Have you ever had a moment where you remember something so vividly,
so clearly that to you, there's no way that that didn't happen.
And then the person that you share it with looks at you blankly and says that I never said that.
If you've ever been in a relationship with somebody who is emotionally immature
or on this scale of narcissistic traits and tendencies, you probably know that
feeling more than others.
And it's that dizzying sense that your reality is starting to slip.
And I want to say right up front, especially if there's anyone new listening,
I am acknowledging memory is fallible. It is not perfect.
We all forget things and we mix up the details. Was it spring or fall?
Was it the lake or the beach, Memorial Day or Labor Day? Was I wearing the green shirt or the red shirt?
Probably green. I don't look that good in red, but that's part of being human.
Humans have imperfect memories and we all misremember dates and details and locations.
And we all forget things that mattered more to someone else than they did to
us. that's normal. That's human.
But in healthy relationships, when memories differ, it can sound more like,
huh, I don't remember that, but tell me more.
Of course, I believe you, but that's just not what I remember. Or you know what?
I am thinking of something completely different. We must have experienced it
differently, but tell me more about what you remember. Because there's a key component here.
In the world of emotional maturity, there is room for two truths.
And I know that can be so difficult for people where they say there must be
one absolute truth. Well, I'll slow down a little bit. Let's talk about that.
Because what we're talking about today isn't the normal give and take of memory,
where if there is something that we could agree on,
it just takes a little bit of patience and calm to be able to tap into that
prefrontal cortex where the logical part of our brain resides and not just stay
all up in our fight or flight response in that amygdala.
We're talking about what happens when your memory or your sense of reality has
been challenged and questioned so often that you start to genuinely believe
that you are the problem, that you must be losing your mind,
that somehow you're the only person who can't seem to get the story straight.
And I see it literally every day in my office, I guess not literally,
not over the weekends, but I see it Monday through Friday in my office.
And I'm going to even throw down my badge as the self-proclaimed reality police
because I talk to people for a living and tell you there are really two kinds
of people who come in questioning their memory.
There are those in healthy relationships who notice that they're starting to forget things.
They bring it up carefully, thoughtfully.
We talk about what's been happening in their life. And more often than not,
we find that they may simply be overwhelmed, stressed, spread thin,
emotionally overloaded.
They're not sleeping well. They're not hydrating. They're not exercising.
They might be in a job that they really don't like and they thought it would end by now.
Their memory isn't necessarily failing, but their body is trying to slow them down.
It might be a gentle nudge toward rest, self-care, maybe even finding a hobby again, getting a pet.
And those people usually have partners who meet them with kindness or they're
supportive or they're curious.
It's like they're packing their own backpack full of rocks before a long hike
when their partner's saying, are you sure you need to carry all those rocks?
So it's heavy, sure, but the person thinks that's manageable and it's their own backpack to carry.
Then there's the other kind, the ones in relationships with emotionally immature
or narcissistic partners.
They don't come in gently questioning their memory. They come in terrified,
anxious, intense, shaky.
They're convinced because they've heard it for so long that they are losing
their sanity. And their stories are hauntingly similar.
They've been told over and over again that their reality is wrong,
that what they remember didn't happen, that they're too sensitive,
that they're too emotional, that they're too dramatic.
This can be the male or the female. It can be whoever is in that one down position
in this narcissistic or emotionally immature relationship.
And here's what's even more painful. The person that they turn to the most for
comfort and connection is often the very one who is rewriting their reality.
It's like they walk into my office and they're actually carrying not just one
heavy backpack full of rocks, but they have two.
And if I were to ask them about the second one, they say, oh,
that one's my partner's. They asked me to carry it. They had me carry it around
everywhere. They said it would be good for me.
They actually packed it and packed it even heavier because apparently when I
told them it was too heavy, I was just complaining.
That's more of like what we're talking about today. When love starts to feel
like labor and when connection starts to cost you your clarity,
when somebody else's comfort starts to outweigh your truth.
But in relationships with extremely emotionally immature people or those with
strong narcissistic traits or tendencies, and those relationships,
disagreements, and memory don't happen occasionally, they are constant. They become patterns.
And they become these patterns where your memories are dismissed,
your feelings are minimized, your reality is corrected, and ultimately their version is final.
And you often find yourself apologizing for even bringing something up when
you are attempting connection.
It's not because they're searching for truth, but because acknowledging your
version threatens their sense of control.
It's that zero-sum game. If you have an opinion or a thought that is different
than theirs, then you must think yours is right and theirs is wrong.
They can't hold space for two different thoughts or opinions or memories.
Your memory becomes a problem to be eliminated, not a story to be understood.
Today, we're going to look at how emotionally immature people bend reality to
avoid discomfort, how they use denial and confusion as control,
and how little by little that conditioning teaches you to distrust yourself.
But more importantly, we'll also talk about what it takes to step back into
your own truth, to tap back into your intuition, and to remember that you are
and always have been the foremost authority on you.
So we're going to talk about that and so much more coming up on today's episode
of Waking Up to Narcissism.
Hey everybody, welcome to Waking Up to Narcissism. I am your host,
Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist. and follow me wherever you can follow me.
Follow me around if you see me walking down the street or follow me on Instagram
at virtual.couch, on TikTok at virtualcouch.
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And if you like short bits of content, ever an occasional long story,
a little bit of video, then go to substack.com slash thevirtualcouch.
And I have introduced a paid subscription version for a very small fee.
I think it's slightly more than one morning energy drink or coffee,
then you will get access to a lot of information.
One of the projects I'm working on and sharing a lot more on Substack to my
paid feed is about raising your emotional baseline, that self-care is not selfish
and what that really looks like.
And I want your questions. I want your marriage questions. I want your mental health questions.
I would love those because I have a lot of question and answer episodes coming
up soon and get those in now.
And if you're interested in working with me, I on occasion do have an opening
and I really am appreciating working with people who are reaching out saying
that they have resonated with the content that I've shared on the podcast.
It has really been some good work to do today.
I want to start with a story that will set the stage for today's topic.
We'll call it The Night Everything Changed, or So She Thought.
This is based on a combination of clients. And we will, let's not go with Jack and Jill today.
Today, we will go with Pam and Jim. Pam still remembers that night like it was etched in her bones.
Her father had just been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and he'd been given 12 to 18 months to live.
Her mom, a breast cancer survivor herself, had grown frail and withdrawn over the past few years.
And the thought of losing her father and watching her mom face that loss alone
just felt unbearable to Pam.
Her husband, Jim, had been gone all week on a business trip.
He had texted that he had landed and he said he was going to take a call in
the parking lot before driving home.
An hour had passed and then another. And by the time he walked through the door,
the kids were finally asleep and she was barely holding herself together.
So when he came in, she tried to talk and the words just spilled out in pieces.
She had fear for her mom, grief for her dad, confusion about what came next.
Jim looked pretty frustrated and honestly, a little bit disappointed.
We find out much down the road in therapy that he had put off coming home because
he didn't really enjoy the time putting the kids to bed because it was so chaotic.
He had anticipated coming home and being intimate with Pam.
But at that time, she could not hold it together. That's not what she was thinking
about. She just sobbed. I don't know what I'm going to do when my dad's gone.
What am I going to do with my mom? And he sighed.
Don't worry about it. My mom was fine when my dad passed. your mom's going to be fine.
And she tried to accept that, but she couldn't stop crying. So then he said,
okay, I don't know if it would make you feel better.
She can come live with us. I'm sure we can make it work.
Now in that moment, something inside of her exhaled and relief flooded in because
it felt like he got it. He was there for her.
He said the things that she needed most to hear.
So she threw her arms around him. She whispered, thank you so much.
And they ended up sharing an intimate evening together.
She remembered thinking, you know what, maybe this is what a partnership really means.
Maybe you have to get to these depths of despair in order to truly grow together.
He saw me. He was there for me.
That night transformed grief into connection.
At least that's how Pam remembered it.
Now, fast forward three years later, her dad lived much longer than expected. It was deemed a miracle.
But then when he finally passed, she found herself reflecting on how grateful
she was for her husband's support, for how he had promised to make space for her mom.
Because over the last two or three years, Pam would mention comments when my
mom comes to live with us, or they would be out looking at furniture and she
would say, man, I wonder if my mom would like this.
And Jim didn't say much, but often he wasn't a man of many words.
So she didn't think much of it. But then...
On one particular night, after her dad had passed and the dust had settled just
a bit, one night over dinner, she said softly, Hey, I'm so glad we talked about
my mom moving in so long ago, and I appreciate the space that you've given me
to prepare for it, plan for it.
I know it's going to be an adjustment, but it means so much that you offered
it. You can maybe guess what's coming next.
He looked up, blank.
What are you talking about? And she said, that night you got home from your
trip, after we had talked about my dad's cancer diagnosis, and I was so upset,
And you said that whenever this moment came, you said that my mom could move in.
Oh, I never said that. He said, you know, you say so many random things about your mom.
I must have just nodded along because I can't keep track of what your mom's
up to or what you and your mom are fighting about or arguing about or what you're into. I can't keep up.
She was devastated, but she waited just for a tiny hint of recognition,
maybe a flicker of memory, nothing.
He shrugged. So I have no idea what you're remembering, but I didn't agree to
that. As a matter of fact, that's ridiculous.
And your mom's a grown woman that she has plenty of money. I'm sure she'll be fine.
This was the moment that Pam started to question her sanity because she knew she was not making it up.
She could picture the room and
the clothes she wore and the way she cried and the way that he held her.
And it was one of the most vivid emotional memories of her life.
But he didn't just disagree. He denied the event altogether.
And in that instant, she felt the floor tilt beneath her.
Because if he didn't remember then who was right, could she even trust?
Her own memory because she knows this feeling well from her 20 plus years of marriage.
Was she exaggerating? Did she make the whole thing up?
That's the seed of narcissistic reality distortion.
When the story of what happened becomes split into two parallel versions,
and you're told that yours is wrong.
And I'm not a big all or nothing fan, but it's always wrong.
So today I want to dive deeper into what happens when your memory and someone else's denial collide.
We're going to talk about why chronic invalidation can make you question your
own reality and how prolonged emotional chaos doesn't just change how you think
or how you feel. it rewires your brain and your nervous system.
And we're going to touch on cognitive dissonance, what that is and why it makes you doubt yourself.
And more importantly, how the emotionally immature individual or narcissist
rewrites history to avoid accountability and projects it over to you because
typically you'll take it. You'll carry that torch.
And then what that trauma does to memory and focus and why your body often senses
the truth well before your mind does.
And we'll spend a little more time talking about gray rocking.
I got some good feedback from that after the attack surface episode,
where I touched on it briefly, of how that can protect your peace when leaving
isn't yet or isn't an option.
Because the moment you begin to quietly say, okay, I do trust my memory,
even if they don't, that's the moment that you begin to wake up to your own
healing and your path to emotional maturity.
Okay, but before we get back to the story though, let's go full psychology nerd here.
What Pam experienced isn't rare in relationships with narcissistic or emotionally
immature partners, it's this form of reality distortion when somebody's need
to control the emotional environment
is so strong that it then attacks and bends their shared reality.
Let's look at what's happening beneath the surface. I mentioned cognitive distortion.
Her brain, Pam's brain in that moment, couldn't hold both truths.
I remember this vividly, and he says it never happened.
That clash, that tension becomes unbearable, and the brain's instinct is to
resolve it by blaming itself. so she starts thinking maybe I overreacted maybe
I'm too sensitive maybe I'm the one that misunderstood and.
Because if it can be a me issue, I can fix it. If not, I don't know what to do with that.
That's cognitive dissonance. And it's one of the most powerful psychological
tools of control, even when it's not intentional.
And I shared more about this on a previous episode of why our minds resist changing
beliefs, even in the face of new evidence that might be blatantly obvious or
scientific or right in front of you.
Because this is where the brain truly is just an organ full of impulses and
connections trying to filter thoughts and consciousness just to keep us alive.
And this is why it becomes so important to be able to step outside of ourselves
and see ourselves in the context of each moment.
Do a little self-confrontation. It's not that scary.
And realize it's okay to admit fault, to acknowledge error, to say, I didn't know that.
But apparently, our little pink squishy brains are going to continue to default
to immaturity and safety, because that's what got us to the point where we're at.
That was our inner child that kept us alive by doing these immature things.
But it is time to let the big kid take over.
Now, in this previous episode that I'm mentioning, I went into great lengths
to establish that our brains are essentially a don't-get-kill device,
constantly scanning for threats
to our survival, including threats to our beliefs and our identity.
Now, let me tell you what happens when that system encounters information that
contradicts what we believe to be true.
When we come across information that challenges our beliefs,
we experience cognitive dissonance.
There was a psychologist named Leon Festiger, and he first described this phenomenon,
and he noticed that holding contradictory ideas creates a genuinely uncomfortable
feeling, like mental, static, or psychological tension.
And let me give you some everyday examples. These are some that I shared on
that previous episode of what this feels like.
Let's say that you believe that you are an environmentally conscious person,
but you just drove your gas-guzzling SUV to Starbucks for a coffee in a disposable cup.
You believe you're a patient parent, but you just yelled at your kids over something trivial.
You believe you are financially responsible, but your credit card statement
shows that you spent $300 on things that you really didn't need.
You can't even remember what they were.
You consider yourself a very healthy disciplined eater, but you just polished
off a sleeve of Girl Scout cookies, then mints.
Who hasn't? They were fresh out of the freezer while watching Netflix all day.
In each case, there's a clash between your self-image, who you think you are, and your behavior.
Or between what you think you believe and what you actually do.
And that uncomfortable, squirmy feeling you get, that is cognitive dissonance.
It's important to just acknowledge it, let it in, sit with it for a moment.
Here's what's fascinating, though. That discomfort isn't just annoying.
It actually, if we're looking deep circuitry of the brain, is perceived as a
threat by our don't-get-kill device brain.
Because remember, our ancestors, if they constantly questioned their beliefs
and changed their minds, they may not have survived.
If those berries were poisonous once, if our ancestor then said,
you know, maybe they've changed, then they eat those berries again, they're not around.
So when we encounter contradictory information, our psychological protection
system kicks in and it says, this is dangerous.
We need to resolve this conflict immediately if we want to survive.
Now, one might think the logical solution would be to examine the new information
objectively and update our beliefs if the evidence warrants it.
That is the evolved brain.
But our brain's primary job is not to be logical. It's not even to laugh or
to love. It's first and foremost to survive, to keep us alive.
And part of that's feeling psychologically safe. So instead of changing our
beliefs, our mind gets creative about protecting them.
It's important to note that we all experience cognitive dissonance.
That's okay. We experience it every day, whether or not we are aware of it. Every single day.
Your brain is a prediction engine. It does not like discomfort.
It is desperate for certainty. It does not like tension.
So it doesn't want to hold to competing realities.
It also doesn't want to eat Brussels sprouts, but you don't have to do everything
that your brain says. That's part of the emotional maturation process.
But what it's going to try to do is do mental gymnastics to make the discomfort
go away. And most often it does that by turning blame inward.
In Pam's case, she knew she remembered that night. She remembered the tears,
the conversation, the relief she felt when he said that her mother could live with him.
But when he said it never happened, her brain hit a wall.
Two completely conflicting truths. I remember this vividly. He says it never happened.
And that clash, that dissonance is unbearable until it's not,
until you get the tools to recognize it's okay for me to have my opinion.
It is actually okay in the scenario for him to have his as well.
I can now be curious about his opinion. There might not be a lot of surface
underneath his opinion because it's just something he's saying.
Because if he just says it, then I will run with it. I will take ownership of
it. Then I will then say, okay, I guess my mom's not moving in.
Her brain does what all of ours are wired to do. It looks for a way to make
it make sense. Maybe I'm remembering it wrong. Maybe he's right. Maybe I overreacted.
And it's painful, but it feels safer in that moment to believe that she's the
problem. Because if she's the problem, then there's something she can do about it.
She can try harder. She can apologize. She can fix it. She can try to convince
him. She can try to reconstruct the memory in the night.
But if it's not her, if he really did say something deeply meaningful just to
end the conversation or to go to bed or to have sex with her,
then what does that mean about her marriage? And what does that mean about her entire reality?
This is where cognitive dissonance is more than just a mental process.
It becomes a form of emotional survival.
Because if she lets herself believe that her husband could look into her tear-streaked
face that night, hearing about her father's terminal cancer and say whatever
he needed to, just to get what he wanted.
Then she has to start asking, well, what else has he done with that?
What else did she believe was connection was actually more out of convenience or control?
What else did she think was safety, but was control?
And that realization that her memories might not match the truth of her relationship
can be the moment where, go with me on this one.
If you've ever ridden one of those rides like Tower of Terror or Guardians of
the Galaxy at Disneyland, I remember one called the Big Dipper,
I think at Santa Cruz boardwalk where you go up really fast,
you, you stay for a second or in the bottom falls out.
And then you let out a scream, maybe, maybe even the first time,
just a tiny, tiny little bit of pee, but you quickly spill a little bit of water on you.
And, and on the way out of the ride, you act surprised like,
oh man, I didn't realize I spilled my drink.
Then your little nephew says, uncle Tony, though, the lid is still on the bottle
of water. How could it have spilled? And you shoot him a look like,
hey, I know things about you too, you little brat.
I mean, hypothetically, but in this situation, the bottom falls out from under
this woman and it can really feel devastating.
I made this reference probably several times, but it's like the movie,
The Sixth Sense with Bruce Willis.
If you've seen it, you remember that moment at the end when you find out,
spoiler alert for a 30 year old movie, he's dead. He's been dead the entire time.
And immediately your brain starts going, oh my gosh, it runs through the whole
movie again, scene by scene.
And you realize, oh, it actually meant something different than I thought.
Now, my view the first time around was real, but then when I go back through
it, whoa, that is different.
That's what it can feel like when the fog of emotional immaturity starts to clear.
You start replaying conversations and arguments and even tender moments,
and you see them in a completely different light.
And it's not because you're rewriting history, but because your brain is finally
seeing it accurately without the distortion or the confusion or the constant
pressure to make someone else comfortable, even at your own betrayal.
And that realization can feel disorienting, dizzying. Some describe it as even being nauseating.
Because once you start to see it clearly, you can't then see it.
And at first, it's very scary. But over time, it is liberating.
It's part of what's going to set you free.
That is terrifying and the beginning of waking up. That's two different truths right there.
So let's talk about what's actually happening when your reality starts to bend like that.
When these moments that once felt true now feel off and you start wondering,
have I been imagining all of this?
Because there's a word for that experience. And it was the word of the year a few years ago.
And it still gets tossed around quite a bit. That word, gaslighting.
You probably already had an emotional reaction to that. When people hear the
word gaslighting, they often imagine something sinister or calculated somebody
deliberately twisting your words and their mustache or manipulating your mind
like a villain in a movie.
And sometimes it is that. It really is.
I find that most of the time.
That's probably fair to say, especially in the immature part of emotionally
immature relationships. Gaslighting isn't a master plan.
It's not strategic, but it is defensive and it is impulsive and it's immediate.
It's what happens when someone's ego is so fragile. Their sense of self is so
shaky that the thought of being wrong or causing pain feels unbearable.
So rather than sit in that discomfort, their brain does something fascinating
and tragic all at the same time.
It rewrites reality to protect them from the emotional pain of accountability.
You can think about it like this. If I admit I said something hurtful or that
I forgot something important, I will die. I will be abandoned.
I would have to confront uncomfortable feelings, guilt. There probably would
be a dose of shame, imperfection.
And for emotionally immature, narcissistic individuals, those feelings don't just sting.
They threaten their entire existence, their sense of self, because it's based
off of a false narrative.
So their brain goes into self-protection mode. It edits the story.
It rearranges the timeline. It smooths over the rough edges until they can look
at themselves and think, no, I didn't do that. You must be mistaken.
That must have been something that you remember, but I didn't say it.
They aren't always aware they're doing it. It's automatic. It's impulsive. It's reactive.
But the impact is the same. You doubt your memory, your perception,
your sanity. And that's what makes gaslighting so destructive.
You bring up something that hurt you, an event, a comment, a boundary was crossed.
And instead of curiosity or empathy, you're met with a contradiction or a dismissal.
And it's even turned around on you.
If you're familiar with the acronym DARVO, deny, accuse, reverse the victim
and the offender, you might bring something up and it's not only denied,
but now you're blamed for it and you find yourself apologizing.
You might hear that never happen. You're overreacting. You always twist things.
You need to calm down. You're too sensitive.
And those words in and of themselves can sound small, but their effect is massive.
It's part of the death by a thousand cuts. Because every time you're told your
reality is wrong, your brain learns, maybe I can't trust myself.
And over time, that learning sticks. The stories we continually tell ourselves we believe.
It changes the way you think, the way you remember, even the way that you feel
the emotions in your body.
To the emotionally immature person, gaslighting feels like self-preservation.
Their nervous system interprets disagreement as danger and an attack.
Not because you are attacking them, but because being wrong feels like annihilation.
So they twist the story not to harm you necessarily, although there are examples where that happens.
But then we're starting to dip
more over into the psychopathy part of the personality disorder spectrum.
But it's more to keep themselves from collapsing under shame.
It's like watching somebody caught in this emotional earthquake.
Their reality starts to shake.
And instead of grounding themselves, they throw the blame at you,
hoping that by destabilizing your world, then theirs will feel steady again.
It's a false premise. It doesn't work. Or if it does, only for a short amount of time.
Because stability built on denial always crumbles. And in the meantime,
you're the one left sifting through the rubble, trying to make sense of what's true and what's not.
I once had a client, a guy who came in just absolutely heartbroken,
not because of an affair or a big betrayal, but it was over something small
that just didn't feel small to him.
He had said that years ago, early in his marriage, his wife had told him that
she did not like long emotional texts and he needed to keep those to conversations
with her, but yet he could rarely find time to connect.
She was always busy, always on her phone. He had stopped sending them for nearly a decade.
He would type out things that he wanted to say, moments of connection,
gratitude, vulnerability, and then he would delete them or would keep them on a note.
And he was thinking he's respecting our boundary and we'll talk about this later,
but then later wouldn't happen.
So one night after years of silence, he brought it up and he said how much he
missed feeling close, how he stopped sharing that way because he remembers very
vividly and clearly when she had asked him not to.
And she looked at him totally calm and said, I never said that.
He was stunned because he remembered that conversation in vivid detail,
the setting, the tone, because that is why he hasn't done what he had done for
so long, texting her emotional texts.
And some were heavy and some were beautiful and amazing.
But it sounds like in a moment where she did not like the way that felt,
she said, I don't want you to ever do that again. And he respected that.
That was just something she said in the moment, because when she said,
I didn't say that, he genuinely wondered, did I imagine that whole thing?
Because she sounded so certain. She sounded so confident.
That's the power of gaslighting. It doesn't just distort one memory.
It makes then you question your ability to remember anything.
Now, what's happening inside the emotionally immature person's mind when they do this?
Why do they seem so believable? And in this case, even serene when they're rewriting
history right in front of you.
This is one of my favorite but not talked about enough concepts of psychology, confabulation.
Sounds like a fun board game, but confabulation is when the brain fills in gaps
of memory with details that feel true even if they aren't.
It's not lying necessarily in a deliberate sense. It's more like the mind's
desperate attempt to create a story that feels coherent.
They start to unconsciously invent a version of events that keeps their self-image intact.
It's not necessarily about deceiving you, but it's about them protecting themselves,
about staying intact for themselves.
You can think of it like a psychological patchwork job.
When the emotionally immature person feels shame or gets called out or senses
that their image might crack, their brain rushes to cover that exposed spot.
So they pull whatever material is nearby, a half-truth, a memory fragment,
a new justification, and they stitch it right over the gap. It's quick and it's
messy, but it holds for the moment.
And that's how their entire sense of self starts to look like a patchwork quilt
made of old scraps from every era of their life.
There's a square from when they were the golden child, one from the breakup
where they were the victim, another from a job where they needed to be the expert
and their boss didn't appreciate them.
Each patch serves a purpose. Each one says, see, I'm good. I'm fine.
I didn't do that. I didn't say that. It was never my fault. That was your problem.
If you've ever seen a real patchwork quilt made of old t-shirts and jeans,
maybe even a retired leather jacket, you know that it tells a story.
Every piece came from a different moment, a different version of that person.
But when it's all stitched together, it doesn't tell one coherent story.
It tells many, layered and overlapping and often contradictory.
That's what it's like inside the emotionally immature person's mind or world.
Their self-concept is stitched together from whatever narrative helped them
survive in that moment. And it is not consistent.
If they're around people who admire them, they'll sew on a confident, accomplished patch.
If they're being challenged, they'll grab a victim patch. If somebody questions
them, they'll reach for the authority patch or sometimes the,
I'm just trying my best patch.
Whatever they can find that helps them stay in that one-up position.
Whatever keeps them safe from the unbearable feeling of being wrong or small or at fault.
But here's the cost. That constant patching means that they're not going to be a victim patch.
Consistent. Often they can't be dependable because consistency would mean owning
one unified identity, one solid but flexible sense of self.
And that would require acknowledging the pieces that you've tried to hide.
So the quilt keeps growing stitched with contradictions. And to them,
it looks like strength and adaptability and even charm.
But to those around them, it's chaos because you don't know which version you're going to get.
Now, other people that have patchwork quilts as well, they often find that person
with the bigger patchwork quilt an authority figure or someone sent from God
himself because it feels so familiar.
But then to those of us that would love consistency, would love honesty, would love truth,
then that patchwork quilt version of a person is really difficult to have a
relationship with or a conversation with or to read about the things that they
do because the lack of consistency is overwhelming at times.
That's where the emotional confusion comes in because you can't connect deeply
with somebody who's constantly changing fabric just to stay intact.
Because here's the deeper truth.
They don't experience reality directly the way most people do.
Or at this point, I'm starting to wonder if it's actually less people who desire
more of a solid sense of self-consistency, honesty, and the truth.
In this scenario, the emotionally immature experience it through a lens of the false self.
That forms in childhood. It's the version of them that learned early on,
I have to be perfect to be loved.
So their identity becomes built around protecting that illusion of perfection,
of being right, admirable, blameless, in control.
The person who solves everything, fixes everything, is never wrong.
And their immaturity just comes screaming out, name-calling,
anger, resentment, gaslighting.
The false self is fragile. It cannot tolerate contradiction or shame.
So whenever reality threatens it, when somebody says, you hurt me,
or you forgot, or that isn't what you said before, their psyche scrambles to repair the story.
And that's where confabulation comes in. And they confabulate in real time.
They start to unconsciously invent a version of events that keeps their self-image intact to them.
It's not about deceiving you. It's 100% them staying intact for them.
To the outside world, these stories look like lies.
To the partner on the receiving end, they feel like betrayal.
But to the narcissist or the emotionally immature person, the new version of
events is entirely real to them. They believe it in real time.
They may not consciously remember what happened but their brain insists it couldn't
have gone any other way than this way because if I did it.
The way that you think I did it, I'd be the bad guy and I'm always the good
guy. So you're the bad guy. And for them, being the bad guy is intolerable. It's not even an option.
It's not just uncomfortable. It feels existentially threatening.
So their mind bends reality, reshapes memory, the truth, even erases emotional
moments that don't fit their internal script.
They have to because their emotional survival depends on it.
And unfortunately, people around them are similar.
They also operate from this false self. So it feels that their nervous system
familiar or they're decent, kind, nice people who believe people in positions
of authority are telling the truth.
So if their story switches every two minutes, there must be something that they
are missing. But they need to put their faith and trust in this person because
they're in a position of authority.
That's why these stories, these confabulations are so inconsistent.
Yesterday's version of reality contradicts today's, but they don't notice because
they were never emotionally present in those moments to begin with.
They weren't truly connected to the feeling, the empathy or the relational meaning of the interaction.
They were connected to how it made them look and how they felt in the moment. Them.
That's where the narcissism comes in. That's where the immaturity, the selfishness.
That's why you can't reason your way into a shared truth with them because they're
not defending facts. They're defending identity.
And the moment you understand that, you stop trying to win the argument and
start focusing on protecting your own clarity.
That's the moment that you start to wake up, to move forward,
because you can't build connection with somebody who's rewriting the story while
you're still living in it.
So at this point, I think it's easy to say, okay, I get it. Emotionally immature
people, they rewrite reality.
But what continues to make this so confusing and so damaging is that your body,
your central nervous system gets pulled into that distortion as well.
So this is where we turn to the field of interpersonal neurobiology, pioneered by a Dr.
Dan Siegel. And I cannot get enough of Dan Siegel's work currently of co-regulating our emotions.
It gives us such a clear lens because the truth is our nervous systems are constantly
communicating with each other.
When you spend enough time in close proximity to somebody, a partner,
a parent, a boss, your nervous system starts sinking to theirs.
It's called co-regulation. Now in healthy relationships, co-regulation feels like teamwork.
Each person can lean on the other person without losing themselves and you can
come home from a hard day and your partner's calm helps regulate your stress.
It's like at times you're going to take turns being the steady one.
Sometimes you'll both feel steady, but if one of you feels dysregulated,
the other one is that calming presence.
But in emotionally immature relationships, co-regulation often turns into dysregulation
because one person typically ends up doing all the emotional labor because as
it is passed over or diffused onto that person, typically the pathologically
kind person, then they will take care of it.
They will handle it. Then the mood of the emotionally immature or narcissistic
person sets the tone, their comfort dictates your peace, and your body learns that pattern.
And when you live like that long enough, your nervous system begins to stay
on high alert. It's always scanning for emotional danger.
So you start anticipating tension even before it arrives. You're not even aware
of it because this is happening at the subconscious emotional level.
Your heart rate rises when their car pulls in the driveway.
Or you start speaking carefully, very cautiously, editing yourself mid-sentence
because you realize, I don't want to say the wrong thing.
That's not even overthinking. It's actually your body adapting to this chronic unpredictability.
And over time, your brain begins to override your own signals.
And you stop trusting your instincts because when you did, somebody told you
that those instincts were incorrect.
You stop noticing your gut reactions, your gut feelings, your visceral reactions
because they were turned against you.
You stop believing your emotions because they were labeled as too much.
That's not weakness. That's a version of neuroplasticity.
Your brain literally rewires itself to survive. in an environment where your
reality is inconsistent and ultimately unsafe.
So when you finally start waking up, when the fog lifts and you begin to see
the truth, your mind and body aren't just confused, they're now disoriented.
Because they've spent years sinking to someone else's emotional chaos,
and now you're trying to find your own rhythm.
And that's why it can feel confusing. It can feel like vertigo.
That's why you question yourself. That's why your body sometimes doesn't believe
what your brain knows to be true.
But the beautiful part, the part that I want you to hear loud and clear is that your body can relearn.
Your nervous system can find its rhythm again. And every moment you choose the
calm over chaos, every time you set a boundary and you leave a situation that
would normally cause you to dysregulate, every time you trust your gut over
somebody else's denial,
you're sowing a new pattern, one that's consistent.
It's grounded and over time becomes authentically yours and who you are.
So now imagine living in that kind of nervous system chaos for years or decades,
constantly walking on eggshells, constantly trying to predict which version
of somebody that you'll get today.
That kind of prolonged emotional stress doesn't just wear you down.
It reshapes and rewires your brain.
When you live in a state of chronic relational stress, the kind that maps onto
what's often called complex post-traumatic stress disorder, or CPTSD,
your body never really comes down from this high alert.
Your stress system, the one that's supposed to spike in short bursts to keep
you safe, it stays revved up like a Ferrari engine that never turns off.
And when that happens, it starts to affect one very important part of your brain, the hippocampus.
The hippocampus is a little seahorse-shaped region that helps you form new memories.
It helps you store memories, short-term memory, and it keeps track of context,
the where and the when of life events.
But under chronic stress, that area gets flooded with stress hormones like cortisol.
And so over time, it literally starts to shrink, and its communication with
the rest of the brain becomes disrupted.
And that's why people who live in these chronic states of stress and worry and
anxiety or people that are suffering from CPTSD often describe their minds as
foggy and their memory is not good and their memory is really bad.
They'll say things like, I know we had a conversation, but I just I can't seem
to find it in my head or remember the feeling, but not the details or everything
from that time just kind of blurs together.
And it's not because they're careless or too emotional, but it's because their
brain has been in survival mode, storing threats, not details.
Your mind can't record clearly when it's trying to keep you safe.
And that's where this gets even more fascinating.
And hopefully it starts to sound hopeful because that same mechanism that wires
the stress pattern into place is also what is going to help you unwire it.
And there's a phrase in neuroscience. You've probably heard it.
I love quoting it whenever I can. The neurons that fire together wire together.
And it actually comes from a psychologist, Donald Hebb. And it basically means
that every time two neurons activate at the same time, then the connection between
them gets stronger because the brain loves efficiency. It loves to skip steps.
That's why we form habitual patterns of thought or behavior,
because it takes less electrical activity.
So if certain thoughts and emotions and reactions happen together enough times,
your brain says, I got it.
These are linked together. And before long, they fire automatically together.
Now let's connect this all back to the emotionally immature relationship.
If you've spent years in a dynamic where your partner's sigh means danger or
their silence means that I know where this is going, but pretty soon I'm going
to have to smooth things over and that could mean whatever it's going to mean.
Your brain has created a shortcut.
Sigh, tension, appease, temporary calm.
And that sequence becomes a very well-traveled highway in your nervous system.
And your body starts running that loop before your conscious mind even joins
the conversation. That's when people will say things like, it's like my body
was reacting before I could even think.
The more you travel that route, the faster and smoother it gets.
That's neuroplasticity at work, but it's going in the wrong direction.
And the same goes for your memory. Each time you doubt yourself and then apologize
for getting it wrong, your brain wires that shame loop a little tighter.
Disagree. Get invalidated. Doubt self.
Apologize. Brief relief. Rinse and repeat. Now your brain associates self-doubt
with safety, because that's when the conflict ends, at least temporarily.
So the good news, you can rewire that same brain that learned to associate appeasement
with safety, that keeping the peace is safe, can learn a new story.
But it does take repetition, and it takes intention, and you have to be deliberate.
It's conscious repetition.
In the opposite direction. So every time you pause, instead of explaining,
every time you breathe, instead of defending, every time you say,
that's not my memory, instead of collapsing into an apology,
you're running new neural circuits.
You're teaching your nervous system that calm can come from truth, not from shrinking.
You're weakening the old wiring by refusing to keep firing it.
Now, the reason this all feels so difficult to break, or the reason your brain
keeps wanting to go back is something called intermittent reinforcement.
It's the same principle that is associated with a trauma bond.
It's also the same principle that goes into how we train a pet or why slot machines become addictive.
Because when you occasionally get a reward, a kind word, a scratch behind the
ear, a good day, an apology that almost feels real, your brain releases dopamine
and it lights up like, maybe this time it'll work.
So that unpredictability is powerful. It keeps you chasing the high of connection,
even when it's hurting you.
And that is why trauma bonds are so strong, because your body remembers those
rare moments of warmth, the honeymoon phases, the laughter, the relief after
chaos, and it keeps searching for them over and over again. It's not weakness, it's a conditioning.
Your nervous system learned that love comes through tension,
relief, and then tension again.
And that cycle becomes the emotional rhythm that you unconsciously seek,
even if it's destroying you.
But here's where the healing begins. When you start to notice the cycle,
when you can name it, you're aware of it, you can start to create space between
the cue, the stimulus, and the response. And in that space, you do have power.
You'll have power to breathe, power to ground, power to stay still,
power to remind yourself this feeling of panic isn't proof that I'm wrong.
It's proof that my body is learning something new.
That's neuroplasticity also. That's the sound of your brain rewiring itself for peace.
If the early parts of this episode have felt heavy, here's where I hope we can move toward hope.
Because the same way your brain learned chaos, it can learn calm.
The same way that it learned to brace for danger, it can learn that connection can feel safe again.
Dan Siegel gives a beautiful roadmap for healing. He says, we are creatures of connection.
From the moment that we're born, our nervous systems are wired to link up to somebody else's.
A baby doesn't know how to regulate their emotions on their own,
so they borrow their caregiver's nervous system. So when the baby cries and
the parent rocks him, hums softly, makes eye contact, that's co-regulation in
action. That's healthy co-regulation.
The body learns when I'm upset and someone calm shows up, I survive.
That process doesn't end when we grow up. As adults, we're still regulating
through connection, through laughter from a friend, a hug from somebody that
we trust, even a kind voice that says, hey, it's good to see you or that makes sense. You're okay.
Our nervous systems are constantly scanning for safety and looking for cues.
And when we find them, our body settles and our breathing slows and our mind opens.
Healthy co-regulation feels like teamwork. It's not just about one person being
the calm one. We're taking turns.
It's this rhythm of sometimes I hold you steady. Sometimes you hold me.
And that's what it can look like in real life.
You come home from a stressful day. Your partner notices the tension.
They don't rush to fix it.
They'll sit beside you and they'll maybe put their hand on your shoulder and
say, tell me about your day.
They didn't want advice. They just wanted your presence.
You're anxious before a big presentation and your friend says,
hey, you got this. You've done harder things.
Their tone, their calm, helps your body remember your capability.
That's healthy co-regulation. Those are nervous systems that are starting to
sync together in safety. And that is what builds trust.
That's what strengthens your ability to self-regulate. But in emotionally mature
or narcissistic relationships, co-regulation turns one-sided.
So instead of shared steadiness, it becomes emotional management.
You start carrying both backpacks and they are full of rocks.
You carry them both nervous systems, yours and theirs.
Their mood dictates your peace. Their withdrawal or their anger dictates your
anxiety. You might find yourself thinking, if I can just say the right thing,
if I can just be in the right way, if I can stay calm, maybe they won't explode.
If I'm patient, maybe they'll finally hear me.
That's not co-regulation. That's self-abandonment in the name of hopeful stability.
And your body learns that connection equals vigilance. Over time,
it'll say, stay small to stay safe.
Over time, when you're no longer in that relationship, your nervous system still
expects the next emotional explosion.
So you find yourself tense around new people, even safe ones,
because your body hasn't learned. that peace can last.
Back to the good news, your nervous system is remarkably adaptable.
It can learn through new experiences that consistency doesn't have to be dangerous,
that calm doesn't mean disconnect.
And those lessons don't have to come from a romantic partner.
You can begin to retrain your nervous system through small, predictable,
intentional, safe conversations. A therapist who stays grounded when you start to spiral.
Or a friend who texts you back consistently, even if it's just for a quick check-in.
Or a pet who curls up beside you every single night. or a community where you
can show up as yourself without walking on eggshells.
Each of those moments gives your body proof that connection can exist without chaos.
That love doesn't have to come through tension and then relief and tension and
relief. That it'll come through steadiness.
And that's how healing really starts.
It isn't these big epiphanies or aha moments. It's quiet repetition.
Each safe moment is like laying down a brand new neural track.
And over time, your body begins to prefer peace over unpredictability,
presence over performance.
Because healing from emotional immaturity or narcissistic abuse isn't just about
understanding what happened.
It's about retraining your body to trust safety again.
You're teaching your nervous system a new language, one that sounds like,
I can be calm and still be loved. I can disagree and still be safe.
I can rest without earning it. That's the work. That's the rewiring.
And every small, consistent, safe connection that you build,
Every moment that you stay grounded in your truth, instead of chasing theirs,
that's your brain and your body working together to learn a new story,
that your reality is valid, that your calm is powerful, and that your safety
no longer depends on someone else's stability.
And once you start reclaiming your sense of calm, once you start to understand
how your body and your brain have been wired to react, then you can finally
begin to use one of the most powerful tools for protecting your peace, gray rocking.
We talked about this a little bit a couple of weeks ago. Grey rocking does get
tossed around a lot, especially on social media, and it's often very misunderstood.
The term came out of online survivor communities that I believe is somewhere
in the 2010s as a way for people to cope with narcissistic or highly manipulative
people, especially when going
no contact isn't possible, which I know is the case for so many people.
So like with a co-parent, a family member or boss, grey rocking might be a really
good way to be able to provide yourself some safety and peace.
The idea was pretty simple if you can't safely
confront or engage you disengage emotionally you become as
uninteresting unreactive and non-emotive as a
gray rock and all of a sudden it's not about winning it's
not about feeding the dynamic because emotionally immature or narcissistic people
thrive on this emotional energy whether it's your praise or your frustration
they need reaction to feel in control so when you stop reacting the game loses
oxygen and And here's where I want to shift maybe the way we think about gray rocking,
because it's not just a strategy to shut down communication.
It's also a practice of nervous system neutrality. It's how you say to your body, we're safe.
We don't need to chase, fix, or prove anything right now.
So when you gray rock from that place, not from fear, not from resentment,
but from self-anchored calm, you're doing something intentional and it can be pretty profound.
You're refusing to let somebody else's chaos dictate your internal state and
you become the regulator that your nervous system never had.
Let's say that your ex texts you something passive-aggressive.
Oh, I guess you're too busy for your own kids again.
The old wiring fires instantly. Your heart races, your thumbs hover over the
keyboard, and you start drafting a four-page response and defending yourself. There's the hook.
That's your nervous system immediately saying, danger, restore safety.
But now you pause, you breathe.
Check in with your body and remember, okay, safety does not come from convincing them.
That is just providing them with a tremendous amount of an attack surface.
It comes from you staying regulated. So your reply, if any, is short,
factual, neutral. I'll pick him up as five as planned.
No defense, no emotional charge,
just clarity. That's gray rocking in its truest form. It's not cold.
It's clear and it's not distant. It's more disciplined.
It's self-protection without self-betrayal.
And absolutely, it will feel at first mechanical.
Your brain screams that you're being rude or you're being dismissive.
But over time, something shifts and you start realizing how much energy you
spend trying to manage someone else's emotions. how much of your day revolved
around not setting somebody off and how light it feels when that's no longer your job.
That's when you move from survival into this self-advocacy, self-leadership.
Grey rocking isn't about becoming colorless. It's about protecting your vibrant
self, your internal colors, by refusing to let it be drained by someone else's
storm, especially the emotionally immature, because you still have color.
You just don't hand them the paintbrush anymore.
If you've made it this far into the episode, there's a decent chance that something
in all of this feels familiar.
Maybe you've been doubting your own memory, or you're walking on eggshells,
or you're wondering if you're the problem. or maybe you've started waking up
to patterns that don't make sense anymore.
Here's what I want you to know. You're not crazy, you're conditioned and conditioning can be unlearned.
Your brain, the same one that once rewired itself for survival can now rewire itself for peace.
And every moment that you choose calm over chaos and truth over confusion,
boundaries over blame, you're literally reshaping your neural pathways.
That's healing, that's actually science and that's you taking back your life.
If you're in that disorienting stage right now where the fog is clearing,
but the ground still feels shaky. Remember this, you are not losing yourself.
You're meeting yourself. And this version of you, the one who trusts your own
memory, who honors your emotions and who no longer abandons yourself to keep
somebody else comfortable, that's actually the real you.
That's the you who is there all along waiting under the noise, ready to breathe again.
And the more you stay with that truth quietly, patiently, courageously,
the more you realize you were never crazy.
You were surviving. And now you're freeing.
If today's episode resonated with you, if you caught yourself nodding along,
maybe even tearing up a little bit, I want you to hold on to this thought.
You're not behind. You're not broken. You're just waking up.
Every realization, every boundary, every quiet moment where you choose peace
over chaos, that is progress.
It's not flashy and it doesn't always feel empowering in the moment,
but it's you building a life that is real.
One choice at a time, developing those neural networks and we'll keep this party train rolling.
Next time, we'll talk about what happens after you start seeing things clearly,
how you rebuild trust in your own intuition, in your body, in your relationships
without falling back into the pull
of old dynamics. Because this waking up process is just the beginning.
We got to learn to stay awake. That's where the real freedom starts.
So until then, sit back, open up the shoulders, take a breath,
give yourself credit for the work that you're doing.
And remember, you are the expert on you.
Your clarity is not up for debate and you're calm. That's your new power.
All right, everybody, have an amazing week, and I will see you next time on
Waking Up to Narcissism.