Hey, everybody. Welcome to Waking Up to Narcissism. I am your host, Tony Overbay.
But first, thank you to Riley Hope for her song that I swear every single time
I hear it, it will now reside in my brain for a few days. I don't know if earworm is a negative.
Is that a negative term? But it will stick in my head. And that is not a bad thing at all.
Not my job. Look for it wherever you stream music and please give Riley a follow on social media.
And while you're there following Riley, follow me on Instagram at virtual.couch
and on TikTok Cockett Virtual Couch, Facebook, Tony Overbay Licensed Marriage
and Family Therapist, and Substack.
Now, if you do not know what Substack is, you are only a couple of days behind
me, and you can click on a link in the show notes to follow me on Substack.
It is so funny to me to think it is like this pendulum swing where now we're
back to blog and written word.
So Substack is more like a blog, meets multimedia with question and answers
and ask me anythings and random musings.
And it is written, like written word.
But I mean, there's also some video and things like that. So everything is video
except for the things that aren't, that are written.
I feel like such an old man where I want to say, you know, I'm an old newspaper
guy because I wrote a humor column in a newspaper for about a decade at one point.
And then I was known for writing incredibly long blog posts.
Shocker, with the amount of tangents I like to go on as a podcast host.
But it does seem like the pendulum swing is over on the side of now.
We're doing a little more written word. I don't think we're going to print out
the substacks or send out newspapers on them.
And I'm sure at some point the pendulum swing will head right back on the other
side and we'll have smartphones implanted on our forearms and screens and our
retinas and then give it a couple of decades.
And now we're sending letters by carrier pigeon from feathers dipped in an inkwell.
Then we'll go all the way to absorbing thoughts while cultivating our snap peas
from our garden on Pluto's dark side.
And I don't think Pluto's a planet anymore, so that's my bad.
Hey, before we get started today, I do want to make a quick disclaimer.
Today, we're basing the episode off of a story that I think will be pretty familiar.
And I want you to know, I get a lot of emails around...
How often that the male is the narcissist in the story.
And I want more stories where if you are the male that you're in a relationship
with an emotionally immature or maybe narcissistic female partner,
but today the role of the narcissist or the more emotionally immature person is being played by,
drum roll please, the husband, a male.
And before anyone starts thinking, okay, here we go, male bashing session.
I just, I want to be so clear.
Narcissism is an equal opportunity personality disorder. And we are all,
all incredibly emotionally immature.
Oh man, are we? The more that you just look around in the news today and social
media, and I'm working on some projects around this emotional immaturity epidemic,
because once you see it, it is hard to unsee.
But the research does show that men tend to be more narcissistic than women
on average. And I will have people often say, well, where are you getting that data?
It's a comprehensive study out of the University of Buffalo that goes over 31
years of data and more than 475,000 participants.
I think it's a pretty good sample size and found that men consistently score
higher in narcissism across multiple generations, regardless of age.
And the widest gap was in entitlement and exploitation with men more likely
to feel entitled to certain privileges.
I found some new data recently that says that narcissistic personality disorder
affects about 7.7% of males.
I don't know if that is just in the US. I don't believe that's worldwide,
but I think the more important thing is 7.7% of males compared to 4.8% of females
in the general population.
That is still a significantly high number of females that would be diagnosable narcissists as well.
But then when you're looking at large, large numbers of populations,
that's a big gap in male and female population.
So yes, statistically speaking, we are more likely to encounter narcissistic
men, But, and this is a very big but.
Insert emotionally immature joke there. I regularly work with men who are in
relationships with narcissistic or incredibly emotionally immature women.
And those dynamics, honestly, they come with their own unique challenges that
I really don't think are talked about enough.
Men dealing with female narcissists or women who are incredibly emotionally
immature face additional layers of stigma, disbelief, isolation, shame, guilt.
And then I also work with same-sex couples that are navigating narcissistic
dynamics, gay, lesbian, non-binary partnerships, where the patterns look similar
in some ways, but really different in others, especially when you factor in
the community dynamics,
coming out trauma and societal pressures that are unique to the LGBTQ plus relationships.
So here is my big ask. If you are a man in a relationship with an emotionally
immature or narcissistic woman, or if you're in a same sex relationship dealing
with narcissistic dynamics, I would really like to hear from you.
Your stories matter. And I would like to feature more of those on the podcast.
I would like to interact with those and point out the parts of it that are very
emotionally mature or maybe unique to your demographic.
Your experiences deserve to be validated and shared as well.
So please reach out to me through my website at tonyoverbay.com or on social
media, Instagram, TikTok, or email me.
Contact at tonyoverbay.com and I am collecting examples for future episodes
because they present significantly different challenges that I think need a
lot more airtime. Let's get to today's episode.
And one more thing before we start, while I am a licensed marriage and family
therapist, I'm not your marriage and family therapist.
And my podcast is here to share information, provide some validation,
and maybe a little bit of entertainment, but it is definitely not to diagnose.
If you are recognizing yourself in these stories on either side of the coin,
please find a good therapist in your area, and particularly one who specializes
in narcissistic abuse and relationship trauma.
And I get a lot of people who email me and say, do I know a therapist in a certain
area? I also know that a lot of therapists listen to my podcast.
I am so grateful for that.
The number of people that email me and say, my therapist suggested I listen
to Waking Up to Narcissism.
That is one of my favorite emails to get. So if you're a therapist and you have
referred people to this podcast, honestly, I would just love to get to know who you are.
Reach out. I would love to know what your experience is in working with this
population. If you're interested in getting referrals from people that are reaching
out to me, talk about going to therapy.
Individual therapy is probably the number one thing that you can do if you are
suspecting that your partner is emotionally immature, narcissistic.
Now, you will probably also want to try couples therapy.
And if both parties are willing and it is safe or it continues to be safe,
then I work with couples a lot where there's that dynamic where one is more
emotionally immature, even varying degrees of narcissistic traits and tendencies.
But definitely get professional support because what we're going to talk about
today, this concept of the attack surface, you can definitely do yourself more
harm than good and starting to really open up and be vulnerable if you are in
a relationship with somebody who's emotionally immature or narcissistic.
But you do deserve somebody that's in your corner who can give you personalized
guidance, who is not going to have the wool pulled over their eyes immediately
by the emotionally immature or narcissistic person, because then it does become
more of an attack surface.
So disclaimers are done. Let's get to today's episode.
The following is based on a very real story and some of the details have been
changed, but this is a story that is very cookie cutter in nature.
So you may think that I was listening in on one of your conversations.
So picture this phone rings. It's 515. It's a Tuesday.
Husband says, Hey, just leaving from work. I'll be home in about 15 minutes.
Wife, she's in the middle of helping her daughter with math homework.
So just starting to think about dinner. And she says, Oh, Hey, good.
Hey, do you want anything particular for dinner? I've been slammed today with kids stuff.
I've been helping with homework and showing kids to practice and managing playdates.
And I honestly haven't really had time to think about what to make yet.
I just put on a pot of boiling water. I'm not even sure what I'm going to put
in there, but I can pull something together. Silence.
More silence. She says, Hey, are you there? Did we get disconnected?
More silence. And then here it is. Cold, flat.
Yeah, I'm fine. I'll fend for myself. Click.
She's still trying to help with homework and trying to figure out dinner.
And she stares at the phone and then her stomach drops because what just happened?
She was just being honest about her day. She was going to make dinner.
She just hadn't started yet. It's 5.15 for crying out loud.
So she tries to shake it off. 15 minutes pass. He should be walking through
the door any second now. That's how far it is to get from office to home. And he doesn't.
30 minutes, an hour. She checks his location on the phone app and,
oh, surprise, it's turned off or it's frozen. And it looks like he's still at his office.
So she texts, hey, where are you? Just want to make sure you're okay.
No response. She calls, goes straight to voicemail. She's used to this.
Two hours pass, three hours, and she's now managed dinner on her own,
finished up homework, navigated the kids, asking where dad is.
She's handled bedtime solo.
And through all of it, her anxiety is spiking.
It's starting to go through the roof. And her mind won't stop racing.
Oh, okay. Why didn't I just have dinner ready? Is that really too much to ask?
I mean, he does work really hard.
And I know this is not the 1950s. And I know I'm not supposed to just make dinner
and have his slippers ready for him, but it's not a horrible ask for all he does.
I mean, he definitely lets me know how hard he works. And I know that he doesn't
understand what I do because he doesn't really ask a lot about it.
But then she thinks, no, it's okay that I didn't have his dinner waiting for
him with his slippers in his newspaper the second that he walks in the door.
I had a crazy day, too. I am allowed to not have everything perfect.
And another voice kicks in. It's like the little devil and angel on each shoulder.
But sometimes when dinner isn't ready, he's actually fine with it.
And he says, hey, no problem, babe. You had a lot going on.
So why was tonight different? What did I do wrong? And then here comes the devil
on her shoulder, the darker thoughts.
Where is he? I mean, is he even coming home at all when he does come home?
Honest to goodness, like what hell am I going to have to pay?
What am I going to have to go through?
And then she just gets back to that pit in her stomach and she starts to shut
down. And then what starts underneath the surface is whenever this heat rises,
whenever she starts to feel this anxiety, several years ago, he had been unfaithful.
And when she discovered it, when she was devastated, when she asked how he could
do that, he told her it was her fault, that if she had been being more intimate
with him more often, he wouldn't have been forced to find connection outside
of the marriage. Do you think that's what he wanted to do?
And now he can't even believe that she's upset with him.
She pays for that revelation every single time that they get in an argument
or any time that there's tension built up in the relationship.
So now 837, house is quiet. Kids are in bed. She's sitting on the couch.
Her phone's still in her hand.
She's numb. It's such a waste of emotional calories and time.
And she's wondering, do I text again? Do I not? What's the right answer?
Because I don't know if there is one because sometimes it's good to text again.
Sometimes it's not. then somewhere out there he's perfectly comfortable because
he's not thinking about her anxiety at all,
And if that story, if there's any part of that that feels painfully familiar
to you, and one of my favorite parts about that is if you happen to be the one
that is engaged or done the silent attack, I would love to talk to you as well.
But if that is familiar, if any of that part of the wife is familiar.
Then I think today's episode is going to be really powerful because we're going
to talk about what I call the attack surface.
And unfortunately, how often the harder you try to communicate honestly,
the more power you're actually handing over to this narcissist or emotionally
immature person in your life.
So let's go back to the phone call. So he's driving home from work and here's
what's happening in that moment.
He literally doesn't know what to think or what to do. Now, I am going very dramatic here.
I'm operating from this place that it makes me chuckle a little bit,
but it's that a true narcissistic person or incredibly emotionally immature
person does not know they exist unless they are interacting with another entity.
I won't even say human. Call in radio. I can tell the host that whatever they're
saying is the most ridiculous thing in the world.
I can read an article and think, that guy doesn't know what he's talking about.
I can listen to a podcast and say, I can't believe that they let this guy have a podcast.
All he wants is somebody else's money. It's just, I need something to interact with.
So it might sound strange, but the narcissist, somebody who's extremely emotionally
immature, they lack this stable sense of self.
And so when When I say they lack a sense of self, I don't mean that they don't
have opinions or they don't have preferences or they're sitting there like this blank slate.
What I mean is they don't have an internal stable sense of self of who they
are that exists independent of other people.
So he's driving home from work. Now, most people in this situation might be
thinking about their own day.
They might be listening to a podcast and self-reflecting or self-confronting
and thinking, holy cow, that is something I do. I didn't know.
I did not know that was a thing.
I'm listening to a book right now called Rules of Estrangement about when adult
children become estranged from their parents by Dr.
Joshua Coleman, trying to get him on the podcast. And it is,
phenomenal to listen to this book and go, oh, wow, here's these things I did
not know that I did not know.
Not I'm listening to it going, yeah, what does this guy know?
20 years of doing this all the time, been through it himself with his own adult daughter.
I can't trust this guy. No, it's there. I'm interacting with it in order for
me to learn more about myself.
Most people in that situation, again, thinking about their own day,
maybe what they want to eat, maybe looking forward to seeing their family.
Might be wondering, man, I wonder what my wife's They was like,
I wish I would have reached out sooner. I just got caught up in things,
but I'm about to go home and I can find out.
They have these internal thoughts and feelings that exist independently of needing another person.
But for somebody without a solid sense of self, that drive home is almost empty,
maybe metaphorically empty.
There's no internal narrative, no independent thought about what he wants or
needs unless it's about what he
needs from another person or how dare that person not know what he needs.
He's almost in a void. So what does he do? calls his wife.
Not really to connect, but because he needs an interaction to know that he exists.
He needs somebody to bounce off of. He needs friction.
And she provides it.
Completely innocently provides it. She says, I've been absolutely slammed today
with kid stuff. I honestly haven't had time to really think about what to make yet.
And so in that moment, she just handed him the attack surface.
She gave him something to push against, something to react to,
Something that allows him to position himself in this one-up position.
I'm fine. I'll fend for myself.
And here's where I want to quote, as I regularly do, Eleanor Greenberg,
a psychotherapist, because I think it's so crucial to understand what's happening.
Greenberg explains narcissistic personality disorder, and I will go into the
world of extreme emotional immaturity, is a series of coping strategies that
began as an adaptation to a childhood family situation.
And it leaves the person with unstable self-esteem and the inability to regulate
their self-esteem without external validation, the inability to figure out who
they are without external validation.
I need another person to interact with to know who I am. And it comes with lower empathy.
So you put that trait together and now I need to interact with somebody else,
but I don't necessarily have empathy for what they're going through.
And that helps put me in this one up position.
And one of the keys is that Eleanor says people with narcissistic personality
disorder lack what she refers to as whole object relations and object constancy.
And these are two very important concepts. Whole object relations is this ability,
this capacity to see yourself and others in stable but also integrated ways
that will acknowledge both the person's good and bad qualities.
It's the ability to hold complexity.
It's the ability to take in multiple emotions, multiple thoughts, multiple feelings.
Now we go to object constancy. That's the ability to maintain a positive emotional
connection to somebody that especially you like, even if you're angry or hurt
or frustrated or disappointed by their behavior.
And we're not even going to talk a lot about differentiation today,
but that is where even my frustration with their behavior is a me thing. Why am I so frustrated?
Why do I have these expectations that that person needs to meet my needs?
First, I want to take a look at that. What does that say about me?
But when an emotionally immature narcissistic person lacks whole object relations
or object constancy without these capacities,
people with narcissistic personality disorder or extremely emotionally immature
only see themselves and other people in one of two ways.
Either they're special, unique, omnipotent, perfect, entitled,
what Greenberg calls high status, or they're defective, worthless, garbage, low status.
This is the black or white, all or nothing thinking that defines emotional immaturity
that leads to this path of narcissistic personality disorder.
So let's go back to that phone call when his wife said dinner wasn't ready because
he lacks whole object relations and this object constancy.
He could not think, oh man, she had a busy day. I am a little disappointed dinner
isn't ready, but I understand.
She's still a great wife and a partner. She's the mother to our kids.
We will figure this out together.
Because what would that require? holding multiple thoughts and feelings all together at one time.
It would require seeing her as both good to him, usually has dinner ready,
as a caring wife, and also human, imperfect, having a busy day, didn't plan dinner.
And it would require his maintaining positive feelings about her,
even if he's experiencing minor disappointment.
And let's not even talk about him doing the work to recognize it just is.
Bless her heart. She's doing her best. How can I help?
But he can't do that. because the moment that she said dinner wasn't ready,
she went from high status, good wife, meets my needs to low status,
worthless, failing, bad. What's she doing for me?
And in that split second, that's when she became all bad.
And this is why the reaction was so extreme. It wasn't just,
oh man, okay, bummed a little bit, the dinner isn't ready.
It was a complete collapse into she's failing me.
She doesn't care about me. She's worthless. I'll fend for myself.
Talk about narcissistic projection as well. He is projecting that onto a mirror
and then seeing himself back there because his assumption is that if someone
doesn't do what you want them to do, tell you that you're awesome all the time, they do not love you.
So then therefore it is true. If I think it, it's true. That emotional reasoning
from the emotional maturity episodes I did a little while back.
This is also why narcissists often seesaw back and forth between idealizing
someone and then devaluing them.
When you make them feel good about themselves, that's the key.
You're special. Amazing. Perfect. They like the way they feel around you.
Then you do something they don't like, which could be as simple as saying the
word no to a request or mention you had a busy day or express a need of your own.
And now you are all bad. You are worthless.
Later on, you might do something that makes them feel good again about themselves.
And now you are back to being good and special.
You haven't actually changed. What's changed is their internal state,
which they can't regulate without this interaction, without this friction,
without this external validation. Let me now share the unicorn rainbow version.
Let me contrast this with what a securely attached, emotionally mature person would have done.
And this comes from the work of Julie Hall, who has the Narcissistic Family Files.
She says, securely attached humans approach relationships cooperatively.
They work together to achieve shared goals. They seek and they give empathetic validation.
They share accurate and truthful information. They express affection and vulnerability.
They build trust and intimacy in their relationships. there might be conflict,
there will be conflict, there will be disagreement.
But mutual support is the foundation of the relationship.
It's the secure attachment. It's the base that they're operating from.
So therefore, respect and love are not at stake when someone is human.
Here's what that phone call would have sounded like with a secure attachment
in people that were emotionally immature, or especially if the husband had been
more emotionally immature.
Hey, just leave and work. Be home in about 15 minutes. Oh, good.
Hey, do you want anything in particular for dinner, I've been slammed today
with the kid stuff, helping with homework, shuttling to practice, managing playdates.
Honestly, I haven't had time to really think about what to make yet,
but I will be happy to try to pull something together. He would say,
oh man, that sounds like a day.
No, don't even worry about it. I'll grab a rotisserie chicken on the way home
or take out or you know what? I know how to do scrambled eggs. I can do a little toast.
What kid doesn't love breakfast for dinner? Whatever is easiest.
She says, that would be amazing. And park your unicorn around back because I'm
tired of the unicorn poop all over the driveway.
Thank you. She says a rotisserie chicken sounds perfect. Done.
See you in 20 minutes. And hey, I can't wait to hear about your crazy day when I get home.
In this version, could he have a fleeting feeling of disappointment that dinner isn't ready?
Absolutely. It can even be more than a fleeting feeling. He might even go,
geez, look at me, a captain entitled here, thinking that I need to be able to
hand her my hat and my overcoat, and then she will hand me my slippers and my pipe.
And he's thinking, all right, who am I? Or Rockefeller?
And he might have been looking forward to a home-cooked meal.
He might have just told a work colleague, oh man, she's a really good cook.
So he's thinking about it. And you might feel a twinge of, oh man,
you know, I wish things were going to be a little more settled when I got home,
but what happens when you have kids and you have a family?
So here's the difference. An emotionally mature person with whole object relations
and object constancy can hold multiple thoughts and multiple feelings all at the same time.
I'm a little disappointed dinner isn't ready. And my wife had an incredibly
busy day and she's still a wonderful partner and we can solve this together.
And I love her and our relationship's secure and I can put the unicorn out back.
And is that a leprechaun? Wow. A real pot of gold.
All those thoughts and feelings can coexist.
The disappointment does not erase love. It is not all or nothing.
It's not black or white. The frustration doesn't erase appreciation.
He can be frustrated and notice it and also appreciate what she's doing.
The imperfection, her humanness doesn't make her worthless.
But the narcissistic husband in the opening story can't do that.
The more emotionally immature he is, the less likely he is to make space in
his own mind for a variety of feelings and thoughts. He is stuck in this all
or nothing, black or white thinking.
It's what he knows. This is why even when you try to convince him of it,
he might at some point say, no, okay, I can see, I can understand.
And then he's alleviated his discomfort or he's even taken the one-up status
there of going like, no, you're right. I get it.
And that makes the other person feel good. Oh, wow. Okay, cool. Good talk.
Because to him, she either meets his needs perfectly. She's high status or she's
failing him completely. Low status.
So hopefully you can see the difference in the secure attachment version.
He has his own internal sense of self. He can think independently about solutions.
He can empathize with her experience.
He can hold complexity, both his disappointment and his understanding all together.
He can cooperate toward a shared goal, feeding the family and still be disappointed.
And so crucially, the foundation of mutual support is intact because his positive
feelings about her don't collapse the moment she's human, the moment she's imperfect,
the moment that she isn't doing what he thought she should be doing.
In the narcissistic version, he needed her to provide him with something to react against.
The coldness, the I'll fend for myself. That's not really about dinner.
That's about positioning.
That's about creating tension or creating fiction so he can feel that he exists
and he can take this familiar one-up position.
Now, narcissistic supply complete. I exist.
And he gets to drive off to whatever he's going to do.
And she is beating herself up and trying to figure it out. and he is not thinking about it.
This is antagonistic attachment. It's a term that's taken from the world of
biology and antagonist.
It describes relationships where one organism benefits at the expense of another.
Unlike secure attachment, which builds connection through mutual support and understanding.
And when you have a secure attachment or you're working together towards secure
attachment, you want more interaction because it's going to teach you more about
each other and yourself. And you're going to grow together.
One plus one is three, that kind of math. Not the gaslighting kind of math,
but the good kind of math.
But that antagonistic attachment requires predation, which is meaning that there
is a predator. It requires competition.
It requires parasitism. It's a parasite that is sucking off of another person,
sucking their life force.
That narcissist literally needs you to interact with them, not for genuine connection.
There is not genuine curiosity, but so they can define themselves against you.
Come over here so I can see how good I am and I can tell you the things that
I can tell you to put you down or that you will supposedly then admire me for me sharing with you.
Or I can be more hurt than you. I can be a better victim.
They're not relating to you as a partner or an equal.
They're relating to you as an antagonist relates to a protagonist in a story.
They need the conflict. They need the tension, the opposition to know that they exist.
This is where it starts to get so confusing for the pathologically kind people
like the wife in the opening story.
She genuinely believed that she was just being honest about her day because
that's what she was being. In a healthy relationship, that is what you want to do.
We're in this together. Let me tell you about my day. Oh my gosh, tell me more.
That's why talk therapy works if we want to back it down to its most simple
components, is that the things that you carry in your head and start to think,
what's wrong with me and this is crazy, and you express them to somebody who
says, oh my gosh, tell me more, and doesn't say, well, why'd you do that? Why didn't you do this?
That's not what I would have done. I am so much better at that than you.
When you do that, you're going to keep those thoughts in your head.
And I know the book Buddha Brain says it so well that the negative thoughts, they are like Velcro.
The positive ones, Teflon. They just slide right off. We hang on to those negatives.
The brain has a negativity bias.
But back to the story, she thought they were having a normal conversation about
dinner logistics and sharing about the day.
She approached the interaction assuming both people want connection and both
people are seeking mutual understanding because we're in this thing together.
Now what's happening? The narcissistic husband wasn't looking for connection,
he needed a reaction, something to define himself against.
Okay, so this brings me to the attack surface.
An attack surface is it's any word, it's an emotion, or it's a behavior that
you provide the narcissist that then they can use to criticize or attack or
position themselves as the victim.
All in the service of putting themselves in that one-up position.
And so let me explain what I mean by the one-up position. And I think that is
one of the terms that is starting to be bandied about in the mental health space.
It's because it's this universal principle where...
Okay. In healthy relationships, people generally operate as equals. That's the hope.
Sometimes you need more support. Sometimes I maybe need more support.
Sometimes you're right. Sometimes I'm right.
There's this natural give and take. It's like a flow in the relationship, in the conversations.
And when you really have a secure attachment, and I'm not going to go down the
path of the unicorn and the leprechaun, but I have strengths, you have strengths.
Some days I'm on, some days you are, some days we both are. And that's why it's
so much better to be in a relationship with somebody when you have another person
that you're going through things with, not when it's somebody that is there
to make your life worse or to suck the life out of you.
There's none of what the narcissist needs where they can't tolerate equality.
It's the concept of a zero-sum game. There is a winner and a loser.
There is a right and a wrong, and they need to be the winner and they need to be right.
They need to be superior. They need to be smarter and they need to be even more
justified or more victimized or more reasonable because being vulnerable equals.
Intolerable to somebody without a stable sense of self.
So the one-up position is about power. It's about positioning and it's the way
that they know that they exist.
When they see life as a zero-sum game, if they are in the one-up position,
what does that put you in? It's the one down position.
It's the narcissist's way of climbing above you so they can look down.
That way, they guarantee they know that they are okay because if life is a competition,
if it is a zero-sum game, they have to be ahead of someone.
And you're the one that's closest to them. And you're the one that they're going
to interact with the most.
And so, they're going to know the best ways to take that one-up position with you.
And they use whatever you give them to get there. If we go back to that opening
story and we identify the attack services, there's a few.
And once you're aware of this concept, you can't unsee it once you see it concepts. So the first one.
When the wife says, I've been absolutely slammed today with kid stuff,
helping with homework, shuttling to practice, managing playdates to her,
sharing information about her day, he might've even asked, how's your day?
To him, okay, I need you to start talking so I can find something that I can use.
Ah, she's complaining. She's implying I don't help enough. She's suggesting
her day is harder than mine.
And what is so fascinating is when I look at the concept of we're all emotionally
immature until we're not.
I remember having quite the aha moment in an old beat up van that we were driving
and it was paid off, which is always a good thing, but it was old.
And sometimes when you would come to a stop, the lights would go on and off
and the doors would unlock and lock. And it seemed like it was haunted.
And I got to the point where when anyone in the family and the kids were pretty
small at that time, but they would mention the van and the locks and they didn't
like it, or they thought it was funny.
I noticed that I felt like they were criticizing me. Oh, you're not a provider.
And so all they had to do was say these words about this van.
And all of a sudden I was looking at it a little bit like an attack surface.
But at that time, I was really trying to be more aware, more self-confrontational,
kind of stepping out of that emotionally immature self.
And I recognized, oh, that is wild. All they have to do is say this thing and
I have made meaning of it. And it is a criticism.
And now I need to let them know how hard I work and how they don't understand
when all they're trying to say is, hey, I think the car is haunted.
Let's go to the second attack surface where she says, I honestly haven't had
time to really think about what to make for dinner yet, but I can pull something together.
Again, she's being honest. She's even offering a solution.
She'll pull something together. But to him, this becomes, she doesn't have dinner
ready. She's not prioritizing my needs. She doesn't care about me.
She's failing at her responsibilities.
Now she did not actually say or even imply any of those things,
but the attack surface doesn't have to be accurate. It just has to exist.
That's all that the narcissist needs is words that someone can say,
and then they are masterful at learning how to use those words against the person
that said them to put that person, the narcissist in the one-up position.
So when she provided those words, those emotions, those pieces of information,
oh, he had what he needed. Now he knew what he could do.
He can now position himself as the victim. I'm fine. I'll, I'll fend for myself.
Narcissistic translation. You've let me down, but I'm such a good guy.
I won't complain. I'll just take care of myself since you clearly can't take care of me.
And then he disappears for three hours and he turns off his location.
He ignores her calls and texts.
And that is honestly not okay. And especially in that scenario where he just
hangs up on her and he goes silent and they have kids.
Now, why did he do that? Because she provided him with exactly what he needed.
This attack surface that allowed him to gain his narcissistic supply.
We'll talk about that in a moment. And then maintain the one-up position while
she sits at home and she is drowning in anxiety.
Second-guessing herself, wondering, what did I do wrong? Or what could I have done better?
There's a psychoanalyst a long time ago named Otto Finchel, who first described
this phenomenon in 1938 as narcissistic supply. attention, admiration,
or emotional reactions that the narcissist needs from their environment to maintain their self-esteem.
Despite this facade of confidence and self-flattery and grandiosity,
narcissists actually fear that they're undesirable and they depend on everybody
else to affirm that fragile ego.
They must defend that fragile ego at all costs and they need people to validate them.
And if they don't validate them, they will make sure they get their own validation
by putting that person down or making that person essentially admit something
that they don't really believe, or to finally that person is just going to go along to get along.
Agree. You bet. No problem. I just got to get out of this conversation.
That same pattern also plays out in divorce and custody situations,
which I have been observant of a few recently.
The reason I jump into this legal world is there's a really fascinating concept
that you see often in this environment where the narcissist rarely,
if ever, offers information first, let's say for a settlement or for mediation. Why?
Because you can't attack a blank page because they typically don't propose the
first custody schedule.
They wait for you to propose one. And then now they have something concrete to criticize. Okay.
I don't like Tuesday nights. That weekend doesn't work for me.
You're being unreasonable about the holidays. What else do you have?
And it's so interesting because if you then say, well, I need this from you
to the narcissist, especially often in these court proceedings, they just don't do it.
And I remember the very first time where I, with one of my clients and she just
said, he lied and he didn't do things by the deadline.
I didn't know you could do that. And I just said, I did not either.
But boy, have I seen lying in a courtroom.
The narcissist typically doesn't start the conversation about things like dividing
assets. They wait until you express interest in something. Maybe it's the house.
Maybe it's a retirement account. Maybe it's a car. Those make sense.
But I've literally had ones where someone brought up a collection of old books.
The spouse had said, she's never cared about those books.
I don't know if she can read. And then now all of a sudden though,
that is the one thing that meant the world to her because he actually wanted them.
Suddenly that thing that you wanted becomes the only thing. It's the most special
thing ever that they wanted in the divorce.
I can think back to a client and this is maybe one of those first world problems
or man, how the other half lives.
But the spouse had never once mentioned wanting this vacation cabin because
they actually never went there and they complained about it.
And we had couples, therapist arguments about this cabin and what it was a waste
and the person refused to go there.
Always complained when they suggested weekend trips there.
But the moment that they said a mediation that they would like to keep it because
it had actually been more important to their side of the family,
then their partner suddenly became passionate about how much that cabin meant
to them. This is the attack surface in action.
One partner gave the other partner something to oppose. And then in opposing
them, they could position themselves as the victim.
The one that is being denied this one thing, this thing so meaningful,
the only thing that they wanted.
Let's go back to silence as a weapon. If we go back to the wife sitting on the
couch, 8.37 PM, wondering if she should text again.
Three hours have passed since that initial phone call. Three hours of silence.
And here's another one of these items that I think is crucial to understand.
Silence is a weapon. The narcissist is completely comfortable with silence and inaction.
Just sit with that for a minute, because here's this projection as well.
Most likely you as the pathologically kind person are projecting onto them that
this must be really difficult for them too.
And I'm sure it's hard and I don't want them to feel bad. So you know what?
I will, I will reach out and apologize.
They may not even be thinking about the situation at all.
You, you're drowning in anxiety. Think about what happened to this wife in those
three hours. Her mind would not stop racing.
Why didn't I just have dinner ready? Is that really too much to ask?
He does work hard. I mean, again, it's not the 1950s.
I did have a crazy day too. Sometimes he's fine when dinner isn't ready.
So why was tonight different?
Where is he? Is he coming home? Or what is going to happen when he does come home?
And lurking beneath all of it is, is he with somebody else? You know, is this like before?
And was that my fault? So will he blame this on me too?
Back to the narcissist, not thinking about it. Maybe he went to a bar.
Maybe he's at a friend's house. Maybe he just drove around for a while.
The silence doesn't create the same discomfort for him that it creates for her.
And now we get into more of what is the parasitic dynamic that researchers have
identified in these narcissistic relationships where one person depletes the
other while remaining unaffected.
And here is why this matters. There's this gap of tolerance.
Great name for an alternative man. He can sit in silence forever.
She can't. So what typically happens?
Eventually the silence becomes unbearable. Who is going to not be okay with
that silence? She eventually texts, I'm sorry if I upset you.
I didn't mean to sound ungrateful.
Your job is so stressful and I should have had dinner planned. Can we please just talk?
And boy, she just handed him a giant attack surface.
She just apologized for something that wasn't her fault.
She betrayed herself. She validated
his victim position. She's taken responsibility for his behavior.
So he gets rewarded for this silence that actually came easy for him and was difficult for her.
And then I call it riding bikes. At some point, then he'll be fine.
Hey, let's go ride bikes. And she's just devastated by what just happened.
And it's going to take a few days to come back around. But she also knows she
can't really have a productive conversation with him about it.
When he finally comes home around 10, acting like nothing happened, he now has all the power.
She's been reduced to a grateful, anxious mess who is just relieved that he came home at all.
And if she dares to say, I was worried about you. Why didn't you answer my text?
He can turn it around. Oh, I needed space after the way that you talked to me.
I guess I'm not allowed to have my feelings now. You sure seem to say that we
need to talk about our feelings. Well, these are my feelings.
I feel like you're not nice to me.
The silence was not about him processing his emotions. The silence was strategic.
It was designed to create maximum anxiety, maximum self-doubt, maximum supply for him.
And I see this play out in custody negotiations so often. The pathologically
kind parent wants to co-parent effectively.
They want to do what's best for the kids. So they spend hours crafting a thoughtful
custody proposal they believe is fair and it's child-centered.
They send it to their narcissistic ex and silence.
Days go by, maybe a week.
Finally, unable to stand the silence, they send the follow-up.
Hey, just wondering if you had a chance to look at that proposal.
I'd love to discuss any concerns you might have.
There we go. The narcissist has exactly what they need. There's that attack
surface. there's that supply.
And now sure, they can bang this out real quick. Here's a list of all the things
wrong with the proposal.
And now they position themselves as the reasonable one who's just trying to
do what's best for the kids while implying that the other parent is being controlling
or inflexible with this crazy schedule that you proposed.
Here's the thing though. They were not thinking about what custody schedule would be best.
They were just doing whatever they were doing and then waiting until you finally
push them enough that then sure, I'll respond. I'll tell you how dumb that is.
They were just waiting for you to provide them with something to oppose.
The silence is not awkward for them. It's tactical.
What is really happening in these interactions? When you provide an attack surface,
whether it's an honest statement about your busy day, a custody proposal,
or even just asking a question, you're giving the narcissist their supply.
And narcissistic supply is fuel for somebody that has a fragile ego,
an unstable sense of self, because they require continuous reassurance and attention
from those around them. but it's parasitic.
And like a parasite, no matter how much you give, it's never enough.
That flea is going to suck all the blood out of the animal until it pops.
The mosquito is not going to stop until you smash it.
I don't know. Maybe these aren't the greatest metaphors, but the narcissistic
supply cycle consists of three key stages.
There's idealization, there's devaluation, and then there's the discard.
They get supply from both positive and negative interactions.
If we go back to our opening story and we look at it through this lens,
When they first got together, he idealized her.
She was amazing and perfect and exactly what he needed.
She was high status to him. She made him feel good.
She felt special. She felt adored, swept off her feet. Maybe he love-bombed
her with intense affection and attention, devotion.
But over time, the more they interacted, the more he realized he doesn't like
the way he feels in the relationship, and he's going to diffuse it over onto her.
And how does he do that? When she makes comments, when she has ideas.
Now we're back into that. Thank you for the supply. Thank you for this narcissistic
fuel that you are giving me.
Because there's other things going on here too, where you go through life for
the very first time and now you have to make these decisions,
maybe about moving or about jobs or about kids.
And if she makes the decision first, now we're into that all or nothing black or white thinking.
He thinks that, well, since you have that opinion and I don't have that opinion,
you must think you're right and I'm wrong.
And now I got to jump back into that one-up position. Over time,
the devaluation slowly begins.
Subtle criticisms, the cold silences when things weren't perfect.
The reminders of her failures, the affair that he had, and then the blame of
her for the affair that that's been placed on her shoulders.
In that phone call about dinner, we see devaluation in action.
She provides an attack surface and he uses it to position himself as the victim
while simultaneously devaluing her.
You don't have dinner ready. You're not meeting my needs. You're failing.
Then the three-hour disappearance. That's given her a taste of what discard
feels like. The message is really clear there. From the narcissist, I can leave.
I don't need you. You should be grateful when I come back.
They get that supply from both positive and negative interactions.
Positive supply would have been if she had responded to his coldness with,
oh man, honey, I'm so sorry. You're right. I should have planned it better.
You are the king and I am just a peasant and I need to do everything I can to
make sure the king is happy. I should have planned better.
I'll have a full meal ready in just 30 minutes. If you come on home and then
I'll massage your feet, I'll get something ready for you.
That would have given him supply through her validation, her apology,
her scrambling to meet his needs. That's right. You'll do that.
But then the negative supply works too. And I think often it's more powerful
because that negative supply involves provoking emotional reactions.
And those include fear, insecurity, and control because it makes them feel more
powerful and it defends against the shame and helplessness that they actually feel deep inside.
So when she spends those three hours in anxiety, when she questioned herself,
when she wondered if she was this bad wife when she feared he might not even
come home, that was also feeding him.
Even though he wasn't even there to see it, the power dynamic shifts.
She becomes depleted. He enters back into the home in control.
And if we could have seen inside his head during those three hours,
I can't even think of a good joke about that.
But he probably felt energized and powerful and in control. Finally,
somebody recognizes how hard he works, how much he deserves.
And he had to do this in order for her to appreciate what he does for the family.
Unfortunately, this is why your attempts to explain yourself actually backfire.
You may think you're having a conversation. You might even think that you're
clearing up a misunderstanding, but from the narcissist perspective,
you're giving them exactly what they need because every time you explain,
you're giving them more material to work with, more buttons to push,
more things to criticize, more opportunities to point out what's wrong with your thinking,
more chances to position themselves as superior,
more chances to then show how more of a victim they are.
And let's go back to that infidelity. When she discovered it and when she was
devastated, what did he do?
He immediately turned it around completely.
He made himself the victim. He made her responsible for his choice to betray her.
And then for years afterward, anytime she tried to express her feelings about
it, anytime the hint resurfaced, then he used it against her.
Oh, you're never going to let that go, are you? I guess I'll be paying for one
mistake for the rest of my life. you are so unforgiving and you don't appreciate me.
She provided the attack surface, but it was her legitimate hurt.
And then he used it to gain supply by positioning himself as the victim of her
supposed inability to forgive.
So now let's talk about the wife in our opening story, the pathologically kind
person, the one who genuinely seeks connection.
She wants to think the best in people, the one who thinks that with enough patience,
enough explanation, enough understanding, she can reach her husband.
She might even be able to give him that aha moment.
People-pleasing, codependency, those kind of things typically develop from childhood
experiences where you learned that your worth was conditional upon meeting other people's needs.
At some point, and I cannot back this study up, but it was believed that up
to 90% of the American population exhibits codependent behavior at some point in their lives.
And if you look at individuals with a history of trauma or growing up in dysfunctional
families, then they are at higher risk.
So now let's go look at her thought process during those three hours when he was absent.
Why didn't I just have dinner ready? So she's trying to take responsibility
for something that really wasn't her fault.
Is that too much for him to ask? He worked so hard, minimizing her own equally exhausting day.
Or she was saying, but sometimes when dinner isn't ready, he's actually fine with it.
Now she's trying to make sense of the nonsense, of the inconsistency.
And she's not even realizing the inconsistency is the problem.
The inconsistency is the weapon.
Then she goes to, what did I do wrong? assuming that she must have done something
wrong rather than just recognizing that it was just what it was.
He was looking for an attack surface.
And there's also that thought or belief where if I can make it a me problem, then I can fix it.
And a lot of times in our subconscious, we're thinking, or we don't want to
think that, oh man, is there nothing I can do to improve this situation?
And there might not be from a couple standpoint, but there can be from a you standpoint.
But this is the exhausting mental gymnastics that the pathologically kind people do.
They'll twist themselves into pretzels. They're trying to understand what they
could have done differently or how they could have prevented the conflict or
what they need to change about themselves so that we can avoid this ever happening again.
But here's the truth. What if she really didn't do anything major wrong?
She had a busy day. She was a human being. She was honest about it.
She offered to make dinner anyway.
It's actually pretty healthy communication if we're in a secure relationship.
So that problem wasn't her behavior. it was that her husband needed an attack surface.
He needed friction and she provided it simply by being honest.
My friend and colleague Ross Rosenberg, author of The Human Magnet Syndrome,
I think he brilliantly describes these relationships, the pathologically kind
and the narcissist or the emotionally immature as breakup resistant.
In a previous podcast, I shared his insights. Here's what Ross says about it.
He says, codependency is both a relationship and an individual condition that
can only be resolved by the codependent.
It's kind of deep. It has to be resolved by the person that is pathologically
kind, that is continuing to try and provide this attack surface.
But he said, many codependents are attracted to and maintain long-term breakup-resistant
relationships with pathological narcissists, or what I would look at as the
narcissist or the extremely emotionally immature.
He said, most codependents are selfless, and they're differential to the needs
and desires of other people over themselves.
So they put others ahead of them. they're pathologically caring,
they're responsible, and they are sacrificing people whose altruism and good
deeds are rarely reciprocated.
So they will continue to give and give and give, but they find themselves in
interactions and relationships with people that when the pathologically kind
person needs something, it is rarely reciprocated.
And he said, while some codependents are resigned to their seemingly permanent
relationship role, he said others actively, albeit unsuccessfully, attempt to change it.
These people become preoccupied with opportunities to avoid,
change, and or control their narcissistic partners.
Despite the inequities in the relationship and the consequent suffering,
they do not end the partnerships.
Codependency is not just limited to romantic couplings. Ross said it manifests
itself in varying degrees in most other significant relationships.
He said this is what creates the human magnet syndrome.
Because the harder that the pathologically kind person tries to figure out the
relationship, the crazier they feel.
Meanwhile, the narcissistic or the emotionally immature person learns subconsciously,
maybe even consciously, how to manipulate the dynamic for their gain to get
them in that one-up position.
I think understanding these fundamentals helps us understand why reactive responses
occur and then why they are often mischaracterized as abuse.
And I've got an episode that is about reactive abuse or reactive reactions.
And I highly recommend that you listen to that because setting the table in
the way that we just have, I think will explain why so often when a pathologically
kind person does lose their mind,
they blow their top, they get angry, frustrated, and then they say mean things,
that they don't just walk around saying to other people.
When I say to them, well, that's reactive abuse. You wouldn't be doing that
if you weren't interacting with this person who is then turning your words against
you or gaslighting you or being so emotionally inconsistent.
But then I love the fact that some of my clients felt like they all got together
and had a meeting and said, yeah, but I don't want to be abusive, period.
I don't care if it's reactive or not. So then I did this episode on reactive
response and tried to really break that concept down.
Because when somebody with pathological kindness finally reaches their breaking
point after a sustained emotional neglect or manipulation, those reactions, they're inevitable.
Pathologically kind people are so often drawn to narcissists because they believe they can help.
They believe their kindness, their patience, their empathy can somehow fill
that void in the narcissist, whether that's happening subconsciously or the
pathologically kind person is completely aware, it comes from a good place.
Because I cannot stress this enough, kindness is a gift. It is a wonderful value to have.
But when it becomes pathological, it implies that it has now become something detrimental.
And when people then differentiate within an unhealthy relationship or when
they leave an unhealthy relationship,
we will work on continuing to lean into that value of kindness,
especially to those they interact with out in the wild or friends or family
members, people in the community.
It does not mean that we work on them stuffing or stifling their kindness or
them not being kind because at this point, kindness is most likely in their bones.
It's in their DNA, which is part of the challenge. But I think it's so important
to understand that narcissists have this instinct for finding and attaching
themselves to potential hosts who confer this status, but they're also enabling
their self-serving worldview.
They specifically target people who are compassionate, who are dedicated, who are conscientious.
And I believe at times they are
drawn to those people because deep inside they want to be more of that.
But then when they try to do it, they revert right back to those familiar patterns from childhood.
People who will provide the best supply for the longest period of time to the
narcissist is the pathologically kind, is the empath, is the person who is just so desirous to help.
And unfortunately, it's the person who is used to putting themselves second
so that other people can be first.
Back to the wife. She finds herself constantly on the side of the relationship
where she's providing this attack surface. She's the one who's explaining.
She's the one who's trying to understand.
She's the one who's making efforts to connect. She's the one apologizing.
She's the one taking responsibility.
And where does that leave her? She feels unheard, misunderstood,
anxious, drained, feeling emotionally overwhelmed, exhibiting symptoms of complex
post-traumatic stress disorder, brain fog, memory loss.
And she continually wonders, what did I do wrong?
I want to very quickly go over my five rules of interacting with a narcissistic
or emotionally immature person in your life.
I have a handout that I just put together that I had not thought about till
I'm recording this right now.
So reach out to me and I can get that to you. And I go into a lot more detail,
the five rules of interacting with the emotionally immature narcissistic person.
The first one is raising your emotional baseline. That's self-care.
You're going to need to be in the best place you can if you are choosing to
stay in this relationship, if you're trying to create space,
if you're ready to leave an emotionally abusive, emotionally immature,
narcissistic relationship.
Self-care is not selfish. It is absolutely necessary.
And this is the challenge for the pathologically kind person or the person in
the relationship with the narcissist,
because they are so caught up in trying to figure out what's wrong with them
or how do they show up different or trying to read the tea leaves of the narcissistic communication.
And all of that, most all of that becomes a waste of emotional calories.
And they need to raise their emotional baseline, self-care.
And it can be anything from starting to read a book, to petting a dog,
to starting to dream and hope, to then getting out and exercising and eating
better and taking courses and classes and communicating with people that will
understand what they're going through, going to therapy, group therapy.
The second one is to get your PhD in gaslighting to know that,
okay, maybe I'm not crazy.
This is what I said, or that is not what he did that he's saying that he did now.
And that leads to the third one, which is get yourself out of those unproductive
conversations because the longer you stay in them, especially if you're being
gaslit and your emotional baseline's low, now we're headed toward that unavoidable amygdala hijack.
When your heart rate starts to elevate, you feel crazy, you start to react,
your fight or flight response is kicking in.
And when it does that, you can't access the part of your brain,
the prefrontal cortex that can access the logical thought.
So you get in this fight or flight response. So when you stay in a conversation
too long, providing this attack surface, then at some point your brain just
says, no, this is not safe.
And then the fourth one is learn to set healthy boundaries and really understand
the difference between a boundary and an ultimatum.
The boundary is, it's a me thing. If you continue to do this, then I am going to leave.
An ultimatum is saying, hey, you can't keep doing that because to the narcissist,
now we know, oh, well, thank you for showing me what's important that I can now use against you.
And then the last one, the most difficult part is know that you will never be
the one to give that person the aha moment or the epiphany. It has to come from them.
The more that you try and explain yourself, the more attack surface you provide,
the more that you show them which buttons are really important for you,
and the more that they can put in this treasure chest of things that they can use against you.
So back to the wife, I go back to this truth. She didn't really do anything wrong.
Her husband wasn't trying to understand her. He wasn't genuinely curious about her day.
He was just interacting with her in order to get her to start saying words so
he could then get a supply.
And every time that she explains herself every time she defends her position
every time she tries to make him understand she's giving him exactly what he
needs and she's depleting herself further and further and further.
When he finally came home that night around 10 o'clock what probably happened?
Maybe he acted like nothing was wrong. Walked in, grabbed something from the
fridge sat on the couch and if she said hey I was really worried about you I
can imagine a response like, I told you I was fine.
I needed some space. Can we not turn this into a big deal?
Or maybe he came in still cold and she had to walk on eggshells,
trying to read his mood, trying to figure out if she should apologize again or just stay quiet.
But either way, she's depleted.
She's anxious. She's second guessing herself. And he's maintained this one position
without ever having to take responsibility for anything.
So like a parasite that feeds off of a host organism, the narcissist depletes
their partner of their physical and their emotional resources.
They alienate the person from their self-preserving instincts,
from their gut feelings, and also from the ability to maintain safe personal boundaries.
And this is the exhausting reality of being in a relationship with a narcissist
or an extremely emotionally immature person.
It's not a relationship of mutual understanding or of genuine curiosity or of
reciprocity, it's a relationship of predation, competition, or parasitism.
So how do you break the cycle? How do you stop providing attack surfaces without
becoming callous or unkind yourself?
Let's think again about what the wife in the opening story maybe could have
done differently. Not to fix
her husband, because she can't fix a narcissist, but to protect herself.
One of the first things you can do is recognition, awareness.
You have to recognize that you cannot out-explain, out-reason,
or out-fair someone who needs conflict to exist.
You cannot logic your way into a narcissist understanding because understanding
is not what they're seeking. They are not being genuinely curious.
When he went cold on that phone call, that was the information.
That wasn't a misunderstanding that needed to be fixed. That was him getting
what he needed, a reason to position himself as a victim.
Second, now that you're aware of this, stop providing attack surfaces.
And I'm not saying that is like you are doing it wrong. First time you're going
through life is you. Now you're having this awareness. You're going to have to get some reps in.
Here's what that could look like in the phone call. Hey, just leave and work.
Be home in about 15 minutes. Great. See you soon. That's it.
No explanation of her day.
She wants to be heard and understood, but I would imagine she had enough of
those experiences that didn't go well that her spidey sense,
her gut reaction was probably telling her, this is a risk, but let me tell them about my day.
No explanation, no mention of not having dinner ready, just a simple neutral response.
Now you might be thinking, but that's not being honest. She should be able to
share about her day. And you are correct in a healthy relationship.
She absolutely should, but this isn't a healthy relationship.
And until she's ready to leave the relationship or he's willing to do serious
therapeutic work, which is kind of rare with a narcissistic or emotionally immature
person, she does need to start to learn to protect herself.
Another thing that she could do is being strategic with her silence and understand
the concepts around gray rocking.
When he disappeared for three hours, what she could have done instead of spiraling
and anxiety and sending multiple texts, nothing.
Let the silence sit and it's uncomfortable and our brains are wired to alleviate
discomfort and seek certainty.
So it makes sense. And she didn't know what she didn't know. And now the work begins.
Document internally that he said he'd be home in 15 minutes and didn't show
up for three hours, but don't chase, don't apologize. Don't provide more attack surfaces.
When he finally came home, instead of asking where he was or expressing her
worry, both of which again, provide attack surfaces that he can use against
her and also would be healthy in a healthy relationship, but if she was in a
healthy relationship, he wouldn't have done it in the first place.
So instead, maybe she could have said something like, hey, I see your home and
gone back to whatever she was doing.
This is where strategies like gray rocking come in, making yourself as uninteresting
and unengaging as possible, like a gray rock, so that interactions become less
rewarding for the narcissist.
Now, I do want to address or acknowledge something about the gray rock method.
Some professionals caution that the gray rock method
can make you seem inauthentic and especially if we're
back to talking about in things like court settings and it
could potentially damage your credibility and there's a risk
of becoming alienated from your own feelings and needs when suppressing yours
for extended periods of time so my my guidance my thoughts gray rocking is a
tool it's not a permanent state of being learn to use it strategically during
interactions with the narcissist especially in things like written communication
and day-to-day interactions and it will start to be more evident as you understand
this concept of the attack surface.
As a human please maintain your full emotional range
with your support system with your therapist with your trusted friends and most
importantly don't use gray rock as a long-term solution for a marriage gray
rock is about limiting engagement if you're at the point where you need to gray
rock your spouse on a regular basis probably need to make a plan either for
intensive couples therapy with a therapist who understands this dynamic or your
own personal therapy but it's time to do something.
And fourth, the last, build your tolerance for discomfort because the narcissist
has a very high tolerance for inaction and silence.
And so if you are staying, especially for now, learn to build your tolerance.
This means working on becoming differentiated, knowing who you are without needing
someone else to tell you, learning to calm your own anxiety, soothe yourself,
learning to not get so reactive, but also at times to not play small and then
taking ownership of your part of whatever you need to take ownership of and
not projecting it onto the other person like most likely he's doing to you.
And make meaningful effort for change.
Manage the anxiety that comes with not over-explaining, not defending yourself
because it will be very uncomfortable.
Try your best to not try and fix the misunderstanding to give him the aha moment.
For the wife in the story today, this would mean sitting with the discomfort
of not having dinner perfectly planned, not explaining her busy day,
not apologizing for something that wasn't her fault, not chasing after him when
he disappeared, not knowing where he was, not getting reassurance that he still loved her.
All of that discomfort is so real. I'm not saying that it won't feel,
but sitting with it, moving through it, learning where it is, somatic work.
Where do I feel that in my body? What does it feel like? Is it big?
Is it small? Does it pulsate? Is it stabbing? What does it feel like?
Where is it? thank you body for allowing me to feel these emotions.
I'm not going to just try to diffuse them onto somebody else or stuff them down
anymore. I'm going to make room for them.
All that discomfort. The anxiety is real, but feeding into it by providing attack
surfaces, unfortunately makes it worse and it depletes her further.
Document patterns and incidents. If you're headed toward things like divorce
or custody battles, or if you're even just trying to figure out if you are sane, document.
This becomes crucial. And you don't need to focus on explaining individual incidents,
which would just create more attack surfaces, but you can document patterns.
Just for an example, pattern of disappearing when asked reasonable questions,
pattern of turning off location and going no contact for hours,
a pattern of blaming the spouse for his choices, like the infidelity,
a pattern of inconsistent responses.
Sometimes dinner not being ready is fine. Sometimes it triggers hours of punishment.
The patterns are much harder to defend against than individual incidents because
patterns show this larger dynamic at play.
So bigger picture, let's wrap this thing up. Here's what I would love for you
to understand about all of this.
The dynamic I'm describing, the attack surface, the supply cycle,
the one-up position, the silence
as a weapon, this isn't about him being difficult or her being difficult.
There's some research that shows a significant relationship between narcissism
and these insecure attachment styles.
So with vulnerable narcissism, particularly linked to preoccupied and these
fearful attachment patterns.
So for some people, narcissism may emerge as a defensive coping strategy and
it develops when early attachments were marked by inconsistency or neglect or abuse.
They are as inconsistent as the care providers that they interacted with.
And I realize that I'm at risk here of sharing this and then causing you,
the pathologically kind person, to feel more sorry for the narcissist or the
incredibly emotionally immature person in your life.
But what I'm sharing it for is so that you understand that this is a deeply
entrenched pattern and it has nothing to do with your worth or your efforts and you're not too much.
The wife in our opening story today could have been the most perfect wife imaginable.
Dinner ready every night, how spotless, never complaining.
It would not have changed the dynamic. And I think that is so important to know
because that does not give the narcissist a sense of self. They will still find something.
The narcissist will always find an attack surface. If she would have dinner
ready, maybe it would have been the wrong meal or it was too hot or cold or
it was ready at the wrong time or cooked wrong or served at the wrong time.
Or she would have spent too much money on groceries or you know that I don't
like this food or why didn't you serve something else?
The attack surface isn't about what you did or didn't do. It's about what they
need to maintain to have their false sense of self.
You cannot love them out of this pattern. You cannot explain your way to understanding.
You can't be kind enough or patient enough or perfect enough to change the dynamic.
The only thing that you can do is change your participation in it.
And for those of you who are currently in marriages like the one I described
in the opening today, I want you to hear this very clearly. I worry that it's not sustainable.
The anxiety of walking on eggshells, of never knowing what will trigger the
next disappearance, or cold shoulder, or rage, the consistent second-guessing
of yourself, the depletion of your energy, your joy, your sense of self,
the way you're modeling relationship dynamics for your kids, it's real.
It takes a serious toll on your mental health, and that leads to problems with
your physical health, your sense of reality.
And if you're navigating the court system with the narcissistic ex,
the same principles will apply.
They'll use every tool available to maintain their supply and their one-up position
they will delay they will accuse they will play the victim they will paint you as unreasonable.
Here's the weakness. They're so focused on opposing you that they rarely offer genuine solutions.
They're so focused on gaining supply that they forget the actual goal is supposed
to be what's best for the kids.
So I go back to document everything. Be the parent who consistently offers reasonable
proposals because that's who I am.
Be the parent who communicates briefly and factually. Be the parent who focuses
on the children's needs rather than engaging in drama.
And most importantly, stop trying to give them the aha moment or the epiphany.
Stop providing them the attack surfaces for them to exploit.
So let me take you back to that opening scene. She's sitting on the couch.
It's 8.37 PM, phone in hand, wondering if she should text again.
But now imagine she understands what's actually happening.
That silence isn't awkward. It's informational. It's telling her exactly who
she's dealing with. And it's showing her the pattern.
She doesn't need to send the text. She doesn't need to apologize.
She doesn't take responsibility for his behavior. Instead, she documents.
Phone call at 5.15 where she mentioned having a busy day. his cold response
and abrupt hang up, his failure to arrive home when expected,
his location services turned off, multiple attempts to reach him ignored,
returned home at 10.07 with no explanation.
It's not about gathering evidence to use against him in the moment.
And I think that's one of the things that I don't think I understood early in
my practice. This is more about your sanity.
This is about learning to see patterns so clearly so that then you can make
informed decisions about the future.
So back to this example, here's what happens. She stops feeding the dynamic.
She stops providing attack surfaces. She stops giving him his supply.
And does this mean he will suddenly become reasonable? No.
He might actually even escalate at times. He might even rage at times.
He might play the victim even harder. He might accuse her of being cold or distant
or unloving and project that all over her.
But the crucial difference is she's no longer participating in a way that depletes her.
She's no longer handing over her sense of self, her energy, her sanity.
She's taking her power back in that process. She's either going to create space
for him to recognize he needs to help and seek serious therapeutic invention.
Rare, but possible. I've known a unicorn or two.
Or building a clear picture of the dynamic so she can make informed decisions
about whether this marriage is sustainable.
For those of you who are in the divorce or the custody battle phase,
remember a narcissist's need for supply is insatiable.
No matter how much you give, it's never enough to fill their emptiness and satisfy the hunger.
When they don't respond to your custody proposal, that silence is information.
They don't have a better idea.
They're just waiting for you to provide more attack surfaces.
And sometimes just knowing that will help you stay more grounded when they do
attack the thing that they were unwilling to provide in the first place.
They are just opposing you to gain supply.
When they disappear or they turn cold or they rage, it's not about what you did.
That's about maintaining the one-up position and creating your anxiety, which feeds them.
And they will do whatever they can, push the right button, get bigger,
louder, withdraw more to get you back into that familiar pattern.
You cannot fill their void. You cannot fix this with better explanations or
more patience or more fairness, but you can stop participating in a dynamic that drains you.
You can stop providing attack surfaces. You can build your tolerance for silence and discomfort.
You can shift from defending yourself to documenting the patterns.
And you can do all of this while still being the kind, genuine person you've always been.
Just now you'll have better boundaries
and a clearer understanding of what you're actually dealing with.
So let me bring this all together. Today, we've talked about some really heavy
concepts, the attack surface, antagonistic attachment, the silence as a weapon,
whole object relations, object constancy, narcissistic supply, the one-up position.
But here's some key takeaways. First, you are not crazy. The phone call about
dinner wasn't about dinner. The three-hour disappearance, that wasn't about him needing space.
The affair being your fault is ridiculous, never true.
When you feel like you're losing your mind, trying to understand the inconsistencies,
the coldness, the sudden shifts from idealization to devaluation,
that's because you're trying to apply logic to a dynamic that isn't logical.
You're trying to have a rational conversation with someone who cannot hold complexity.
Stop questioning your sanity and start trusting what you're observing.
Every time you over-explain or apologize for things that aren't your fault or
chase after their approval, you're handing them the attack surface.
You're giving them exactly what they need to maintain their sense of self while depleting your own.
Recognition is your first superpower. Once you see the pattern,
it's hard to unsee and you can stop participating in it.
And next, their silence, their coldness, their disappearances.
These are not bugs in the system. They're features to them. They're strategic.
They're designed to create your anxiety, which feeds them. Your anxiety is the supply.
Stop letting their comfort with silence manipulate you into providing more attack surfacism.
You can't love somebody out of a lack of whole object relations and object constancy.
You can't explain your way into their understanding.
You cannot be perfect enough to prevent the devaluation because the problem was never you.
The problem is that they can only see people as all good or all bad.
And the moment you're human, the moment you have a busy day or a need or a boundary,
or you say no to a request, you switch from high status to low status in their
mind. That's about their limitation, not your worth.
And finally, you actually have more power than you think. The power to choose yourself.
So here's what I want you to know. And I really want you to hear this.
You're not the supporting character in somebody else's story.
You're the author in your own life.
For so long, you've been living in this reaction mode, reacting to their moods,
managing their emotions, walking on eggshells, questioning yourself,
shrinking yourself, apologizing for your humanity, making yourself smaller and
smaller, hoping that if you just get it right this time, they'll finally see you.
They'll finally value you, finally love you the way you deserve.
But here's the truth that will set you free.
They can't. And it's not because you're not enough. You are more than enough.
But because they lack the internal capacity to see you in your full complexity,
your light, your brilliance, your radiance is too much for them because they
don't have it themselves.
To hold on to love while experiencing disappointment, to value you,
even when you're imperfect, to be a true partner instead of somebody who needs
you to be all good or all bad.
And that limitation, that's on them. It's not you.
So here's your permission slip.
Stop auditioning for a role you've already earned. You don't need to prove you're
a good wife, a good husband, a good parent, a good person, a good kid, a good adult child.
You are, but you've been bending over backward, twisting yourself into pretzels,
exhausting yourself, trying to be seen by somebody who can only see their own reflection.
It's time to redirect that energy back to yourself. You are allowed to have
a busy day without it being an attack on somebody else. You're allowed to have
needs without being called selfish.
You're allowed to say no without three hours of punishment. You're allowed to
be imperfect without becoming worthless in somebody's eyes.
You're allowed to stop explaining yourself to somebody who is never listening
or not genuinely curious anyway.
And most important, you are allowed to choose peace over chaos.
And I know it will be scary. And I know you've been in this pattern for so long
that breaking it feels impossible.
And I know you're probably worried about what will happen if you stop providing
a tax services. Will they leave? Will they rage? Will things get worse?
But here's what I've seen time and time again.
Of people who've walked this path before you. When you stop participating in
the dynamic, here's what happens to you.
You start to remember who you were before you became an attack service.
You start to reconnect with your own thoughts, your own feelings, your own worth.
You start to breathe again. You start to laugh again. You start to dream again. You reclaim your life.
This is your wake up call, not to fix them, not to try harder,
not to be more understanding or more patient or more perfect.
This is your wake up call to remember. You matter. Your needs matter.
Your feelings matter. Your peace matters.
And you don't need anyone else's permission, especially not theirs,
and not even mine, not anyone's, to start choosing yourself.
The woman sitting on the couch, phone in hand, wondering if she should text again.
She can put the phone down. She can take a deep breath. She can whisper to herself,
I am not responsible for his behavior.
I am not the problem. I am allowed to choose peace. And then she can take one
small step toward reclaiming her power.
Maybe it's not sending that apologetic text.
Maybe it's calling a therapist tomorrow. Maybe it's confiding in a trusted friend.
Maybe it's starting to document the patterns.
Maybe it's just sitting with the discomfort without trying to fix it.
One small step, that's all you need to start.
Because here is the beautiful truth. Every time you don't provide the attack
surface, you're building yourself up.
Every time you resist the urge to over-explain, you're reclaiming your voice.
Every time you let their silence sit without chasing it, you're strengthening your foundation.
Every time you choose yourself, you're writing a new story and you deserve a
story where you're not just surviving, you're actually thriving.
Where you're not just managing someone else's emotions, you're honoring your own.
And where you're not just avoiding the next attack, you're building a
life of peace you're so much stronger than you know you're
wiser than you think you are worthy of so much more than being somebody's attack
surface so take that first step and then take another
and another until one day you look back and realize you're not just waking up
to the narcissism you woke up to yourself and that is when life begins i believe
in you i'm rooting for you i will be here walking alongside you on this journey
send me your stories your thoughts your questions and until next time take care
of yourself you're worth it
Have a great week. We'll see you next time on Waking Up to Narcissism.