Music.
To episode 73 of Waking Up to Narcissism. I am your host, Tony Overbay,
and I am gonna jump right in today because I've got a lot to get to and some really good examples
of what we're gonna talk about today.
So I am a tiny bit, I don't know, obsessed or fixated or hyper-focused,
on this concept of we don't know what we don't know,
but yet it seems that by default, we often have a hard time simply saying, I don't know.
And I'll go on a couple of tangents here. I've been listening to a lot of the Lori Vallow Daybell trial.
My daughter, Sydney, and I will be covering that more on Murder on the Couch in
the coming weeks because there is so much narcissism there.
I believe there's a very narcissistic family system, narcissistic, magical thinking. Anyway, there is a part where Chad Daybell's wife, Tammy, unfortunately
dies in the middle of the night.
Now, my opinion that he or Lori's brother, Alex Cox, killed Tammy.
But the point being when they interviewed the police person and the coroner that showed up at the scene of the crime
Or at the time it wasn't viewed as a crime. It was just viewed as an event someone had passed.
Chad shares this opinion about what happened and I'm probably getting a lot of this incorrect
But in essence He says that he noticed That she had died after she had fallen out of bed in the middle of the night and she had been cold to the touch
One of the people testifying said something like, Chad told her when she got there that
he thinks that after she died and she started to become stiff, that then there was more
weight in her feet because she was stiff.
So then that weight eventually tipped her out of bed. So she fell out of bed, but here's the thing.
So he believes that must be what would happen if somebody died and their feet are hanging
over the bed that the feet must eventually weigh more and then that person will tip and
fall out of bed. Yeah, thanks Chad. That makes sense to me. So I'm going to go with it. There
comes his memory and now anytime he's probably thought about that memory, rehearsed that
memory, then he's packing it in with all kinds of things that make sense to him. There are
people who enter the crime scene and well, again, not a crime scene. There are people,
that show up and there's this little problem called science. And these are people that
do go or they're first responders and they do this for a living. So they actually understand
the way the body works after death and what he's saying doesn't only just not make sense,
It basically can't happen that way.
So now they know this guy is up to no good.
But he doesn't know what he doesn't know. And he lies. And this is why the process of becoming
more emotionally mature is really about becoming more true to yourself, living an authentic life,
being more consistent, because you are showing up in situations honest. Here's what I know.
Here's what happened, and here's what I also don't know. This is why when you watch interrogation
videos, they are so fascinating because the police have caught someone, they've arrested
at somebody, I'm not saying that they're false accusations made, but for the most part, the
police have gathered a lot of data and they bring somebody in because that person is saying things
that just don't make any sense to the people that do this for a living. I run into this in therapy
often where people are telling me the look at that concept around triangulation. I see over and over
the emotionally immature person showing up in a couple's therapy session and taking the entire
time to just talk about that, you know, he and his doctor were both talking about
his wife. He and all of his friends were noticing these things about his wife and
those are not things that happen in normal everyday life or with emotionally mature people. I remember long ago somebody who I had sent an
invoice to that they hadn't paid their bill. Now my system sends out auto reminders and what is so cool is that it tells me when the person opens the
message says that here's the time that they viewed the message. So I eventually
have to ask this person, hey do you need any additional information or time or
help in paying my bill? And then they said, oh man I haven't even seen a bill.
So, then...
I showed them that they had, well, what I saw, the system behind the scenes showed me
that they had actually at least seen and opened five out of the seven of the reminders that
showed the bill. Now, this client also had wanted me to be blunt and honest with them. And while,
I don't know, I don't have the need to be blunt. I feel like that sounds very dramatic,
but I'll be honest. That's okay. And I just need to be. So I took that as an opportunity in a
future session after they had then paid the bill. And then they had set up another appointment
to introduce this concept that they didn't know that I knew that they had opened the
messages. Now, I probably need to do a better job of using my own four pillars and assuming
good intentions, or there's a reason why they didn't tell me the truth. And I can't just
say they're wrong. And I could say, tell me more. Maybe they don't use that email. Maybe
they had been hacked and people were reading all their messages and he never saw the bill,
all of those things. But when I brought it up to him and then was able to show him how
my system works. Unfortunately, he still couldn't take ownership at first. He saw
that my system showed that five of the seven messages had been open. So he sees
that opportunity and he said, oh no, okay, I see, I see. And I feel like he saw the
one of those that wasn't open. And he said, I thought you were asking me if I
had received a bill on the 20th or whatever day that was. And he said, but I
didn't. And I smiled and I let a little silence enter the room. And then I was
very proud of him because he then just kind of went a little bit more flat and just said.
You know, I just, uh, I just didn't want to stop and take the time to pay you. I guess
it wasn't as important as whatever I was doing at that time.
And I thought, oh, we have a moment right there. But then he quickly went victim and said, geez, what's wrong with me? And I stopped him. And I just said, oh, hey, OK, here's this amazing moment to self-confront, sit with this discomfort and share it with somebody safe.
I'm a safe place. Let's just start from here. And I would like to say that that person saw that as their aha moment. They continued in therapy and now they are completely self-actualized.
They're honest about everything, but no, he continued in therapy for a little bit, but I really do think in that moment
We had a temporary breakthrough, but then darn you confabulation,
He left that appointment feeling validated because I was happy with him But by the time he got home, I think the discomfort kicked back in it couldn't be that he was the bad guy.
I think he eventually went with the he has a lack of time for therapy He had thrown a joke or two out there about man your rates pretty high
but I knew from our conversations prior that he not only had the time but he
also had the money. So it broke my heart that we missed that opportunity to
really self-confront, to really grow, sit with that discomfort, realize how
empowering it can be to take ownership. Now I also think there are very casual
or pedestrian or innocent ways this occurs too. Let's just say that your wife
says, hey why do you think the Johnson's kid dropped out of college and joined
the army so soon? And the husband might say, hey he probably hates college. You know
he was probably going because his parents were forcing him to, so then I bet he did
the exact opposite of what they wanted him to do, and he joined the army, and man I bet that ticked him off.
Okay, or now let's enter the living room of the Johnsons. The son has wanted to go to the army since he was a kid.
The parents have always said, you go, we support you, but he said, I feel like I have to at
least try college, and the parents said, hey champ, whatever you need.
Or perhaps a drug cartel has threatened their grandmother, but they can't tell anybody
or the cartel will murder their grandma. So then the kid drops out of college vowing to become an
army ranger and devote his entire life to planning on getting back at that drug cartel. You can tell
I'm a kid that grew up in the 80s and that was the plot of so many movies. Or he was in college
and he watched the movie Saving Private Ryan and he felt a call to join the army or, or, or. But
the bottom line is nobody knows. But the kid and his parents, and quite frankly, just because
somebody does something in my therapist world doesn't even mean that they necessarily know
why they're doing it. It's more of a check this out then I don't know I dropped out of college I joined the Army.
But back to the husband and wife conversation, if the guy is just being a regular guy, he throws out something like,
I wonder if he did it because he felt like he had to, or the wife says, yeah, I wonder that too.
Or maybe, I don't know, maybe it's because he wanted to get out of the podunk town that we all grew up in.
But the truth is they don't know. But they also didn't really go after each other or try to burn each other's thoughts or opinions down to the ground.
Down to the ground. They didn't have to make one person right,
the other person wrong.
Now, next up, if they have been doing a little, I don't know, air quote, doing their own work.
Then maybe listen to a little virtual couch, a little waking up to narcissism,
and they hear about this concept of nonviolent communication,
and they realize, you know what, we're actually making an observation and a judgment all at once,
and so we need to separate that judgment from the observation.
So then they might bring a little bit more awareness to it and say, but you know, I don't know.
I'm observing that he dropped out, went to the army, there's my judgment, but I guess the reality is I'm not really sure.
And that might be a little more evolved than just both saying, I don't really know,
because they're recognizing, oh, this is what I'm doing. This is why I go to that place of making that judgment.
So now there's a little more awareness.
Now, if the wife in this scenario, let's just say is more emotionally immature
or the narcissist, then this conversation becomes her opportunity to get her narcissistic supply
or to take control or power.
And if I refer to Julie Hall's article that I referenced a couple of weeks ago
on the antagonistic attachment style of the narcissist, then this might fit into competition.
Now, that means we both can't hold our own opinions. So therefore, if you don't agree with me,
if you think I'm wrong, and how dare you, and now I must burn your opinion down to the ground.
Julie said competition. So the competition's another type
of relational antagonistic characteristic of the narcissist.
Narcissists approach relationships oppositionally, viewing other people, including and often,
especially their family members, as competitors for resources.
Those resources may be tangible things, but often they are intangible,
interpersonal resources such as attention, acknowledgement, inclusion, respect, admiration, affection.
I would add to the narcissist or the emotionally mature, for some reason there's this bounty on truth
that there can only be one truth.
So then seeing life as this zero-sum game, she said, in which they can only win if somebody else loses,
or therefore they can only be right if somebody else is wrong,
then narcissists continually work to undermine and one-up those around them,
while asserting their superiority and greater entitlement.
So then typical competitive narcissistic behaviors within families and other social groups include,
comparing, bragging, over-talking, blaming, cheating, exaggerating,
diminishing, excluding, applying double standards,
distorting and withholding information and taking undue credit. So here there might be
exaggerating. There might be, you know, exaggerating, well, I definitely know because I've talked to the
mom or I've talked to the kid or diminishing. Really? You think that that's what they're saying?
But then if we just, I don't know, spin this wheel of narcissistic replies,
let's, yeah, let's go with diminishing. So then the wife might say, really? She says.
You think that he felt like he had to. Well, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
But if you spin the wheel again and we land on mocking, then she might make fun of him
and say, oh, hi, I'm their son. I have to join the army because I'm dumb like my husband.
And then let's go to, let's spin it again, taking undue credit, maybe with a side of
gaslighting, some bragging as well, saying, well, you would have asked me my opinion before just offering yours.
You might know that he came to me and asked for my advice and I said, well, what do you
want to do? And he said, I don't know.
I'm clueless, but I know that you're very smart and wise and that's why I came to you.
So now in my private women's Facebook group, somebody shared a very good example of this
and I asked the group for more examples. So I want to read some of those today.
And in this particular example, the woman was talking about using a particular tool to fix something.
She said she didn't necessarily know about the tool or actually let me let me read this
and there's some things that have been changed for confidentiality's sake.
She said, I got gas lit to the fullest the other day, and I have to share.
My parents had a leak in their roof at their house, and lucky for me, my narcissistic or
emotionally immature husband is a contractor. He arranged for a roofing guy to come check out the roof.
So he called me and he told me that, okay, you can call your dad and tell him to get
on the ladder, clear out the gutters.
Now she said, I don't know why, but I didn't even really know much about what the gutters
do or why that was significant.
And she said, I know that sounds lame and I'm sure I could figure it out, but I truly
just didn't know what I didn't know about roofs and gutters and contractors. So I did
call my dad and I said that my husband said, get up on the ladder and clear out this one
section of gutters before the contractor gets there to look on the roof. And then my dad,
he just said to trust him. Oh, my husband said, trust him. And that had to do with where
the leak was. And it would be better for everybody if the contractor didn't think that the roof,
had been completely neglected. So I called my dad. I relayed the information because
I paid particular attention to the information because I don't know about roofs and gutters and what's going on.
And my dad said, okay, I feel good about doing something.
And my dad wondered, okay, do plugged up gutters and maybe that was part of the problem.
And he knew what the problem was and he knew my husband didn't like looking bad.
So maybe the roofing guy would make fun of him if his own father-in-law's roof had gone
bad because the son-in-law of the year didn't go clean out the gutters.
So we had a good laugh.
So then I call my husband back and I tell him about the conversation with my dad and I thought
we would all get a laugh. And here comes the gaslighting. So he freaks out and he says that
he never told me to tell my dad to clear out the gutters. Now I panic that I just ruined my dad's
chances of getting his roof fixed because I can't do this simple relay of information correctly.
But I've been making an extra effort lately to remember what I say and what he says because I'm
tired of this game. I know he said what he said because I was listening so intently to make sure
sure that I got it right.
I don't know anything about roofs or gutters, then ask me what kind of moisturizer might help
on the dried up shingles on the roof, and I'm your girl. Cleaning the gutters, is that a thing?
So I tell him, no way, you told me to tell my dad to get on the ladder and clean the gutters.
My dad is old, I darn near challenged my husband when he first said it, that you really want my dad
to be on a ladder, but I was giving him the benefit of the doubt, and then he proceeds to tell me that I never listen.
Maybe I was on my phone playing a game at the same time and I made it up, because I don't ever pay attention
what he's saying and I come up with my own stuff all the time so why would he
tell me to have my dad climb up on a ladder and he almost gets me again,
because for a split second I thought I was why was I watching TV maybe a car
commercial came on I was listening to that wait no I was not watching TV it,
was silent at my house because I was listening to my podcast on my phone and
you can't have a phone call and a podcast at the same time okay whoo I'm not crazy she said I almost wrote down the instructions even to make sure I
I didn't mess it up, but I figured it was only a couple of things and I can remember that.
I was listening, I remember correctly, he said it.
But now I'm defending myself. You did tell me that. I don't know anything about roofs.
Why would I make that up when I know what's at stake?
I was listening intently. Why would you say that?
And so now, of course, he lets me know I'm the psycho. Well, why are you yelling at me?
You're the one who doesn't know how to listen and you told your dad something that I never said.
It's fine, it's fine, cleaning the gutters is fine, but just for the record,
I never told you to tell him to do that.
But it's whatever, just tell your dad not to talk to the guy when he gets there
so we don't have any more problems." And then she says, huh, any more problems?
We wouldn't have any problems if you would have told me at any time during the week
that you knew this guy was coming, but you waited until an hour before he was supposed to be there
to call me and tell me to have my dad get up in a hurry, get on the ladder, and get out there.
We wouldn't have any problems if you hadn't ruined the relationship
between you and my dad years and years ago
because you would have been able to actually go there and help.
We wouldn't have any problems if you didn't make me feel like I'm the crazy one
over something so silly." She said, I just realized I'm getting so mad at him.
But then she said, wait, I'm mad at myself for wasting the emotional energy and the emotional calories
and having to make mental notes of our conversations and almost want to download everything to a recorder
to catalog our conversations so that I'll have backup,
when we're trying to have a conversation.
But then she said, I don't think normal people do this.
How did I let this happen? Maybe I am the psycho. Maybe I didn't hear him and said, shoot, he almost got me again.
I can't tell anybody about this. They think I'm crazy. So then she said, thank goodness for this Facebook group.
And she posted to the group. So let me share a few more examples.
And again, the concepts that I really want to bring home here are the things that are very obvious that are happening.
And I feel this is where I like to step into this concept of healthy ego, which means it is based on the real life experiences that you have,
that you are seeing things that you know you are seeing. You are hearing things that you know you are hearing.
And in the past, you might have questioned things. If there wasn't such clear data, I guess, of sorts,
then you might still say, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I didn't see it that way.
But these are examples where you know that this is a thing.
I thought about earlier talking with someone not long ago. His wife was more of the emotionally immature,
and she was just talking about being unsure of what she wanted to do at a particular time
on a place to go on a vacation. And she named a few different places.
Now, she had also left part of her, in her travel plans, had left the family email address
in for the itineraries.
So he had already received an email that said where she was going,
but then she was telling him, yeah, I don't really know. I haven't made up my mind.
And so then he was saying, really?
I just assumed you'd already made up your mind because I received the tickets.
And I received your itinerary. And then she just said, that wasn't me.
And so that was one of those moments where he said, okay, I, I, in the past might've thought.
How is this not you? But he just said, okay, I know that I'm not crazy. I know that that is not
the case. And so these examples where I just want, I want people to hear these examples because,
it's, it's hard enough when somebody has these things, these times where they're being gaslight
about things that, okay, maybe they are questioning their, their sanity, even though I, I feel like
so often this is the emotionally immature person just gaslighting or trying to get out
of a situation to get rid of their discomfort.
They will say anything in the moment to get rid of their discomfort and it will be a lie.
It will not be a truth or it might be a half-truth.
So here are a couple of examples. One person said, my ex likes to say, I just don't really remember that.
And she said a specific example was being at a farm where they would get pumpkins and
this was when their kids were young.
She said, he went to get some food for the family and I said that I would take the kids
and I would find a table to sit down.
So she went, she found the table to sit down. She said, I watched him get the food.
Then I watched him just walk directly over to a random table and sit down and he started eating.
She said, I watched, he was in plain sight and he didn't bother to look around for us.
He didn't even pause for a quick glance.
So as I'm watching this, then I have to pack up all of the things with our little kids,
and then wrangle them over to him. And I said, hey, why didn't you come find the table
that we were sitting at like we had talked about?
She said, I was obviously irritated. And at this point he looked at me and he said,
and this breaks my heart, but he said, F you.
You are being, and he went on, an effing B. And I'm only saying this so I don't have to click the explicit rating.
And she said, and then he threw food at me while I was holding our little kid
and there was another little kid standing next to me. She said, I was horrified.
I cried on and off the rest of the day. he never apologized.
When I confronted him about his behavior later, he said, I don't even remember,
I don't remember what you're talking about.
She said, I agonized over this moment for days, months, and even eventually years, because he
eventually had me believing that I was crazy. That it might have been so insignificant that
why would anybody remember it? And she said, here I am almost 15 years later still traumatized over
it. I certainly will never forget it. It's one of many examples. I want these examples to be heard
because I want people to know that this is a behavior of the narcissist or the emotionally
immature person. And they say whatever they need to to get out of that moment, to get rid of their
discomfort at the expense of whomever. She talked about another one that said that her husband has
denied many traumatizing and hurtful things and the denial is even more traumatizing at times than
the initial event because he would say often, hey, I know myself, I would never do that. So,
then she said, okay, so are you then calling me the liar? And he said, why do you always have to
do that? I didn't say you were a liar, but you are clearly misremembering things because I would would never do that.
She said he loves the concept of word salad. And I said, well, you did though.
So you are clearly misremembering.
And it was very traumatizing me to drag myself across the floor one time to the bathroom
when I was pregnant and I had pulled a muscle and you refused to help me.
You went right back to sleep, you were snoring.
And she said, he just pulls out all these toxic immature strategies
to make sure that he is the objective holder
of the truth on the matter. And to this day says things like,
that I'm the one that has never listened and I haven't been compassionate about his experiences.
She said that I don't know what else I could possibly do. I could list loads of examples of him being anything
but empathetic and compassionate.
And she said, you'd really have better luck getting empathy and real compassion from a barn wall.
And this is where that emotional immaturity is that it's just on full display,
that the person does what they do and they cannot self-confront or sit with any of that discomfort,
because that would mean that they might have done something wrong
and we trace this all the way back to their childhood
and gaslighting is a childhood defense mechanism.
That they grew up in a home and I'm not trying to say that you then just say,
okay, well then I need to not feel the way I feel because you do feel the way you feel
because your body is keeping the score I'm trying to tell you that this is not okay.
That it isn't something that you just have to suck up and get over because tell your body that.
Because eventually this is where people start to develop chronic pain.
They start to have autoimmune disorders. They start to have irritable bowel syndrome.
They start to have high blood pressure. So many things where your own body is saying,
I can't keep doing this.
But from that person, they weren't modeled a parent that was taking ownership or accountability.
They weren't allowed to have their own feelings or emotions, they had to be stuffed.
Or if they got in trouble, they got in trouble. And when you're a little kid
and you get in that kind of trouble, whether it's the physical abuse, the emotional abuse,
the just denying of just kindness and affection,
then it becomes a matter of life or death if you did something wrong.
So you learn at a very young age to basically disassociate and you could not have done something wrong
and now you need to get rid of that discomfort so fast you're willing to just push nuclear buttons,
to then get that person away from you.
And then that's the problem. That's the do you wanna ride bikes problem.
Because then what that means is that then once they get rid of that discomfort,
oh, they feel better.
So then you now are left to carry that trauma and carry it on your own.
And that just gets heavier and heavier. It's this bag of bricks that every single time
is one more and one more and one more.
And they're the ones saying, man, I just grabbed a brick. It's kinda heavy.
Let me put that in your backpack. I feel better. And now come on, let's go on a walk.
So it's just so, so difficult.
There's another person that says in a conversation with their husband about changing behavior
that she was finding very hurtful.
And before she started really waking up to this emotional immaturity or the narcissism in the relationship,
he responded to this request.
She said that he had four separate sentences back to back that included phrases like, I'm gonna need help with,
and I'd love to have your help in order not to.
And she said, me wanting to ask for clarification, knowing that he's told me in the past
that he does not want me to coach him.
Okay, sure, but in order for me to help you, then he interrupts.
I'm pretty sure I never said the word help.
She's dumbfounded. She said four times within a minute or two of his denial.
People that just deny the sentences that they literally just said, that literally just came
out of their mouth. Another person said, yeah, one time my mother-in-law had denied a sentence
she had just said, it had just left her lips. When I said, you literally just said that. And
she said, no, I didn't. I would never say that. And she said, it was the first moment that I
realized I had married into something, this family system that seemed messed up. She said.
Those apples don't fall far from the trees. So this next example is going to feel very specific,
but the person gave me permission to share. They just said, over the years, a lot of situations I
faced were about missing objects. Favorite kitchen knife, garden hoses I bought, outdoor tools,
debit cards, etc. Have you seen the whatever it is or my whatever it is? And then no. And when and
And if I found an item, she said notoriously not where it was supposed to be, or where
I had left it, his reply was, I didn't do it, as if our three year old had moved the
new hoses to the stock tanks.
Fast forward to the last time I caught him. She said I loved to make stained glass mosaics.
Glass is very expensive, and I bought a lifetime's worth of gorgeous glass at an estate sale,
over a thousand dollars worth I'm sure.
We stored it all in a container shed until I had studio space, and then I moved out,
And it took more than one trip to get all of my things moved across the state, and my
glass was a constant worry for me.
On the very last trip, after everything was unloaded, I looked over the glass, and at
least half of it was missing.
So I called him to the basement to ask where the rest of it was, hoping he'd just forgotten it.
And he said in a very blustery voice, this is it.
And she said, it's not, I had twice as much. And he said, this is all, this is everything that there was.
So she said, I pulled out my phone and I pulled up a picture of the hall of glass,
literally piles in stacks and 20 shoe boxes sorted by color.
And he looks at the picture and said, well, I brought it all, I brought everything that was down here,
there was nothing more.
She said, my beautiful glass is long gone now and I think that of anything, this still hurts the most.
It's like the crowning example of the 30 years of lies and denials
that were often about the most mundane things.
And she said, because I had this visual proof of what I was missing, and yet he still denied it.
She said, I'm certain that he decided, and I appreciate her saying he decided,
that I had enough glass and I didn't need it.
So he probably threw it away in the dumpster.
She said, no wonder I thought I had gone crazy. Thank goodness I woke up.
Feel free to use this example, Tony.
And I appreciate so much of that, where she talked about having the visual proof
that it was this thing that seemed a bit mundane and that she knew that he was the only one
that had had access down to the basement or wherever the glass was kept.
And then he just went with, that's all it was.
But he knows, or does he, that he is the one that got rid of the glass, that he threw the glass away.
The only reason I say does he, is I feel like when I really start working
with an individual and you're looking at that concept again
of confabulation and confabulation is just changing that narrative of memory,
to fit whatever the narrative is for the narcissist or for the emotionally immature.
And we all confabulate to a bit and it's been a while, but I know I overused this example
of a client of mine coming in and I thought that they said they were gonna be five minutes late.
They thought that they said they were gonna be 10 minutes late.
This was all in a text exchange.
And then when they arrived, we looked at the text and they just said, I'm gonna be a few minutes late.
So we both had thought,
thought very certain, we were sure that we were right. And I swear to you, I would have taken a
polygraph or whatever that would take. And I would have told you that I saw visually five minutes
late on my phone. And I understand, again, because of the mechanisms of memory, that he and I had had
that exchange on several occasions. And so I had seen the texts before that said, I'm going to be
five minutes late. But then I feel like the difference is then when we were both confronted
with the real data, first of all, we just looked at things humorously and we didn't look at that
as this zero-sum game, that it was a death match, that one of us had to be right and whoever was
wrong then was booted off the island. But we both just said, oh man, I thought it was this and he
said I thought it was that. And then we looked and then I immediately just said, oh, I was wrong,
as did he. That was the mature way to do it. But in this example, this woman's talking about the.
Husband just saying it that isn't what happened. I didn't do it. It wasn't me.
This was all the glass that we had. So then from a confabulation standpoint did
that narrative change in his mind so instantly and does he believe it so
forcefully that then it he does literally think she is crazy because he didn't do it. Because in his incredibly emotionally immature brain and response
that it couldn't have been him. He couldn't have done something wrong. He just did what he did. And so now when confronted on it, then that gaslighting
is that childhood defense mechanism. No, I didn't. And now his brain has to just
lock in. We didn't do it. No, we didn't. We didn't do it. You're crazy. You're
wrong. We didn't do it. We couldn't have done it. So the only way that this could
have happened is, I don't know, you did it or one of the kids did it, but I didn't
do it. So it really is just that crazy making. Somebody responded to that post,
that comment, and I just, I have to just throw this one in there. This person
that my sister-in-law realized that her husband was messed up when she told him,
Hey, can you get the cookies out of the oven?
And went to take a shower and he said, yeah, no problem. So, she gets out of the shower,
the cookies were burnt. They were still in the oven. I can only imagine one of those things
where you get out of the shower, you smell, oh man, he forgot to take cookies out. And she asked
him, hey, why didn't you take the cookies out? And he said, oh, I did. Literally cookies burning
in the oven. And it sounds like she had then ran down there taking them out. So, they were on the,
table or wherever they were. So, then she approaches him, why didn't you take those
out. And he's like, I did. Just so he was so just assuming that, well, they're out. I mean,
I'm sure she didn't do it. So no, I did. I'll take that credit. Which again, it's just part
of that crazy making. There was a comment in the, in the group that you feel like this is the,
like a literal joke. I think I have something out there, a reel or something about gaslighting
being the word of the year. And then I make the joke of, I mean, that's not even a thing, right?
But one of the people in the group said that my ex had looked into my face one point and said,
you know, there's no such thing as gaslighting. That's something that you totally made up.
She said, I just don't miss him. He was a monster. And then I want to share another one. And this
one, I want to go a little bit deeper into and talk about what this, the right way,
in my opinion, to handle something would be.
Okay, so taking us home, we have a couple of different scenarios and not to date the podcast,
also, no spoilers, but if you have not seen the latest guardians of the galaxy movie, and again,
as podcaster evergreen, we're talking about number three, I don't know this could be listened to well
into the future, not like into, you know, the years 2312, or that sort of thing. But we're
going to go with this concept of an amalgamation of several stories. I think we could also throw
an old toy story reference in there where I think it might have been Sid was the the toy taker and
he would put together different toys and then create these monstrosities of them. But so I'm,
not going to create a monstrosity of stories but I'm going to end with two or three that are a
combination of stories because I started to see a lot of patterns from some of the stories and
one talked about the concepts around paying for things and paying for things like car registrations
That was one of the biggest ones and there were also just ones of late credit card bills or.
People finding out that their credit was lower than they had ever thought that their credit was or even
Situations where there might be a wife who didn't even know that she had a credit score
She's been a stay-at-home mom
but didn't realize that that in these scenarios her husband had opened up credit cards in her name and,
What I can understand the marriage therapist part of me that has had a lot of these conversations
And when I throw my four pillars out there where there is that pillar one of assuming good intentions
Or I throw that part B in there when you talk about narcissism or extreme emotional immaturity
That I cannot ask somebody to assume good intentions when somebody is yelling at somebody else or when there's any kind of abuse
but I put that part B in there of or there's a reason why somebody does the things that they do because they maybe never
had the right modeling in childhood and,
Maybe there's I mean honest to goodness if you start looking into the world of psychopathy
psychopathy, psychopath, sociopaths, then you start looking at there's some areas of the brain
that may not actually.
Do what what other other people's brains do when it comes to things like empathy or impulse control.
But that is a two minute way to say here are some combinations of things. And in this scenario,
the one around paying for things, the reason I framed it that way with the assuming good
intentions, or there's a reason why, is I have had situations where guys have opened up credit
cards in a wife's name, and then it hasn't gone too far down the path of negativity. And then
and when it is discovered that the husband has said, absolutely, no, I did it and I'm ashamed.
I'm not proud of that, but it's something that I did as we are financially, we're heading in a bad direction
and I was too embarrassed to admit that this is what happened financially,
but now I wanna be transparent and everything comes out on the table.
And the reason why I wanted to start with that one is there's that, the key thing is that
when someone gets caught and we hope that it doesn't have to be a situation where somebody gets caught,
Maybe somebody feels the courage to then come to their spouse and say,
Hey, I haven't been as honest with the finances or some of the other things
that I need to be, but I'm willing to, to sit with the extreme discomfort,
take ownership and accountability.
And then now this is an opportunity for me to grow me playing the role of the guy in this scenario.
And he's going to be transparent and he is going to be very open, even though
it's going to be uncomfortable because that's an adult mature thing to do is
to be open with your spouse about finances.
And to sit with a lot of that discomfort and then take ownership and accountability.
What am I pretending not to know?
That maybe I don't spend things consistently, maybe that I say that, okay,
the finances look one way when I want something and then they look a different way
when it comes to anyone else.
And that's an opportunity for that emotionally mature person to self-confront and to grow.
So there's that concept around car registration. And there were a couple of people
that talked about examples of getting pulled over and not realizing that their car was behind on registration
because that's something that the husband always taken care of.
There was another one where someone talked about being late on rent or being late on.
Credit card payments. And then the emotionally immature in this scenario will go again with
the husband saying that, Oh, I paid it. I mean, I really, I literally, I sent him a check. You can
go ask him. And then the landlord or the people that were taking the payment would say, we don't
have any record of that. And then the husband saying, well, that's, that's not my problem then.
I mean, that's a, that's a them problem. And the wife in this scenario being the messenger
and being caught in the middle and then just arguing until finally the landlord takes another
check or that sort of thing. And then finding out a couple of the situations, finding out
down the road that the husband had not been honest to the wife, but it put the wife in
a position where she was arguing that, no, we did, we turned the payment in. And so that
can be a really difficult thing because that's the emotionally immature, narcissistic person
wanting to just not have any discomfort, but then putting their spouse in a position where
they are going to absolutely feel a tremendous amount of discomfort and then when they find
out down the road, if they do, that that wasn't really what happened, that can be a big sense It's a betrayal.
And then I'm going to end with one one person had shared that early in their marriage a charge for pornography had showed up on a
Credit card bill that they could not afford to pay and so the wife asked the husband about it
And he swore up and down it was not him
she believed him she went to war with the person on the satellite company the person at the credit card company and,
Finally was able to get the charges taken off.
But the person that the on the other end the credit card company said, okay, I'll do it this time
but we can't do this again." And then this person shared that later down the road he had admitted
that it was him and she was just so embarrassed. And why I put this into this episode where it's
more along the lines of somebody that is insisting that something happened a way that it did
is someone, the satellite company for example, in that scenario that they can look at how often
certain channels or those sort of things are being accessed and that's one where, man, they have the
of the data and they know that, I mean, I guess there's a chance somebody could have hacked
into some system, but most likely that did happen.
And then in this scenario, the emotionally immature husband is putting the wife again in this place
that is just gonna be really, really incredibly awkward.
I'm gonna go a little bit off into the weeds intentionally on the last example.
And this is one that somebody had just shared an example where, and it goes back around this pornography
or compulsive sexual behavior, impulse control disorder, whatever we wanna look at it.
But the person who had the pathologically kind person, the spouse in this scenario,
has never been able to talk about her husband's pornography compulsion,
pornography addiction, pornography as an unhealthy coping mechanism.
She says that her husband has a pornography or a sexual addiction that we are not allowed to discuss.
And that that's the backstory.
So then she talked about a particular time recently where she said out of nowhere,
that he went into a rage and just screamed, You've been so standoffish toward me this last week when you happen to remember that I was communicating with people inappropriately and that that had been well over a year or two ago.
And he said, get over it. I refuse to be treated this way and stop asking me what I'm doing on my phone because I'm not going to take it anymore.
I'm not going to stand it. This is your problem.
And you have a problem with me looking at porn or even reaching out to anybody that I want to reach out to.
So go talk to somebody else about it.
And then I appreciate this had to have been uncomfortable for her, but she said the memory that came up in my mind that I had forgotten about really did trigger me.
And it changed the narrative of what the things that we're talking about now, and it really shed light on more truth.
And she said, we never even talked about it.
And then she said that she had simply asked for some space, some time so that she could calm down her trauma response and not even the fact that they weren't still going to address it.
But she said to her husband, yeah, I might've been a little bit distant
since the time that I was triggered,
but she said, I have made a lot of efforts in trying to just come back to the present,
make things normal with you.
I'm really hurting, I feel betrayed, and now I can't believe that you're telling me to get over it.
And he claimed that she was being disrespectful because he had been working from home,
that she's now bothering him at work, she's gonna affect his livelihood.
And then I was, again, proud of her. She said, hey, you're the one that brought this up to me
on your own while you were working from home.
And then he just unleashed a barrage of explicatives and it really put this person into a bad state.
And the reason I wanted to end with this is I feel like this is such a good example
of something that I don't know if any, Most of anyone knows what they don't know,
but as somebody that works in the world of betrayal trauma, I also work in the world of pornography.
Pornography, that sounds funny if you just put a pause there but even though I have a book called
He's a Porn Addict Now What?
An Expert and a Former Addict Answer Your Questions where I play the role of the expert.
And it has the word pornography addiction in the title, there isn't actually a diagnosis of pornography addiction.
Now you can look at compulsive sexual behavior or impulse control disorder,
but I often talk about pornography as an unhealthy coping mechanism and that people often turn to pornography
when they feel a lack of a connection in their marriage or in their parenting, in their faith,
their career, their health.
So when I'm working with the person that is the person struggling with turning to pornography
as an unhealthy coping mechanism, then we're working on filling what I call those voids in their life.
But that same concept rings true if people are turning to everything from food to gambling
to even sometimes social media or work or exercise.
But when something becomes an unhealthy way that someone copes, then it typically means
that they turn to that when they feel uncomfortable about a particular area or areas of their life.
So when I have someone come into my office and there is betrayal trauma.
And I actually put this in my book that I feel like 25% of the people,
This is just a number, it's just off the top of my head.
25% of the people or so say, okay, fine. I got caught and I'm here and I'm not gonna do it again
but they just need to trust me and the last thing I want to do is have somebody all up in my business or
Looking at my phone or wondering where I'm at now I said I'm done and then maybe it's 66 or 75 percent of people that I work with will come in and then they say,
I am so sorry and I'll do whatever it takes I'll do whatever it takes whether I need to open up my phone or my emails or my calendar or
or put a tracking device on myself,
whatever that looks like because the relationship matters and it means enough for me that I want to make things right.
And then with that person, we can start to work on what the betrayal trauma looks like in the relationship
and we can start working on helping that individual
turn to filling these voids of becoming a better spouse, a better parent, getting more in touch with their faith,
their work, their health, and then they turn less or they feel that draw to the unhealthy coping mechanism
less and less, and then they're able to show up more present in their relationship.
Now there's still a lot of work to be done in the world of betrayal trauma.
But that's from that two thirds or three quarters of the people that I get to work with
that come in and say, okay, I'm willing to work on this, I need help.
I got caught or whatever, however that happened, but I'm here and I'm willing to show up.
But then another 25, or maybe then 33% of people that come in and their immediate response is,
I said I'm sorry, I'm not gonna do it again, and the last thing I wanna do is get to
have this used against me. So in this scenario that I talked about, then here
is this, without me knowing a ton of the backstory, but knowing or having this
person share that there had been some awareness or someone was maybe he was
caught in looking at pornography or turned into pornography as an unhealthy
coping mechanism, but it sounds like they have clearly not dealt with it. And then
here's where I want to jump into the the weeds and share a tangent. So she talks
about being triggered. And we talk often on this podcast about the body keeping the score.
And a trigger is something that just happens. Triggers are things that are not, they aren't
always in our, well, not always, they're not in our control. They're things that can be worked
on. But a trigger can be hearing a song that reminds you of a situation that you were in
when you found out about, in this scenario,
her husband who continually looked at pornography.
I've shared a few different episodes about betrayal trauma over on the virtual couch podcast and I have plenty of examples of people there was some situation once where someone had had a had an affair with with an Asian woman.
And then when he and his wife, I was working with him as a couple, and then they were in a Chinese restaurant.
And then the wife was triggered just by seeing an attractive Asian woman who was their server
And so then in that scenario, then he said hey, I am so sorry I put you in a spot where even if we go to a Chinese restaurant that you feel triggered and
We will do whatever you need to do if we need to get up whatever you need to do. I'm here for you
And again, I'm sorry. I put you in this position, but I'm here and we're working on this
We're gonna get through this and we'll do whatever it takes
So you can see that right there, what a different experience than having somebody that is sharing an experience
where they never even feel like they've been able to talk about the topic and then being told to get over it
and then her expressing a trigger,
and then instead of it being this opportunity for him to heal that wound, help her heal that wound,
this person that he cares about, then he's made her feel worse about it.
And there's a document that I have that's about healing attachment injuries
and this is based off of the book, Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight.
And Sue Johnson is an amazing psychologist and this is what I base my four pillars off of.
Is her models in this book, Hold Me Tight, and just an emotionally focused therapy,
which is the modality that she is founded.
But in this healing attachment injuries, then an attachment injury by definition
is it's a hurt in a close relationship and it's severe enough to really significantly affect the relationship.
So, this could be between a husband and a wife, parent and child, no matter what the
age is for others, but here we're talking definitely about a husband and a wife relationship.
And Sue Johnson goes on to say that we grow close to or attach to people when they help
meet our needs of friendship, companionship, romantic relationships, and we want to love
and trust those that we have attachments to, and we want to be treated well by them.
And when the relationship is good, we can easily forgive little things, and a quick
apology can work wonders.
But when there's an incident that happens that is so big that we could rule this as
an attachment injury, then Sue Johnson says that this is one that is different, that it
needs to be handled differently.
She shared an example, I believe, in the book where when a woman had a miscarriage and she
appropriately responded to the loss as a death of a child, but her husband, however, had
not yet established a relationship with the unborn fetus, nor felt it growing and moving,
And so he had not developed those deep, loving, tender feelings that his wife had.
His anticipation and longing for a child was not in the same place as his wife's.
So then he looked at the miscarriage more clinical, as somewhat of a medical procedure,
and she was absolutely crushed by his lack of what she felt like was empathy and this
denial of her pain and her loss.
So for years afterward, whenever she felt a triggering event, then maybe she would even
and see a pregnant woman or would hear about somebody else's miscarriage,
then her emotions would well up and she would start to feel anger and hurt and she would feel abandoned,
almost as if it was happening in that moment or that took her back to the day
where she remembers having that miscarriage.
And Sue Johnson says, then when our spouse goes off on an emotional outburst
after experiencing a triggering event, we know that there's an attachment injury
that's not yet healed.
So in this example of this person in the group saying that when she felt triggered
and then it brought up a lot of feelings and emotions around this unresolved trauma to her
of this, whatever the pornography addiction, pornography compulsion, or her husband's pornography use,
that it was unresolved, that there is something there that happened that was not dealt with properly,
so then it is gonna come back to her by way of triggers.
That's where we're gonna know that there's an attachment injury,
and it does need healing, and it needs the right tools. And she also says another way we can know
is when we hear about the same problem or issue over and over again.
But here's where things are fascinating, though we don't know what we don't know, but I want
those of you who are maybe in these emotionally immature relationships to really try to step
outside of yourself, not view you as the problem, bless your heart.
But let me take you and let me stay on my train of thought here.
So here's how to start to heal an attachment injury at approximately this kind of level.
And she even says more severe injuries like affairs or repeated significant injuries require
more and sometimes different treatment.
But just this concept of an attachment injury apology alone, I think is brilliant.
She says, first, you must sincerely want to heal all such injuries.
So if I am coming from the place of the husband in this scenario, and this is why I say when
I get that 66% or 75% of the people that come in, if they're coming in, they're coming in
not just to check a box off, but because they really do need help and they're not exactly
sure how to handle this situation.
So first, you must sincerely want to heal all such injuries.
Now second, you must have already changed your behavior or your attempts will not yield the desired result.
So if this person's spouse is still looking at pornography on a regular basis and or still having inappropriate chats
or relationships with other women, then even if they are saying,
I really do want to heal this,
but if they have not changed their behavior, then the attempts are not gonna be,
they're not gonna be sincere, they're not gonna be authentic.
And it goes back to that, they're not gonna show up in a way
that their spouse is really gonna even be able
to trust this process.
So she said the following steps will be written from the point of view that the husband
is the one that caused the injury.
So the next time that a triggering event occurs and ignites your wife's emotions about the injury, stay with it.
Now we already, maybe you can see where we're going here, but if the person, if the husband already has
a really difficult time sitting with discomfort or feeling uncomfortable in general
because this is where the gaslighting comes from.
Then we can already see that we've already said first, The husband has to sincerely want to heal the injuries
and has to have already changed behavior.
So is he working on himself with a therapist? Is he taking ownership and accountability
or is he just going to a therapist and just getting validation?
Sue Johnson said, the next time the triggering event occurs and ignites your wife's emotions about the injury, stay with it.
Bring the entire issue tenderly and carefully to the forefront of her thoughts.
Go over all the events that led up to it, all of the errors made, acknowledge the missed cues.
And to be healing, then your attitude should be calm, humble, soft-spoken, contrite during the conversation.
And it's important to acknowledge that your spouse, your partner is in pain, that they're suffering over this.
And what can be difficult, if I go back from the husband's standpoint,
if he's now thinking though, if he's listening to this and thinking,
okay, but I don't feel very comfortable either.
Like I need her to know that I'm hurting as well, and we'll get there.
Because putting your needs ahead is then part of that emotional immaturity
or being selfish in this scenario of saying,
okay, fine, I'll do this, but you just need to know.
But acknowledging your partner's pain and suffering, and remember, and the focus is on your spouse's healing,
not on your own or your feelings or your image or those sort of things.
And the more that you're thinking about your issues, the less helpful it's gonna be to your spouse.
Next, then Sue Johnson talks about apologizing. Apologize for every little detail
that you're responsible for.
She says everyone. Then apologize for the things that happened that you did not cause, especially if you didn't cause them.
Apologize that they even happened. Be truly sorrowful that these events
contributed to your wife's pain and sorrow.
Now, what does that look like?
In this scenario, it's being able to really sit with your wife and say, I am so sorry
that I put you in a spot where you have these triggers, and I'm not even aware of them,
that I'm sorry that I put you in a position where you don't even feel safe enough
to share these triggers with me because that sounds really, really hard.
And that's what she means by apologizing for the things that happened that you didn't even cause
because you're not even aware of them and you are grateful that she is finally starting
to bring this up to you and you're willing to sit in the discomfort and sit in the pain and sorrow
because you're changing, you're making change
and you want to be there for her.
Now, Sue says, proceed slowly, only go forward when there has been enough time for her to absorb what's occurring.
And then next, let her know what your intent was and what your intent is now.
At that point, maybe your intent was you were hurting and you didn't even have the tools to cope.
And you were reaching out because you just didn't even feel like you could go to your spouse.
And that's a you problem and you've been working on that.
And if your intent was not good, Sue says, don't lie about it, admit it.
And if it was selfish, prideful, controlling, apologize for it.
Tell her how your intent is going to change if it needs to. Now, on the other hand, if you truly felt that your intent was completely pure,
recognizing that with this additional knowledge that you now have, that you still, it's okay to apologize.
It's okay to say, look, I didn't have the tools. I wasn't sure. I didn't know what I know now, but that doesn't mean so.
You need to let this go. It says, so I am so sorry.
And she said, pointing out that your intent was not meant to harm.
It can be a step in the process, but it doesn't negate any of these other steps.
Now, the fourth step, she says, next, tell her how you're gonna prevent things
like this from happening again.
And here's where I feel like people say, look, I'm gonna open up my phone,
I can open up my email, I want you to have access to, you can check in with me.
And this is the part where to the emotionally immature person,
I can only imagine if they're thinking, oh, I'm gonna be this kept person
that I'm gonna be under a lock and key or on a leash.
But that's when there's an unhealthy view of this or unhealthy relationship happening.
I have people to this day that when they would go travel, They would take pictures of themselves,
pictures of the people that were around them.
Thank goodness to how easy things are with a phone these days.
And it wasn't, okay guys, I have to take a picture because my wife doesn't trust me,
but it's more of just snapping a little picture of hey, let me get all of us in here to capture the moment,
or sneaking a quick picture, just, I don't know, at the side of the table or whatever that looks like,
but doing it from a way of saying, hey, I just want you to know here's where I'm at
and here's the group of people I'm with and just thinking about you.
So it doesn't have to be this heavy, Okay, here you go, you happy now?
And in that scenario, again, telling her what you're doing and going to do to absolutely make certain that this won't happen again.
How are you going to be aware that something like this is brewing again?
And share this with her, figure it out with her. And that's the part that's going to probably need to be done in couples therapy and with a lot of discomfort.
And then the fifth thing she says is finally apologize all over again for the issue that you've caused and the things that happened that could have been prevented,
whether you caused it or not.
And then if she's ready, hold her gently and lovingly, let it all sink in.
But he says, but Sue Johnson says, the apology must match the size of the injury because
we don't cure infections with aspirin, we don't cure attachment injuries with a quick
and pitiful, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done it, but now you need to get over it.
And remember that also healing takes time and it takes consistency.
So these things need to be repeated and be patient.
And I love this concept where she says, you will know when the injury is healed because
you will see or hear the trigger and the gun won't fire. That at that point, the healing
will be complete. So the concept here is that when somebody has the right tools, and if
the wife feels like she can go to him and express any trigger, and this is where I tell
my clients, and this is how long I've been talking about this concept, if it'll be dated
here, trust me, but I would say, okay, I want the wife in this scenario to be the trigger
release valve. That when she feels a trigger, that that is too much for her to carry around
continually and just sit on it because if she feels like she can't bring it up
to her spouse then that would be really difficult and it's gonna it's gonna
drive her crazy. But being able to express a trigger and have the husband
have this tool but the key parts again to the tool are he has to be willing
want to hear her and want to heal this attachment injury and he needs to be
doing the work so that then he can be sincere and genuine about saying that he
understands and this isn't gonna happen again. But then over time if the wife
knows in this scenario again. And I have people where the wife is the emotionally
immature and the husband is the one that has been betrayed.
Over time the person that oh the dated concept So I say that the the wife in this scenario would be the trigger release valve and the husband would be the attachment injury
Apology ninja because I think there was a time there probably in the mid 2000s early 2000s where everything was a something ninja
I'm a ninja about it. Whatever it is, and I literally just did my hands in an embarrassing way.
But in that scenario then if the wife knows that I can express a trigger to my husband and then my husband is gonna,
to meet me with this attachment injury apology and mean it, and we're going to feel like
this is a connecting moment, then over time, she knows that if she expresses a trigger,
then he's going to go right through the list and apologize, sincerely go through the attachment
injury apology concept.
And so then at that point, she'll think to herself, okay, I know he's going to be there for me.
So I'm going to sit through this one. I'm going to breathe through this one and I'm going to be okay.
So I wanted to go into that detail because you can see that we are so far from somebody
using the right tools.
And then if a husband in this scenario just says, well, I didn't know, but I feel like
what can be really difficult is the version of I didn't know is man, I'm so sorry.
Yeah, we can talk about it. Maybe we got to go to therapy versus the look, I don't want to talk about this and I need
you to not bring it up.
That that's not a way for healing and that is not going to allow the relationship to
to move forward anytime soon in a way that will be helpful or help the person that feels betrayed to feel safe.
Okay, added a little bit extra on there. We'll call that bonus, I guess.
But if you have questions, I do appreciate the examples. When people hear episodes and they share their own examples,
that would be wonderful. and then we will see you next week.
Music.