i am Ekho Podcast: 004
Unpacking the Narcissistic Mind with Dr. Connor McClenahan
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Transcript:
i am Ekho Podcast Studio (00:00.194)
They have a narcissistic wound that gets inflamed when they feel shame. And then that's when you experience a narcissistic behavior. That does sort of make you feel empathy because to have to live with that your whole life and trying to rank yourself with other people constantly has to be horrific.
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When I picture your audience, I picture people who like you have gone through some kind of narcissistic abuse like that and feel, I'm sure, very angry, overwhelmed, small sometimes. I like that term small, yes. And that's really important when we talk about like a narcissistic defense about what actually narcissists are trying to avoid feeling all the time is that they're always trying to avoid feeling like the lowest.
rank on the totem pole, know, the lowest rung in the ladder. And so it's really important that feeling that you might have, or maybe your audience has when they're in a narcissistic relationship, that they're the ones who feel small, right? That that's, it's, it's unconsciously intentional by the narcissist, you know, where they are, they are projecting onto another person, their small feelings, so they don't have to feel small. I'm not small, you are.
You know, and the way that they act, the way that they emote, the way they behave, can promote those feelings in somebody in that relationship where they go, you know, like you were kind of expressing just a minute ago of this feeling of what it was like to even break up and to be in hiding. There's a small kind of caved in crumpled up feeling that you have of my life becomes smaller and smaller. And there's this impression that you have that their life is
maybe even grandiose, big, you know, they're living large, they don't care at all. But this is a function of what it's like to not just be in a narcissistic relationship, but a peek inside their mind of what it's like in their mind as well. I'm interested in to diving deeper into that because what they present to the world oftentimes is not a feeling of smallness or I'm the lowest person on this, on this totem pole. What they oftentimes present is,
They're confident, they're successful, they're well liked, they're popular, and they're maybe even in leadership or prestigious positions. So what you're saying is that even though that's sort of what they project out onto the world, that's not what's going on in their inner minds? That is not at all what's going on inside their minds. And this is where it's really tricky because when you start to try to understand narcissistic behavior, because it can feel like empathy,
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And then you can feel angry of like, why am I having to be empathetic or trying to understand what's going on in their mind? And so I kind of just want to lay that out real quick as I'm thinking about listeners who are in a narcissistic relationship and the sensitivity around doing something like trying to understand from an empathetic perspective, what's going on in a narcissist's mind. There's two different ways we can go down, right? One is to go, well, let's try to understand a narcissist and pour them, right? Look how bad they have it.
And that can make us feel kind of angry and make us feel like again, we're giving more to them. You know, on the other side though, we can go down the empathy route as a way of expanding ourselves, as a way of growing our own consciousness around rising above something that makes us feel small and helping us gain some kind of humanity for them, for the purpose of deflating them in our own minds, of taking them down like
If we don't explore it, what we end up doing is we create them into a God. They really are huge. They really are just live in large. And if we have some empathy for what's actually going on inside of them, the gift that that gives to someone like you or someone who's in a narcissistic relationship is that when you can have empathy in your own mind for what is actually going on for them, it deflates them. creates them into just a small little person that is not so big anymore.
But the path that we go through to get there, sometimes in therapy, sometimes in your own personal exploration, is to see them as somebody that is treading water, always trying to stay afloat, always trying to stay on the surface so that they don't sink down into this pit of nothingness is always beneath them. So I just kind of want to lay the groundwork there as we kind of explore narcissism.
And what it means is that my intention isn't to say, pour them, you know, it's to say, they're just a person. And we need to be able to remove the power from them if we're going to feel powerful ourselves. I love that way of framing it because you're right. You don't want to. I do have empathy, a lot of empathy for everyone to include people who have these narcissistic traits. But there is that.
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path, like you said, of enabling them through the empathy versus let's understand it better, let's have empathy so that we can put them where they actually are instead of this larger than life person. And then that helps us with our healing to know what's actually going on in there. And you mentioned that they oftentimes feel small or they're just trying to stay afloat. Do you see any connection between
people with these sort of narcissistic traits and addictive harmful behaviors that maybe they're using to mask their inner shame or pain. What you're talking about there is a defense, right? So this is something really helpful to think about is that you want to think about the emotion that someone's feeling like shame is a really important one for a narcissist, right? The shame is the primary emotion that if they were not to defend against it,
that they would just be overwhelmed by. A lot of us can feel shame and there are different ways that we manage that feeling or reduce it or try to make it not so overwhelming. If you're a healthy person, you use lots of different ways. You might use humor. look at me. I'm being such a weirdo or something. Or you might, you know, you might, you know, try to overwork yourself, kind of an OCD thing of, I'm going to be better this time. I'm going to make sure everything's tight and clean. You know, so there's lots of different ways that we can
deal with the shame that we feel inside. So when you say addictive, the way that it's not usually substances per se, although maybe it can be for a narcissist. Honestly, if they're using substances, it might mean they're not such a good narcissist because they need a substance to make them feel better, as opposed to using other people, you know, to feel better. So
The image that we want to use when we think about what a narcissist is doing when they're defending is that they are, you know, they're harvesting from other people. They always have a rank in their mind about where they stand and they're always trying to push to the top. A good image to think of is like, imagine you're at a group interview for a job and there's 10 other people in the room interviewing for this one coveted position, right? And
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The narcissist is in the room and as soon as somebody else says something about their experience or what they're good at, the narcissist starts to feel pretty insecure and like, I'm not going to get chosen. I'm not going to be okay. And so what do they do? They push ahead and like, they try to interject a bit and go, well, me here, here's what I, so when narcissists are talking about themselves, this is the context unconsciously that they're doing it from is that they're always doing it from a place of trying to.
push themselves a bit above other people so that they're worthy, so they're okay, they're not shamed anymore, they don't feel rejected anymore. That's kind of the narcissistic defense that most narcissists are dealing with is this experience of having to rank myself higher than other people in order to be valuable, worthy, actually in order to be really a person. Wow. That does sort of make you feel empathy because...
To have to live with that your whole life and trying to rank yourself with other people constantly has to be horrific from a personal perspective to have to live that way. You know, you say something about, healthy coping mechanisms for shame. remember one thing when I was with him that always seemed very odd to me. And I wonder if this sort of ties into it. when he was talking about his first wife, he did some pretty.
not nice things to her. And he would say to me, I can't think about that because then I'll start to feel guilty. So I just don't think about that. Is that is that a healthy way to cope an unhealthy way to cope or just sort of a neutral way to cope? interesting. I don't want to think about that. Well, I'm glad he's saying that. Right. Like if he can say, I feel guilty. Yes, that's different. Right. Than him just changing the subject, for example.
He's actually reflecting on his feeling in that moment. I thought what you maybe you have other moments like this where he said something like this to you, but I thought he might say something more like, but I would never do that to you because you're so great. I have heard that. And out of our six year relationship, he only twice told me I can't think about that because it'll make me feel bad. So it wasn't something he often said.
i am Ekho Podcast Studio (09:48.566)
Mostly he would sort of take change the subject that was the thing or he'd get mad or he would say, well, she did this so she deserved it. But twice at least that I remember he said that. And I was wondering, is that like a slip up to what's actually going on in his mind or, what might be going on there? A slip up. Okay. This is really interesting. Okay. So how do you deal with the fact that sometimes a narcissist might have self reflection or they might be able to connect with you.
How did you deal with that? How do you deal with those? I'm just kind of curious, just from your experience of you have some times where he's narcissistic and maybe unavailable. He makes you feel small. He makes himself feel big. And then other moments like this that you're mentioning where he says something like, I can't think about that. That makes me feel guilty. How did you deal with that? Would you just say, that's the real him. And finally we're connecting or how did you manage that?
Well, it was so infrequently that there wasn't much to manage, but whenever he would do that, I would say something along the lines of, maybe you should talk about that if it makes you feel guilty, maybe we should talk about that, or maybe we should explore that a little bit more, or it's okay to feel that way. I feel guilty about things I've done in my life as well. I think that that's basically what I would do. I didn't really think of it much. I didn't really dwell on it, but those couple of times,
have in hindsight really stuck in my mind that he would say that. Yes. Okay. So here's another maybe analogy to think about that a little bit. Let's say you have a bad back, right? And there's sometimes when it's inflamed and sometimes when it's not. Just because you have a bad back doesn't mean that it's always inflamed, right? There are certain conditions where it becomes more inflamed and the pain makes you act much differently. You know, change the way you walk, change your mood, everything like that, right?
It's a wound that we cope with sometimes, but just because it's a wound doesn't mean it's always inflamed or it's always there. There's a similar way of seeing narcissism where it's not just when people are narcissistic, they're actually incapable of empathy. I think that again makes them into some kind of one dimensional object right there. They're only narcissistic. That's not true.
i am Ekho Podcast Studio (12:10.004)
they have a narcissistic wound that gets inflamed when they feel shame and then that's when you experience the narcissistic behavior. In those moments, those very few moments that you're talking about are likely times that he felt connected enough to you to not feel shame. He felt like a person to you. He could see maybe in your eyes that you could were trying to understand him, that you were connected him in some way and he felt permission somehow to feel like a person and he could actually self-reflect for a moment.
And then something else comes up where he feels bottom of the rank, lowest rung in the ladder, and he can't tolerate it. He feels like I'm about to get rejected. And so what does he do? He does the whole, you know, blame, you know, whatever else things that he might do to make himself, you know, feel inflated again. Narcissists will have good and bad days, you know, and that can be confusing for somebody who is in your position or if you're in a relationship with a narcissist.
because you want to think, maybe he's better now, or maybe I was exaggerating before. That is not the case at all. It is likely that you will continue to experience this with them for years, these kind of roundabouts where you go through cycles where they feel less inflamed and they're able to be more of a person. go, I can make this work. Maybe I did something well. Maybe we're okay. Maybe we turned a corner and then they get inflamed again and it's intolerable. You can't do it. It's too much. It's painful.
That sounds very similar where I did oftentimes even would say it's like two different people in there. Like one person does seem to have some sort of ability to care and maybe even empathize a little bit, although empathy was very low, I would say, but has that ability. And the other one is just cold and manipulative and just pathologically lying, you know, making things up.
gaslighting, know, assuming my intention is horrific whenever it's not, you know, those sort of things. And mostly that came up around his drinking. So he did drink into excess a lot and it did cause problems within his family structure to include our marriage. Like he tried to be sober and he recognized he had the issue. He tried to be sober. That was actually part of our agreement for staying together was
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that he would stop drinking. And anytime he was sort of caught drinking, he would lie about it. And then he'd get enraged that I would, you know, bring it up that he was drinking. And I think that deep down, he was feeling tremendous shame there. knew that he shouldn't be doing it, or that he was being weak, let's say. And then this was grounds for being rejected for feeling shame. And so instead of just
and going, know I messed up. And this makes us appreciate this too is that in order to do that kind of thing, in order to own up to a mistake like that and to just let ourselves feel the shame and express it in relationship, it requires a lot of trust for all of us. Like in order to do that piece, we all require caregivers who are tuned into us and who see us as a real person, even when we're at our weakest, who don't reject us.
It requires that and we revisit that capacity in a relationship. We borrow from those early memories of tuned in parents when we're able to accept our faults, right? In all of us, if we don't have that, we'll defend in different ways. It's not always, it's not always just narcissism, but you know, we'll defend against that kind of place. And that can be a problem in relationships generally is when we can't accept our shame and just talk about it. And we defend against it, whether it's
avoiding the other person or it's blaming the other person or more addictive behavior or you know, anger, you know, all kinds of things we can use to defend. But here you're noticing something where he kind of went really internal in a kind of a private way and he was kind of caught being small, being dependent, being unacceptable. And it made him push back and have to kind of again, like the group interview kind of situation, you know, put his best foot.
forward in terms of going, I'm no, I'm good. You know, you're the one who's bad is kind of the, the sense, the way that he'll use to, to recover there. No, that, that sounds very, very spot on. in, in what ended our relationship actually was he did assault me for a second time and the police were arrested him, but, he threw me into a wall and it caused me to break my collarbone and gave me a concussion. And he told everybody in part of his smear campaign is that I went.
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crazy through myself into a wall, broke my own collarbone, gave myself a concussion to make him look bad. And I think he couldn't handle feeling like he did something wrong. There's that inflamed thing, right? I'm bad. You know, that's the that's like the inflamed back. That's the wound. I'm bad. And so I'm unacceptable. And it's like he interpreted that whole experience, like you said, not as I hurt you and
I ought to do something to make this right. It's I'm hurt. You know, he was the one who was hurt by it, right? His ego. He's too, too injured to actually look around and see, my gosh, I actually hurt you. You know, and I can't tolerate that. I don't want to do that. Yeah, that's, that's difficult. Something that I think is helpful to explore here is, childhood situation, you know, about what's common with
narcissistic childhoods. And as I described this, I think it's easy to kind of go, for example, for you or for anyone else, to start to picture the person in your life who's narcissistic. But I want us to kind of take a moment here and get outside of the category and just think this is a very common experience for many people, especially today. We live in a much more narcissistic culture today than even 100 years ago. You know, when Sigmund Freud was trying to diagnose different
disorders and whatnot narcissism wasn't a very common thing at all. And so there's a thought that narcissism has emerged in our culture as we've removed, you know, really committed long term relationships, like communities that we still live in that we grew up in, where our actual reputation matters. And where we can't just be surface level and, you know, showy, we have to actually be integral.
You know, so those things didn't exist as much back then. And sadly, it's much more of our common experience today that we are all in some ways narcissistic. Maybe some of us have had protective things, but I think we all can kind of put ourselves in that seat and know what it kind of feels like to sense that I'm about to get kicked out. I feel like fragile inside in the only way to avoid being dismissed or shamed is to
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produce something really good and to help make somebody else feel good about me. the situation, and again, I would encourage you if you're listening to put yourself in these shoes and to wonder about your own experiences growing up too, not just your partners or whoever else. The situation that you want to picture is the narcissistic child had to always maintain the self-esteem of their parent.
You picture like a parent who is always, you know, getting deflated, right? They feel like they're not doing well enough. They're not, you know, they're lower on the rung in some way the parent is. And what the parent will do is that they will unconsciously, without being aware of it, they will harvest from the child, the child's talent, the child's achievement, the child's goodness, the child's attention.
in order to show, how good I am as a parent, look how good I am as a person. I see this in Little League all the time, where you'll see like a parent who almost like puts their kid on a pedestal, not to praise the kid, but to say, look how good I am, I made this kid. And they kind of almost put the kid on a pedestal and then stand in front of the kid and go, isn't he great? And they mean themselves.
I don't know if you've had an experience like that, but I can think of many experiences where not just men of putting their kid on a sports pedestal, women who are proud of their daughters, who dress a certain way or who get some kind of attention or who are in valet, you know, in the star of the class. And it makes them feel secure for a moment. They feel, oh, I did it. I'm good. I'm a good parent. Finally, I'm worthy of being loved.
I'm worthy of having attention in their minds. I know this sounds crazy, but in their minds, it's like, finally, I did it for my mom or my dad. You know, I'm now a person to them. I finally earned a spot at the table because I was so good by having this kid who can fill me up and make me feel good. So the kid learns, you know what I need to do? I need to make sure that I am excellent. And if I'm not excellent,
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I have the suspicion that mom or dad will go to another kid or someone else and they're going to use another kid instead of me. So instead of the kid going, for example, I really like ballet and I love how I feel when I do it. They go, I love how mom feels when I do ballet because I finally feel worthy. I finally feel good. That's a really, really empty place for a kid to be always having to.
be right on this edge of whether I'm a person or not, depending on how good I am. And that's the narcissistic wound that is carried forward in adulthood where we go, I have to keep doing this over and over, keep climbing up the rung of the ladder. I don't think you actually read my blog probably, but I wrote an article in my blog about how when I went to visit his family and in 1500 miles away,
They live six miles from the next house, right? They live in the middle of nowhere. His mom sat me down and got out his yearbook and was like, he was Mr. Quarterback. He was Mr. Prom King. He was, and just went on and on and on about all of his accomplishments in high school. She must have talked to me for two hours about all of his accomplishments in high school. I didn't even know this woman. This was within like the first four hours of me meeting her, say.
And then he told me, and I know this is true, he had lived away from home for 20 years and his mom visited him one time. And that was when he got his, his graduation from his PhD. And so I'm just wondering, is that sort of what was going on in his life? What do think the message was that he heard there? You will get attention and validation if you perform well.
Yeah. You're only going to get attention and validation if you perform well. And if you don't, if you don't, we kind of crumple, we fall apart. Mom and dad feel invisible. Even the way you described him, six miles away from everyone else isolated. He might have a picture that they're fragile. They're like poor, you know, impoverished emotionally and that his job is to beef them up.
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fill them up with his PhD, with his, you know, his trophies. And then, so it's this anxiety of going, it's like this terror of going, what if I wasn't, can you picture being in that shoes and you go, what if I, what if I wasn't that good at that? Then where would I be? Well, then where would you be mom and dad? You know, like if, what if I didn't get my PhD, would you have come out at all? What if I couldn't complete it? What if I'm weak? What if I'm alcoholic? What if I drink?
You know, this is where there's a part of them that is going to go, and this is again, think getting deep into something difficult, which is to be somehow have capacity to have empathy there again, because we were ourselves injured by them. There's this emptiness that they feel at the base of everything. What if I am alcoholic and there's going to be a part of them that isn't just trying to defend against themselves?
by climbing up the rung, there's also going to be this thing perniciously that goes, what if I actually fall apart and I'm actually really bad? And they're going to want to test that boundary too. And for example, do something unforgivable, like push you into a wall or become alcoholic. And they're kind of testing, am I still a person if I do this? Again, this is totally not consciously that they're doing it, but we all do this in some degree. We're longing.
to expand ourselves by being able to be accepted for the unacceptable things that we feel we can't be. So for example, somebody who's, you can think of someone who's raised in like a strict Christian environment and they're not supposed to date and they might have sex with multiple partners. Well, why do they do that? Because they're kind of like an adolescent pushing against the boundary going, will you love me now? Will you love me now? But you can kind of imagine that. feel like why does he drink? If he knows it's bad and it's gonna cause him shame.
there might be a part of them that goes, can't I drink? Can I be weak? And someone else take care of me? You know, even though they know consciously they can't accept that it's too inflaming to them. That just hits so close to home and clicks on so many levels. And I always wondered, I only had visited his parents twice in our five year relationship. He would go every year, but it was only like the last two years when we lived together.
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that I would go to visit them 1500 miles away. He'd go once a year. And I saw that he was doing something. He was looking at his former students, pictures that were scantily clad. We'll say that. And I just mentioned it to him and, you know, a text I was like, you know, I don't appreciate this. This isn't okay. And he went and told his mom and his mom started texting me that just in rapid defense of him out of nowhere. And I thought,
Why is this woman, first of all, why did he go to her? And then why is she texting me defending this behavior to include putting in text? It's perfectly normal for him to look at his, you know, students' pictures half-naked. She put that in text, but she just attacked me viciously over that. And it never made sense to me why, but now I'm wondering, it because it sort of threatened that ideal version of him?
threatened his ideal version of himself. It kind of brought it out into the light. And then what did he say about how you were being by telling him this? I was awful. I shouldn't have brought it up. I got accused of trying to ruin his time with his family. think the mom accused me of that as well, being controlling, being jealous, that sort of thing. And it was just it was right there on his on his stuff. You know, it is his computer and.
I just mentioned it to him. Like I was upset. not going to, was heartbroken and upset, but by mentioning it, it was enough for him to go and tell his mom that I was causing problems and for her to just rapidly defend his behaviors. Yeah. Well, you can see right there about like, as if he slipped all the way down the ladder and then you're a rung above him. And so he pushes you down so he can get a leg up again, as if he's about to drown.
So yeah, he could have gone two directions, right? One is to make you look bad so that he looks better by comparison, which is kind of what he did. The other one would be to somehow talk about how good it was that he would be doing that. You know, how it's actually, you know, something, I don't know, he'd probably try to elevate himself and, you know, in some way in that instance too, but you could probably expect those two kind of outcomes there. But yeah, definitely not a great feeling.
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But again, what you ended up feeling there to come back to the projection. And just so we understand what, like, I don't want to use it kind of psycho jargon term without explaining it, but projection is this idea that, I think it's tossed around often, but it has to do with there's an unacceptable thing that I can't take in myself. And so what I do is I kind of place it on another person. so.
For example, let's say, again, sexuality is easy example where you go, okay, I'm not allowed to be sexual. And so if I feel some kind of sexual feeling with another person, I'm gonna go, oh no, you're the one feeling some kind of attraction towards me, not me. You know what I mean? That's projection. So you go, wow, why are you coming onto me so strong when the reality is that you might be feeling some things towards another person, right? That's projection.
In this case, he felt incredible shame. And he was tattled on in some way. And so he tattled on you and made you the object of criticism, you know, and so he was projecting onto you. So in that moment, you were feeling I'm sure you can remember how horrible it felt to have his mom call you. Absolutely. I horrible. Really? Yes.
I saw the text she sent me saying I was ruining their time together. It was precious time together. I was naive if I thought men wouldn't look at other pictures of women and that I was not. And that I even said, well, you know, maybe it's a cultural thing, but there's like the student teacher boundary. He was a professor. So these women were of age. But not only does it hurt me that he's even looking at any other women in this sort of way.
but that it's also an ethical issue as far as he's going into his students. And she said in Texas, there's nothing wrong with that. It felt horrible. You felt really bad. mean, that again, how clever for him to shift mom's blame onto that way. And you were the sacrificial lamb that carried his shame.
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Right there, you held, you knew right there you were feeling exactly what he was avoiding feeling in that moment from you. I mean, this is the way that, if he hadn't brought his mom into it, he would have been you in that situation and you would have been the mom, right? Yes, yes. So he kind of did a judo move and now you're the one who's feeling the shame. And then he's kind of on the sidelines going, huh, I got off scot-free. You know, I'm over here feeling pretty good.
You know, I'm my mom's defending me. And now you're the one who's being pushed down into shame. Wow. OK. Now that makes that makes absolute sense. And at the root of it is their inability to feel to be comfortable feeling that shame or that the root of it is that they just perpetually feel that shame and they do everything to avoid that. Yes, both. You know, so it's you know, they're they're perpetually
very conscious that they're going to be kicked off the bottom of the ladder, they're going to be shamed. again, shame is this shame is a term again, that we throw around a lot has a lot to do with our social acceptance, you know, the idea that we we are social creatures. And so we've associated belonging with survival, right? I'm only able to survive. So it's like a death threat to be kicked out of the community in some ways to be kicked out of relationship.
because you go, am going to provide for myself? It's a scary world, right? This is like a survival instinct that we have. That's why we have shame is that we go, I'm not accepted in my relationships, I equate that with death. And so when someone feels shame like that and they feel aware that at any moment I could be discarded if I'm not good enough, the mom, the dad, to my partner, then I have to somehow
defend against that death threat, that overwhelming experience there. You know, like you can think about him like clawing his ways out, his way out of that threatening experience by putting it on you. And he doesn't care that you're, and he doesn't care that you're being shamed and you're being kicked out, you know, which is exactly where he left you, right? Which was, you know, in hiding, you know, kicked out and you go, this is no kind of life. I'm dying in here, you know.
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That's the experience that he's trying to avoid. That's what he's trying to avoid. it was with that looking at pictures of his students, it played out that way. And then whenever he assaulted me, it played out that way by taking the blame off of him and saying, she's crazy. She threw herself under a wall, broke her own collarbone to make me look bad. And then it took the blame and shame off of him and put it on me.
That's very insightful. No, no one has phrased it that way before, but that feels, that feels spot on actually. good. Yeah. A lot of the viewers are in a similar situation to me, various stages of healing, maybe still in the relationship. I'm curious if they would come to you and your practice, what are some ways that you might be able to help them? I think the biggest way that therapy can help
in this kind of situation is being able to pay attention to just how much pain and weight that you're carrying in the relationship. And then also the ways that you might be defending against that pain to tolerate the relationship, which is understandable. You know, it can be really scary to make a shift at all or to leave. I can think of a client that I've had where it was a similar kind of situation, narcissistic boyfriend in this case.
And I kept trying to at beginning of therapy, I kept trying to encourage her to leave and go, you know, can't you see how, bad this is? Can't you see how, how unhappy you are? I had to stop because whenever I would do that, she would try to express to me how much she can't leave him. He means too much to her. How could I ever do that? You know, things will get better. I had to have the patience to actually.
listen to that and understand that of going, you really love him, you can't leave him, huh? In order for her to be aware of the actual other part of it, the other side of it, of the, it was almost like once she got that she, you know, that she could feel understood that she loved him, that she can't leave him. She kind of, you know, was able to shift towards being able to be like, this is actually really heavy. This is actually too much for me. So I think a lot of the process of therapy is helping us
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remove our defenses against just how much pain we're in and just how much we're having to tolerate. Because there's all kinds of things, even though the narcissist is defending, we defend as well. There's all kinds of pain that we're going to defend ourselves from. And that's a historical thing usually for most of us of some time, a long time ago, where we go, I'm supposed to tolerate something like this. I'm supposed to stick in something that's my role. And getting over the narcissistic
relationship isn't just about leaving the relationship, it's about growing our awareness of ourselves and our value in ourselves to say, my feelings matter enough. And I think a lot of times without therapy or without a listening ear like that, they always just feel this constant, well, I know I should, I should get with him. Other people would tell me I should break up with him. But unless we're able to do some kind of deeper emotional opening up of
just what this relationship means to us, just how much we've been defending against pain, how bad it feels to us or threatening it feels to get out of the relationship, we're gonna stay in the same place. So maybe to summarize what I'd say is that therapy is about helping you actually weigh the pain that you're going through appropriately, because there's all kinds of things that make us not weigh it. We don't wanna actually take stock of what's happening inside of us.
Now that that makes sense. And you're right. There are lot of societal pressures put on us to either stay in relationships because you don't want to be the person that, you know, ends a relationship, starts a new one, ends a one, starts a new one. There's pressure that way. There are things we learn from our own past of what you tolerate that maybe we shouldn't tolerate. Right. And, and there's just so many things that sometimes
make it hard for us to say, isn't a healthy relationship, I need to get out of it and the pain I'm experiencing really is bad. I'm not exaggerating it, I'm not being dramatic, I'm not imagining it, it's really bad. So just having someone validate your feelings and experiences could be, is tremendously helpful. Yeah, including the feelings of care, attachment that are really hard to understand when you're in that relationship.
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Because when you start to express it to a friend or something, you go, I shouldn't feel this way. I shouldn't. And that's a lot of the pain that makes you not want to leave. It's not just it's painful when, you know, he's abusive. It's painful because you feel attached. that's what makes it. That's a really hard thing to understand. We can talk about boundaries here for a second, because I think that's a popular keyword here. Boundaries has been pop culturalized in Instagram.
reels, right? And what boundaries say, and this is a way of sometimes shaming ourselves when we're in a narcissistic relationship, just say no, just break up, don't tolerate it. It's like telling somebody who has an eating disorder, don't eat a candy bar, just say no. And what happens is the person will, if you in that situation, the person will say no to the candy bar, but then their emotional self, if they're not, if they don't know how to pay attention to it,
We'll find a way to eat junk food anyway, right? We'll find a way to do it anyway, because they aren't paying attention to how much they are hungry. Right. What you'd want to say instead is like, I don't know. I'm thinking about what the example would be in a eating disorder situation or somebody who's, let's say overeating or something like this, where you'd go, what does it feel like after you eat the candy bar? Or tell me what it's like when you see the candy bar and you really want to eat it.
know, what's that feeling? And then to connect with it, to understand it, to even want to eat the candy bar and say, what was that like? And I say, at first it tasted good. And then I just felt, if I'm really honest, I felt kind of sick right after. Oh yeah, what do you feel? That is a much different kind of quote unquote boundary than saying no. And so boundaries is usually an ought that we give ourselves that actually doesn't help. It actually creates some kind of
goody two shoes way that I know I ought to be, but that I emotionally rebel against, I don't actually do it. So I know I ought to run, I ought to eat healthy food, but I don't. And then I just feel bad about it. And I think people in a narcissistic relationship are sometimes told when they are told some kind of boundary thing, just get out of the relationship, just stop. It's not actually gonna help. It can actually decrease their awareness.
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about what's actually happening for them. That sounds spot on as well because one of the people, a lot of people told me, get out of it, get out of it. What are you doing in here? What are you doing in here? What are you doing with this person? Just, just leave him, just get away. you should, you should do this. But the friend that helped me the most, just listened to me, just listened to me. And I later learned that she was really, really hoping that I got out of that relationship because she knew it was bad for me.
but she just listened to me and she'd ask me questions like, well, how does that feel to you? That those sort of questions. And I, I want to say that probably our interactions largely led to me finally saying this is enough. That's beautiful. Versus the dozens of people who told me, what are you doing? You need to leave. What are you doing? Get out of there. So that sort of relationship was.
way more effective and getting me to realize this is not good. I need to separate and I feel, I understand my own feelings enough to know that this is the right thing to do sort of. That's amazing. What a wonderful friend. And she trusted you. Yeah. Right. Yeah. She trusted that you had enough inside of you. She didn't need to tell you how to feel.
She trusted that you had something inside of you that was trying to work it out and that she could just sit there and let you expand that, you know, be present with it. She helped you weigh it. She helped you weigh exactly what was going on in you, not just the angry feelings, but the sad feelings, the hard feelings, I'm sure, you know, that are harder for someone to understand when they just already say you shouldn't be in a relationship where you got to get out. That communicates anxiety and distrust, doesn't it?
Yes. Your impulses are actually bad and you shouldn't trust them. And so I need to come in here and give you the right thing to do. Right. But I trust that as well. You go in for people listening, you go there is you have everything you need inside of you to be able to make a healthy decision. But you need sometimes some kind of relationship so you have to articulate that. So you have to become aware of it so you can actually observe what's going on inside of you.
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I think that is a wonderful pathway towards healing. sounds like has led you to where you are today as well. It has. has. Yeah, that has been one of the most supportive relationships of my life to this day. So I'm very thankful for her. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. The other picture of boundaries, just to of expound that, and I think this is what your friend did for you there, is something called self other boundaries. And this is where
sometimes with narcissism or even like with borderline personality, there's this experience of kind of confusion. You know how when somebody is like too close to you and they're blurry because they're too close, you know, and you can't quite make out where their face starts and ends, right? And where your face starts and ends. That's an example of like a diffuse self other boundary where I don't actually know whether I'm feeling something or whether you're feeling something. I don't know whether this is something I want or something you want, right?
Self and that can be really confusing, right? So for example, am I wanting to say in this relationship because I feel bad about him or is he trying to control me? And that's why I'm in the relationship. Do I love him or if I'm loving him, am I being manipulated? These are all kind of this entangled self other boundary thing. And I think when people say in like a pop psychology or an Instagram way have self or like have boundaries, they're replacing this actually really good idea of boundary, which is
that I know what I feel and I know what you feel. I know who I am and I know who you are. For example, somebody who goes,
I know you feel resentful. I know you feel emotional. I actually feel really sad and I feel really angry, you know, because I feel hurt about this, right? That kind of skill of being able to know what the other person feels and what you feel is an incredibly important thing that not just helps us do something like leave a narcissistic relationship, but helps us reduce people pleasing. You know, if I can sit with
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OK, they're rejecting or they may not like me very much right now. I actually like them a lot and that's OK. And I can still repair with them. That's a different kind of skill. Or like a good example would be like if you're if a couple of people are trying to go out to a restaurant, right? And you go, I actually like Chinese food, even though somebody else is saying I want Mexican food or something like that. I know it's a really basic example, but that's self of their boundaries of being able to say, I don't have to feel or or.
you kowtow or whatever to somebody else's experience, I can accept their experience and still maintain my own experience. That is an essential part of secure relationships that helps us to actually navigate into to make decisions that benefit us and our relationships. Same thing with your friend when she was able to sit with what you felt. She could tolerate her own feelings on her side of going, I don't want her to be in relationship.
But I'm going to have to hold that inside. I don't have to do anything about that. I'm just going to hold that and I'm going to allow her to have her own feelings about it, to be able to connect with herself here. That's essential for secure relationships. Wow. I like that. Yeah, it feels so, it feels good to know that that's what happened and that I actually have a very good friend there that I know I can trust and depend on. So after someone maybe is more like,
Maybe not where I am now two years out, but they're out of the relationship and now they want to focus on healing and they come to see you. Are there any sort of therapies either you offer or the people in your practice offer that you might recommend? Yeah, first of all, I think more so than just the type of therapy that we offer. I think the fact that you fit or that you feel like you connect with a therapist is much more important. Trust with your therapist or goodness of fit.
I should say, therapist is one of the biggest predictors of success. I love our therapists. I think we do a great job in terms of training, in terms of our awareness about these kind of issues that we're talking about. My counseling center is in Los Angeles and in Pasadena. And so we see private pay clients who are in the area. We do in-person, but also virtual. But I don't want to just
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say that there's a certain brand of therapy that's going to be best for a certain person beside kind of like what you're talking about here, trusting what it feels like when you talk with a therapist. When you first talk with a therapist, you ought to feel like you can trust them, like you can open up, you can have coffee with them if you wanted to, like it ought to be easy to talk to them. And that's actually the biggest thing to look for when you're looking for a kind of therapy. But in terms of
what you can anticipate with coming back into therapy after you've left a relationship. Sometimes we have this fantasy that when we leave the relationship, all the bad is gone with him or her. know, okay, well, at least I extricated that toxic person from my life and now I'm pure and clean. Right. This is kind of the story of this kind of a tangent here, but kind of a story of our, you know, of America, of leaving Britain, right. And going, we're going to be better.
We're going to be anti-colonial. We're going to be whatever. In some ways you go, there are some really wonderful things about that. In other ways, there are lot of threats to it, even when we take Britain out of it. In the same way, we are removed from relational experience, we carry part of the toxicity inside of us. It's not just in the other person. We have to contend with that and go, if I'm not careful, I might end up in a similar relationship.
or recreating the same kind of people pleasing patterns that I had before. And so the good thing is when you're ready to get into a new relationship, this will give you a fresh start not to be removed from the person, but to be able to see with fresh eyes what's happening inside of you when you try to attach. And a therapist can help you do that if they're tuned in and they're not idealizing you as the just pure survivor of a narcissistic abuse.
But if they can have some kind of awareness about there's some equal things going on inside of you that are worthy of attention and care and love. And if we can pay attention to those things and grow our awareness of those, there's so much possibility for change and healing and growth that can be there for you. But I think it happens through not just this is the bad person who I'm now removed from, but acknowledging and being able to accept the
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parts of us that also need to be looked at and taken care of if we're going to be in right relationship. I love that. I do love that because you're right. It's not just this evil bad person and this wonderful good person. It's two people with their own inner wounds, their own maybe not so great ways of adapting to different things or attaching to people or handling situations.
you can't do much, you cannot control other people. There is nothing you can do to control other people, but you can work on yourself and control yourself. And so I think by coming to see you or a similar therapist, someone in your practice, you can also work on that. You can work on yourself so that when you are ready to get into another relationship, if you are, you're in a better position to attach in a healthy way and to be a really good partner.
and to protect yourself and the relationship. Yes, I think there's a lot of hope there. And I would encourage just anyone listening that, you know, even if it's a friendship, you know, where you can talk, that's great. you know, having a therapist who can, as you, like you're saying, as you're looking at getting into another relationship, can walk alongside you and help you become aware of the early signs of the things that are happening in you that
that you don't wanna create the same pattern. So I think having a therapist who doesn't just idealize you, but can see that there are some things that need care inside of you is really, really valuable to you. So if people want to get in contact with you, first of all, your website has amazing information on it. It's one of the best websites I've ever seen. It's an amazing website. It has quizzes, it has tests, it has therapists.
It has a blog on it that you can look at and it's amazing. I've been watching some of your little videos that you make, like the short videos that you make. Yeah. So informative. No matter where you are, we have lots of great blogs that are all organized by category. We can look at things like couples issues, which might be pertaining to some people here, parenting issues, things like that. We also have just started pushing harder at doing some video content with a therapist, because I think
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It's so scary. It's hard to reach out for a therapist when you don't know who they are. And a lot of times you're just looking at a picture and like two sentences and you're supposed to reach out to them. And I think that we need to do better at helping people feel confident knowing who this person is before they reach out to the therapist. So we want to do a lot of good video content so that you get a sense of who these people are, so that you already feel some kind of sense of trust of how they might
help you. So we do that. So we have a lot of video content. We also have a care coordinator who who can call you back immediately and see make sure that you're you're with the right person the first time. And again, that is the biggest indicator of therapy to growth is making sure you're with the right person. It's not about the type of therapy. But that being said, we have all kinds of people with EMDR therapists. We have somatic therapists. We have analytic therapists. We have, you know, therapists who help with teens.
So there's a lot of in couples, there's so there's a lot of issues that we handle, but I would just encourage you to find a therapy center that gets back to you quickly and also trust your intuition. When you're looking at a therapist, their picture, their blog, listen to the voice inside of you that goes, how would I feel actually sitting down with this person? That is the biggest indicator of how much you're going to grow with a therapist. Do you mind just telling the audience what it is? Oh yeah, here counseling is ours. So we have an office in
LA and in Pasadena, but if you're in somewhere in California, we can see you virtually as well. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I have learned so much and thank you for everything you do. I appreciate it. And I also just want to say I just have so much appreciation for the journey that you've been on this last year and how you've been helping people. And then also just for listeners of just how much it takes to be in a relationship like that, how much strength it takes to even consider what's going on inside of you.
what's going on in society relationship when you feel overwhelmed. So just a lot of appreciation for that journey that you guys are on together.
