Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse

Being Taken for Granted? How to Protect Your Big-Heartedness from Toxic People's Manipulation

• Kerry McAvoy, Ph.D. • Season 3 • Episode 92

Share episode

Send us a text

As a nod to this week’s holidays, let’s revisit three of my favorite episodes that discuss how to handle being too big- or kind-hearted.

We at the Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse podcast hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Are you interested in the Podcast Extra Interviews?

Get immediate access by subscribing to the Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse Substack newsletter. Every Podcast Extra interview can be found inside the weekly newsletter. You’ll also get helpful tips, explanations, and strategies for dealing with troubled or toxic people. Sign up here: substack.com/@breakingfreenarcabuse

Links Mentioned: 

• Codependent No More by Melody Beattie: Melody Beattie
• Facing Codependency: What It Is, Where It Comes from, How It Sabotages Our Lives by Miller, Miller, and McMillan
• Not Nice: Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty by Aziz Gazipura, PsyD

To learn more about the Dark Triad Personality Type, check out, “Could you be at risk? Why you should be afraid of the Dark Triad Personality” -  https://www.buzzsprout.com/2150391/episodes/12978484

To listen to the full episodes featured today:
—>S2 EP 10: Is Codependency a Bad Word?
Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2150391/episodes/12428199
Video: https://youtu.be/aF9cW1b7Dtk

—>S2 EP 23 Does Everyone Deserve Our Kindness?
Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2150391/episodes/13150918
Video: https://youtu.be/RMVMtCF3N4A

—>S2 EP 40: Does the Narcissist Always Ruin Your Holiday?
Audio:  https://www.buzzsprout.com/2150391/episodes/13922710
Video links: https://youtu.be/RzSxypGEtpI

Did you know you don't need to wait a week for your next podcast fix? For only $5/month, sign up for weekly podcast extras!  Join me on Substack! 

Follow Dr. McAvoy!

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D., a mental health specialist and author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships, deconstructing narcissism, and understanding various other mental health-related issues. Her memoir, Love You More: The Harrowing Tale of Lies, Sex Addiction, & Double Cross, gives an uncensored glimpse into the dynamics of narcissistic abuse.

As an Amazon affiliate,

Wedding Wednesday Pod
We're spilling ALL the tea on wedding drama, horror stories & the craziness of planning!

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Support the show

Being Taken for Granted? How to Protect Your Big-Heartedness from Toxic People's Manipulation Ep. 92

Kerry: [00:00:00] This time of year brings to mind words like compassion and charity. Today I'm featuring a montage of my three favorite episodes that talk about big-heartedness, where’s the line for codependency, and how to stop toxic people from ruining special occasions.

Tara: Today we’re going to talk about codependency, which Kerry and I actually disagree on. I think this will be an interesting topic. So, what do you think about codependency, Kerry?

Kerry: So here’s kind of like to put myself into perspective. My graduate training was from the mid-80s. It was when I went to school in the mid-80s. So, if you think about what was happening around the mid-80s, the DSM-3 was released in the early 80s. Narcissistic personality disorder really made its first appearance. Autism was making its appearance. There’s a lot of things that were really new. Codependency hadn’t really showed up.

So that’s partly, if you put my [00:01:00] training into perspective, you can see why some think, "Oh, you know the other thing that was happening in the 80s?" That’s when Prozac made its launch. Just as I was starting my first experience in a psychiatric hospital, Prozac rolled out, so I got to actually watch the difference from the old style of treatment to the new style of treatment.

So that may have been partly why I struggle with it, but here’s the other reason. If you Google, or especially do like a Google Scholar search where you do it based on research, you’re going to find psychology as a field does not agree on what codependency actually is. So we’re talking about a lot of different things, and we’re kind of throwing it into the hat and saying, it’s this.

But when you bring it up, it may not be what I’m bringing up and talking about. We may be talking about vastly different things. I think that’s why I struggle with it. And at an emotional level, have I behaved that way? Yes, I have. But why am I doing that? Well, because I was raised in a home where I was emotionally responsible for the adults in my life.

Is that my fault that that happened? When it’s a survival [00:02:00] technique, it helped me get out of the house and do really well? No. So there’s a level of responsibility we place on the person when we say that they are. It’s like, bad you. You should have known better. You should not be doing that. Healthy people don’t do that.

Hey, it got me out, saying I’m where I am today because I learned that people-pleasing skill. I don’t like it because I feel like it’s blaming.

Tara: I’ve never taken it as such. And I think maybe the difference why is because I also connect it to the sign of, like, attachment theory. When we’re thinking about attachment theory and how in the first year of life, our blueprint for relationships is created.

And I think about it a lot in terms of that and that my blueprint or default is to sacrifice myself for the betterment of other people, to sacrifice myself in some ways that is actually selfishly motivated. And the reason why I say that is because I avoided conflict, walked on eggshells, and was totally honest, manipulated, because I didn’t want to deal with the uncomfortable feelings of others. [00:03:00] And in some ways, that was very selfishly motivated.

Kerry: Yeah. But when we’re talking about infants who have no choice and who will actually really die if they—

Tara: Can’t figure out how to show up. Yeah. I mean, I’m not to blame for what happened to me when I was a kid, but I am responsible if I’m, when I’m, making healthier choices in adult relationships. And I think that’s the case with most things, is that, you know, just because we experienced trauma or whatever when we were children, it doesn’t mean we have to rely on those survival mechanisms as an adult. And those survival mechanisms were necessary for me as a child. And I’m certain that they were for you too, but they don’t have to last if I’m going to create healthy, secure relationships as an adult.

Kerry: But at what point do you then say you move from the place of, "Okay, you didn’t know better, you got out of a really bad home situation, yay for you, that’s a big win," to, "Oh, you know what, you’re kind of messing up adult relationships. Maybe you need to start looking at this differently and get your act together."

See, that’s where I find it’s really hard is through failure we discover we have this pattern. It’s not because [00:04:00] we suddenly have this insight of, we become a self-reflective person, like, "I’m people-pleasing awfully a lot. I should maybe—" you know, it comes out of the fact that something bad happens and then says, "You know, you sacrificed yourself in that relationship, and you probably shouldn’t have done it. Have you ever thought about maybe that’s a pattern of yours?"

I think that’s the other part that kind of rubs me wrong. Is that we’ve already attached a label to somebody just that they had no awareness until that happened. They discover it in a back-end way, not in a—it’s not a planned thing. It’s a failure; it’s an accident that happened.

I wish it was nicer. Because let’s be honest here, we know out there, there is a lot of criticism leveled against codependent people because here’s the other thing: I think a lot of codependent people are women. I’m not saying there aren’t codependent men, but they’re more likely to—

Tara: Be a woman than a man. You know, in some ways, I would disagree with you, actually. In my experience with my clients, people-pleasing is considered normal in a lot of [00:05:00] men, like not really being direct, doing things for others, believing that "I’m providing," doing things for others with the expectation that they’ll get appreciation and reward. I see that sort of hardwired into a lot of men, but they don’t necessarily recognize what it is.

Kerry: So they wouldn’t say to you, "I think I’m a people-pleaser," or "I think I’m—" no, they wouldn’t come up. I know you worked with more men in your career probably than I have, because I would say in my counseling practice, it was 95 percent women. So, yeah, I saw men, but they were more likely to come in for couples work, not just straight out for therapy.

But I think you’ve done a lot more work with just men on their own. And you’re right, when you said that, yes, I’ve seen that dynamic a lot. I’ve even met men, dating-wise, who say, "I sacrificed this, and I did this, and I’m not grateful." I’m thinking, I didn’t—

Tara: even know that you did that. Yeah, and it's a relationship killer. Yeah. It absolutely is, because that expectation, that anger, that resentment, you know, I see it a lot with my own husband [00:06:00] in that he won't say specifically that he doesn't want to do something. He'll say things like, I would rather not, and I don't see that as a definitive no.

I see that as, oh, I would rather not, but I'll do it. He's just not as clear as he could be, and I've called him out on it. I see that sort of sidestepping, not. I've seen it with many men and I've dated, I see it with my husband and I'd see small things that again can build that expectation, that resentment, that anger.

Kerry: There's two groups of people. I don't know how familiar with Sandra Brown's research. So in 2014, she had 600 couples that she looked at. Previous to that, it had been assumed that people get into a pathological love relationship must be codependent. And she was looking mostly at women who were in a pathological relationship with men.

But what she found actually was startling. She found that there was two separate groups of her subjects. There was the group who had a history of trauma before, probably had what we would say classically codependent characteristics. [00:07:00] And that was roughly around 30, I think it was like 37 percent of that group was that.

So roughly one third of the group. And then two thirds of the group. Actually had no history of trauma, none, and they actually were high functioning women who had been doing really, really well in their life until they met this person and they got into a relationship with them and then they started to kind of fall apart and become more codependent as a result of trying to deal with the trauma bond.

So that group was the 63%. She said she found two consistent traits across that group. It was extremely elevated, not just a little elevated, but like shockingly elevated. And that was they are highly cooperative people, meaning they played well as part of a team, and they tend to be very conscientious, which meant they had sort of an internal moral code about what it meant to be human and how to behave with other people.

And those two super traits, those two overly elevated traits made them susceptible. To get trauma bonded with somebody. So I thought that was really interesting. Actually, [00:08:00] I fit into the 37%. I don't like saying that. Because I had a history of trauma before. And, yes, I tend to do too much emotionally in relationships, if I'm not careful.

But I have met a lot of people who are out of the 63 percent who are not. Who is completely blindsided by the abuse. 

Tara: Even know that you did that. Yeah, and it’s a relationship killer. It absolutely is, because that expectation, that anger, that resentment. You know, I see it a lot with my own husband in that he won’t say specifically that he doesn’t want to do something. He’ll say things like, "I would rather not," and I don’t see that as a definitive no. I see that as, oh, "I would rather not, but I’ll do it." He’s just not as clear as he could be, and I’ve called him out on it. I see that sort of sidestepping, not just with him. I’ve seen it with many men I’ve dated. I see it with my husband, and I see small things that again can build that expectation, that resentment, that anger.

Kerry: There’s two groups of people. I don’t know how familiar you are with Sandra Brown’s research. So in 2014, she had 600 couples that she looked at. Previous to that, it had been assumed that people who get into a pathological love relationship must be codependent. And she was looking mostly at women who were in a pathological relationship with men.

But what she found actually was startling. She found that there were two separate groups of her subjects. There was the group who had a history of trauma before, probably had what we would say classically codependent characteristics. [00:07:00] And that was roughly around 30—I think it was like 37 percent of that group. So roughly one-third of the group.

And then two-thirds of the group actually had no history of trauma, none, and they actually were high-functioning women who had been doing really, really well in their life until they met this person. And then they started to kind of fall apart and become more codependent as a result of trying to deal with the trauma bond.

So that group was the 63%. She said she found two consistent traits across that group. It was extremely elevated—not just a little elevated, but like shockingly elevated. And that was they are highly cooperative people, meaning they played well as part of a team, and they tend to be very conscientious, which meant they had sort of an internal moral code about what it meant to be human and how to behave with other people. And those two super traits, those two overly elevated traits, made them susceptible to getting trauma bonded with somebody.

So I thought that was really interesting. Actually, [00:08:00] I fit into the 37%. I don’t like saying that. Because I had a history of trauma before. And, yes, I tend to do too much emotionally in relationships if I’m not careful. But I have met a lot of people who are out of the 63% who are not, who were completely blindsided by the abuse.

Tara: Yeah. Yeah. And I will say I’ve read a lot about codependency, like Facing Codependency by Pia Mellody, Codependent No More by Melody Beattie, as well as Dr. Aziz Gazipura has a book that’s catered more towards a male audience, I think. It’s called Not Nice. It’s specifically about people-pleasing. And I’ve seen a lot of those books do talk about not necessarily it being rooted in childhood or something that you’ve learned there.

It is for me, it is for many of my clients, but for some of them, it’s not. They get into a relationship with someone that they see as having the same traits or qualities as themselves. And that soft-heartedness, that agreeableness gets taken advantage of. And you’re right that in studies [00:09:00] of narcissistic abuse victims, people who are actually more likely to be cheated on—and two studies on those—they found that the people that are most likely to be cheated on and victims of narcissistic abuse had those traits.

And I think it makes a lot of sense because, for example, if someone may believe that it’s okay for them to cheat on us because they think we might forgive them for their first or second transgression. Things like that might make us more susceptible to have that happen. And sex, you know, because we wouldn’t do that in turn.

So as someone who struggles with codependency, I heard years ago from a therapist the difference between caretaking and caregiving—that caregiving is when we can give to others without expecting something in return. But caretaking is when we give with some kind of expectation or ulterior motive. And that’s often how I’ve been able to tell, like you mentioned the whole feeling like it’s at a cost or there’s a high [00:10:00] price to pay.

That’s where I have to check in with myself, like, why am I doing this? What am I expecting? When I give this or do this, am I expecting something in return or some kind of setup? Because then I’m just going to get resentful and angry and bitter if that’s the case. And I really have to learn to say I have to be better about just saying no in general.

Kerry: Yeah, that’s certainly been my journey too, trying to figure out the difference between those two lines. Because I was raised with this concept in a very evangelical Christian home of joy being Jesus first, others second, and you last. So that means every time that you put yourself first, then somehow you’re knocking Jesus out of the way, which makes you a bad person.

Or maybe even talk about it, who’s at the throne in the center of your life? Are you sitting on that throne or is God sitting on that throne? So, because there was a lot of indoctrination about all of that—and I’m not saying that’s all bad—but what I am saying is that it confuses the fact of what does self-love look like, because it makes all forms of self-love then toxic or selfish.

What got [00:11:00] me though, which really, really tripped me up, is I figured out pretty early on that doing it for selfish reasons—in other words, being kind to you, showing you niceness and generosity—in order to get you to be the same back to me was a form of manipulation, actually.

But what really tripped me up in that abusive relationship was that there are people who seize kindness—I’m not using niceness on purpose because, to me, niceness is sort of a social nicety that we do that is a form of exploitation in itself. But when we do things out of kindness, you know, it’s deliberate, it’s thoughtful, it’s truly sacrificial—they see that as pitiful, apathetic, exploitable, worthy of disrespect because they see the world in a very, very different way.

They see it as a competitive world. So they then want to know, "What is your reason?" or "Are you that idiotic that you would open yourself up to be exploited by me?"

Tara: Then you’re asking for it. So, in my current relationship, for example, my husband has asked me multiple times to help him meal prep. And so this is like a mundane—this is not a toxic relationship, but this is mundane. And I’ve always said no. And I know he would really love me to meal prep for him. I know that’s something he would love. But I feed three children on my own because I’m the primary caretaker for our kids.

I’m not going to meal prep so you have this special diet. I’m not going to do all that extra work so you have a special diet when I’m already taking care of three individuals and can barely remember to feed myself. And I’ve always said no. And I know for a fact, if I was to do it today, I would get extremely resentful and irritated and, you know, and I would say things to myself like, "Well, why isn’t he meal prepping for me? Why am I doing this for him?" But today, I’m able to do that. You know, and he doesn’t—he’s—he asked it, you know, but it’s not something that he gets mad at me for not doing. He understands why I say no and why I don’t do it. I don’t have that extra place on my plate. I don’t.

But in the past, that would always be used against me.

Kerry: You’re making a powerful point, and that is: does the person see you? Do they really see you? And I even know the argument is like, "Well, you’re already prepping food, how hard is it to prep my food? You’re already buying groceries, why can’t you think about the kind of groceries that I also need?" I mean, I totally know the line of argument.

But what’s also being ignored is all the mental energy—having to know what that diet is, having to be able to prep a whole separate group of food with a whole separate group of containers. By the way, you can tell I know because I’ve done this. Because my late husband was gluten-free for a while. So I experienced that; I lived it. It’s a lot of hard work when you ask somebody to do that.

This is the other thing: right now I live with my adult middle son. And there are certain things he takes care of in the house, and there are certain things that I take care of in the house. And one of the things that he does is he completely creates the groceries list, he grocery shops, he pays for the groceries, he puts the groceries away, and he often, if I let him, cooks for me. He even makes the menu for the week if I let him. You know, sometimes I have my own ideas of what I want to eat. But he’s not very good at cleaning up. That’s just not a strong point of his, but he does all this other manual labor.

I don’t have to think about it. I don’t even pay for it. I mean, so I—I don’t like the cleanup part, but I remind myself this is a person who’s carrying a lot of a mental load that I don’t have to carry. And yes, I can carry some of the mental load and the work around some other things that maybe are not my favorite things. But I’m sure he doesn’t always like that grocery bill. And I’m sure he doesn’t always have every week the time to do this, but he’s doing it.

But I think it’s still super important—I want to circle back to this because this is where it really tripped me up, really tripped me up—is that we can come at it from the complete right place. We can come at it from assessing it correctly. We can come at it doing it in a balanced way that shows our self-respect, and it still can be exploited.

It’s important for us not to forget there’s a mindset of some people. Fortunately, only 20 percent of the world. And they really see things differently. And they really—like back to that episode when we talked about, I think it was the dark triad—we talked about the four roles. You’re either a patron, you’re a patsy, you’re the pawn, or you’re the enemy. And there is no room in that world. You’re one of those four positions.

And if you do things for them, ask what they ask you, you’re either being a patron who’s giving them influence, you’re a patsy and they’re setting you up, you’re a pawn, they’re using you, or they think you’re an idiot because you’re the enemy. And we forget that not all of our good behavior is doing good things for us. Sometimes it’s putting us in a dangerous position. And that’s hard. How do we know that? I mean, we don’t often know that.

And I think sometimes for me, I have to lead with being a good person from the start, but then assess, what does that person do with it? Is there reciprocity in this relationship? Do I see more contempt? If I do a good thing and they come back with contempt, that’s a sign to me this person now disrespects me because of my kindness, because of my generosity.

Tara: I remember going to buy my ex some sweet thing that he wanted from the grocery store. And my thought was, if I buy this for him, I hope he’ll be nice to me. Like, I was trying—and I, at the time, did not see that as my desire to control him. But it was. That’s what it was: my desire to try to control and manipulate him into treating me with kindness and basic human decency.

And I would do these things, these games, these whatever, to try to figure out. I was always buying him, like, little things in the hopes of, this will be the thing. That, you know, I’ll let him play his video game, I will whatever, I will do this in the hopes that he will treat me this way. And I was trying to constantly manage and juggle his emotions, and I could never predict the reaction. But my intentions were always with, I will do this because I want something from this. I have an action, I have motivation for this that’s beyond just, "Oh, I’m being kind or nice."

Kerry: Mine was, I kept thinking I could [00:17:00] model good behavior, and then they would want to be like me. Like the teacher, you know, sort of the wise psychologist. And then like, "Oh, that’s what caring behavior looks like." Or, "Oh, that’s what generosity looks like."

You know, and we’re talking about adult people and adult males. Come on, let’s get realistic here. One of the things my ex would do is he would take me to the Rolex store and look at his favorite watch. And I know, you know, at the time, I kind of knew he was hoping I’d buy it as a gift. And this is a guy who, for one of the gifts that he gave me, it was a re-gift from an affair.

That’s the kind of level of generosity that was back towards me—was shit. It was absolute shit. And yet he would take, like I said, literally walk into a Rolex store and look at his favorite watch. And then he would say, "I don’t want you to buy that for me. I just like looking." Like, oh no, dude, there’s an ulterior motive here. You’re hoping that I will buy it for you, but I’m not.

Tara: Growing up with a narcissistic parent, I grew to dread holidays, anniversaries, celebrations. It was always a shit show. It always was somehow drama. My narcissist, who was my mother, tended to always want the attention on herself, and it didn’t really matter if it was good or bad attention. It just mattered that the attention was on her.

So if it was—I remember Father’s Day, my mother would throw some kind of fit, and my dad would be off crying, and my mom would be, like, pleased with herself. And that was an ongoing thing. And when I then met my other narcissist, who I had romantic relationships with, I grew to dread that. My birthday, for example—I was born on Thanksgiving. And every six or seven years, it’s on Thanksgiving again. So that’s double. You have this family holiday plus my birthday.

And I remember specifically that the narcissist that I had a very long romantic relationship with would specifically do things that were upsetting around my birthday or on my birthday or on Thanksgiving. You know, he would have a fight with someone or not get me a gift. It was always something. So I grew to really [00:19:00] hate anything that wasn’t specifically relegated to the narcissist. If it wasn’t their birthday, if it wasn’t a day celebrating them, it was generally not going to be fun.

Kerry: Did they also ruin their birthdays and the holidays that were important to them? Did you see them sabotage that too?

Tara: They often did. And it was usually some kind of attack, like something wasn’t done to their expectations, or they didn’t like the gift, or, you know, somebody wasn’t acting right. It didn’t matter what kind of attention. It absolutely didn’t. They felt entitled to be the center of attention. And it just mattered that attention was on them, whether it was good or bad. But primarily the narcissist in my life, I’ve seen that attention primarily be bad.

Kerry: That’s fascinating. The narcissist that I met for that second relationship, he told me right up front that he hated his birthday and he hated Christmas. Just to get that out of the way, just expect that this was not going to go well. It was going to be a really loaded holiday. And of course, my, you know, good nature, I thought I could win him over, and I could throw him the best birthday, and I could really show up for Christmas, and we would do it over and heal this wound in him.

But yeah, he told me that to—

Tara: My narcissistic ex also did not like his birthday, and I thought I was going to fix it. But then that became a huge source of resentment because I had done these lavish celebrations. There was one year I did a surprise birthday party where, like, 40-plus people were all at this restaurant and came as a surprise. It was this amazing birthday party. And I never got anything like that reciprocated—nothing. There weren’t any surprises for me. There was just always this uncomfortable tension.

One year, my first Mother’s Day was very wonderful. My narcissistic ex made sure it was. And I remember saying to him, "Thank you so much. That was so nice." And he goes, "I really tried."

Kerry: Wow.

Tara: And that was one of those things where it just ended up really pissing me off because I was like, so you can try? And you—you accomplished that. That comes back to that choice. A narcissist can choose how they treat you, and they choose to treat you poorly.

Kerry: Yeah, because the reality is we’re always choosing all the time. Every person—I mean, you’re not telling the world how you feel today. What they see is how you’re showing up. We’re all making a choice to put on a certain presentation or a certain persona.

And it’s interesting how they have this perception of the world that’s very odd, and yet they know what’s socially acceptable. So they can do what’s socially acceptable despite this odd view of the world. So yes, they know our expectation. And here’s the part that probably hurt me the deepest. I think that there’s this desire to hurt us.

That this ruining-the-holiday thing, ruining-the-birthday thing, to me feels there’s a level of cruelty to it. It’s like, I don’t want you to have a good day. I don’t want you to enjoy your family or your time because I want to be the sole source of your neediness or your relationship. It needs to be only through me.

But in addition, I don’t want you to have those good things because I don’t think I get what I want adequately enough. So, gawl-dang, you’re certainly not gonna either. I’m gonna make sure that you don’t either. So part of it, to me, feels like they’re shitting on these days because they want to shit on us.

And that’s the part that I find super, super difficult, is that it’s just a foreign way of thinking about it. I don’t relate to that at all. They have this world construct that’s strange. The construct is that you’re supposed to not only mind-read to know that these things are significant and to know how they want to have you show up and show that you care.

The bar is getting set really high, but they also then have all these things that they have been holding against you. I think a lot of them are grudge holders. So they’ve been holding these grudges against you. And then they decide to work it out on the most important day because they want you to hurt because, in their minds, the way that you fail to show up for them is that big of an injury.

To you, it may just be you forgot to say, "Hey, how was your day today?" But to them, that might be like catastrophically big. Then they exaggerate it. "You never care, and you never do these efforts." And then they wait, get you back, and they kind of collect these things almost like a pile of crappy ways to get you back. And then they make sure to offload it right when it matters the most.

And the thing is, most of the time, most of us have no clue—no clue any of this is happening on the back end. I didn’t—certainly didn’t.

Tara: Growing up with a narcissistic parent who used to always ruin birthdays and things like that, I have never liked much attention on myself, and that always sort of connected to my self-esteem too, of not feeling like I deserved that kind of recognition or attention or anything.

I remember when I graduated college, which was actually a very big deal. I did not get clean from drugs until I was 23, so I was actively using the entire time I was in college. I also had almost dropped out to go be with this other narcissist. I was going to get engaged. I was going to help raise this kid. He was nine years older and a drug dealer. You know, that was a good choice.

So I’d made a lot of bad choices and somehow still had graduated college by the time I was 23, and I graduated with honors. I graduated cum laude. And at my college graduation party, my mother said that she had given me this necklace—I can’t even remember what it was. I think it was like a little owl necklace or something. She’d given me a necklace, and she said that I had graduated cum laude because she’d given me that necklace.

And I remember being baffled that she said that. And she said it in front of multiple people. Like, there were multiple people there that all witnessed that and heard her say that—that I had graduated from college with honors, despite a drug addiction, despite transferring and nearly dropping out, despite all of these things and being raised by her, who was particularly awful and had physically assaulted me also while I was in college.

I had graduated with honors despite all of that, not because she’d given me a necklace. But again, it’s that sense of entitlement or just feeling like she’s responsible for the gifts that I do or the successes that I have. Because somehow she’s a part of them. And I think, at least for my mother, she really felt like I was an extension of her, that I was not myself, and the things that I did reflected on her, good or bad. They were somehow connected to her.

Kerry: Yeah. So it’s important—I think, you know, I’m thinking about how we kind of wrap up this topic—is that I’ve found it helpful to grieve what’s been lost, for what is missing. And then I’ve also found it really, really helpful not to move in the direction of becoming resentful and envious of others, but rather to ask myself, what is it that I can do to augment, to step into, to realize that I am my first person in my life to love myself, and I need to show up for myself?

Yeah, it’s nice when others do it, but it doesn’t have to depend on others doing it, right? And that’s how I’ve kind of tried to heal this in myself.

Tara: I think, too, it’s good to just reclaim holidays—to make the choices that you want to make, to spend the time with the people that you want to spend time with, and celebrate the way that you want to celebrate. One of the best Thanksgivings I ever had was just by myself and some friends having like a Friendsgiving.

At a time in my life when I was implementing really strict and firm boundaries with my narcissistic mother, I would limit the amount of time I would spend at areas where she was going to be, and I would make sure to take my own vehicle. So I would only spend a maximum of two hours. And that was it.

What helped me too was having sort of bookends—things I did right before I would attend and things I had planned to do right after, or things I would say I was going to do right after. For example, I remember one Thanksgiving I said I was going to go visit my in-laws right after I left Thanksgiving with them, just to give me an excuse to leave the house at that exact time. I had two hours, and two hours was it.

And also taking my own vehicle to make sure that I was able to take myself out of the situation. Being able to limit those specific interactions and times with that person was so important.

Kerry: I do similar things. I have a lot of the same plan, in that I would also bookend. I would plan activities one after another so that I would have a reason to leave—not just that I was leaving because I wanted to, because that’s hard to explain. So it gave me a great excuse. I love that.

I also asked myself ahead of time, what is it I wanted to have happen that day? And then make sure that I made time for that and tried to fit it in some way. Like maybe I might go to an event and I really want a certain kind of food. Instead of hoping someone would make it and have it be there, I would make it and bring it. I would kind of figure out how I could meet my own needs in the context of the situation that I was facing. And then try to show up for that.

Yeah, it helps a lot for me. Then I’m not so dependent on other people, and I’m less disappointed because I know that I showed up. Yeah. But I love your ideas—they’re great. And I do agree—taking your own car.

Tara: Having an exit plan is so necessary.

Kerry: Well, that’s a wrap for this week’s episode. Are you following me on TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube? Find me at Kerry McAvoy, PhD. And whether you’re in or out, considering leaving or have left a narcissistic relationship, find community support at my Toxic-Free Relationship Club. You can learn about this resource as well as others at KerryMcAvoyPhD.com, and I’ll see you back here next week.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D.

Host