Are you dealing with a covert narcissist? Did you know that in some ways they are actually
the most dangerous form of narcissist? Yep, it's true. So stay tuned to find out why covert narcissists
can be the most dangerous form of narcissist and what the warning signs are. Hi, I'm Rebecca Zung, top 1% divorce attorney
and the bestselling author of the books Negotiate Like You Matter and Breaking Free: a step
by step divorce guide. And I've helped thousands of people just like
you go from lives of drama, trauma and chaos, to step into lives of freedom, possibility
and purpose. And I give all my tips and tricks right here
in these videos. So make sure you hit that subscribe button,
hit that notification bell so that you can be notified every time I upload a brand new
video. Now, if you are dealing with a covert narcissist
or any kind of narcissist, whether they're overt or grandiose or malignant or covert
is what we're going to be talking about today, or a combination of any of the kinds of narcissist,
then you're dealing with a hellish personality, a heinous personality. But there are some things about covert narcissists
that can make them even more insidious than the other types of narcissists. And for those of you who have watched my other
videos, which you will want to check out on covert narcissism in relationships and the
covert passive aggressive narcissist, and I'll drop links to those below. You know that I have a personal experience
with dealing with covert narcissists, not as husbands, but as people who were close
to me, who I became the target of these heinous creatures. So this is the kind of narcissist that I personally
disdain the most. So in some ways, this is like my PSA, my public
service announcement to warn you, to warn you against this personality type and what
to look for in this personality type. So one of the things that you should know
about covert narcissists is that they are a hundred percent narcissist. So they have what Dr. Craig Malkin calls the
Triple E, which is that they exploit, they feel entitled, and they lack empathy. So they still are all a hundred percent narcissist,
like all narcissists are. And the other little dangerous thing about
covert narcissists is that they can sometimes be grandiose narcissists that act covert,
which is confusing too. Sometimes these different types of narcissists
actually vacillate back and forth between the various signs of the types of narcissists
they are. But what I'm going to be talking about today
is actually more of your pure covert narcissist, which is the kind that I've actually had to
deal with and why I think that they're so dangerous because if I could be fooled then
anybody can be fooled. And I really just had to literally work these
people out of my life in the last year, and it was not easy and they still try to pop
back up and pop back in because that's what narcissists do. They never really let go. They never really move on completely. Sometimes it can be years before they pop
back up again, but you can minimize it and protect yourself in a lot of ways. And that's why I'm doing this video because
I want you to know the signs of abuse. Okay? So the thing about covert narcissists is that
they don't look on the surface like regular narcissists. Regular narcissists, what I call the garden
variety narcissist is more of your grandiose varietal that goes around telling everybody
how great they are all the time. Covert narcissist don't do that. And that's one of the things that I think
is so dangerous about them is that on the surface they appear very nice. They appear like good people. Lots of people love them. They can be politicians, they can be clergy,
they can be lawyers, doctors, they're often in positions of respect because of course
they're narcissists. They want and they feed on that respect. Remember that the narcissist actually has
no inner sense of internal value. They get all of their sense of value from
the external. They need endless amounts of what we call
supply, which is anything that feeds their ego, anything that feeds their external value
or their feeling of external value. So supply can be in the form of money, compliments,
prestige. Anything that they think is going to give
them more value. So here's the problem with a covert narcissist
and one of the things that is so dangerous about them, is you're not going to hear them
say, "I'm the greatest. Look at my ratings. Look how fantastic I am. I'm so smart. I'm the number one this. I'm the number one that," without anything
to back it up. They just go around saying all those things
because they feed on that, they need to have it, okay? So what a covert narcissist is more likely
to do is put themselves in positions where they're going to get all of that, but they're
not actually going to have to say it overtly. And so we're told that narcissists are brash,
braggadocious, loud, assertive. Well, the thing is that covert narcissists
don't come in that format. They're usually much nicer. They start off by giving you lots of things,
that their version of love bombing is often being the perfect person for you, they can
put you in positions that you want to be in, or give you speaking engagements that you
think that you want, or introduce you to the person that you want to be introduced to,
or they're the perfect cook or the perfect mother or whatever it is that you want. This person just seems so nice and so wonderful
and yes, malignant narcissist can do that too. But the difference with covert narcissist
is that they don't come off that way, where they're loud and braggadocious and flashy. They come off as really nice, sometimes even
quiet, sometimes passive, sometimes demure. So that's one of the things that I think is
super dangerous about covert narcissists. One of the other things that I think is really
dangerous about covert narcissist says is that they come off looking very successful
often on the surface. And grandiose and malignant narcissists can
do this too. But grandiose narcissists come off as super
ambitious, super successful, whereas the covert narcissist is often, they make it look like
they've had that sort of success. But if you look just beneath the surface,
they haven't actually gotten that success. And so they have a lot of bitterness and resentment
about the fact that everybody else has more success than they do, and that their failures
are other people's faults because something happened with their business, or this person
sabotage them in some way. Or maybe they were just getting going and
they had to close their business, so they had to move or something happened. And so they have all of these failed ambitions
and feeling of emptiness and they often have a tremendous sense of depression and emptiness. And sometimes they'll even tell you that they
have bouts of depression, but they don't tell you it's because of their failures in business. They'll tell you it's just that they have
these afflictions. Because one of the other things about covert
narcissist says is they often are very good at playing the victim. All narcissists do that. But the way covert narcissists do it is that
they're sad and people aren't treating them well and they just didn't get a good lot in
life and the world is unfair to them and so they end up feeling depressed and empty and
they often have sicknesses so that they can get sympathy from people around them, garner
lots of pity from people. "Oh, so and so's always getting a bad deal." There's a lot of payoff sometimes for being
a victim and a covert narcissist thrives on that pay off from being the victim. So the other thing about covert narcissists
that I think is super dangerous is that they're super passive aggressive. And this is the one thing that really was
very confusing for me and the two passive aggressive narcissists that I had to deal
with, the covert ones, is that they would do these little things that on the surface
would seem so nice. "Oh, here I did this for you." But while they're there doing this thing for
you, they're crossing a boundary or they don't do something that they say they're going to
do, and then when you ask them about it, it's, "Oh, I forgot," or "Oh, I misunderstood you,"
or "Oh, we had a conversation about that, remember? And we decided to do this." And it's absolutely not something that we
decided to do, but it's them trying to make an excuse for behavior that they know has
been hurtful to you. And so they try to get you to say that basically
you went along with that. And it's little things. It's that little drip, drip, drip on your
forehead, little things. In Debbie Mirza's book, The Covert Passive
Aggressive Narcissist, she gives an example of a husband would go into Starbucks to get
coffee and the wife would stay in the car and the husband would say, "Do you want anything?" And she'd say, "Yeah, I'll have a vanilla
latte," or whatever. And he'd get back in the car and start to
drive away. And she'd say, "What happened to my latte?" And he'd say, "Oh, I forgot to get it for
you." But then he wouldn't go back in to the place
to get it. And it was a little thing. If you tell somebody, "Oh, I didn't get the
latte that I wanted," then you come off sounding petty and you start to think, "Well, do I
blow up a whole marriage over that? I mean, that seems so ridiculous." But what they're really trying to do is send
you this message, send you this message that they think so little of you or that you're
not worthy in some way. Because that's how narcissists get supply. They get supply by building themselves up
and cutting you down. And so they do these little tiny things that
in the surface if you tell somebody about it, it just doesn't seem like that big of
a deal. Very, very passive aggressive and it can leave
you feeling confused and after a while abused and actually traumatized because of the way
they act. And if this is sounding really familiar to
you, give me a totally in the comments. Is it, they're a hundred percent narcissist,
but they are really, really good at being manipulative. Very good at hiding their manipulation. Very good at disguising it as something else,
disguising it as, I just did this little thing for you, and the hair on the back of your
neck is standing up, that's not something nice. One of the things that I've heard during this,
I'm taping this while we're still in this global pandemic is that the covert narcissist
in people's lives are leaving food by the door. And you know that that's a message of I know
where you live or I still have control over you or I know what you want, but the rest
of the world is like, "Oh, the person left you a care package. How is that bad? Why is that?" Well, we all know that the person is so nice. We all know that the person is such a good
person. So what's your problem? And so while they're lining up their flying
monkeys and they're telling everybody how wonderful they are or how long they've been
by you. Because oftentimes you actually look like
a stronger person because they've put themselves in this light of being the nice, caring, kind
person. So you obviously must be the one that is wronging
them in some way and you almost feel paralyzed to, how do you even right that wrong of what
people are thinking about you? And the way I've just come to deal with it
is number one, I have major boundaries. I do not look at what these other people are
doing. I don't look at their social media, I've blocked
them on my social media so that they can't see what I'm doing and continue to have access
to what I'm doing. I don't want them to think that I'm interested
in what they're doing at all because I'm not, I just want to look forward, not back. I don't want their energy in my space. I don't want to even be thinking about them,
when one of them pops into my mind, I pivot immediately because the way I look at it is
if I'm thinking about them, then I am not in creation mode. I'm not helping people. I'm not doing things like making these videos
and helping you guys so that you can look forward also and concentrate on your now and
the rest of your life and creating an incredible future. And so I just learned how to pivot and create
major boundaries because I don't want these people in my space and you shouldn't have
them in there either. So if you have to continue to co-parent with
them or you have to continue to live with them in some way, then figure out a way to
protect yourself so that when they do these things, you're no longer going to be sucked
into it, and certainly do not let them see you be upset by their behavior, because then
they know that they have you. Then they know that they still have this little
modicum of control over you. So here comes more, here comes more. So you know the less you can interact, the
more you can show that you aren't interested and you direct your energies elsewhere, then
that vibrational energy of connection that you still have with that person will eventually
peter off and hopefully eventually die. So if you are dealing with a covert passive
aggressive narcissist in your life, they can be the most dangerous kind of narcissist because
they are the most sneaky, the most insidious, the most stealth. And in some ways the most toxic because of
how good they are about hiding their narcissism and being under the radar. And so if that is you, I'm sending you blessings,
I'm sending you light from one survivor, thriver, to another. You can do this. Just follow the light, get them the hell out
of your life and look at your now and look forward. And if you are dealing with a covert passive
aggressive narcissist or any kind of a narcissist and you're getting ready to negotiate with
them, then you must download my free crush my negotiation prep worksheet. The link will be below. But if you just go to winmynegotiation.com
it will be all yours. And if you liked this video, give it a like,
give it a share. Drop me a comment, let me know that you were
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your best life. And I'll see you in the next video.
