Dismissed True Stories
Dismissed True Stories is a survivor-led podcast that dares to break the silence around domestic violence, emotional abuse, and toxic relationships. Each episode shares the raw, unfiltered realities of what abuse really looks like. From overlooked red flags to moments of escape, and everything in between.
Created by a survivor-turned-advocate with a broadcasting background, DTS is where stories once silenced are now spoken. Loudly, honestly, and without apology. We’re not here to sensationalize abuse; we’re here to humanize survivors.
You’ll hear from survivors finding their voices, families forever changed by loss, and organizations working to support healing and recovery. Sometimes, it’s one survivor passing the mic to another with a piece of advice that could change or.. save a life.
But DTS isn’t just about telling stories of survival. Each episode's commentary helps you decode your own story, make sense of your experiences, and see the patterns you might have missed while in survival mode.
The tone? Like talking with a trusted friend. No fluff. Just truth.
Whether you're navigating narcissistic abuse, gaslighting, or coercive control or you're in the process of rebuilding your self-worth and healing your trauma this space is for you.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is finally tell your own story.
Survivor-led. Heart-led. Truth-led.
#DismissedTrueStories | A podcast for survivors and victims, by survivors.
Dismissed True Stories
You’re bad, I’m good: Jenna’s Childhood of Narcissism
Family dynamics can be a minefield, particularly when narcissism and favoritism are involved. Jenna opens up about the emotional torment of living in the shadow of a 'golden child' sister and the struggles of establishing boundaries with a manipulative parent. Through her narrative, we gain insight into the heart-wrenching reality of a narcissist's manipulation and the stigmatization of mental health within families, issues that often leave deep, lingering scars.
Raised in an environment where love meant extreme emotions rather than safety, Jenna's early relationships were marred by abuse. She recounts her tumultuous teenage years, from encountering a stalker to enduring a physically abusive relationship that began at just 17. Her tale is a powerful reminder of the importance of self-awareness and therapy in breaking free from the cycle of abuse and redefining what it means to truly be loved. Join us for an episode that not only sheds light on the dark aspects of narcissistic abuse but also celebrates the strength and resilience of survivors like Jenna.
National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233 OR text begin to 88788
Join the Sisterhood! The Survivor Sisterhood
Come join our community of survivors who are looking to meet someone just like you! See the behind the scenes work that goes into the sisterhood non-profit business, discuss DTS episodes, and of course find your survivor sister.
🔗 Follow Along:
Ready to share your story? Send me an email with the main talking points of your experience and I'll reach out to book an interview.
dismissedtruestories@thesurvivorsisterhood.com
Give DTS a 5 star rating! It helps this podcast reach other victims and survivors who NEED these stories! Help us find each other, help us heal, and help us find safety. Love you, mean it.
This episode of Dismissed True Stories is brought to you by Persephoneai. Persephoneai is an innovative and disruptive discreet app where you can more securely stash your evidence of abuse, make static notes, upload attachments, import audio-video files and even request transcription and language translation. Transcription and language translation. Then export your full evidence, report on your timeline, sos the police or even use it in court after your safe exit. You are not alone, and Persephone is here when you don't know who to tell. Find Persephoneai on Google Play or the App Store. In this episode, we will be hearing directly from a survivor as they recount their personal journey. Dismissed True Stories recognizes that discussion of abuse and trauma can evoke strong emotional responses and it may be triggering for some listeners. Listener, discretion is advised. Hey, I'm Elissa and this is Dismiss True Stories the podcast.
Speaker 1:This podcast was born from the idea that when I was a little girl, I wanted to be a war reporter in the sense that I just really wanted to talk about the things that matter in the world. And when I ended up walking away from my professional broadcasting career and into an abusive relationship, I realized that victims and survivors really do fight their own wars at home. I volunteer with a local domestic violence shelter in my city and as I was putting on a vigil for the lives lost to domestic violence last year, I stumbled upon a story that will forever stick with me. I did the research to find this victim's family, since she is no longer with us, and one sentence kept rattling around in my brain Let them tell their story. And while I haven't worked up the confidence to get in touch with her family just yet, I want this podcast to not only be about the survivors who lived and escaped, but the stories from the family members of victims who, unfortunately, are no longer with us.
Speaker 1:I sat on this idea for almost a year before I decided to randomly make a TikTok video asking for survivors to come forward and share their stories of survivorship, and what happened next was completely and totally unexpected. Women came forward sending me their stories of survival, telling me that they were so sick and tired of being quiet, because what happens so often is that survivors are silenced, people aren't ready or equipped to handle their truth or sometimes simply they just don't want to make the time. But now, on Dismissed True Stories, we're making the time. Are you ready? Are you nervous?
Speaker 2:Yes and no. I think that there's going to be pieces of my story that I probably haven't thought about in many years, even with all of the therapy.
Speaker 1:So just, anticipating some of those moments. How long have you been in therapy?
Speaker 2:So I have actually been in and out of therapy for as long as I can remember. I had mentioned in my original message I was raised by a narcissist and so one of his tools to control the family was to tell us that we were crazy and put us in therapy. And then kind of just use that as one of his supports is like, well, she's been in therapy for five years and she's not getting any better, and so, yeah, I've been in it for as long as I can remember. And then I kind of fizzle out and then you know events happened and I would get back in, and so, yeah, right now I've been seeing the same therapist for a little over a year now and it's been the most consistent therapy I've ever had, and so I'm in a really good space in regards to all of that at least.
Speaker 1:Welcome back to Dismissed True Stories. This is episode seven. I'm your host, Elissa, and today we're going to hear from Jenna, and Jenna addresses a very common theme that I see very often in the stories that you send me. It's the idea that your childhood and being raised by a narcissistic parent or parents definitely affects who you pick as a partner in life later on down the road, once you start dating, how what you have been modeled as love in your childhood isn't healthy and how it is so easy for a victim of abuse to think that the love or the breadcrumbs of love that they are given is acceptable. I guess we can start from the beginning.
Speaker 1:You had said I saw your post and love the idea of sharing my story. Here's a little bit. I'm a survivor of narcissistic abuse, like you just said, by the man who I thought was my father until I was about 25. And my question is the man who you thought was your father? Can you explain that, Like had he been in your life since you were a baby? Were you too young to remember how? How did that situation play out?
Speaker 2:He was actually um with my mom when she found out she was pregnant, um, and so it was never really a secret between, uh, my mom and him that um, that it was a 50, 50 chance on whether or not I was biologically his Um, and so he was with me throughout the whole pregnant or with my mom throughout the whole pregnancy, um.
Speaker 2:And when I was born, um, they did the DNA test um found out I was not biologically his um. He did leave for two weeks and then, after processing, I guess, he did come back and find us and we were with him ever since and then they actually ended up having two other kids together, which are my two siblings that I'm very close to, luckily. And then, yeah, about 25 years old, my mom kind of sat me down and told me. And then, yeah, about 25 years old, my mom kind of sat me down and told me that the man who I thought was my father was not. I was raised believing he was my father and you know, there was no differences between me and my two siblings outside of the differences.
Speaker 1:What was that like Was?
Speaker 2:there any relief that he wasn't, or was it like a mixed bag of emotions? Actually, initially I lived in a very sick home where this man he was a tyrant and he ran the home and he brainwashed me and my siblings to believe that he was this amazing thing, while my mom was less than it has always been absolutely insane to me how narcissists will use their children as a pawn.
Speaker 1:They use their children as tools to hurt the other parent. By manipulating the child into siding with them, by planting negative ideas about the other parent, negative ideas about the other parent, it's providing the child with false or exaggerated information just so the child will then begin idolizing them and then acting out toward the innocent parent.
Speaker 2:And so when my mom originally told me, I thought my mom was playing games to get back at my dad for something. They had been going through a divorce so I thought this was just a continuation of their nonsense from the divorce and just like a tit for tat kind of situation and I was actually really hurt that my mom would tell me such a thing. In that moment I was still very much like under this man's spell and very much believing that he was an amazing father figure. And over time and after a lot of other events I started shortly after that I started getting into these abusive relationships and over time worked on myself and started to realize that he is not the amazing man I thought he was. We've actually been no contact for almost two years now, but at the time I was actually really hurt and just couldn't understand why my mom would tell me such a thing and try to destroy our happy family. I think is kind of what my initial reaction was.
Speaker 1:And so did that hurt you and your mom's relationship.
Speaker 2:Very much so. My mom and I did not have a close relationship growing up Again just due to these, these tactics in the household. My mom was very much isolated from us kids.
Speaker 1:This has a name, and it's called parental alienation. It really just goes hand in hand with the idea that a narcissistic parent will then turn a child against an innocent parent or party. However, as far as psychology standards go, this isn't a diagnosable disorder or condition and, as far as my research goes, you also can't use the term parental alienation in a court of law.
Speaker 2:And we weren't in a good place, but it just made it worse. And because this man was like in my ear and telling me like that was such a hurtful thing for me to find out and he would have never done those things to me, I kind of fed into it more and it put a pretty big wedge between me and my mom for a very long time. He definitely was just a narcissist through and through. It didn't matter what type of relationship. There wasn't much that was authentic about him. He was very abusive to my mother and you know I witnessed a lot of the verbal abuse it was. It was only verbal abuse. There was physical intimidation tactics, but he never put hands on my mom, nor did he put hands on us, and I think that that's going to be really important for later in my story. But there was, they argued a lot and it was very toxic and there was a lot of screaming, a lot of breaking things. He would often, I guess, tell my mom she should just kill herself and get it over with. And so it was. It was. It was a lot towards my mom.
Speaker 2:I think out of the kids meaning me and my two siblings I got it the worst I had. Growing up I attributed it to me being the oldest, and I was I always. I'm now finding out later, as a late diagnosed autistic person, that I was very like into justice and so if you're saying one thing but you're doing another thing, it upset my nervous system in a way that I would always stand up for as a kid and so I was kind of painted as this problem child and disrespectful and I got his abuse the worst, like he would scream at me for six, seven, eight hours straight, no break, just demeaning and kind of like trapping me in like the basement to keep me there so he could just keep going. My siblings didn't get it as much and now that I know he was not my biological father, I think that that had a huge factor in things and the way I was treated. But again, growing up I didn't have that insight as to why I was treated so differently.
Speaker 1:Can you explain the relationship between you and your two siblings? Has the severing of your relationship with him made you guys closer in any way? Do they see him as a narcissist?
Speaker 2:So it's interesting Growing up. So I'm the oldest, I have a sister who's the next oldest, and then we have a baby brother. He's not a baby anymore, but my sister and I growing up could not stand each other. I always joke that if I could have just pushed her in front of a moving bus, um, I always like joke that if I could have just pushed her in front of a moving bus, I would have slept just fine every night because we just fought all the time. Um, but we both got along with our little brother always. So our little brother was like very lucky that he didn't have beef with either of us. Um, but it was just a lot of. It was my sister and I.
Speaker 2:Um, again, now that I'm older and I have the insight, my sister was the golden child. She was his first child. He was she's his first baby girl. She was even named after our grandmother, his mom, and so she was always treated so much different. But I always just assumed like she was always sweeter, she tried harder, she cared more about what people thought, and so that's kind of why she was the golden child, because I was okay with being that rebel kid and my sister was very mainstream best friends. We're inseparable. I cannot do life without her. Our brother we're still very close to our brother, but he doesn't live in the area anymore. He's been lucky enough to distance himself from our chaos. My sister unfortunately, sister, unfortunately um still has very close ties to that family, um, and so when, um, I cut ties with um, the man who raised me, her father, um, it was really hard on our relationship.
Speaker 2:We couldn't talk about it. It started, uh, it started arguments. Um, I was not. I was struggling to verbalize what I was not. I was struggling to verbalize what I was going through and the abuse that I was enduring. Even at 32 years old, I don't even think I acknowledged yet how abusive it was until I hit my breaking point and I took steps back.
Speaker 2:And again, this was only two years ago, and so when that started happening, my sister just so desperately wanted us to have this happy family right. She wanted it to be the way it always has been. It always was our father, the man who raised me, and, like us, two, and so the three of us were always super close, and so that dynamic shift, just she took it really hard. I and we ended up having to have an agreement that we could not speak on those things without checking in with the other person and getting permission and then being specific about the topic, because I wasn't speaking on my side, but he's speaking a lot. He needs to tell people his side of the story. He needs to start spinning it in a way that makes him look good, because there's so much that makes him look terrible.
Speaker 1:Oh this, the fact that a narcissist cannot handle someone making them look bad, even though they do that work on their own. I can't even imagine what a day in their head is like. The narcissist has to be right. They have to be the good guy in every story, no matter how factually false that may be, and they will convince themselves of this and then attempt to convince you and anyone else who will listen to their distortive narrative. Think of this as, like, the narcissist is the one living in a glass house while throwing stones at others.
Speaker 2:And you know, because of that like imbalance of information, he was able to get through to my sister and my sister's like you're right, she's being crazy, how dare she?
Speaker 2:And so it was really tough at first. I think over time and the more distance and the more I've just stood firm and, like you're going to see for yourself who he is, I can say everything I want until I'm blue in the face. But words like he's just he's going to tell on himself, it's going to come to the surface at some point and I'm just not going to waste my energy trying to convince people of my experience and I can tell my sister's starting to see things Again. We don't really talk about it, but there's a huge acceptance of my distance and it's celebrated in my family now and that's not something that was celebrated. It was taboo and I was just such a bad family member for doing this and my family took it as a victim mindset of like how dare you do this to our family, this is happening to us, and so, like I said, it's a very sick family.
Speaker 2:You've come a long way, though you said, when you reached your breaking point, what pushed you to that point, the thing that shifted my relationship with my sister um, back when we were kids, um, when she got pregnant in high school, um, and in that moment, like I just knew my, this, this baby, is bigger than all of us. Right, like this is bigger than me and my pet sister's petty stuff Stop stealing my clothes, you know whatever. Um. So my niece is our savior in this circumstance. She shifted our narrative so much, um, because, coming from a family of this, this illness, my sister and I have made it a point to never be those people around. My niece, um, and so fast forward, um, she was kind of having some struggles at school and my sister was talking about getting her tested specifically for ADHD at this point, and the man who raised me and I were talking about it, and we both work in the mental health field, specifically with children, children advocacy.
Speaker 1:She laughs here and my eyes almost literally fall out of my skull because I'm just going to say what we're all thinking here. This man works with children, but unfortunately, I think this is something that we see a lot is that narcissists do put themselves in positions of power. They put themselves in, they put themselves into different professional careers that are normally like idolized, or to make someone look at them and be like oh, they're just a good person because of the career field that they chose.
Speaker 2:And he spent the whole time saying that there was nothing wrong with our niece. And the way he was speaking about or my niece, his granddaughter, the way he was speaking about it was if she had this diagnosis. That I was pretty sure there was a diagnosis there. We later found out it was autism, but it was very obvious there was a diagnosis. And he kept talking about it like if she was diagnosed, like she's less of a person, there's something wrong with her, that there's just like something fundamentally wrong with people that have diagnoses, and specifically with ADHD pardon my French, she said people with ADHD like that's a diagnosis for people who can't do shit.
Speaker 2:My husband has ADHD. I have lots of loved ones with ADHD. Again, I am an actual child advocate. I have lots of loved ones with ADHD. Again, I am an actual child advocate. That was kind of the thing and I was like and I because, because I knew my niece probably had this diagnosis or a diagnosis I was kind of defending her in a sense and it kind of just enraged me and we kind of got into it he pocket dialed me and was talking about me in this voicemail and I had tried to confront him and he didn't answer and I text him and I was just like hey, listen, I'm disappointed. Like the way you spoke about people with ADHD was just like not OK, I think you need to kind of explore those things. And his gut reaction was to call me and leave me a voicemail reminding me of how terrible of a child I was.
Speaker 1:Raise your hand. If you're not surprised, that's because the narcissist go-to is to deflect and project. It's the I didn't do it, you did and I'm not bad, you are mentality.
Speaker 2:And telling me that, like I'm just such a horrible person and just like all of that, like all of the explosiveness, the same lines, you know that it just kind of loses its sparkle after a while. You know, like I'm I'm in my 30s, telling me I was a terrible teenager, which is literally like what teenagers are supposed to be. They're supposed to be like, chaotic and making mistakes. That's, that's the purpose of that age, and that was just kind of what started. It was just me like this, like enough is enough, like I'm trying to just tell you you need to be better in general, and um, so I just took some space and just decided I didn't want to communicate with him for a while. And after a while I was like you know what? I'm going to write him a letter and just kind of explain how that conversation triggered me into a lifelong of things, because I was at a point where I'm cleaning out all this toxicity in my life and he's part of that, and I don't. I want him in my life, I love him, but I can't have this part of him in my life. It's not good for me.
Speaker 2:And so I wrote him a letter. Hey, when you said this, it reminds me of all the times that you did that and when you did this, that, and you know, I just kind of sent it and I got one of those fake apology letters. I'm so sorry that I was such a bad parent and I did this and I did that. And you know, there's no accountability in anything. There is nothing authentic about it. And then he just tried to deflect and say that he didn't need help and I just told him that's fine, we can't, until you can either go to therapy or we go to therapy together. This that's. This is what this is. This is there's no more contact, and that was it. I mean it just it kind of I wasn't even in a play, I wasn't even in pre contemplation Like maybe I need to get rid of him from my life. It just one big blow up and I was like this is it. I can't do this.
Speaker 1:And that therapy has never happened Um actually it.
Speaker 2:It did have kind of um. So six months go by and he's still reaching out and he's still telling everybody this pity party story of like I don't understand why she won't talk to me and kept trying to reach out and I was like, great, do you got therapy? No, okay, and he kept trying to blame it on like the wait lists for therapy. Wait lists for therapy this is coming shortly out of like the COVID and like all of that stuff. And so there were huge wait lists. But I knew he wasn't doing the work. I knew he wasn't trying to find a place and putting us on a wait list. I knew he was waiting for me to break, because this is not the first time we went no contact. It's the longest time and it's the most stubborn I had been.
Speaker 2:But I knew his game. I knew he was going to try to wait me out. I kept holding him accountable. So finally he hits me with about one year of when I originally started going no contact. He said, oh, I finally got an appointment. Here's our first appointment. So I show up, he didn't even tell the therapist we were there for family therapy appointment. So I show up, he didn't even tell the therapist we were there for family therapy. She was shocked to see me and very confused and spent the whole time telling her about how I ruined our family. There was no talk of we've been no contact. There was no talk of we need things like, we need to work on things. It was just Jenna ruined our family.
Speaker 1:Narcissists don't care too much for the truth. They will literally tell their lies over and, over and over again. It's like when you listen to a song and repeat until you finally know the lyrics and can sing them out loud. That's how narcissists will tell their lies, and sometimes, in certain situations, they think so highly of themselves that they are flawless and they're like a god that, like in this situation, they're just going to completely omit the truth and eventually kind of manipulate you to like, lure you into their warped sense of reality. And that is a dangerous and scary place to be because eventually it's going to slowly erode your psyche.
Speaker 2:And it was just Jenna Jenna. Jenna Jenna did everything, and so I was truly there, um, and so I was truly there, um, to go through the motions. I think internally, like I, I knew he can't get better in the plate, as who he was, in that moment I knew he couldn't get better. Um, I hope for my siblings he does find the help that he needs. But, um, I don't think he will, um, but I was there just cause I, that was what I said I was going to do. I don't think he will, but I was there just because that was what I said I was going to do, and I think that that's the closure I needed was to give it the one last good old college try.
Speaker 2:So we went to a few sessions. The first session was really rough, so the second and third sessions we had to go separately, and then the fourth session, we came back together. She had asked us to come with a list of boundaries, basically, so we could start kind of breaking down what, like, the big issues were, because we still weren't even agreeing about what the issue was, and so I just was like, okay, well, here's my boundaries when you call, you cannot call repeatedly until I answer that's like you, don't like. He's one of those people that believes he deserves access to people 100% of the time and that's obviously not appropriate ever. And I even told him I have a trauma directly related to repeat phone calls. When I was 16 years old, my best friend died in a car accident directly behind my house and I missed the phone call. So missing phone calls for me is like traumatic. It gives me a lot of anxiety. And so when you call repeatedly, people automatically assume it's an emergency. That's what normal people do when there's an emergency. And it's never an emergency, it's just like oh, I was just thinking about you, you or you know, whatever. And so I even revisited that, because that was something we tried to work on previously, and he was just like that doesn't happen. And I was trying to tell him like I feel like you believe I'm your equal until it's convenient for you. I'm his punching bag, I'm the person that he vents to. I'm the person that's preventing him from stalking his ex-wives and getting arrested. I'm the one when he is getting explosive and embarrassing himself, I'm the one calming him down and reeling him in. And I was just trying to tell him like I can't do that for you anymore. I am your daughter, you're supposed to take care of me and I'm done taking care of you, like I'll take care of you when you're like old.
Speaker 2:One of the big reasons or one of the big things that came out when we went no contact for that first year, was that he was throwing around and telling other people that he's not going to do X, y and Z because I'm not even his daughter. And that's a weird insecurity. That I well, not weird. It's not weird. That's very valid insecurity. But it's a weird thing for him to throw around Um and so and he like, whether or not he like knew, knew how much it affects me. Like you, you're not doing it for fun. That's a very purposeful, calculated thing to say. And that was another thing I was like you got to stop saying that Like I can't trust somebody that's going to just decide when they will and will not be my dad. That's not fair.
Speaker 2:Um, and in that boundaries session, um, the therapist challenged him and reminded him he's the father, I'm the daughter and I'm not responsible. He was trying to blame me for something that happened the year I was born, and so the therapist was like no, no, no, that's between you and your ex-wife, that has nothing to do with her. And he was like, well, she caused it. So, like my existence causes him pain is basically kind of what he was getting at, I guess, who knows. And she challenged him. He got irate because who challenges him?
Speaker 2:And as he was storming out he said I don't even want to be your dad anyways, um, and again, that was something we covered in that exact session, and so at that point I said that's it, um, you can't take that back. This is the exact reason we're here, um, and that that is the final straw. And so we have not spoken since. There's been no contact and literally he hasn't even reached out. He knows, he knows what he did, he knows he should be extremely ashamed. For a while I was still in contact with his side of the family and he was telling people he has no idea why I have not spoken to him. In two years he will die on that hill. I know he will. He's got some pretty bad health problems, all probably because of the amount of stress he puts himself through, because of his narcissism and the lack of accountability, because this man's been destroying his own life for his whole life.
Speaker 1:So you said that because of the abuse that you experienced in your childhood from your stepfather. You said that this led to you choosing abusive partners when it came to dating, and you said that you had been physically assaulted in each relationship. How many times did that happen? How many relationships did you find yourself in repeating this cycle?
Speaker 2:So I would say, um, with the exception of my husband, um, and one man I dated for like three, four months. Um, every relationship I have been in has been, um, toxic to some degree, some varying degree. My first stalking, my first stalker, I was 16 years old and nobody protected me, and so I think it's important, again, being raised in narcissism, I obviously didn't have a good compass of what love is. I was shown that love was these big emotions, whether it was the love bombing or the anger. So love is big. It's never these subtleties. It's never safety, right, Like I was never safe or I never felt safe, and so I was always seeking out relationships that made me feel comfortable, which meant there was big emotions always.
Speaker 2:And I would say, my first physically abusive relationship, I met him when I was 17 and he was 23. And we dated for a very long time. We were together for about five years and it didn't get abusive until about four and a half years. My big thing because, again, I didn't have that compass of like what's right and wrong Um, my line was, if they put their hands on me, that's when it's wrong. Um, nothing else is wrong, it's when they put their hands on me in a in a violent way, and I think that that's also important because, um, I was prone to being coerced into sexual things that I was uncomfortable with, and so the first time he put his hands on me, that was when I was like, ok, this isn't right, I need to start thinking about leaving. But it didn't happen again, and so I think I was just like, oh, he was just having a really bad day.
Speaker 2:He did just lose his father somewhat before that, so I just assumed it was like these heightened emotions, but he was spiraling and he was cheating on me a lot and it got to a point where I was trying to leave the apartment. He wouldn't let me leave. He stood in front of me and wouldn't let me leave and I took out my pepper spray and I was like, if you don't get out of my way, I'm going to do this. And I gave him several warnings with it in my hand and finally did it and he lost it. And then it was my fault and I felt bad. I felt really bad because he was sitting in the shower sobbing, and then I stopped.
Speaker 2:I didn't even end up leaving, I ended up taking care of him and then, like a week later, two weeks later, he like threw me up against the wall because I came home from work late by like 10, 15 minutes Like it wasn't like a big deal and he like kind of threw me up against the wall by my throat and that point I was like okay, I've got to, I've got to start doing this. But I didn't know how to do that because we had a lease together. I was so young I didn't really understand all of that and I didn't feel like I had anywhere to go unless I went home to the man who raised me and I knew he would see that as a failure. He wanted me to stay in these relationships pretty consistently. His favorite boyfriends of mine were the most toxic consistently.
Speaker 1:His favorite boyfriends of mine were the most toxic. I want you to marinate on Jenna's conversation today. A lot of the times, you may not be able to identify narcissism as it's happening. It can be covert or insidious and sneaky. However, one of the things that I've definitely seen since releasing this podcast is messages from women who have been listening religiously, who have been able to identify either a current or past relationship that they had or have is actually abuse. So I just think that this is a really good stopping point. I don't want to tell you how to think or to feel or what to do, but I think this is a good opportunity to kind of unpack what you've heard today.
Speaker 1:Hey, I'm Alyssa, the host of Dismissed True Stories, and if you like what you heard today, give me a five-star rating and hit that notification bell, because I do upload every Friday. If you are a survivor or you know someone who this podcast episode may resonate with, I ask that you share this with them. There is nothing quite like helping a survivor or a victim of abuse feel seen and heard and validated. It is extremely healing and helpful to the journey and the process after abuse. Ready to share your truth, please follow me on my socials. I've included them in the footer of this episode. Send me your story, the Cliff Notes version, and I will get back with you and, as always, thank you so much for being here. The world is truly a better place because you are in it. Thank you.
