Welcome to the Stay or Go podcast, where we're changing the dialogue around divorce so that no woman ever stays in her marriage out of fear. Get ready to dispel myths, learn life-changing tools, and build a solid foundation in yourself from which to make your decision. And now your host, me, Britta Joe. All right, all right, y'all. Welcome back this week. We are diving deep into the second half of understanding, hopefully, in ways that you've never heard before, what covert narcissism is. And before I dive into this episode, I just wanted to speak a little bit real quick about why I'm spending so much time on this topic. As someone who has survived, really, I think that's the best word, has experienced covert narcissistic abuse, has survived and escaped a world of living in a covert narcissist reality, and is now getting to thrive and experience what life is like on the other side. I have a deep, deep spot in my heart for anyone out there that is experiencing this type of abuse. And diving back into all of this, y'all, has definitely brought up these rooms for me. And I've I've been feeling once again just how painful it is in these rooms, these these rooms that were created by individuals outside of me that needed me to be something I wasn't so that they could exist in their worlds. And I think I have just an intense amount of compassion for this experience. And um I'm hoping that that is translating through these episodes. I'm hoping that coming off of that first episode, for those of you going through this, you are feeling seen, you are feeling known, and you are feeling validated. These are some of the most important feelings that are not experienced when you are in that world. And that through experiencing those from healthy, secure adults and support individuals, the first person to do this for me was my therapist seven years ago. When they start validating your experience and help you step out bit by bit by bit into a world that is your own and returning your personal power to you, everything changes. So just taking a little pause here at the beginning to drop in with you all. My heart is very full coming into this second episode. I've been surprised. I mean, Alex has had to do so much editing on that episode last week. As much as I was so excited and like had all of this material, it's been a lot on my system to even get it down to speak it out. So feeling some, I don't know if it's weight or apprehension or anxiety, I think talking about these things kind of triggers a lot of my past pain. And maybe that's why it's taken me over a year and a half to really dive deep and talk about this. So, really acknowledging that at the beginning of this episode, maybe holding myself, holding you all really gently as we dive back in to the rest of these attributes and techniques. I'm going to be covering the second half, the seven remaining that I have. And remember, these are just from my list. These are the ones that I thought of the most that were the most present for me. After we dive into those seven, I'm going to talk about the cost. I think it's so important to really acknowledge what happens from abuse like this and to speak about it in terms that really help people going through it to feel, like I said, seen, known, and validated. Um, and then I'll be finishing up with some next steps. I really wanted most of all, coming off of both of these episodes, to provide you with things you can be doing now. If you do coming off of these two episodes, identify a lot of narcissistic abuse in your relationship, or even if you're identifying just some of it, these steps are what are going to help you to be regaining your power and grounding back into yourself. And then at the very end, I'm gonna kind of hopefully frame all of this in a perspective that really didn't emerge for me until the end of writing both of these episodes and kind of talking with my partner about it and trying to find a way to move forward in the world while acknowledging that these dynamics exist. So, with that roadmap out ahead of us now, let's go back in to our list and we will be at number eight, which is gaslighting. And I'm actually not gonna go terribly deep into this because I feel like there are lots of resources out there specifically talking about gaslighting. Um, this is totally giving me side note thought where I'm like uh a really helpful thing, obviously, is to be able to use ChatGPT for this, to be putting in some of the things you're experiencing and saying, chat, you know, does this line up with what you know about covert narcissism? That can also be an incredible resource for specific, like in real time going back and forth with someone that can help you be identifying what may be happening to you. But in thinking about gaslighting, I went and looked at the definition because sometimes I feel like that word gets thrown around and we're not really sure what it is. And the definition I landed on that I like the most is that gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a person causes someone to question their sanity, their memories, or their perceptions of reality. And that part right there, your perception of reality, is what I feel like is such the key when we are talking about covert narcissism. When I discuss, you know, that you are living in their reality. This is what I'm talking about with gaslighting being a technique that is used where you have one way of viewing things, okay? Or you see something that has happened in the relationship. And when you bring it to the narcissistic individual, they will go so far at times to tell you that that thing did not happen, that that is not what they meant, or that is not what they said. Over time, you start to feel like you are forgetting things. I think a real side effect of narcissistic abuse that I know I had, um, I still definitely suffer from, but I know it was very, very prevalent in my childhood is memory loss, just feeling like I couldn't keep track of things. And I think that is a lot related to the up and down, whiplash, dysregulation, disassociation that your brain is having to do. So you're dealing with all of that. And then on top of it, you can have this technique happening of gaslighting where they are actually psychologically causing you to question your memories, to question if things have actually happened that you know did. And an aspect of this too, another layer of the gaslighting, I would say, is they often make it seem like you are out to get them, or somehow you're always wanting to misinterpret them negatively or think badly about them. So once again, I feel like it stems from that deep insecurity that the narcissistic individual has, wanting to preserve their external image, how they are viewed, and preserving that at the cost of perhaps turning you against your own perception of reality. Now, the biggest way I saw this for myself was feeling an almost compulsive need. Um, I remember this was at a point where I was in therapy and I had this just deep need to record the conversations that were happening in my marriage because I could not keep them straight. And wanting, I would like to send them to my therapist to be like, can you please listen to this? Can you please tell me what's happening here? Because I cannot keep the conversation straight. I'm getting completely turned around and feeling very crazy in the process. And I know I had one of my one-on-one clients at one point do the same thing. She ended up recording a conversation with her husband. She sent it over to me. And sure enough, in the conversation as I was listening to it, you could hear the tone of voice, the restructuring of reality happening ongoing in the conversation. It is one of the most tricky, confusing, deeply infuriating and invalidating experiences to be gaslit by someone. And I just want to say too, one of the things, I'm going to talk about this a little bit later on, but when you have had narcissistic wounding in your childhood, as I was saying, you know, on that spectrum, if you're not someone that could be diagnosed fully narcissistic personality disorder, you may still exhibit, though, traits from that wounding. And I have seen, even in my relationship with my partner Joe, now, that at times, y'all, when I have had a particularly big trigger, in fact, it happened a couple times in the last year of our relationship, where my psyche not wanting to see a mistake that I had made or a choice that I had done that had hurt his feelings, or a way that I was behaving that was out of integrity of the boundaries I had set with him or the person I want to be. I myself have been called out on gaslighting before. Let that just like land and kind of shock some of you all. And I'm gonna discuss why this piece is so important to understand because later on, you know, so many of my women in my community talk about this when they have narcissistic partners, the lines getting blurred and the confusion of like, wait, am I the narcissist? Are they the narcissist? Like, who is the narcissist here? So in dynamics like that, and in my own marriage, I noticed we would often trade showing up in ways that were either stemming from that codependent side of the coin or the more narcissistic side of the coin. So in my marriage, I actually experienced way more of the codependent side, and my ex-husband tended more towards the narcissist, the covert narcissistic side of the coin. Post all of that, though, I have noticed at times myself, as I said, showing up in ways when I am very deeply triggered, mentally creating up whole stories and perceptions of reality that thank God I have an incredible partner and we have enough of a foundation. And I am not a full-blown, not even close to being a person that has the disorder. But that wounding shows up, and we have at times he's had to call me out on like, hey, you are creating up an entire story that does not match your actions or your behaviors, what is going on here. And thankfully, this is how I know I'm not a narcissist. When he calls me out on it, I can self-reflect. And when I have, and I've like dropped down into my body, realized I'm triggered, tracked back through the flashbacks, and been able to identify and be like, oh my goodness, yes, I was, and I'm sorry. So just know this is like one of the hardest parts for me to try and describe and explain as I'm doing these two episodes, is the very multi-layered like individual process of all of these different pieces and these techniques and these attributes for all of you. And that sometimes when we have come from narcissistic wounding ourselves, we can end up even using these techniques ourselves. And that does not mean, like, if I think back to my marriage, getting stuck in that rut of like, oh my God, am I the narcissist that did not help me long term? And if you are the one asking, am I the narcissist? That is the best indicator that you are not. Okay. Like, biggest indicator is if you are worried about being the narcissist, you are probably not. You are probably more on the codependent end of the spectrum. You are the opposite side of that coin. And yes, there are codependent behaviors, like I said, episode for another time on codependency that need to be cleaned up, that need to be worked through. Codependency is very different than narcissism. Codependency does not involve trying to manipulate and change somebody's perception of their own reality. And that is why, in so many ways, I'm diving deep around this covert narcissism because when you fuck with another person's perceptions of reality and you will unconsciously stop at nothing to preserve your version of the story and convince them, that is a really intense level of abuse. So know that we've got stuff going on on both sides. Know that sometimes you may even show up in gaslighting. I'm not that worried about it though, if you are the one that is in the more codependent realm, but also be aware of this piece. Okay, so the ninth technique that I have in my list is something I lovingly refer to as the crazy room. And this kind of encompasses a lot of the different techniques I've been talking about, but I love thinking of it in this way. And that's why it has its own section here in the list. So the crazy room is where you go into a conversation with the narcissistic individual, and the conversation ends up lasting hours. You will go in upright, like you feel like you're walking in upright, you know who you are, you feel like you're an adult. And when you leave that conversation, you are demoralized. You have been flipped upside down. And from a CPTSD perspective, you are entirely flashbacked and flooded into the feelings that you have in childhood. This would be like the hopelessness, the helplessness. Ooh, even as I'm talking about this, I'm kind of like feeling that activation in my body of just how incredibly painful um the crazy room is back when I had individuals uh with narcissistic behavior in my life. It is one of the most like difficult sensations to walk in as an adult and crawl out feeling like you don't exist. Like your sense of self, your sense of being able to trust yourself, to be able to trust reality is gone. And I want to emphasize that no matter how many techniques you learn or how grounded you get outside of this crazy room, once you walk in it, they have got you. Okay. And this is really important because I have watched myself and a lot of the women I coached be really hard on themselves once you learn about narcissism, thinking that you should be able to go into the crazy room and hold your own, that you should be able to step into that boxing ring and still walk out of it okay. I experienced this a lot with my mother once I learned about narcissism and specifically, and so this is where we get into the piece of the crazy room aspect is at its most intense with those individuals that could be diagnosed fully with the disorder. So, for example, my mother is one of those people for sure, would have been someone that could have been diagnosed NPD. Once I learned about narcissism, and as I was starting to set boundaries with her, I formed this idea that I should, because I knew about what was happening, because I was learning how to be adult, like I should be able to now be having conversations with her and not walk out of them feeling like a little kid and feeling completely demoralized by it. And what I learned through enough experiences with her towards the end of her life was that was just not going to happen. She was just too good. And I was no longer going to be so rough on my inner child parts and telling them that they should be able to do something that ultimately was just not going to happen. And instead, the correct response and what was the most supportive for me was to limit contact with her. Now, y'all, that was like three, four years ago. Okay. I want to share with y'all that this instance, this experience of going into a crazy room with someone that is heavily covert narcissistic, literally happened to me this past week. And actually, by now, by the time this episode drops, it'll be about two weeks ago. So before I recorded both of these episodes on covert narcissism, this was another reason why I really wanted to dive into this. I had had a conversation with a woman that I thought was a friend. And it was a conversation that I was having with her to try and kind of set better boundaries. I was noticing a lot of behavior, a lot of dysregulation in myself. I couldn't put my finger on why it was. And I was just kind of wanting to go into that conversation to ask for more space. And after that conversation, y'all, I went into that conversation upright. And I walked out. And for the rest of the day, I felt shook. I felt off. Like I just was like, uh, what is that? And I just felt really gross and heavy, like, uh. And why I'm like sharing this is because here I am, y'all. I know a lot about narcissism. I can coach other people about it. And yet I, in my own life, can end up having someone with covert narcissism show up, come into my life. I've known this woman for about six months now, not see it, y'all, start a friendship with them, really let them in. And only this past, you know, couple weeks, all of a sudden realize in this conversation, holy shit, this is what's happening. And it was when I came off this conversation, I went and talked to my partner, and I was reflecting. And as I was sharing with him the different components of the conversation, I was like, oh my God, here it is. Like, there was the monologuing extensively about all the things she thinks that I need to do. There was an obvious like savior complex coming. From her of her doing me a favor and helping me. And she was using a lot of the knowledge of my trauma and my vulnerabilities that I had shared with her through the friendship that we were building to pathologize me. The other big feeling was like I went into the conversation in mutuality. I'd actually just been setting a boundary earlier that week with a different friend. And that conversation had felt so good. I was like, okay, I can do this. Go into this conversation, totally different experience. Like really early on in the conversation, she's all of a sudden bringing up things that I had mentioned that I struggle with that we talked about months and months ago. That is that whole holding on to your weaknesses and then pulling them out at moments to use them to build their case, not really to help you, but to build this case that she had around, I'm here to help you. I know what you need. There was a lot of her treating me like a little kid and her as the authority figure. I experienced a ton of massive whiplash emotionally. Like one minute she's saying all of these things about how great I am and how she doesn't need anything from me. And five minutes later, which I can now identify in the conversation, she was triggered by me kind of stepping back into a place of mutuality and being like, no, I don't really agree with that. Here's what I'm feeling instead. Boom. It was like she was telling me how I can't show up, telling me what's wrong with me. At what point I got so triggered in the conversation that I was like crying and asked to get off the call, and she refused to let me leave the conversation. I'm like in shock a little bit as I'm sharing this all with y'all, as I'm sure you guys are, at how much you can know all of this and still be vulnerable to individuals like this. And it was rough, y'all. I ultimately left that conversation feeling bulldozed. I mean, the last like 25 minutes of it were like my my conversations with my mom had been in the past, where I'm just sitting there and she's just monologuing me and I'm just saying, yes, thank you. That makes sense. Great. And to come out of that feeling so unsettled, so bulldozed, so used, and deeply flashbacked was a big like whoa. Because since my mother's passing, and honestly, as my ex-husband has done more of his personal work, I have had less and less of these conversations in my life. Thank God, y'all. I swear I cannot handle people that drag me into the crazy room. It's just not a thing I do anymore. So experiencing it was really disorienting, and I'd kind of forgotten to be on the lookout for these kinds of dynamics. And at the same time, you know, as I'm talking to my partner Joe, and then a little bit later that day, when I still couldn't get it out of my system, I called my best friend Quinn, as you all know from the podcast. And she was so compassionate because Quinn has also experienced covert narcissistic abuse. She was so compassionate with me about like, B, once you are in that room, they have got you. No matter how much you know the things that I'm, you know, teaching you, I want you to be really compassionate with yourself in understanding that as much as you think you should be able to handle and manage conversations like that, when you are speaking to someone who is full of narcissistic personality disorder diagnosable, that is never gonna be a thing. And where in the past I used to hold myself to that standard and think that I should be able to hold my own there. Now I say, fuck that. Those people don't deserve space in my life. It takes too much energy to have people like this around. And honestly, that's you know, another just huge piece of that crazy room and what we discussed in the last episode is I know this woman genuinely thinks she was helping me. She would be shocked to know how damaging that conversation. And I take that back. I don't know if she'd be shocked or not. I but she would fight tooth and nail, probably, to dissuade me of my perception of the reality of that conversation. And I know since getting out of these relationships with individuals like that, that that is not a me thing because I have plenty of people in my life now that I can have conversations that feel good in. That I get to walk in upright as an adult. I get to be seen in all of my messiness and my mistakes, in my strengths, all of it, and leave as an adult because there is mutuality there. Big, big word for you all to remember is the crazy room. And you know when you have been in the crazy room by how you feel when you come out the other side. Okay, let's move on to number 10, which is another technique. And the technique is love bombing. So I coming back to the same um experience I just had that is so fresh, right? With interacting with someone that I think could be diagnosed with covert narcissism. Love bombing is where individuals that have narcissistic tendencies seem to be able to sense where your pain is and what you need most. And love bombing is where they overly adore you and give you attention, which I want to say you do often crave because those of us that are more susceptible to narcissism have often experienced narcissistic abuse in our childhood. So we are susceptible, our brain is susceptible to these styles of being loved in these really overwhelming, like just you are so amazing, you are so wonderful. I remember this happening with this specific woman. Like when I first met her, it was just so much praise, so much love, so much like I see you, you're amazing. And y'all, you know, I did not get that from my mother, or at least, you know, I did get it, but only in specific ways. So when somebody brings that, my brain is like, oh my God, that feels so good. That feels so healing, like that feels really great to have somebody like see me, and you know what I forgot, y'all? This person doesn't know me. They have just met me. So, how can this person that has just barely met me be so in love with me? Because a part of them is sensing that you are high value to them, and a part of their brain knows that and is going for that with you. Okay. So in the moment, it feels really enticingly good when you're experiencing it, but you have to stop and remember and ask yourself does this person actually know me? And I want to offer this is what makes getting married to an individual with narcissistic abuse traits, tendencies, full-blown disorder so difficult to catch when you are young, especially as a woman, because a lot of us as women, we don't know who we are. We have been raised in a culture and a world that has taught us to be whatever anybody else wants us to be. So that question, does this person actually know me? If you don't know yourself, then yeah, it's gonna seem like they know you because they're they're telling you all these things about yourself. I think so much of how growing up, I did not know myself at all because it wasn't safe to know me. The game with my mother was become what she needs me to be. And so when I met my husband, I couldn't tell if he really loved me because I didn't even know me. So a big piece of this, too, if you are in the middle of this abuse right now, I'm thinking specifically of the woman I coached a couple weeks ago, is thinking back, especially if you got married to your partner older, let's say, because this woman that got on the call, she got married when she was older in her like early 30s, and she had done some things and she had learned some things about herself. So it's noticing who you were before you met this person, especially if you were older and you had like a career that you loved or things that you loved or people that loved you or friends that you loved and you don't have those things now, and this person is defining you in these ways that don't match who you were before that. Be very suspicious. Okay. Be suspicious. Be be suspicious. Um this has also been driven home to me, like just how much love bombing is not really about you. It's they are they are just so entranced with you because they are entranced with their projection of you and often what they believe you're going to give them by association with them. So, in contrast to that, my partner Joe, you know, when he met me, I look back now and I'm like, it was such a beautiful, just like he slow burned us. And yet at the same time, y'all, when I think back, we were so in it too with each other. But it was not this overpowering, overwhelming, like he is devouring me kind of energy that you will get with narcissistic individuals when they are love bombing you. And here we are a year and a half later into this relationship, and I am still discovering so much about him, and he is still discovering so much about myself that I've realized, like, oh, whoa, telling somebody that, you know, you love them and you know them and you adore them and you see them so early on in the relationship is not actually, in my opinion, like let me put it this way. I've loved a lot of people, I don't trust a lot of people. I've only trusted a few people in my life. And I think this is the difference here. I've seen this like a little bit too in people in my community where I've noticed like partnerships where there is a lot of making a lot of promises and saying a lot of things up front that sound really beautiful. But the reality is you don't actually know each other yet. So be aware of this. Notice partners that come in really hot, really heavy. And ultimately where that lands you long term, if you are in a marriage with someone like this, is you years down the road feeling like this person does not actually know me. They don't actually know what I like, they don't actually know who I am. There is a level of like deep friendship that is missing in the relationship. And that is because when they first met you, when you're in the like rush of all of the excitement of getting to know each other, there may have been a lot of them projecting what they wanted you to be. And then that translates into that grandiosity of throughout the relationship telling you, wear less jewelry, do your hair this way, hang out with these friends, don't hang out with these friends. So take a second to look back on the beginnings of your relationship with your partner. Was this present? One of the things I do the most in my 90-minute sessions, where I always start, is questions about the very start of the relationship. Because there is a lot that we can learn from how the relationship was entered into, who you were when you met that person, and what they were interested in about you. Now, number 11. This is more of an attribute that covert narcissists have, which is they have very carefully controlled external personas. So often, and this is another like very difficult aspect of experiencing this abuse, often everyone else in your life sees this individual and thinks they are a great person. And if you were to share with them about the abuse that is happening, they would not believe you. I can think of a couple clients that I have had with very fully diagnosable NPD disorder partners that were terrified to end up sharing because, in their words, nobody's gonna believe me. And the other really difficult aspect of that too was that they had participated in hiding this from their families. Um, and that's the codependent side of the coin. The not wanting other people to know, wanting to support your partner, allowing yourself to kind of get caught up in becoming whatever they need you to be, because when you have that codependent piece, there's a part of you that like wants to be devoured. It feels good to sacrifice yourself for someone else and what they want. So, because of this carefully controlled external persona, only those on the very inside actually know what the abuse is like. And even then, there can be varying accounts. So I think of like my siblings, and we all have different takes on my mom. I think it's based off the type of abuse that we experienced from her, but we were the only ones, my dad, my siblings, that inner circle that knew what my mom was really like. And everybody else out in our church community, in her friends, they got to see the best version of her. And then in your marriage, in your relationship, this can definitely show up with sometimes even your own family preferring your partner over you because they do such a beautiful job crafting and maintaining their behavior when they are out in public. And this can be very difficult because it makes you start to feel like you are the crazy one. So I think I've already given a lot of examples of this throughout both of these episodes of this external persona. But I just want to end by saying it is so important for you to start trusting your experiences through your body of what it feels like to be with this person. And when other people are talking about them or how great they are or how wonderful it is that you're married to them, coming back to remembering that nobody else knows what it is like to live in your shoes. Nobody has spent every day, every minute being married to this person. Number 12 is what I'm going to be calling, I'm sure there's a better word for it, but a technique of emotional blackmail. And what I'm trying to describe by titling it this way is that I have noticed with covert narcissism that these individuals can do it all when it comes to how they prey upon and use emotions to exert control. And one of the biggest, trickiest parts of this is when they switch into playing the victim. And this happens a lot when we are dealing with divorce. These are partners who, when you come forward, I see this the most. Um, when you finally say, I'm filing, I'm done, all of a sudden there is massive crying, losing their shit. How can you do this to me? Oh my God, this is the worst thing ever. You're going to destroy our family. Really, really making you into the villain. We can even say, like, if you do get a divorce from this individual, you'll see it a lot as martyrdom. Covert narcissism shows up as partners who are, you know, giving it all for the kids. You are selfish or cruel to want anything for yourself. How could you do that? When this is happening, I want you to notice that the technique, the way the technique is working, notice they are not expressing real emotions, like processing and expressing what I would consider real emotions as much as they are using emotion to try to regain control. And that's why I call it emotional blackmail, because they are using high-intensity reactions. I remember this so much in my mother. My mother would cry, my mother would scream, my mother would lose her shit. And the ferocity, the bigness of that was so overwhelming that it would cow down whoever was trying to push against her or want something different. Because when you see someone crying, in fact, I have a woman right now that I'm thinking of where her husband is just relentless around this, just emotionally blackmailing her left and right. And when you genuinely care about this person, don't want them to be sad. You know, I mean, I the way I see this the most is women who are like, I just want like, I don't want him to have a horrible life. I want him to go on, I want him to be happy, I want him to find somebody else. That is really hard to your brain has a tendency to slip down into getting so caught up in their pain, and it can paralyze you and it can keep pulling you under and down into really getting caught up in their feelings and emotions. And I would just want to say one of the biggest things that you want to be doing with this is coming back into your own body and your own perceptions of reality and understanding the the individuals that do this the most are people that I would consider diagnosable. And as I'll talk about later, people that can be fully diagnosed with this do not change. Ergo, as much as they are crying and begging and telling you to stay, a part of you knows that if you go back, it's not changing. So, as hard as it is to watch them throw everything they've got in their playbook at you, you have to ground back in to what you know about the narcissism. And if you're seeing this high of levels, going back and letting them convince you is not going to fix this long term. You will be right back where you are, you know, six months, a year from now. Okay, 13th technique that they use is weaponizing you against yourself and isolating you from outside support. I cannot tell you the amount of women that I have talked to on calls that tell me of husbands who are controlling, who want them to not go out with their friends, who get jealous when they talk to other women. They need to control at all costs. And because of that, they are very against any others who can help you feel good about yourself, define yourself differently. And they will often go to very large extents to isolate you from those friends. I remember watching this with my mom and my ex husband for sure, where there was like this competitive energy between the two of them of like who was going to be the voice that I listened to. And I remember feeling really frustrated, especially towards the end, as I was going to therapy and And I was regaining my voice of feeling like, no, I get to be in charge of me. I get to have the say about who I am and what I want. I remember my mom even going so far, y'all. This is how far they will go, like thinking that it's other people that are controlling you. Cause surely you would want to be close to them. So before I got divorced, I had really distanced myself from my mother. And that was helping my mental health immensely. Just not being in the crazy room with her, not having contact with her, because anytime I would, the abuse was just too much for my system. And unbeknownst to me, she had created the story that she was perpetuating over there in my family that she was confused at first about why this was happening. And when I came to her and told her that I was getting divorced when I actually ended up sharing it with my parents, she immediately latched on to her new version of reality, which was, oh my God, it makes so much sense. It was her husband. Her husband was the one that was turning her against me. And now that her husband is gone, we will reconnect. And I remember having to say at one point to my parents, because I did have some closeness with them post my divorce, um, that ultimately long-term was just not tenable and got convoluted with my mother's cancer and all of those aspects. But I remember having to say to her, like, no, mom, the reason you and I didn't have a relationship and our relationship is still strained is you. It's it's you and me. It is not, it was not my husband turning me against you. So if you, I want you to be aware of these dynamics. If you see your partner feeling competitive with your best friend, feeling competitive with your parents, feeling competitive with other people who seem to love and support you, people that seem to be able to be in mutuality with you. We've got narcissistic abuse happening. Okay. I've also seen this with there was an example I had of a client where her husband like actually said things to her friends when she was not present that then ended those friendships. And she would try to like reach out to those friends and they wouldn't even talk to her because of whatever her husband had said. And then on top of that, he would make it seem like the reason she didn't have friends is because she's not a good person. So, y'all, this is a really big one. Weaponizing you against yourself, controlling the dialogue about you, and then isolating you from outside support, all because it allows them to maintain and increase their level of control over you. Final one on the list, 14, is that narcissists are parasitic. Okay. They get energy and power from the control that they are able to exert over you. And what that gives them, right? So a parasite is something that is latching on to another creature, and it is not a reciprocal relationship. They are taking something from that other animal without giving back. And in many ways, it is hurting that other animal. What is the narcissist getting? The parasitic part of them is that it allows them to hide from their own pain, internal trauma, and perhaps even shame. Because, like we said, a core of that narcissistic wounding is the deep, deep insecurity that they have. And so by controlling and projecting it out onto you, they can avoid all of that internal work. And I'm just gonna drive this part home again. As I said earlier, if someone can be diagnosed, like if you're listening to all of this list and you're like, whoa, it's hitting on all of these levels, if they are truly matching all of these, like my mother did, that individual is not changing. And they are dangerous because they are willing to sacrifice your relationship with yourself to keep control of you and get that energy. And it is not so much about you as it is about their deep psychological wounds. So just like a parasite has to have a host to survive, true NPD individuals have to have hosts to survive. And what is so confusing about all of this? I'm just gonna repeat this piece because it's so hard for those of us that are empathic and really love these individuals. I mean, y'all, I loved my mom. As much as I talk about how abusive and difficult it was, deep down, I loved my mom. And it was very confusing to see her continue to unconsciously attack me in these ways and hurt me until I realized that it's because of that deep psychological wound for her that is so entirely unconscious. Like that woman I talked about, the example I just gave of the woman that came into my life, she has no idea what she is actually doing for me when we are talking. Like when you can see the behavior of the narcissistic individual through this parasitic lens, it helps tremendously in being able to distance yourself and rein in some of the empathy that may be that Achilles heel empathy that may be keeping you in the abuse and believing that things will change. Now, with the entire list now given to you, all 14 attributes and techniques that I wanted to highlight. If you are not at the space of full-blown, like, oh my God, holy shit, this is me. This is my partner. I want to take a second now to talk a little bit more deeply, although I have discussed this in the episode, right? Of what I mean by when I say someone fully diagnosed with MPD is not changing, why that is important. Okay. Because with someone who is full-blown narcissistic personality disorder, you have to really shift and change the way that you are going to be interacting with them. Um, if you're gonna stay in the marriage, it's gonna be very different. And if you are going to go through a divorce and then co-parent with them, it has to be very different. Ultimately, for me, there was a lot of grief as I started to realize and to accept my mother has a mental illness and this is not going away. It is not changing, and her mental illness is so severe that for me to be in contact with her leads to me being hurt, leads to me being attacked. And boy, does this change. Like, I think I want to make space here for those of us that have had individuals in our life like this, perhaps a parent, where other people don't get when you go kind of no contact with your family. And to hopefully, through this episode, make more space for all of us, honoring and respecting people that choose not to have perhaps a parent in their life. Because I now believe if that individual is detrimental to your health, you do not need to be in conversation with them. As much as I was programmed by Mormonism, told, you know, family is family, you have to stay close to them, they're they're your blood. I now choose for myself to invest my time in my chosen family. I choose to be around individuals that do not have narcissistic abuse tendencies and traits that they are taking out on me. And that can be really difficult, y'all, because if this is in your family of origin, then your siblings also suffered it. And often there will be narcissistic abuse happening in your family of origin with your siblings. So please make space for yourself around honoring when you need to not have contact with family members. And if in the case of divorcing someone who could be diagnosed NPD, they are not going to be changing. You have to start grieving and making peace with the reality that this is not going to be a Glenn and Doyle divorce. Okay. I can't tell you how much in reading Untamed I kept hoping and wanting to have, you know, what Abby Wombach and Glennon Doyle have with Glennon's ex-husband, right? Like shared Thanksgivings. We're all together. It's it's this amazing family, we're creating this new world. That is not the case if you have an individual like this that you are getting divorced from. And for me, and actually my ex-husband, even though I've told you guys he would not be fully diagnosed, we still, I still needed so much space coming off of the divorce that I looking back did not understand and could have benefited from even more space, even more boundaries, more protective boundaries. I remember my therapist telling me to have them. And I was like, no, no, no, I'm gonna do it my way. So that definitely prolonged some of the like working through all of that. But it is a different technique, and you have to conscientiously really protect yourself and your energy going forward and having very clear boundaries around how you communicate and really, you know, investing in getting an attorney that is going to protect your ability to advocate for yourself, get what you need, and get a custody arrangement that is legally locked tight because it is a lot dealing with someone post-divorce. Now, that is not a case for staying married, but it just means the strategy is different. And I've watched some of my clients that are going through divorce right now, where we did identify they do have partners that are not changing heavily, narcissistic personality disorder individuals. That process is different. And there is so much that can be gained when you see the big picture of all of these techniques, attributes, and you know, okay, this is kind of where my partner falls. Now, right, along that spectrum, there are a lot of you, though, that are more in the space of like, my partner has definitely experienced narcissistic wounding in childhood. They are exhibiting traits of covert narcissistic personality disorder. Like I said, this is more what I experienced in my marriage. And for those of you there, okay, please do not take me discussing this level down here at the end of the spectrum and discount your experiences. Because y'all, it was still horrifically painful and confusing. Okay. Experiencing that in my marriage, not to the level that I experienced it with my mom, because my mom would was full blown, but still it was so incredibly difficult, very, very painful because of those levels of messing with perceptions of reality and messing with your trust in yourself and believing that they know you better than you know yourself. In my instance, because my ex-husband, I would not consider him being somebody who could be fully diagnosed, he's made a lot of changes post our divorce, which is why me saying, like, just because your partner is gonna maybe be tough post-divorce, that does not mean it is not worth it to really seriously consider divorce when you are in dynamics of narcissistic abuse. Because the changes he has made have been hugely beneficial for our boys. And y'all, in me getting out of that abuse, I have done an immense amount of work and continue to around my own narcissistic wounding from my childhood, my opposite side of the coin, my levels of codependency and self-abandonment and people pleasing at the expense of myself. So, regardless, though, of whether your partner could be fully diagnosed or they're just exhibiting traits along the spectrum, please remember and take away from this episode that even just having a few of these techniques is damaging and it is real. Okay. What matters is not so much, oh, they are doing all of these things and they could be diagnosed as a fully covert narcissistic personality disordered individual, but rather coming back into your experience and acknowledging what is the cost in your life and to your mental health with the things that they are doing. And this is where we land, as I said earlier, towards the end of this episode, I want to take you into the cost. Because y'all, damn, I was discussing this with Joe the other night where I was like, this can make or break your life. Being in close contact with an individual that is narcissistically abusing you regularly, it can be everything. I'm going to try to explain it with words, but the cost is so, so great because it is this intense psychological, emotional pain that when you live in that reality where the most important person in your life is so psychologically powerful over you and fully intent on you being what they need you to be and not what you actually need most. And on top of that, right, let's like just layer in like everyone else in your life thinks that they're a great person. Let that sink in. That is literally what being trapped in purgatory feels like. Like imagine a reality where you do not have any freedom, deep, deep down. I mean, that is the reality I was raised in with my mother. Looking back, there was no freedom to truly become myself. And when you live in that world, it feels like this deep, utter despair that maybe for a lot of you, you haven't even like been able to acknowledge. Because you are living in a world where you cannot beat them in the crazy room. Everything you do to try and get out increases the abuse and the pain. And I just want to drive home again that truly only those who have lived through this themselves get it and understand what this is like. So if other people around you are not getting it, you just haven't, you're just not talking to the people who do. To frame this out as well, like the way our brains are built, the very things that would help you individuate and thrive, the mechanisms in your brain that are there to help you become all that you're meant to be, with a narcissistic individual in your life, in order for you not to be punished, you have to go against those very mechanisms. And your psyche has to fight you and get you to fit into their box. And what you will notice, and what I noticed over time, was that that box gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And what you see is you start collapsing as a person as I really think about, you know, what this was like. Like your psyche understands this. Although you may not consciously understand it, you don't have freedom, you don't have agency. And any personal decisions you make are seen as an affront to them. So, where does this lead you? For me, uh thinking back to this time, it led me to crushing depression. Um, I remember describing it to my sister once on a call where I was just like really, really struggling as this like deep black tar that would come up and engulf me in self-hatred, unending confusion. This is where there was so much suicidal ideation. And by ideation, that's where you're like hoping something will happen to you to just end things. Um, living as a shell, you know, waking up going through the motions each day, but not really present. There's a lot of my life during my marriage that like I just don't have memories of because I was just so caught up in this way of being. And I want to drive home, hopefully, here at the end of this episode, that there are real consequences of this abuse, right? This is um where you become someone often that you don't even like or want to be. I found myself yelling all the time. I was angry all the time. I was so desperate. I was like dysregulated, out of my body. The amount of self-loathing, then that gets added to that, right? Um, for many of us, this is where substances, for many of us suffering from narcissistic abuse, this is where substances come into play to disassociate. This is where, you know, food, working, scrolling on technology, using sex. For me, you know, it was perfectionism, just having to really try as hard as I could to be everything to everyone. And why I'm spending so much time here in the cost piece is because this is where the real mind fuck comes in in trying to get out of covert narcissistic abuse is when the abuse has gone on for so long that you are starting to like collapse in on yourself, you then get stuck in this like whirlpool of shame because you know you are not showing up as a good version of you. You are yelling at your kids, you are losing your shit, you are like a mess. And this is where it gets so dicey because I've seen that because you are now the one, often too, with covert narcissists in those conversations, you're like crying, you're screaming, you're freaking out, and they are like calm and cool and collected. And it really starts to get confusing here. This is also where we'll get into like your partner starting to say, like, you're the narcissist, or you're the mean one, or you're the one always yelling at the kids, right? And that's so hard because you know deep down you are not showing up like you want to. I mean, I was just talking with a friend this weekend about this, and she's like, Yeah, I remember when she was in the thick, she also had a husband who covert narcissist. When she was in the thick of the abuse, she would remember yelling at her kids and then walking into her bedroom and like looking at herself in the mirror and yelling at herself and being like, Stop it, stop it to herself, because she just had so much shame at how she was showing up. So if this is you, let me hopefully in this episode reach across and take your hand and be like, hey, that was me. That was me, baby. So all of this fear that you are the bad person, that you are the villain, that you are the one destroying everything, I want you to just pause with me. Take a deep breath. And remember, like I said earlier, that the difference is when you are the one asking and worrying, am I the narcissist? You are not. Okay. And the step that got me out of this was me acknowledging and feeling the shame. It was like, fuck, I'm not who I want to be. And I started taking the steps to get help. And that looked like going to therapy. I did not go to therapy all because I was like, oh, I'm in a narcissistic relationship, or oh, I'm, you know, I'm not my. Myself and I need to be more. Y'all, I went to therapy because I was like, I am a terrible mother. I am mean. I am angry all the time. I am not showing up, and my kids are taking the brunt of it. I need help. And I went and got it. And it was two and a half years of my therapist gently, bit by bit, walking me back into reclaiming my psyche from all of the abuse of my childhood and the confusion and abuse in my marriage that were happening to realizing, oh my God, that was not me. That was the cost and the effects of having lived with covert narcissistic abuse my entire life. And I was not the narcissist because I could admit the problems. I could self-reflect. I was doing the work to heal. So that is what I want so many of you grounding into when you get lost in the like, well, but sometimes I show up narcissistically, sometimes I do these things, sometimes I gaslight him, sometimes I. Yes, you probably have narcissistic wounding in your childhood. And at times you show up with those traits. But if you are coming, acknowledging the changes that need to be made, being able to even see and acknowledge your trauma in childhood, you are not the narcissist. And one of the biggest pieces to healing and getting out of this for your children, for yourself, for the future that will actually give something back to the world with your life, right? Is realizing the problem is not me, the problem is the abuse. Okay. And that can be so confusing when your partner seems to be able to keep their calm and their cool, which they will in the crazy room. They can often seem very, very like level-headed while you're losing your shit. And at the same time, you are feeling so crazy and not being able to trust yourself and hating on yourself. So this is why it is so important to have that voice outside of you, that person, hopefully this podcast that goes, hey, baby, we might be experiencing a lot of narcissistic abuse here. Okay. The difference always is going to come down to if you are the person that can admit I am not showing up how I want to, and going and getting help, you are not the narcissist. And remember, as I said earlier, that this can get a little dicey when you have individuals that show narcissistic traits and are going to therapy. And they will then use those words. They will go get help, but it will look like coming back and using that help to pathologize you further. And another piece that I want to include is okay, so for me, right, in this instance, my ex-husband was not someone that I believe would be fully diagnosed. But, y'all, the levels that were still there were significant enough for me that the amount of work, the amount of time that it was going to take for the two of us to work through that together. And in our instance too, I want to make this clear my ex-husband and I had only known each other for three months when we met and got married. So we did not have, even at the start, a true what I now know, connection and basis of deep friendship in the ways that I need it. So although you may be with a partner that is not fully diagnosed but has a lot of those traits, you may still find yourself like, okay, even though he can change, this is not enough. I still don't want to be with this person. I still know and can feel in my body that this is not for me. And I want to massively validate that. I do not want you all coming off of this episode thinking, here's the standard. And if somebody can change, if they're not full-blown and they can change, then it means I need to stay and work this through with them. No, that was not the case for me. And I am so grateful that I did not stay stuck in the, well, if he can change, that means I should stay. And instead, I grounded into what are the ongoing consequences of him behaving in these ways and the effect that it is having on me. And y'all, I know myself well enough to know anybody who will take me into the crazy room is not someone I will ever have in my inner circle again. No matter how much they are working through their shit, no matter how much they are healing, that is not a fit for me. Let's finish up by talking about next steps. This is my list. I'm just gonna roll through this for y'all of 10 things that you can do to start moving forward, to start resourcing yourself. It is a journey, y'all. It is a process. I am still, hopefully, as you saw in this episode, I am still healing from covert narcissistic abuse in my life. I probably will be. Who knows? I it's it's a journey. I am not, I don't think I'll ever be like I am fully healed. But ultimately, it doesn't matter how long the journey is. What matters is that you are taking steps forward towards that healing and regaining of your right to own your perception of your reality and who you are and what you want in life. So, number one, I have for you. I want you to remember. So, one of the steps you can take is remembering and reminding yourself that if you look around and notice that you are loved and treated normally and can function normally at work or with your friends, but with your partner or your parent, or maybe it's a boss, but with that person, it always devolves it is not you. Okay. Remember that. That is so key when we are stuck in the crazy with this person and they are projecting so much of it onto us. If at work you seem calm, cool, like people love you at work, you connect with them, you have friends that get you. It is not you, it is the abuse. And remember, if you're seeing it in your marriage, there is a high likelihood that you may have a parent that is currently doing this to you as well. Second, educate yourself. Education is what I have seen as one of the biggest, most quick and effective ways to start moving through and potentially getting out of covert narcissistic abuse. I recommended The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists by Eleanor Payson last week. I hope if you have not gotten that, you do. I also want to recommend Lindsay C. Gibson's books, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People. Although she is not talking specifically about narcissism, emotionally immature people are often very narcissistic. You're going to see a lot of things in that book that are going to look similar. So they have a lot of gorgeous crossover that's helpful. Third, get support however you can. Okay. Therapy, coaching, find someone. You need people, especially if the abuse is severe. You have to have people outside of the abuse that can help you regain your reality and ability to trust yourself. This is so key. I was speaking with a woman the other day, y'all. Like, seriously, I think I mentioned it in the last episode. A woman that was like calling me on a burner phone from a deeply fundamental religion and a husband who is abusive. And I was so incredibly proud of her because even with all of that, she has managed to go to therapy. She is reading, she is building up the skills and the strength to find a way out. And y'all, and I hope she's listening to this episode. So if you are, my love, I could see it in her. She will do it. She will get out. The same tenacity I had, I saw it. And when she does, she will become an incredible voice in the world for helping other women do the same. So remember, when you are like, oh, should I get support? Is it worth it? Your journey is not only for you, it is for the collective. It is for women everywhere. It is worth it. Find someone to support you. Fourth, Sarah Blonden and her LiveAwake podcast. My assistant's going to be linking all of these in the show notes. She helped bring my soul back into my body and strengthen it. If you're going to start listening to her podcast, I know I've talked about it before on this podcast. I recommend going back to her very first episodes. And those are the gems. I remember mornings when I was still married where I would go sit with my feet in the grass in a lawn chair on my grass on my front patio with those in, and I would just cry listening. And that was what helped soften me back into my body. It brought me back into connection with my felt experience with who I am and trusting myself again. Fifth is Women Who Run with the Wolves. This book is incredible when you are healing from narcissistic abuse. You need a different perspective on women. You need a different perspective on the wild divine feminine within you. And one of the things I love most about Clarissa Pinkola Estes's work in this book is she provides so many stories that help you see the narcissist through the stories. One of my favorites, the very first one in the book, is Bluebeard. Holy shit. If you have experienced narcissistic abuse, that chapter, that story will just, it will land in your body in ways that will open and help you get out in ways I can't even describe. So she I especially love that she does that work through story, which is different for your brain than say a podcast or therapy or working with a coach. That's why I have my woof tattoo, y'all. It is that book. It literally changed my life. Sixth, if you find yourself still doubting, you're like, wait a second, but like, but what about like this? What about this? Like very specific things that you're kind of getting hung up on. Get on a 90-minute session with me, all right? Because that is where we can discuss those exact situations in depth. Um, I had a gorgeous review come in from a client that had a 90-minute session with me, and I want to share it with y'all. She said, within five minutes of my conversation with Brita, she clocked my husband as an emotionally immature, covert narcissist. This was an earth-shattering discovery for me. Listen to this piece, y'all. I have literally spent over 15 years trying to psychoanalyze, fix, support, and help this man with his never-ending problems in every aspect of his life, completely abandoning myself, my own needs and wants in the process. And yet, it never would have occurred to me that he could be a narcissist. I read The Wizard of Oz and other narcissists based on Brita's suggestion and just wow, mind-blown emoji in the review popping in here. I finally have the framework to describe what the fuck is happening with him. And it's making it so much easier for me to work through the process of disentangling myself from my codependent caretaker role. Ugh, mic drop y'all. I got you in these 90s. Seventh community. I cannot tell you how much seeing other women going through the same things helps you realize you are not crazy. I'm watching it unfolding in the community right now. It is so massive. One of the most painful things about narcissistic abuse is that it isolates you, right? It cuts you off. You end up in a echo chamber where all you can hear is the narcissist's thoughts about yourself and your own self-loathing and self-hatred. Community breaks through that. It shatters that. It shows you, oh my God, other people are experiencing that. You get to see those women and you see those women, you're like, whoa, she's amazing. She's incredible. And through that reflecting and mirroring, you realize, whoa, there is something more here. This is not just me. And you're able to identify the abuse. Also, I've just noticed how much having women meet you where you are at is so incredibly healing and supportive. Also, having women that are ahead of you, women behind you that you can help. It's a whole process. So if you've been considering the community, if you are dealing with narcissistic abuse, we have a whole breakout room for those that are wanting to discuss narcissism. This is something we are well versed in in the community and learning and healing through together. Eighth, start doing something that calls to you. So, y'all, way back in the beginning of my journey, I wouldn't say I was even considering divorce. It's when I was going to therapy and I was really realizing the abuse with my mother. I started trying things that called to me. For my friend this weekend, for her, it was yoga and it was ecstatic dance. Those were her lifelines that pulled her back into her life, into her body. For me, this was going to a pottery class. I even considered at one point going back to school. I looked into careers. I thought about becoming a physical therapist. I went and attended an information session at like the women's college down in Dallas about becoming a physical therapist. I went so far as volunteering at a physical therapist's office, like once a week, so that I could get volunteer hours. I took a calculus class at the local community college. Like all of that, every bit of that, helped connect me back to my source and my spark. It re-ignited that in me. It became lifelines back to myself. And although I'm not going to encourage you to go have an affair, right? That is not, you guys know, I'm like, affairs open a whole other fucking can of worms. But for those of you that have had affairs that are experiencing narcissistic abuse, just so you know, these often become the lifeline. When we talk about doing things that spark you back into yourself, this is what I hear the most when women talk about their affairs is they met someone, and through meeting that person, they're like, oh my God, I'm not who I think I am. And this other person views me differently or sees me in a way that my partner never has. That can be a spark. So I'm not saying go have affairs, because there's a lot of cleanup involved in that. But if you have had one, understand it through this context. It's not so much that, oh, your affair partner is this amazing person that now you're going to spend the rest of your life with. It's that they opened you back up to seeing yourself with a different lens, right? Sometimes they can pierce through that experience the lens of the reality that you've been so sucked into through the abuse. Ninth, share your truth with someone you can trust. For me, y'all, I had two people. It was my therapist and my best friend. They were the ones that knew the truth. And I will tell you, I truly believe that when you share the truth of what's happening for you, it breaks the spell. It breaks the spell of all of that psychological warfare that's been happening through the narcissistic abuse in your mind. And it helps you reorient over time because you now have someone outside of you that understands, maybe they don't understand, but they know you, and you know, you know that someone outside of you knows. I have met quite a few women on calls that tell me I am the only person they have ever shared some of the things that have happened in their marriage with. And I've even met one or two that were like, nobody else but you knows. Y'all find your person. There need to be at least one to two other people that you are being brave enough to start telling the truth to. Break the spell. Tenth and final one, validate yourself in your reality. Keep coming back to this, y'all. You get to feel the way you feel. You get to trust yourself. You get to know the things you feel in your body. You get to know what you need. You get to know what you want. No one else gets to know ultimately what is best for you. You are an adult and you are the main character of your story. Final takeaway, y'all, is that coming off of this episode, um, writing these episodes, really diving back into all of this for me, y'all. I had a lot of fear come back up. In digging into this, I'd re-entered those rooms of my past, started to see again and realize like how many people are out there in the world moving in narcissistically abusive ways. Okay. And I started to go into a space of really feeling afraid and like, oh my God, Joe, like, how can these women, you know, like if they're gonna get divorced, they're just gonna run into more of these people? And it was just like bah bah. It was like spiraling. And I realized I was slipping back into the victim mentality and feeling uncertain and helpless about how we make it in a world like this. As you all know, because that's the process, I had to like cry out this pain. I had to acknowledge this room, I had to have Joe hold me. And then where I ultimately landed was here, which is within every relationship with a narcissist is an opportunity to reclaim your power. And that journey is what makes you who you become and ultimately who I believe you are meant to be. So, what I mean by that is I know from my own experience what it's like to be in multiple relationships. I mean, y'all, I definitely dated a guy post my divorce that had covert narcissistic traits of abuse in that relationship. I now look back, I'm like, yes, 100%. That is what was happening there, y'all. And if we go through life being terrified that we're gonna end up in that again, we will never step out the front door. So, in reflecting back over my journey, I realized, yes, my mom had narcissistic personality disorder. Yes, my ex-husband had those traits, and I went through that in my marriage. Yes, I dated partners that definitely exhibited these things. And the journey and process of coming through each of those relationships, finding myself at times crawling back to myself, it is what has made me me. Like the me you see today came out of the intense struggles and journey I had with reclaiming myself and my power back from narcissistic religions, ideologies, and people. So I want to unequivocally say here no, narcissistic abuse is never okay. And absolutely, I live my life now where I do not intentionally and knowingly choose to have those people in my life, right? I'm not saying go be with a narcissist so that you can have a journey and come out of it and be stronger. That's not what I'm saying. Once I identify someone that has narcissistic tendencies, I do not give them any of my time, space, or energy. Okay. But if coming off of this episode, you're like, fuck, it's in my family, it's in my marriage. If you find yourself in this place, you have it in your past, know that you do not need to live in fear of it because what you are is powerful enough to come through it, out of it, and build the life you want. Especially for my women post-divorce, fear disempowers you, y'all. You are not a victim. And we heal and reclaim our power when we break the illusions that narcissists end up creating with their words and their fear. They use fear so much and their illusions of control. We break that when we say no more. And we get support and we take the next steps. And on the other side of exiting narcissistic relationships is where you begin to find your chosen family, your soul partners, and people who I promise will meet you in true mutuality. It is a process and a journey, yes. And I just want to reassure all of you, it is worth every bit of the hard it takes. And no matter where you find yourself in the future in your journey, like I did, coming off that relationship with that boyfriend and being like, fuck, or just now, right? Realizing this friendship I'd been building with this woman, I'm like, fuck, there it is again. You can develop a level of trust in yourself over enough time where even if you do end up in these relationships, you do not stay. And that is the key. That is the takeaway. We do not live our lives in fear of narcissists, okay? Because fear disempowers us. We live our lives with deep trust in ourselves. I hope both of these episodes, part one and part two, have shined so much light for all of y'all on the deep, dark, you know, really confusing labyrinth of what covert narcissistic abuse looks like and the costs of it. And with that, I really want to emphasize again that if you know someone that you think is experiencing this, please send and share this episode with them. These episodes are just a really, really big gift that took a lot for me to create. It took over a year and a half of building my voice on this podcast, all of the years before that, the therapy, the working through it in my own relationships to be able to feel ready to really articulate and dig into all of that. And even then, I'm still like as I was doing it for y'all, I was like, oh my God, this is. But I land here in the space of being deeply proud of it. And when you share that with someone else, when you send that along to a friend or a sibling that you think is in the thick of this, you give them a lifeline. You show them I'm a safe person. I'm someone you can trust to not dismiss this, to not say, well, they just seem like such a great person. I don't know what you're talking about. And, you know, I am still regularly shocked at the amount of women like that client that mentioned, you know, 15 years of trying to help her husband. I'm still shocked at how many women are experiencing narcissistic abuse that has not been identified or talked about by literally anyone in their life, including therapists that will miss it. So my hope is that this episode will really spread far and wide and find women, men like me that are desperate to understand the excruciating pain and confusion they are living in daily, that are internalizing it, that are hating themselves. And hopefully it will call out to them and say, this is not you. And there is a way out. And there are many other people finding their way out. Also, if this episode resonated with you, please go leave a review on Apple Podcasts or even on our YouTube page through the comments. Remember to like and subscribe and follow all the things we're on Instagram, YouTube, here on Apple, and over on Spotify. Remember, every time you do that, it helps other women find me and this work. Thank you all for hanging in there with me on these ones. Just a quick shout out to, I this is so like at the end, I was not planning on saying this, but I got an email from an amazing woman a couple weeks ago who mentioned to me, she was like, I know you said you want to do shorter episodes, but please don't because I love when you go deep. So just a quick shout out to you, my love. Thank you for telling me that because that also helped make these episodes possible because I knew they were gonna be a deep dive. I knew they were gonna be long. So to all of you listening, I'm sending my love. I will see you all next week.