Music.
Hey everybody, welcome to episode 78 of Waking Up to Narcissism. I'm your host Tony Overbay. I'm a
licensed marriage and family therapist and host of the Virtual Couch podcast as well as Murder
on the Couch. And we'll just, we'll get right to the content today. But if you will take a peek,
at the show notes, you'll see a Linktree link. I think it's link.tree or linktree.com slash
virtual couch. And there you can find marriage courses and parenting things and latest podcasts
and all those sort of things. So check that out and I still would love if you want to have questions
and answers, learn everything you want to know about narcissism and emotional immaturity,
you can subscribe to my premium Waking Up to Narcissism question and answer podcast. So that
is up there as well. So let's start with another poem today. And this is from a listener and she
said, Hello, I've been finding your podcast episodes incredibly helpful. I feel lucky to
have come across them and wanted to thank you for what you do. I wrote a poem about my relationship.
I felt inspired from your readings of the writings that listeners have shared with you.
I had to share it somewhere and I thought this could be the place. Thank you.
Here's the poem.
I believe in him because I love him. I want him to succeed, even though believing makes me bleed and bleed and bleed.
I do the heavy lifting. I pull more than my weight, even when the ground gets icy and I don't know how to skate.
It feels like I'm a beggar for crumbs that he can spare, desperate for a pinch of his tender loving care.
To matter as much as he does to himself and not feel like a toy collecting dust on the shelf.
In the beginning, I felt known. I felt loved and seen, lost and love-bombing like a perfumed dream.
Now it's me and the rubble of who I used to be, struggling to decipher what's him and what's me.
I believe in him because I love him. I want him to succeed, even though believing makes me bleed and bleed and bleed. He says he wants to change. His worry
seems sincere, to leave him in the cold now fills my heart with fear. What if I could
break the odds? What if I take that chance? Can I outlast the devil and his wicked dance?
Should I keep moving my feet to this old dance I've known for the slightest chance that
something good has grown? Or should I cut and run with crumbs in an empty bowl, still
loving and needing him, but needing more to feel whole?
So thank you for sharing that and I would just encourage anybody that also has tried
their hand at poetry or anything.
I think I did. I read a haiku at one point or if there's a narrative, a story, but feel free to share
because I feel like the more that people are sharing about their experience, the more that
people are starting to realize that they are not alone and that these relationships, these
things are maybe a little bit more common than people would like to think.
And that means that we're starting to get more traction, and people are starting to get the tools
that they need for help.
So today I want to talk about a concept that one of the people that I admire the most in the Private
Women's Facebook group brought up and she shared an article and this is called Intermittent
Reinforcement and the article, and I'll link to this as well in the show notes, but the article
comes from a site called Feeling is Healing, Embrace Your Feelings, Embrace Your Dreams,
and it is a site based out of the UK. So it's feelingishealing.co.uk and it's just simply
simply titled Intermittent Reinforcement.
So before we turn to the article, let me just set the table on this concept of intermittent reinforcement.
So if you look at narcissistic or emotionally immature relationships, they are often addictive in nature.
They feel addictive to somebody that is caught in this trauma bond.
And this concept of intermittent reinforcement will explain why.
And I got permission from this person, but I was trading texts with someone last week
and they are finally trying to really wrap their heads around what this trauma bond is.
And they have been in a horribly emotionally abusive and at times physically abusive relationship,
but they shared with me in a text that they said they're just struggling not to talk to this person
so much. They just said they miss this person. They said that they were tagged in some photos
online recently and just seeing this person really triggered my client. And they just said not knowing
anything is just so difficult. They just want to know, they want answers, and as we'll talk
talk about today, they really just want that dopamine bump, they want certainty. And so what intermittent reinforcement, where that
comes from, it originates from B.F. Skinner's theories on operant conditioning and behaviorism. So let me try and just make a
little bit more sense of those two concepts, because this is a very important thing to set the table for why we get to this
intermittent reinforcement, which is such a major factor of the trauma bond. So what is operant conditioning? It's a learning
process in which behavior is shaped and it's maintained by consequences. So by the consequences
that follow a behavior. So in other words, an individual's behavior can be modified based.
On the rewards or the punishments that they experience as a result of the behavior. So
here's a pretty simple example. So suppose a teacher wants to encourage her students
to turn in their homework on time. So she decides to implement a sticker reward system.
You get a gold star where students who consistently hand in their homework on time receive this gold star sticker.
So, in this scenario, the students quickly learn that the desired behavior, which is
turning in the homework on time, is followed by a positive consequence of getting a gold star.
So, as a result, they are more likely to repeat the behavior in the future to receive the
gold star. And this is just a simple example of operant conditioning in practice.
So then there's behaviorism.
So behaviorism is also proposed by B.F. Skinner.
A theory of learning that then focuses solely on observable behaviors. So this is not taking
into account any independent activities, things that are going on in the mind, cognitions,
thoughts. So this theory, so again, behaviorism, which right in the name, it's behaviors, suggests
that all behaviors are either conditioned, which would mean learned, or unconditioned,
which would mean that they are just innate. They're just the way what we do. And it emphasizes
the role of reinforcement, punishment, and then your environment in shaping your behavior.
So again, we've got this, we've got these two concepts. We've got operant conditioning.
And then we've got behaviorism. Well, let me give you an example then of behaviorism.
I mean, I think you could probably come up with one on your own, but think about a kid
that is learning to clean their room. Every time that they clean their room, their parents
praise them and then give them a reward, maybe some extra playtime. So according to Skinner's
behaviorism, the child then starts associating cleaning their room with the
positive reinforcement of praise and extra playtime. And Skinner isn't talking
about this, but if you start talking about relational frame theory, then they'll have in the same frame the concept of cleaning their room and
reward. So then those those two start to be associated together. And this is just
my theory, unsupported, unscientific, is that then if we really go back to looking at the brain as a don't-get-killed device, that your brain is
working off of this flawed premise that it has a finite amount of electrical activity,
which is why we want to habitualize so many things from behaviors to even thought processes,
then the sooner that you can cram something into a relational frame, good or bad,
your brain's gonna do it because it will require less electrical activity
when it's coming from this habit center of your brain,
that basal ganglia, the little walnut-sized part of the brain that is where things go when you just get them down,
when you habitualize these behaviors and then you use less brain power, less electrical activity.
Again, working off the flawed premise that you're gonna run out of electrical activity
in the brain and die.
So the brain is, for as wonderful and intelligent it is, sometimes it's not very bright either.
So if we go back to this example, so then that praise, the extra playing time,
that positive reinforcement, then the kid is more likely to repeat that behavior in the future.
So their behavior cleaning the room is shaped by the consequence of their action.
So this external stimulus of a reward.
So take those two solid concepts and I don't know if you ever saw the movie The Fly. The only one I
ever saw was the one with Jeff Goldblum back in the day. I don't even know what year that would
have been, probably a long time ago. But if I remember correctly, he's trying to transport
himself from one pod to the next, but then a fly gets in with him. So when he teleports or
transports to the other pod, now all of a sudden he has fly DNA in him and he can see really well
and he can stick the walls and he vomits on his food and those sort of things.
And okay, so actually, as I talk it through, maybe it's not the best example.
Well, okay, hang on. So I'm back on my train of thought. You're going to transport or teleport BF Skinner's concepts of operant conditioning and behaviorism
to this other pod.
And if you are listening from beyond the grave, BF Skinner, I bet you have never seen your
work described in this way, but I digress.
So if you then tell a narcissist that there is, I don't know, a mirror in the pod as well
maybe a microphone and there's a crowd of people who want to hear them tell their high school
baseball stories, then they may go into that pod. And so now they're in that pod with these
concepts of behaviorism and operant conditioning. And so then when the teleportation happens,
now you have these solid psychological principles interwoven in with narcissism. And for the record,
there wasn't actually a mirror or a microphone, so this new creature is not going to reflect light
or have a voice that projects similar to the Mr. Microphone of my youth, but you put them
through these filters of emotional immaturity and narcissism and I feel like you really
do get intermittent reinforcement.
So this is a powerful motivator, it's a manipulation tactic.
So to illustrate the concept, Skinner then conducted studies with rats.
So initially the rats were rewarded with food every time that they pressed the lever.
So this was this continuous reinforcement.
But over time, then the researchers changed the experiment. So they rewarded the rats with food in a very unpredictable pattern.
Sometimes pressing the lever would result in a reward, and other times it would not.
Sometimes they would press the lever and it would be even more food, and other times it would be nothing.
So this random pattern, one might expect, sorry, I feel like I'm in my teaching class,
what would you expect?
But they were expecting that the rats would then give up pressing the lever.
Instead, the opposite occurred, so the rats continued to press the lever obsessively,
And they even neglected their own hygiene and their other needs.
So, now I'm going to jump full into this article of intermittent reinforcement from this feeling is healing to act as the muse.
But so this mirrors, and they don't have an author listed of this article, but it really is, it's brilliant.
But this mirrors what happens in an abusive relationship. And it goes toward explaining why such a relationship is harder to leave than healthy relationships.
Because we almost become addicted to trying to get the narcissist or the emotionally immature person to behave in a safe and sane way.
So we're going back and pressing that lever like crazy, hoping to get the reward.
And this phenomenon also explains why it can take longer to get over an abusive relationship once that relationship is ended.
Because the relationship is by nature not a relationship, but an addiction.
Which is so fitting as a person, myself, who has worked with a lot of people that are trying to overcome addictive behaviors,
or turning to unhealthy coping mechanisms.
That pull of the addiction, one of the biggest components,
so I work a lot with people who turn to pornography
as an unhealthy coping mechanism, because there isn't by definition or by diagnosis code
a pornography addiction.
You can start looking at impulse control disorder or compulsive sexual behavior,
but I like to look at it as turning to an unhealthy coping mechanism.
And often the biggest triggers are boredom, or I call it crimes of opportunity,
but that boredom one or that loneliness, and we've talked about Ross Rosenberg's concepts
around pathological loneliness on the podcast many times.
So when people are lonely, pathologically lonely, then they often turn to that narcissistic lover of choice,
to try to get that dopamine reward. They go hit that lever hoping this time
it's gonna dump a ton of rat food in their bowl.
So intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful motivator and manipulation tactic. In an abusive relationship, the abuser will mix episodes of love in with the abuse.
And at this point, the victim, this is why I say it's so important to raise your emotional baseline. That self-care is not selfish.
Because the victim becomes so worn down and starved of affection that when they finally do receive this little scrap of love, then it can feel just heavenly.
It can feel euphoric, it can give you, it's like that rush, that dopamine dump, it's like the high.
So that feeling is literally created by the release of dopamine.
So then over time, the victim associates the abuser with the feeling of relief from their pain.
So even though the abuser caused the pain in the first place.
So we desperately hang on to this hope of the narcissist's promise that they are reformed.
That they get it now. Because that does, that alleviates our discomfort.
And they actually get the validation, the emotionally immature does.
And then we might even get that little hit of dopamine and now we're associating them,
the person that does the very abuse, with actually the healing as well.
And this causes the trauma bond.
And so it is a very strong sense of bonding with the abuser.
And this happens because of the abuse, rather than in spite of it.
So by leaving such a relationship, the physical body actually has to go through withdrawal.
Just as a drug addict does when they come off of drugs.
So hopefully by understanding what's going on with this intermittent reinforcement,
then it can help you make sense the feelings that you're feeling.
And I think that one of the most important things as somebody who works with people who are trying to overcome addictive behaviors,
that I think there's a lot of bad data out there as well.
Because we have to accept the fact that we want to turn to that drug of choice.
We don't beat ourselves up, we don't say what's wrong with me, and we don't tell ourselves don't think about it.
Because for the nine millionth time, we'll go through this exercise that I love.
Don't think about a, I don't know, a yellow tricycle. Don't think about a fish on top of the yellow tricycle.
I'll give you a little bit of latitude there. If he's laying on flopping around on the seat
or if he actually has feet and he's driving, actually have him have feet
and his arms are on the handlebars of the tricycle
and he's wearing a, I don't know, a red, white and blue hat and there are streamers coming around from the handlebars.
Don't think about it, of the tricycle and they are just flowing in the wind.
So whatever you do, do not think about those things.
Just as you can tell yourself, don't think about the narcissist or the emotionally immature.
I have to accept the fact that I am thinking about that.
I have to accept the fact that I am a human being who has thoughts, feelings, and emotions,
and so check that out, that's what I'm thinking about. That's interesting.
And now I have to invite those feelings to come along with me while I take action
on things that matter, while I do. And if your brain says do what?
Anything, anything to begin with, but if you can find things that actually matter to you
that are of value, then you're gonna be more engaged in doing those things.
But if you sit there and think and beat yourself up and ruminate and worry and try to solve and figure out
and look for certainty, then that's only gonna cause this feeling to feel worse.
And then what do you wanna do?
You wanna get that dopamine dump, that hit from the narcissist.
So, in the article, the author goes back to saying intermittent reinforcement is a serious
threat to your health and well-being. Because as you saw in the Skinner example, it led to the rats completely neglecting their
own self-care.
So these patterns will leave you feeling confused, unable to make sense of anything because the
behavior does not make sense.
This is where we talk about trying to make sense of the nonsense, it's illogical.
And intermittent reinforcement also explains why no contact becomes very important when,
it is possible to do so.
But when it is not, it's as if the heroin addict has to go to the methadone clinic to have the come down
or a step down drug.
For the narcissist, the relationship is never really over from their perspective,
because they're gonna keep coming back to you as long as they need their drug, the narcissistic supply.
And I love that they give this example. A behavior like checking emails is another example
of intermittent reinforcement or checking your phone, because we're rewarded with an email,
at inconsistent and unpredictable intervals.
So the occasion when we receive the reward, then that'll make up for the times we check the email
and there's no reward.
Or we pick up our phone and there isn't a notification or anything that we need to do.
They say there's a lot of other examples of intermittent reinforcement such as gambling,
slot machines, it also explains why if you give into a nagging child one time,
then the child will continue to nag and push your boundaries because they're gonna learn that
after a certain amount of time, that they will get what they want.
So how do you know when you are being subjected to intermittent reinforcement?
They have a list in the article you experience feelings of confusion. What is going on? You find,
yourself obsessing over what the other person meant, what was intended, what the other person's
thinking. You find yourself trying to work out what you could have done to make the situation
turn out differently. Again, my fifth rule of interacting with a narcissist or emotionally
immature person is there's nothing that you will ever do to cause them to have the aha moment or
or the epiphany, it has to come from them. Or you blame yourself. You feel like you have to take
responsibility for what went wrong in the relationship and for your partner's actions.
And I maintain that this is, I would love for us all to take a look at,
what do you do with your discomfort? If you feel uncomfortable or you feel bad,
what do you do with that? It's okay to sit with it. It's okay to talk to a trusted person about
it. It's really good to journal or write it down or even record it into a microphone or onto your
phone you can delete it that's fine but it's what you do with that discomfort.
Because if you want to get rid of the discomfort oftentimes what people do is
take take the blame okay it's my bad that makes me feel a little bit better
or they hand that power over to somebody else this is why I have a bit of a
problem at times with things like the concepts around confession because I can
appreciate it if somebody is looking for accountability in order to help them
grow but if somebody just feels like okay I need to confess this to whether,
it's a spouse, whether it's a friend, whether it's a priest, whether it's a bishop, a rabbi, you name it,
and they say, forgive me, I have sinned, and then that alleviates their discomfort, and then if the
person says, I forgive you, whoo, okay, I'm good. But then the person, at times, the people I often
work with, then they just go and do, and their thought is, I feel good, I don't need to work
on myself anymore. I feel really good. I've been forgiven.
When those waters are calm, that's the time to start to learn how to deal with your emotions,
how to look for things that matter to you. Because if you just hand that power over to
somebody else and they tell you, you are good, yeah, it feels better in the moment,
but are you doing anything to grow or are you just alleviating that discomfort?
And heaven forbid that person says, oh man, you are bad. Because now I just handed that power
over to somebody who said, hey, you're a piece of garbage and I want you to go think about it,
which never leads to positive outcomes in my opinion. So that was coming off of you blaming
yourself. The other ways to know when you're being subjected to intermittent reinforcement,
you feel distressed and you feel in pain. You end up second guessing yourself. You rationalize and
you talk yourself out of your gut instincts. You find yourself going back to the scene of the abuse,
the scene of the crime. I want to tell a quick story. I wasn't sure where I was going to share
this or if I was going to share this, but talking about trusting your gut instincts, this is going
going to be full of healthy ego, egotistical talk, and then I'm the floor will be open for criticism, bring it on.
I will take it. I want to, I want to grow.
I want to be better. I will self-confront, but let me talk to you through a story.
Take you on a train of thought.
Friday night, I was asked to go speak to a group of youth and there's some fun ADD concepts here as well.
My associate intern coworker, Nate Christensen, who's been on the podcast was going to go with me.
He was, we were joking, he was gonna be the opening act.
It was about a hundred or so youth, maybe more. And we were gonna talk about mental health.
And I assumed it was gonna be at a big, large church building in the area.
And instead we got the directions and it was about an hour and 45 minutes outside of town,
out in the middle of the woods, no cell service, had to use bug spray, all of it.
So, we head out there and we have an amazing talk on the way. We're talking about all kinds of things, mental health and cases and podcast ideas and just really enjoying the conversation.
And we get there and I think Nate does a phenomenal job. He really does. There was a stage, he did have a microphone and there was a bonfire and the smoke just blew right into the stage the entire time.
And like a trooper, he stood there in the face of the smoke and just talked through, gave hilarious examples. I think the kids loved him.
Loved him. One of the things I thought was really funny was when they were asking how
they announced Nate, I said, just announced that you may have seen him in his Netflix
special. And I was offering the kid five bucks to make that intro. He did it for free. But,
then Nate got up and said, I don't have a Netflix special, but I love this concept called
anchoring, where I guarantee there were people that left there looking for Nate Christensen
and his Netflix special on the internet. But then Nate introduced me and I got up there
and I just had such a fun time and just talked about mental health. We left and we were driving
back home. Now we've got this, it's about a four mile really windy road to get out to
a 12 mile kind of windy road to get to a 40 mile just loosely winding freeway or interstate
or I don't know the back road kind of vibe back into a main town. So as we leave the
camp right away, there's something out of my peripheral to the right and I think it's
deer running out to the car. And so I put the brakes on a little bit. I noticed it's a ginormous
German Shepherd at this point now. I've confabulated this fish tail that he was as big as our car.
I see him, oh, he's a dog, and I just, I give the car a little bit of gas, pull up a little bit,
we start chuckling. And then I look and it's like a scene from Jurassic Park and the T-Rex is coming
in and objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. So I gun it, I get out of there.
But then here's where my true confessions. So I might as well have grabbed a ponytail,
strapped it on, asked if I could put a yoga mat on my driver's seat. And I just said to Nate,
hey, this is what's really interesting, is that I've been doing mindfulness exercises for a very
long time, years now, and I've had a series of things that have happened. I believe I shared
a couple of them on a recent podcast where I got pulled over by the cops because I didn't want my
yogurt to melt. I didn't realize there was a DUI stop. I thought it was just some road work, so I
flipped a U-turn where I wasn't supposed to. And a cop came and he was wonderful and kind, and I said
I took ownership and accountability of what I did, and if I needed to pay a ticket, then no problem,
but let's get home and let's eat this yogurt. And I didn't get rattled. I noticed all of my
my thoughts and feelings and it was wonderful.
And I almost missed a connecting flight due to a flight delay on a speaking gig in Salt Lake.
And there too, it was really interesting because people were losing their minds on the airplane
and I thought, oh, this is interesting.
You know, what happens, happens and I'm here and I'm being and doing.
So I'm telling Nate this and I'm telling him that as this dog ran out, I thought,
oh, that's interesting, the dog ran out.
But right as if I just cue the cue from the universe, from heaven,
there's a car pulled over to my left And there's a woman that is flagging me down,
waving her hands wildly.
And we slow down and all of a sudden, I just, you know, the spidey sense kicks in.
And I notice she looks a bit disheveled and she asked if I have some water.
And I said, I do, do you need it for your car or for you?
And she said, both.
And so, and I realize now taking this in, you know, the hood was not up for the universal sign of,
hey, I'm broken down.
There wasn't steaming coming from the car. She looked disheveled and bless her heart,
I know she's probably been through a lot in her life, but she had some track marks on her arm
from you could tell maybe from some drug use.
But I just felt, I felt off, I felt scared, I felt nervous. And so I just said, she said, can you get out of the car?
And I just said, hey, let me, and I know I don't know much about cars anyway,
I thought about do we drive this person into the next town? But I just said, hey, let me just have somebody come get you,
let me send for some help.
And she got a little bit angry and started yelling and said, whatever, don't send the cops.
And then we pulled away.
It really, after I just talked about being so mindful, then I realized, oh, I was freaking out.
That really scared me. And so there goes all of my mindfulness training. But then I also thought,
though, no, it was me trusting my gut. And what I think is ironic is people can make the observation
and judgment, the concept out of Marshall Rosenberg's nonviolent communication and say
that they just observed that I left some Christian camp and this was literally the parable of the
of the good Samaritan and I just walked on by.
And I will take that criticism, because I often say to the people that have been
in emotionally immature or abusive or narcissistic relationships,
or if they grew up in that way in their home as a kid, that oftentimes they don't trust their gut.
And so I would rather lead with that trusting of my gut. And we talk again about this intermittent reinforcement
if that was the way that your relationship pattern maybe was from your childhood,
or maybe it's from your emotionally immature narcissistic relationship,
you end up second guessing yourself, you rationalize and you talk yourself out of your gut instincts.
So I feel good about the fact that we left, I really do. But then if everything is an opportunity
to sit with that discomfort and to self-confront because I wanna be a better human being,
I want to be a better person in general,
not so that other people will say well done or good job, but because that's what I feel like this human
or mortal existence is about, is becoming and being and doing better,
or accepting who I am and then so that then I can move forward
and hopefully let my light so shine
that I can lift others around me and all those things.
But the thing that I did not do was I did not stop at the next town and send somebody to help.
And I processed this with a couple of clients who were talking about trusting your gut.
And it's funny, I deal with so many emotionally or pathologically kind people,
that they were saying, well, right, but you knew.
You knew that she really didn't need help. And I said, I appreciate that,
but for me and my journey of awakening, of enlightenment, of trying to get that ponytail and that yoga mat,
is if I say to somebody that I'm gonna send somebody back, even if they're saying don't send the cops,
if they truly are broken down, then I should've sent somebody back.
So, I would imagine that person eventually got help because there were other people that
were leaving the camp later that night, some other leaders, and then the next day there
were a lot of people leaving.
But so I hope that person found their way. But back to that, rationalize or talk yourself out of things or trust your gut instincts
because that can be one of the consequences of growing up with intermittent reinforcement
because you really will question yourself and your gut.
So back to the article, will a partner who's treating me in this way ever change?
They say that a person who has a personality disorder such as narcissistic or antisocial personality disorder
is aware that they are, is aware that they're manipulating their partners in this way.
And they're unlikely to ever change as this behavior rewards them.
And I do find that that's interesting when they say that they are aware
that they're manipulating their partners in this way.
And this is where I do really question that from the work that I've done over a very long period of time.
And we look at the concepts of implicit memory or what it feels like to be them
or what it feels like to be you or what it feels like to be me
that are all based on the gradual residue of lived experience.
So if the narcissist or the emotionally immature person has just been being them and doing them,
and just reacting and thinking and being manipulative and not taking ownership,
that gaslighting comes as a childhood defense mechanism.
The concepts around confabulation, they're creating a new narrative in real time
because it can't be that they're a bad person or that they did anything wrong
or that they didn't take ownership of things.
It has to be someone else's fault or you don't understand. whatever, whichever one that you ascribe to or buy into,
whether they are aware or that it's just part of that implicit memory or they're just being them,
the key point here is that talking about that person with the personality disorder,
that they're unlikely to change as this behavior rewards them
because that behavior puts them in the one-up position.
That behavior gets them their narcissistic supply. It gets rid of their discomfort.
The author says there are other non-personality disordered people who have insecure attachments.
So I love that. For example, someone with an avoidant attachment style may pull away due to an underlying fear of intimacy.
This type of person would need to be willing to work with their partner to form more consistent patterns.
They would need to process the underlying feelings and beliefs that come up when they feel like pulling away.
So how do you take back your power?
Realize that if the person is carrying out this behavior on purpose, that they aren't going to be any different,
and the relationship will be this way for as long as it lasts.
So then I would add then my two cents in there that then whether it is on purpose
or whether it is what they do,
that there isn't gonna be any different behavior and the relationship will continue the way it lasts
if you continue to just acquiesce and go along with this intermittent reinforcement.
If you're on the receiving end of intermittent reinforcement,
it's important to set clear boundaries, but then to stick to them and know again that a boundary
is a challenge to the narcissist.
The more consistent and firm that you are with your boundaries, the less power
that that person will have to manipulate you.
And after stating those boundaries, you stick to them. Don't keep repeating them. Don't rub the line in the sand, back up on your boundary.
Try to explain, even if the other person isn't listening, I'm expressing and holding my boundary.
Honor your feelings as they come up. If something doesn't feel right, pay attention.
I love that they say in this article, the body doesn't lie. We know Bessel van der Kolk says the body keeps the score.
Our instincts are built on a lifetime of awareness from the vault of our implicit memory, our subconscious, or what it feels like to be us.
And this is so much more powerful than what they say our limited logical and rational minds could ever fathom.
So intermittent reinforcement can only work if the person is offering or withholding something that you want or need.
This is where it is. It is time for your personal journey of worthiness, that you are of worth, you are enough.
And if you can step into that calm, confident energy, that healthy ego based off of the things that you like to do and be and feel and say,
then you will not need that intermittent reinforcement.
As a matter of fact, it will be something you detest, that you abhor.
Realizing that you have a sense of security then becomes the only way to really have a relationship with somebody.
And I love how they say, do not settle for anything less.
So I want to throw a couple of ideas out. I would like to create a little bit of content,
or a good old intellectual property around the concepts of intermittent reinforcement. So I've come up with the acronym RIDE.
Reinforcement intermittently delivers emotion, R.I.D.E. Because I feel like this term, it captures the ups and downs that are experienced by the victim
in a relationship with a narcissist or an emotionally immature person.
It is an emotional rollercoaster.
It's an emotional rollercoaster ride. So that, I feel like that lends itself to this acronym of R.I.D.E.
So reinforcement intermittently delivers emotion.
Thought of an example, I should have put it in the form of a haiku.
But consider the case of a Mark and a Lisa. Mark never knows what he's going to get when he walks in the door after work.
Some days Lisa greets him with a smile, a warm dinner, an affectionate conversation, a hug and a kiss.
Those are the days that Mark lives for.
But without warning, the dynamic shifts. Sometimes he's met with cold indifference or harsh criticism, complete silence or withdrawal.
And that, it's a wild ride. It's an emotional roller coaster.
Again, reinforcement intermittently delivers emotion.
So, in this scenario, the reinforcement is Lisa's positive attention, her affection, however, it is delivered intermittently.
So, on the days when Mark is greeted warmly, he experiences a surge of positive emotion, a dopamine dump.
But those highs, they're unpredictable.
And so those keep him emotionally invested in the relationship and constantly seeking that affection,
despite the distressing lows that he feels when she withholds that attention or that affection or even just conversation.
And those fluctuating emotions that he's experiencing, those are like the ups and downs of a roller coaster ride.
So, hence the term, the emotional roller coaster or ride. That reinforcement intermittently delivers emotion.
I had a letter that came in that really got me thinking about this and then there was this, again, this article was posted in the Facebook group.
So, speaking of ride, I think that we're at the end of today's ride.
So I want to thank you all for taking the time to join me on Waking Up to Narcissism.
And if I can just point you, and I may post this as a bonus episode here on the Waking Up to Narcissism, but I would highly encourage you to go over to the virtual couch.
Couch and I shared just a it's probably one of the most powerful episodes that I
feel like I've done it was an interview with Duff and Kiera Dyer and it was
about about finding their daughter Emma unfortunately unresponsive and she she
passed away but the the story that they tell that that podcast I think I've
received more feedback from that one than anything I think I have in the last
seven years so I just really feel like that would be something I would highly
recommend and I'll put a link directly to that in the show notes today but I,
would highly encourage you to go check that out and again I appreciate the support. Please send your questions, your comments. I do, I read them all. So many
times I don't get a chance to respond but my my wonderful assistant Naomi does
get back to people. If you're looking to get in a woman's group or men's group
let me know. I want your poetry, I want your haikus, I want your stories, I want
your examples because I do see you and I know that this is a journey and I
I appreciate where you're at.
And I will see you next week on Waking Up The Night.
Music.