Hello. My name is Jessica night and welcome to the relationship recovery podcast. I have gotten a bunch of questions on narcissism since posting the last podcast on the difference between emotional abuse and narcissism. So for the next few weeks, I'm going to go through. Some qualities of a narcissist, like what that will look like in your relationship.

And so this may seem like a little bit of a diversion from some of the stuff that we've talked about it. And you know, this podcast has really been meant to educate that. Also give you some tactics on what to do, but sometimes it can be really helpful and validating just to understand, you know, what you're going through is textbook.

You can basically like, right. The local little check marks next to some of the behaviors and that a lot of people feel the way that you do. And I know for sure when I was going through this, I definitely could have listened to a podcast like this, like all day, you know, I could have just, you know, gone through it like this today is going to be the first one.

And then there's probably going to be, you know, five or six more I would have just probably went through all of them. Cause I would have been wanting to understand what this looked like and felt like. And so that's what we're going to do is to try and break this down a little bit more so you can understand.

But before I get into that, I want to make something clear that if you are, if you're worried that you're in a relationship with a narcissist, I want you to remember that he or she can have narcissistic qualities without being a narcissist. They can have, there can be some things about them that are narcissists.

But they don't have to have all of the qualities to be diagnosed. They have to meet nine, uh, five of the nine criteria. But a lot of narcissists don't go to therapy because they don't believe that they need therapy. So it's not your job to go around and decide like this is a narcissist or is not a narcissist.

I'm inviting you to listen to these, you know, to listen through this, to just ask yourself, Are these qualities present in my relationship because all, everything I'm going to mention today is abusive. Okay. All right. So today I'm going to go through five and I'm going to talk about just five things that come up in a narcissistic relationship.

Five characteristics of the narcissist. They criticize a nitpick and demean you, they don't empower you. They don't give constructive criticism as a way to help you. They throw nuggets at you rather than wisdom to almost like double your efforts to have to please them. And so if you're with a narcissist, what will typically happen is, you know, you, you.

Be dressed a certain way and they might comment about it. You know, they may comment about what, like, oh, if you just word this or if you're just did that, you know, or they, they might treat you differently. If you're not, if your makeup isn't done perfectly or on the days you are adult up and stuff, they may just treat you with more respect than normal.

So it also happens like if you had a bad day, if you had a bad day and you're stressed, And you are worried and maybe like really stressed out about your job or maybe the, what will come next. They typically don't continue to, they don't lift you up. They kind of continue to shoot you down. It can feel like it's a personal attack on her character.

And often they focus on irrelevant things. Like they may even talk about something. Really has nothing to do with the issue at hand. But the important thing in this one is to be mindful. If you feel nitpick to not empowered somebody that is empowering, you would say something like, I know that I know things are going to be okay.

I know that this sucks right now, or even like, you know, I know you don't feel like your best today. Like, I promise you, like you're shining is always right. Like they would say things that would help you feel better, not help, not kind of cause you to feel worse.

this one kind of piggybacks on the second one I wanted to touch on today. And is that nurses give unsolicited advice, especially in situations where it's inappropriate to do so or matters that you've made. Or none of their business,

they do this because giving unsolicited advice enable the toxic person to feel in control. Most of their unsolicited advice is usually not really even helpful. It just doled out in a way and thrown at you as a way to distract you from your own thoughts and your own progress. That being said, you don't actually have a pretty good example for this.

Um, I was in our relationship and this was the first relationship I've ever been in with being a single mom. I've dated other people, but I've never, this was the first person I introduced my daughter to an early on in the relationship, even before he met her, he would give me like some advice. And at first it came on, it came and he's not a parent, but it would come off the tails of like looking, watching YouTube videos and finding resources.

I was like how to manage different kinds of behaviors. And I thought it was so helpful and I was so grateful until if I didn't do any of those things or if I didn't watch it, or if I didn't want the advice, because it wasn't aligned with my parenting. He would use that against me. There were a lot of times where he would kind of bring that up about me not wanting to try or something like that in a disagreement that had nothing to do with my.

And so this whole time I would kind of cut to the chase of like, this is none of your business, my daughters, my business, I was super protective over her. I mean, I'm always going to be, but like, even in this, I was very protective, but when I would tell friends some of these examples and just say, Hey, am I just like, not seeing this right.

They'd be like, oh my God, what he has no. Right. It's your kid. And. This happened in areas of work. This even happened in my coaching business of how many clients I should be taking and not taking and what things I should do and not do. And you know, it was like, or you should take, you should do this with your time or you need breaks.

That was another one was, it was constantly about me needing rest and breaks. But what I realized in time was that it was never about me. The brakes were never about really wanting me to rest. The brakes were always about the fact that he didn't want to work at night. He's definitely somebody that even if he worked like three hours that day, he still signed off at five and didn't want to feel anything or any shame because his work ethic did not align with mine.

My job requires me to work with. I like working at night. I work at night. I, you know, I have time during the day. I also take clients during the day. My life is different than other people's, but it's like, when it didn't look like what he wanted his to look, I got all this unsolicited unsolicited advice that really was none of his business.

My work schedules, my business. If you notice that I'm like slipping or that I really need rest and I'm not getting it, there's a much more. There's a much more empathetic way to go about that. Like, I love you. I care about you. I think you need like a little bit of rest. Is there anything I can do that can help you get like a night off?

That's one way to say it not, you need rest. You're not taking breaks. I don't know why you're still working,

which you know, for me, a lot of times I'm in a joyful space when I'm working, which brings me to the third one that they enjoy raining on your. They don't want to see you successful toxic people like bringing little Tempus of D of the like derogatory comments. Whenever they see that you're proud of yourself or feeling especially happy.

And this is usually because they are envious of you. This is, this is a key point. We mentioned on last episode that a narcissist narcissism is rooted in shame. And if that's true, then like they are probably constantly envious and jealous of you. If you get a grant, if you reach a milestone, if you run a PR, if you take a day off, if you go on a vacation, if you, I mean, or just having a great day for whatever reason, and there are.

They will rain on the parade. They will have a bad day. They will find a way to make you feel bad about it rather than lift you up.

the next one I want to talk about is about how they play devil's advocate. I hate devil's advocate and I'm like, I have a friend that sometimes like, if I go to him with an issue, he'll be like, Like just to play devil's advocate for a second. I'm always like, no, like shut up. Like, I, I don't, I don't give a shit about devil's advocate.

Let's talk about the issue at hand, but a narcissist will tend to do this in regards to issues that are deeply personal to you, and that touch your core values, like your belief systems, your life experiences, your moral code. They might try and dismiss trauma that you've gone through by arguing that it's not really trauma at all, or you didn't have it that bad, or you don't have it that bad right now, but get into useless conversations about whether everyone should have equal rights and whether proven facts are actually legitimate.

If this is not done with any intention to adding to the. But to revoke you for pure sense of security and your reality, and sort of shake you up a little bit. So you have no idea what's going on. It's really hard, you know, and if you go to them with an issue, a personal issue, explain your personal issue.

They will play devil's advocate, even though it's really not their space to do that.

The copy, your mannerisms, your work, your behavior. And in this context, imitation is not a form of flattery because they do it so that you feel like a part of you is stolen. They are identity thieves, and they steal facets of your personality. They're always watching. Does he, what other attributes they can take?

And this is because they live in St. Shame. They have no core sense of self. So they prepare, prefer to mimic the qualities. They know that make you likable victorious, but often the sense of being rooted in jealousy and chain, which will then end up leading to them lashing out or blaming in some way.

And I actually will talk about one more because when a narcissist doesn't like what they hear when narcissist doesn't like what they see you and nurses feels envy. When the nurses feels shameful, they tend to rage excessively, especially when challenged. This is to feel their sense of superiority. It's called narcissistic rage and it occurs when a person feels slighted or when they've lost country.

And raging, which means like yelling, screaming, being angry at another person, allows the toxic person to reclaim some measure of control and reaffirm their sense of superiority. Because if you are stuck in a narcissistic cycle, you likely are going to submit in some way, because that's what you've learned.

That's the phone response that you just freeze you obey. You agree. And you move on because that's all the only thing that you can do. It's a trauma response. And so I think, you know, it's important to know that that when you start to challenge them, this is likely to happen. If you want to know more about that, I recommend listening to the podcast I did on boundaries and how to set them and what will happen when you set them.

So I said, we were going to do five, but you got six. Trying to keep this going for a few weeks, we're going to try and get through a lot of qualities of a narcissist so that you really understand and see and feel what this looks like. And I hope it's validating, but if you need support, reach out to me at Jessica Knight coaching on Instagram, you can email me, Jessica Jessica Knight, coaching.com.

And you could also follow. At emotional abuse coach, where I have been posting more emotional, abusive and narcissistic content because my business is twofold. So if you need support, please don't hesitate to reach out. I will talk to you soon.