Episode 398: Recognizing the Patterns of a Narcissistic Parent with Julie L. Hall (Rebroadcast)

0:00Julie L. Hall: All right, everybody, I want to tell you about today's sponsor, Wired for Addiction. And honestly, I am so excited about this partnership. You might remember Dr. Evelyn Higgins from when she came on the show to talk about the biomarkers of addiction. That episode landed in such a powerful way for so many of you. And I really believe in the work she's doing. Here's the thing. If you or someone you love has been caught in chronic relapse, addiction switching, or treatment that only works for a while, the issue may not be behavioral. It may be biological, and that changes everything. Dr. Higgins and her team actually measure the underlying biomarkers driving these patterns, dopamine, cortisol, inflammation, mitochondrial function, and then build a personalized plan to bring your biology back into balance.

0:53Julie L. Hall: She put together a free guide for you. The Biology of Addiction 10 Core Biomarkers. Download it at theaddictedmind.com forward slash wired. That's theaddictedmind.com forward slash wired. There'll also be a link in the show notes. And I want you to know, you are not broken. Sometimes your biology just needs to be understood. And I think that brings a lot of hope. All right, on to this episode.

1:26Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Addicted Mind podcast. We are now on to episode 90. My name is Dwayne Osterland and I'm your host and I'm the founder of Novus Mindful Life Institute, Family Counseling and Recovery Center in Long Beach, California. If you or anyone you know is struggling with any of life's challenges, reach out to us. You can find out more about us at theaddictedmind.com forward slash help. Also, you can support The Addicted Mind by rating and reviewing us in iTunes. That really does help get us exposure. And I really appreciate it. Also, think about joining our Facebook group.

2:05Just go to Facebook, type in The Addicted Mind Podcast, click join and continue the conversation online there as well. So today we are going to talk with Julie L. Hall, and she is the author of The Narcissist in Your Life, Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free. I was excited to have Julie on the podcast. I actually reached out to her to see if she would be a guest and come on and talk about narcissism. I think that is a topic when people come in and seek treatment about addiction. A lot of times they have grown up in a narcissistic family structure. And due to the trauma that comes with that, they've gone to addiction to be able to cope with that.

2:51So I thought having her on as a guest would be really helpful to people and would be a topic that people would want to know more about. For a lot of people who have grown up in narcissistic families, it can be hard to see the patterns that are there. And so I think her book does an excellent job of breaking that down and pulling the pieces apart and making it clear so that if this is something that you struggle with, you can understand it and understand the impact that it can have on you as well. And then learning how to deal with that because it can be a difficult thing and a challenge to be able to cope with a person who struggles with narcissism.

3:36So I'm excited for this episode and I hope it is helpful for everyone. Let's go ahead and start it. Hello everyone. Welcome to the Addicted Mind podcast. My guest today is Julie Hall and she is going to talk about narcissism and her book, The Narcissist in Your Life. Julie, you want to introduce yourself? Hi, Duane. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, Julie L. Hall. I always throw that L in there because I have a little generic name, but it's, yeah, Julie L. Hall. My book is The Narcissist in Your Life, Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free from Ashet Books. just came out in December.

4:22I have a blog, a popular blog called the Narcissist Family Files. And you can find my articles on psychology today. I'm writing regular articles there lately. I also have stuff at HuffPost and various other places around the internet. Well, great. Thanks for coming on to the podcast to talk about this topic. Thanks so much for having me. I'm happy to be here. So let's just jump right in. This is an exciting topic for me. I don't know if exciting is the right word, but I like this topic. It shows up a lot in my practice and what I do, and I see it a lot in addiction as well. So let's jump in and talk about narcissism and what it is.

5:04Everyone's favorite topic today, these days. Yeah. I think so. So tell me a little bit about what motivated you to write this book. So I am a writer by trade. I'm an educational writer. I'm a journalist, a poet, and I also come from a narcissistic family. So I'm a survivor. And I was actually working on a memoir. And I came to the realization that, wow, what are the major themes in my memoir? Narcissism. and I ended up shifting gears a little bit and writing directly about narcissism, writing articles and a lot of my early stuff was on HuffPost and I launched my blog kind of at the same time and wrote a lot for a while and interviewed a lot of experts and lots of other survivors and so it became a professional journey sort of figuring out aspects of my work writing the memoir, but then it took on a life of its own.

6:06And I came to realize that it was part of my own process of, you know, healing and my own processing in my recovery. I think that sounds like a lot of people do that, you know, they start to write and then they, especially when they survive narcissism in a family structure that they are looking for answers. Right. And, you know, pre-internet, there were very few books. There was very few information available. It's hard to imagine now because there's so much. There's really almost too much. It's everyone's favorite topic these days. And there's still a lot of misconceptions about it. But yeah, I mean, in a very real sense, I wrote the book I needed to read as a younger person.

6:49And many of us as writers, we tend to do that. We often do that. I think that's so common. I think that's common as therapists too. We go to look for the answers for ourselves in doing that for others. Right. And an early book that was important for me was The Narcissistic Family by, so it's Stephanie Donaldson Pressman and Robert Pressman. And they were the ones who coined the term narcissistic family. And that was a profound discovery for me as a younger person. And that sort of laid the groundwork for a lot of other people to move forward with treating it therapeutically and writing about it.

7:24A family in which one or both parents are narcissistic and the family is structured in such a way that the needs of the children are secondary to the needs of the parents. And a lot of dysfunctional families are set up that way. That's kind of sort of the definition of the dysfunctional family. But in the narcissistic family, there are differences that are unique to the narcissistic family as opposed to the alcoholic family or other addicted families or religious extremism or other mental health issues. Okay. Well, let's, because we, this word narcissism is thrown around a lot, like you said, and can we talk a little bit, just what does that mean?

8:08And when we say narcissistic and yeah, what does that mean? Yeah. So narcissistic, it's often misunderstood as egocentric, egomaniac, somebody who's extremely self-focused, arrogant, superior. And those are behaviors of the narcissist. But the underlying issues, which are, you know, there's an underlying sense of profound vulnerability, shame, and a sense of inferiority and worthlessness. That's the underpinnings of the disorder and what happens with a young person developing narcissistic defense mechanism. So it's really a defensive coping structure. And a child who begins to develop that coping style, they develop an exterior kind of persona, personality.

9:04And the shame and the negative emotions that are really overwhelming for a young person, a young child, they repress those negative feelings, those feelings of vulnerability and shame, and adopt this grandiose persona. a superior, often a bully. They become domineering. Often the narcissistic personality is very domineering and competitive. It's external. They miss out on, they don't develop a stable self-esteem. They don't develop a sense of connectedness and the empathy. They don't experience consistent empathy themselves for whatever reason because of conditional, often conditional caregiving.

9:53And so they, although they're capable of empathy cognitively, they can recognize what other people are feeling. They don't engage emotionally. So they're not actively empathizing on an emotional level with other people and what other people are feeling. So they create a false self to survive this intense feelings of shame and low self-worth and self-compassion. They create this false self that they project to the world and I guess they lose touch with themselves. They do. They repress the shame and they really lose touch with that painful piece of themselves. And that externalized persona, that's what you see.

10:39And that's what they continually try to keep in place. But it's unstable and it's something they're constantly having to prop up. And so that's where the domineering behavior comes in. The competitive one-upmanship, the arrogance, the need to constantly compete with others and feel better than, more entitled than. So they're afraid that if they don't do that, they're going to have to experience their lack of self-worth or their shame that is in their, I guess, could you say it like their true self? Yeah, you know, it's complicated and hard to understand for those of us who don't struggle with this.

11:23And even for the narcissist, because that so much of what they're actually carrying around emotionally is repressed. so they're very out of touch with their interior emotional world and they want to keep it that way and that's why the narcissistic personality avoids self-reflection at all costs that's a behavior that those of us with healthy self-esteem and you know we practice self-awareness we reflect on our behavior we reflect on things we've said we try you know we check in with ourselves and And the narcissistic personality avoids that. And along with that, then any kind of sense of responsibility for their behavior as well.

12:07And then I would imagine that leads to that inability to have those empathetic feelings, because empathy is a feeling state, you know, a mirroring feeling state that if they can't be conscious of themselves or experience themselves, then you can't really be empathetic. Exactly. And you can't also be intimate. If you are not in touch with your own vulnerability and your feelings and consistently engaging in self-reflection, having that self-awareness, you're not feeling safe and you're not in touch with yourself enough to be in touch with others. So that intimacy is really not there. And often the narcissistic personality becomes quite good, often very skillful at mimicking certain behaviors that maybe seem like intimacy or interest in others, especially when they're first in a new relationship or trying to win over a prospective partner.

13:05You know, they often engage in mirroring other people instead of actually being intimate. And the mirroring can feel like someone else at first. It can really feel powerful. Like, wow, I've really met someone I have so much in common with and have this amazing rapport with. But then when it gets to a deeper level or really where you have deep connection, that starts to break down, I guess. It does. And another kind of underlying feature of the narcissistic personality is this all or nothing mentality of everything is either good or bad, right or wrong. There's no gray area. There's not emotional nuance.

13:46So the narcissist tends to see him or herself as either worthless or wonderful and others as well. So narcissists idealize other people that they're drawn to. they initially idealize people and they do that in their romantic. So it's not necessarily that they're trying to con you. They really are idealizing you at first. There's certainly manipulation, but often it's this, they're caught up in this idealization of the love object and then eventually gives way to disillusionment, disappointment when we reveal ourselves to be imperfect, which we all are, except in the narcissist mindset, they are perfect.

14:32And someone has to be perfect in order to not be worthless. Right. So it's this terrible dichotomy that is an impossibility for any of us to live up to. Yeah, that's where the narcissist becomes disappointed, impatient, and that quickly develops into contempt, really. Right. And then they project that outward onto the people around them, right? You're either a loser or amazing. Exactly. And that hyperbolic language too. Amazing. Terrific. Perfect. Right. Right. And you can see that play out and there's examples in the world of that as well. There sure are. Yeah. Right. So tell me a little bit, because it sounds like at the same time, when I hear the story of the narcissist and this living in this life.

15:21It sounds incredibly lonely for them, I would imagine, but maybe they're not connected to that. You know, it's a really good question. And I think of it that way too. I think of it as extremely disconnected. It's this very disconnected state. And that's, to me, sort of the fundamental, the most basic aspect of it. And it's tragic because we're all, humans are so communal. We're so social. We really do rely on each other to survive and to survive in every way, physically and emotionally. We have to see ourselves in others and we need each other. And the narcissist struggles with that every day.

16:03And yeah, I imagine it's extremely lonely. If they're connected to that, but they may not even be connected to that at times. Yeah. I mean, they don't know anything else. That's their normal. Right. Unless they, and this is unusual, but it certainly happens, unless they can reach a level of self-awareness where they begin to have insight into there's something not right here. This doesn't add up. Right, right. Yeah. And then they may see it if they have some insight, they can maybe begin to realize like, maybe there's something going on with me. That takes a lot of courage, I think, for the narcissist to be able to do that because now they're saying they're not perfect.

16:43Exactly. And then they get into that scary territory where that persona, that protective persona then can collapse. And then that means they don't get any love. If you're not perfect, you don't get love, I think. Exactly. Yeah. And then they kind of fall into that self-hating cycle and that can happen too. Often people call them vulnerable narcissists. I think all narcissists are vulnerable. So I don't really use that language, but it's that vulnerable place that any narcissist can kind of fall into that pit. And that's actually, that holds the potential for digging out of it, for getting help.

17:19If there's that glimmer, if there's that opening, you know, where they're open to the possibility that they need some help from someone, that they're not okay. And often that happens like if they've lost a job or if a spouse is threatened to leave, you know, that some profound possible loss may drive them to get help and stick with it. And that's a lot what I see in my practice too of people coming in, especially around infidelity, is that they get caught and they realize they're going to lose this relationship. And then sometimes that forces them to look at themselves and maybe ask these questions and confront it.

18:03Not all the time, but sometimes they begin to look at that and that can be really, really, really difficult for them and a long process. A very long process, yeah. And you have to, you know, it's often said that narcissism really isn't treatable. And it's not true that it's not treatable. It really is if you have a skilled therapist who really understands the disorder and who can bring empathy to the work together. And, but, you know, it takes a long time. I mean, people, psychologists I've talked to with experience doing that kind of work, it can take seven to 10 years of dedicated, you know, work.

18:39A consistent relationship with a therapist that can be with them in their own narcissistic hurt or pain or suffering and can mirror that back in a compassionate way, I think, gives them a shot at maybe finding somewhere in there where they can have some kind of connection. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, I was going to shift gears a little bit to focus more on the focus of my work and the book, more about treating people hurt by narcissism, the family members, the partners, the friends. You know, it's devastating to be around a narcissist on a regular basis. And especially if it's the person you're looking to for caregiving.

19:22If you're the child in a family with one or two, one or more narcissistic parents, or, you know, it can be even step parents. It can be a very complex web of narcissistically disordered people in your family. That is a very lonely and difficult position to be in for a child. So let's talk about how this shows up in those systems. Like what does it look like? How would somebody know they're in this narcissistic family structure or they're in a relationship with a narcissist? How does it show up? Yeah, so for a child, that's their normal. And that's what life is. And, you know, often kids figure out that something's wrong with mommy or daddy, but it can take a long time.

20:08And first, what happens is there's self-blame. And that's kind of built into the human psychology. I mean, children who have caregivers, who have parents who, for whatever reason, are not meeting their needs consistently, not giving them loving acceptance and empathetic response, are terrified. They're helpless. And everything rests on getting whatever they can in terms of caregiving. And so there's this kind of built-in psychological mechanism, I think, where children will blame themselves. and in doing so, they preserve that connection with that parent as much as they can. And they also hold out hope for being able to change things.

20:50The mentality then becomes, oh, there must be something wrong with me. I just have to figure out what it is and then things will be okay. And often that child spends a lot of time and energy working on that, trying to figure that problem out. There's also the denial component, which is a huge other mechanism that happens early on because we're simply not in a position to change our circumstances. We're relatively helpless. And so denying the situation, it's kind of like shock. It's when we go into shock initially, we can't really help ourselves in that moment. So our body turns on the shock response to kind of, you know, buffer us from the initial pain.

21:31Right. Yeah, definitely. If we were an outside observer looking in on this dynamic, what would we see if there was a child and a narcissistic parent? What might that look like? That's a good question. So, you know, as I mentioned before about the narcissistic family, it is a family in essence where the normal healthy family dynamic is turned upside down. The focus is not on meeting the children's needs and nurturing them and giving them increasing freedoms, but also creating a protective, safe environment in which they can experiment and grow. Instead, the narrative, the dominant narcissistic parent, and meeting the needs of that parent, which are constant, and it's a daily drama.

22:23And when I say narrative, there are different narratives that can play out depending on how the narcissist defines him or herself. Maybe the narcissist is an amazing athlete or a great business person or really funny and charming and everyone loves or an intellectual, whatever it is, everybody sort of moves around the narcissist, jockeying around, trying to avoid attack, trying to avoid shaming treatment, projection, criticism, and protecting the narrative that domineering narcissistic parent has set up. Dad's the smartest person around. Dad's brilliant. Whatever dad says must be true. It must be right.

23:13Or if I don't really agree with dad, I have to pretend that I do anyway, because if I dare to disagree, his wrath will be directed at me. So in a way, everybody's in service of this, what we were talking about earlier, this narcissist's fragile sense of self or shell. Everybody's in service to protect that. And if you challenge that in some way, accidentally or purposely, you're going to, as a child, you're going to maybe get shamed or you're going to lose love or they're going to withdraw or they're going to do something that's going to punish the child to make sure they get keep that frame solid is that right and you know in any way being perceived as competing also with that parent if you maybe distinguish yourself academically and your parent is the one who's supposed to be the big shot brain that can be perceived as a threat and so in that narcissistic family system, there are often roles that play out as, you know, and that often happens in dysfunctional families in general.

24:20But in the narcissistic family, there are some unique aspects of those roles. And the primary roles that tend to play out are scapegoat and golden child. And these roles are particularly prominent and common because they're reflections of that extremist dichotomy in the narcissist mindset of either you're worthless or wonderful, you know? And so it's this idealizing or devaluing dynamic. And the kids then, the narcissist is so self-absorbed, they're continuously projecting their own feelings and thoughts and beliefs onto those around them, particularly those who are closest, family members. And the children then become projections of their own inner drama of, you know, that shamed self, and then that idealized superior self.

25:18So the golden child then becomes that idealized place on a pedestal and can do no wrong and is often quite spoiled. And both roles are, neither role is golden. And then the scapegoat, you know, is can do no right. And the scapegoat is to blame that somehow the narrative works its way into blaming the scapegoat for whatever happened, whatever's going wrong for the family that week or that day. And somehow it ends up in one way or another, becoming the responsibility of that scapegoated child. And so that those children are left in the lurch with that. It's an extremely, I mean, the scapegoat role in particular is such an isolated, lonely role.

26:06And, you know, the golden child is more of an enmeshed, often the narcissistic parent, especially the very domineering narcissistic personality is, you know, can be extremely engulfing of that favored child. So that child has struggles to individuate. They're not given permission to individuate. They're not allowed to develop their own interests, their own passions, their own ideas. It's a trap. I think of it very much as a trap. But it comes with privileges. So it can seem like a very, you know, something that all the other children than the family envy. And the golden child often feels very special.

26:51Right. Yeah. So it's a very confusing experience for that child because they're told they're superior and they're given special privileges and they're often, you know, they're often not held to accountability and they're not made to do. They don't carry the same responsibilities in the family as other children for chores, for, you know, jobs, you know? Definitely. So it's a very confusing mix. And I think the golden child is most apt to develop that narcissistic personality too. Right. They can have their own traits of narcissism because they've been praised. They've been told they're special.

27:30They're above everybody else. Exactly. Yeah. So that feeling of fraudulence, like an imposter, then the shame that comes along with that then gets buried and the cycle continues generationally that way. Right. And then, because when people come into my practice, I hear a lot about the narcissistic family and a lot of people who are trying to work through it also struggle with addiction to cope with the leftover legacy of growing up in this narcissistic family to cope with all of that pain. Yeah, addiction is a huge part of this, of the whole narcissistic family system. I mean, it's hard to avoid.

28:13I mean, we're, you know, people coming out of families like this are dysregulated themselves, and they are carrying complex trauma. and it manifests in many ways. And one of those ways, one primary way is, you know, addiction, whether it's eating disorders or, you know, substance addiction, sex addiction, you know, I'm a coach and I work with clients, many of whom are struggling with different forms of addiction as a way, you know, the way I see it is it's a loss of homeostasis, you know, when you're in that traumatizing environment. And you're just trying to feel better. You're just trying to get back into that state of equilibrium again.

28:56Right. And you have to find a way to cope with all of the confusion, whether you're the scapegoat or the golden child. It can be rough. It can be tough. It's extremely lonely. And there's a tremendous amount of pain that people coming out of these families are carrying. You know, the complex trauma they're carrying covers, runs the gamut. It's difficulty with sleep. You're hypervigilant. When you're in that kind of environment every day, growing up, you become hypervigilant to the narcissist's moods. When is that parent going to explode in a fit of rage? When is that parent going to humiliate me?

29:34When is that parent going to target me with punishment? And your whole nervous system is kind of recalibrated is how I view it. And so we carry that hypervigilance and it's very difficult to recalibrate and get back to a place where we're not feeling that need to be hypervigilant all the time. And it's an unconscious compulsion that we then get into and carry with us for a long, long time without even knowing it often. And going to that without even knowing it, you know, what I've experienced too, is that as you're dealing with all of this, and you're moving through it, there's almost sometimes can be a discovery that you came from a narcissistic family, which can be overwhelming in and of itself.

30:26Right. And so yeah, often the pattern is, there's depression, anger, confusion, family rifts, there's a often alienation, it's very typical for kids, for siblings to be alienated coming out, you know, moving into adulthood, but there's no awareness of what the core issue is. There's not identifying of the personality disorder that's driving all this. And eventually, now people are coming to this realization younger, people coming out of these families, you know, whether they're processing their addiction or other issues, depression, whatever their anxiety, if they're lucky, they may identify, wow, mom's a narcissist.

31:10Mom and dad are narcissists. And because there is the information out there now, and that's a blessing. And so, yeah. And typically then there's often a long struggle to figure out, okay, well, if they begin to identify, okay, I think maybe my dad or mom as a narcissist, that can take quite a while because that denial mechanism is so strong. And that self-blame, which the narcissistic parents reinforce every day in their children, that they're at fault, they're to blame. So that's been reinforced since day one and taking responsibility for things that the children were never responsible for or capable of handling in the first place, but nevertheless try to handle.

31:56So those kids are often extremely overburdened. They fall into roles of caretaking and codependency and perfectionism, the self-sabotage. It's all there. It all plays out. So how do you begin to help someone who is on this journey and they begin to discover that they've come from this narcissistic family structure. So yeah, I would say that that denial component is a really big obstacle. When I work with clients, sometimes they've already worked through that quite a bit and they've done a tremendous amount of research and processing around that, but they still struggle with it. Even those who have been processing it for years and reading a ton, still are struggling with that compulsion to blame themselves and question and trying to preserve that parent as that godlike figure that, no, they really do love me, that we all need to feel that our parents love us.

33:02That's such a fundamental. I was thinking like on that topic of denial, this is what my thought about it was, is that as human beings, as children, we're biologically wired to get our parents love because we don't receive our parents love we're dead we're dying we're going to be left in the field I mean so we're going against this strong biological urge to differentiate and to face that denial I think that's one of my thoughts about I don't know if you I see it the same way yeah and it makes sense it makes a lot of sense that way we can preserve some relationship with that parent, you know, but in adulthood, that denial mechanism then becomes self-defeating.

33:47And it's something we have to overcome in order to grow and come out of that to suffering and move on and heal. It's essential. It's the first thing we have to do. The first step is coming out of that denial and really looking, taking a hard look at that origin family and those parents and being willing to acknowledge the ways in which they hurt us and couldn't love us. Right. And there can be a lot of grief and sadness about that too, letting that go. Right. And it's a grieving process, absolutely a grieving process. And all this, you know, the stages of grief, which are really states, they right or wrong way to grieve.

34:26We grieve in and out of all the states of grief in and around those states, and it can take a long time. And And to some degree, I see it as a lifelong process, but there's so much progress that can be made once we begin to move out of that denial and start really looking at this look at what we've been through and the self-beliefs we're carrying that are false. And we all come out with coping styles. And, you know, so many of us come out with a codependent kind of style where we end up recreating those relationships with narcissistic people in our own lives as adults, whether it's a partner or friends, often it's all of the above.

35:09and until we're able to come out of that denial and really start processing and becoming self-aware about it, we're going to repeat those patterns in our relationships. Right. And that takes, I think, a lot of work. I think that takes someone you can talk to, a good therapist to work through that because it can be very overwhelming. And therapy has a huge role to play in this. The therapy issue is a complicated one with narcissism because Unless a therapist is very well educated and trained in this disorder and in working with people who have come out of families or relationships with a narcissistic personality, they may not really fully grasp what that person has been through.

35:54and often there can be inadvertent gaslighting or encouraging. In some cases, many of my clients come to me having been through therapy. Some of them have had terrific therapists who get it and who really help them. And then some have had a series of failures with therapists who didn't understand the realities, didn't understand narcissistic abuse trauma and what that looks like and what that feels like. And oftentimes inadvertently mislabel or give bad advice like to work on things more with that parent or reconcile with that partner when there's no possibility of reconciliation because the narcissistic personality will not take responsibility for their behavior.

36:46They will not honestly self-reflect They will not acknowledge fault or flaw or any kind of behavior that hurts other people. And they don't have that empathy. They don't care. And that's almost inconceivable to those of us who do care. Yes, definitely. It's almost hard to wrap your mind around because, and I've seen exactly what you're talking happen where a therapist well-intentioned, right? Doesn't see the narcissism because sometimes narcissists are incredibly charming. They know how to do the first reflection and they know how to kind of pull you in. And if you don't have your radars up for that, it's easy to be conned by them.

37:35It is. You know, unfortunately, sometimes, for example, with couples who go into therapy where one is a narcissist and the other is desperately trying to get validation for what they've been through and the therapist doesn't understand and doesn't identify the underlying narcissism at work and the codependency, they may accept the narrative of the narcissist and further gaslight and traumatize the partner. And that is a common occurrence in couples therapy. I've heard many examples of it and it's re-traumatizing for that partner. Yeah, especially for the partner because they get labeled as the one that's crazy, broken, and why aren't they just being understanding enough to this very super reasonable narcissist?

38:26Yeah, that can be incredibly damaged. And often just really, right, and they often actively cultivate a very charming, likable, helpful, do-good or great humanitarian persona. And so many people in their social circle may see them that way, you know, who people who haven't gotten to that deeper level with them. It's maintaining that kind of, you know, helpful, giving, caring, great humanitarian persona in more public sphere, you know, with friends and co-workers, for example, neighbors, community members. But at home, it's a really different reality. And that's where, you know, the narcissist is often extremely rageful and manipulative and unforgiving, punishing.

39:15Right. And so usually they don't have a lot of friends, but people who just meet them on a superficial level, they sound like amazing people. Right. But any more depth than that, they're not really there. Exactly. Yeah. Nobody home. Right. And I think that can be confusing to the victim of narcissists because everybody goes, but they're so nice. They're so good. You know, they're so wonderful. Right. Yet they don't see that underbelly. And that is one of the, and the isolation of the family members, it becomes even, I mean, it's a very isolating experience, because so many people don't really understand narcissism.

39:54And because what you just said, which is that the narcissist, you know, often is very charming and very likable, and goes to can may go to great lengths to be helpful and asset in the community. And the reality is, you know, bleak at home. It's strikingly different. And yeah, it's, so it is, it does create ongoing confusion and isolation for family members. And, you know, you can't talk about it. You're not allowed to talk about it. That's one of the family rules. And even if you try to, maybe people are invested in seeing it a different way. So you're running up against that. So what does, once a person realizes they're in a relationship with a narcissist or they come from this narcissistic family structure, what do they start to do to get better besides breaking through the denial?

40:46I know we talked about that, but then what are the next steps? Well, you know, the education component is really important, you know, educating yourself. And it's so easy to do now because there are more good books now and there, you know, there's so much information on the internet. So it's, you know, it's so important to do that. And I actually also encourage people to, you know, watch shows, watch movies, read books with narcissistic characters. In my book, I have a list actually of some good resources like that. You know, just it helps with that lingering denial and it helps just sort of bring it, it just helps clarify it and it's therapeutic.

41:25Right. Yeah. And you can even watch people in today's world and watch them out there doing this behavior and you can see it. Right. And when you become aware of what narcissistic personality disorder looks like, and you become aware of these patterns of behavior, it's hard to miss it. It's funny because some of my clients after several initial sessions, when they're becoming a lot more aware of what it looks like, they're just kind of blown away because they're like, wow, I'm dissecting everyone and everything. I'm seeing it so much, and I'm seeing how it works at my job or at the church or with my neighbor in politics, of course.

42:09Yeah. Right. Definitely. So as we get closer to the end, what would you want to tell someone out there who might be struggling in these kind of relationships or realizing they're in these kind of relationship, what would you want to tell them? Yeah, it's not your fault. You're not crazy. And the education component, you know, I encourage people to really research it, to really learn as much as they can, so that they can untangle themselves from the confusing web that they've been caught up in, whether it's with a partner or a parent or a friend. It is so confusing. It's kind of the antithesis of what healthy, emotionally regulated people are feeling and thinking.

42:56The narcissist is really operating with different rules. There's a different playbook. And it's important to recognize that and be aware of that to protect ourselves. And it's a grieving process. And don't be afraid of that because you have to grieve to get better. And don't fear that. And often when we've been with in a long-term relationship with a narcissist, we're carrying our own shame, a lot of it, because the narcissist is continuously projecting their own uncomfortable feelings onto others. That's a defining feature of the personality disorder. And so those of us who've been on the receiving end of that projecting anger and negativity and shaming treatment and blame shifting are severely wounded.

43:48It's a very painful, traumatic thing. And so keeping in mind that we are carrying trauma, profound trauma. Children who grow up in narcissistic families have the same brain scans as war veterans. And so recognizing that it is trauma and that there are things you can do to treat that trauma, you need to seek that out. And you need to seek out, it is so important to get therapeutic help, But it's also important to be careful about choosing that therapist or coach. You have to find someone who really understands what you've been through and who understands the kind of trauma that you're carrying, the issues that you're struggling with.

44:30It's also important to recognize that those of us who've been in those long-term relationships with the narcissist, we are essentially codependent. We have our own issues. People, the codependent personality, I see as being on the same spectrum as the narcissistic personality. There are overlapping issues, an over-identification with the relationship, a fear of being alone, underlying shame, confusion about boundaries. Those are some of the commonalities between the narcissist and the codependent. One of the primary differences being, however, that the codependent has more self-awareness, a willingness to take responsibility, and a desire to get better, and empathetic connection with other humans.

45:19So there's hope. It's just a long journey, and sometimes it's really hard. It is so painful, but understanding that it's for real reasons and that there are so many others of us who are also going through it and that it is possible to heal. It is possible to work through this kind of pain and grief and get to the other side of it. And there are redemptive features of that process, whatever the reason for the trauma. It doesn't have to be narcissistic trauma, whatever trauma. When we go through that grieving process, it puts us more in touch with our own humanity in the end. And we become more compassionate, I think, to ourselves and to others.

46:02So we become more connected in that process. So Julie, thank you so much for coming on to the Addicted Mind podcast. if people want more information, want to know more, how can they find you? Oh, yeah. So my blog, The Narcissist Family Files, has upwards of 100 articles that I've written over the last few years all about recovering from narcissistic abuse, understanding it. And you can find me on Psychology Today, Health Post, and I'm also a coach, and you can reach out if you're interested in finding out more about my coaching. You can find information about that also on my blog, my website, NarcissistFamilyFiles.com.

46:42And of course, my book, which came out in December, The Narcissist in Your Life, Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free from Ashet Books. It's available in all independent bookstores and all major book sources. Awesome. Thank you. I will link to all that on theaddictedmind.com. So they'll be in the show notes as well. Julie, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Oh, thanks so much, Duane. It was a real pleasure. I appreciate it.

47:37Tab on the side and share your message of hope. I want to have your voice on the podcast as well. I want people to hear from people who have been through recovery and have seen the healing benefits of recovery. And if you have that message and want to share that, and that's a fit for you, I would love to hear your voice as well. So please do that. All right, everybody. I hope that you have a wonderful day and I'll talk to you on the next episode.

48:33Thank you.