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. Alright, y'all. This week, you are about to get an episode that I know I can feel this one in my bones, y'all. The episode this week and the second part to this episode that will come next week are going to be two episodes that will be work that I will probably for the rest of my life be the most proud of bringing to this podcast. As you can tell already from the title, we are going to be talking about covert narcissism. And this is work that I have been so deep in, so fascinated by for years now, that I have not brought to the podcast yet, not because it is not incredibly important, but because it is such a deep, deep and vast topic. It is extensive, the amount that I'm going to share with y'all from my personal work, from the work with my clients, from everything I have learned about it. And that's been brewing in me for a very, very long time. It's felt almost too vast to approach until this last week when I got on to a couple of 90-minute sessions and I met two incredible women who are so deep right now in the worlds of narcissistic abuse that in speaking with one of them, like I got emotional, which I don't do. Part of my training as a coach is to really be able to hold that space. But it was so intense hearing what these women were going through and knowing what it was, that it really this last week just tapped me back into what it feels like to be in that world, to be experiencing high, high levels of narcissistic abuse. And I felt the shift come. I was like, all right, this is it. This is the moment. So buckle up. I am the perfect guide to take you into this space. As I compiled this outline, as I dug back into all of this, as I digested with my partner Joe, with friends that have experienced it, I feel so privileged to now get to bring all of this to y'all. And I hope that this will be a clarion call in the podcast world. I hope that it will get shared. I hope that you will think of people that need this and it will spread because meeting those two women last week just drove home for me again how much we do not understand or speak about narcissism in the ways that I understand it and that I see it in the boots on the ground application and how not understanding that is so detrimental to those experiencing it. So, as you can tell from the episode, this is gonna be a part one and a part two. This week is part one. Next week will be part two. This week we are really gonna get into the overview kind of of two big core identifiers for me when it comes to specifically covert narcissism. I am not discussing overt narcissism in this podcast. I'll explain what the differences are between those two things in a second. But I'm gonna talk about the two core identifiers for me, what I have come to use when I am identifying narcissistic abuse in my own life, in my clients' lives. And then I'm gonna start diving into overall, I have 14 different techniques of abuse that covert narcissists use. This first episode, we will dive into the first seven of them. And next week's episode, we will finish off with the final seven, talking about the costs that narcissistic abuse has on your mental health, your emotional health, your physical health, and then what you can do instead. So we got a pretty juicy roadmap, y'all, for this week and next week. Let's dive the fuck in. So, first off, I want to say that I have noticed so much in our world today that there seems to be this belief that we are overusing the word narcissism. And I notice in a lot of women that get on calls with me and a lot of clients, them feeling like, well, I don't know if he's really narcissistic. That word kind of gets thrown around. He doesn't fit the things that I've read about it. And I just want to say clearly, in my own experience, in the way I'm going to explain what I see when it comes, especially to covert narcissism, we are not identifying and using this word enough. Let that land. Okay. That is what I am seeing. Is there many, many of us out there, many women struggling and experiencing covert narcissistic abuse that have no idea what that actually is. So in these two episodes, I'm hoping to provide a much deeper and very true to life explanation and analysis of what it is. Um, I feel like so many of the articles I've read, I have really not related to research that I've read around narcissism or books or the way people talk about it. There's only a few books that I really am like, yep, that that does it. So hopefully these episodes will talk about it in a way that pierces through all the confusion and all of the ideas that everybody has around it and really speaks to those that are experiencing and what it's actually feeling like. Okay, so the other big piece about this is in working extensively with women that are experiencing narcissistic abuse, I know I have witnessed that one of the most important pieces in regaining your self-sovereignty and your ability to escape the abuse comes from language around what is happening to you and being able to call it what it is. It is much harder to leave if you don't know what is happening. I'm gonna go deeper into things like the crazy room and feeling crazy yourself. There is so much dysregulation and up and down and all over the place that I hope that these episodes will become that for those of you experiencing this. A anchor point of like, oh my God, what is happening to me is real. And here are ways that I can make sense of it. Now, another first key piece is understanding that there is a wide spectrum when it comes to narcissism. The spectrum I'm talking about, like on one end, I think of as people that could actually be clinically diagnosed as having narcissistic personality disorder. Okay. And down on that end is another spectrum of like overt narcissism versus covert narcissism. Overt narcissism, usually pretty easy to spot. This is Trump. This is Trump. For all y'all wondering what the fuck is going on over there, that is overt narcissism. It is loud, it is in your face, it is over the top, it is unfeeling, it is all the things. Go look it up. I'm not worried about explaining what overt narcissism is. It can be pretty obvious, although perhaps a little bit more subtle when it's in your family of origin, which that's an episode for another time. But the difference is when we come down to covert narcissism, down on the spectrum of people who can be diagnosed with it, overt is loud and in your face. Covert narcissism, though, is much, much less obvious in an outward way. Okay. Um, people that have covert narcissism are typically, they appear on the outside very kind, very helpful. They can sometimes be self-effacing or even withdrawn, which is the opposite of what many of I've noticed my women think when they think of a narcissist, right? Oh, narcissist is someone who's obsessed with themselves and talks about themselves all the time and is loud. And no, y'all, this is not what we're talking about when it comes to covert narcissists. They actually outwardly can appear very normal, helpful, wonderful. But inwardly, what you will notice is they still crave admiration. They will lack empathy and experience a fragile ego. And covert narcissists, while they are experiencing the same insecurities as an overt narcissist, this is like one of the key defining characteristics, is they both have this deep insecurity at the core. The difference, though, is they internalize those feelings and that self-importance while hyperfocusing on their need for attention by getting control through the people closest to them in their innermost circle of authority. So where the overt is externalizing that self-importance, it's very obvious, it's on the surface, and you can watch it happening. Covert narcissists are still hyperfocusing, but they do it in very tight circles. Okay. They control and they hyperfocus on the people closest to them that are in that innermost circle of authority. This looks like spouses. This looks like children. Okay. Now, coming back finally to that spectrum I mentioned. So those that can be diagnosed with MPD would be, you know, between the overt and the covert. And then as we come back on that spectrum, though, and this is where I will talk in the second episode a little bit more about how it can get confusing, is individuals who will exhibit narcissistic personality disorder traits because they have experienced narcissistic personality disorder wounding in childhood. And I will dive into that more in the second episode. That's actually more what I experienced in my marriage was a lot of the trauma happening from two individuals who couldn't necessarily be full-blown diagnosed on the NPD or the flip side of the coin, like full-blown codependent. So just know as you're listening to these different techniques that narcissists use, your partner may not actually be a full-blown, able-to-be-diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder individual. They may have more narcissistic wounding that is showing up as exhibiting those traits, and it is still deeply hurtful. It still has consequences. Okay, so over the last four years of coaching women considering divorce and seeing all of this spectrum come up. And then in my own personal journeys with seeing it in my family of origin, ultimately seeing narcissistic wounding aspects in my marriage, and even narcissistic patterns in my religion of Mormonism, I have developed two core identifiers for me that help when I am trying to figure out if a person is in the narcissistic wounding traits realm of the spectrum, or if they are on the end of someone that would probably be diagnosed as full-blown narcissistic personality disorder. The first of those is whether the person lacks true empathy. Okay. And I'm going to dig into this with y'all. When I'm saying true empathy, I mean that they cannot fully, in their mind, put themselves in someone else's shoes and experience and understand what that other person is feeling or might be wanting or thinking. And why I'm using the word true empathy is because there are many narcissistic individuals that may say a lot of words that make it seem like they understand you and that they get it. Like they can sometimes be very good at reflecting back your feelings and being like, I hear you, I know you're hurting. But the key is checking in with their actions. So even though they are saying things that make it seem like they have empathy, their actions will show you otherwise. And when you dive into the actions, that is when you see that individuals who lack this true empathy, they often really deeply struggle with taking self-responsibility and being able to self-reflect. And what this looks like is apologies will always come with a but. Like you can track it sometimes where you're listening, they're explaining, they're telling you all this stuff, they're saying they're sorry, and all of a sudden there's a but you did this, or I had to do it because of this. They cannot sit with a clear, clean, sorry, I fucked up and feel into their own shame in that moment of like, oh, I fucked up, and it just gets to sit right there. Now, where I think this comes from is watching my mother and understanding more about her and the years actually leading up to her death, as I learned more about narcissism as I was doing my work in therapy. I came to see that for someone that can truly be diagnosed with NPD, I believe it stems from a psychological wound that happened in childhood that seems to be so deep for them that to ever acknowledge or go to that space would destroy them mentally. And that is where this deep, deep insecurity I mentioned earlier comes from. And you will see this. We're going to dive into this more later on, but this is where individuals with narcissistic personality disorder have this tenacious ability to hide from themselves in the controlling of others. And I think that stems, at least when I saw it in my mother, as I've seen it in other individuals, it seems to stem from this feeling of like, I am so afraid deep, deep down that I am broken, that even admitting I have made a simple mistake with no excuses is excruciating and untenable for the psyche. So to give a little bit of perspective on this, if you're like, whoa, what does this actually look like? The books by Lindsay C. Gibson, um, children of emotionally immature parents and disentangling from emotionally immature people do an incredible job of giving you perspective on what it feels like to live with, grow up with, or be in a relationship with individuals like this who, whatever that core wound is, it has stunted their emotional growth. And therefore, in that emotional immaturity, they, like a little kid who just feels so guilty, it cannot admit that it did something wrong. They do not seem to be able to do that. And that becomes very dangerous in adulthood because when you cannot sit in a space of admitting you have done something wrong, you will go to extreme levels to keep control. And this is very important. I think this is one of the most important things that I have learned and that I'm hoping to provide all of you in this episode is that for those of you experiencing narcissistic abuse from individuals on this end of the spectrum, when you can view the person through this lens, when you can understand that there is a very, very deep psychological peace here, it will help you in realizing why this person will go so far as being willing to destroy your internal trust and connection with yourself over them keeping control. This is the only way that the level of abuse, the level that individuals with this disorder will go to makes sense. So keep coming back to this as I share pieces, keep understanding that I believe this is a deeply unconscious mental illness that they are unaware of that drives all of this. Now, the second piece, these two indicators, right? When I'm trying to decide and identify, is my client, am I talking to somebody that like is full-blown narcissistic personality disorder? I'm checking in with are they able to experience true empathy? And I see that in their actions, not in their words. And second, do they view others as an extension of themselves? Okay. The analogy that I love using this for is for an MPD individual, okay, somebody who could be diagnosed with the disorder, the way their brain seems to view humans in their life is as if that human was an appendage. So you are not a separate individual from them. You are like their arm. Okay. And so when you operate outside of the way their brain thinks you should, okay, it is as if their own arm is attacking them. That is a very like, imagine your own arm all of a sudden moving on its own and doing something you don't want it to do and like attacking you. You would lose your shit. You would be like, oh my God, this has got to stop. Like, you are my arm, stop doing this. Ergo, if they view you as their own arm, okay, when you do things outside of the realm of what they are expecting, what they want you to do, the level of shock and assault that they will do back emotionally, verbally, can be extreme. And it doesn't make sense unless you understand that the way their brain works, they are viewing you as literally their own arm attacking you. And they do this to maintain that sense of control. Okay. Another big piece of this is understanding that when you view other people as extensions of yourself, they are not separate individuals that have their own ideas and passions and pursuits. They are a part of your own body. They are connected to the way you are viewed in the world, and thus they need to be controlled because they are a part of you. When you view people that way, you cannot interact with them in positions. Of mutuality. So I've talked about mutuality on the podcast before. Mutuality is where we are interacting with another individual in a space of like we are on equal footing. I am a human with passions and pursuits and things that I want to have in my life, and you are as well. And we are meeting at the table with respect and equality and being able to meet each other in mutualness. That is not possible with an individual that has NPD because they need you to be in a position of either power over, or sometimes they will even flip it and move it into a power under dynamic. But mutuality is for some reason for their brains just untenable. It has to be some kind of power over dynamic. And even when they take a power under dynamic, at the heart of that is a technique and a twist where they are ultimately getting power over you that I will explain in the future. So in understanding these two pieces, I have come to see, as I said earlier, that for the individual with NPD, most of I still choose to believe this, although a lot of the way that people talk about it, I think it's more with overt narcissism. They make it seem like they know what they're doing when they manipulate you. But what I saw in my mother and what I've watched in other people that I think could be full NPD is that what they are doing and how abusive it is and how painful it is is deeply unconscious to them. And that ties into the part of them seeing you as an extension of themselves. So although someone outside can see how abusive they're being, or even you yourself in talking to them can be like, this is not okay. You're not supporting me or you're not treating me like an equal, the narcissistic individual cannot see it and will defend vehemently that everything they are doing, that what they are doing and how they are treating you is because they love you. They really deeply believe that they are doing what is best for you and that it is because they love you. And anytime you try to get them to see what they are doing, they will turn it around. It is the most difficult thing in the world to try to get a narcissistic personality disorder individual to see this aspect of themselves, to understand you are treating me like an arm and I am a human. And I want to pause a little bit here to say that this is one of the most painful parts, I think, of this disorder is that these individuals cannot see what they are doing. And they will literally defend to the death their behavior while simultaneously professing how much they love you. And that is very, very psychologically damaging when you are the one receiving the abuse and trying to explain it and trying to discuss and help this person see it. And why I came out at the beginning of this episode with these two things is to hopefully lay the groundwork for so many of you finally understanding why, if you happen to have a person that could probably be diagnosed and PD in your life, why they cannot change. Now, to illustrate this more fully, I want to give you an example of a conversation that I had with my mom. Like this was the moment where it clicked for me. And I was like, oh my God, this is an actual mental illness. It is not going away. She is not going to change. This is real, real in a way I had not fully seen or understood prior to that moment. So at the time I was married, y'all. I had kids. I was not a child by any means. I was a grown-ass woman. I had flown out to be there for an event with my siblings. Um, I think my little sister was getting baptized, and I was staying at my parents' home. And I did not come with my husband and kids. It was just me. And I was set to fly home the next day. And the evening before, my mother and I were talking, and she was expressing some opinions that she had about one of my younger sister's choices, life choices. And at the time I was going to therapy, I had a lot more resources under my belt of understanding narcissism. I was setting better boundaries with her. So instead of playing the game that is often required when you are interacting with a person that has NPD, I pushed back and I expressed my opinion instead. And she really didn't like it. You could see her brain struggling that fuck, my arm isn't doing what it's supposed to do moment. But because it set enough boundaries, she wasn't able to fully just like push me to give in and to caveat. And I kind of held my ground. I'm like, no, I think she's making choices for her. I think you need to let her live her own life, that kind of thing. Fast forward to the next morning, the day I'm about to fly out. And I get woken up at 5 a.m. by my mother walking into my room in a kind of emotional and mental panic, which I noticed this a lot for my mother. I'll talk later on about how narcissists are unable to like process and feel their own emotions and manage their thoughts internally. Um, so all night she had been stewing and she was not able to resource in herself. She'd worked herself up until finally at 5 a.m., she could not stop herself. She comes into my room, wakes me up, and then proceeds to do a lot of techniques that we're gonna discuss in the future. But basically comes in to have what ended up being a three-hour-long conversation with me, trying to get me back in the box. And the box is her view of the world and what she thinks I need to agree with. And in this conversation, I start out, you know, in other relationships with other people, I can have conversations, I can have discussions. So you go into that conversation thinking, okay, I get to have my own opinion, she gets to have hers, and we're just gonna talk about it. And then you go the fucking rounds. It is like being put into a ring with a master boxer. And they will not let you leave the ring. Every time you try to leave, they pull you back in. So, in this instance, I remember multiple times like feeling it was it was one of the most amazing experiences for me because I had enough knowledge at the time of narcissistic personality disorder that I could watch what was literally happening to me as it was unfolding, which was that she would have an opinion, she would monologue and talk to me and try to convince me. And then when I would finally get my chance to speak, I would speak and I would explain back to her my ideas, my viewpoints, and even kind of move into a space where I could feel our energy moving to like we are now in mutuality, which is me getting to say, I understand you feel that way and I don't feel that way. And I'm gonna have my own opinion and you get to have yours. And when we would reach a spot of mutuality, I would think, okay, now we're gonna be able to lead this conversation. And without a beat, like without a beat missed, she would go right back into boom, power over me. And she would use one of the 14 techniques that I'm going to share to pull the conversation back, to reassert authority and to go back into trying to get me where she needed me to be for her to feel safe enough to leave that conversation. And after doing this for three hours with enough awareness to keep seeing, oh my God, every single time I move through my conversation into a space of mutuality, and I get to leave as my own individual and you get to leave as your own individual, she literally cannot let me leave. And she must compulsively bring me back into the power over dynamic until I finally had to literally get up and be like, this is over, and walk out of the room. And from that moment on, y'all, I never stayed in their home again. Because at that point, I had seen how boundaries that I set with my mother were not going to be respected. She could not. That was the moment when I was like, oh, I get it now. This is a mental illness. She is dealing with some deep psychological pieces and needing to try and work them out on me. And I am done going through the thrashing for three hours for her to get that all out. And I'll explain later what those conversations are that you go into for hours on end, you walk out feeling totally trashed, and they seem to be fine. There's an actual process happening there. The other thing I wanted to mention from this example with my mother is something as I was talking with my partner Joe about it. He has partners, definitely a partner that would have been diagnosed MPD, partners that have narcissistic wounding, and parents that had narcissistic personality disorder. So vast knowledge there. We were vibing out about this. I was explaining this combo, and he was like, Yeah, it's that feeling of you're in this carousel logic with them. And I love this term, y'all. This is new, new, newly minted and coined by Joe. But we worked together to realize, like, oh, so the carousel logic that you experience when you're in a conversation with an NPD individual is the conversation's very loud on their end. There is a ton of circular reasoning. You're just going in circles. It's very, very up and down emotionally. Like one minute they're like, I love you, I understand you, I've got you. Next minute they're like, oh my God, like attacking you. And you cannot get off this carousel ride until you are where they want you to be. Okay, now with that example that I gave you of my mother in mind, I want to tap you into what I believe is the core of the narcissist's path in life. Like if their life is going to take a certain path, what does it look like? And I would define that path as being I must control the people closest to me's actions, feelings, thoughts, and realities through whatever means necessary. They have to be what I need them to be for me to feel safe. And there is no other option. Now, this is the core that I think is kind of their path in life, the way they move through the world, the way they operate. And I want to emphasize: I do believe this for a lot of them is unconscious. They do not see how badly they need to control others to feel safe. And as we'll explain later, when I talk a little bit about their technique and this grandiosity that they have, they truly believe that in doing this, they are doing what is best for those people in their life. Okay, we're about to jump into the techniques. I know you all are probably just like, okay, I'm ready. Come on now. But I had to lay this foundation first. And also just, I hope you soak in and maybe re-listen as well. You're gonna want to really listen to this episode, but soak in the pieces that I just gave you because these are some of the biggest pieces that I have been able to formulate and pull from all of the work that I have done. So those core identifiers, remember them. It's a lacking of true empathy and then viewing others as extensions of themselves, which at their root, right, have this psychological wound that is so deep that they have to do this at all costs. And I want to, before we go into the techniques, I do want to give a quick caveat that even though I tried to be so thorough in these episodes, y'all, and these are as many techniques as I could think of, I know I will have missed some. So I want to take this opportunity before diving in to say if there are parts in listening to these two episodes that you resonate with deeply in your experiences with an NPD individual in your life that I do not mention, please take the time to email me and share with me those parts. Because I would love to create up a follow-up episode sometime in the future where I get to bring in an even deeper layer of all of this. This is something I am really, really deeply passionate about. So even though these two episodes are like a huge birth of all of this immense work that I've been doing, it will be something that I know I want to come back to and keep going just to even deeper levels with in the future. So reach out to me, write to me if you're like, oh my God, Berta, I can't believe you didn't bring up this one. I also want to mention that although this episode, because I work with women, considering divorce, is predominantly focused on women's experiences with narcissistic parents or partners, this episode will be incredibly helpful for anyone, no matter their gender that is experiencing narcissistic abuse. So if you have a brother, if you have a male friend that is experiencing this, or if you happen to be one of my male listeners, I know you are out there. Some of you have reached out to me, know that if this is landing for you, it absolutely can go both ways. This is not gender specific. Now, let's get into the techniques. So, in diving into these techniques, I want you to understand that when you are in a relationship with an NPD individual, you live in their reality. And let me also, real quick, caveat: I am speaking a lot right now about people that could be like fully diagnosed as NPD. But it all depends on where they are at on that spectrum. So please know that even if your partner cannot be diagnosed as a like full-blown narcissistic personality disorder individual, there is still immense cost to even being with someone who is down towards that end of the spectrum. So be gentle with yourself in not discounting your experience because you're like, well, they don't fit everything and they couldn't be fully diagnosed. Just because they can't be fully diagnosed does not mean the experience of living with them is not still taking a massive toll on you. So coming back, when you are with an individual that could be fully diagnosed or that has narcissistic wounding and has those traits and is exhibiting them, often you live in their reality and they have hundreds of routes into your brain that they use to keep you in it. I've often described, like when I've been in relationships with narcissistic individuals, it feels like being a rat in a maze, and you are just like you are running. Every time you try to get out of the room, they've got a different way blocked. Like they can block you in hundreds of different ways to guide you back into their reality. And I want to drive home here that from what I have watched over the years, I am blown away at the level that covert narcissistic individuals can do this in very sophisticated, complicated psychological ways. This is some of the most high-level shit I have seen out there when it comes to people I have met on 90 Minutes, clients I've worked with one-on-one. The level of psychological control that they are able to use is so painful, the effects of it, that only those that have lived through it themselves get it and understand what that level of control and the pain it elicits is like. So if you are someone that is experiencing this and you feel like nobody else gets it, welcome. Welcome to one of the experiences that I see the most amongst people who have experienced this level of abuse is until you finally meet your one person who gets it, you spend so much time trapped in this world thinking you are crazy because other people who have not experienced it don't get it. I cannot tell you the amount of women I have met who are currently in therapy, have been in therapy for years, and don't have therapists who have identified that what they are dealing with is narcissistic abuse. That is how much it can fly under the radar, even in clinical therapeutic settings. So know that, validate yourself, and let hopefully the techniques I'm about to dive into you with help you find your footing and validate your own experiences. Okay, first technique I have for you is that conditional love is the name of the game when it comes to covert narcissists. As long as you are what they want you to be, you will be so praised and loved, and you will get the connection. If you are what is called a Rapunzel when it comes to children, right? There's a book I'm going to recommend at the end of this episode that will break this down. But typically there are two different types of children: there's a Rapunzel and then there's a Cinderella. And if you happen to be your narcissistic parents' Rapunzel, you will get so much praise and love and connection when you are doing what they want. If you are a Cinderella, you kind of get the short end of the stick. And you may not get that praise and love when you're doing what they want, but you will get treated slightly better. But as soon, for both children, as soon as you are not fitting their expectations of you, you will be punished with all kinds of things, with love withdrawal, with emotional abuse, with neglect. You are not, even once you become an adult, and this is, you know, now we can think of it too, as well in like in a marriage, right? If you have a partnership, what's happening there? Your spouse, when you are showing up in the ways they want you to, when you are, quote, behaving, when you are projecting the image they need you to be, things are good. And when you're not, things get bad really quick. And that is because you are not an equal and full human being to them with your own wants and desires and needs that are equally important, going back to the mutuality and then viewing you as an extension of themselves. So the heart of what this is like is they don't truly know or love you deep down for you, but they love you for what you represent for them. And this is something that only now that I am out of relationships with narcissistic individuals and have experienced what it's like to be truly loved and seen and known. By friends and a romantic partner now, do I get how deeply these individuals did not truly know or care for me outside of what I could do for them? So what that looks like for narcissistic parents is wanting you to get straight A's, um, hoping that you will grow up and be a lawyer or a doctor, being like really disappointed and upset when you don't in the framework of Mormonism that was like, you're going to be Mormon, you're going to get married in the temple. It's not a question. You don't get to make decisions here. Um, you're going to have grandchildren for them. You're going to attend Sunday dinners. This is the way our family is, and you behave and participate in the family this way. You follow the religious rules. If we're talking about what it looks like with a partner, okay. This is where you may be in a marriage where neither of you are really like you're not connecting. They may not, they may even go so far as not being happy either or in love with you, but they really want you to stay married deep down because being divorced is going to make them look bad. And they will never say that, y'all. That's what I mean by how unconscious this is. If you were to say you're only staying married to me because you think being divorced will make you look bad, they will fully and without, I believe, lying, say that. And yet when you dig down into their actions, remember, what you see is this person doesn't even fucking know me. I think of a client that I met recently where she was like, I hate going to the mail. It is like my least favorite thing. And how her husband proposed to her was to put a ring in a mailbox on her birthday and tell her to get the mail. Like, this is what I'm talking about. This person does not know you. They do things for you that look like they know you. But if you really check in, and a good way to do this is to think about like your best friend or somebody that actually loves you unconditionally. Like they know things about you because deep down they love you for you, not just what you bring to them. These are comments in partnership. This is comments about your weight. This is comments about how you look. This is another client I heard shared a story with me about like her husband planning a birthday party that she did not want to have. She didn't want to have all these people over. And yet he got super upset that she wasn't grateful that he was planning this. Another client I talked to recently, her husband had planned a Mother's Day celebration, but didn't even communicate it to her. Their marriage is on the rocks. And so she makes other plans because they're not close. And then he rails on her when Mother's Day comes and he's like, okay, I'm gonna celebrate with you. And she's like, dude, you didn't tell me. I've got other plans. And it's all about how awful she is, how unkind she is, how she's not leaning into the marriage. This is one of the toughest spots for our brains, I think, in this dynamic, because for many of us, especially when it comes to the marriage, conditional love, if you are in typically what I've seen, if you are in a marriage with an individual who has narcissistic traits or full-blown disorder, that started in your childhood, the conditional love, the I have to be a certain way to be loved. And so you've been trained to think that this is what love looks like. And so when it happens in your marriage, you may not even realize what it is because it's the Kool-Aid you've been drinking and raised in your whole life. So remember with narcissistic individuals, the love is conditional. It comes and it goes based off of how well you fit what they need you to be. The second technique that I've seen when it comes to narcissists is grandiosity. And I'm like realizing I don't even think techniques is the best word for this. Some of these are techniques, but some of these are just like attributes. Okay. So it's techniques and it's attributes. So grandiosity is more an attribute that I've noticed of narcissistic individuals. And what I mean by this is that in the narcissist's mind, because you are a reflection of them, they feel entitled to define and pathologize you. And deep down, this grandiosity element is they think they truly know what is best for you more than you could possibly know for yourself. And regardless of what you tell them. So this is like a quick example that's coming to mind is my mom growing up. Um, I had a younger sister who was dating a guy and she did not want to date him anymore. Like, was over this, wanted to break up, and my mother literally shamed and guilted and forced her into staying with this guy because she believed that my sister was going to regret this for the rest of her life if she didn't stay with this guy. What this can look like in a partner is someone who has all kinds of opinions about what is best for you, how you should look. Um, from, you know, they can range from like, oh, you wear too much jewelry to not liking your haircut, to comments about your weight and your body, to full-blown telling you, defining you who you are, telling you that you are a horrible person and that's why you don't have any friends. The core of this is understanding that deep down, they genuinely believe they know what is best for you more than you know it for yourself. And so you coming to them, this is why it's so confusing when you are considering divorce and you're having conversations where you're coming to your spouse and you're saying, Look, I just really don't feel like I want to be with you, or I just don't feel like this is a fit for me, or I'm just unhappy. They cannot hear that and self-reflect and go, wow, my partner seems to be hurting, and I am a part of this partnership. That may mean I'm not showing up in certain ways. Maybe I want to go get some help. Maybe I want to go get some therapy. This leads to them doing all of that projection, all of that telling you, like, well, why can't you be happy? Or you can't leave because you're gonna ruin our family, or it's it's a lot of they believe they know what is best, and you just need to get back on board with the program. So do not underestimate this piece of narcissists, and that's the I think that's the grandiosity piece of like really believing deeply that their version of the world, the way they see things, is right and best for those in their inner circle, even to the point of you saying, This is not working for me, and they cannot digest that. It's okay, well, there's something wrong with you then. So, one of the ways that the grandiosity shows up that I see across the board, and this does not have to be with an individual that, like we're saying, you know, full NPD diagnosis is husbands who insist on staying married and who refuse to allow you to leave. And I'm not saying that they're actually saying to you, like, you cannot leave. We are not getting divorced, though that is definitely a part of it. But this is more insidious, I've seen it, in husbands who they are not directly telling you you can't get divorced, but they are enforcing that with relentless and unending mental guilting, shaming, fear-mongering, and trying to negotiate and talk you out of that. That is what I mean when I talk about the grandiosity of thinking you know what is best for someone. Like if you can look someone in the eye who is telling you, I am hurting, I am not happy, this is not working, I think I want a divorce. And you can tell them that, oh my God, they're going to ruin their children's lives. Like, do this is like the heart, y'all. This is the heart of when I say narcissistic individuals will do anything to prevent themselves from seeing that deep psychic wounding. This is it. They cannot, in that true empathic way, hear your pain and sit in it and feel, yeah, fuck, maybe I'm afraid that like everything's gonna fall apart and my kids are not gonna be okay. But ultimately, she is not doing well. So I can stay in the space of like, oh, whoa, okay, like this is for real. Instead, they will go to these techniques of just bombarding you unendingly with their pain, their sadness, how difficult this is going to be. How could you do this to them? And it will be all over the place when they do. We'll talk about more of that in the techniques in the next episode, but understand husbands that insist and keep you, run you through the ringer emotionally about wanting to leave. At the heart of that is them believing that they know what is best for you and you need to get on board. Third technique. This one is a technique. They will weaponize your struggles and weaknesses against you. So, this is another aspect that is very psychologically destructive for you as the partner of the NPD individual. Because where vulnerability and sharing intimately with them your hurts, your struggles, maybe your past trauma, things you've been through, where those things in a normal and healthy relationship would create connection, would create a deepening of the relationship. Fuck, even as I'm saying this, I'm like getting triggered, y'all. It actually leads to them storing those things away and then pulling them out to use them against you in the future. And why it's triggering is because I can think of clients and women that I have coached sharing about being sexually molested as a child. And then as they're going through this waking up, right, to the abuse happening in the marriage, they're communicating about it. Instead of that creating compassion in their partner and a real like gentleness around sex, a care towards them, it becomes a well, you know, you got molested in childhood, so you're kind of broken. Like you need to work on that. Um, like I remember coaching a woman who once shared that early on in her relationship with her husband, she had shared that she had been raped. And her husband later on in the relationship literally ended up doing the same thing, raping her with no like awareness of how traumatic that would be. Where people who have true empathy, when you tell them something like that, they they interact with you in spaces of sexuality, slower, softer, gentler. They do not go, oh, you should probably like get that fixed. Yeah, that seems to be a real problem. Like you seem to be struggling with sex, and that's probably because you were sexually assaulted as a kid. So a big element that I see here is the pathologizing. Um, especially if you start going to therapy and you start sharing in an attempt to create openness and connection and to get support, they will then start using those things you have shared back against you. And here is another tricky element of this. I have seen individuals, narcissistic individuals, where they end up going to therapy. But instead of the therapy actually creating internal change and self-reflection and them increasing their self-awareness, it fuels the fire of them now learning the languages of self-help, of therapy, and the ideas that are there. And then they bring them back to the conversations with you, and they have a new level of psychological verbiage to manipulate you with. And this is really tough when this starts to happen. When now the tools and the techniques that maybe you were using, right? Maybe you've been on a journey of self-help and you're trying to find yourself and you've been sharing some of that with him. And now all of a sudden, your trauma, the things you've been learning are being turned around and used on you. One of the craziest examples I have seen of this, and literally, y'all, I had two different women bring up this exact same example. And in both of these instances, both of these women were with partners that could be diagnosed as full-blown NPD disorder with the level of the abuse that was happening. But they both spoke of husbands who had been like doing more of the self-help reading. I can't remember if they were going to therapy or not. But there's some like research around, oh, if you get like a 20-second hug, it boosts your oxytocin or something. It creates connection. And their husbands were literally enforcing when they would leave for work that they get a 20-second hug before that. Even though these women were like, I don't like it, I don't want to do it. They had to do it. Um, I've seen this recently with a lot of women where there are husbands who have been in therapy. I recently had a client describe it as like, okay, they're having a conversation. Her husband is complaining about his day. She's like reflecting back his feelings, trying to be compassionate. And all of a sudden he's like upset and he's like, You're not reflecting my feelings back to me. You're not doing active listening. I'm feeling unheard. And no matter what you do, it will never be enough. And they will always find something else because at the heart of this, it is not actually about you being able to fill that aspect for them. But it seems to be this like relentless escape they need from this pain that I mentioned before inside of them through focusing on and controlling you as an external person in their world. And that is why they will log, I think they do it unconsciously, it's a mechanism in their brain, they will log away the things that you are struggling with, the aspects that you are working on, and then pull them out in the future to hold over you. So if they know that you've been struggling with hearing them, they will double down on that in learning about it in therapy. The fourth attribute I have when describing an individual with narcissistic personality disorder traits or diagnosis is they don't like it when you shine, unless it is in an area that they want and expect you to shine. Let that one kind of sink in. Okay. So I've noticed there is this kind of competitive energy with narcissistic individuals that is kind of confusing because it comes and goes depending on what area you're shining in and whether that area is actually sanctioned by them and doesn't like trigger that insecurity piece. So an example I have of this is my mom growing up was obsessed with mine and my sister's boyfriends. And looking back now, we really didn't choose our boyfriends. She picked them, she would kind of direct us towards them. And we learned unconsciously that if we ended up going with someone she liked, we got more time and looser restrictions. Okay. So if I shined in the area she wanted me to shine, if I picked the boyfriend she wanted me to pick, I got more privileges. Um, I had a sister that played soccer. My mom loved sports. The sister that played soccer was treated better. When I got older, I ended up taking piano lessons. It was something I just wanted to do for myself. And I remember when I would go to their home, I would have to take my books when I'm like when we were visiting. When I was older, I had my kids, we would go visit for Christmas or something. Um, I was taking some pretty intense, they're called Royal Conservatory of Music tests. And I would have to take my books to practice on their piano at their home. And I remember practicing and playing and thinking, wow, my mom never asks me about this. She never comments on how well I'm doing when I'd be practicing at their home. And that's because playing piano was not valuable to her. It was not a place she cared about me shining in. It was not something she was interested in. I can think so of so many conversations on the phone her, where I would start sharing something that I was excited about and she would like to check out. It was only when I was talking about the areas she was interested in that she wanted me to be good at, that I got to have her attention. But when this is with a partner, this is where the competitive energy comes in. And it's more like competitive energy when you're shining in areas they don't want you to shine or they feel insecure. And then more of the neglect of not supporting or being excited about areas that they don't see as valuable to them. Fifth technique they use is whiplash. Y'all, this is a big, big, big one. Okay. What whiplash looks like is one minute you can be experiencing this. And actually, I just recently went through this with someone that I've now identified as being definitely someone who can be diagnosed as NPD. But in this conversation, like one minute she has me shrouded in like love and concern and tons of emotions. And then the next she is like criticizing me and upset. Okay. So that's that's a part of it when you're in an actual conversation with them. This also can happen in bigger stretches of time where you're going through periods where you feel like things are good and we're doing well. And then all of a sudden, an interaction happens, they get upset and they become brutally distant, icy, and completely ignoring you and treating you like you don't exist. Which, if you are a natural empath, and I just have to say heads up on this, y'all, that seems to be who narcissistic individuals are drawn to most. It's almost like it's freaking magnetic because you are a natural source of what they need. If you're a natural empath and you experience this, it makes it really excruciating. This whiplash feeling of one minute I'm loved and feeling safe. And the next minute they are like emotionally gone. What I've seen is this technique is really, really effective for keeping you in the abuse because you can't ever get your feet underneath you because the ground is always moving. And what this does for you psychologically is it keeps you destabilized and unbalanced, which prevents you from grounding and regulating your nervous system. And that leads you to perpetually living in this fight or flight mode, which, as we've talked about previously, can Lead into like functional freeze where you just shut down. This is why the work I do with my clients is so important because, especially with women who are in narcissistic marriages, is you cannot make decisions. Like you will never win, get out in that much of a dysregulated, unable to be in your body mode. It is so, so difficult to make decisions from this back and forth, up and down. I don't know where we're at or what's going to happen next. And a lot of women will describe this to me as, you know, being afraid and feeling like, okay, it's good, but when's the shoe gonna drop? The the women that are in marriages with NPD individuals, diagnosable, they are like, when is the shoe going to drop? When is shit going to hit the fan? And I want to like, real quick, do a side note for my women that may be realizing, like, shit, I'm really hitting a lot of these, like down here on the end of the spectrum where he's NPD. Oof, do I have so much compassion and love for you and you are not alone? Y'all, if there's anything I have been surprised about in my coaching, one of the biggest is how many women are in very, very emotionally, mentally, and psychologically. They are not physically. This is another thing that I think MPD individuals know. They know to not hit because they have to preserve that image of themselves, that grandiose image of them as the good person. But you are getting wrecked emotionally, psychologically. It is so difficult. And the level that I have seen, like that's what shocked me, is the amount of women that I have seen in intensely high levels of the covert narcissistic abuse where the whiplash literally messes with your brain so much, and you live in such a destabilized state that you can't gather the resources to eventually get out. So please understand whiplash is real, and it is, I would say, one of the biggest techniques used to keep you unstable and unable to leave. Sixth technique that they use is monologuing. And this is where they talk at you for hours and hours and hours just to wear you down. And your role during that, I'm putting it in air quotes, conversation, which is just you fucking listening, is to listen and agree. Like that is what they expect from you. And why monologuing is so painful, why this technique is so painful for you, is because if you push back, if you speak up when they are monologuing, if you try to have an opinion, that will just lead to more hours and more abuse. So I definitely learned this as a child with my mom. Like if you spoke up, that would add like an extra 30 minutes to the conversation. So in order to survive that, your brain learns and has to develop mechanisms that cause it to shut down, that cause it to step back. That's why I see in so many women suffering from this abuse over time, like they may have started in the marriage more outspoken, more expressing what they needed, pushing back, saying, No, I don't like that. I don't want this, I'm missing you, I need help, I'm not this. Over time, though, your brain learns unconsciously to not speak up, to not push back. And this is such a huge cost for you in your individual life because you develop these mechanisms that long term will work against you, because the mechanisms you're developing of don't speak up, get quieter, get smaller, are the very things that will keep you in the relationship and prevent you from reaching out and getting the resources and the connections that you need to get out. But when you are in the abuse, this is the only route for self-preservation. It is to get smaller in the conversation. And this goes back to what I mentioned with like being in the ring with a prize fighter. Okay. Narcissistic individuals, I have seen how when they go into these conversations, they do not tire. They can go rounds for hours and hours and hours until you finally give in to them. And y'all, this is terrifying when you are in a marriage and you are with a partner who will literally follow you from room to room to room for hours talking. What you'll see too when you're in a conversation like this is those conversations for them feed them. It like gives them energy while you are being drained. And that leads me to my final attribute for this episode, my seventh and final one for this episode, is you are their dumping ground for emotional processing. So tying back into the monologuing and why you have three-hour-long plus conversations with them and why those conversations seem to energize them while totally fucking you up, is you are their dumping ground for emotional processing. Here's what I mean by that. Because they don't have the internal tools to process and support themselves, they emotionally process by throwing up all of that internal shit on you. Best image I have is that like they cannot digest their own feelings. They cannot digest their own shame. They cannot digest their own thoughts. So they have to get those out somehow. And it feels best when they can throw it up on someone else. This is literally my mom. Like, this was in that conversation I was explaining to you guys earlier. That was what was happening for her. She did not have the tools to that evening, like digest. My daughter gets to have a different opinion than me. I don't always have to be right. And it stewed and stewed and stewed into her until she was so sick she had to come in, storm into my room, and throw it all up on me. Now, what this can also look like, I had a client describe this recently, where she said she'd made a small mistake in public. So narcissists care immensely about external personas, external facades. They care about it immensely for themselves. And then they also need everybody around them to participate and fit that. So for this client, she'd upset him somehow out in public. Okay. She hadn't fit perfectly into his idea of who she needs to be, how she should be acting. And what that led to when she got home was four hours of psychological beating. Okay. Um, and afterwards, her leaving, feeling wiped out. Like when you leave that, you are not in your body. They have completely like obliterated you. You have been beat over those hours into full and utter submission. And next week, I'm gonna go into this a little bit more. I actually call these conversations, I call them the crazy room. That's a name I came up with through my own experiences. But they leave that experience feeling refreshed and happy and tying back into the whiplash, y'all. Often the next day, when they wake up, they will act more in love with you and happy and kind and helpful, and and oftentimes act like nothing happened because for them, they just got to dump all the pain inside of them on you, and they actually do feel better. That piece of being kept up all night. I mean, I can't tell you how many women I have heard who are like, I had to go to work the next morning. He kept me up, going on and on and on about it. And the next day I wake up and it's like it never happened. And he's like kissing and hugging on me and happy. This is what is happening. That is why you are such a valuable source for them. Are we all putting it together now? Are we starting to see how this ties? You are an incredibly valuable source in their life because you are where they get to drop all of the shit that they can't handle. You are the dumping ground that gets to hold the stuff that they dump on you so that then they can go out into the external world and project this incredible facade that everybody else thinks they're amazing. That's another attribute or technique, I guess, that we're going to talk about next week. But I'm hoping that coming off of all of this, you guys have gotten some of these techniques and attributes. In the next episode, I am going to break down the final seven techniques. I am also going to dive more deeply into the cost that is enacted to your mental, physical, and emotional health from being in a relationship like this. And I am going to provide tools for what you can do to help yourself. But before I end this episode, I know I'm like, man, we were just in the heart of it. Like we were rolling, y'all. I could not do this in all just one episode, though. It was going to be too much. But if you are needing help right now, okay, for those splitting these episodes, I was like, I cannot leave them with just like, okay, you probably have an MPT individual with your life. Good luck till next week. If you are needing help right now, here are two options that I've got for you that I want you to utilize this week. First is I want you to go get the book The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists by Eleanor Payson. Y'all, this book, this book, this book, I cannot vibe about this book enough. This is the book my therapist seven years ago recommended to me. This is a book that changed everything because this is the book where I read, and for the first time in my life, I had language that explained what I had been experiencing as a child that no one had, I just didn't even know I was experiencing it until I read it in the book. And I was like, oh my God, I've felt that. I've experienced that. Holy shit. This is what I've been going through. I love that book too, because obviously there are tons of books, tons of resources out there on narcissism. And I think that's where it can get really muddy and start kind of like, oh my God, well, he has some things, but he doesn't have others. This book, though, really drives it home in ways that I just found very eye-opening, cut-to-the-point kind of pieces. So if you are like, holy shit, I think this is me, I have never really dived into narcissism that much. I want you to go get the book and I want you to start digesting it. And if you do that, I know that next week's episode will land for you even deeper. So highly, highly recommend that. And then my second option for you all is if you are like, whoa, oh my God, this is earth-shattering right now. Like, I think this is actually what I'm experiencing. I want to reach out across the void and say, I have got you. And I want to recommend getting on a 90-minute session with me this week if you can. Um, I don't know what my schedule is. I'm, you know, recording this on Sunday, so I'm not sure what my schedule will be like by then. But if you can't get in this week, get in as soon as possible because I have seen so powerfully how being on a 90-minute session with me and actually getting to talk through your pieces, right? I mean, there's only so much I can do with this episode. It would have taken me hours and hours to go like comb through my notes and find every single example I've ever been given from women that have worked with me around these different aspects. But when you can get on a call with me and we just go through it together and we go through that format that I have on the 90 minutes without a doubt, I have seen and I know from my own work how good I am at being able to spot and help you see these patterns. And I've seen the shift that it makes for women when you are in the thick of it and you have somebody that can be like, yeah, this is real. And not just on a podcast giving you examples, but actually hearing, like, oh, this is this is that part. This is this piece, this is what's happening here. So, like I said, if you've been considering one, if you're like, oh my God, I think this is me, I have got you. I am so proud to be able to be like, bring it, honey. I've walked the path, I've helped many other women walk it. One of the things I love the most about coming off of a 90-minute session is I provide after that an audio and a PDF roadmap that gives you the next steps to take. Because one of the most important things to understand if you are waking up to narcissistic abuse in your life is it takes time to get your feet back under you. If you are still married and deeply in it, it takes time to gather the resources to learn the language, to start pouring back in yourself enough to have the resources even to get divorced. I mean, I think of how I knew a year before I filed for divorce, like part of me knew I'm going to get divorced. But there is a level that you have to reinvest back in yourself to be ready to go through what it's like divorcing someone who either has narcissistic personality disorder or is on the end of the spectrum where the traits that they use, the psychological defenses that their brain is enacting on you to try and keep you with them because you are a source that they really, really need in their life. Coming through that, you have to have resources and some sort of foundation in yourself. I look back now and I'm like, fuck, it's amazing that I did it how I did. I mean, you don't have to have a ton. I had a best friend and a therapist and a pretty deep understanding of narcissism. And I'd become a bit of a narcissist ninja and then cleaned out some shit with Mormonism and my mom. So I was on my way, but that still didn't take away the hard that it was going through it. So if you're coming off this episode and you have got momentum, right? You're like, this is speaking to me. Oh my God, I'm feeling it. Make the move. Make the move now. Get the book, sign up for the 90 minute with me, and let's get you rolling. And if you know someone that you think is experiencing this, y'all, if you're like, oh my God, this isn't my marriage, but like maybe it's my sister's, or oh my God, this sounds like my best friend, or please reach out to them and share this episode. I just feel like these episodes I hope will make such a huge difference in the world for those experiencing this and stuck in the just horrific, and I'm gonna go into this more next week of what it like when I talk about the cost. It is so terrifying when you live in the world of experiencing this abuse and you have no understanding of it. When you understand what is happening to you, it can literally be life-changing. So if someone is coming to mind, share this episode with them. Let them know that there will be a second one. We've got the other one coming out next week. And most of all, know that we are in this together. If you are currently experiencing this abuse and feel like you are alone and isolated, which often happens because that is part of the technique that they use. Know that you are not. There are many, many women out there that get it, that don't need you to explain, that are like, yeah, that's what that is. And I see you. I see you. Y'all, thanks for hanging in there with me. I'll see you next week when we break the rest of it down. Till then, I'm gonna go.