S2 | E9 Lynn Catalano — When Family Isn't Family

Some relationships don’t just hurt you… they slowly break you down.

Lynn Catalano, Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Coach, chats about the toxic patterns so many people experience but struggle to explain.

From silent treatment and manipulation to "word salad” arguments and always being made to feel like the bad guy. This conversation puts real words to what narcissistic abuse can actually look like.

Lynn also shares her personal story, the red flags people often miss, and what healing looks like when you finally stop living in survival mode.

Get to know more about Lynn:  https://www.lynncatalano.com

If you have loved today’s episode, please share this with a friend. ❤️

About Lara Portelli:

As a successful business owner, NLP Practitioner, Midlife Reset Mentor, acclaimed award-winning author, and seasoned professional, Lara understands the challenges of navigating careers, business, and personal growth. She now channels her expertise into mentoring women through midlife and into their bodacious second act, helping ambitious women step into their power and build success on their own terms.

Connect with Lara:

https://www.laraportelli.com/
https://www.facebook.com/laraportelliglobal
https://www.instagram.com/lara_portelli_global/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Hello and welcome back, everybody, to MidLife Unplugged the Fucker Is. I'm your host, Lara Portelli, and today I have the wonderful Lynn Catalano with us all the way from New York City. Hello, Lynn, and welcome.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Hello, hello. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. Thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

So Lynn, as you know, we we uh we are pretty raw and real on our show. And I'd like to jump straight in and talk about your midlife uh evolution, so to speak, and what's got you to where you are today from where you have been, and for our audience uh who are listening, where you are in your journey and what your fuck it moment was, where where what has brought you to where you are in life today, please?

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Wow. Well, I will tell you my story is a very twisting, winding road. Um, you know, I don't think if you ask children today what do they want to be when they grow up, I don't think one of them will say narcissistic abuse recovery coach. I'm pretty sure about that. So, you know, for me, I I went to uh I went to college and I knew I was gonna go to law school. And when I was in law school, I really wanted to be a sports agent. I wanted to represent athletes. And I thought as a girl, I should get a law degree. You don't have to have that. So I did that, and then when I graduated, uh I was engaged to my husband, and you know, women have to make a lot of decisions about whether to really devote yourself to a career and maybe have a family later on, or uh start a family. And I had already spent a lot of years in school, so I really wanted to have a family, so I did not pursue uh the sports agent career, and I ended up leading nonprofits, uh, charity foundations for years uh for hospitals, and that became something I was good at. It was a great career to have while I had my children, and then all of a sudden, um my mother suddenly passed away at 66 years old, very young. And you know, growing up, I knew that life was not completely normal at home. I'm an only child. I knew that my father behaved in ways that other parents did not, but you know, everybody's different. I just wrote it off, okay? And then she dies, and all of a sudden it was as if you're familiar with the um classic movie, The Wizard of Oz, when they finally get to Oz and the curtain comes comes back and they see this little old man. That was how I felt. I felt like my mother had been the curtain all those years. And all of a sudden, I my father started acting and saying weird things. And so my fuck it moment was when I was Googling his symptoms. I tell my clients, this is a huge red flag now. Googling um won't take responsibility for his actions, gives the silent treatment for long periods of time, um, doesn't tell the truth. You know, there were a lot of things in there. And Google, in in their infinite wisdom, kept spitting out narcissistic personality disorder. And I don't know uh if it was my coping mechanism or my law degree, but I I really dove deep into the research. I needed to know what was this, and I ended up interviewing lots of people that had suffered narcissistic abuse in different ways than I had, and I wrote a book about it called Wrecking Ball Relationships because I felt like the wrecking ball was in my brain. I'm sure anyone suffering narcissistic abuse can really relate to that. And since then I've been coaching people and it's it's I I feel like I've made lemonade out of lemons.

SPEAKER_01 4:40

Yes, yes, you talk about that. And I wanted to deal with a little bit more about wrecking ball relationships. Is it your book? Is it your business name? Is it how you coach? Because we all coach and mentor uh, you know, or um in Australia we have psychosocial recovery coaching, and yeah, um, that helps people that have you know been through several forms of abuse to get back to to what the to a life that they'd like to live. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about wrecking ball relationships. Is that your way of coaching people through that have been through uh narcissistic relationships, whether it be from family, whether it be from um spouse? Is that is that your, I guess for want of a better term at the moment, flavor? Is that your wrecking ball with your flavor?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Well, I love I love that. That is certainly my brand, and it is my name on Instagram as well, wrecking ball relationships. Um, as I said, I love that that imagery because we can all relate to that wrecking ball just going through your brain, doing so much damage. Um, and on the cover of my book, it's actually a wrecking ball hitting a family portrait, so you can really get what it's about. Um, yes, I do. I coach people who've suffered narcissistic abuse in all the ways that you you listed. Yes. So it it's it doesn't have to be from a parent, it could be uh from a partner or uh from a spouse or a boss. I I coach people who've suffered all of that. And yes, wrecking ball relationships is definitely my brand.

SPEAKER_01 6:22

Yes, and I like how you touch on that because for myself growing up, I was exposed to narcissism. And then we seem to, well, I mostly for people who are listening at home, you might be sitting there with your baby, or you might be, you know, thinking, oh, this sounds a little bit familiar, what that what Lynn's talking about. And I know for myself, I seemed to attract narcissism. So you may have the experience sitting in your family home right now, you may also be attracting it at work. Like I've experienced some awful and shitty situations at work with a boss that you know is a narcissist. And how do you get out of it? How do you, you know, you can put in all your the complaints to HR that you want, but until that behavior is recognized and someone's willing to do something about it, it just continues on. And that's why I think the work you do, Lynn, is amazing to bring education to people about because you begin to think this is me. Why are they going? Why why is he shutting down? Why is he giving me the silent treatment? I've asked him to do something three days ago by close a business or something, and it's almost like a form of I feel in my uneducated um about you know narcissism, only a lived experience. It's almost like it's um you know, a form of power control. I don't know, that's how is ever am I getting close to it there, Lick?

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Oh my goodness. Every time I talk about people who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder, I tell people it always goes back to power and control. Those are the words because that's what it's about. Um, you know, I have formulated my own red flags over the years for people to look for when you're in this type of relationship. Um, it helps when you're dating, it helps to be aware of these things. And I, in my opinion, people who suffer from narcissistic personality disorder give us a gift. They are incredibly consistent. It doesn't matter if it's your boss or your partner or your sibling or your spouse or your parent. They all use the same tactics. They all, I actually had someone on social media ask me one day, do they get a guidebook? Because it feels like they all do the same thing. They all know exactly what they're doing. But we have to look at it as a gift because it makes education and predictability and preparation so much easier for us. Yes, you know.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

So, can anyone like at home resonate with them? They know what they're doing. Do they have a guidebook? Is it mapped out? And I used to think with my ex-spouse, does he know what he's doing, or is it just he can't be bothered, or we need to talk about this? We'd have an issue, we let's talk about this, let's talk it out, let's get some help. And it was just stonewall, it was just a complete brick wall. It was like I wasn't even there or talking. And the silent treatment, I'm not talking. He wouldn't say I'm not talking to you, but it'd just, um it was like I wasn't even there. And I'm going, oh, maybe he hasn't heard me, so I'd repeat it, which of course irritates, right? But I'm irritated too, and it's just this cycle. And I love how you touched on that, Lynn, about when you're dating. There's plenty of red flags, but speaking only for myself, do we obviously the red flags were there, but I wanted to choose to see them green, maybe. I don't know. Maybe I was a bit colourblind, I don't know. Uh, it's too long ago. But yeah, I love that you touched on that about dating because there's definitely they're educating us, they're educating us. And if it keeps popping up in your life, you have to wonder, don't you? But there was a lot of the time we say, Is it me? Is this me?

SPEAKER_00 10:29

In the infinite wisdom of our great poet laureate Taylor Swift, um, narcissists will never say, I'm the problem, it's me. Never, never, never, never, never. And if you're asking yourself that, I promise you, you are not the narcissist in the relationship. I promise. Yeah, they are they're not capable of self-reflection. So it's actually a deficit in their makeup, it's a personality disorder, it's a cluster B personality disorder. It's listed in the diagnostic and statistical manual for mental health. Every mental health professional in the world consults that manual. Um, it actually has uh nine behaviors, and in order to uh be considered to have narcissistic personality disorder, you have to have you have to possess five of the behaviors. Right. So I don't mean to brag, but my narcissist was nine out of nine. Just saying.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

I'd have to do a bit of a score about the people that I've come across in my life, but oh it's actually a certified mental health condition. Yes, it's actually a personality disorder. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:51

You just walk away thinking, oh, they're a prick, right? No, no, no, no. So much more than that. They are disordered. So all of their reactions, their responses, they are disordered. You are dealing with someone who is disordered. So you know how you just said uh with your ex that you like to talk it out, and and he wasn't receptive to that. So for years, I'm I'm not lying now, years, I would go to my father because my mother conditioned me to have an open, honest conversation when I had a conflict with someone, right? We should sit down, we should talk it out. And in a normal, non-disordered relationship, you're gonna say to someone, you know, when you did this, it hurt me, it hurt my feelings, it made me feel X, it did this, whatever. And the other person is gonna say, I'm so sorry. I love you. I I please forgive me. I will never do that again. I didn't know, and then it's resolved and you move on. With a disordered person, I would go with my bullet points because I'm an attorney, so I got bullet points on a on a piece of paper, and I come in, meet with my father, and I say, I start with number one, and within minutes he would say, Do you know how hard it is for me? And he would turn the tables and he would make himself the victim, and we wouldn't talk about anything else on my list, and I would leave there thinking, what just happened?

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Yeah. Yeah. And if you think about it for people that might be at home listening to whatever you may be doing, or driving in the car listening to this episode, as Lynn just said, she just touched on something really, really important there. You leave that meeting, so to speak, or coffee or whatever, and you go, what just happened? You know, and they they put it back on them so you know, do you know how hard this is for me? If you look at, if you look at it, narcissism can actually start and stem, uh can be the precursor for lots of things such as domestic violence. Absolutely. And I like what you talk about, Nin, about um narcissistic abuse is emotional abuse, because in Australia there's been a law passed, I think it was last July, about domestic violence isn't always now with fists. There's actually been a law passed here about um coercive control. Yes, and it's like it's back to what this we talked about before power control, power control. And when you're in it, you just can't see it. And as you were saying, for you know, as sad as it it was with the wizard of ours, your mum was the curtain. Yeah, and then my mum wasn't there anymore. The the yellow creek path, unfortunately, wasn't so golden for you, right?

SPEAKER_00 14:55

No, not at all, not at all. It's awful, you know, the things that I learned, the things that I discovered. Um, he just did things that were so off. You know, I'm an only child, I have two children, his only grandchildren. So we would go on vacation together. He stopped talking to all of us, my husband, my two children, and myself on a beautiful vacation in the Dominican Republic. I mean, a beautiful place. And I'm not talking about the kind of silent treatment where he stayed in his room the whole time. No, no, no, no, no. My father came to every meal because it was an all-inclusive resort. And at every meal, he would look at his fingernails, he would look out the window, he would look at the ceiling, anything but talk to any of us. So unbelievable behavior. Like, and uh, we came home like, well, we're never doing that again. That was the last one, thankfully. But it was it was constant. He was he was in competition with me, unbeknownst to me. Um he it just everything was a problem, everything was a manipulation. If it wasn't about him, he wasn't interested. It was very sad for my girls um to not have a grandparent. Very sad.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

And I wonder how much your mom suffered that was unbeknown to anyone, but society, the neighbors. Um yeah, she did a great job, unfortunately, for her, of shielding everybody else.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

Yeah, yeah. And I did you recognize it? So I do now because now I can see it. I feel like when you're in this type of relationship, you often don't know the terminology. We don't know um what gaslighting is or um what word salad is or what what's happening um when they're using projection and manipulation and the silent treatment. We don't, we just don't know. I didn't know it was called the silent treatment. I just knew he didn't stop talking to people, including me. And I saw my mother take a lot. I will tell you, um in the US, we have a holiday called Thanksgiving, and um, I'm sure every country has something similar to that, but um it happened that we would go to my mother's family for that holiday. There was not a year that my father didn't completely eviscerate the whole holiday. Like I'm talking about this was my mother's family, this was my grandmother, this was my my mother's sister and her husband and her brother and his wife. And my father would throw a ginormous narcissistic rage storm. It wasn't a question of if, it was when. Every single year. He ruined the holiday.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

That's a lot of carnage.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

That is a lot of carnage. It is wrecking.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You got it. Just go back a little bit. He used a term, and I want to go back so people can understand it because I haven't heard of it. Please leave. Was it salad topping? Salad. Oh, word salad. Word salad. I've not heard of that.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Can we go there, please, for a minute? Yeah. What is that? So I think if I read that in a book, I don't know if I would believe it, but I observed my father using this uh technique. So oftentimes during any kind of confrontation, any kind of argument, disagreement, whatever it is, the narcissist will attempt to deflect from answering a direct question. What they often bring up are things that may have happened a year ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. They're irrelevant things to what you're asking. So if you're asking, you know, did you do that? Did you, you know, call me that? Did you take that? Did you say that about me? Whatever it is, right? The narcissist goes into this spin that's all about um, well, you know, remember when that time and you and these the these things that come out of their mouth are irrelevant. So the the things they're talking about, it's just word salad. It has nothing to do with what you're asking. Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Okay. So it's a word salad. It's kind of like you've dumped the lettuce in and the cheese and the tomato and whatever your, you know, your flavor is. He's just added his ingredients, and yeah. It's a deflection. It's just a complete deflection. Word salad. I've not heard of that. Wow. Um, and the other thing, Lynn, I like that you talk about as well is that family ain't always family, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:20

I I in my opinion, friends are the family that you choose, right? But not that we talk about that.

unknown 20:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:28

Well, when things went really bad with my father, when he stopped talking to me for years at a time, his family, his brothers and their families and my cousins completely cut me off. Never asked me a question, never asked me if I was okay. At the time, I had been hosting an annual holiday every year at my home. I my husband finally said to me, enough. Like it's enough. You don't need to put yourself through this. You know, the anxiety and the the pressure on me. And here my father wasn't even speaking to me, and I was going to entertain his whole family. And uh, so I I canceled it. And I had one cousin um text me and say, Are you having it or not? And that like that was the last thing she said to me. And like, not one aunt or uncle contacted me to say, Are you okay? Is your mental health okay? Nothing. So um, you know, I have my mother's family, and that's very important to me. And I I we do spend time with them every year, they're far and wide across our country, but we we gather together and you know that small is okay. I think your small circle is okay. Yes, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 21:51

Um I have found solace in people that are not family. I found my people that in I have found my people. Outside of my people on several occasions. And and it's good. It's good. It took me a long time to be okay with it. These are not my blood people. These I look at other families and I think, oh, they're doing the whole Christmas thing together. But I have just not got that with my people. And my people are different than my blood people. And it took a while. It took a while for that to sink in. But it's okay. And life goes on. And you need to make the best of life. And I keep going back to what you said earlier in the call that these people are sent to educate us. And it will continue to happen. If it's God, if it's whoever, if it's Buddha, if it's whoever is sending you this message, the universe, as you said, it will keep sending us this education until we hear it. Until we hear it. And you heard it, I heard it. And it gives you, why is this happening? Why does this keep happening? It keeps happening because we're meant to learn from it. And then finally, when you start to learn it, you go, okay, it's not happening so much, or it's not happening at all. And it's like, okay, I've learned that lesson, time to move on. But life is a school. Would you agree, Lynn?

SPEAKER_00 23:33

And you continue to learn even after you've left school. Absolutely. And I feel like, you know, um, my Angelou uh said this wonderful quote, which really didn't even strike me until after I went through this experience. She said, when people show you who they are, believe them the first time. And I I had to experience that myself because I my father showed me many times, and I it took me a long time to believe him.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Absolutely. And I like that you talk about uh that having the uncomfortable conversations is okay, and getting rid of the toxic people. Yes, yes, in your life. You know, the toxicity, it's um it hurts. Like, you know, if talking to people that are listening, Lynn and I are not saying that it's easy. It's it's a it's hard to do. These are the people we love, these are the people that have been put in our lives, these are often our family, our spouse, whoever. Sometimes it can be a best friend, whoever these people are, and it's not easy. It's not easy, they're not easy lessons. However, they're there, and everyone's journey, everyone's individual journey is different with it, and learning to embrace it and learn from it and move on, I think is the key. And yeah, everyone's journey will be different, and uh yeah, it's um it's all there for a reason. So, Lynn, as we start to wrap up today, what would what message would you have for people listening about uh narcissism, the coaching that you do, and a way forward for people that it's okay, I guess people could could be listening and going, it's okay for you, I don't know what to do. I'm in this relationship, I can't get out, I don't know if I want to get out. Uh, I know for myself, I think I'd been thinking uh in my in my marriage maybe for five, 10 years, that I knew something wasn't right. Uh, and it wasn't anything big or blow up, it was just one day I was done. I was done. Yeah. After 20, 24 years, uh I was a slow learner.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Well, we want to make it work. That you know, we are we are very diligent about trying to make it work. But we're taught that again.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

I like how too that you talk about society's expectations and what we're conditioned and um molded to believe. I need to make my marriage work. I'm trying to work on it. Why is he not why is he stonewalling me?

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Yeah, yeah. Well, I would tell your listeners that um not everyone is a narcissist, so please don't use the term loosely. Um, I feel like just because you like to take selfies doesn't make you a narcissist. Um, there are very specific parameters for it. Um, but if you have dealt with someone, coercive control is a really dangerous part of narcissistic personality disorder. They like to control everything, including your finances. And if you're a victim of this, please talk to someone, get help, um, get some resources. I know I have a lot of uh free resources on my website. I know you're gonna share that with your listeners. Um, but find find help, please. Uh, and and talking to someone helps you so much. There's an awful, terrible statistic out there that says if you have a relationship with someone with narcissistic personality disorder, or you were raised by a narcissist, you are more likely to keep finding that person in different fonts until you do the work. And so when I say do the work, read about it, talk to someone, dig in, find out why you find comfort in their chaos. Because you don't want to continue that, you want to break that cycle. And that's why I give people these red flags. That's why I help people with strategies. I think coaching is amazing. I would never, ever, ever knock therapy. I think therapy is amazing as well, but therapy is about really digging in and understanding what happened. Coaching is about moving you forward. I'm here to move you forward, help you heal, and get you on to your next chapter.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah. And um recognize the red flags.

unknown 28:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Yeah.

unknown 28:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Okay, Lynn. Well, it's been lovely chatting to you all the way from New York. So, everybody, let's thank Lynn uh for her time today. So, thank you so much, Lynn. It's been amazing, and I work so much. I work so much in chatting to this episode. Today's conversation is something like a big life.