend used to have a heart attack basically calling me like a because i was wearing shorts you know and things like that so of course you then don't wear them because you're like i but i love him i want him to love me too and so it's just a pair of shorts right and so that of course is never just a pair of shorts um and i actually remember when i finally broken up broke up with them being like can i wear those and it was like the hesitation yeah because he had so trained me to think you can't wear them correct and i'm so glad you brought that up because that idea of controlling what someone wears controlling their makeup and all that that's actually a really dangerous dynamic it's a very abusive dynamic a very controlling dynamic and so a if that's happening to someone someone's like you have to dress this way that to me is like 50 red flags that you're being abused number one but number two as part of that healing that 12-month process is i'm talking about you go and wear what you want yeah and you but see here's the thing lisa it's not as simple as i'm putting on the shorts i'm putting on the makeup it's paying attention to how you feel like i can wear my shorts i'm out in my shorts no one's yelling at me you've got to go through that sequence so now you're like you're creating a new neural pathway you're creating this like i'm wearing shorts and it feels so good to not get yelled at because then you're not romanticizing that's i you know i'm saying that abuse like somebody controlling me okayness you're trying to break all of that way of thinking like i love wearing my shorts or i love wearing my makeup or i love wearing these crazy hangily hanging dangly earrings all kinds of things that people are made fun of for wearing that you're out there and you're like this feels so good to wear these things that i like wearing nobody's making fun of me you have to go through that whole processing sequence it's not just about wearing the shorts it's really being mindful and talking and thinking about even if you're talking to yourself about what it feels like to do that oh my god that's so powerful and it's like is that because you're then rewiring the thoughts that you're having and then over time the more you wear the shorts you keep telling yourself that you're rewiring the narrative it feels good these things are my shoes what i want to wear this is authentically me i feel good in these you know that this is that no one's telling me what to do or how to do it it feels really really good and you take yourself back the more you take yourself back then when you meet people in the future you might focus on things like respect kindness compassion shared interests versus falling into that trauma bonded trap of i have to win them over or you know what i'm saying all the things that like that take you back to childhood of i'm not enough so i have to win this person over and there's one video i recently put out on youtube where i talk about the difference between being desired and cherished and that is a really important distinction that's worth bringing in here so to be desired is like it's love bombing it's dramatic it's it's being chased right and that's all the fairy tales people are raised on to be cherished is to be valued to be respected to have someone keep you safe to have someone be kind with you for somebody to meet you halfway or that sometimes you meet them more than halfway but they're aware of that and they meet you more than halfway it's it's to be again it's safety it's somebody holding you like this like you're so important to me right that's being cherished we are not taught to hold out for that and that's missing from every narcissistic relationship ever i'm so glad you brought that up um what is the language then because you said like you're so important to me that's actually beautiful that makes me feel cherished but even with the value i was like i don't know if i would know the difference between someone like bringing desire to make me feel valued versus bringing me making me feel cherished to feel valued it's things like it's it's respect it's um it's valuing your opinion on something it is valuing the things that you want to do even if and if they don't agree with you to disagree with you even respectfully so if you say like hey i want to go to that little christmas tree display in the town that's stupid like what are you for and you're like no like that would be fun like oh come on like let's just go to this cool thing like that's not being cherished like it's like you're you know you're my princess but i'm not going to some christmas tree thing like i'm i'll take you out to this fabulous restaurant desired like that's like you're my side piece versus if that christmas tree thing's important to you inside that person might be saying christmas everything but like they want to do that that's cherishing someone interest so is desire more physical like it's superficial it's it's still on the agenda of the desirer does that make sense desire is driven by the person doing the desiring i want you i need you i love you i i i instead of you really want to go see those christmas trees let's bundle up and go see those christmas trees you wow i never realized the difference and it's interesting though because even when you put it like that totally get it but before i heard you say that like i was like yeah i really want to be desired yeah i mean it feels good it's sexy it's hot but you're i mean i know your marriage so i can see if you don't feel comfortable yeah no no i've been in the presence of you and tom tom desires you and cherishes you both and i've seen more of the cherishing from him than the desiring there's a tremendous pride he feels in your presence so when i'm listening to tom talk with you and work three of us are together i see someone who has respect who has admiration who has kindness who has tremendous boundaries he cherishes you if he desire if you can have both well then you hit the wall i wasn't sure if the design is bad you have to have the cherishing the desire is great i mean it's fun but as the only game in town it's not going to work yeah that makes complete sense okay i'd love to start you touching it early and you said trust i actually want to talk about trust because i think that again going back to if someone is got the you know the they've listened to you they've really worked on themselves they've got out of this relationship they're looking for someone new they're they're spending the 12 months by themselves i think the trust thing is actually very important because i think so many people say like i'm so scared to get into another relationship because i'm so scared i'm going to fall back into um another relationship with another narcissist right and you hit me with like a side punch one in one of your videos where you said it's not just about trusting someone else but people have lack of trust within themselves yeah because what happens is yeah you don't feel like you could trust anyone but you trust your you mistrust your own judgment you're like i'm the idiot who let this person into my life i feel ashamed i let this person in my life so now you view yourself as the problem right you're like damn like i have no judgment and so the the fear is i'm going to make this mistake again right so i i want you the best example i can give is if your house was burglarized okay and you locked the doors and this and that but there was this one little breach so then you get out go out and you spend thousands of dollars on a state-of-the-art alarm system you got 20 cameras and motion sensors and glass breaking this and alarms that can be operated from space and all of that stuff right it's probably more than especially if you live in sort of a really kind nice suburban thing it was just a bad luck of that one window being cracked right we tend to over correct and people in narcissistic from coming from narcissistic relationships they tend to over correct they tend to put up the barbed wire fence and the walls and the fortifications and you know what i tell the people who do that initially that's fine i need you to feel that you have because i think when we say oh you're putting up too many walls i actually had that conversation with someone recently when i was sharing an experience i had they're like well you can't put up so many walls i was like the hell i can't i'll put up all the damn walls i want and that's what i tell my clients you put up all the walls you want you can put up walls you can put up fences you can put up barbed wire and what we're going to do over time is we're going to help you have trusting experiences and little coil by little coil will take some of that barbed wire down but we'll do it on your time i think that when people need to feel safe we need to help them feel safe instead of judging them it's like well you're so cynical and not trusting why they just had they just had their house burglarized and everything was taken if they want 27 alarms on their house then that's on them we don't get to judge that and so people need to do initially what they need to feel safe but i have to say that when a person even a year out of a narcissistic relationship if they're putting themselves out even if it's not even just a a romantic partnership it could be a friendship even or a workplace thing that they may throw back fish that are big enough to keep like they may over correct they may actually distance themselves from relationships that actually could have been keepers it's okay it's okay i think it's about giving yourself permission to say okay maybe i i hoisted that red flag maybe it was just a little bit light pink and i called it red it's okay when people are saying they see red flags i want to validate that experience but i've worked with clients who come off of long-term narcissistic relationships and they're very tentative like they're walking on ice and they're not sure if it's thick enough i'll say listen if you fall into icy water you're gonna die and maybe it is thick enough but i'd rather you didn't take that risk so it's a process and so i think people do learn to trust lisa they do um i've seen it happen so i've seen so many people move into healthy romantic relationships marriages amazing workplace situations amazing friendships after coming out of narcissistic relationships there's definitely a world where you do learn to trust again but there's also a learn world where you learn to set boundaries and you give yourself permission to say not okay or i'm not okay with this something that that person could never have done before the narcissistic relationship be getting lost part again that sometimes the getting lost is the only way to learn to say no i'm not doing this like this isn't okay you know or someone will be in a new relationship with someone they keep talking about an ex-partner their form and but yet otherwise they're good they're cool right they're really nice respectful they keep making this mistake and you might say i'm not okay with this so you go work on you but you bringing your ex partner into these conversations all the time something's not resolved for you i like a lot about you but this isn't working for me that for a person who's just coming out of narcissistic abuse feels foreign it's not just about the trust of the other it's about that you have the right to set a boundary and that's about trusting yourself and so does that come first you have to trust yourself before you go out and i do i think you do have to trust yourself and i think what happens is after a person's been through a narcissistic relationship they doubt their judgment right you see and i'm saying so then you don't trust yourself which is why you have to start accumulating experiences where you're like well that went well and that went well because it's very easy again that idea i was saying we tend to focus on the bad things you may have one messed up narcissistic relationship but 20 that are really working wonderful respectful kind of like you got most of the relationships in your work life are working well this was one bad thing let's try to break down what happened here but clearly your judgment's great because you have all these other wonderful relationships in your life so we also don't want people to over generalize from the one toxic relationship when they are managing to have good judgment all their others like i said we tend to internalize the blame on ourselves for the bad behavior of the narcissist as humans we move towards pleasure and away from pain how do you encourage may not be the right word but how do you i've got no other word encourage those people where you're like hey look this is about to get really bad really bad but it's going to be worth it in the end yeah i would say the word i would use a support like you're really supporting a person who goes through this is and i don't even listen i'm going to be almost cynical i don't know that i can guarantee them it's all going to be okay in the end i do believe they're going to be better off without this toxic energy in their life there was actually some interesting data that was collected by a team i work with that's based in israel as a site that calls um stuff that works and they actually collected some data on narcissistic abuse and one of the things that they found at the and on their in their data was that no contact that cutting the narcissist off completely is the technique that worked the best for people to heal like no contact like that done we're done like you uh you're not done that finding made me both really happy and really sad made me happy because i'm like okay this works it made me sad because it's a technique not accessible to many people does that make sense not everyone can go no contact for a whole range of reasons and so when you when you really really step back and think about if you've ever known someone who's difficult or toxic when they were out of your life everything got a lot easier there's no way to soft pedal that right and so not getting yelled at not getting screamed at not getting angry emails not getting angry texts not getting angry angry angry and all the other abuse and victimhood and all the other stuff they're piling on right to be away from that anyone is going to be relieved so i'll tell folks i want you to close your eyes and imagine what it would be like to not get messages from them for a week and people almost look like you think you put them on the beach in hawaii they're like oh my gosh i said okay hold that hold that feeling and then um and i'll say but this is the pathway to get get to this okay it's terrifying in some of the in many cases not some many cases people who are leaving narcissistic relationships are terrified there's a whole range of responses to downright stalking and dangerous sort of harassment and stalking all the way down to more of the like petty comments on social media narcissis the narcissistic person calling their friends and family members and kind of almost creating alliances against you it's really it can be really destabilizing for a person who goes through this and will find themselves they're afraid to look at their inbox they're afraid to even they're afraid when their phone rings because they're thinking or pings when there's a text because they're they're anxious about their social media some people go off completely because they're so scared of it it is just it's the relentlessness and someone i know once said it really astutely they said when you're having an argument with a narcissistic person or whatever it is email battle or text battle whatever they don't pause they reload it's like they just they come in and it just even more vitriol coming your way and it never ends like it's middle of the night they're doing it first thing in the morning you're just it doesn't end for folks whereas for most people we're like okay can we just let this go because that abandonment issue as as well as they lost control for narcissistic people it's really important for their ego to always be in control and the idea that someone else is calling the shots does not work for them so are there a few um i assume nothing is universal but are there a few things that someone can do in those moments because going through that journey of leaving someone that's an artist like you said can be you know absolutely painstaking is a certain advice that is somewhat universal that certain people can do in those situations so is it like um so i've heard you say don't tell a narcissist they're a narcissist never never that's a big mistake people will watch my content and say i've got the answer and i'm like no no no never because by the time it's done they would have said they would have convinced you that you're the narcissistic person because they're much better at arguing and how dare you and how dare you use a clinical term and but and people will they will either take such a relentless attack or they will doubt themselves and i'll say what's the win on this where is the because if you're doing it to intentionally hurt them that's not good for your soul to intentionally hurt anyone so don't do that if it's to say i figured you out why do they need to get the memo you figured them out make your decisions accordingly because it i've always found that when people have that call them out conversation it always makes a destabilized situation even far far worse i say listen hold on to it as your secret it's like now i have the road map now i can see this clearly i say absolutely not the other piece i tell people is that this is once you come into the revelation that these patterns are really cons well again we talked about it in the previous time i was on the show the lack of empathy the entitlement the grandiosity the arrogance the sensitivity to criticism the constant need for admiration and validation the sense of always being a victim the sense that everyone's out to get them all of those are very classically narcissistic things and patterns once you're pretty clear that this is what you're doing dealing with no matter what you do it never changes it's always the same however you say it on and on and on you're being manipulated you're being gaslighted and everything you don't need to make a decision immediately a lot of you know now that it knows i gotta go away no get your ducks in line if it's a if it's a workplace situation if it's a um divorce you're going to need documentation you need to make sure you have good financial records that many cases money is hidden in fact i'd say in a majority of cases people hide money in these kinds of situations so you need a good attorney it often doesn't always work to do this in a mediation that you actually need an attorney to do the good fight because a narcissistic person will usually try to hijack the mediation and people are so traumatized and so confused by these relationships they're really not in a good position to be their own advocate and so it's if it's a workplace situation you're going to need tons of documentation if you need to file a claim or a grievance or even get out of there and not have it hurt your career in the future so i say make sure you're getting things documented absolutely make sure you're in therapy being supported having a sounding board many people going through this have other mental health issues they're managing depressive symptoms anxiety some may turn to substances to to manage their feelings some may start developing issues around food and eating like there's a whole host of issues we may see people with existing mental health problems may have now an intensification need to be in good therapy to really walk through this to have again to get as much information as you can possibly get and then recognize it's going to be a battle i always tell people you need to write down everything there's actually a technique i give people it's called the ick list an ick as an egg but the ick list is is where you write down every bad thing that's happened in a relationship and the reason i tell people to do this is as they're getting ready to leave or the narcissistic person confuses them so much just having that list and saying when they're having a doubt like well maybe it wasn't that bad or maybe i am going to stay in it they'll read the list and say i can't i forgot this and i forgot that and i sometimes say you might even want to make that ick list with some of your closest people the ones you can trust who say oh do you not remember when he got drunk at your birthday party do you not remember that time he cheated on you when he went to vegas like did you forget these things people don't forget them but denial and the way our brain tries to almost cordon off traumatic memories often leads us to kind of conveniently push them to the side like it's a storage unit where we've forgotten what we've put there and then we're hurtling through on an incorrect set of assumptions oh so you said something i didn't want to interrupt you but how do you get your friends to say that when a lot of people if they go through a breakup they turn to their friends their friends like yeah he's terrible you need to leave him oh my god i'm so glad and then they end up not leaving them and now they almost don't talk to the friend because the friend doesn't like the partner and so how do you encourage friends to speak up in those moments remind you of those things because the fear is they're going to come back to you after and be like right oh i'm staying with them and now i'm not talking to you i'd have a very different kind of a conversation about it and i've actually known a few people who will say as the friend of the person in the narcissistic relationship if they go back i have to cut out of this friendship because i can't watch this anymore it's like watching a horror film they're like i can't watch this anymore um and you know what that friendship will come back together if and when the day comes they ever leave this person but i wouldn't make it about this is such a this is such a bad guy such a bad person make it more about the events oh the at literal episodes and even in that ich list i tell people these are about the episodes that happened in this relationship the things the behaviors not the what a bad person but the you know the um inappropriate texts with somebody at work the um you know the constant criticism of your family the [Music] making you know the leaving a really important work event where you were going to get an award early people get this stuff most people don't keep those kinds of journals and by generating that ickless and i i don't disagree with you that if you bring in your friends then you may get mad at your friends well that's something you need to work on your your friends try to do you a proper by saying i don't feel like this is healthy i don't feel like this is good healthy friendships are going to be able to withstand this they really really are they'll say okay i know that you told me this i get while you're staying i love you i'm here and we i can talk about it like good people can actually kind of be able to go shape-shift and say if this is what makes you happy i can be here for you and i shared those things with you because i observed them right i could say that i saw this happen that was not an okay thing that is very different than he's a bad guy yeah it makes such a difference 100 um in everything we're saying there's a lot of the language than um the narcissist uses and a lot of it is manipulative demeaning um how do you advise people to respond in those moments it's a great question because it's not as simple as somebody says that you get up and walk out of the room right you almost need a transitional phrase the ones i offer are kind of inane they're things like i see got it okay all right um that's hard to hear but okay and just you give a transition and say i gotta step out for a little bit or i'm just gonna i'm gonna run to the bathroom or i'm you know i think i think we're good here for now like i'm it's just you're giving a sort of a transitional sign off and get yourself out of that situation imagine you were in a room and somebody was singing swinging a sword around and slashing you up a bit and getting close to you would you stay in that room hell no you'd leave why would it be any different if somebody's saying think of it as someone's just swinging this machete or sword at you you would say i got this is not safe for me now you wouldn't may not say to someone this is not safe for me i always really encourage people watch things like your tone watch your volume don't escalate with them don't say how dare you behave none of that okay so you almost want to think like a hostage negotiator they don't start screaming at people they actually break to keep their volume really really steady okay like they're trying to talk someone down trying to talk someone out of a crisis and so you keep it steady and you say things like okay what if they've really upset you still just like taking try to get out as soon as possible like take a deep breath because what you don't want them to see is you cry oh save those tears for the bathroom save those tears for the drive you're about to take save those tears for a walk not in front of them why is that they'll weaponize them oh baby baby really you can't take a little thing i am so tired of your disgusting weakness is that what you want to hear when you're crying no no i take get out take your weakness and get out and when i say weakness i don't mean that in a bad way your vulnerability get out of that situation because i think that's the issues you don't want to serve up your pain to somebody who's going to melt it into bullets you don't want to serve up the pain to someone who's going to melt it into bullets how often do we do that and not realize it all the time all the time i think that and this is where we talk about that hope of the narcissistic relationship right i am going to show my pain i am going to sob i'm going to anguish and here's where it gets really confusing in some cases when people fall to their knees and they wail and they sob it's as though that level of if you will degradation is what the narcissistic person wants they do they want it because now it's like to them they're like you're they have contempt for your emotion they're disgusted by you but they're like ugh get up off the floor it's very contemptuous but keep in mind that for some people who are really stuck in these trauma bonded cycles with narcissistic people they may not want out so they're sobbing and wailing on the floor and like oh they didn't kick me out and you can see how this cycle of like almost like showing this almost degraded emotion this humiliating emotion in front of the narcissistic person is like their prize because it keeps you here and them here all you know the the primary motivations of these difficult relationships are the narcissistic or difficult person wants power they want control um they want everything for their own pleasure their own needs and they're almost getting a little bit of enjoyment like hahaha so weak because for them it keeps their because we talked about in that previous episode with you what the core of the narcissistic personality is inadequacy these big feelings of inadequacy and insecurity so anything that brings those inadequacies to the surface brings up a lot of shame for them when they feel shame they rage so if you're wailing on the ground and crying or moaning or sobbing in front of them their inadequacy stuff gets totally pushed into the background because now they feel strong and powerful on your back on your pain is actually being used for them as fuel for their ego that's not healthy how to then act once you realize that the person is a narcissist and you've communicated and now you want to leave yeah okay and so i'd love to actually read a proverb that you said to get lost is to learn the way yeah so i really want to start there because i feel like when people are feeling lost they almost don't know where to go yep listen think about school if the teacher just said here's two plus two here's four times eight and never made the child work the problems they'd never learn math or they if they didn't make them fill out a map this is the united states this is africa whatever they'd never learned geography at some point we have to do it now when we elevate that to adult relationships we think why did i have to i just went through this i literally got lost i got harmed i i lost people in my life i lost myself i lost my identity what was that all for and i do think in that way these terrible experiences do become a teacher i always tell people it's a balancing act right nobody should ever go out and seek out suffering like i'm gonna go get into a narcissistic relationship so i can get lost and learn something no no no no we don't want you to do that and also i think some people feel like a hurry up and heal mentality like okay i'm out of it so now i gotta heal i'm also not behind that grief and giving yourself time to sort of go through the steps regret and rumination and the things that happen after a narcissistic relationship are part of that cycle and i'm never a fan of hurry up and heal because i think some people then having been so bashed by a narcissistic relationship will say great now i'm even failing at healing there's no such thing as failing at healing okay each if you're getting up out of bed in the morning even if you're slow and even if it's later than you want you're healing because you have the courage to face down another day okay but that idea of getting lost because we all when these are in these narcissistic relationships we get lost that we've learned something the key though lisa the key above everything else is to hold on to that lesson and not naively say well that was just an exception and next time's gonna be different no no no two plus two is always four you know next time it's not going to be five it's always going to be four you've got to learn from this and it's hard because the lessons of narcissistic relationships can feel cynical they can feel painful it can feel like how can i trust anyone and it's not as black and white how can i trust anyone but you're definitely not going to trust people the same way oh okay i really want to go deep on everything you just said because it's so powerful so thinking about the person right now that is feeling lost giving them the the hope that look you can get out of it and that's why i really like that quote in the sense of look you may feel lost right now but don't worry it can be a good thing because you can learn from it you will learn from it you will get lost you will learn from it you will learn that you're a better navigator than you thought you may have had to go around that landmark six times you're like i've seen that tree before i'm gonna get out of this because to get lost and then find you'll find that idea finding the way is that you're you're learning something from this right that and that learning makes you more wise and you are able to see that no there's not something wrong with you it's not you it's really that this happens to all of us it happens to me it happens to you it happens to everybody and that if you can heed those lessons you will then come out of it saying wow now i know how to use this compass now i know how to read this map and that's actually a really there's a certain confidence that comes from that and you could not have learned that lesson unless you've gone through it so the sort of the hope message there is it's not the hope that the narcissist will get better it's not the hope that next time you know the next narcissist i'll figure it out no it's the hope is around you are a better navigator of your own life and you had the wisdom to extract the lessons from this really difficult experience okay i absolutely love that so i'm thinking about now this person is listening that is stuck in this relationship that feels lost and is now now you've just eloquently put of how they can use that to actually better their life and move forward so now i start to think about okay in communicating with somebody whether it's you know a partner that's a narcissist and saying okay i finally want to leave right and you've got the courage now you've listened to dr romney who has said you know okay this is going to be a lesson you build up the confidence you maybe have some words that you're preparing to say to them i actually want to talk about the traps that people may find themselves in because i'm the type of person if i know the traps are coming at least i'm aware of them so that when i'm in there i don't actually get trapped and revert back to the norm of i'm lost i'm a loser i'm in this relationship and there's no way out okay so let's start with talking about the five ways people get stuck in narcissistic relationships even when they're like i know this isn't healthy for me i know this isn't good for me let's talk about the five traps hope fear guilt pity and believe it or not comfort start with hope the hope is this is going to get better maybe if i wait another year maybe if we wait for them to get a promotion maybe if we make a little bit more money hope hope always almost future faking yourself right you keep moving your own goal posts and it doesn't help that they're doing it too they're like give me another year give me another six months i'm gonna go to therapy i'm gonna no they're not i just wanna highlight that frame you said it's so good future faking yourself so and that's worse than someone future faking you because now you're you're almost like falling into the same vat with them of saying i'm gonna give it this much time or maybe after no today you're gonna judge today okay so that's the hope the fear people have is the fear of being alone the fear of having to start again the fear of um doing things on their own the fear of what if i'm wrong you know what if they actually do change what if i maybe it was going to happen in six months so there's a lot of fear okay the guilt one thing we talked about in that first episode we did together is not all narcissism is the the big peacock strutting around so grandiose in some cases the narcissistic presentation is really vulnerable it's they're very socially anxious they're always a victim you always need to rescue them so people sort of feel a sense of guilt of like i'm not a mean person i'm a compassionate person i don't want to leave someone when they're down well they're always down so it's never going to be the right time but that last p that piece that comfort piece is challenging too because we really do gravitate to that which is familiar even when it's traumatic and so that idea of trauma bonding you keep having the same arguments but they're familiar arguments that's very much the trauma bond the justifying all the time the thing using sort of magical terms like i don't know it's just something i can't describe why i like them i'm like if you can't describe why you like them and you're using all this magical talk then there's something wrong here tell me why you like spending time with this person i know it's a narcissistic relationship with people like i don't know how to describe it it's just like this magic and i don't know how to describe it so you know how to describe it because it's not healthy interesting why is that can you like depressed and excited so this is it's a big part of the trauma bonding experience because it's so primal right is really someone going to say you know why i like being in this relationship because they remind me of my invalidating mother and the the the reminder of my invalidating mother is really just such an interesting place for me to work things through they ain't gonna say that right so they're gonna say i don't know how to describe it it feels sort of magical and i'm like oh god no no no magic i want to hear respect kindness compassion similar values similar interests i feel safe i want to hear that stuff okay so all of that stuff though in a trauma-bonded relationship sadly can feel like comfort because familiarity is one of the greatest comforts of all think about it you go back to a hometown even if you never want to live there again there's a comfort in knowing almost intuitively the turns and the road and all of that stuff right we are soothed by comfort it's the phrase the better the devil you know yep and then and the biggest trouble you have basically so all of that stuff keeps people stuck okay but even once people recognize that they're like no oh despite all of that i'm going to do the courageous thing i'm going to step out of this then they step out okay a couple of things happen most classically is the phenomenon of hoovering now hoovering and you know this is a bridge as a vacuum right so you know it better than americans americans are like hoovering it's it's a vacuum yeah so it's sucking someone back in and hoovering is a common narcissist tactic now not every narcissist hoover sometimes they move on into their own future thing without you but many times they do it's a power play it's a dominance play it's a way for them to feel in control it's game playing it messes with your mind it's manipulation but hoovering is when the person's left they're already struggling with the hope the fear the guilt the pity the trauma bondedness all of that and then the narcissist i don't know two months out three months out even three days out texts like hey babe i miss you or like been thinking about you and this this sort of the fantasy version that love bombing version of the narcissist sort of starts to emerge again and you think oh yeah i was yeah i was right see hope and in fact some people when they step out enjoy that sense of power of like oh if i step away from them then they become nice again and that's a trauma bond to dance in the relationship out of the relationship in their relationship out of the relationship recognizing that the narcissistic person loves games in relationships they love the chase they love the hoovering cycle so some people really can get very vulnerable to getting sucked back in and almost enjoying the having the narcissist trying to win them over well as soon as they get them back in they discard them it's like a child with a toy they don't really want they just wanted to get it away from their brother their sister right so that hoovering trap is a big one for someone to be resistant to because every trauma-bonded cell in their body is saying i want to go back you know and you have to say no no no no no it's almost like don't walk towards the light and this gets like walk the other way whatever the other way is and so that's a huge risk okay but then we have to add into that lisa things like societal pressures and this is where we talk about enabling the enablers to me in many ways are as dangerous as the narcissists the ones are like oh they're not so bad you just got to give them a chance or come on the devil you know and they'll say things that will not only attempt to sort of downgrade the harm the narcissist is doing but then leave the person who wants to step away from the relationship feel shamed foolish like they're making a mistake because that person who's leaving the relationship is already struggling with that so if the enablers are stepping in and they're saying like oh you sure you know what you're doing then there's already so much doubt in the mind of the person leaving so now those enablers pouring all this new doubt in there and p again there's a lot of shame around that like who am i to think i could step away because narcissistic abuse really undoes a person leaves them feeling like they're not enough leaves them feeling like they're they're full of self-doubt they're confused and they really start believing like who else will have me who cares who else will have you we just want to get you away from that person but the enablers can really do a number on a person as well as society you know like um we're making this episode around the holidays right and so you gotta be you can't be alone during the holidays i can't tell you how many people got stuck in narcissistic relationships for another six months because it was the holidays and they didn't want to stay leave because of the holiday and i'm like oh my gosh just go get drunk under a tree somewhere but like please don't let this be why you you you end up signing up for more so you can see that there's it's society it's enablers it's your own demons all of that colludes to make not only leaving but even walking that first block out of the relationship really really difficult i love how you frame it and then also like i would love to get some like real tactics because i'm always that person where like if i'm emotionally not feeling like if i'm feeling vulnerable i need tips and tactics to actually either do or say in those moments to not then just let my heart follow um get hoovered back in basically so i actually want to start with hope because what are the language that people say that narcissists will say to you um to bring back that hope that you can kind of um be wary of that becomes a flag so for instance i know that you've said when someone says to you like oh um don't it's never going to happen again so things like that what are the things that they're using to um trigger your hope it's never going to happen again i'm going to go get therapy give it another give me another six months this has just been a rough time the holidays are tough for me valentine's day is tough for me your birthday is tough for me my birthday is tough so keep lin linking it to anniversary dates holiday dates and say let's just get through this holiday let's just get through the summer let's just get through the fall i'm like okay we've got all four seasons so we're just going through so it's always this idea of let me get through this review at work let me get through this deadline um so in essence you're always being put on ice right that's that future faking but that's how the hope gets cultivated because they're saying like i'm aware there's an issue right so when somebody says that to you i'm aware there's an issue that fosters your hope but basically they're saying and you're not important enough for me to adjust that right now oh my god that's so true and then thinking about i know a lot of women that have been hurt and um are wounded and so they look for that in a partner because they feel needed i can help fix it yeah yeah yeah so even with with the guilt part i think that how does someone work through that that might be one of the hardest things of all to work through right because especially when you're dealing with somebody who's a very manipulative vulnerable narcissist they use their victimization as a tool like oh nothing ever goes my way and life is so unfair to me and you know i can't you know how is ever going to want to be with me now often even a vulnerable narcissist their tactics are interesting they'll even put themselves down like oh if you leave me who's ever going to want me and if some if they're with somebody and usually vulnerable narcissists are with rescuers and fixers right they're not the big flashy grandiose narcissists these are the ones who get very victim very sullen very resentful very angry and brooding and all of that that the rescuers will feel like oh god like this is this per person and so it really is the work then becomes is to say your empathy and compassion are such beautiful things however i want us to take a minute and really list all of the unhealthy patterns in this relationship because what's happening is you're basically staying in something that's noxious that's unhealthy it's almost like being next to like a chemical dump site and smelling in all the chemicals or next to someone who's smoking a cigarette or something and blowing the smoke towards you it's not good for you and so that idea of helping someone see that you can retain your empathy and compassion and you can also preserve yourself and your job on this earth is not to rescue another capable adult that responsibility lies on them wow that was so amazing thank you for that because i really do worry about those situations where people do just take it on themselves as their responsibility and you're 100 right that they'll lock it away like the phrase that came to mind is you you teach people how to treat you and that phrase really hits me and so when i think about things like that it's like you mean so well and that's the thing right people mean well right and that phrase though lisa it's tricky you teach people how to treat you because so many people were never taught how to be treated ah you see what i'm saying so i think that there's a real risk with that one because many people came from homes where they were invalidated as children where they were not valued where they had no empathy shown to them they came from family systems characterized by narcissism and antagonism and high conflict personalities so nobody taught them so this idea of they don't know how to teach someone else because they themselves don't know i'm not even going to say they're teaching people one of the key elements to remember about the narcissistic relationship it's why currently the world of mental health is not serving this group of people who's going through narcissistic abuse well we make it all about responsibility and we put all the responsibility on the person going through narcissistic abuse and they're already blaming themselves but the person who's behaving badly really is the narcissistic person right and since the world is telling this person in the relationship maybe you shouldn't leave or everyone deserves second chances or why don't you forgive they're getting that message messaging they themselves are confused they've been gaslighted they've been manipulated they think all of this narcissistic person's behavior is their fault right so you feel like that framing actually they they will take on the blame which obviously doesn't serve them correct yes so i think this idea that they have this person in the narcissistic relationship thinking that they can take all this responsibility and have all this power they actually can't and don't because this is so manipulative and even the mental health profession will say well well what's your role in this i said there this is like saying what someone's role is somebody gets punched in the face and said well does your face really need to be in the way so that's the challenge that's really really the challenge and i think that ultimately the survivor and the experiencer of narcissistic abuse will get their power back but not while they're in the toxic situation we got to get them out a little bit and and that's why therapy with somebody who understands trauma domestic violence narcissistic abuse like therapists who understand those things are often the best in the best position to work with these individuals because the focus is to not blame them but unfortunately a lot of times the conversation is about like well teach them there's not you can't eat they're they're inaccessible they cannot be taught they cannot be anything they are entirely egocentric so even if you try to teach them how you want to be treated they ain't listening because they have no empathy they don't care you're merely an object to get them what they need wow okay so it actually correct me if i'm wrong so you're saying the real healing must happen after you've left the relationship or it has to because again i always want to frame this as not everyone can leave and i don't want anybody watching this to feel like well if i can't leave does that mean i'm never going to heal absolutely not because i completely understand for reasons of money fear culture children there's reasons people feel like they can't leave and those reasons are valid i get i am very mindful of never invalidating the survivor's experience so even if you're still in it there are things that can be done towards healing the key if you leave obviously the more distance and time because i'm going to tell you girl there are people who leave these relationships and their head is as much in these relationships as somebody who's physically still in the relationship right whether you're physically in the relationship or physically out you got to get your head out of that game too right people keep giving away all of their precious mental real estate to the narcissist by ruminating by having regrets by looking at social media what are they up to is the next person getting a better version of them no there's only one version it's like narcissist 1.0 it never gets better for the survivors there's 2.0 3.0 4.0 you're going to keep evolving they're always going to be the same version the next person's going to get exactly what you got wow so do you handle then the healing and the same whether you're in or out or is it actually there's different tactics for slightly different but again it's it's really addressing things like addressing things like rumination understanding processes like grief not falling into the the sort of the vortex of what i call euphoric recall euphoric recall is remembering only the good things about the relationship oh my god yes so why do we do that that's a again it's part of the trauma bonded experience because it's the it's the justification and rationalization it actually kind of flies it goes against what our human brain is designed to do the human brain unfortunately is actually uniquely positioned to remember bad stuff more potently than it remembers good stuff that's a survival mechanism that's in our brain so you know if we remember the bad stuff that we remember that was a poisonous plant that's a dangerous ravine there's a tiger over there like we need to remember those bad things so we don't die right so there's an evolutionary piece to that and in fact a lot there's actually a guy named rick hansen who wrote an amazing book called buddha's brain and does a lot of work in this area and he often says like one of the some of his work is on how do we almost retrain the brain to remember the good stuff well in people who've gone through narcissistic relationships this is where the trauma bond creates this interesting hiccup they'll remember bad things about other stuff like being alone but they'll remember the good stuff about this narcissistic relationship it's often an artifact of childhood so for people who had narcissistic or invalidating or high conflict environment childhoods kids really don't have options so they have to tell themselves stories and give themselves rationalizations that somehow this mess that's floating around them is okay well mommy really loves me she's just really busy and daddy really loves me because remember that one day he took me to throw baseball after 200 days of yelling at you you know so they the child has to mine those those good experiences out of it to survive right well that experience and jumps into adulthood that's that trauma bond it's a long-term experience and so in adulthood the more toxic the relationship the more the trauma bonded person says like well we had that great night in miami or they did get me that nice present that won christmas 30 years ago you know and then they will forget all the abuse yelling and validation gaslighting infidelity lying whatever it is and that's why one of the things i do with people as part of their healing journey is i have them make a list i've colloquially called it the ich list i don't know i call it something else but it's like ick and i said i need you to write down every terrible thing they did to you and if you can't remember it all i need you to call friends i need you to go through your calendar i need you to look up anniversary dates i need every bad thing written down and some people are like i don't want to do this this makes me sick and i said it makes you sick because we're cutting the trauma bonds you have to this is like putting up an ugly mirror in front of you and saying this is what this relationship was and every time you want to go into that euphoric recall i need you to look at that list how would you then start to break it down afterwards because the thing that i worry about is that people then stay there because they're like okay now i've protected myself right i actually don't get dinged anymore right so i'm gonna keep these walls up for the rest of my life because they've worked for me no because they aren't because now you're not in the world anymore right one day you're like it's almost like you're looking out of your barbed wire castle and saying well they seem to be having fun out there and i'm not in the fun right so it's it's the doing it's go so it's starting with small experiences maybe you go to a friend's birthday party and you and your friend has some friends there that you don't know and you have a conference it's a safe place it's your friend's birthday party right it has a finite beginning and a finite end and you have a conversation with somebody new and they tell you admit some maybe just a friendship right they tell you about i don't know their job or their car or this new appliance they bought that you're thinking of getting and you have that conversation this is why journaling becomes important because then you might even write down like met this new person today had a really cool conversation about i don't know an air fryer i really enjoyed it i turns out they're from the same town as my grandmother like and i didn't feel scared a little bit of the barbed wire comes down that day right it's a slow process and it does mean that you're right you can't sit forever behind the barbed wire but i don't know that most people want that i think what they want though initially is permission to erect it so that they can slowly take it down over time do you think they need permission to break it down as well yeah i think so too like to say it's okay and some people say i don't know i don't want to meet new people i'm like i'm going through my own difficult time in my life right now so if somebody right now said to me come to come to a party meet a bunch of people in fact a dear friend of me asked me to come to a christmas party the middle of the month and it's an active will for me to go to this i know there'll be many people there i don't know and i'm so i'm really wrecked right now i'm just going through a tough time and um but i said come hell or high water romney you've got to go to that christmas party i don't care if this person happens to live in an absolutely beautiful place too like there's a beautiful view so if i'm feeling overwhelmed i know i can look out to the view and all of that and there's one very very important friend of mine there who i know i feel very safe with her sometimes all it takes is one person as long as i know she's in that room somewhere and i can get her eye contact i'll feel okay but and i know if after an hour i'm overwhelmed i'll leave um but i think it's the doing so that to me it's an active will i'm like and there's one thing that might throw it off that night but i say even if you show up at nine or ten o'clock at night for 20 minutes you are showing up so you do have to say it doesn't mean i'm gonna walk out of there with a new friend but it's that idea of trusting myself enough that i can go so these are baby steps they're baby steps and so how do you know they're in those moments where you're like actually i'm putting myself in a situation that makes me feel uncomfortable right so i actually shouldn't be putting myself in this situation you know i'm not going to go to the party because i know it's going to hurt right so the thing is here like i said one safe person so if this was somebody said come to this event where you don't know anybody oh hell no there is no way like somebody for a lot of people i know i can say for myself you know a lot of people say no if i can can i bring someone can so figure out a way to make it seem safer and then also give yourself that escape clause like it's okay if i leave after 20 minutes like there's no problem because you probably won't having all that safety having the friend saying 20 minutes is fine you might just find yourself by the time you have your beverage by the time you have your snack by the time you talk to a few people now it's an hour maybe it's two hours you're like oh that was fine and so i think that it becomes a it's almost like working out you're like i'm gonna not everyone wants to go to the gym not everyone wants to do their workout and say this is my workout i'm gonna go and i'm going to sometimes i even say start with silly small things like you go to the market the grocery store and you actually say to the the cashier like how's your day been and they're like oh they usually be quite surprising oh that day's been okay okay great are you enjoying the holiday season they're safe people because that whole interaction's gonna take two minutes you get in you get out but you got to flex that sort of social muscle there's lots of ways you can do it in low stakes settings hmm i think that's really yeah the low stakes settings and i love that you have a game plan i'm that's exactly what i'm all about because i can't get out of my own head very often so it's like i need a game plan so just like you said it's like okay i know there's going to be one safe person there i know there's going to be a view that if i get over anxious i like looking at it i like looking at it i've given myself permission to be able to leave absolutely in 20 minutes you don't have to stay like that is so beautiful to allow people because you're 100 right many of us can't don't want to go to a certain and then when you're there you're like oh my god this is this was great and what was i worried about because you get in your own head yep that's right that's right and you know again you're 20 minutes in you're like this is horrible get it leave and then you learn and say what was so horrible did you push yourself too fast on that night were there people there that were making you uncomfortable was it all couples and you were the only person alone so that means next time assassin event you go to maybe needs to be more of a mixed crowd are you are you not as good at night maybe your social event will be better for you during the day like pay attention again this is where you're not doing this in a vacuum writing things down journaling is not just today i had eggs for breakfast and i feel sad that's not it at all it's really looking at these accumulated experiences and saying tonight i went to a get-together i didn't want to go but then that one person who was talking about their trip to antarctica that i've always wanted to take that actually ended up being i learned so much from that person and it was really nice to talk to somebody and actually not feel scared that's a baby step so it could be even things like um uh make up make a note in a journal of a successful social experience you had that day just one i greeted the post the person delivering the mail and asked them if they're having a good day i went to my sister's house and i met her neighbor and we had a great 20-minute conversation um i we i was in the office was when our first day's not remote and i actually went in and was able to catch up with the receptionist it could be the biggest or smallest things but you can see that like okay i'm not this barbed wire person i actually am kind of in the world but i also am continuing to keep myself safe but i think it's easy for a person to say oh i'm so closed off to the world i'm like no you talk to the post person you talk to your sister's friend you talk to the receptionist at work it's a process so i think sometimes when you can see that cumulated progress like i actually did talk to someone every day i did have a nice conversation every day where i wasn't totally on guard you start to realize that you you're not you don't have to pathologize yourself as this closed off untrusting person but it's the um instead of calling it untrusting maybe we can use words like wise or being willing to honor my instincts or acknowledge red flags i mean i'm the first person lisa who will be willing to leave a dinner party if i'm offended by people's antagonism like and it's been a long time since we've had those gatherings but i will say it's been like you know what i'm so sorry and i'll make up a white lie like i have a call from someone i've gotta jump where i'm having a stomachache to get myself out like that's something for me in the years after different episodes of narcissistic abuse to give say you're allowed to set the boundary to get out i'm not good like to give you a personal example i'm not good at setting direct boundaries with a person but i am good at pulling myself out of unsafe situations and so that's where i practice my boundary setting and then over time i've gotten a little bit better at setting it with other people directly but that's still more of a challenge so at least i'm learning to say okay romney you may not be able to like boom set this line in the sand with this person but that doesn't mean you have to sit here quietly and endure an uncomfortable situation you can give yourself permission to leave and it ain't your job to school that person anyhow love that because that's the thing like we just get even we get in our own heads well i can't do this oh i can't leave i can't defend this person um and it's funny because like when you're just like yeah and i'll just tell a little white lie like i love how you're just like look if i'm if this is toxic i will get out of it even if i have to do the little lie and i don't want to hurt someone like i don't want to say i hate your friends and that's why i'm leaving your dinner party because that's the truth yeah right you know these are the most horrible people i've ever met rather it's to say oh i mean again as a psychologist you always have an out like i'm so sorry i have this client having this emergency and i really want to go deal with this my child needs me you know and then some do me feel less guilty i'll call my kid on the way home like how are you doing like why are you calling us you're supposed to be at dinner but um it's uh yeah i mean i don't wanna because i think that to me the alternative to say i think your friends are hateful people not great and then next time they invite me to that party those people will be there i will just say no from the junk you know again honoring that boundary for myself instead of saying i'm going to white knuckle this and show up to something i that i know will not feel good yeah i love that i love how you set boundaries and it's just so clear so beautiful um one thing i heard you talk about that i really want to go into is revenge so once you've left a relationship talk about revenge yeah it's a revenge to me is not meant to be like i'm gonna stalk you i'm going to publicly humiliate you i'm going to you know i'm going to set you up no it's i am not a fan of vindictive revenge i am a fan of revenge through you succeeding as well as you can and that doesn't mean you have to go and start your own company or you have to go and save the world it could literally be that your revenge is you found your bliss you found your happiness you found your rhythm you got the cat you always wanted or the dog you always wanted or took the night class you always wanted to me revenge is you taking yourself back because what the narcissist wants to see either a they don't care what happens to you or b they'd like to see that because you know a lot of people do after narcissistic relationships especially on social media they'll be like uh you know it sure is hard to spend saturday night alone like they'll be the people leaving those relationships will sometimes sort of like sort of in an unskilled way but like is there anybody out there and i'll say either don't post anything at all or if you feel the need to post something say like i'm so excited because i'm going to be watching my favorite movie tonight or you know i just watch this show and would love you know like you're in your life and and that sometimes that revenge does come through you succeeding brilliantly but it has to be something for you if you can think of revenge as you being your best self that shuts everybody down so it's not about the other person that literally is about you it's about you that's how you get it and so it's a very did because i always say to a person you want to stick it to a narcissist succeed that's it you stuck it to them because now their whole narrative is you're a loser and the only way anything's going to happen if you stick close to me or in fact i'm getting rid of you because you're a loser right that's there there's this contemptuous like pushing people away but narcissistic people are very interested in successful people so if you become successful now they can't have you anymore there's a little bit of revenge there i mean i can't tell you how many people when i set out to start my own business don't be silly who leaves academia that's ridiculous what are you doing worked out god i love that and like one of my favorite quotes is um the best revenge is unmitigated success now whether it's success in yourself exactly but it's so true in the sense of i used to think about my ex and being like i'm going to show him yes but it was very toxic right it was the it was dark energy um until i was like you know what and other people have definitely stabbed me in the back and the people that have not necessarily in a relationship but have very much done me wrong and they know it and i know it there's no secret they definitely served me in the back very openly and i was so angry so vivid that's normal and then in that moment though like after like a day later i was like okay i know this anger doesn't actually serve me and putting it towards them actually doesn't serve me to get better and only actually fuels them because they know they got to me and so now actually my reaction is exactly what it is exactly so it's the anti-revenge yes it's a yes like you're literally saying you know you're serving it up on this platter to them yeah and so in that i i then had to work on myself of letting go with the of the dark energy but actually leaving just enough yeah to push myself to be freaking unstoppable oh yeah you know i i've tell i've told this story there was one somebody i had worked with super narcissistic person very disrespectful very unkind and i talked about this i think in a video too basically the person was you know their their take on me was i entered a position you know after graduate school and i wasn't done with what's called my dissertation it's like our big final piece of work to get our doctorate it's a pretty monstrously large demanding piece of work that you can sometimes take years and so i took this position and he said and he's like oh so when are you going to get your dissertation done and i'm like oh i hope to get it done by january and he's like that's a joke there's no way someone like you is going to get it done by january it's like mean so and he was such a mean guy it was mean to everyone but it was such a mean thing lisa i said i don't care if i don't sleep for the next four months i am getting that dissertation done january 17th of that year i defended that dissertation was a brilliant defense it went swimmingly i had the most amazing committee of people who who evaluated my dissertation and then on january 18th i went into work and he's like oh hey romney i'm like that's dr devasa i kind of got in trouble for saying for more conservative time but i oh hell no i was not going to let that man i and you know what in a sick twisted way he did me a favor because i it lit a fire under me and i think every time someone told me no for the longest time i internalized that into my identity you're a loser you're nothing you're never going to amount to anything you're no good you're not enough that's the messaging of my whole life there was a turning point for me i think the accumulation of narcissistic abuse got too much i thought how dare you and i think things had to happen in my life i had my children like i think major in some ways having two daughters really pushed me to become like you know like wonder woman basically i'm like you know what i now have to defend myself not for me but for them and for them i'll always take the fight and so i think that emboldened me in a certain way but i'll tell you that so many people so many especially narcissistic people you can't do that or you're not going to be able to pull that off or that's ridiculous and so then it just became sit down put your head down get it done and and then i got lost in the project it's i stopped becoming about the revenge when i was deep in that dissertation i wasn't thinking like i'll show him i'll show him i'll show him i was like now i'm in it and the process carried me and then i was done you know that's what i was going to say actually where is that fine line and the difference between you're doing it just to get revenge versus you're actually using it as fuel to get the life you want it won't work for revenge because after a week you'll burn out oh okay yeah you have to want it you have to wonder so the thing got you started it gave you the push to be like this is your deadline yep and then you're in and then you're in and it's something you don't want to do it's not going to work lisa it's not going to work like i said it can't be linked to outcome it can't be i'm going to write a book and it's going to be a bestseller like forget the bestseller part get the words under the paper that's it that's that's a book the best seller part does not make a book a book makes a book oh god i love that and then so going down just like to put a cap on the revenge thing so let's say um or how do you know then when you need to stop focusing on the things that they've said to you in the past and kind of like let go because it seems like holding on to that yeah keep trying to prove it to themselves even if it's something that you want can just keep getting toxic and hold on to the wound that's right so i think that it is to the the idea of getting like the revenge being the success is that you were told for so long you can't you won't you don't have the ability you're too dumb the best way to break out of that mindset is to actually do something it's something called self-efficacy self-efficacy is this idea that we believe we can do something so most of us have self-efficacy for simple things like we know how to boil water we know how to brush our teeth right it's as we level up to things self-efficacy like can i run a mile can i um you know can i write a dissertation can i write a book can i make this deadline can i finish this degree um you know can i bake a pie i mean it's that sell can i prepare a dinner for four people all of those things if you have self-efficacy you believe you can do it you can do it you'll do it ma it may not someone else may not think it's a great dinner but you believe you've made dinner so you'll do it again self-efficacy is a call to action so that's why it's important we do things because sometimes we're like i don't know how to do that then we do it like that wasn't so bad now i've got efficacy for that right so that's a big part of if the narcissistic person lays down the gauntlet and is mean to you and says you can't do it then you do it you're like i can do this your efficacy building now i understand what you're saying is the holding onto it i think things like the efficacy building having experiences succeeding in whatever ways you're succeeding even if it just means getting it done i do believe that that starts you start caring less about the narcissist and you're like oh i can do this thing and you get more focused on the doing it i tell people all the time my goal for everybody in healing from narcissistic abuse is indifference i'm not looking for forgiveness i'm not looking for you to become friends i don't even think that's a good idea indifference you just don't care you don't care if they live you don't care if they die you don't think you care if they succeed you don't care if they fail you don't care if they're sick you don't care if they're well you don't care they're just and so when somebody comes up and says you're not going to believe it such and such is sick you're like you might be almost like you know you've come past this we're like oh okay um maybe you'll say like oh that's a shame they've got kids but you're saying it the same way you would if you read a newspaper article like what a shame this lady is sick and she has kids the same level of indifference like you're sad like that's a sad story but that lady in the paper is a stranger to you so you have the same level of reaction that indifference to me when i see it in people i'm like my job here is done you got it so when a guy on a date says i'm not looking for anything serious you can trust that he's either a definitely not looking for something serious or he thinks that there's a very good chance that he's going to end up hurting you

Channel: Lisa Bilyeu

Views: 1,000,615

Keywords: Dr. Ramani Durvasula, Narcissism Expert, Clinical Psychologist, Lisa Bilyeu, Radical Confidence, Women of Impact, female empowerment, empower women, narcissists, borderline personality disorder, narcissistic, covert narcissist, narcissistic abuse, what is a narcissist, narcissistic behavior, how to deal with a narcissist, narcissistic mother, signs of a narcissist, narcissistic relationship, narcissistic people, gaslighting, how to deal with gaslighting

Id: S-CLDu_bp1k

Length: 154min 30sec (9270 seconds)

Published: Sun May 15 2022