Evan Rachel Wood on Surviving Her Abusive Relationship with Marilyn Manson

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
While promoting her groundbreaking role and HBO's smash hit Westworld,
actress Evan rachel Wood revealed a painful truth about her past.
She had been raped and physically abused by a former
intimate partner while they were together. After years of speculation
about the identity of her alleged perpetrator, Evan revealed that

(00:21):
it was Brian Warner, famously known as controversial rocker Marilyn Manson.
Evan was just eighteen when they began dating, he was
thirty seven. Throughout their tumultuous relationship, Evan says she was tortured, threatened,
and terrified for her life. She's testified to Congress and

(00:44):
played a key role in changing California law. She championed
the Phoenix Act, which extends the statute of limitations for
domestic violent survivors. On this episode of Navigating Narcissism, Evan
shared how she escaped her alleged abuser, the actress who
encouraged her to open up for the first time, and

(01:06):
how she's found healing. This podcast should not be used
as a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals
are advised to seek independent medical advice counseling and or
therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition,
mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on

(01:30):
this podcast. This episode discusses abuse and suicide, which may
be triggering to some people. The views and opinions expressed
are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating
in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of
Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. Evan, I

(01:53):
can't thank you enough for coming in and talking with me,
as your perspective as a survivor is remard arkable in
and of itself, but you also use your platform to
change laws, and that is such an important part of
your story and for us to learn from your journey
of survivorship. To me, that's the focus of the story.

(02:14):
So to that end, I want to hear from you,
and you can start talking about what's happened to you
anywhere you want to begin.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
I almost want to start after the abuse and my
experience with narcissism in the aftermath, because I remember going
through a lot of that thinking we don't talk about
this enough, we don't talk about how this feels. You know,
when you hear those things like why didn't you say
anything sooner? Or why didn't you respond this way? Or

(02:42):
why didn't you do that? Or why didn't you do this?
It just suddenly becomes so clear when you've said in
that space, why it just took me so many years
to feel like I was capable enough, for strong enough,
or clear enough about what had happened to me to
be able to face what I knew I was going
to be up against. I started speaking about my sexual
assault sort of right before the big Internet Me Too

(03:06):
hashtag movement happened. And around that time, my nervous system
and my stress and the weight of it all became
so intense that I started a seizure.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
I started having stress seizures.

Speaker 2 (03:17):
And when I realized just what a physical impact this
was having on me, and it was making it nearly
impossible to just move about my life normally and comfortably
and safely, that was such a breaking point for me.
That's when I just knew that I wasn't going to
be able to stay quiet. I realized that my silence
was keeping me really sick.

Speaker 1 (03:40):
I always believe that we always should lose names in
terms that survivors are comfortable with how do you refer
to this person.

Speaker 2 (03:46):
I refer to him as Brian. He is the one
that created the name Marilyn Manson, and he was the
one that.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Told us all to call him Manson.

Speaker 2 (03:56):
But to me, that kind of feels like a cult
leader asking you to call them pop up or vanguards,
like this title that he's giving himself to fit whatever
image he has of himself, And I didn't want to
give him that power anymore, and so I just use
his real name, Brian.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Okay, So I want to go back to a couple
of things you said. Is that there's a way we
think a survivor is supposed to respond when you think
of it that way, I think it would be useful
for people to hear what a trope that thing is,
what was in your mind sort of how one is
supposed to respond when they're a survivor of sexual assault
or any form of trauma.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
There's this idea that something bad happens to you, you
know it's bad, you immediately react, and you immediately respond
or defend yourself, and it's just cut and dry, black
and white.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
This is good, this is bad.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
And if something feels bad, then you should say something
or something.

Speaker 3 (04:47):
But it just completely erases so much of.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
The human experience and of the psychological manipulation and torment
that you go through, especially when you're dealing with a narcissism,
especially when it's an intimate partner, and there's so many
other dynamics coming into play. I was faced with a
lot of the narcissistic abuse I suffered. I was a teenager.
I was so ill equipped. My brain wasn't even really
done for me. It wasn't I was just speaking to

(05:13):
somebody the other day and they said, well, surely you
know when you're raped and you go to the police,
something happens and they come after the person, and I
had to stop them and just say.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Whoa, whoa.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
There's a million other steps, yeah, that come into play
here before this happens. But people had this idea that
people just come and take the bad guy away if
somebody did something bad. And when I say things like
the system is corrupt, that means the laws. That means
the courts, that means lawyers, that means law enforcement. A
lot of times, as a survivor of there's there's no
easy way out if a.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Person doesn't say something evan, especially in proximity to the
thing that happened. The belief is, well, maybe it wasn't
that bad, because they're not for bad things something right,
I would have said something right away, right. So that's
a complete disregard of everything we know about trauma systems
in the brain and in the body and how healing works.

(06:04):
Then you add the historical context that most survivors of
rape and sexual assault are not believed, and that not
believing gets magnified under a whole host of circumstances. Were
you drinking, did you go there voluntarily, the race of
the person making the report, the social class of the
person making the report, All of those things undercut the

(06:29):
likelihood that this will ever be taken seriously, which is
a retraumatization which will put a person back even further.
And so the entire system is conspired against anybody feeling
that they could safely make a report. And so there
was a process for you before you were able to

(06:49):
come out and speak. And I think people need to
understand it wasn't that something terrible happened on a Wednesday,
and by the following Wednesday or the day after you
spoke up, because when when you first spoke out you
did not even name your perpetrator. I simply said this happened,
so starting the story there that I finally spoke out. Okay,

(07:12):
so then what.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Or just like finally getting out and at first just
wanting to the first step was finally made it out.
I convinced him that it was his idea to let
me go, because that's essentially what I felt like I
had to do.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
I really had to study.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Him for years and understand his gaslighting and manipulation, and
I just knew that I was never going to get
out if I was pulling away.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
From him, or if it was my choice to escape,
I had to.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
Somehow play dead and give him something that was undesirable
to make him feel like it was his idea to
let me go?

Speaker 1 (07:52):
How did you do that? There was a.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Moment when I felt like, I'm so afraid of this person.
I've been threatened so many times, either with blackmail or
with force, and if I stay here because I'm too
scared to leave, I feel like I'm dead anyway. I

(08:14):
don't feel like a human, don't I feel like a
shell of a person, and staying kind of felt like
a death sentence. Leaving also felt terrifying because something could
happen to me or he could come after me, and
so I kind of felt like, well, either way, I
feel dead, so.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
I may as well try to escape. I'd rather die
trying to get out.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
Then I remember realizing that a lot of what he
fed off of was my fear that he was going
to do something like that was the power that he
had over me.

Speaker 3 (08:48):
I could embarrass you.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
I've got information on you, I've got photos of you,
I've got you doing things that would humiliate you.

Speaker 3 (08:56):
When that finally clicked, I released any.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Of trying to have any control over the situation and
just kind of surrendered to what the situation want to.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
Just look, if you stay, you're dead, If you leave,
you're dead.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
So I didn't really fight back. I didn't really react
or seem hurt. I kind of just went. I think
they call it going gray rock.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
Okay, So I want to break that down. Yeah, gray
rocking is that process where I mean you render yourself
to be a gray rock, as dull, as non responsive,
as unnoticeable. So when you're not responding either with fear
or trying to appease them or trying to get into
it with them, or explain yourself. The goal is that

(09:36):
they would get disinterested and move on to new supply.
Gray Rock's a tricky strategy because in many cases, what
it can do is it leaves the narcissistic person unsupplied
and they get more agitated, and their power over you
is to get these strong, emotional, almost erratic reactions out
of the person they're targeting. This is now psychological right,

(09:56):
they will get more frothed up. Okay, you think you're
going to play this game, I am going to sh
share those pictures with the world they did see, which
they do. And so what happens is if you can
tolerate the menace and you can come around the other
side of the bend, they will ultimately get bored because
now it's just sort of they're exhausting themselves in the
process of trying to break some and they could just

(10:16):
move on to new supply. But a lot of people
cannot weather that sort of gray rock agitation, as I
call it. But in your case, you did gray rock,
And how did that get you to the place though
where it felt like his idea that this was no
longer working.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
Well, exactly what you just described, I wasn't trying to
defend myself. I wasn't trying to talk them off the ledge.
I wasn't doing all the things that I normally did.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
And one thing.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
He was doing with me as well is that reactive
abuse where he would sort of push me to the
point of breakdown, where I'd either be having a panic attack,
I'd be shaking, I'd be screaming, I'd want to reach
out for help, and then he would tell people something
else was happening, like anybody, like in his inner circles.
One time he told somebody that I slipped my rest

(11:04):
to get his attention, or oh that I cheated on him,
or like he just kept telling people all these things
had happened that weren't happening to set me up.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
If I ever did reach out for help, if I
ever did try.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
To explain to people what was happening, they've already heard
a completely different story, Like he's already gotten ahead of it.
Made this mistake with a couple of narcissists in my
life before I knew they were narcissists. Of if I
could just show this person how much pain I'm in,
they'll stop because I'm dying.

Speaker 3 (11:33):
I'm collapsed on the floor. I'm in a pool of tears.
I'm pulling my hair and I'm screaming, I'm cutting myself.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
I'm clearly in pain, and of course they'll stop, and
they never do.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
They use it to their advantage even more.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
But when there's no empathy, all the rules are out
the window, right. See, that's the piece what you described
is I would show them my pain. I would fall
to the ground in my pain, in the expectations, not.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
In a performative note, in a genuine joy.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
And yes you're devastated. What happens is that when a
person goes through any form of narcissistic or psychopathic or
antagonistic relationship where there's so much in validation, there's so
little empathy, you're not having that fall to the ground
panicked distress response the first time. This is after hundreds

(12:22):
of times of being exposed to this. Right, it's relentless,
and so there's a point at which it's unendurable, and
that you think that within this person, I saw it
for a minute at the beginning. I know it's there.
Maybe they're not seeing how much pain I'm in, and
they will see how much pain I'm in. Maybe they're
not fully getting it. Maybe they just think this is
an exchange. It's really complete and utter exhaustion and breakdown.

(12:47):
That's just game on.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
For them exactly. That's what I learned through trial and error.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
Yes, that Eavan is the norm. I think it's so
important you laid this dynamic out because that's every survivor's
sort of mantle they wear. Maybe I'm not being clear,
and if I was clear, they'd get it, because that's
the hope. That's the trauma bond. When you started gray rocking,
did you experience the escalation I was talking about? So
you did, so you were holding back and then the escalation, yes,

(13:13):
And what did that look like?

Speaker 2 (13:15):
So at one point he was threatening to go over
to somebody's house that I knew, and I.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
Was scared, but I also knew him well enough with
that point.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
First of all, he doesn't have a driver's license because
he gets everybody to do everything for him. So I
was like, well, first of all, you don't drive, you're
not going to go anywhere. But I remember him getting
dressed saying he was going to go to this person's house,
and it was very threatening. He was demanding the address,
and I just didn't react I just kept saying, okay, yep, yeah,
if that's what you want to do, and they ended
up not doing anything and not going anywhere, and that

(13:43):
was sort of the first kind of call their bluff yes,
saying yes, and then I wouldn't laugh at their jokes,
like they were always incredibly inappropriate.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
And one of the ways they really tested the people.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Around them and incriminated them in things was by you know,
there was sort of a code of contact for how
you needed to act.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
Rule number one was always just keep him happy and
keep things de escalated.

Speaker 2 (14:06):
And one way to do that was just laughing at
the terrible jokes, joining in with things that were highly inappropriate.
You feel like, yeah, I'm on your side, I'm trustworthy
because I'm joining in with you, and so you're not
going to come after me because I'm sort of being
just as disgusting. And after a while I was like,
I can't do this anymore, and so I stopped and

(14:26):
I stopped performing in.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
Front of people, which was a big, a big thing
to do.

Speaker 2 (14:32):
So like people would come to the house, usually like
a famous person or somebody that he needed to do
a job.

Speaker 3 (14:38):
It was either status or servitude. The only way he
would interact.

Speaker 2 (14:42):
With people, is if he was getting one of these
two things out of the relationship. He didn't just have
friends that he hung out with that he connected with
that we just enjoy each other this company, there's an
exchange here.

Speaker 3 (14:51):
I'm getting something from this.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
And so it was always a big deal when someone
came to the house because it was almost like a show.
It was like we had to put on a show
for these people. And he liked having me around. I
think because I brought some status. I could wait on
them and bring out drinks and do these things, and
it made him seem very powerful. And if you did
things wrong, you would hear about it when the people left,

(15:14):
So everything would be fine.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
When the people were there. You would act like we've
got this great relationship.

Speaker 2 (15:19):
Sometimes he would say demeaning things or do something and
literally sometimes it would be so horrible.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
The guests would think he was kidding, yeah, and they
would lean over to me and they would say, he's
kidding though, right, And I would just sort of.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
Have to shrug and look at them like no, but
I can't say anything because he's right there and I'm
going to hear about it later.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
It's what I call sort of the dinner party paradox
of the narcissistic relationship. Right, Oh, this is they're great,
like you guys are great?

Speaker 3 (15:45):
Have you ever seen anything like that?

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Door closes? And the other place this happens in a
pronounced way is in cars. The event is done, you're
in the car and the gloves come off and you
can't get car right. Like a car is the worst
because if this thing's hurtling down the freeway at seventy
miles an hour, there's no getting out. That moment is
such a signature move in any narcissistic relationship, which means them.

(16:11):
As the evening's going on, there is this sense of
dread that overwhelmed you and completely clench when you're thinking,
did I.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
Say that wrong?

Speaker 2 (16:19):
To night?

Speaker 3 (16:19):
You're walking on eggshells.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
This is shards of glass, shards glass at this point,
egg shells left the room a long time ago. Right,
But you know what's coming because there's no way you
would have hit every beat perfectly because you can't read
someone else's mind.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Now they're looking for something too. I remember one time
I got in trouble because I gave the guests water
when they arrived, but I gave them to them in
plastic bottles instead of glasses, and it turned into like
being up all night just getting berated and yelled at
about how you either don't care or you're making them

(16:54):
look bad, or this is how things need to be
when people show up, and here's what needs to change.
And just like the constant criticism, the constant it doesn't
matter what you do, they are going to find something.
It's a game you cannot win, and they're just going
to keep moving the goalposts and they're just going to
keep up in the anne to keep you destabilized and
apologizing and constantly trying to please them so that you're

(17:17):
not looking at the horrible things.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
That they're doing. And god forbid you ever try to
like call them out or turn it around on them,
which I just knew not to do that.

Speaker 1 (17:25):
Evan, you're talking about you're translating into gray Rock. How
much of it at that point though, was a frank
trauma response to what you're doing.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
It wasn't even necessarily a conscious thing.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
That's what I'm hearing. It's not even the intentionality that
gray Rock. And sometimes I didn't know Grayrock was. You
didn't know what it was a thing, right, So what
you were experiencing was dissociation and numbness. And when you're
talking about the most severe levels of narcissistic abuse, that
definitely was what your experience was. It is traumatic. You
start getting into the territory of complex trauma, of severe

(17:58):
relational trauma, and at that point a person is now dissociated,
their numb It's like the soul has left the body
kind of thing. Actually, in a way, they've annexed you.
You're done, Like it's a horrifying sense of disposability as
they've emptied out the bottle.

Speaker 3 (18:15):
That's exactly how it felt.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
It just felt like he's kind of pawing at me
while I lay on the growling, Oh, I think this
one's done.

Speaker 3 (18:20):
Yes, Yes, And then I.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
Definitely noticed him getting bored with me, And then I
got a partner movie and that's what got me out
of the house.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
He still tried to call me a few times.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
After that, but I got the nerve to hang up
on him and change my number. And normally he would
just keep calling and keep finding ways around that, but
that last time after I changed my number, he seemed
to sort of fall back yeah and move on to
the next supply, Okay, all right, so, which I'm sure
he already had in the chamber.

Speaker 1 (18:46):
You know, they're always there, always is, these relationships. In
two thousand and nine, Brian told Spin magazine that the
day after he and Evan broke up, he called her
one hundred and fifty eight times. He was quoted as
saying I have fantasies every day about smashing her skull
in with a sledgehammer, a comment his team later characterized

(19:09):
as a quote obviously a theatrical rock star interview promoting
a new record and not a factual account.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
And it's always the same sort of pattern of you know,
the new supply comes in, he lets her know that
the supply he currently has is crazy and is really
hurting his spirit, and doesn't understand him and is very controlling.
And we have to hide our relationship because they're so erratic.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
Yes, so let's keep doing this in secrecy while I
try to get the crazy one out. That was his emo.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
I would say that that must be on like page
thirty two of the Narcissism Relationship, because it's the now
that that person's gone, it is getting ahead of it.
If you were to ever speak to this person. Not
only have you been painted as though there's something wrong
with you, it's an opportunity to sort of elevate the
new partner who feels as though, well, I'm going to
shave you how saying I am, I'm going to show

(20:04):
you how saviory rescue that great? How fortunate are you
good that you got rid of.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
I'm going to be so much better than that person.
I understand you way more.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Yeah, you said something before though that did jump out
to manage. The language you use was fascinating. You said
you would get in trouble if you did something wrong,
you know, bring the water in the wrong cup. First
of all, in no healthy human relationship, child or adult,
should anyone ever feel that they were going to get
in trouble. A child shouldn't feel that they're going to
get in trouble. They might feel like, I know, Mom

(20:33):
told me not to do this. A consequence or something
get in trouble. The gotcha. There's a gotcha feel to
every narcissistic relationship. It's also infantilizing, evan that I'm going
to get in trouble. That's very much a child's statement, right.
So these relationships are designed to leave a person feeling
as disempowered as a child would in a relationship.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
And it's knowing that something painful is coming.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Correct, It's like you know that whatever's coming is really
going to hurt.

Speaker 1 (21:04):
It's really going to hurt. Yes, and that's terrifying.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
It is. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
Well, testifying in front of Congress, Evan explained the painful
punishment she experienced, saying she was tied up by her
hands and feet, beaten, and told by her abuser quote,
I could kill you right now. Here's the thing I
want to really talk about is you were only nineteen
when this relationship began, in eighteen. I'm not going to

(21:32):
use child feels a little heavy handed though adolescent. Yes,
And this beautiful brain of ours is kind of rocking
and rolling to you, like summer meter twenty five and thirty.
A lot of innervating still happening in this frontal lobe.
It's the last part of the turkey to cook, which
is why we see adolescents are, you know, kind of
sometimes all over the map.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
Yeah, and impulsive.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
And it don't mean this word to be like dismissive,
but to me, you were a child in many ways, absolutely,
and so to the verbiage and the power and the control.
You weren't eighteen years old? What age were you when
the relationship ended?

Speaker 3 (22:08):
Twenty two?

Speaker 1 (22:09):
Okay, so four years And in that whole period of
time eighteen to twenty two, this never got done.

Speaker 4 (22:16):
Oh.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
I felt was completely stunted. So much catching up to
do afterwards. I felt like I fell so far behind
on life skills and communication skills and relationship skills. And
that was another thing that was really hard to navigate
after getting out, was having to play catch up and
feeling like my peers had passed me and not knowing
how to function.

Speaker 1 (22:36):
And there's grief around that, Oh, so much grief.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
I mean, I grieved like the person I was before
the abuse, and I hear this a lot with survivors
of this kind of abuse. It was hard for me
to watch films that I had done from before. It
was hard for me to look at photographs. I think
also because one of their goals was to make sure
I felt terrible about myself, yeah, and that I felt

(22:59):
inadequate and broken, and they would tell me constantly like
that I was broken and no one was ever going
to love me after this, and after he was done
with me. No one was going to love me or
touch me or you know, take me seriously. And this
is one of the reasons why I tried to kill
myself before the very end of our relationship, because I
didn't know how to get back to baseline or where

(23:20):
I was, not even saying like I was the healthiest person,
but nowhere near where I was. So I at one
point felt like the only way through it was to
die because I didn't know how to get myself back.
A grief around who you were, what was lost, what
your life should have been, should have looked like. I
felt like my life was supposed to have a very
different trajectory, and the realization of what happened to you.

(23:42):
The more I learned about it, the more grief comes
with it. Because when you read a textbook about domestic violencer,
about narcissism, and you think these things that have happened
you are so unique and have kept you so isolated
from people for so long, and then you start reading
about it and the realization of how common it is
and all of these red flags that maybe had you
known or could have looked out for, or maybe it

(24:03):
was well educated about, maybe you could have seen it.
But there's also a part of me that just thinks
everybody susceptible to this.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Everybody is because with some exceptions, but very few human
beings are oriented towards attachment and love. And I think
that I'm sort of on an anti red flag crusade,
really yes, because I think it's an unsafe framing because
when we make it about red flags, we're putting the
onus on the survivor of why didn't you see it right?

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Well?

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Versus this is unacceptable behavior, right, And then to let
people know that when the unacceptable behavior descends into something
where you've already started to form what feels like a
meaningful attachment, resting your way out of this is not
something you can do alone. You need either someone to
throw you the life ring or to tell you out,
because that's a big, big leap to frame it that way.

(24:56):
No eighteen year old on the planet is going to
be able to manage that. Most forty eight year olds
on the planet are not able to manage it. And
it's interesting because I do talk a lot about people
who is more vulnerable, who's more susceptible? Are there things
that can stack the odds? Sure?

Speaker 2 (25:11):
Yeah, Yeah, I think they say like most domestic violence crimes,
like the highest rates are between the ages of sixteen
and twenty four, because that's when you're absolutely you know,
you're a child and an adult's body at that point.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
It's things like, yes, certainly, things like having a history
of trauma, having a history of narcissistic relationships in your life.
But we can even pivot to things like being really positive,
see see the.

Speaker 3 (25:34):
Good and everyone that was definitely.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
No, being very forgiving, being a rescuer, seeing something in
someone that you feel the rest of the world is
not seeing one hundred percent. Then you also have to
count for things like being less empowered in a system
or culture or society because of race, because of lack
of financial support, because of lack of family support. That also,

(25:57):
almost the privilege of detecting a red flag is taken
away from you right right Then, on top of all
of this, you throw in that this narcissistic person is charismatic, compelling, charming, smart,
and often the reason they grab us is because for
us in particular, there may be something about this person

(26:18):
that jumped out of us. When you take all of
that and shake it up, the milkshake you're pouring out
of there is dangerous and toxic and confusing, and there
was a time you truly cared about this person.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
Oh that's the time. That's the hardest to think about
or talk about.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Really, it's really the hardest part to access because it's
so hard to imagine now and it's so sad to
think about and what I thought I felt. And that's
the scariest part because for me, it wasn't just about
like trusting other people.

Speaker 3 (26:50):
It was trusting myself again.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Because there's a lot of people are like, oh, I
ignored my gut feeling or ignored red flags. But sometimes
you don't see red flags. You don't have a gut feeling.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Everything feels fine, like you feel completely safe. I really felt.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
Like I was lucky to be there, and I was
being really taken care of, and I was being saved.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
And in the beginning, they.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Were careful with me, they were slow with me. They
like they took their time to establish a sense of
trust and safety and vulnerability. It took a while for
things to really escalate.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Okay, so how old was he when he met you?

Speaker 3 (27:26):
He was thirty seven. He was eighteen years older.

Speaker 2 (27:28):
Okay, so he was eighteen years older than I'm still
not the age that he was.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Okay, wow, yeah, let's just sit with that for a minute. Yeah,
you are still not the age that he was as
you approached that age thirty seven, and you witness what
eighteen looks like in the world.

Speaker 3 (27:43):
This just happened to me. Actually, my little sister just
turned eighteen. Wow. And I spent a day with.

Speaker 2 (27:48):
Her and a friend of hers that I was around
the same age, and that is all I could think
of all day was, Yes, she is so smart and
beautiful and intelligent, but she's a child.

Speaker 3 (28:01):
That's a child, that's a child.

Speaker 2 (28:03):
She's still so vulnerable and innocent. And that doesn't mean
I don't have respect for her and think that she's
not smart. But yes, it was so apparent to me
that day just how vulnerable I was at that age,
and imagining somebody like Brian imagining her in his clutches,
and you know, it helped paint a better picture for

(28:23):
me too. Why so many people were their alarm bells
were going off back in the day, but I was
already set up to really just not trust.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
The adults around me anymore. Why was that?

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Brian definitely put that in my head from the beginning.
I think because I had struggled a bit in the
entertainment industry with feeling a bit controlled, feeling stifled, feeling
like I had to behave and act a certain way
to be loved or to be liked, and it didn't
always feel authentic, and I think I felt a little
trapped and I was struggling with that. That was part
of the allure of being in his world. It just

(28:56):
seemed like a place where you were free of judgment
and it was all about expression and being exactly who
you are.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
The part of me that wanted to feel.

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Like I was a part of some sort of noble cause,
Like he felt like really trying to change people's.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
Way of thinking in the world, and.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
It felt like I was a part of something really
special and really great.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
The part of myself that.

Speaker 2 (29:18):
Yeah, that was a little like no things need to
be shaken up and fuck the establishment.

Speaker 3 (29:22):
This is rebellious arts, you know, sort of short film.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
And he was capitalizing on a developmental chasm, the chasm
between eighteen and thirty seven, let's fast forward, that is
very different than the chasm between sixty and seventy nine.
Does that make sense, right? Age differences aren't linear. Those
gaps go steep and less deep depending on how old
we are. But that is a chasm in at eighteen

(29:45):
to his thirty seven. That's grooming. So you were talking
about he was very careful with you in the beginning,
that carefulness, that drawing you in subsequently creating trust and engagement.
To me, there's no other word but grooming that could
be applied there. Yeah, grooming and love bombing, And I
would say the love bombing is part of the grooming.

(30:07):
How long did this sort of careful period last before
his behavior started to shift and change.

Speaker 2 (30:13):
Well before anything even romantic happened. It was at least
a few months of just hanging out and being friends
and nothing feeling off or weird, and.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
Everybody was like, what's going on between the two of you?

Speaker 2 (30:25):
And I was like, there's literally nothing going on, Like
everybody's freaking out over nothing. He's never tried anything with me,
you know, And I was almost offended that people would
ask that. And also at the time, I viewed myself
as a child. I felt very young and sort of
in over my head, but kind of special to be chosen,
and maybe there was something special about me that only

(30:46):
he saw and that everybody else was missing, because that
is kind of how I felt in my life. So yes,
it was a few months and then things sort of
turned romantic, and I remember just being shocked because I
didn't understand why he was a track me.

Speaker 3 (31:00):
I just felt like.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
I never thought there was even a chance that that
could happen. I was like, this is like some older
rock star who's also like married and can have anybody
he wants, and I'm like, this kind of weird, awkward,
young kid essentially that's just kind of a nerd.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
And then I.

Speaker 2 (31:17):
Think at the time how I made sense of it
was like, oh, I'm just you know, I'm really mature
for my age, and I'm actually really soulful and age
doesn't really matter, and I'm.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
Like a fluke.

Speaker 2 (31:26):
I didn't know that there were possibly other miners at
the time.

Speaker 3 (31:30):
I didn't know that.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
In retrospect, especially when I found out about the alleged
miners that have come forward and looking at the timeline,
and then this moment of realization of not only did
you never know this person never, Like the second he
said alone to you, it wasn't real, but he picked
you because you were young. He picked you because you
were a child. He picked you because you were flat chested.

(31:52):
There's certain things that I looked back and thought, these
are things he's looking past to be with me. And
then in retrospect it was no, this is why you
were chosen. And that was like a huge switch that
got flipped.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
The narrative had to change.

Speaker 1 (32:06):
When did you come into that realization that instead of
these are things that were being looked past, these are
actually reasons I was being chosen for, because to be
chosen for those reasons is actually much more pathologic and unsettling.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
Right when, you know, stories started popping up on the
internet again, you know, I had to stay alleged. People
started saying this happened to me, and I was this age,
here's when it happened. That knocked me down so hard
because I think before that I was still trying to
convince myself that maybe there were horrible things that had happened,

(32:37):
but maybe there were good things in between, or maybe
we had moments of clarity or moments of real connection
or moments of real love and sprinkled into that were
just this devastation.

Speaker 3 (32:48):
And then when I found that out and I realized that.

Speaker 2 (32:50):
He was leading a double life essentially, and that there
was a whole other side to him that.

Speaker 3 (32:53):
I never knew existed.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Then everything feels like a violation at that point.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
Completely again that now we're back to the grief. Yeah,
because if you're grieving a thing you thought was and
I think this is one of the big struggles in
narcissistic relationships because when you use that grief framework, a
lot of people say, what, like, no one's dead, what
are you talking about. If you had a relationship and
it's done and it wasn't what it was, that's the problem.
And so you're even grieving that you were in something

(33:21):
you thought was something and it wasn't that something. It's very,
very unsettling because you really truly believed it was this
other thing.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
And then you start questioning everything.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
We will be right back with this conversation. You've questioned everything.
So what happens with accumulated gaslighting is that you actually
start to feel psychotic, is that you're no longer in reality.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
Right.

Speaker 3 (33:49):
It's funny.

Speaker 2 (33:49):
There were a couple of projects that I did before
coming forward that shook things up.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
It was like it shook something loose.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
In my psyche that had been sort of like calcified
and buried away. First one was when I had to
do like a pretty brutal sexual assault scene in a
film called Into the Forest.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
And that was the first day that I.

Speaker 2 (34:09):
Started questioning some of the things that had happened to
me and that they were possibly assault.

Speaker 3 (34:14):
I couldn't even.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Say that I was raped for many, many many years
after the fact, like it wouldn't even come out of
my mouth. And people started asking me about that scene
when I was doing press for the film, and I
really tried to dodge questions about it, just sort of
deny it, like, oh, no, this has never happened to me,
but I've got a lot to say about it, and
that wasn't sustainable. Right after I did that movie, actually

(34:36):
I went and did West World. There was only a
day between the two of those projects. I finished one,
I got on the plane immediately started filming Westworld, and
then I didn't know what West World was really going
to be about. They kept everything kind of hidden from us,
and so I was finding out with the show like
script by script and as an actor.

Speaker 3 (34:54):
Being put in situations.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Where you have to be in peril or you're getting
beaten up or getting dragged or being threatened, or you're
having to stand up against an abuser. As an actor,
at least for me, you go back in your rolodex
and you say, what can I draw from bring real
emotion to the scene. And of course I had my experiences,
and it was the first time I think I'd really

(35:17):
let myself go back and feel certain things because I
wasn't able to cry about it for about I want
to say, seven years.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
I didn't cry about anything.

Speaker 2 (35:26):
That had happened to me until I got in a
trauma therapy like many many years.

Speaker 1 (35:29):
Ago, seven years out of the relationship before you were
able to cry about it, before I was able to
shed a tear.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, And then suddenly I'm doing these scenes where it's
my job, you know, it's like you got to go there.
And it gave me permission, I think, yeah, and a
buffer because I was in a controlled situation, so I
could allow myself.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
In a bit more. And it just like opened up
Pandora's box.

Speaker 2 (35:53):
Like there's a scene like my character is programmed, she
can't pull any triggers of any guns, she's trapped, can
defend herself, and then there's a scene where she finally
does and she overrides her program and she pulls the
trigger and she gets up and she runs, And that scene,
I remember, was a big moment for me, having to
act the feeling of being held back and then breaking

(36:17):
through it, and then definitely filming the finale, there's this
beautiful monologue that I was given about I'm not crying
for myself, I'm crying for you because I'm going to
stand up and I'm going to keep going and You're
going to.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
Perish and fights back.

Speaker 2 (36:36):
And that was a big day too, And that was
sort of the first time I started telling people like
I definitely told people on set like people I trusted
just in case I got triggered or something.

Speaker 3 (36:47):
So I started opening up to people a little bit
more and.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
Saying, you know, I was in a really abusive relationship
and I just want you to can you just stand
off to the side just in case, Like I don't
want anybody to really know, but I definitely want somebody
a safe person there in case I get to.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Her mooned or something.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
And so doing the show unlocked a lot of things
and got me talking about it bit by bit, and
then I met.

Speaker 3 (37:09):
Other survivors on that show.

Speaker 2 (37:10):
Oh Okay, you know Tanduway Newton's has come forward as well,
and she recognized.

Speaker 3 (37:16):
Something in me. Wow, And then she brought me to Evensler.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Yeah, and Eve was one of the first people I
told my story to and she was one of the
first people that said I believe you and like that.

Speaker 3 (37:32):
That also kickstarted a lot of things.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
So you said she saw something, she saw something, and
what was that?

Speaker 3 (37:37):
She said, I could just tell you were still in it.
There was a buzzing sort of energy to me.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
And I think now talking to some of those same
people years later and then interacting with me, like everybody
usually says the same thing. They're like, your whole energy
has changed, your calmer, You're lighter then, you know, I
was still kind of chain smoking and still agitated, and
still like she's numbing something Like I can just tell
she's trying to keep herself busy. She's got these kind

(38:04):
of nervous habits. I think she just saw something that
she identified with. I've seen it too, Like I've connected
with people not knowing their backstories at all from one meeting.
I can just tell by looking in their eyes, or
I can tell by their communication skills or styles that
they've done inner work and that they've been through something
and all immediately feel sort of connected.

Speaker 1 (38:25):
I love how you just put it is there's a buzzing.
I think that's actually probably more accurate than you would know,
because there is sort of a frizzon, like the crackling
that's happening in somebody who's viewing everything in your life
as a threat, and it wasn't being processed, and it
was being numbed in so many different ways, but there's
really no putting it away. I think that that's the piece.

(38:45):
When your relationship ended, Evan, you left, but you weren't
talking about it, so I mean, it's like a psychological
pseudo safety. You're away from the peril because obviously there's
a benefit to no longer having to live under those circumstances.
But if you don't do the processing, it's like they're

(39:05):
still in the room with you, right, So it's you
were not living in the same place, but your nervous
system didn't get the memo, So as far as you're concerned,
they're still there. You're still walking on the eggshells. So
how long was it before Westworld? Before it was at
about seven years? Seven years what I want to understand
is you're out, You're physically out, you're not talking about it,

(39:28):
so psychologically, that's a long period of time. Six seven
years is a long time. What was that?

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Like, Sorry, I don't know what I'm crying.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
You never we have a rule on navigating narcissism. Nobody
gets to say I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (39:39):
Oh yeah, I think I'm getting emotional, just because those
years were some of the hardest, because that was before
I knew what was going on with me, and I
immediately tried to I got back together with an X
of mine that I was dating when I met Brian,
and like, I think the was a part of me

(40:00):
that just wanted to go back, you know, like just
wanted to.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
Get back to where I was before and to try
and like fix what was broken. And I didn't know
how to describe what was happening with me or my body.
I was definitely still programmed to respond and behave like
I was in the room with Brian, for sure, and
I think that really confused my partner because it seemed
like I was being dishonest about things, and it seemed

(40:25):
like I was, you know, it wasn't safe to tell
the truth with Brian, and I think that carried on
into my next relationship, where I was just programmed to
like if I felt like I was going to get
in trouble, or if I felt like I'd done something wrong,
or if I felt like I didn't say the right thing,
I was like, oh, well, well, here's the excuse, and
here's here's me defending myself.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
Here's and here's this, and here's here's this panic. And
I I think.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
That comes across very alarming to certain.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
People and confusing.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
And I didn't know why I was doing that, why
I was responding in these ways.

Speaker 3 (40:57):
I didn't know why I was so shut down.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
I didn't know why I was self sabotaging and being
impulsive and unable to be honest with them about certain things.
Still could just completely programmed and didn't know that I
had PTSD.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
I was having night terrors.

Speaker 2 (41:13):
I would wake up screaming next to my partner in sweats.
So it wasn't until I kept trying to have this
normal life and it just wasn't working and all of
these emotional problems and relationship problems and nervous system problems
started popping up that I realized, like I couldn't run

(41:33):
for a minute anymore. And it took sort of everything
falling apart and my marriage falling apart and becoming a
new mom that really changed everything. So that's what I
was doing in between, was just trying to move on,
trying to have a normal life, trying to have a marriage.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
And then once I had.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
My child, I was like, well, you know, if you
want to be a good parent, you got to work
on yourself as much as possible. Yeah, whatever issues might
be in there, and now is the time to sort
of like face them and get ahead of this as
much as possible so you're not transferring anything on to
your kid. And so it became really important to me
to do self work. Before then, I was just living
in that. I don't know what's wrong with me. I
think I'm going crazy. I think my partner thinks I'm crazy.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Leaving what you did, wanting and craving normal, it's what
we expect somebody would want after that. But without doing that,
the processing of the trauma, you're living in a permanent
state of threat. So what you were describing as sort
of those agitated reactions you'd have with your partner one
thousand percent expectable because your system was reacting to these

(42:37):
situations as though they were dire cataclysmic threats. Everything makes sense, right.
The funny thing about trauma is, as much as it's
not us sort of having if you will, normal responses,
it is given what your system believes is coming at it.
I always call it it's like a faulty alarm system.
I'm like, yeah, well, I mean your alarm system did
think something came in the door. The problem is the

(42:58):
sensor's not right exactly. She wasn't open. Yeah, Like that's it.
That's really what it is.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
Yea.

Speaker 1 (43:05):
So for those six seven years, as you threw yourself
into normal, if you will, and it gave you the
gift of your child. So I don't believe there are
ever any lost experiences that said, there's no packing this
away and forgetting about it. Yes, it can become incredibly dissociated.
But somehow something wafts into our life and it turns

(43:28):
that light on and illuminates what happened to us. For you,
it happened while you were making this show.

Speaker 2 (43:35):
And simultaneously my marriage and everything was falling apart.

Speaker 4 (43:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
Right, So Westworld feels so significant in terms of an
insight moment. It's so important for us to learn from
that because that was sort of like your penny drop
moment in terms of awareness that led you into a
new twisted the road for you. Can you share what
you really ultimately learned from that experience.

Speaker 2 (44:00):
I was moving through life and I was entering relationships
with the very firm belief there was something wrong with me.

Speaker 3 (44:06):
It was for me.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
Yeah, for those years in between leading up before that,
I was like, you are the problem.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
Something's wrong with you.

Speaker 2 (44:14):
I think in my marriage and things, I walked into
that thinking I was completely inferior, that I was lucky
to be with this person. I think sometimes that was
sort of the yeah, the vibe of like, you know,
she's a lot, but I deal with it because I
love her. People would look at me and say, don't
fuck this up. It was always just kind of like, right,
I'm the fucked up one, and if anything goes wrong,

(44:37):
it's my fault.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
And I took responsibility.

Speaker 2 (44:40):
For everything that went wrong in that marriage everything. I
never stood up for myself. I never you know, questioned anything.
It was always just like it's me, it's me, it's me.
And so that's how I was moving through the world.

Speaker 1 (44:51):
Self blame is the universal pattern of anyone who experiences betrayal, trauma,
betrayal of any form in a relationship, relational trauma, and
narcissistic abuse. That's where you go because it serves so
many functions. It maintains a sense of control. Okay, if
this is me, then I can change it. It allows

(45:12):
the attachment or the relationship to persist. It allows your
worldview to persist that the world is somehow safer or
more just than this relationship is teaching you. Yes, right,
it's a lot. So the self blame is this incredibly unhealthy,
self destructive thing that happens that has slowly eroding us

(45:32):
to the point where we almost don't know where we
end in the.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
World begins, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (45:38):
So a lot of the work of healing is for
you to understand that there was this experience that happened
outside of you, that another person was responsible for this behavior,
that behavior was unacceptable, and there was nothing you could
do to change that, and nor would it ever change.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
I think before I even got to the place of oh,
here's the tactics, and here's the thing this person did
the first step for me, it's just somebody validating that
what had happened to me was awful like that was
the first step. That was the thing that made me
cry for the first time. I put myself into trauma
therapy because while I was doing West World and I

(46:13):
was noticing these things and certain things were trying to
get shaken up, I also noticed that I was talking
to somebody that I was collaborating with creatively. All I
needed to do was tell them that I wanted to
change something like a pretty common thing to just have
in a creative conversation. And I was terrified to say
that I needed something or wanted something, and I was

(46:36):
working up the courage to do this, and this person
stopped me mid conversation.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
They're like, are you okay? And I was like, what
do you mean, And they're just like, you're gripping the chair.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
And I didn't even realize I was wrapped around this
chair and I was white knuckle. I was holding onto
it for dear life. And they looked at me and
they said, I'm not going to hit you, like as
a joke.

Speaker 3 (46:56):
Almost I like slowly sort of released the chair, and
I realized that I was that.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Scared to just give an opinion right, And that's when
I was like, Oh, this is trauma therapy time. And
I'd had a therapist before then say that I was
exhibiting symptoms of PTSD. So I started trauma therapy and
I think the first session, I just started telling her
some things that had happened to me, and that was
all she said.

Speaker 3 (47:20):
Was that sounds really awful. That sounds really awful. That
sounds awful.

Speaker 2 (47:25):
And I think that was one of the first times
i'd spoken to somebody about it, but also spoken to
somebody that understood and was trauma informed and didn't blame me,
because I had people ask oh, well, was this just
a game you guys were playing, or oh was this
a weird sex thing? Or oh was this like they
immediately follow up with question, well, why were you drinking? Well,
why were you doing drugs?

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Why are you doing this?

Speaker 2 (47:45):
And so anything before then it felt very shaming, and
this was just the first time it was validating, and
that was the first step for me to start to
realize maybe it wasn't all my fault.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
And it takes a long time to get there because
to take that a way that the idea that it
wasn't your fault is actually a very very tricky psychological process,
even for a therapist to do, because that's your scaffold
for so long that if we just pulled down the
whole scaffold, the facade is going to fall. It's not
as simple as like, no, this wasn't your fault and

(48:17):
this is what it was in prison, Like what you
can't just dismantle realities. That's not how therapy, a psychology,
any of that work. It's a tentative dance. Somebody dismantled you.
Putting you back together again is a process too, which
requires support and compassion and therapeutic love. And in your process,
not only were you blaming yourself, but you as a

(48:38):
survivor were being blamed.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
And already been blamed.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah, so can you break that part because that was
a very important parallel process that's happening in your Traumay.

Speaker 3 (48:48):
Yeah, Well, while.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
I was being groomed by him, and while our relationship
was becoming public in the beginning, people's response to it
was very shaming and very blaming, and all of the
attention was focused on me, none was on Brian. The
story everybody was focusing on was like, here's this like
sort of young Harlot Lolita type home wrecking party girl

(49:12):
that's come in and ruined everything, and none of the
focus seemed to be about the fact that I was
that young and he was so much older. This seemed
somewhat inappropriate, or that he was the married one cheating
on his wife. It wasn't that he's doing these things,
it's that she's doing this to this woman. So I

(49:32):
was really shocked at the onsought of hate that I got,
mainly from women. It felt like very scarlet letter, and
he seemed to sort of kind of get off Scott
free in that situation. Nobody was posting his picture online
and writing horror across it.

Speaker 3 (49:49):
That was me.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
The joke was like, well, she's clearly crazy, because you
would have to be crazy to date somebody like him
or that looked like him, And that reinforced the idea
that I had of like, wow, see, like people just
don't understand. They're saying things about me that aren't true.
They're saying I'm crazy just because he looks the way
he does and I look the way that I do.
And it made me turn on the world even more

(50:11):
and run even deeper into Brian's arms because it just
reinforced what he was saying, which was the world's against you.
It's an unsafe place. The world doesn't understand you, the
world doesn't understand me. It's me and you against the world.
In fact, that was the saying that he says to me,
and that he said to a few of the other girls,
is together is one against all others.

Speaker 3 (50:29):
It's us and that's it.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
And so as he's telling me these things and saying,
you can't trust your parents, you can't trust the adults
in your life because they've been controlling you and they're
making you miserable, and you need to stay with me
because I'm the only safe place. And then simultaneously the
world is coming after me and saying that I'm this
horrible person that's done this horrible thing by being with

(50:52):
this person.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
Then yeah, then like where are you going to go?

Speaker 1 (50:55):
Well, he makes himself your only safe space, yes, which
is so classical a dynamic in these relationships that he
can keep taking you apart, so he's the only one
who has the instruction manual to put you back together, exactly,
and that dismantling and then myth that I'm the only

(51:15):
one who can put you together, and when the world
is coming at you and you're as young as you were,
it's as though it's so manifest to me. Speaks also
to things like patriarchy and the anti woman sentiments that
cut through our world. That somebody is labeling an eighteen
or a nineteen year old girl a homewrecker without any
developmental recognition of what this is. And in fact he's

(51:37):
the one who made the vow to the wife, not you,
and you're swept away in something. You know, It's interesting
because you said early in the relationship, other people around
you were sounding alarm bells and freaking out, still doing
his sort.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Of in gathering the rooming process, right, they were freaking
up by the age difference.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah, who were these people? Were these your supports?

Speaker 5 (51:59):
Like, yeah, yeah, my mom, my mom really really had
a hard time my partner at the time, of course,
just having a really hard time my agents and publicists.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
I have a different agent and publicist now, So at
the time everyone just seemed very worried, but nobody was
really saying we're worried that he's taking advantage of you
or praying on you.

Speaker 3 (52:26):
Or grooming you. It was just like we're worried you're
on drugs.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
We're worried, you know, this person's corrupting you or this
person you know. It was sort of framed in a different.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
Way, and so I just couldn't hear it. It just
felt like more noise, like more this is just more
people don't understand.

Speaker 1 (52:43):
Me, right, And because of his look and his persona,
it was very easy I could see to get swept
away in that people aren't getting this, which pulled the
lens away from this process is unhealthy. Yeah, slowly, but surely.
The way you were being treated was unhealthy. It fostered
plausible alternative narrative that shielded you from actually doing a

(53:04):
deeper look at the other problematic dynamics. Correct not unusual
in a malignant narcissistic relationship at all. I'm going to
come back to your youth again and again because there's
a process of individuation that's happening in adolescence. I need
to separate from the you know, the structures aren't letting
me grow to the next space. It's a very healthy process.
Yet the problem is if you're trying to flee the

(53:28):
nest into a situation where someone that is this toxic
is on the other side. That's when it's a disaster.

Speaker 2 (53:36):
Yeah, that was part of the grief too, of just
like I had just gotten out of my mother's house.

Speaker 3 (53:42):
I'd had my driver's license for two years.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
I was just getting out into the world, and the
first place that I end up was with this person.

Speaker 3 (53:52):
That's devastating.

Speaker 1 (53:53):
How were these other important relationships in your life, like
your relationships your mom affected by you sort of remaining
in this relationship with him.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
So she had a nervous breakdown. We were very ameshed,
and I think that's another one of the reasons why
I pushed back so hard and why it was easy
for Brian to sort of isolate me from my parents.
I was already slightly isolated up from my father because
he lived it in different states. I love my mother
very much, and she was a single mom. She did
her best, but I was ready to have my independence

(54:23):
for sure.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
And meshed is another one of those words we hear
very often these days. Let me break down exactly what
it is and why it is a toxic dynamic and
Meshman refers to any emotional relationship where emotional boundaries are
poorly defined can result in emotional over involvement and can

(54:45):
block emotional autonomy for people in these systems, and mesh
systems can foster unhealthy dependencies, and people trying to break
out of in mesh systems may find they overcorrect and
completely cut themselves out of their family system because it
feels impossible to find a middle ground.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
I think he saw that, and I think used that
to his advantage. And she had a really difficult time
with it. And I know there was at least a
year while I was with him where her and I
didn't speak. It was as long as we'd ever gone
without speaking, and she was really, really, really struggling. But

(55:25):
I had also felt that sort of kind of shaming
energy from her, which you know, she's acknowledged and like
has caught herself a few times realizing like, oh, I'm
doing the thing.

Speaker 3 (55:36):
I had a conversation with.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
Her once like years later, where I had gotten rooffeed
or drugged at a bar and I had realized it
and managed to have my friends get me out of there.

Speaker 3 (55:47):
Before I you know, could move my arms essentially.

Speaker 2 (55:50):
So I was telling her about it, and I was saying, yeah,
I had one drink and lost control of my arms
and realizing that there had to have been.

Speaker 3 (55:56):
Something I drink, like, I only had one drink in
the Her first response, why were you drinking?

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Was a mom, I get that question exactly.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
I understand exactly, and I get it too. But I immediately, because.

Speaker 2 (56:07):
Of all the work that we had done and everything experience,
I stopped her and I went mom and she realized immediately.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
She was like, oh my god, I just did the thing.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
I just immediately I jumped into that protective mode and
the societal brainwashing. Yeah, I went straight to the shaming
part instead of oh my god, I'm so sorry. That
should never have happened. I don't care how much you drank.
Nobody has the right to put.

Speaker 1 (56:29):
Drugs in It's interesting you said you were enmeshed with
your mother. Was that something you did believe to be true?

Speaker 5 (56:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (56:36):
I felt responsible for her. She was a single mom.
It was really kind of the two of us on
our own.

Speaker 2 (56:41):
I was working and she was supporting my career and
seeing her going through the divorce and wanting to take
care of her. I think I just immediately just jumped
into a caretaker role and this idea that well, if
I'm just the perfect child and I never give her
any problems and she'll be really happy, and I'll put
my needs aside, and I'll make myself as small as

(57:02):
possible and as good as possible.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Make myself as small as possible and as good as possible.
That dynamic with your mom did that predate this relationship?
It did. That's interesting because we're talking about vulnerabilities that
kind of somewhere along the line getting the message that
Evan needs to make her needs smaller and that's a
means of support. Right, that's a dangerous precedent. Right, there's

(57:28):
a million explanations for that. Psychologically, I mean, I'm your
soul sister, and that I'd have done always that exact
same thing. So I have an appreciation for that. When
we cut it up, it's culture, it's how we view women.
It's actually how a young person keeps a sense of
control in a relationship. And to me, that's even more
more terrible that a perpetrator could do this, because they're

(57:48):
taking advantage of a situation precisely when you needed to
be protected.

Speaker 3 (57:53):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
And I always wondered if by sharing with him these
things about my home life and the way I felt
that he did and take note of it and think, well,
this is like the perfect breeding ground because I've thought
about that, and you don't know that's what you're doing
as a parent.

Speaker 3 (58:09):
I don't think any of it was done with malice.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
It just sort of the hand that I think my
mother and I were both dealt and are able to
look back on now and go, oh, yeah, this was
the perfect sort of breeding ground for my voice to
be very stifled and for me to feel like I
had to act a certain way to be loved.

Speaker 3 (58:26):
And of course that would.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
Then feed in immediately to this situation with Brian, because
I was already sort of conditioned to do that, especially
with an older person.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
The grooming process is an assessment process, right, So it's
like looking at a plot of land and saying, can
we build a house here? It's assessing something for its viability.
Is this ripe territory for me to be able to
do what I want get what I need? There's no
recognition of the human being. And then what's so imbalanced
and asymmetric about the relationship is you're going into it

(58:56):
thinking it was a get acquainted process. Someone's learning about me.
I'm learning about that.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
Someone cares about me so much.

Speaker 1 (59:02):
Listening exactly.

Speaker 3 (59:03):
They care about my experience in my inner world.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
And that's powerful, but that's it's asymmetric because they're not
doing that. They are actually doing assessment and evaluation and
is this worth the time and trouble. So you're not
playing the same game. And that's why grooming is so
dangerous because the other person is also more disempowered and
they're learning every which way you are disempowered. So that's

(59:27):
the other treachery. So as you're going through this in
these four years you're in this relationship, how is your
relationship with your mother unfolding? And not just your mother
but other supports.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
I became very angry. I think I got more and
more angry with.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
My mother because to me, it felt like she was
losing control and that scared her.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
And the more.

Speaker 2 (59:52):
Autonomy I gained, the more nervous she became. So I
think that's how I made sense of it, and it
certainly and how Brian was framing it to me, She's
controlled you your whole life. She's not able to do
that anymore, so now she has to make it seem
like you're crazy yep, and that you're in a bad situation,
and she's going to say bad things about me and
bad things about you to try to get you to

(01:00:13):
leave so.

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
That you go back to her.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
I didn't always subscribe to everything that he was saying,
but I knew that if I pushed back, he.

Speaker 3 (01:00:22):
Wasn't going to accept it. My relationship with my mom.

Speaker 2 (01:00:24):
Just slowly eroded because the deeper I got into the
relationship and the worst things got, the more paniced she got,
the harder she would kind of come down on me,
and then the more I would push away, and so
it just became like this vicious cycle until I finally
told her that I didn't want to talk to her anymore.

(01:00:44):
But Brian was standing right next to me the whole time,
and he would kind of listen in on my conversations,
and under the guise of like, I'm going to help
you navigate this, he was kind of puppeteering it, and
so like he'd write things down on a piece of.

Speaker 3 (01:00:57):
Paper for me to say.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
He would record the commations that I was having, and
so I'm thinking, Wow, this guy's giving to be like
really good advice, you know, when really he really set
it up so that it came to a head and
he said, he just said, you know, tell your mother
you don't wan talk to her anymore, like just be
done with it, you know, and hang up on her.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
And that's what I did.

Speaker 1 (01:01:17):
So it was coercive because it was isolating, which is
always the play.

Speaker 3 (01:01:22):
Right there, he was always right there over sea.

Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
See that's the thing. So that was a it's like
a coerced confession. Plus the isolation, you now have no
more touchdoones back into reality. He gets to entirely dictate
the narrative, the reality, everything, that's exactly, And that's every
narcissistic relationship. I think that we have this depiction of
isolation as being I'm locked off from the world and

(01:01:44):
I don't have credit cards, and I don't have a phone,
and I can't communicate. There's versions of that that certainly happens.
But isolation is also the seeds that get planted in
our mind that create doubt about the motivations of the
people around us. So you may still have contact with them.
Isn't just a loneness. It is the psychological loss of
trust in what were traditionally and could still be your supports,

(01:02:08):
but they cannot do their puppeteering with those supports.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
Yeah, cults do the same thing, you know, and they're like,
you know, don't read anything about the cult online, and
just like society trying to brainwash you and all these things,
and we've got the answer, and like it's the same
kind of psychology of up is down and down is
up and everything that you've known previously was actually the
thing holding you down. He did the same thing with
my best friend, the friend that I had had since
I was eight years old.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
We were living together. He had me kick her out
of my house.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
He had me go over there, and he sent one
of his flying monkeys with me, one of his assistants,
and she recorded everything that I did to show him
to make sure that I was doing what he had
asked me to do.

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Flying monkeys is a term we used to describe the
most toxic enablers of narcissists. Just like the Wicked Witch
from the Wizard of Oz sent winged monkeys to do
her bidding, Narcissistic abusers often utilize a there's to carry
out tasks and help maintain the narciss's overall sense of

(01:03:06):
power and control.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
So even when he wasn't with me, he had eyes
on me or bring some sort of proof that like
what I was doing was what I was saying, and
which also made it hard to get out. And so yeah,
he had me kick her out, and he was watching me.
Same thing with my brother, like anybody that cared about
me or anybody that said, hey, I'm worried about those
people immediately were kicked out. Of course, yeah, they were

(01:03:30):
against him and the brainwashing that would take place too,
Like at first it was under the guys of care,
and then it became incredibly paranoid and incredibly like these
people are literally out to get us, right, you know,
and I have to defend myself against these people, and
this is like a dangerous situation. And it escalated more
and more and more to the point where my mom

(01:03:52):
and my brother showed up at the house one day
because I just wasn't returning phone calls and they hadn't
seen me in a really long time, were getting worried,
and so I guess they thought.

Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
You know, we should be able to just go over
and see her whenever we.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Want and just knock on the door, like what's going on,
And so they didn't know that I had just been
trying to talk him off the ledge for like two days.
One of the hardest things that he would do is
essentially isolate you in the house for at least two days,
just you and him and like a mound of cocaine,
and he would keep you up and he would stay awake,

(01:04:26):
just berating you, telling you everything that was wrong with
the world, what was wrong with the people around you,
everything you were doing wrong, all the ways you were
failing him, you were failing yourself, the suspicions he had
towards you.

Speaker 3 (01:04:38):
He would start wrecking the house. And it was just
like this non.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
Stop onslought of words and monologues and like it was
just this constant stream of negativity that I felt like
I couldn't escape and couldn't stop. And that's where like
the relentless sort of like psychological like brainwashing and abuse
started taking place where he just wouldn't stop, and he
wouldn't stop until you you gave him what he wanted,
or you gave in or you started agreeing with everything

(01:05:04):
he was saying, or if you just started doing whatever
he wanted you to do, or making the phone calls
he wanted you to make, or it just wouldn't stop otherwise.
And so I had just kind of talked him off
the ledge of one of these onsloughts of I don't
know what else to call it. And so, yeah, my
mom and my brother showed up to the house, and
he thought I had called them, and it just restarted

(01:05:25):
everything that I had just been through. And I was like, okay,
that's two more days. And yeah, he started freaking out
and thinking that it was all like a plot against him,
sort of pleading and begging like I didn't call anybody,
didn't do anything.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
I didn't But you know, by then I thinks were
really bad.

Speaker 1 (01:05:39):
My conversation will continue after this break, but then that
series of emotional reactions starts to come out of the perpetrator.
Keep in mind, we talk about narcissism, we talk about psychopathy,
and I'm sure you've heard this. Framing of the dark
tetrad is a really elegant theoretical model developed by a

(01:06:00):
guy named Paulus and his colleagues, and it's this idea
of narcissism, psychopathy, Machiavelianism, and sadism, and Machiavellianism is more
of an exploitativeness that all hang together, like it's all
just sort of fits. I would argue paranoia belongs in
there too. In a relational context, you can see the
way it creates this kind of this madness in thinking,

(01:06:23):
this relentlessness, this exploitativeness, this willingness to take advantage of you,
to isolate you, to have no empathy, for you, to
be cold, callous, calculating. You take everything that all of
these things are because they all work together. Not only
impossible to maintain a relationship, the other person is always
going to be harmed, but for you, it was setting
in these cycles where no one could support you because

(01:06:45):
if they did, their support of you was now cascading
into more.

Speaker 3 (01:06:49):
Who was an attack? Yes, yeah, it was an attack.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
It was seen as an attack, correct, and that would
set him off and to also attack me because I
must have.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
Tripped the alarm, correct the alarm. And doctor Jennifer Fried
has a model called DARVO, which is deny attack, reverse
victim offender. Right, that's exactly what you're talking about. Although
this person's a perpetrator, is coming back to I'm the victim.
I'm the victim. I'm the victim, and that would be
a very almost soothing place. And then it puts you
in the place, put you on your back foot to

(01:07:19):
have to sort of fix the situation, and those cycles
can go on for decades in these relationships.

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
Yeah, that was the worst part actually, was the kept
up for days, the downloading of information is what it
felt like. Yeah, and just the being worn down to
the point of submission.

Speaker 3 (01:07:36):
Like, right, I have a question.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
I've heard different types of narcissists and maybe like different levels,
but I don't know what your take is on it,
of like, do you think there's different forms of narcisism,
different levels of it, like narcissism that can show up
and maybe be put in check and fix, or like
narcissism that can't.

Speaker 3 (01:07:56):
Like, I'm always kind of curious about that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
I know there's like col narcissism, and there's like milignant narcisism,
and there's maybe like narcissistic traits, but like, I don't
know what your take is on that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08):
So Narcissism's a personality style, right, And like all personality
styles that exists on a continuum or a spectrum. Right,
at the mildest levels, we're talking about someone who's sort
of annoying, grandiose, a little entitled and selfish. This is
the person who might make a little bit of a
persnicketty fit at a restaurant or kind of throw a
bit of a call me the manager kind of thing,

(01:08:29):
like they may not be a good friend, they can't
put their own stuff aside to be available to someone.
But it feels like an emotional stuntedness. It certainly doesn't
feel like a menace or anything like that. Right, Once
you get into the moderate range of it, of the
narcissism spectrum, you're really talking about someone where it's not
healthy to be in a relationship. But it's not terrifying.

Speaker 3 (01:08:48):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
It's uncomfortable, it's unsatisfying, it's not deep, it's not mutual.
You definitely are gaslighted from time to time. You feel manipulated.
It's not a happy relationship. It felt like this parent
was never there for you. This is a friend that's
really self serving and maybe taking money from you. It's
leveled up when you get to the far end of
the spectrum. Here's where we're talking about that. It's our tetrack,

(01:09:10):
that malignant narcissism. Actually, in my book that's coming out
next year, I say malignant narcissism is sort of the
last stop on the train before you veer into psychopathy.

Speaker 3 (01:09:18):
Station.

Speaker 1 (01:09:19):
Now here's what happens in malignant narcissism. They're not the same.
There is a division point between malignant narcissism and psychopathy.
Narcissistic people at the core of themselves are somewhat anxious,
They're insecure, they feel inadequate. There's this sort of shame
that's always bubbling right up at the surface of almost
being found out. And all of these defenses randiosity and

(01:09:41):
intimidation and all those sorts of things draw the person
draws around them as a suit of armor to keep
that shame at bay. Controlling and dominating people, that's what
we see in the malignant narcissism. Malignant narcissism is where
we see the coercive control. But there's always still that
sort of that anxiety. There is some fear of consequence.
Is there's some fear of being found out, and there's

(01:10:02):
some level of insecurity. Now when we get to psychopathy,
there's differences in their brains. There is no sense of remorse.
Now in a malignant narcissist, this sense of remorse still
doesn't feel like it's fully authentic. The remorse is more
like I got caught. Now I've got to pay for it.
The psychopath almost builds the consequences into sort of as
part of the model. They're never going to stop psychopathing,

(01:10:23):
as it were. And so usually it's a criminality and
a violation of social norms. We see from a very
young age five, six, seven, definitely before the age of fifteen, right,
violating the rights of others from a very young age.
And then psychopathy. Listen, not all psychopathy is a person
who's like, you know, an assassin or it's going to

(01:10:44):
know at them. They could be just white collar criminals.
They can not be like they're really confident, they're very authoritative,
but they're menacing. Yeah, and I think with malignant narcissism,
the overlap is so much that unless you really spend
time with them, you may not fully get to that
sort of that bay, this kind of anxiety and stuff
like that. Now, what you called a covert narcissist, it's

(01:11:05):
probably better captured by the term vulnerable narcissists. Okay, here's
where we see the resentfulness, sullen, aggrieved, angry, vindictive narcissistic person.
But the vindictiveness is more like, how come the world
didn't see that I'm a genius? The grandiose person like
I'm a genius. Of course, you all see it, right,
But the vulnerable person's like, how come nothing ever worked

(01:11:28):
out my way? Grumble, grumble, grumbled, grumble.

Speaker 3 (01:11:30):
This is what I have a.

Speaker 2 (01:11:31):
Hard time describing to people because they think are obvious attention.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
To any people.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):
I would say all narcissistic people have some level of covertness.
And this is a big distinction because a big pushback
you get is, well, maybe they can't help it, Like
you want to know how I know they can help
it because he waited till the guests were gone to
go off on you. That's exactly right, right, So then
you get into all these other subtypes. You have communal
narcissists who get their validation by portraying themselves as somebody

(01:11:59):
who's helped full and is saving the world. Your self
righteous narcissists who are hyper ethical, hyper moral, very judgmental,
I know better than others, and very harsh to somebody
who's going through a hard time. Well, if they'd only
live life the right way, they wouldn't be in this
cattle of fish, would they? They can feel judge. You
can see this in religious communities. You'll see it in

(01:12:21):
cult leaders because the communal communal meets malignant is your
cult leader, and what you're describing feels like we're malignant
means vulnerable. Yeah, that's what we're seeing. And it's a
very dangerous combination because of the victimhood. Because of that,
I was never understood by the world. It's like WHOAE
is me? Nobody wants to appreciate me. That can pull

(01:12:42):
for a rescuing vibe from other people, then people are
drawn into it, and then the malignant piece happens to
meets the most deadly of the combination.

Speaker 3 (01:12:51):
Yeah, that all makes so much sense.

Speaker 2 (01:12:53):
One thing I feel like, because I feel like I've
had interactions with different shades of narcissism that you're kind
of describing, but one thing I always one defining characteristic
that I found in all of them. That was usually
the moment that I realized maybe they were a narcissist,
was the feeling of they're in a completely different reality.

(01:13:15):
Like there's always a moment where I feel like I'm
either recalling something that's happened that I remember clear as
day and they either don't remember it at all, remember
completely differently, or they're retelling of something or their view
of the world or situation either just never happened or
they just refuse.

Speaker 3 (01:13:34):
To acknowledge it correct.

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
And that's where I feel like the gas lighting starts
to come into play, like because you suddenly are at
a standoff with a narcissist and you're like, well, this
is my reality, and they're saying, well, this is my reality,
and you're either going to join me in my reality
or I'm going to punish you where gaslight you into
agreeing or running away.

Speaker 1 (01:13:52):
So the only way to keep the relationship going is
to fully surrender to their reality, and over time you
actually get indoctrinated to believe that is the only reality.
That's where you see in cults. That's what you see
in these relationships if they go on long enough.

Speaker 3 (01:14:07):
Yeah, it becomes a means of survival too.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
And know and to the world the two people, the
narcissist and the non narcissist, they look like they're in sync,
not because they're in sync, but because you are now
in survival mode. And so people are like, oh, they're fine,
Like and you look for what Thandow saw on you
that look, there's a look and I mean, I've done
this long enough, and I'm like, oh, I see the look.

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
It's a look.

Speaker 1 (01:14:32):
It's a little bit far away, it's not fully there.
And you know, now, all of a sudden, you're in
the Manchurian candidate. You're like, okay, woo, let's bring you back.
But it's not as simple as waving your hand over
someone's eyes. It's about a very slow process of reacquainting
someone with reality. And some of the work I do
with survivors is I want you like three times a day,

(01:14:56):
am I hungry right now?

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:14:58):
Literally, start from basic. It's like plugging into bodily sensation.

Speaker 2 (01:15:02):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:15:03):
Yes, you have to start from scratch. You have to
start percratch. That's how it felt.

Speaker 2 (01:15:08):
Rebuilding myself felt like I had to go all the
way back to the beginning, to the point I was
so worn down.

Speaker 3 (01:15:13):
I had to like relearn how to walk.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
Yes, you are, you're really, it's beyond really. At least
a baby knows when it's hungry.

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
And part of your healing process has to come from
being in.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Tune with your body and getting back into it is
like the first step. It felt like I was watching
my life from behind a pane of glass, and it
was absolutely terrifying.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
You know how if you've ever seen an old colonial home,
they have that letty glass which is like distorty. You know,
it's not it's not just glass, it's distorty glass where
you can't quite make out the images on the other side.
You know that there's a thing back there, and there's
some light, and there's a plan, maybe there's a person,
but they're distorted. You're starting from scratch, and you had

(01:15:53):
to start from scratch. Oh yeah, no, I mean it
with everything.

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):
I felt like I had to relearn empathy too, because
I think after my experience with Brian, which one of
the reasons I felt like I had fallen into that
was because I was overly empathetic, like what you were
saying of like I see the good in everybody, and
like I'm going to be the one that stays.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
I'm going to be the one that sacrifices everything for you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
Maybe empathy is the wrong word, but at the time,
it felt like when I got out of that situation,
that empathy was dangerous and I felt like if I
cared about people, then I was going to become vulnerable.
And so I think without realizing it, I kind of
shut that part down when I started disassociating, and I
couldn't allow myself to care for people in the same

(01:16:35):
way because it felt unsafe, And so I also had
to relearn how to do that because otherwise you repeat
the cycle right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
Well, there's also an overcorrection when you come out right
because right empathy does feel dangerous because you're immediately working
the angles, like how am I going to be taking
advantage of? And I tell survivors, I'm not mad at that,
Let's stay there. This is why it is a slow process,
that overcorrection that initially happens. We'll see what's happened to me,
am I now like them. It's not that you lose

(01:17:03):
your empathy. It's actually now a period of discernment. It's
a very slow creeping into what does trust look like?
And a lot of folks will say this is taking
me forever, and I'll say, so what if this person
is able to see your gifts? True love, genuine love
is when you're the custodian of another person's vulnerabilities, and
that means there hurts their wounds and their traumas. And

(01:17:25):
so if you've been through this and someone meets you
and in a loving way, and you've been through this,
then that's going to take a long time. And somebody
who loves you and cares about you will let it
take as long as it takes. But when they start
hitting with you, why am I paying for the sins
of the person who came before me?

Speaker 3 (01:17:41):
Yeah, I'm not that person. I've heard that a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:17:43):
And you say, because the process that brought me to
you has brought many many wounds but also some gifts.
That's the nature of trauma exactly. But that's going to
take a minute, and there is an overcorrection. It's like
when after you're in a surgery, you're walking very tentatively
so you don't put too much weight on the line
exactly right, and then you slowly can put more and
more weight on the leg that you don't go run

(01:18:04):
on it right away. And if we can do that
for a leg, we can do it for our soul.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
M h. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:18:11):
Whenever I had like a new partner, I would always say, like,
you have to approach me like you would a shelter dog.
You know, when you first adopt a dog and they
tell you we don't know what happened to them, but
we know something happened. They're very afraid of people, they're
very afraid of touch, they're afraid to come out of
their cage. And you see like all these success stories
online of people just taking it really slow with the dog.

(01:18:32):
Every day, the bowl gets a little closer every day,
maybe they get the leash on the day, maybe they
get a little pet here and there, and then like
over time and yeah, over about a year, suddenly the
dog's outside running around, playing, licking their.

Speaker 3 (01:18:44):
Owner's face and all these things.

Speaker 2 (01:18:45):
But it takes time, and it takes time to build
that trust because something has happened to that dog. And
for some reason, we're like more active to believe it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
About dogs than people.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
Yeah, and it was a public story, so you continue
to be castigated and criticized and abused from that large,
ephemeral internety space of all.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
Oh yeah, the Suria campaign is still in full effect,
and it's even scarier now. It's like everybody I talked
to is a potential person that could take advantage of
me or use me, or use something against me or whatever,
and it is really scary, and yes, that does continue
to happen. When I decided to do this, I had
to make peace with the idea that a lot of

(01:19:26):
things could go away and I might have to be
okay with that, and a lot of the things that
could go away are things that I feel like the
narcissist holds near and dear, and I kind of told
myself that I was just going to have to let
things go, like reputation and money and career and public
perception and all of these things that, like, I know
to them like these are the worst things that you

(01:19:47):
can lose or that I can take away from you.
And for me, I just immediately kind of said, like,
I think one of my only defenses here is going
to be letting go of any attachment I have to
these things, because then I don't really know what they're
going to have over me anymore. I don't know if
that's the right way to go about it or not,
but it felt like the only way to suspend that
kind of fear was just saying, like, Okay, I have

(01:20:08):
a backup plan in case all of this goes away,
and I can't be afraid of these things, and I
can't be afraid of the lies people are going to tell,
or the smear campaigns or the assassinations on my character
because a that happens to every survivor that comes forward
against a powerful person or a person.

Speaker 3 (01:20:23):
That was beloved or has a following or whatever. It's
gotten a lot worse with the Internet. I don't want
to say worse, but different.

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
There's like different plans of attacks because it's always been
pretty bad at least I'm not getting the bottomized now
or something, you know, so I don't even want to
say worse, but there's just different kind of forms of
the same thing. It's like you get stone in the
town square or you get called crazy stereocille bottomized, and
now it's like I can't even go online anymore, Like
I can't, you can't.

Speaker 3 (01:20:46):
I've lost that privilege. That's done, Like my social media
days are completely over.

Speaker 2 (01:20:51):
There's this quote I love that somebody said, whenever somebody
speaks out against abuse, eventually your tone is exaggerated. Your
tone being exaggerated is such a big thing. They take
things you've said out of context and they try to
like shame and scare you into silence. And that's what
I feel like I'm experiencing now, and it's working because

(01:21:11):
I've wanted to talk less and less and I've censored
myself more and more until the point where I'm almost
non existent on social media anymore inside of just like
maybe here's a show or a job that I'm doing,
but other than that, like I don't feel like I
can share my opinion anymore.

Speaker 3 (01:21:25):
And so I feel like that tactic absolutely is working.

Speaker 1 (01:21:28):
And when you say that tactic free, that tactic is
working for whom.

Speaker 2 (01:21:32):
Well, I do feel like that the media can be
complicit in some ways. I think Roon and Pharaoh spoke
about this a bit in Catch and.

Speaker 3 (01:21:39):
Kill and that it wasn't just about Weinstein.

Speaker 2 (01:21:41):
It was also sort of uncovering like a mass conspiracy
to protect predators and high profile I want I agree
with that, and I think that is absolutely a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
But you said something very important, which was me having
to sort of give myself to detach from things that
might have been important to me if I I'm either
going to speak out or show up the way I
want in this situation. So you spoke out. What was
his reaction to you speaking out.

Speaker 2 (01:22:07):
Brian's Well, first, I was speaking out without naming him
that he was trying to say with other people in
my life and kind of like, oh yeah, well, she
told me about so and so, or it must have
been this person or that person. And then he started
getting questioned about it because people were putting two or

(01:22:28):
two together and ended up hanging up on the on
the interviewer because they were getting a little too close,
and that sort of caused a bit of an uper
So I know he was just trying to kind of
downplay it at first, and then we, you know, me
and a few other survivors came forward, and the first
thing I noticed was he started setting up the narrative

(01:22:51):
with some of the words he used, like these are
horrible distortions of reality. And whatever I've done, it's been
with you know, like minded partners or things like that.
So I'm immediately understand like, Okay, he's already setting this
up that these were all consensual interactions and we just
maybe misunderstood or got in over our head. And because
he's a powerful man who has built a career off

(01:23:13):
of being shocking and disturbing, is going to get away
with it because his right to being weird and kinky
will get defended in court and we will get shamed
forever even stepping foot in there or participating.

Speaker 3 (01:23:26):
And so it's been used a million times.

Speaker 1 (01:23:28):
Hours after Evan publicly named Brian as her alleged abuser,
he issued the following written statement. Obviously, my art and
my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these
recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality. My
intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like minded partners,

(01:23:51):
regardless of how and why others are choosing to misrepresent
the past. That is the truth.

Speaker 3 (01:23:59):
But there were.

Speaker 2 (01:24:00):
People popping up on the Internet that were saying there
were miners, and I was like, well, how are you
going to defend that? You know, you can't say that
those things were consensual, And more stories.

Speaker 3 (01:24:08):
Started popping up, and slowly.

Speaker 2 (01:24:11):
He stopped talking. He just stopped talking completely. And now
his lawyer just kind of says things for him.

Speaker 3 (01:24:17):
He's kind of fallen away.

Speaker 2 (01:24:19):
And I think it's the only reason why it's more
disturbing and scary right now, is I think we're at
a weird precipice.

Speaker 4 (01:24:25):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:24:25):
Absolutely, people are very scared.

Speaker 3 (01:24:27):
Yeah, I really really scary.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
First of all, when a person is in a groomed relationship,
there's never consent. No, it's not possible for there to
be consent at any point in time, because it was
how the developmental structure of the relationship, right, So no
consent ever, so let's just lift that right from them.
When there's menace at any point in a relationship, that
kind of gaslighting, the consent must left the station a

(01:24:51):
long time ago. Then we forget that. While these feel
like individual relationships, these are societal issues. Like patriarchy, like
hierarchy is like oppression in all the structures, which means
you have a perma perpetrator. Now, okay, they're not gonna
not do this. This is how they wrecking crewe themselves
through life. I mean, every day people come at me,

(01:25:13):
you are a cruel person. How dare she? She's going
after people with the personality style. Call it whatever you
want to call it, Give it a different name, give
it another damn name I call That's why I use antagonism.
That seems to be a little bit more palatable. But
it's a style that is resistant to change. And once
they're done with you, they go on to the next
ext and the next and the next, And there is
no YELP for people. No, there is no review guys.

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
No. And that's why I don't want to speak for
all survivors. But that is why I felt like I
had to come forward. It wasn't to I mean a
lot of people think this narrative.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):
It bothers me that like all we.

Speaker 2 (01:25:49):
Want is like bloody revenge or like it's about hurting
the person that hurt us or sticking it to them
or whatever, and it's like, no, it's us realizing Look,
what they did to me was awful and I hated it,
but I was ready to go to my grave with
it because I thought it was just me. But when
I realized there was a pattern and it was happening
to other people exactly the same way was happening to me,

(01:26:09):
and it was going to keep happening. Like that's when
you take to social media. Law enforcement can help me.

Speaker 3 (01:26:14):
Okay, I don't know how else to protect people.

Speaker 2 (01:26:16):
I don't know how else to protect people or warned
people except to put my ass on the line.

Speaker 1 (01:26:21):
That's right and that, but that took a toll on
to you. That took a toll on you. So, speaking
of the toll on you, how is your healing going.

Speaker 2 (01:26:28):
There's good days and bad days. It's still really hard
some days, like everything feels really normal, and then you
get hit with another legal attack or an attack on
your character in the press or something coming and you're
just like, oh, right, I'm still in tango with this person.
I don't think this person's ever going away until they
pass away. Honestly, I don't know how they're ever going
to stop. I agree, that's an awful feeling because it's

(01:26:50):
like I've been going through this half of my life.
I was eighteen when it started. I'll be thirty six
this year, and I'm still going through it. And that's a.

Speaker 3 (01:27:00):
Bummer to say the least.

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
But my nervous system for the first time, feels like
it's calmer than it's ever been. But I've had to
make decisions for my life so that I can be
an optimal health and that I can thrive and I
can be happy and I can be clear headed. And
one of the hardest decisions was leaving Los Angeles because
this is where my child is and I have to
make this impossible decision of do I stay and stay

(01:27:24):
in fight or flight and have my nervous system always
be overacting and always looking over my shoulder. And believe me,
I tried, I really really tried to hunker down, and
I fought as long as I possibly could. I was
just like, I don't know how to be the best
version of myself and to thrive and to fully heal
if I don't leave this place. That was one of
the hardest moments of realization for me, of just like,

(01:27:45):
the only way I can be the best mother is
if I leave, and that's been the hardest. Of course,
I still have a wonderful relationship with my child and
I always will and I will always remain connected with
them and I will see them, but they can't live
with me all the time.

Speaker 3 (01:28:00):
We have to live in different states now, and I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:28:02):
Feel like I had a lot of understanding and compassion
in that area. But all that being said, once I
again just had to think about the things I could
control and make peace with the things that I couldn't.
Forgive myself for the things I couldn't control, or the
things I felt like I couldn't overcome or wasn't strong
enough to Overgod be like, no, you know what, A
lot of this isn't your fault, and all you can

(01:28:23):
do is the best that you can with the situation
that you have. Be your best self, be the best
mom you can be, and that's being as healthy and
happy and also showing my child that you don't have
to stay in unhappy and unsafe situations. I want them
to be happy in their best selves too, so I
hope one day they understand why I felt like I
couldn't stay. I know a lot of people have been

(01:28:44):
in the same situation, and my heart goes out to
all of them.

Speaker 3 (01:28:46):
An awful position to be in.

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
However, the other side of the coin, I'm happier than
I've maybe ever been in my life. And that took
a lot of work, a lot of consistency, because for
so long you're chipping your trauma. You're trying to relearn
how to move through the world in a healthy way
and reparent yourself and make sense of your life. And

(01:29:09):
it feels like, when am I going to see the results?
You know, when are things going to start feeling normal?
When it's going to stop feeling like a constant battle,
a constant fight. I'm constantly having to monitor myself. And
now I feel like, you know, my grip is loosening
a little bit, and I feel relaxed in my body
and in myself. I trust myself, I trust my instincts,

(01:29:29):
and I think a lot of that came from being
alone really really hard to do, and really sitting with
myself and the uncomfortability, in the loneliness, in the grief
and wading through it and just letting it take as
long as it needs to take. And now I do
feel a sense of peace and a sense of calm
and capable of being in happy, healthy relationships. And I'm

(01:29:53):
a better mom and I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:29:55):
More present with people.

Speaker 2 (01:29:56):
I feel like I can be there for people more
like I'm not so caught up in all of my
stuff that i have nothing to give anybody else because I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:30:04):
Just trying to survive, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:30:06):
And so like feel like I'm at sort of the
light at the end of the tunnel, and I armed
myself with enough tools now that like I know how
resilient I am, and like, you know, I think they
say there's like post traumatic stress, but there's also post
traumatic resilience.

Speaker 3 (01:30:20):
But I definitely feel like that. And now all I want.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
To do is what you're doing, which is now I
just want to try to help other people and draw
attention to it and just keep learning.

Speaker 3 (01:30:32):
But I just want to kind of hide, like I
that's understandable.

Speaker 2 (01:30:36):
It's funny because some of the naysayers, they'll say, like,
whe they're just doing this for money and attention, And
it's funny because like, I'm hemorrhaging money and all I
want to do.

Speaker 3 (01:30:42):
Is hide, hide.

Speaker 2 (01:30:45):
And it's made me pay more attention to the things
that I really feel like madder in life, which are
safety and connection and love and family and like just
kind of a simple life. So yeah, my healing journey
is good. There's still really difficult things, but I do
feel like I'm doing my best and I do feel
like I'm happy. I'm like, yeah, feeling safe in my

(01:31:08):
body again.

Speaker 1 (01:31:08):
How would you compare how you were doing before speaking
out versus your life now?

Speaker 2 (01:31:13):
I felt like a prisoner in my body and in
my mind, Yeah, it just felt like I was a
prisoner of my trauma, my nervous system, my PTSD, and
it just felt like an avalanche and a deep hole that.

Speaker 3 (01:31:25):
I was never going to get out of.

Speaker 2 (01:31:26):
And I felt crazy, like you're watching the world go
on without you, and you're being left behind, and you're
kind of left questioning like why did all these things
have to happen? Why did this have to be harder.
Why do I have to sort through all of this now?
And why am I left with the wreckage? And why
does nobody believe me? It's one of the reasons why
one of my triggers is calling me crazy, of course,

(01:31:47):
because I feel like I've been made to feel that
way for so long.

Speaker 3 (01:31:50):
It was horrifying. I couldn't sleep, I would act out.

Speaker 2 (01:31:54):
I definitely like was in a bit of like a
thrill seeking phase for a second, especially when I was
really disassociated in the beginning.

Speaker 3 (01:32:00):
It was just like, how can I feel something? So
I was a little all over the place.

Speaker 2 (01:32:06):
I think it definitely hurt my job. I wasn't always
able to show up for work. I would get sick
a lot easier. Some days I would show up to
do a photo shoot and just being in from the
camera was too triggering, and like I would just like
break down in.

Speaker 3 (01:32:18):
Tears and have to leave.

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
It's a hard thing to explain to people, and it's
hard to keep your reputation intact when you're going through
that and people don't know what's happening. They just think
you're unreliable or I felt like that for a while,
and I think I think I do still fight against
some of that in the industry.

Speaker 1 (01:32:36):
I think we need a more trauma informed world. And
to the radical acceptance is the radical acceptance these folks
with these personalities don't change, and these relationships don't change.
But the radical acceptance is also about ourselves, as I've
been through something and I need to hold myself close,
I need to care for myself. Everyone who's ever gone
through one of these relationships has a very similar set

(01:32:59):
of reactions. And you know why, because that's how human
beings react when the reality is stolen and they are invalidated,
and they are not seen, and they are exploited, and
they are taking advantage of a finite, consistent set of reactions.
And since that's the case and it's happening to all
of us, you can keep calling people crazy all you want,

(01:33:21):
for as long as you want. It's just not true.

Speaker 3 (01:33:24):
It's utter devastation.

Speaker 1 (01:33:25):
It's utter devastation does kill people. And I've had far
too many documented cases of people sharing me, people who
have ended their lives, especially people who don't have a
lot of support exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
And that's why I consider myself one of the lucky ones.
And I almost died multiple times I've tried to kill
myself twice.

Speaker 3 (01:33:40):
It could have easily been me, and I have much.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
More privileged than things at my disposal. And so that's
when that's something so terrifying to me to think about,
how do people fight this without money?

Speaker 3 (01:33:50):
How do people fight this without mental health support?

Speaker 2 (01:33:52):
They?

Speaker 3 (01:33:52):
How do people survive this?

Speaker 1 (01:33:54):
They you know, there's people who are suffering, struggling out
of financial necessity, they have to stay. Out of cultural
necess they have to say, out of safety necessity, they
have to say stay. There's not a day you could
not open up the news somewhere and find out that
one more person was killed because they tried to leave
an abusive relationship.

Speaker 3 (01:34:12):
They tried to leave.

Speaker 1 (01:34:13):
People don't get it. And even it's not just.

Speaker 3 (01:34:16):
You're assuming everybody has a place.

Speaker 1 (01:34:17):
To go, No they not only do they not? Did
they not have a place to go? Somebody's done such
a number on your brain. But Evan, frankly, it's not
just about the survivors understanding what's happening to them, but
it's the people out there where they could get this.
They could be that voice that says, I believe you,
How can I be here for you? I hear you.
I see you. You may not be ready to go,

(01:34:39):
and I understand that, and I'm here waiting for you
on the other side and alongside you as you go
through this. That's what people need to do, is we
need to educate people just as much on how to
be supporters and not naysayers.

Speaker 3 (01:34:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:34:52):
I cannot thank you enough. Do you have any other
questions for me?

Speaker 2 (01:34:56):
Well, you kind of answered some of them, like like
this doesn't change.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
Let me put it this way. You know, when you
and I leave here today, might I see a unicorn
galloping down the road I drive. I suppose sure, Jamie.
As a chance tell you this, you'd have to have
an extraordinarily motivated individual who has enough support on the
outside of therapy, who has access to the highest quality therapy,

(01:35:22):
probably multiple times the week for many years. We're talking
six figures now that you've got available for therapy probably
over your time, that you are able to engage in
some self reflection on what you did to someone, all
that stuff, all those conditions present, and you might be
able to make a horse race out of this. I've

(01:35:45):
been doing this. I've been doing this about twenty five years,
once maybe twice. And what I have seen in some
cases where a person says, oh, in order to be
good at a relationship, I need to do this whole
empathy thing and self aware and kind of be nice
to them thing and listen to their problems thing. What
I've seen more often is I don't want to hurt anyone.

(01:36:07):
I'm not a bad person, but I don't want to
do that other stuff. So I'm going to cut bait.
I consider that a win. But that person's personality is
never changed, right, you see what I'm saying. That's it.
So that's where it doesn't really change. It's never going
to evolve into healthy. So that's what I mean. These
are tough things. Tell people. I've got a personality it's

(01:36:28):
not going to change. Is it really realistic for me
to expect that someone else's will? So yeah, thank you,
Thank you, Evan. Thank you for bringing your story that
I keep talking. Yeah, you have to keep talking. Yeah,
And your story reminds people that there is healing. I
think that that's the big important piece to take away.
So thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:36:46):
Yeah, thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (01:36:48):
Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Evan. First,
narcissistic and abusive relationships can leave us feeling stuck in time,
and as people come out of them will often feel
like they lost years in their psychological development. These types
of relationships offer no place for growth. Evan shares that

(01:37:10):
this was the case in her relationship. When all of
your resources go towards survival and just getting through the day,
it can slow psychological growth way down, which only adds
to the grief and struggles people face when they leave
these one sided and harmful relationships. Next one thing Evan

(01:37:33):
shared was that as she reflected on that time and relationship,
that it is difficult to look back at her life
and many survivors find that just having to look at
images of themselves from the time they were in these
relationships leave them sad and regretful. In this way, narcissistic

(01:37:53):
relationships really do steal time, and for people in more
severely narcissistic abusive relationlationships, there is so much pain in
revisiting these relationships, and as such, the time and the
memories can get set aside to avoid the pain for
our next takeaway. As she shared her story, Evan said

(01:38:15):
that after she got out of her relationship, she distanced
herself from her experience for nearly eight years, and in
her quest for what felt like a normal life, she
had not only distanced herself but attempted to avoid dealing
with all that had happened. Unfortunately, we cannot outrun our pain. Grieving,

(01:38:37):
processing the trauma and losses, and talking it through are
all crucial. While routine and a normal life can create
a sense of safety without addressing trauma and having experiences validated,
it can and will show up in many ways or
be brought up by triggering experiences. Evan had this happen

(01:39:01):
on film and television sets and found that it affected
her professionally. Trauma informed therapy as a place to work
through these kinds of experiences is essential. In this next takeaway,
a trauma bond can be generated by a partner who
not only manipulates in gaslights, but Evan shares how her

(01:39:22):
partner took the stance of it's us against the world,
casting them as misunderstood misfits in a world that wanted
to ostracize them. By creating a bond in this way,
it cannot only make a manipulative partner feel like an ally,
but further cement this dangerous dynamic of isolation. Next, we

(01:39:46):
have discussed coercive control in multiple episodes of Navigating Narcissism,
but one dynamic Evan highlighted in her relationship was her
partner getting in her face repeat heatedly until she would
agree just to make it stop. This dynamic can have
a gaslighting feel to it, but in some ways it

(01:40:09):
conforms to something called negative reinforcement, which is when a
person is rewarded for a behavior by something aversive being
taken away. Evan would give in to her partner's criticisms
and accusations, even if they were wrong. It would make
his relentless rage stop, and the relief of that would

(01:40:33):
mean that she would do it again in the future.
This can create a treacherous dynamic where it looks to
the world that the person being harmed in the relationship
is agreeing with the abusive person, when in fact they
are just capitulating and giving in to make the verbal
abuse stop. And for our last takeaway, as Evan shared

(01:40:58):
what worked for her in her heeling, she highlighted trusting
herself time alone, allowing herself to process the grief, being
patient and giving it time, and this culminated slowly into
her feeling safer in her own mind. After her relationship,
Evan entered another relationship and became a mother, and she

(01:41:21):
has found, like many, that motherhood also becomes instrumental to healing.
Time alone is often crucial to processing grief, and while
it can be scary to be alone with these feelings
and sensations, it is often the only path forward

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