Episode 35: Narcissists, Mirrors And Me: Taking The Spotlight Back!

We’ve been hearing the word “narcissist” a lot recently, with various friends talking about a person in their life who has narcissistic tendencies. 

So, we wanted to record an episode, where we talk about our experiences with narcissistic people and some key ingredients to either stop attracting them or improve your encounters with them. 

In this episode, we talk about:

•  Our experiences of narcissists (both in a romantic and relationship context) and lessons we learned
•  A key internal ingredient to understand to stop attracting narcissists into your life
•  Narcissists can be a mirror for your growth 
•  A simple step to deal with narcissists in your family that you can’t avoid 

We want to hear your thoughts and questions, so if there's anything you would like us to cover on the show, please drop us a line on info@thebone-zone.com 

And if you want to check out Sara’s solo podcast, The Mind Body Spirit Accelerator – where she gives you simple neuroscience-based tips (that actually work) to create the life you want, you can check it out on:

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033kZ5sPIbZkkQe6j6xJkH?si=99231cc2e65c4d8a 

or

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mind-body-spirit-accelerator/id1896793868

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Bone Zone. I'm Sarah.

SPEAKER_00 0:05

And I'm Richard.

SPEAKER_01 0:06

And in this podcast, we excavate sex and relationship myths and uncover the truth of how it all really works. We bridge the esoteric and practical worlds to bring you grounded, sage, and tangible advice and tools, whether you're looking to attract a soulmate relationship or grow and expand within an existing one.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Hello. Hello. Welcome back to episode 35 of the Bonus A.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

I can't believe you're still keeping count.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Well, I have to edit them every bloody week, so I have to have some kind of chronological order.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

So we are recording this on our three-year wedding anniversary. Although it won't come out on our three-year wedding anniversary. It'll come out the week after.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

I know ironically, um yes, this this actually we decided on this topic this morning, so we thought we would uh record it right away. Um I cannot even begin to count out the the amount of times either myself or my troubling strife here has um heard the word narcissist or narcissism or he or she is a narcissist. We've heard this word so many times in the last few weeks that we thought we might do an episode on it.

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Well, so interestingly, with both this podcast and my own podcast, a topic will come and then usually I'll get some kind of uh intuitive confirmation, so to speak. So in this case, it was um a friend texting me talking about someone in her family that is a narcissist, and I was like, okay, great, thank you for the confirmation. But this is a good topic to do. Yes, it is a good topic.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

And I will explain what I meant by trouble in strife at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Oh, yes, because it's a very English crack. It's a very English.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

I let me just do it now, just to start off before we go down this rabbit hole. Uh, there's a thing called Cockney rhyming slang. And the Cockney accent in in the UK is like, all right, mate, how are you doing? Yeah, all right. And they invented this kind of a rhyming slang so that the aristocracy could not understand what they were talking about. So instead of saying a pocket, they would say skyrocket. So I put my money in my skyrocket. Skyrocket, pocket, trouble and strife, wife, so on and so forth. Let us begin by defining what actually narcissism means. Because I'm not sure that everyone actually knows what the definition of narcissist is.

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Well, I I suppose most people probably have looked it up at some point. Anyway. Yeah. So the dictionary definition is a person characterized by excessive self-centeredness, vanity, and a profound lack of empathy for others. And basically, this comes from Greek mythology, the story of Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection. So there's certain key traits that are associated with narcissists. You can't even pronounce it. Um, grandiose sense of self-importance, lack of empathy, entitlement, need for excessive admiration, exploitative behavior. So yes, that's pretty much the traits. I'm not gonna go into more about what each trait is.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

Well, I think it's pretty self-explanatory, right?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

But what I am gonna say about all of those traits is that narcissists are deeply insecure people and they need that constant validation from the outside world. Because I mean, although it talks about this grandiose sense of self-importance, it's actually not real grounded confidence or a sense of their own value, it's kind of a delusion that they've set up for themselves that needs to be validated by I'll add my own little thing here from what I've learned in the past year.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Narcissist is also someone who has who only builds him or herself up from external validation and has done no work on the inside whatsoever with themselves. Okay, it's just purely from outside, from the outside in and not from the inside out.

SPEAKER_01 4:47

Yes, I would also say that I've met people that I would think maybe, and I'm I'm kind of a bit cautious about labelling, but I have met people that definitely have narcissistic traits, even if they don't have all of these traits. They'll have maybe three or four.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

There are various levels, of course, of narcissism. We have a friend here in uh Portugal who is recently separated, well, she tried, from what I understand to be one of the definitions of what narcissism is. A very strong man who used her and um and basically all the traits that Sarah just read out to you, and she keeps going back to him. Or she did once, although she is trying to really resist this.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, so it's interesting because she was uh she was over visiting us, uh I don't know when it was, a couple of months ago now, I think. And she was like, Oh no, I'm done with him, I'm done with. And I said to Richard, she's not done with him yet.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

No, yeah, and you were right, because that's what a narcissist does, they pull you in, they're like a fucking tractor beam. And if you are in that, I mean you were in that pool and you managed to escape and never go back with your first relationship.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

No, so um, yes, I I I'm just gonna go into that a bit now to demonstrate the point, and then what I want to cover in this episode is how to stop having uh situations where you attract narcissists into your life, yes, but obviously in certain family cases, I mean they're there, so it's not as if you can sort of get rid of them. So, how to deal with narcissism?

SPEAKER_00 6:41

I think that's two very, very important points.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

So I am gonna talk about my experience with um narcissists first, um, and then I'm gonna talk about it in various contexts because um, yes, I've had it in a romantic context, but I've also had it in a work context as well. Um so this is not this is not coming from the place of oh, I'm lecturing everyone on how to deal with narcissists. Um, never encountered it. It's not how I dealt with it at the time, but I can take those experiences and talk about how one deals with narcissists now with the benefit of my knowledge and the experience of. So, would I have dealt with my first boyfriend differently now? In fact, I probably wouldn't even have gone out with him at all now.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

But I think you needed to go through that experience to teach you what you know now about what a narcissist is as well and what you don't want in life.

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Yes, and uh to be honest, out of my uh friends, so friends that I've known for 30 years, I think pretty much everyone has been out with a narcissist at some point.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

I think everyone has.

SPEAKER_01 7:59

And you've been out with one as well, I think.

SPEAKER_00 8:01

I have, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

You think so my first uh serious relationship, and bear in mind this was 20 years ago, so the term narcissist or anything on the personality disorder spectrum wasn't really talked about there.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

No, not really, no.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

But again, looking back, did he have traits of narcissists? Yes, he did. Um perhaps not the grandiose sense of self-importance, but certainly the other thing.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

But he did offer to to to to fucking commit suicide if he didn't go back to that. That's pretty narcissistic, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 8:38

Yes. I he had all of the other traits, just perhaps not the self-importance one. Um so basically I met him, I was you know, I was young, so late teens, and uh I I kind of never saw any evidence of behavior at all for like six months. So it's quite common that they'll be charming as pie to begin with, to reel you in. I've heard certain other coaches talk about narcissists, and they're like, Oh, well, as soon as you get one sign, you leave immediately. Okay, that's not very helpful advice because it's not like from the first time you meet them, it's a hundred percent obvious.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Yes, there are red flags, but it's not sometimes we don't see them in the first few months because we're all taken uh distracted by other things going on.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

So, um, but were there signs before the controlling and aggressive behavior started at six months? Yes, there were. I mean, he wanted to reel me in as quickly as possible. He was like already starting to implant himself into every area of my life. Like after one month, he was like, I love you, and I was like, Well, I don't rain, but I felt obliged to I think I felt obliged to say it back because I was like, I was young, I was like, Oh, that's probably just what you say. I don't know, what do I know anyway? So, um, and then at the six-month point, that's when I started to see signs of, and it started small, so it kind of started with him going nuts about I don't know, a metro ticket or something. It was something really small. I was like, where the hell did that come from? And I just wrote it off. I was like, maybe he's just having a bad day. Then it kind of spiraled to I was with him for three and a half years in the last six months. The behaviour got really, really, really bad. So, like, he basically succeeded in isolating me, completely destroyed my sense of self-confidence. And I want to say, I don't see myself as the victim in this story. I stayed with him, and all of this happened because I allowed it to happen, and I'm glad I did because it made me uh better and stronger for it, and it gave me a stronger sense of self-value after I got out of all of it.

SPEAKER_00 11:14

And it gave you the opportunity to meet a wonderful person like me.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

Yeah, but that was a billion years.

SPEAKER_00 11:19

Shut up, just say yes, darling. It's our anniversary, you're supposed to agree with.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

What was it that narcissists need to be validated? Fuck you.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

Screw you. Anyway, very good though, very good. I'm impressed with that.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

So it's it just uh the last six months, and it was a very difficult period for me anyway, in every sense, family, career, like uh grandpa dying, like all the things, and he took advantage of it to really, really ground me down until a point where he snapped for some other reason, and I was like, right, I'm done with this, and then I broke up with him, but that wasn't the end.

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Of course it wasn't.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

So narcissists are very good at reeling you back in, as Richard said, because they can switch on and off the charm at will to control you. So I did go back to him, and the way that I actually made a clean break in the end was literally to be like, right, I'm going to South America for five months by myself, and you know, that was I've talked about this before, I think, but it was very transformative experience for me to do that, and when I came back from there, I really was done. Do you think and sorry, actually, there was one more thing here. He flow me up after I was back and was like, Oh, I'm messy, messy, messy. So he guilt tripped me into having dinner with him. Then we had dinner, and then he started an argument with me over nothing, and then I was like It's like the infamous dinner where he called you a cunt. No, no, no, that's not the time. Um, he started an argument about something to do with me having got away or whatever. Doesn't matter. The point was at that point I was like, I'm 100% done. I said, You don't ever contact me ever again. I don't want to hear you from you ever again. And he never did contact me ever again.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

So this is your aha moment.

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Yes, not only that, but um I really had a very strong intention at that time. I was like, I will never have another relationship like this ever again. And I never did. I did go out with commitments phobes for about 10 years after that, but it was a completely different dynamic.

SPEAKER_00 13:48

So um, do you believe everyone has at least maybe one narcissistic trait in them?

SPEAKER_01 13:56

Yes, we all have narcissistic traits in ours, you just had nearly all of them. So narcissists are unhealed people that don't want to look at themselves, but that's pretty much everyone in the fucking entire world. But do we all have narcissistic tendencies? Can we all be selfish? Can we all lack empathy at some point in time? Yes, of course. Okay, we can we've all had times where we have been selfish, and that's I would like to say that's normal, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:32

Well, yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

The problem is that narcissists don't have self-awareness and they let everything out of control, so it becomes their way of being.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_01 14:41

So I I can look at myself and say, yeah, sometimes I have lacked empathy for other people.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

So there's a distinction here about narcissistic tendencies and being a narcissist.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

I'm saying everyone has some narcissistic traits in them.

SPEAKER_00 14:58

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

Even just for the listeners, you know, then so even if we're talking about people pleasers, right? You are basically someone that always says yes to everything, blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Like I used to.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

You're doing that for a reason. The reason is that you recognition, recognition, validation, fit in. And what happens when you don't get that from other people? You get annoyed.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Right? So if it really was a selfless act, yeah, absolutely, you wouldn't get annoyed. And that's not to take away from uh people's experiences with actual narcissists who let this whole thing run rampant and it becomes who they are and their way of being. But you know, it's it's good to also look at those qualities within ourselves, not to judge them, no, but to be like, okay, I have an awareness that, you know, this is something that I perceive is yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

This is what in doing the internal work is all about.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Okay, it's like going to the gym, you go to the gym, you've got a ripped body, but what is the point of a ripped body if you don't do the internal work as well with it? Like put the right kind of food in your body, have the right kind of thoughts, not to do it just because you want to get laid, or whatever it is that you're doing it for.

SPEAKER_01 16:25

So, one thing about narcissists, once you're in it, it's difficult to get away. So, again, I can identify with that. It's all very well for someone who's never been in a narcissistic relationship for longer than 10 minutes to say, Oh, you just walk away, it's easy, it's on you if you don't. Even though I broke up with him after three and a half years, I didn't really get him out of my system until the four-year point when I was finally like, I'm done and I'm done forever, and I was. But having said that, I met narcissists in other contexts after that in a work environment. So there was still something in me that was attracting these kind of people into my sphere. So I'm gonna, we can go into that in a sec. But please talk about your experience.

SPEAKER_00 17:14

I'm not even gonna talk about my first partner. Um, she was narcissistic, but I one day I said, fuck you, and walked away, never looked back. She tried to call me and I just ignored her.

SPEAKER_01 17:29

So how many years though?

SPEAKER_00 17:31

What do you mean, uh?

SPEAKER_01 17:32

How many years were you with her?

SPEAKER_00 17:34

Uh six.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

So there you go. So it wasn't like, oh, I just told us fuck off after like ten seconds.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

No, but I think I could I could talk about her and listen, it's gonna mirror what you said about your first one to a lesser extent. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so there's no point in me just doing the reverse. Okay. I'm gonna talk about my mother.

SPEAKER_01 17:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 17:55

And that's more difficult for me because she was just such a fucking wonderful mother. That woman um did literally everything for me. And I wasn't really I'm grateful now, but she's dead now, so uh, but I wasn't didn't feel I was very grateful at the time because she was such a uh a narcissist, she was the classic narcissist.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

I I'm not sure about that. I wouldn't say she was self-centered.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

Um everything revolved around what she thought and her opinion and the validation that people gave her on the RC. I mean, you didn't know her like I did.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

No, I get that. I'm I'm not claiming to know her, but I'm saying there's a difference between a full-on narcissist and narcissistic tendencies. So narcissists actually don't care or love other people a lot of the time. Not really.

SPEAKER_00 18:50

Okay, maybe she wasn't a full-blown narcissist, but she was very narcissistic in her nature and character.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

She was very vain.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

She was very vain. She hid from me that she had an uh uh an arse lift.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Oh my god, she told me one morning.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

She never told me.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

I think she was telling me because she was trying to encourage me to have some kind of butt-up or something.

SPEAKER_00 19:13

Oh god, that again. So yeah, she would impart her wisdom onto everyone, whether they liked it, wanted it or not. And if you um did not want any part of that, she would get really annoyed so many times she didn't speak to me for two weeks because I didn't take her advice. Yeah, and it was very difficult because she was my mum, first of all, and she I know that she loved me. I we had completely differing opinions on a lot of things, even though now sometimes I ask her for advice, um, even though she's gone, she's no longer with us. Um, because I know what she would have said in a certain situation. Um it was really terrifying when she would walk up to me and say, May I make a suggestion? Then I knew I was fucked because I would have to sit and listen to her being right, because all through her life she believed that um she was the one giving advice to people and that she didn't need advice from people. I mean, once there was a whole scene at Christmas and the whole family was really angry with her, and after things had died down, I had a talk with her, and I said, I think, mum, you should see someone and get stuff off your chest. You've obviously got a lot of anger uh bubbling underneath everything. No, how dare you? I don't need to see anyone. You want to lock me up in the noodle bean. I am the one who gives advice to people. People come to me, I am their psychiatrist, and I said, No, you're not qualified to be a psychiatrist. And then she didn't speak to me for two weeks. So I had to deal with this much more interesting than my first partner.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Do you know what actually? So so because I I mentioned I was talking to to my friend earlier, and she was talking about this family member that's uh uh a narcissist, and this family member does kind of ignore when she doesn't get her way or she doesn't get what she wants. How did you deal with your mum being super pissed off with you?

SPEAKER_00 21:30

I just didn't talk talk to her.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

I didn't play the game, but that because it was easy for me. I went to boarding school when I was seven years old because she was working three jobs to support the family. She was on her own. And and in the UK, boarding school in the 70s was the hallmark of a great education. People would take out loans to save. Their kids to boarding school, which was just like a fucking shitty camp.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

Like a prison.

SPEAKER_00 22:06

Where you got beaten or fucking fondled by the teachers. Um, yeah, true story. We had two Peter's at the school. I found out years later. And um, but and on my summer holidays, I would go to Italy because she was working. In my twenties, I I got my own house. So I never actually lived for any extended period of time in the family house, really. So I didn't have to be there when she would not speak to me for two or three weeks. So it was a lot easier for me to say, alright, okay, if you want to do that, fine.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Okay, but we're talking about a family member that doesn't live with the family. So we're talking about like a parental fiction.

SPEAKER_00 22:48

I didn't play the game. Okay. I didn't play the game. I would just stand my ground and say, Look, mum, if you don't want to speak to me, fine. I think you're in the wrong here. Then fine. I even wrote her a 10-page letter once saying, Here, you can read this over and over again. This is how I feel. Okay, so and I found it in her things when after she died.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

So this is important because I want to kind of impress this point, and I'm gonna cover this later in a bit more depth, but you're saying that she would get pissed off, and it's a form of emotional manipulation to explore someone.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

It is.

SPEAKER_01 23:23

You refuse to play the game. And what happens then?

SPEAKER_00 23:27

What happens then is that after three weeks, because I was her son, I think that there's a there's a there's a different dynamic between a mother and a child than there is with a an in-law or something. I'm sorry, I just hit the mic. Um, she would extend the olive branch not by apologizing, and I wasn't really asking her to, she apologised by kind of touching my arm or stroking my head, and I knew that she knew that she had that she was in the wrong, and then we would start talking again.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

And what would have happened, do you think, if this is tied into an interview. Yes. There you go. What would you would what would have happened, do you think, if you had played the game, i.e. you had done something or given in in some way?

SPEAKER_00 24:21

I would have become extremely resentful. And my question I would have blamed her for me turning into something, I I wouldn't have turned into something that I would have liked.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

And my question is, would do you think that would have reinforced her behaviour?

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yes, of course.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

If if anyone who is under the influence of anyone who is a narcissist or have has narcissistic tendencies, um we are the ones that can or not reinforce that person's behaviour. And some of us who are really deep under that narcissistic spell, it's even more difficult.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

So let's talk about what is it in you that attracts narcissists into your life. Because and I've had this conversation with a friend recently who's going through a divorce, she has uh psychologically labelled her husband, but or ex-husband now, but soon to be ex-husband, whatever. But regardless of what the label is, clearly there are some kind of narcissistic tendencies going on there. And I said to her that narcissists cannot attach to you really unless there is something in you that they see or recognize subconsciously. Because narcissists prey on insecurity, yeah, and that's how they get their foothold in and their power, and that's why they go full out with flattery quite often to wheel you in because they are recognizing that you are responding to that quite often, and they are feeling like you're not grounded in that. Now, the problem with that is a lot of people that you think are confident still attract narcissists, and that was my friend's argument. I said in every single case, even if someone is successful and they look successful externally, there is deep insecurities or wounds in them that are making them a match to having a narcissist in their life. So we're talking about, I suppose, more like people you can choose to have in your life. Obviously, a parent is your parent. So sorry, let me just get this straight.

SPEAKER_00 27:15

One second. So, because I had this conversation with our friend in the gym the other day, she said, Yeah, these type of men always come on and latch on to me. And I turned around and I said to her, Well, actually, maybe it's you who are pulling them in so that then they can attach themselves to me.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

There is always, always something in you that is bringing that person into your life. So I'm gonna put it in context of my experiences. Okay. So my first boyfriend, or first serious boyfriend, I was a deeply insecure person. Did I know that at the time? No, but looking back, I was deeply insecure. I'd been bullied, like growing up consistently. I'd had like emotional shit just dumped on me that shouldn't have been dumped on me. Like I felt horrible in my body. I was never thin enough, I was never pretty enough, I was never fashionable enough. So I was horrendously insecure. And that's why, and again, this is not me being like, oh, poor me. You know, this has all built me into the person I am today. But those insecurities were very obvious looking back, which made me a match not only to meet someone with narcissistic tendencies, but to stay with them for quite a long period of time. And even when I dealt with that, I still met narcissists in other contexts, usually to do with work. So, yes, I had built up enough sense of value and self-esteem that I never put up with or even attracted into my experience any partners that were narcissistic, but there were still insecurities in me because it meant that I was encountering them on and off in a in a work environment. And again, that makes sense because it's not as if having sworn off narcissistic men, that I was suddenly a very secure person. I had a lot of other insecurities, so I always felt not clever enough as well. It's one of the catch 22s of being around very intelligent people in university, in school. On the one hand, it pushed me, but on the other hand, I never felt enough. Like I should be further ahead, I should be doing this, I should have got a star instead of A. Yes, that was a thing that actually did bore me.

SPEAKER_00 29:58

And that's all of this is a hook for a narcissist.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Yes. So it's no surprise that, and I haven't actually encountered a narcissist in my work for many years now, but it made sense that until I really grounded into what I love to do, what I'm really good at doing career-wise, when I stopped encountering people like that, it's no surprise that prior to that I was meeting those kind of people in a work environment. And for any of you that say to me, Oh, but Sarah, I encounter them at work, but I'm really grounded in what I do work-wise, the insecurity can be in any area of life. So if you're constantly like feeling less than in one or more areas of life, you are a match for bringing narcissists into your existence because that is what they do. They are there to prey on your insecurities and blow them up, right? Um, so you blow them up, you mean like they will make it so because literally they'll break you down so that they're kind of breaking you down to nothing. But what they're doing is taking your insecurities and amplifying them.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

So, but that's the work in the con I mean, with your first, I thought they would do the opposite. They will come and prey on your insecurities in the sense that if you were feeling less than, they would make you feel more than, so they can just drag you out.

SPEAKER_01 31:32

That's at the beginning. That's to hook you in.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Okay, to hook you.

SPEAKER_01 31:36

Okay, and then remember they're attracted to you in the first place because some way on some level, to some greater or lesser extent, you are very insecure, not feeling enough, not feeling good enough in something in probably multiple areas of your life a lot of the time. Or when I was young in in all areas of my life. So I felt ugly, not clever enough, not thin enough, not uh this, not that. Okay. So you get the point.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 32:05

So what they then do is they understand what your insecurities are. So in actual fact, they have dark empathy because they they understand your weaknesses and how to exploit you, and they take those insecurities and amplify them. Now, what that means is you uh you either remain completely unaware of that all of that and you continue to repeat a pattern, right? Or it pushes you to such an extent that you can't help but be like, I am fucking worth more than this. I am not having this anymore.

SPEAKER_00 32:49

And that's the lesson.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

So I was had to be pushed to such an extent that I put my foot down and I was like, boom. And that is where, again, whether you're spiritual or not, doesn't matter. You can call it a lesson, but I call it a soul lesson. It was a lesson I was here to learn that it's up to me to ground into my sense of value and worth and to say I'm not putting up with this in my life.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

And friend at the gym, you have been pushed really far this time. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:26

Does she listen to this?

SPEAKER_00 33:27

Um, no, but I'm gonna make I'm gonna make her I'm gonna make her listen to this because it's very pertinent, and I think uh she might draw some positive things from this podcast, but you have been pushed to the very extreme. Okay. So it's time to act. That's all I'm gonna say.

SPEAKER_01 33:48

And you you have a choice because when I was pushed to the extreme, um I and and still it took me a year after I broke up with him, as I said, to really ground into the I'm done with this.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

But what you stay celibate, sorry, for a year after that, or did you go on some kind of um promiscuous?

SPEAKER_01 34:11

Hell no, I wasn't celibate.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

No, I don't know. Did you have a break from men?

SPEAKER_01 34:15

No, no, I didn't have a break from men doing that. When I was in when I was in South America, I yeah. Well, anyway, we don't need to go into that. But um, it's the point of like being absolutely firm and done in every fibre of your being. And it doesn't it doesn't matter how long you take to get there, but it's your choice if you choose to get there eventually. So to summarize the point of how to stop attracting narcissists, look at yourself and not from a place of judgment, but from a place of okay, I understand that these are some of my insecurities, I'm gonna face them and I'm going to learn to love them, which I know is not an easy thing. So, for example, if you hate your body, you're not gonna go from like, oh, I hate my body to I love my body overnight. It's little little steps to really build up your confidence every day. So you pick out one thing that you love about yourself, like even if you hate your body or you think you're really dumb or whatever is your insecurity, everyone can always find one or a few specific things that they can like get on board with. So the gathering of evidence, gathering of evidence that actually you are good enough and you love yourself as you are.

SPEAKER_00 35:50

Yes, because you might excel in one area of life and you kind of have been disregarding the other areas of life, and this is where the stuff tends to crop up in, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Yeah, so um, and that's it. It's like a process over many, many years to basically get to the stage of loving every single thing about you the good, the bad, even the narcissistic tends to be.

SPEAKER_00 36:17

There's no quick fix for this. You either do the work or you continue allowing this kind of personality into your life and it's slowly destroying you.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

But remember, like it's it's about learning the lesson a lot of times, it's about learning to say an absolute no to being treated in a certain way. I am absolutely done with that. Yeah, and when if anyone asks how do you know you're done, you can feel it in every fibre of your being. It's not just a statement, it's a deep knowing at a cool level I am worth more than this.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

When it's there, you will know about it. You will know about it. Yeah, um, there's no other feeling, you just know.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

Um, okay, so that's attraction. Then the other thing was what do you do if you know it's a member of your family or in-laws or whatever, and you can't do anything about it.

SPEAKER_00 37:17

It's a little bit more complicated. Well, you can.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

It's also a learning opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

So the the thing with um narcissists is to not well, firstly, deal with your own insecurities, actually. I'm still gonna put that down because they are preying on those insecurities, even if not consciously, subconsciously. Yeah. So that's part one. Part two, you don't participate in the game. So um, this is a concept talk talked about in therapy. We're all playing games all of the time. So one of those games that we could play is victim persecutor. Quite often, a narcissist will frame themselves as the victim, which, if you play the game, you are the persecutor in that story. And the way you know that you're in a game is if you tend to swap roles. So at one point, someone's the victim, the other point the other person's the victim. So this kind of game plays out and continues to perpetuate. How do you stop it? You step out of the game, so you refuse to see the other person as a victim or to pander to them ignoring you or being pissed off or whatever it is, and um you refuse to see yourself as a victim in this scenario as well of this person is just you know being an narcissist and putting you in a victim role. No, so you refuse to be in that dynamic. Which I think is pretty much what you said when you were talking about your mum anyway.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

Totally, totally.

SPEAKER_01 39:06

There was one other thing that I wanted to add to that, but I'm wondering whether it's completely gone out of my Well, you can Oh wait, yes, I know I know what it is. So one other thing that I think it's important to mention in the scenario of Richard's mother, who clearly did love Richard very, very much, when he didn't play the game, she always came back because her love for him overrode any of her narcissistic tendencies. If, however, because some narcissists in your family, there is no love, right? It's it's literally about control and it's not about love.

SPEAKER_00 40:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

I think we can I can probably class my ex into that, although obviously that's not family anyway. By God. Anyway, so you the point is that if you refuse to play the game with narcissists and there is no love there, and you're not a match for attracting narcissists, it may be that naturally they lose their grip over you because you stop playing the game and you just stop spending time with them.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

True. Didn't you nearly marry this guy and your mum said I'm not coming to your wedding future?

SPEAKER_01 40:37

No, that's not what happened at all. I never nearly married him.

SPEAKER_00 40:41

Well, what happened to you? No, someone said, If you ever get married to him, I'm not coming to your wedding.

SPEAKER_01 40:49

Oh yeah, that was my friend.

SPEAKER_00 40:51

But there was something along those lines. Your mum hated him.

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Yeah, but no, he never asked me to marry her. Okay, no, I just uh was like 22.

SPEAKER_00 40:59

You weren't two years old, you were 19, stop exaggerating.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

I was like 22 or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 41:05

So that's not two, it's like half of two, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 41:09

Anyway, so uh that's all for today.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

Thank you very much for tuning in, and we hope you enjoyed the content as always.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

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SPEAKER_00 41:33

Which I believe is everyone.

SPEAKER_01 41:34

So that everyone! We really appreciate you listening.

SPEAKER_00 41:37

Yeah, okay. Lots of love, everyone. Bye. We'd like to thank you for tuning in and listening to this episode today. If you like what you heard, I invite you to follow our show. And if you really liked our show, head over and leave a review on your podcast app of choice. We also want to hear your thoughts and questions. So, if there's anything you would like us to cover on the show, please drop us a line on the email below. Thank you for listening, and until next time.