The Women Are Plotting
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Then welcome to The Women Are Plotting -- a new podcast that allows a peek into the unfiltered minds of three Gen X writers. Give us a listen. And if you like what you hear, tell your friends.
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The Women Are Plotting
Surviving Narcissistic Parents, Partners, And Friends
What if the person you love most thrives on making you small? We go straight into the lived realities of narcissistic parents, partners, and friends—how they isolate, control, and turn you into “supply”—and what it takes to break free. We start with the facts, including DSM-5 prevalence estimates and why real-world numbers may be higher, then move into raw personal stories: body shaming in public, relentless phone calls, stalking, and that gnawing guilt that lingers long after you set a boundary.
Therapy becomes a lifeline. You’ll hear how a simple notebook exercise—documenting every small kindness—rewired a brain trained to remember only pain. We talk about gray rock in clear, practical terms: when it helps, why it can trigger blowback, and how to pair it with safety planning. We also unpack covert versus overt narcissism. Not every narcissist is loud; some hide behind fragility, passive-aggressive compliments, and constant blame-shifting. The result is the same: you become smaller, more apologetic, and less yourself.
We challenge the “family first” script and offer a different compass: peace over performative loyalty. When someone targets your kids or uses religion, illness, or guilt as a leash, it’s time to set limits. Expect escalation; prepare with allies, documentation, and if needed, legal options. Along the way we name the tactics—gaslighting, projection, supply—so you can spot them early. We also explore where hope might come from, from CBT to new modalities, without pretending there’s a cure for NPD today.
If you’re navigating narcissistic dynamics, you’re not alone. Press play for language, tools, and courage to protect your mind, rebuild your worth, and choose a life that feels safe and wide open again. If this conversation resonated, subscribe, share it with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find the show.
Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited -- the book referenced by Etty in this episode.
Email us at info@thewomenareplotting.com, and find us on all the socials. Be safe and be excellent to each other.
[00:00:00] Etienne: Welcome listeners. This is The Women Are Plotting. I'm Etienne Rose Olivier and I'm here with my friends and co-hosts, Heidi Willis and Jane Gari.
[00:00:15] Etienne: On today's episode, we'll be talking about narcissistic parents, partners and friends. And my interesting fact for today's episode is that narcissistic personality disorder is very rare. The prevalence is estimated to be between 0.5 and 1% of the general population, but then there are some studies that suggest it could be as high as 5%.
[00:00:41] Etienne: Jane, what is your fun and or interesting fact for today?
[00:00:44] Jane: My interesting fact is the same. It's with a, with an update of, according to the diagnostic and statistic manual of mental disorders known as the DSM, we're on the fifth issuing of it. So according to the DSM five, it's estimating like in the general population in the United States, the prevalence of narcissistic personality disorders may be as high as 6.2.
[00:01:13] Etienne: Oh wow.
[00:01:14] Heidi: Oh, we
[00:01:15] Etienne: Wait, what year was that published the DSM five. I'm just curious.
[00:01:18] Jane: that's a good question.
[00:01:22] Etienne: Oh no, you put it away.
[00:01:23] Jane: I didn't put away, but I
[00:01:24] Jane: put it behind me.
[00:01:26] Jane: Um, and I'm opening, you're hearing the flipping of pages in real time. It was updated.
[00:01:33] Etienne: Yeah, general.
[00:01:35] Jane: I know, right? Oh, it actually was updated a while ago. This is 2013.
[00:01:40] Etienne: Oh, okay.
[00:01:42] Jane: Yep. But then it was reprinted in 2018, but the addition is 2013, so that's when that stat was from.
[00:01:52] Jane: I think
[00:01:52] Etienne: I wonder if that means the DM six is coming down the pipeline soon.
[00:01:55] Jane: I would imagine so. I'm wondering if it's even higher
[00:01:59] Jane: and I often wonder if social media plays into that and
[00:02:04] Jane: if there are studies on that, because I do feel that, but we can talk about that later.
[00:02:09] Jane: Um, 'cause we can
[00:02:09] Jane: hear what, what Heidi's interesting fact is. Or is it fun? Is it a fun fact?
[00:02:15] Heidi: Yeah, well I'm gonna make it funny. So anyway, from the Mayo Clinic, they say narcissistic personality disorder affects more males than females. Big surprise. And it often begins in teens or early adulthood. Some children may show traits of narcissism, but this is often typical for their age and doesn't mean they'll go on to develop the personality disorder.
[00:02:40] Heidi: And I was laughing 'cause I was thinking aren't all children's kind of narcissistic? Like they just kind of are.
[00:02:47] Etienne: Well, yeah, they think the world revolves around them, you know?
[00:02:50] Heidi: exactly. You can't diagnose children.
[00:02:53] Etienne: No
[00:02:54] Jane: no.
[00:02:54] Jane: they're all like, look at me, like,
[00:02:55] Jane: watch this trick. I can do like,
[00:02:57] Jane: and then they cry if you don't watch them.
[00:02:59] Heidi: Exactly. So I just thought it was funny that they mentioned.
[00:03:05] Etienne: Some teenagers or could show traits in their
[00:03:09] Etienne: childhood.
[00:03:09] Heidi: show traits, and
[00:03:10] Etienne: Yeah. You can show traits, but don't diagnose them.
[00:03:16] Heidi: Anyway, that's my fun fact. But, Etienne,
[00:03:19] Etienne: yeah. Oh,
[00:03:20] Etienne: you're starting with me?
[00:03:22] Heidi: the narcissist in your life.
[00:03:25] Etienne: Okay.
[00:03:28] Heidi: We all have experience.
[00:03:29] Etienne: We do. So mine turns
[00:03:32] Heidi: and we, we,
[00:03:33] Heidi: should probably
[00:03:33] Heidi: preface this. We are not professionals. We cannot diagnose
[00:03:37] Etienne: Exactly. And I will point that out. I, yeah,
[00:03:40] Etienne: I, I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist. I'm not a trained mental health professional. When I went to therapy, not long after meeting my ex-husband it was on his insistence.
[00:03:52] Etienne: 'cause he had met my mother and he was like, wait, what, what is happening here? Why, what, why is she treating you like that? And why are you making excuses for her? And I'm like, well you don't understand. He's like, no, no, no. There's no excuse for how she's treating you. Because the very first time he met her was at a party at his house and she walks in, she knows nobody except for me and she's meeting my fiance. 'cause we were already engaged. We got engaged very, very quickly. And, she immediately says to him. Doesn't Etienne look fat?
[00:04:28] Heidi: What.
[00:04:28] Etienne: He is like, what? He didn't even know what to say, his face, it was just sheer and she just made some excuses, grabbed a drink, and then went down to the rest of the party and started being her grandiose fucking life of the party self that she can be, and he's talking to me like, what is happening?
[00:04:45] Etienne: Well, you are not fat telling me right away. As soon as she can't hear you are not fat. And I'm like, yeah, I don't think I'm fat either. I, but that's one place she likes to go with me is saying that I'm fat and
[00:05:00] Heidi: she, did she feel like she was in competition with you?
[00:05:03] Heidi: Like she had to put you down?
[00:05:04] Etienne: definitely, definitely. And I think the problem was I'd already told her. Because I at least talk to her once a day, not of my choosing. She would get me on the phone multiple times a day, multiple minutes. I mean, I probably talked to her at least an hour a day at bare minimum.
[00:05:23] Etienne: Not even joking 'cause she would call me constantly. And this is before cell phones folks.
[00:05:29] Heidi: Oh my
[00:05:29] Etienne: She was able to, I had a pager. I think she paged me when she couldn't find me, but I actually got a pager. Not for her, but for other reasons. I was not a drug dealer. I was, I worked as a temporary assistant at the studios.
[00:05:43] Etienne: And the best way for people to get ahold of me, 'cause I never knew where I was working, was to have my pager and I would just call people back. She'd already learned about my fiance, and I was telling her all these things about him and she's trying to find what's wrong with him.
[00:05:54] Etienne: She needed me to always not have anybody in my life.
[00:05:57] Etienne: I needed to be alone. I only could depend upon her. She had to be the only person in my life because if anybody else started to come in, I think her disorder knew. They're gonna start telling me that something's wrong with her and this relationship, and they're gonna fix it, so she always felt threatened by any outside party coming in and trying to take me away from her.
[00:06:18] Etienne: So the best way to do that is to poison me against everybody that I know. And she did it so many times. I mean, literally, it was every friend that I had, every boyfriend that I had there was always like, oh, well, he was always this and you knew that, so this wasn't gonna last forever.
[00:06:33] Etienne: That was always her little thing. And she couldn't find anything on my fiance. There was nothing at that point in time, there was nothing wrong with him. He was ambitious, he was sweet, he was, good and bad and he was, very giving and all the, uh, everything.
[00:06:50] Etienne: There was nothing came from a good family. Even old timey situation of came from a good family, there was nothing. So she immediate comes in and immediately says, I'm fat. And then she goes to the rest of the party was like, it was a duplex and they lived on the top part of the duplex, but they shared the backyard area so you could go down these stairs.
[00:07:10] Etienne: It was actually concrete slab, but the concrete slab area where people had cookouts and stuff at this duplex. And that's where the rest of the party was happening. And when we finally joined the party, I'm coming down the stairs and my mom looks up and sees that I'm coming and she. Very loudly questions the whole group.
[00:07:30] Etienne: Yeah. Doesn't Etty look fat? Like she literally announces it to everybody that she wants everybody to agree with her. Now, people she just met who are my fiance's friends to agree with this strange woman that her daughter looks fat and why? For what reason? Because, yeah. So that was the very, very, very first thing that my, my ex-husband saw with my mother.
[00:07:54] Etienne: And there's just so many examples of things and, he just immediately was like, I really, really feel like you need to go to see a therapist. He knew that I had never seen one. I'd seen one, one time after I'd gotten back from a trip to the Soviet Union when I was 15, right after I turned 16. Because I had been sexually assaulted there.
[00:08:16] Etienne: And so I had seen a therapist for a couple weeks. Maybe a month tops but that was it. That was when I was 16 years old, so I went all of this time and we're talking when I met my ex-husband, I was 28 years old, so, I'd gone all of that time and I'd even asked my mother at points, like, I told her how there were times where I was suicidal, and she was like, yeah, no, I mean, like, mom, I literally have the gun in my lap right now.
[00:08:42] Etienne: Like, it's in my lap, it's loaded. I checked, I wanna put it to my head. I'm gonna pull the trigger. And she's like, mm, you're gonna be fine. I'm like, I really need to see a therapist. And, she had money. They couldn't say, oh, we don't have the money for a therapist. I'm like, no, you have money, you see a therapist three times a week, but I can't see a therapist.
[00:09:01] Heidi: She saw a therapist.
[00:09:03] Etienne: She did. She saw a therapist for years. The same therapist. Yes, the same therapist. Yeah. He obviously was just taking her money. I mean, what was he doing? He wasn't doing his job like
[00:09:13] Jane: Or if he knew that she was a narcissist, he knew that if, and again, we are not clinical diagnosticians,
[00:09:20] Jane: but, but from our research, we can ascertain that if you have narcissistic personality disorder, all the literature points towards, it's not fixable. Like they can learn how to
[00:09:31] Jane: fake empathy at best.
[00:09:32] Jane: So
[00:09:33] Jane: did she ever talk about
[00:09:34] Jane: what her sessions were
[00:09:36] Etienne: yeah, she would. I can't even remember now, but it would always be like, yeah, he agreed with me. That was always the end result oh yeah, he said I was right. It's like, do we even know if he
[00:09:45] Heidi: It makes you wonder
[00:09:46] Etienne: Who knows what
[00:09:46] Heidi: a narcissist himself. She
[00:09:48] Heidi: found the one narcissist
[00:09:50] Etienne: I honestly just, I know, I mean, I honestly thought though that like I wasn't getting the real story.
[00:09:55] Etienne: She was giving him whatever information she wanted to give him to get the answer that she was looking for. I mean, that was probably what's happening.
[00:10:02] Etienne: And if she was telling him the truth, he might have been telling her something honest back.
[00:10:07] Etienne: She's gonna come to me and tell me that no, her disorder is gonna make her change it to then be where she is.
[00:10:13] Etienne: Like the smart one. She's the great one, she's the smartest, she is the breath, you know, all that stuff. But, so yeah, I started seeing a therapist that summer, she didn't say that my mom had a narcissistic personality disorder, but she recommended I read this book and, I can't even remember the title.
[00:10:31] Etienne: It's actually in my bookshelf right now. The Malignant Narcissist, I think that's the name of the book. I'll put it in the show notes for us. I read the book and it felt like I was reading a book about my mother and myself, it was so creepy. I'm not a psychiatrist or therapist, so I can't say that she definitely had NPD, but if she didn't, I don't know who does, seriously, because it was like they just took her life and put it in words and stuck it in this book and published it. And I was the perfect narcissistic source that she had brought up from birth to be her narcissistic supply, to tell her everything that she needed to hear, to make herself feel good about herself with her disorder.
[00:11:12] Etienne: So I always had to tell her how brilliant she was, how beautiful she was, how the world doesn't even understand how great you are. You are the most brilliant person ever. You're the best poet. They don't even know. And yeah, like literally every day when I would come over to her house, which was almost every day, not even joking, I was forced.
[00:11:32] Etienne: I was at her beck and call until I started seeing a therapist, which is the fun part of the story. But yeah. And soon as I come over to her house, she'd stripped down and get on a scale.
[00:11:42] Etienne: And I had to tell her how thin she looked and how little she weighed and how great was that?
[00:11:47] Heidi: What.
[00:11:48] Etienne: Yeah.
[00:11:49] Etienne: And
[00:11:49] Jane: was that like when you were a kid? Was it
[00:11:52] Etienne: she actually, it didn't really, she was worse when she got divorced the second time. So when I was 16 years old, she divorced her or her second husband divorced her. Probably is more appropriate I think.
[00:12:05] Etienne: Yeah. First husband divorced her. I have no doubt. Second husband surely divorced her. And she moved to Los Angeles and I stayed in Maryland to finish high school. But then I joined her. So it wasn't till I joined her when I was 17, that that's when her disorder really ramped up. I mean, I was her source.
[00:12:24] Etienne: Yes. But I think she had other sources before. I then became a
[00:12:28] Etienne: hundred percent the only source, and she did not use other people from that point forward. It was always me until she saw that I was pulling away. And so the therapist told, taught me when I, when I read the book, and I was like, what, what does this mean?
[00:12:43] Etienne: What do I do? I don't know what to do. All I know is I'm scared of her. I'm scared of what's gonna happen when I do anything.
[00:12:51] Etienne: And she's like, we gotta figure out how to make you, you have to start putting the boundaries up. And I'm like, I, what do I, I, she's like, just don't answer the phone for one day.
[00:13:01] Etienne: I'm pretty sure that was her advice. Just don't answer the phone for one day. My mom, when I did not answer the phone for one, I swear to God, like she just knew that I had had that thought in my head. I maybe didn't answer the phone one time, and she started leaving these threatening messages. It was like, I, I, I like to put this in my, in my memoir.
[00:13:22] Etienne: I made this little metaphor of, uh, created, wrote this metaphor about like, I went to the Home Depot to get my supplies and my mom fucking knew I was getting my boundary supplies, and she just wanted to blow up my life because she knew I was about to pull away. And you can't pull away from somebody who has a narcissistic personality disorder that's a bad reflection on them.
[00:13:44] Etienne: That means something might be wrong with them if you're pulling away. So they have to shove you away. They have to be the ones to take control and go, no, you fucking don't. I don't want you anymore. Like you're gonna, yeah. Yeah. So I, at that point, I was still like. I was planning my wedding. I did still have conversations with her.
[00:14:06] Etienne: I didn't fully, fully cut her from my life until, a month after I got married. So we still had another year and a half of her in my life from the point of me finding out that she possibly had narcissistic personality disorder. And, uh, yeah, when I cut her off, the guilt that I experienced was so intense that I went to therapy twice a week for two years to learn how to get over the guilt of knowing I was hurting her by not talking to her and not taking care of her needs and her mental health and all that.
[00:14:43] Etienne: So, I found out through that therapy, 'cause I went to cognitive behavioral therapy, I found out through that therapy that she had. I mean, she didn't do this on purpose. This was her disorder. I don't blame her for this. I just know I couldn't have her in my life.
[00:14:58] Etienne: But what she had done to me because of her disorder, was she made me feel like I didn't deserve love if I wasn't a perfect human being.
[00:15:07] Etienne: And I knew I wasn't a perfect human being, I was realistic like nobody is. Even though I would tell my mother all this stuff, I knew I was lying most of the time, but I knew I wasn't perfect and she would not give me the recognition or the love, or the support that I needed unless I was perfect.
[00:15:22] Etienne: And so I didn't really get anything except some things here and there just kind of thrown at me accidentally or if it was somehow a reflection on her that, oh, look, my daughter is this, that means that, I'm a great person. I had a daughter that can do this. So, um, yeah, it took
[00:15:38] Heidi: Yeah. Only when you were making her look good.
[00:15:41] Etienne: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So two years of therapy and, I know I've described this to you guys before, but the people listening don't know. So my therapist had me carry around this little tiny, tiny little spiral notebook that I had to have on me at all times.
[00:15:54] Etienne: And whenever anybody said or did anything nice to me, I had to write it immediately down in my little notebook. And, anything holding the door open for me at the Starbucks like that had to go in my notebook. You know, like something as small as that or something larger, like, fuck, I don't know, like I am about to fall and somebody stops it.
[00:16:14] Etienne: I don't like, that would be something. Or they just, somebody complimented me like, oh, you did a great job at this project. Or something like that, obviously would go in a little notebook, but at the end of every session with my therapist, she would have me pull out my notebook and I'd have to read.
[00:16:28] Etienne: I would silently read to myself everything that I had written in here since the last time I'd seen my therapist. And I would choose which story to tell her about. Like what was my favorite, one of all the ones I'm reading. And I, every time it would just remind me as I'm reading these, I fucking couldn't have told you any of these things.
[00:16:44] Etienne: I don't remember any of these until I'm reading them right now. Like I did not make memories of anything that nice that would happen to me.
[00:16:50] Etienne: I literally would not make memories of it. So I knew after two years when I pulled my notebook out and I was like, you know what? I don't even have to open it. I remember what my favorite thing was that happens since I last saw you.
[00:17:02] Etienne: And I'm like, does that mean I'm cured? I literally use that word. Am I done and did I do it? And she was like, yeah, I think so. Like that. Yeah. So, yeah. And it felt like to have her say, and I knew like, I can remember things now. People can do things for me and I can nice things and I can remember 'em.
[00:17:23] Etienne: It's not just all the bad that has to be remembered. I can remember the nice things now too. So it was like, I, I suddenly was able, as a person to go, I just have to be a living, breathing person to deserve love. I don't have to be perfect.
[00:17:37] Heidi: Hmm.
[00:17:37] Etienne: I am okay. I deserve it just because I exist, as we all just deserve it because we exist.
[00:17:43] Etienne: And the guilt, the guilt was slowly going away over time too. But there were times it would get really, really bad. But the guilt stopped happening after that. There was no more guilt anymore about my mother and me cutting myself off from her. Like that went away.
[00:17:57] Etienne: If I was gonna be a happy, mentally healthy human being for the first time in my life, the only way to do that was to not have her in my Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:18:09] Heidi: you cut her off after,
[00:18:11] Etienne: after the I cut her after the wedding, but it took two more years before I was okay with that. And then actually, she stalked me.
[00:18:19] Etienne: She stalked me and my, my ex-husband for years. And she also would send letters to my in-laws. And yeah, she never really stopped. There was one night, we were a few months from moving from Los Angeles to Charleston that she found where we lived. 'cause we didn't use our apartment address for anything.
[00:18:38] Etienne: We had a mailbox, et cetera, where everything was sent. Everything, like literally everything. I didn't have anything with my actual home address on it. Not even my taxes, like nothing. No mail came to my house where I was living. But she must have hired somebody to find me. And she sat outside of my apartment door with my aunt.
[00:18:56] Etienne: One night and they were banging on my door and they're like, open the door. Ah, she's so ridiculous. They're just talking about me on the other side of the door and they're writing these notes and slipping note paper, under the door. And,
[00:19:09] Etienne: and she slipped notes in my mailbox the mailbox I don't use we're like, let's check and see if it's there.
[00:19:13] Etienne: It's so weird because at the time my in-laws were visiting because my mother-in-law was sick with cancer and she was having, some kind of cancer treatment she had to do in Los Angeles but she was there and he was there too, my father-in-law.
[00:19:25] Etienne: And they hadn't at that point, even though it had been years with us telling them about my mother. Even though she'd sent letters to them, it still didn't fully register all the way with them, that she, ah, she's just, you know, overbearing. She's a little loud, whatever, she drinks too much, you know, all that, et cetera.
[00:19:41] Etienne: It's like, no, no, she's crazy. And it wasn't until that, and I, that my father-in-law was like, okay, I understand why you guys are leaving now, like while you're moving across the country. And I'm like, we didn't call the cops or anything. Somebody asked me that before. Why don't you just call the cops? And it's like, she, that's what she wanted me to do.
[00:20:02] Etienne: She wanted me to call the cops so that I'd have to open the door and she could see me. That's all she wanted. just wanted to like see me with her eyes. I'm sure she would've gone through any kind and she had the money to go through to court, like she didn't care. You know, like that would've been nothing to her.
[00:20:21] Jane: You gray rocked her and it was successful. I don't Have you ever, have you ever heard that term
[00:20:27] Etienne: I think I just heard that recently actually. Is that sort of
[00:20:30] Heidi: love that. I do that with people all the time.
[00:20:33] Heidi: Just be a stoic
[00:20:34] Heidi: person and give them no reaction, nothing.
[00:20:39] Etienne: But, the good end of the story, she actually did die of lung cancer. She was a horrible smoker since she was like 14 years old. It's laughing so hard. She smoked menthol cigarettes. I packed a two pack. Well actually over the years it just grew and grew and grew. But she definitely smoked two packs a day, for years, years and years and years.
[00:20:59] Etienne: And, I found out that she was sick through a Facebook post of my brothers and I never go on social media, I was bored one day at my job. I had an office job for a little while and I saw in there that my brother's like, pray for my mother. She's in the hospital. She's got metastatic lung cancer.
[00:21:16] Etienne: And I'm like, what? Okay, I guess I need to call my brother. 'cause obviously I don't have a good relationship. I have a decent relationship with him, but he didn't call me to tell my mom is like, gonna die. And he said he was gonna try to wait until she was dead to tell me that she was dead because he didn't want me to, he knew what I'd gone through and he'd gone through way different stuff, but he knew what I'd gone through.
[00:21:40] Etienne: And he was like, he didn't wanna risk me thinking I would visit her in the hospital. He is like, I visited her. It's a horror show. He is like, all the nurses want her to die. You can tell, you can tell. You see them come in the room and they're like. Are you gonna fucking die already, lady? Like, I swear to God, he is like, that's what they're thinking.
[00:21:58] Etienne: She was trying to smoke in the room. She was like, bring me cigarettes. Like, it's like, no, I'm not bringing you cigarettes. You're in the hospital. Yeah. Yeah. So I found out only like two months before she died that she was dying. And my brother told me, yeah, so she had a chest x-ray and they saw that there was something on there that was suspicious and she's like, eh, there's just something wrong with the x-ray machine.
[00:22:28] Etienne: That's what she said to everybody who's like, you might have cancer, maybe you wanna go get chemo, or I don't know, treatment. Something like she, no, she died in denial without a will. Yeah. I got some of her money. She would not have been happy about that, but she was in denial about dying, so she did not make a will.
[00:22:47] Etienne: When I found out she was actually dead, dead, like not just dying but dead, it was like, okay, it's over. It's all over. I don't have to worry about her just showing up at my door anymore. I mean, she didn't try to do that when I moved to Charleston. She didn't like airplanes, but she could have driven across the country.
[00:23:04] Etienne: She could have driven here, no problem. Or taken train. I don't know. She, or a bus anything, but yeah, she didn't thank God, but she did write letters and, yep. I actually have a voice recording. She left on my work phone way back when too, when I was still working at Paramount Pictures. Really threatening voicemails and the letters, that she sent to other people, they would forward them to my ex-husband.
[00:23:28] Etienne: And, he kept 'em, he showed 'em to me after the fact. He is like, would you like to see all the stuff she sent? I'm like, what stuff? He hadn't told me. I didn't know that she'd been sending stuff to my in-laws, to him. And it's crazy too, because when you read the letters, all the things that she says, I am like all the things that are wrong with me as a person.
[00:23:47] Etienne: It's not me at all. She's
[00:23:48] Etienne: writing about herself. Yeah. It's
[00:23:50] Heidi: It's all projection,
[00:23:52] Etienne: Mm-hmm.
[00:23:52] Etienne: Yeah.
[00:23:53] Jane: I've read that with different kinds of narcissism that every accusation
[00:23:58] Heidi: just the compassion. Yep.
[00:24:00] Etienne: that's good. I've not heard that.
[00:24:02] Jane: Yeah.
[00:24:03] Heidi: There's quite a few narcissists
[00:24:05] Heidi: that are up, up, in levels of power right now
[00:24:09] Heidi: who are making confessions daily.
[00:24:13] Jane: I mean it's, very common with that. But I think it's very interesting, Etienne that you had people around you who were then protecting you. Like they didn't want
[00:24:21] Jane: you to backslide. So they're
[00:24:23] Jane: like, okay, you cut, you cut yourself off.
[00:24:25] Jane: You finally dealt with that. You're in a good spot, so
[00:24:29] Jane: you don't need this bullshit.
[00:24:31] Jane: We're just gonna put it like literally away in a box, like a maybe.
[00:24:35] Etienne: it was in a file cabinet. It was in a file cabinet.
[00:24:37] Jane: And, and maybe after the threat has subsided, you'd like to see all the bullets you dodged.
[00:24:44] Etienne: god. Yeah,
[00:24:46] Heidi: Probably crazy.
[00:24:47] Heidi: Yeah.
[00:24:47] Jane: my gosh,
[00:24:48] Etienne: I know. And it made me worry because, she was also bipolar. My brother is bipolar, so I was worried, I was more worried about being bipolar. I only found out today that you could possibly inherit the trait to have a narcissistic personality disorder.
[00:25:03] Etienne: You know, it's a gene you can carry. I am like, are you kidding me? Like that's why I didn't have kids in general. I was worried I would have one that was like my brother. 'cause he was bipolar and he had oppositional defiance disorder in such a bad way that he was inappropriately diagnosed as being a sociopath when he was seven years old.
[00:25:22] Etienne: So they don't do that in today's world, but back in the eighties they did that and it was a nightmare growing up with him and her. He was more the nightmare in my childhood years. But then once I left like high school and was with her a hundred percent, then it was a new horror show.
[00:25:40] Etienne: It changed into this thing that was just gonna affect me for years. But, um, that's why I didn't have children though. I was always worried I was gonna have one like my brother. But now hearing I could have had one like her and, or you know, like what if I had one that had everything like
[00:25:55] Etienne: bipolar and oppositional defiance disorder and NPD, I would be like, oh no, no, no, no, no.
[00:26:04] Etienne: Yeah. So that is, that's my story.
[00:26:09] Jane: That's why I feel bad for people that then marry people that have it, and then they have children before they realize like, what's going on? They're like, uh oh,
[00:26:20] Jane: uh oh what, what genetic Russian roulette game that I just sign up for. And
[00:26:25] Jane: you're just looking at your kid, just waiting for them to hit adolescents going, what fresh hell is this?
[00:26:31] Jane: Like you don't know. And I think that you would've been an amazing mom, but I
[00:26:36] Jane: totally understand, your misgivings , and trepidation and, but you're an incredible person and incredible friend. So, um,
[00:26:47] Etienne: Oh, thank you, Jane.
[00:26:48] Jane: you're that. And so that, and that is enough and we love you unconditionally.
[00:26:51] Heidi: Mm-hmm.
[00:26:53] Etienne: Aw, thank you guys. I
[00:26:55] Jane: And you've told me the, all the, all of this before,
[00:26:59] Jane: but I'm still just floor. Because I just can't imagine, I guess because I don't have narcissistic tendencies. Well, I, okay, first of all, let me
[00:27:09] Etienne: Well, I think we all
[00:27:10] Jane: we all have
[00:27:11] Etienne: point. Yeah.
[00:27:12] Jane: we all have narcissistic tendencies, but I do not have, narcissistic personality disorder. And perhaps your mom did. 'cause she literally checked all the boxes. But I just couldn't imagine, growing up in the face of that, like my mom, um, I. Checks all the boxes. Again, not officially diagnosed, or she is, she did not tell me. Borderline with histrionic tendencies.
[00:27:37] Jane: It's something that my therapist told me like, does your mom have borderline personality disorder? Because literally checks all the boxes.
[00:27:44] Jane: But it was the same thing when I read the DSM five, I'm like, oh, oh, this is, it's not just like, oh, one of these things kind of fits. It was like, oh my God, it's all of it. but she doesn't have to fake empathy, she was fabulous when we were little.
[00:28:02] Etienne: Oh.
[00:28:03] Jane: Like, fabulous. But there's also limits, to that and then after a certain age, she could no longer relate because the way that she could relate it works really well.
[00:28:11] Jane: That manic level of energy works really well with little kids,
[00:28:16] Jane: but not so well, as you age. But, she married someone with narcissistic tendencies, her second marriage. My father, does not have, well he does, but not where I think it's clinical levels, but my stepfather like clinical levels.
[00:28:29] Jane: And so it's just kind of like, what I think is, the covert variety after doing,
[00:28:35] Jane: you know, a lot of research and you're just, The Gray Rock method. I didn't know that was a thing when I was growing up, but I definitely did it. Once you realize that someone is seeking you out as supply.
[00:28:48] Jane: And I didn't know what any of these terms meant when I was younger. It was just kind of something that I intuited as a survival mechanism. And, I guess Etienne you did too of like, okay, well if I don't give them a reaction and I don't feed their ego in these moments, it looks like they just kind of get pissed off and they don't know what to do and they just kind of leave me alone. So a combination of that and then just not being present at all, which is what was also your tactic, works really, really well. But the gray Rock method is for folks listening are like, what is that? I mean, you probably Googled it already, but it's just a psychological strategy whereby you just. Reduce your engagement with somebody who is exhibiting toxic behavior and or abusive behavior, or a combination of both. If I become dull and uninteresting like it's gray rock sitting here, you'll have no interest in me and you will not bug me or seek me out for, passive aggressive compliments.
[00:29:44] Heidi: Yeah, you don't engage with them. You give them one word answers, you
[00:29:48] Heidi: get away as soon as possible and no reaction. Yeah. You act like a rock.
[00:29:55] Jane: Now Heidi, did you end up doing that? I know that you've had some
[00:29:57] Heidi: I've removed people, I've removed myself, dropped people because of Yeah. The way they were treating me. and I dated a guy who thought he was. Jesus reincarnated.
[00:30:09] Etienne: Oh no.
[00:30:10] Heidi: Plus he was diagnosed as bipolar as well.
[00:30:14] Heidi: And had Yeah. Had all the things. Had all the things,
[00:30:19] Etienne: Wait, wait though. I need to find out. What specifically did he think made it that he was Jesus reincarnated. Like what were special gifts that
[00:30:28] Etienne: There had to be something.
[00:30:29] Heidi: he just really thought highly of himself.
[00:30:32] Etienne: No. Come on.
[00:30:35] Heidi: he just, I mean, I don't know, like I didn't stay with him long enough to really dive deep into
[00:30:43] Jane: He wasn't
[00:30:43] Jane: like, taste this water's like.
[00:30:45] Etienne: Doesn't it taste a little like wine?
[00:30:48] Jane: A little bit or approaching a lake with sheer confidence that he is,
[00:30:57] Heidi: Yeah. He just really thought he was God's gift to human behind. He, yeah. He just
[00:31:02] Etienne: Oh, what if he could give you an orgasm just by touching you like your arm? Sorry.
[00:31:09] Etienne: No, Jesus. Jesus didn't do that. I'm just using modern terms that would be like, okay, you, maybe you are Jesus reincarnated. That's pretty impressive. Like
[00:31:17] Heidi: that's really
[00:31:18] Etienne: else could do that.
[00:31:20] Heidi: Is there anybody out there that can do that?
[00:31:22] Jane: I dunno, there is that. You're making me think of that line from Tori Amos, so you can make me come. That doesn't make you Jesus.
[00:31:27] Heidi: Yeah. Oh yeah.
[00:31:29] Jane: that was at a song called Precious Things. Another thing for folks out there
[00:31:32] Jane: to Google, go to
[00:31:33] Jane: Spotify right now. Listen to the Little Earthquakes album by Tori Amos. You're welcome.
[00:31:38] Jane: Anyway, that's my commercial.
[00:31:40] Etienne: Oh, so good.
[00:31:43] Heidi: Yeah. Yep. She dealt with some narcissists. You could tell
[00:31:49] Etienne: Yeah,
[00:31:49] Jane: Oh,
[00:31:49] Heidi: she wrote a lot about them.
[00:31:52] Jane: she really
[00:31:53] Etienne: she had really good lyrics. Yeah, really good lyrics.
[00:31:57] Jane: Her lyrics were a therapy to be while I was dealing with narcissists in my life. And, I couldn't imagine Heidi being in a romantic relationship with somebody with those tendencies.
[00:32:11] Heidi: It was,
[00:32:12] Heidi: bad. There was some abuse going on, accusing me of looking at other people at a concert and it's like,
[00:32:20] Etienne: At a concert, how do you not look around?
[00:32:22] Heidi: exactly, exactly.
[00:32:24] Etienne: to be blindfolded and
[00:32:25] Heidi: but I apologized and made myself smaller
[00:32:30] Etienne: yeah.
[00:32:31] Heidi: because of it. And I woke up pretty quickly after that, but, , at the time, yeah, he was getting away with some horrific behavior.
[00:32:42] Heidi: So, yeah,
[00:32:44] Heidi: glad, glad that's over. And I kind of know what to look out for now. I kind of feel like it was a training for me to know what not to pick.
[00:32:55] Etienne: but some of them, like my mother are really good at hiding it for a while, at least early on in their lives. But then I feel if they don't. Learn how to fake being a person 'cause my mom never learned how to fake being a real person, like pretend to have empathy, pretend to have relationships the right way.
[00:33:11] Etienne: She didn't understand boundaries. There was no boundaries to her, you know?
[00:33:16] Heidi: I,
[00:33:16] Heidi: I
[00:33:16] Heidi: don't
[00:33:16] Etienne: but I mean like, she just hurt. Her disorder just kept getting worse and worse and worse as time went on. Whereas when she was younger, I think she got away with it more. She got people to actually wanna be in relationships with her 'cause she was fun.
[00:33:28] Etienne: You gotta be careful about, especially at the age of the person we're talking about, if they're in their thirties, they're probably have screaming traits that it's hard to miss. But if they're in their twenties, they can still keep it somewhat under control
[00:33:40] Etienne: and it just looks charming and charismatic versus, I'm actually nuts in my head, you know, like.
[00:33:48] Jane: That's exactly what happened to this couple that I've been friends with since high school that when we were all in high school together, the guy in the relationship is the one that I suspect, may have. Well, he displays characteristics that align with covert narcissism. And when we were in high school, we all loved hanging out, he was incredibly talented, plays multiple instruments, just super talented. And also fun, like you said, fun to be
[00:34:13] Jane: around
[00:34:14] Etienne: people are fun.
[00:34:15] Jane: life of the party
[00:34:16] Jane: And, hilarious. Hilarious.
[00:34:18] Etienne: Like
[00:34:19] Etienne: laughing to you crying for
[00:34:21] Etienne: sure. Mm-hmm. So,
[00:34:23] Jane: uh.
[00:34:23] Heidi: first ex-husband was. Yeah.
[00:34:26] Jane: Right. They draw you
[00:34:26] Jane: in and, and the personalities are very magnetic and, a lot of times probably because they have this amped up sense of grandiosity,
[00:34:34] Jane: so they seem very sure of themselves and they're very just fun to be around and you feel good when you're around 'em initially. Right.
[00:34:41] Jane: But then my friend who ended up, marrying him became his supply, but, it just kind of happened slowly but surely. But I saw how he would try to isolate her from other people in her life, would be jealous of other people in her life
[00:34:57] Heidi: Be jealous of her,
[00:34:58] Jane: and well, yes. And when you said something very striking, Heidi, when you said making yourself small,
[00:35:04] Jane: That's what happened to the woman in this relationship. She is one of the smartest people that I've ever met. And I won't say any other further identifying things 'cause people will be able to be like, wait, I think I went to high school with you and I know what you're talking about. But she was incredibly smart and advanced degrees and could have done, a lot different things with her life.
[00:35:26] Jane: And she made decisions 'cause she wanted to, but, I think that had he been absent, there probably would've been a different trajectory
[00:35:33] Jane: there. And he definitely played a part in steering her clear of things that would've made her life, a lot more wide open. You know what I mean? That would've allowed her to,
[00:35:46] Heidi: Blossom,
[00:35:46] Jane: shine in, a way that I know that she's capable. And so it's just kind of heartbreaking to see that, especially since she's now waking up to like, oh no, this whole time, this whole time. And she actually, without knowing the Gray Rock Method, started doing it just as a defense mechanism. And this was someone who's she thought was a lifelong love. But then when those tendencies started happening, and I think this is something that happens to a lot of women, when his tendencies were then directed at her children, she was just like, and we're done. That's what happened.
[00:36:25] Etienne: Um
[00:36:26] Jane: because now, she has two adult children. So when those tendencies were expressed towards the children, she was furious. I think that a lot of us will take things on ourselves because we're thinking. I don't know. We all have that inner critic. It's like, well, maybe I brought it on myself.
[00:36:43] Jane: Or maybe I, or maybe it's just me or whatever it is. The weird excuses and stories we tell ourselves, but someone else that you love and care for, that you would be a champion for in a second. And if they're your children or they're, you're good friends, you're just like, excuse me, stop being an asshole.
[00:36:58] Jane: So that's what, happening, with them right now. And it's very sad to watch. But I watched the trajectory of it, from the early days. And in the early days, I was at the party too. I was just like, woo-hoo.
[00:37:11] Etienne: Is that the party too?
[00:37:13] Jane: I was part of his fan club. I was just like,
[00:37:15] Etienne: Oh yeah,
[00:37:16] Jane: for real.
[00:37:17] Jane: And so I, saw, how it happened. I went to their wedding. I celebrated their wedding. I was like, this is amazing. And, but then. Early on there were some flags. There were some flags,
[00:37:29] Jane: and he was jealous of me, and my friendship with her and would say really messed up things.
[00:37:34] Jane: And that was when I just said, you know, Hey, maybe don't be a dick like that. But then of course, then I was the bad person, so I was like, that's fine, but just lay off my friend. Just not wanting her to wear certain bathing suits, clothing. Just being Heidi, when you were talking about being at a concert and be like, are you looking at other people?
[00:37:52] Jane: His thing was
[00:37:52] Jane: not, are you looking at other people or are other people looking at her? But is she inviting
[00:37:57] Jane: that by dressing in an immodest fashion?
[00:38:02] Etienne: Jesus, and I doubt she was dressing in an immodest fashion
[00:38:06] Jane: I assure you she was not. She, is very, attentive to is there any cleavage showing,
[00:38:12] Etienne: What? There's she can't show any cleavage. Oh my.
[00:38:14] Etienne: Okay. So she's not doing it at
[00:38:17] Etienne: all. She's not like out there wearing strips of fabric and saying, this is a dress, you know?
[00:38:22] Jane: no. She was wearing a very modest tankini. We were all at the beach. This was early before any of us had kids, and we were just hanging out at the beach and he made her go back to the hotel room to get a t-shirt to wear over her bathing suit.
[00:38:36] Jane: And I was just
[00:38:37] Jane: like, dude, whatever. And I said, look, look around, man.
[00:38:43] Jane: I was like, we're at a beach. Like, what the, anyway,
[00:38:47] Etienne: it's luckily you weren't on the beach in south of France where everybody's topless. That would've been the end of the world,
[00:38:52] Jane: for real, he would, yeah, he would've freaked out.
[00:38:55] Etienne: Man.
[00:38:56] Etienne: I'm sorry. Well, I I hope things work out
[00:39:00] Heidi: Yeah.
[00:39:00] Etienne: they should, in
[00:39:01] Heidi: hope she finds her way I,
[00:39:02] Etienne: yeah, I hope everything works out in a way that creates the most good. How about that?
[00:39:08] Jane: That is what I hope for also, for anybody dealing with this kind of thing. Because sometimes it's very easy to say, okay, because if someone does have clinically diagnosed narcissistic personality disorder, you can't fix it. For what I've read in the literature, the best these people can do is fake empathy.
[00:39:27] Jane: So you have to decide, is that enough for me? And if it's someone that is just in your circle that's not close to you, it's very easy for us to say, just cut that person out.
[00:39:37] Jane: But if you're just all of a sudden waking up to the dawning realization that the person that you're married to
[00:39:43] Jane: has this or may have this
[00:39:46] Jane: and
[00:39:47] Heidi: father of your children.
[00:39:48] Jane: yes,
[00:39:49] Jane: your lives are entangled, or in your case Etienne, this was your mom.
[00:39:53] Etienne: Yeah. So yeah, it was, it was scary. Yeah. Like I said, I was really scared.
[00:39:59] Etienne: Yeah.
[00:39:59] Heidi: Hmm.
[00:40:00] Jane: it was very brave what you did because it's hard to cut. I mean, I tried to cut my mom out, at the advice of my therapist and she didn't have NPD, but she, probably has borderline and histrionic, personality tendencies. And, my therapist recommended that I stop talking to her for at least just a couple of months as well.
[00:40:19] Jane: I
[00:40:19] Jane: was going through, yeah, just stuff that when, I had already. Confronted her about her husband, making multiple sexual advances towards me sexually harassing me on a daily basis, and then just constantly gaslighting me about it. And, that had gone on for years. And then I finally told her what had happened and why he didn't wanna talk to him anymore. And she just did not want to hear it. And did not believe me. And then was constantly calling me to tell me how sick she was and how terrible she felt, and how it was my fault for causing this rift in the family. And she would call me really sick. Like, I have pneumonia and it's your fault, this was not healthy. And so my therapist's like, you should stop talking to her. I couldn't. I tried. I went four weeks and she would just keep leaving messages on my machine, just saying, also before cell phones, you're like, you're literally killing me. And I was like.
[00:41:11] Etienne: Yes.
[00:41:12] Jane: Yeah. And then on top of that, then her mother, my grandmother
[00:41:15] Etienne: Oh.
[00:41:16] Jane: was, sending me letters like, you really need to talk to your mother. The Pope forgave the guy who, who shot him, and so you should forgive your stepfather and your mother. And I was just like, you know, with all due respect, grandma, the Pope didn't have to have Thanksgiving dinner with the guy who shot him.
[00:41:31] Jane: So it's not the same thing
[00:41:33] Heidi: Not the same.
[00:41:34] Jane: but I was never able to do it, But I've just became a compartmentalization
[00:41:42] Heidi: I am so glad that we're getting to a point where people are realizing that, oh, family above everything else and you gotta keep the family together and,
[00:41:50] Jane: Hm.
[00:41:51] Heidi: all this, all this garbage about your family is everything. I'm so glad that people are waking up to the fact, if you've got a toxic family, it's okay to cut them off.
[00:42:03] Heidi: Like it's to prioritize your peace and your own sanity over coddling toxic family members
[00:42:14] Etienne: Yeah.
[00:42:15] Heidi: but sometimes mm-hmm. Blood is not thicker than water
[00:42:19] Etienne: And for what? I mean literally you're gonna torture yourself for your whole life to have some sort of a relationship or, if you can't have boundaries, like obviously Jane's got boundaries, but I couldn't, my mom would never have lived with boundaries in me. So, was I going to keep giving her what she need?
[00:42:36] Etienne: Is I still gonna be her narcissistic supply until she died of cancer? But I probably would've been like, you know what, that's probably not a broken x-ray machine. I probably would've saved her goddamn life and she'd still be alive
[00:42:47] Jane: Oh my gosh.
[00:42:52] Heidi: I've cut out toxic family members and holy shit, I realized just how anxious. And, off and, bad feeling, I would feel
[00:43:05] Heidi: after some of these family get togethers and now I don't have to deal with that. And it's beautiful.
[00:43:10] Heidi: I love it.
[00:43:11] Etienne: Yes. I don't understand why people go around saying that family can actually treat you worse than friends. 'cause if your friends treated you like that, you wouldn't be friends with them anymore. You'd call the police, you would literally have them arrested.
[00:43:24] Etienne: Why is this okay? Your family, they're supposed to be the ones that love you unconditionally. They're the ones that are supposed to be taking care of you first and foremost. If they're the ones abusing you and hurting you, no, they do not get a free hall pad. They don't get a free pad. There's no get outta jail free card.
[00:43:41] Etienne: That's infinite. I'm sorry.
[00:43:42] Etienne: Your family should treat you better than your friends.
[00:43:45] Etienne: Yeah.
[00:43:46] Heidi: Yeah. They should face consequences losing you from their lives, you know?
[00:43:52] Etienne: Yeah.
[00:43:54] Heidi: Absolutely. Yeah.
[00:43:56] Jane: I think boundaries are a good
[00:43:58] Jane: lesson from this. If
[00:44:00] Etienne: And I didn't know about Gray Rocking, actually, I thought it was kind of like ghosting before this episode . If I had tried to do it with my mother, I don't know what would've happened, but I would've tried.
[00:44:10] Etienne: Definitely would've tried.
[00:44:11] Jane: Well it sounds like she would've continued to come over and pound your door until you put a restraining order against her, which she would've probably liked at first
[00:44:20] Jane: until it was enforced, and then she was like, but my supply, and then,
[00:44:23] Jane: She wouldn't be able to see her supply.
[00:44:25] Jane: gray rocking, if you're someone's narcissistic supply can be effective because then you're not giving them what they crave.
[00:44:32] Jane: And they'll unfortunately then probably try to find other supply. But in the meantime though, sometimes they can just like you said, blow up your world because you are rebelling against the role that they have
[00:44:45] Jane: ascribed to you
[00:44:46] Etienne: Yeah.
[00:44:47] Heidi: yeah.
[00:44:47] Heidi: because they, they need that admiration and, the reassurance that they're a great person.
[00:44:54] Etienne: Well, what I, what I learned from reading that book was that when you have the actual personality disorder, you don't have a true sense of who you are as a person on your own. Like you as an individual don't know who you are. So you need that source to basically be a mirror for you so they can tell you who you are and you teach them what you wanna hear back.
[00:45:15] Etienne: So that's how it all works, it's very awful.
[00:45:19] Jane: Yeah.
[00:45:20] Etienne: It's really twisted.
[00:45:23] Jane: And in the case of covert narcissists,
[00:45:25] Etienne: Oh yeah. I.
[00:45:26] Jane: there's overt and covert. And the overt ones are the ones displaying the grandiosity and they're very extroverted. And covert
[00:45:33] Jane: narcissist can be
[00:45:35] Heidi: CEOs,
[00:45:36] Heidi: pretty much all of them are narcissists.
[00:45:39] Jane: probably.
[00:45:40] Etienne: not doubt that yet.
[00:45:42] Heidi: I,
[00:45:42] Heidi: read an article where they were saying, basically, yeah,
[00:45:45] Heidi: pretty much all CEOs are,
[00:45:48] Etienne: oh.
[00:45:49] Heidi: they have multiple disorders.
[00:45:51] Jane: they're all in that cluster. C and then the DSM five that's behind me, that
[00:45:55] Jane: has like all of like the, there is a, well, it's coincidentally called cluster C, but we could say it stands for CEO. But they have, just some toxic personality traits and I guess it would make them not feel bad if a decision they made was going to then. Have downstream effects that impacted society poorly. They're just, well, I got mine
[00:46:20] Jane: and our margins look awesome.
[00:46:21] Jane: So, screw the environment, screw the
[00:46:24] Jane: local community. Like we don't, who cares? we'll do some kind of PR stunt
[00:46:28] Jane: we'll donate some money to somebody and it'll look good on the outside , but it'll be a tax write off and we don't really
[00:46:33] Etienne: Oh my God. Yeah.
[00:46:35] Jane: if you can do that,
[00:46:36] Jane: if you can do all of that and sleep at night, on your private jet, on your way to wherever you're going, I, I think that you probably are in that cluster c of personality disorders that
[00:46:45] Etienne: look up cluster C. Yeah. I don't know about cluster C,
[00:46:47] Etienne: but wait, what's what's covert though? You had to tell me about
[00:46:50] Jane: So covert is when you have the narcissistic tendencies, but it's deeply rooted in a sense of insecurity.
[00:46:57] Jane: And so the way that it expresses itself is that you still need that narcissistic supply. But there's a lot of eor kind of things going on. Like, er from any of the people like, nobody appreciates me and nobody sees how. Great. I could be. And, so you're just kind of fishing for compliments ,
[00:47:14] Jane: in really passive aggressive ways with your supply person. And if you fail, everything is everybody else's fault a hundred percent of the time. And this goes back to that same thing that we were saying before, though. That every accusation is a confession as well, because you could say, well, the reason why, I didn't succeed is because all these people that I'm working with they're not appreciating me and they're all lazy.
[00:47:38] Jane: And they didn't work hard enough to amplify my efforts when meanwhile you were the one who were lazy and not doing the work. You just kind of expected to just be stumbled upon and discovered and somebody else to do all of the heavy lifting of amplifying your project or your band or whatever the hell it is that you're trying to be famous for.
[00:47:55] Jane: And if it's not working out, it is always someone else's fault. And the world just doesn't see how. Freaking awesome you are. And everybody should just fall down on your feet. And when it doesn't happen, you're just miserable. I'm not trying to not legitimize suicidal ideation by any means, but with this particular brand of narcissism come a lot of threats of it.
[00:48:16] Jane: So to make their supply feel incredibly guilty.
[00:48:19] Jane: So it's used as a emotionally manipulative tactic rather than a sincere expression of it. The idea, and this is what I've read in some literature, and again, I'm not a clinician. This is what I've read and what I've experienced from people who had these tendencies.
[00:48:33] Jane: And it's incredibly damaging for people close to them because, there's a lot of emotional whiplash, of, highs and lows. If things are going well for them, they're on top of the world and they're going to be nice to the people around them, but if things are not going their way, it is everybody's fault. And you don't see how awesome I am. And, they can definitely, oh, it gets ugly.
[00:48:54] Heidi: They think the world's against 'em.
[00:48:57] Jane: Yes.
[00:48:57] Heidi: Mm-hmm.
[00:48:59] Jane: Until it's
[00:48:59] Heidi: Yeah. That's how the X was. Yeah. Everybody was out to get 'em and I was like, not everybody has evil ulterior motives to undercut you. Most people are wanting to help. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:49:15] Etienne: Oh my God.
[00:49:18] Jane: Well, if that is happening to anybody out there, we encourage you to be brave, like Etienne, be brave, like Heidi, ditch the person. Put your boundaries up.
[00:49:31] Jane: Define what they are.
[00:49:32] Heidi: Well do research if someone's toxic and abusing you in any way, whether it's physical, mental, emotional, whatever it is, if they're hurting you in some way, if you feel awful around
[00:49:47] Heidi: them, do some research. Figure out how to protect yourself and get away from that person.
[00:49:53] Heidi: There's enough good people out there that you don't have to stay with a bad person.
[00:49:57] Jane: A hundred
[00:49:57] Jane: percent
[00:49:58] Jane: advocate for yourself.
[00:49:59] Heidi: I wish we could just ship 'em all to their own little island and they can just miserable together.
[00:50:04] Etienne: you imagine an island with just NPD people, with no supply, just themselves?
[00:50:09] Jane: gosh. I was just gonna say,
[00:50:10] Jane: where
[00:50:11] Etienne: happen? I know what would happen. They'd find that Wilson Ball and they'd be like pretending they can hear it, talk to them.
[00:50:19] Jane: I was just gonna say, they would probably start hallucinating that animals or inanimate objects were inflating their ego
[00:50:27] Etienne: They're like, look, this monkey me around. He's in love with me.
[00:50:30] Etienne: I'm so great. Of course the monkey's in love with me.
[00:50:33] Heidi: Yeah.
[00:50:34] Jane: Oh my gosh. I think that probably would happen, but because they're probably not gonna go to their island
[00:50:42] Jane: in the meantime, seek help, seek
[00:50:44] Jane: therapy. It's a beautiful thing. And set your boundaries.
[00:50:49] Etienne: I know that there is no cure for NPD if they actually have that. If
[00:50:52] Etienne: they actually have.
[00:50:53] Jane: Yeah. If you get that diagnosis, cut your losses,
[00:50:57] Jane: you don't deserve it.
[00:50:58] Etienne: I did tell my mother one time that she had NPD when I was still talking to her during that year and a half that I had that knowledge, or, the very, very, very large suspicion of mine. And she's like, no, I don't. I can go to the grocery store without wearing makeup. That is
[00:51:16] Etienne: not it.
[00:51:17] Etienne: That's not it at all, but, okay.
[00:51:21] Heidi: Wow.
[00:51:23] Etienne: Yeah, she didn't have it. Jane, she could go to the store without wearing makeup.
[00:51:31] Heidi: She just thought it was vanity
[00:51:33] Heidi: or Or
[00:51:33] Etienne: it was just narcissism. She didn't know what I was talking about. Yeah. And she never came back and told me anything about it, like I looked it up but I don't know about it.
[00:51:41] Heidi: When you talk about your mom, I think of Joan Crawford
[00:51:45] Etienne: Joan.
[00:51:46] Heidi: Mommy Dearest.
[00:51:47] Etienne: Wait, did you guys ever see or read the book?
[00:51:49] Etienne: White
[00:51:49] Etienne: Oleander?
[00:51:50] Jane: yes.
[00:51:51] Etienne: So that was my mother, except for the criminal elements, although she did carry a gun. So I was afraid at some point that she would, if she got mad enough, maybe she would just murder me. Yeah, that's what I think of my mother's. She was not as beautiful at all as Michelle Pfeiffer.
[00:52:04] Etienne: 'cause that's impossible. But like Michelle Pfeiffer character in that movie, in the book, it's insane. It just felt like my mother. A hundred percent.
[00:52:14] Jane: Wow.
[00:52:15] Etienne: Yeah.
[00:52:17] Jane: that is frightening.
[00:52:18] Etienne: I read that book after I learned about my mother. So it was just more of like, oh God, here we go. Another one, another example. Thanks. Thanks world.
[00:52:29] Etienne: Sometimes you need a lot of like input from different sources, different places if you're the victim of somebody who has this before, you can go, you know what, I don't wanna be a part of this anymore. I need to extricate myself in some fashion. even if it is just putting up mental boundaries so they can no longer hurt you.
[00:52:47] Etienne: But I don't even know if we're talking about somebody who actually has NPD, I don't know if it's possible to put up borders to completely protect yourself. They know what your buttons are.
[00:52:58] Etienne: They fucking know.
[00:53:00] Heidi: You need distance, You need space.
[00:53:03] Jane: A new country, if you
[00:53:04] Etienne: Yeah. I tried, I tried when I was 25, I tried to get whisked away to England and that didn't work out, but it
[00:53:11] Etienne: did for a
[00:53:11] Jane: well, you moved across the country and
[00:53:13] Jane: sometimes you just need a few of
[00:53:15] Etienne: You just need 3000 miles and that Yeah.
[00:53:18] Jane: a hundred percent. But I, commend you for writing the memoir because I
[00:53:21] Jane: hope for what you saw on White Oleander, or someone will see when your book is published and they'll be like,
[00:53:26] Jane: okay, I am in this situation that's similar to this and I need to set up boundaries and, get away from it.
[00:53:32] Heidi: Mm-hmm.
[00:53:33] Etienne: Yeah, that's what I hope too. I just want everybody to, find more peace in the world and with themselves. I want everybody to feel that way, not just the ones who don't have disorders. I feel really bad for these people who have mental disorders. Personality disorders.
[00:53:49] Etienne: I don't know if any of them who have personality disorders, if any of them are able to be cured or if they just learn to manage and pretend if they're in therapy.
[00:54:00] Heidi: I wonder they've ever tried doing psychedelic
[00:54:05] Etienne: Or ECT electric convulsive therapy
[00:54:07] Etienne: or, you know, trans transcranial magnetic stimulation. I don't know. Have they tried? I mean, I know they tried TMS transcranial magnetic stimulation for dementia.
[00:54:17] Jane: Well, hopefully in the future they will find a cure because it
[00:54:20] Jane: is kind of sad that our only advice right
[00:54:24] Jane: now is be like, get away from them.
[00:54:27] Jane: Because that's all we're left with. Thankfully. It's a small, small portion of the population.
[00:54:32] Etienne: the most, 6%. But that is also an estimate. We don't know. Like my mom was never diagnosed, so she's not a part of the
[00:54:39] Etienne: numbers.
[00:54:39] Jane: This is true.
[00:54:40] Jane: Well.
[00:54:41] Heidi: not gonna ever seek out
[00:54:43] Etienne: No, exactly. This is the exact disorder where they're like, I am perfect. What are you talking about?
[00:54:49] Heidi: Yeah.
[00:54:49] Jane: I don't need to go to therapy.
[00:54:51] Etienne: What?
[00:54:51] Etienne: No.
[00:54:52] Heidi: Oh, and she was seeing a therapist and wasn't
[00:54:54] Etienne: Exactly.
[00:54:55] Etienne: Exactly.
[00:54:57] Jane: She's probably seeing a therapist. 'cause like I need to deal with other people in my life.
[00:55:00] Jane: I need help
[00:55:01] Jane: navigating that.
[00:55:02] Heidi: I'm sure she was the victim in everything.
[00:55:04] Etienne: Yes. she was. It was everybody else's fault. Remember everything that didn't go right in
[00:55:09] Etienne: her world, everybody
[00:55:10] Jane: everybody else's fault. That's one of the boxes that gets checked.
[00:55:13] Etienne: Oh yeah. Does not take responsibility for the consequences of their actions.
[00:55:18] Heidi: Not self-aware.
[00:55:19] Etienne: No.
[00:55:20] Heidi: Yeah. They
[00:55:21] Heidi: say the most outlandish, crazy things.
[00:55:24] Heidi: Yeah. Calling you fat.
[00:55:27] Jane: protect yourself. It's the best you can do for right now.
[00:55:30] Heidi: Yeah. Until
[00:55:31] Heidi: they
[00:55:31] Etienne: mental, we need mental condoms
[00:55:33] Etienne: for
[00:55:34] Jane: Yes. I was just thinking that like the prophylactics just against malignant narcissists and just like go, go away.
[00:55:42] Etienne: Magneto. A Magneto helmet.
[00:55:44] Heidi: Yes.
[00:55:47] Jane: uh, I like it. I can get behind it. Let's
[00:55:50] Jane: fund it.
[00:55:51] Heidi: Yeah, me too.
[00:55:55] Heidi: That's our show you've been listening to, the Women are Plotting. If you have a story you'd like to share or have any comments, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at info at the women are plotting.com and of course you can find us on all the socials. Thanks, and until next time, be safe and be excellent to each other.
