July 16, 2022 • 34 mins
Narcissists are an especially dangerous and toxic pairing for people with codependent behaviors, due to the way each person’s maladaptive behaviors work together. In this episode we discuss the general characteristics of narcissism and then detail Brian's two, back-to-back, romantic relationships with abusive narcissists.
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In this episode:
00:01:25 Common characteristics of narcissist
00:02:18 The codependency - narcissism connection
00:03:59 Narcissistic abuse
00:05:21 The beginning of relationships/lovebombing
00:10:20 Financial control
00:12:09 The narcissist’s script
00:12:47 A portrait of R
00:15:19 Gaslighting example
00:21:16 A portrait of J
00:31:10 A tale of two narcissists
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Stephanie (00:05):
Hello, this is Stephanie and this is Brian.
Welcome to episode four of the making and the remaking of a codependentmind. Last episode, we talked about the phenomena of trauma bonding, and how it played out in two of your romantic relationships, abusive relationships with women we call R and J. R and J both triggered and exploited the trauma responses that you were still experiencing from your abusive childhood friendship with a boy we call G. You mentioned in that episode, a number of times that R and J were presumably still are both narcissists. And unlike with G, their abuse with narcissistic abuse
Brian (00:50):
from all the reading and researching that we've been doing on on narcissism, it really is not a big surprise, there definitely seems to be a toxic link between narcissism and codependency specifically. So that's actually why we decided to devote a whole entire episode to narcissism just to kind of get an understanding of what it is.
Stephanie (01:10):
Now you didn't understand at the time of these relationships, that they were narcissists. In fact, you didn't even seem to understand what narcissism really involved.
Brian (01:19):
Right. Yeah, I mean, there's not a lot I really understood at all. I mean, I didn't understand what codependency was, or it would have been immensely helpful to understand even half of what I understand now at this point, but we should get into I guess, the specifics of what we've come to find to be kind of the collection of behaviors that are commonly seen as narcissistic behaviors. There's a lot of information out there on narcissism. So I thought I'd just list off some of the common characteristics. There's an inflated sense of importance and an excessive need for attention and admiration. There's a need to feel superior to other people. They're, they're usually paranoid or easily slighted. There's a
(02:01):
lack of empathy. And there's an inability or unwillingness to recognize theneeds and feelings of other people. And then there's a difficulty in regulating their own emotions and behaviors for a large part. And ultimately, narcissists never wind up taking responsibility for their own behavior.
Stephanie (02:18):
So listening to those characteristics of narcissists. And thinking about the way that we talked about codependency in the previous episodes, you can kind of get a sense of why there is such a toxic connection between narcissism and codependency. You have on the side of the narcissist, someone who lacks empathy and really has an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs or feelings of others. And then yay, here's a codependent who doesn't feel he or she has the right to have their own needs or feelings, so they're not going to make demands on the narcissists. Also you have on the side of the narcissist, difficulty regulating their own emotions and behaviors because they don't feel like
(03:01):
they should have to because they're the most important person in the world.And then you have on the side the codependence someone who is trained, possibly by a narcissist or by another kind of abusive situation, someone who was trained to regulate the emotional behaviors of another person to believe that it was his or her job to regulate emotions and behaviors of another person,
Brian (03:26):
right. And then all these things about kind of this excessive need for admiration and validation and things like that. The codependent person is set up to do that, too. I mean, that's just yeah, they're primed to tell people what they need to hear. In my case, it just goes back all the way back to to the G relationship, and there's a through line all the way up to those relationships of just validating other people to try to survive social situations.
Stephanie (03:53):
So that narcissistic abuse would be abuse that emerges from those traits,
Brian (03:59):
right. Like controlling behavior. Entitlement, the need to always be right or feel superior, avoiding taking responsibility for their words or actions. The gaslighting rage or contempt type behaviors, verbal abuse, things like condescension, belittling insulting, coercion, manipulating, and then you know, just taking advantage of other people to fulfill their own needs.
Stephanie (04:26):
And you experienced all of that in both of these relationships. The narcissist ends up triggering the traumatized codependent person through their abusive behaviors. And then the codependent person then buys into the narcissistic visions and provides the validation the narcissist needs in order to keep themselves safe from the abuse.
Brian (04:48):
So the two work in concert that way, in effect, the narcissists getting their needs met while the codependent person is just behaving reflexively in the ways they taught themselves to survive. And so the two just worked perfectly together for a while, obviously. So in my case, I just got stuck really quickly when I came across one of these people. First of all, they had to express interest in me because I didn't really have agency. But once they did this whole drawing process that we will explain a little more this love bombing, quickly followed by the abuse, which activated all my codependent behaviors,
Stephanie (05:21):
why don't we talk a little bit about how you did get into those relationships and how the trajectories for both of those relationships, especially at the beginning, were very similar. Because I suspect a lot of people who've been in relationships with narcissists, they will probably see a lot of similarities between their own experience early on in the relationship and your experience in those two relationships.
Brian (05:43):
When I reflected on him, it was pretty amazing how many of the experiences lined up almost exactly
Stephanie (05:51):
when thinking about the start of the relationship with R and the start of the relationship with J
Brian (05:54):
really, the whole trajectory of the relationships, how they started and how they progressed, and makes it really easy to explain the link for me and then between narcissism codependency because almost the same exact thing happened twice in a row back to back. So here's the similarities that I found between the two without going into too much detail yet. They both started with this love bombing, which we've mentioned before this extreme words of admiration, and you know, you're you're so amazing, you're so handsome, you're you know, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff.
Stephanie (06:26):
And started really from almost the first conversation.
Brian (06:29):
Yes, exactly. Right, from the first conversation the first day, really, really, really long conversations, daily conversation just kind of this barrage. And then even big relationship discussions happened within the first week with both of these people just like, you know, these Oh, okay, we're talking about our future already, and things like that. And
Stephanie (06:47):
so just all this kind of destabilizing the attention
Brian (06:50):
which I had a really hard time, you know, we've mentioned this before, when we talked about love bombing for me, but it's, everybody likes to be admired. And it's, it can be confusing to have that kind of love bombing. But for someone that with as low self esteem that I had, it was especially destabilizing. And then both of them made a big push to move in together really quickly, there was kind of like this, I don't want to say tricks. But looking back, it kind of felt that way. It became an offer I couldn't refuse, sort of, like so the moving in together happened really fast. Within three to five weeks of even meeting the people.
Stephanie (07:26):
This I guess, is fairly common with narcissists as well, you got to move things along very quickly. So within like three or 4 or five weeks, all of a sudden, you're living with this person, and you're in a relationship where you're talking about the future, and you haven't really even got a chance to find out whether you like this person at all
Brian (07:46):
Yeah, we'll get into this in the next episode with a lack of agency, but I didn't really recognize what I wanted to begin with. So it's just like, okay, sure, yeah, great. This person was really into me, and they're asking me to move in with them and stuff. Whoo. But then, as soon as I did, or even actually, possibly slightly before, I think the abusive behavior started that started very, very early on to within the first couple of weeks the abuse started. It was almost as if the abuse was these kind of tests like to see if I, you know, what my boundaries were, or even if I had boundaries, which I didn't, because that's often what codependents lack is boundaries, kind of, like we've talked about when we went into
(08:24):
codependency. So it was kind of just like exerting, see how much controlthey had, how much control they could get, like, right off the bat, then also with this whole intermittency thing, like we talked about with the trauma bonding, there was apologies, you know, if I expressed like, wow, Whoa, that was that was, you know, I wouldn't use the word abuse but that was pretty harsh or something, you know, and I tried to push back, they would apologize, both of them, right at the beginning very profusely apologize. But then also make excuses. It was always there was some reason that they did it, some external reason. In both of their cases, it was because their jobs were terrible, and they were having a hard time handling
(09:00):
their jobs, the people that there were awful, they were out to get them andtheir jobs were affecting their physical and mental health.
Stephanie (09:08):
Right. So going back to the narcissistic traits, I mean, narcissists do not take responsibility for their behavior. So their apologies were really about justifying their behaviors, because it was other people's fault. It was their jobs or their co workers.
Brian (09:21):
Yeah, exactly. It wasn't like, Oh, my God, I need to fix these behavior problems. It's it's I'm sorry. Here's why. Here's why it's justified. Then that would dovetail into the next step in both of these relationships was just continuing this this onslaught of complaining about their jobs, to where I started to feel responsible, that I needed to take on this this emotional regulation problem that they were having, what do I need to do about this? And so in both cases, I was like, well, we're living together, I make a good paycheck, you don't have to have this job. You could always look for another one. ButI think I went beyond you should look for another job, you should quit now this because they were both abusing
(10:02):
me. And they were both using their jobs and their physical and mentalhealth as their excuses. So it's like, okay, well, maybe you should quit your job with me in the back in my head going, maybe they'll stop abusing me if they quit their job, because now they won't have this horrible thing that they're putting up with us every day. So these both this happened within a few months,
Stephanie (10:20):
within a few months of meaning someone they are quitting their job, and relying exclusively on you.
Brian (10:26):
Yep, it was a way to establish financial control. Because with both of them, there was also this very heavy reliance on on my income, but then also, the finances were seen as our finances really more their finances or our finances
Stephanie (10:43):
You told l them to quit their jobs, so they should have an expectation that now you will be permanently financial responsible for them. And, you know, which is interesting, because you often hear about financial abuse, narcissistic abuse, somewhat from the other angle where the high paying spouse, or partner, usually, the man will control the the lower earner, you know, maybe actually telling her to quit her job so that he can now have financial control over and doling out the money, that path wasn't available to either of these women. You made more money, they both, as you say, struggled at work to kind of keep jobs or to make progress. Really, this was the way, they came at it from the other angle, they made
(11:30):
themselves financially dependent on you so that they could now financiallycontrol you
Brian (11:34):
It kind of fit into this puzzle that that was kind of this chaotic thing that was going on within these first, you know, a couple of months, that was testing my limits, seeing what kind of boundaries I had, seeing how I reacted to their abusive behaviors and how I let it go and stuff like that. So it was it was kind of like, okay, well, here's a natural next step. If I just quit my job, I'll make myself even more really reliant on this guy that is has made it clear that he's going to accept this abuse, and he's going to do whatever it takes to avoid this abuse.
Stephanie (12:09):
seems almost like a script, excessive love bombing, attention, moving, moving things along quickly, quickly, quickly, as you say, testing your boundaries to see what they can get away with it such that again, within three months, you're trapped in a living situation with these women and feeling not just financially responsible for them, but feeling responsible for their mental health, for their physical health, for their emotions and for their behaviors.
Brian (12:33):
Exactly right. Just falling in line very quickly.
Stephanie (12:37):
We listed out earlier the common characteristics of narcissist. Let's get a little more specific in our portraits of these two narcissists. Tell us a little bit more about our
Brian (12:47):
Okay. R was very conceited and arrogant, and she was often condescending, mostly only openly to me. But she spent a lot of time crafting her image, from the clothes she wore to the music, she listened to things like that. She went out of her way to make sure these things were noticed. She was bragging about how cool she was all the time and how she would do things before they became popular and kind of was bragging about her past a lot like all these all these crazy interesting things she had done in our past and, and would actually put me down for the fact that I didn't have these interesting things from my past. Like we're always making this parallel between the two of us that she was superior. Yeah, just just
(13:31):
everything about her and her image and her past everything was just farsuperior to me. And so she would use that a lot. And she would put down other people's tastes and things to either behind her back or to their face in different ways. Usually she would play it off his humor. And she worked really hard on her social media image and and definitely thrived on positive feedback that she got from the social media or just in person just and if she didn't get positive feedback, it was always kind of confusing, like she would you know, was clearly hurt by if she didn't receive the level of recognition she thought she deserved. She saw herself as a very intelligent and capable person. And she was certainly resourceful. But much
(14:14):
of that was really fragile. As far as I could tell. There seemed to be somekind of trauma from her childhood at the core of this behavior. I don't want to speculate too much into this, but she did tell you she did tell me some things about her past how she was regulated called stupid and irresponsible by her family and things like that. It seemed like anything that she felt the need to exaggerate about herself were the things she went out of her way to insult me for. So she called me stupid on almost a daily basis in various ways, sometimes just indirectly by like, ridiculing or belittling the things that I did, or said or and then other times just directly, like flat out just calling me stupid or other names, you know,
(14:52):
and often mocked me, you know, it's kind of like the childhood bullieswould do just like kind of just mocking behaviors and And she would try to pass this off its humor. Also, you know, like I said, with other people like just, she tried to pass her behavior office humor much of the time, especially if she went too far, but then would wind up just insulting my sense of humor after that. So it would wind up being this kind of double wave of insult.
Stephanie (15:19):
That's a good example of gaslighting, which we've mentioned a couple of times, and which we talked about in the last episode. I'll just explain it again, in case people are unfamiliar with that term, it actually comes from a very old movie, I can't remember who starred in it, where a husband was trying to drive his wife crazy. And the methodology he took was to go up into the attic,their their home was lit by gas lamps. So he would go up in the attic, and he would every day turned down the gas lights in very small amounts. And when his wife was starting to notice this and comment on it, that it was getting darker, he would say no, what are you talking about? It's not getting darker must be your eyesight, you must be
(15:59):
seeing things. So the process of gaslighting again is not just to lie tothe person, deceive the person, it is to destabilize the other person and make them think that their version of reality is not correct. That they have that they have no grasp on reality. So R would insult you. And when you would call her out on that as saying something unkind or abusive or hurtful, she would try to substitute that actual reality with her reality, which was like no, it's just you don't have a sense of humor, you're the problem in this equation. And so the next time she says something hurtful or insulting, you check yourself a little bit like, oh, maybe she's just being funny. And I'm just being too sensitive. You start to doubt yourself,
(16:43):
which is the point of gaslighting, you doubt yourself and your own sense ofreality. And you've described R as a successful narcissist, in that she did have a wide circle of friends who would validate her version of herself and her version of your relationship and her version of reality. So that made the gaslighting even more effective.
Brian (17:02):
Well, that and the fact that the majority of her abuse was hidden from others too. So it was kind of in the privacy or on home most of the time. So for example, we'd be we'd be in social settings, and she'd have kind of like code word ways of insulting me that she knew others wouldn't catch on to like, say, calling me saying the word vulture, because of my postures. And like that, just she would just say, filter and look at me like that. And so it was, you know, obviously, she knew this was not good behavior. So she was hiding it from other people. But then also kind of, I could tell she was reading my performance the whole time. We were like in the social setting. So as soon as we were back behind closed doors, then
(17:40):
she can let loose and let out all the all the abusive language that she hadwanting to be used the whole time. You know, once we were we were in a private setting, the insults were about absolutely everything. It wasn't just like calling me stupid, she insulted the way I dress, the way I walked, the way I talked the way I breathed, the way I ate my food. She body shamed me, it was pretty much every aspect of of myself, my body, my personality, the way it presented myself. Everything was insulted and undermined. And that went into the gaslighting because I started to believe these things about myself. She seemed to only see me as an extension of herself is what I came to find,
Stephanie (18:23):
which is really the issue of boundaries. narcissists have no boundaries on the other way, in the sense of everyone is resource to them. And you kind of trapped and codependent behaviors had no boundary against that as well.
Brian (18:39):
She also took several actions that amounted to financial abuse, like what we said earlier on about how she quit her job early on. And then from there forward, it was just kind of the sporadic part time jobs, it was always kind of just, I was allowing her to explore different personalities and different ways of of, of being interesting, you know,
Stephanie (19:00):
but as you said, she dictated everything you did with your money.
Brian (19:04):
Yeah, she was promoting this kind of extreme recklessness and irresponsibility when it came to our finances, and I never felt as though really I had a say in any of this.
Stephanie (19:14):
And to what end was the spending directed?
Brian (19:17):
At the root of it. She wanted and felt entitled to really a unique and exciting life and and she was expecting me to provide that either financially or some other resources. So we ran up a huge amount of credit card debt and, and lived from paycheck to paycheck for that entire relationship. Because of that, we are always spending beyond our means.
Stephanie (19:39):
You use the word fragile earlier to describe our sense of our own self worth. I think that's a good word to use in reference to narcissists because even though they can come off as extremely confident, that confidence rests on extremely shaky internal grounds intimates wholly dependent on external validation.
Brian (19:58):
Yes, R was constantly looking for ways to make herself seem more interesting or exciting. And she needed a partner that was not only a perfect reflection of that image that she was trying to push of herself, but also one that could help provide things she thought she needed and was entitled to, when it came to making her life look more interesting and exciting to other people. So when that person was unable to provide these things at any given moment, that's when she lashed out the abusive behaviors.
Stephanie (20:25):
And that person, unfortunately, for eight some years, was you
Brian (20:31):
Yes, I was always on alert for potential abuse. And I was in a permanent triggered state the entire time.
Stephanie (20:37):
It sounds like a replay of the G relationship, the behaviors that you developed to survive the G relationship as a young child, those were taking on responsibility for others emotions and needs, the one sided caretaking, the people pleasing the no boundaries, those were all activated in your relationship with our and then the trauma that you were already living with was extended.
Brian (21:02):
Yeah. And I think it actually became more severe as a result of that relationship.
Stephanie (21:08):
And it left you vulnerable to another narcissist. Yeah. So let's hear a portrait of that of J's narcissism.
Brian (21:16):
So J had many of the same sorts of traits, obviously, but was far less successful at getting other people to actually buy into those images than then our was. That is she didn't have nearly as many friends and she actually rubbed people the wrong way. She had this kind of bizarre way of presenting herself, especially online, most of the time, she was trying to put herself out there online. She exaggerated her interests like our two, but in such extreme ways that I think it was pretty obvious to the average person that she was insincere, or even just looking for attention. It was like she needed to be the number one fan with every interest that she lost herself on to some of the things that she claimed to be into. She didn't
(21:59):
actually even know hardly anything about like, claiming to be a huge fan ofcertain authors or philosophers, but never actually reading any books by those people like just finding quotes and like posting the quotes online. So it was like that, that became the extent of for interest in these things. She was also extremely immature, these kind of childish characteristics and in many ways, she acted like a young child including intemperate temper tantrums, childish eating habits and other kind of bizarre, like almost comical kind of immature behaviors. She also spent a lot of time on her public image, mostly online. She was active on a lot of forums, not just social media, she spent a lot of time working on our
(22:45):
image, what to show what to say about herself when not to show commentingon other people's things like love bombing people's posts, but also kind of like parading other people's posts, she regularly would get into arguments with people and then block them. I saw this happen all the time, and she must have had hundreds of people blocked on on Facebook, from what I've heard from other people who didn't really know where she came off is completely crazy online. And like our she was super paranoid and would get confused anytime someone didn't like her or said something negative about her. Like she was always assuming there was something just terribly wrong with the other person, really difficult time getting along with people
(23:24):
right. As I said, with both of those relationships, they had this problemwith work and physical and mental health. And her In particular she had this kind of mysterious illness that apparently she had had for years decades. And she pushed this at the time she called it Lyme disease, chronic Lyme disease she had bitten by a tick years ago, She diagnosed herself with chronic Lyme disease and this was causing all these problems you know with with her health , immune system, tiredness and different things. And also to treat me badly right so initially that was the main reason for the excuse for for the abuse. You know, right off the bat when she was still making excuses for the bad behavior, later both of them R and
(24:16):
J stop pedmaking excuses entirely, it was my fault that these abusivebehaviors were happening. No ownership whatsoever. I mean, that's a common narcissist thing, too. But in the beginning, it was just like, you know, not sure if I'm going to fall in line, you know, so there had to be some excuses. So it's just like, well, I feel tired, so I'm sorry, I'm sorry I acted that way but it's because I'm tired. It's a health issue. You know, all we have to do is figure out how to to make sure that I
Stephanie (24:43):
"We" have to figure
Brian (24:44):
"We" have to, exactly, we have to figure out how to deal with this health issue of mine. And it was it was like this this this illness thing was her identity online too. So it's just like any any any excuse anytime she needed an excuse for anything. It was the illness and she was on this quest to make sure everybody understood. She put a lot of people off and actually ended some of our combined friendships because of this, this attitude, like they had to all support this quest of hers and respond in very specific ways to it.
Stephanie (25:16):
You described R as the successful narcissist, and J as an unsuccessful narcissist. I think that's a useful distinction, we often have a stereotypical image in our head of what a narcissist is. They're very charming. They're very beautiful or handsome, they're very successful in their chosen field. But that was really a version of successful narcissists. Someone can be narcissistic, and have the same deep sense of entitlement, deep sense of superiority, excessive need for admiration, little or no empathy for other people, and not have the resources to charm people to be successful in their chosen field of work. That's a pretty terrible state to be in as a narcissist, to know to your core that you are
(26:01):
special and unique and entitled to good treatment. But to not be able toconvince anyone in your life if that's the case. It sounds like what happened with J, she decided this illness was going to be the thing that was going to make her special and unique and would entitle her to special treatment from everyone around her.
Brian (26:20):
Yeah, everyone had to respond to it in a way that she wanted them to respond to it. And like she said, everyone had to take it very seriously. Everyone had to give her the type of feedback she wanted in the way she wanted it.
Stephanie (26:31):
It became a fuel for her abuse of you as well.
Brian (26:35):
Yeah, with me her abuse started almost immediately to just look just like R but her abuse was different. Her abuse was consisted mostly of verbally violent outbursts and coercion and extreme controlling behavior. She saw that I would get very afraid and shrink down and freeze in these moments. And and I came to find that was really the only way to get out of these, you know, I tried the the flight, she would follow me I tried fawn, tried to talk her down, it wouldn't work. So just freeze, to sit there, take it, and then wait for it to end.
Stephanie (27:10):
And in the screaming would be anger shaming, belittling, the goal being control. If you in any way violated her control, you would be met with anger and shame and belittling.
Brian (27:25):
When I think back on the source of a lot of these, these extreme outbursts, it often was that somehow I missed something she said or didn't follow something she said or got something incorrect from what she said or or missed the detail of something she said. But part of the problem here was, first of all, she was a big verbal diarrhea person, she talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. And I found quickly that I needed to listen to every word I couldn't really interject. It actually often made her angry if I tried to interject. So I would listen and but what I didn't realize that there was gonna be a test afterwards, right? I had to not only hear everything, take in everything and understand everything but there
(28:09):
were often directions in there somewhere, right? So it would be like, I'mexpressing a view, the fact that you're not saying anything back or correcting me or changing anything, I'm assuming you agree with every single thing I'm saying, I'm expecting that you agree with everything I'm saying. So then later, the next day, next week, or whatever, if I say something that contradicts something that she said during one of these dumps? It would be like wait, no, you said you agreed you agreed to this. Last week I was talking you agreed! You said you were going to do this. So that kind of stuff, you know ? That would that was a very common reason. But there was a lot of reasons, she was extremely emotionally immature so
(28:46):
anything would set her off. The verbal violence was extremely triggeringfor me, much like R's methods of making me feel inadequate. Anytime I tried to point out the behavior though, she would either lash out more or swing to the other extreme, which is to kind of push hard for more sympathy, like making excuses for the behavior, which usually involve blaming the health condition. So this convinced the codependent parts of me really quickly that I needed to always be looking for ways to make her comfortable and safe. Because then you would be comfortable and say, Yeah, as long as i is i kept her safe I was going to be safe. So this became a continuous daily quest of mine that became all encompassing that I had this this feeling of
(29:29):
responsibility for caring for J in every way that I could. So similar to Rshe quit her job very early on, as soon as she possibly could after we moved in together, then wound up never getting a full time job again from that that point forward. Sometimes she didn't even work at all. But like R she was also completely dictating pretty much how our money would be spent to where I really didn't feel as though I could ever really do anything for myself. I wound up doing pretty much everything for J in that relationship. So for from providing the majority of her financial resources to doing all the grocery shopping, all the cooking all the cleaning all the house maintenance. And when she wasn't at work, which, like I said was only part
(30:12):
time or not at all, she mostly just took naps, laid around in bed on herphone or sat at a computer and seem to just be chatting with people or making comments on social media or watching YouTube videos, things like that. No matter how bad it got, though, I still never allowed myself to ever imagine ending that relationship,
Stephanie (30:31):
which we explore more in the previous episode on trauma bonding,
Brian (30:35):
So like with R my blinders were completely on. And I continued to just do everything I thought I needed to do to survive the relationship by trying to keep her happy and safe. Whatever it took to do that.
Stephanie (30:46):
At this point, you were pretty good at gaslighting yourself. That is, denying your own reality and buying into the reality of the abusive person.
Brian (30:57):
So after 12 years of narcissistic abuse, I really had no sense of my own reality. Any lingering sense of agency that I might have had before are is was pretty much wiped away at that point.
Stephanie (31:10):
So this is a tale of two narcissists. Both have a deep sense of entitlement, deep sense of how special and superior they are. We have on the one hand R convinced that she's entitled to a unique and interesting life. And if anything failed to live up to her expectations, or she felt small or threatened in some way that was not her responsibility or fault, that was your failure. And the abuse would follow - the insulting the belittling behavior, the gaslighting. And then on the other hand, we have J convinced that she suffers as no one else suffers and it's everyone else's responsibility to arrange their lives for her. And if she ever felt uncomfortable or threatened or uneasy again, that was not her
(32:03):
responsibility to address that was a failure on your part and abuse wouldfollow verbal attacks, coercive control, manipulating and gaslighting.
Brian (32:14):
Yeah, it's funny for a long time I pushed this narrative that J was better than than R, like just basically not as bad, you know? Only simply because at at the beginning, she never called me stupid. That was my benchmark, although actually she did wind up eventually doing that anyway. So I just I didn't want to see the similarities because I was struggling with a lot of confusion and shame both during and after those relationships about how I was treated and why I was with them.
Stephanie (32:45):
It's actually somewhat ironic how unique narcissists think they are given that there are all kinds of variations on the same theme. If they weren't so destructive, it would almost be amusing how banal and cliched they actually are.
Brian (33:02):
I mean, really understanding the narcissism and this codependent narcissist link helped me hugely,
Stephanie (33:09):
but the link isn't the whole story. There's still more to come
Brian (33:12):
right. At this point in the podcast, we've given a pretty clear and detailed look at the sources of my codependent behaviors, where it started. The most impactful relationships I had since then, that went to deepen and expand on those maladaptive behaviors. We've explained what we mean by codependency and the types of behaviors that fall under that umbrella. But equally as important as exploring and understanding the source of my codependent behaviors, though, is a more thorough look at the actual behaviors themselves. As we've mentioned, throughout the previous episodes, there was this kind of web of behaviors that all played off each other in such a way that I kept myself mostly ignorant of not only those behaviors,
(33:57):
but even just acknowledging the abuse that came from other people. We'regoing to spend the next couple of episodes focusing on those various behaviors in more detail and how they worked. Starting with this concept that we've mentioned a few times already that I had this lack of agency over my life.
Stephanie (34:14):
We hope you will join us for that discussion. If you have comments or questions or want to contribute your own stories, you can find us on Facebook or Instagram by searching codependent mind.
Hello, this is Stephanie and this is Brian.
Welcome to episode four of the making and the remaking of a codependentmind. Last episode, we talked about the phenomena of trauma bonding, and how it played out in two of your romantic relationships, abusive relationships with women we call R and J. R and J both triggered and exploited the trauma responses that you were still experiencing from your abusive childhood friendship with a boy we call G. You mentioned in that episode, a number of times that R and J were presumably still are both narcissists. And unlike with G, their abuse with narcissistic abuse
Brian (00:50):
from all the reading and researching that we've been doing on on narcissism, it really is not a big surprise, there definitely seems to be a toxic link between narcissism and codependency specifically. So that's actually why we decided to devote a whole entire episode to narcissism just to kind of get an understanding of what it is.
Stephanie (01:10):
Now you didn't understand at the time of these relationships, that they were narcissists. In fact, you didn't even seem to understand what narcissism really involved.
Brian (01:19):
Right. Yeah, I mean, there's not a lot I really understood at all. I mean, I didn't understand what codependency was, or it would have been immensely helpful to understand even half of what I understand now at this point, but we should get into I guess, the specifics of what we've come to find to be kind of the collection of behaviors that are commonly seen as narcissistic behaviors. There's a lot of information out there on narcissism. So I thought I'd just list off some of the common characteristics. There's an inflated sense of importance and an excessive need for attention and admiration. There's a need to feel superior to other people. They're, they're usually paranoid or easily slighted. There's a
(02:01):
lack of empathy. And there's an inability or unwillingness to recognize theneeds and feelings of other people. And then there's a difficulty in regulating their own emotions and behaviors for a large part. And ultimately, narcissists never wind up taking responsibility for their own behavior.
Stephanie (02:18):
So listening to those characteristics of narcissists. And thinking about the way that we talked about codependency in the previous episodes, you can kind of get a sense of why there is such a toxic connection between narcissism and codependency. You have on the side of the narcissist, someone who lacks empathy and really has an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs or feelings of others. And then yay, here's a codependent who doesn't feel he or she has the right to have their own needs or feelings, so they're not going to make demands on the narcissists. Also you have on the side of the narcissist, difficulty regulating their own emotions and behaviors because they don't feel like
(03:01):
they should have to because they're the most important person in the world.And then you have on the side the codependence someone who is trained, possibly by a narcissist or by another kind of abusive situation, someone who was trained to regulate the emotional behaviors of another person to believe that it was his or her job to regulate emotions and behaviors of another person,
Brian (03:26):
right. And then all these things about kind of this excessive need for admiration and validation and things like that. The codependent person is set up to do that, too. I mean, that's just yeah, they're primed to tell people what they need to hear. In my case, it just goes back all the way back to to the G relationship, and there's a through line all the way up to those relationships of just validating other people to try to survive social situations.
Stephanie (03:53):
So that narcissistic abuse would be abuse that emerges from those traits,
Brian (03:59):
right. Like controlling behavior. Entitlement, the need to always be right or feel superior, avoiding taking responsibility for their words or actions. The gaslighting rage or contempt type behaviors, verbal abuse, things like condescension, belittling insulting, coercion, manipulating, and then you know, just taking advantage of other people to fulfill their own needs.
Stephanie (04:26):
And you experienced all of that in both of these relationships. The narcissist ends up triggering the traumatized codependent person through their abusive behaviors. And then the codependent person then buys into the narcissistic visions and provides the validation the narcissist needs in order to keep themselves safe from the abuse.
Brian (04:48):
So the two work in concert that way, in effect, the narcissists getting their needs met while the codependent person is just behaving reflexively in the ways they taught themselves to survive. And so the two just worked perfectly together for a while, obviously. So in my case, I just got stuck really quickly when I came across one of these people. First of all, they had to express interest in me because I didn't really have agency. But once they did this whole drawing process that we will explain a little more this love bombing, quickly followed by the abuse, which activated all my codependent behaviors,
Stephanie (05:21):
why don't we talk a little bit about how you did get into those relationships and how the trajectories for both of those relationships, especially at the beginning, were very similar. Because I suspect a lot of people who've been in relationships with narcissists, they will probably see a lot of similarities between their own experience early on in the relationship and your experience in those two relationships.
Brian (05:43):
When I reflected on him, it was pretty amazing how many of the experiences lined up almost exactly
Stephanie (05:51):
when thinking about the start of the relationship with R and the start of the relationship with J
Brian (05:54):
really, the whole trajectory of the relationships, how they started and how they progressed, and makes it really easy to explain the link for me and then between narcissism codependency because almost the same exact thing happened twice in a row back to back. So here's the similarities that I found between the two without going into too much detail yet. They both started with this love bombing, which we've mentioned before this extreme words of admiration, and you know, you're you're so amazing, you're so handsome, you're you know, blah, blah, blah, that kind of stuff.
Stephanie (06:26):
And started really from almost the first conversation.
Brian (06:29):
Yes, exactly. Right, from the first conversation the first day, really, really, really long conversations, daily conversation just kind of this barrage. And then even big relationship discussions happened within the first week with both of these people just like, you know, these Oh, okay, we're talking about our future already, and things like that. And
Stephanie (06:47):
so just all this kind of destabilizing the attention
Brian (06:50):
which I had a really hard time, you know, we've mentioned this before, when we talked about love bombing for me, but it's, everybody likes to be admired. And it's, it can be confusing to have that kind of love bombing. But for someone that with as low self esteem that I had, it was especially destabilizing. And then both of them made a big push to move in together really quickly, there was kind of like this, I don't want to say tricks. But looking back, it kind of felt that way. It became an offer I couldn't refuse, sort of, like so the moving in together happened really fast. Within three to five weeks of even meeting the people.
Stephanie (07:26):
This I guess, is fairly common with narcissists as well, you got to move things along very quickly. So within like three or 4 or five weeks, all of a sudden, you're living with this person, and you're in a relationship where you're talking about the future, and you haven't really even got a chance to find out whether you like this person at all
Brian (07:46):
Yeah, we'll get into this in the next episode with a lack of agency, but I didn't really recognize what I wanted to begin with. So it's just like, okay, sure, yeah, great. This person was really into me, and they're asking me to move in with them and stuff. Whoo. But then, as soon as I did, or even actually, possibly slightly before, I think the abusive behavior started that started very, very early on to within the first couple of weeks the abuse started. It was almost as if the abuse was these kind of tests like to see if I, you know, what my boundaries were, or even if I had boundaries, which I didn't, because that's often what codependents lack is boundaries, kind of, like we've talked about when we went into
(08:24):
codependency. So it was kind of just like exerting, see how much controlthey had, how much control they could get, like, right off the bat, then also with this whole intermittency thing, like we talked about with the trauma bonding, there was apologies, you know, if I expressed like, wow, Whoa, that was that was, you know, I wouldn't use the word abuse but that was pretty harsh or something, you know, and I tried to push back, they would apologize, both of them, right at the beginning very profusely apologize. But then also make excuses. It was always there was some reason that they did it, some external reason. In both of their cases, it was because their jobs were terrible, and they were having a hard time handling
(09:00):
their jobs, the people that there were awful, they were out to get them andtheir jobs were affecting their physical and mental health.
Stephanie (09:08):
Right. So going back to the narcissistic traits, I mean, narcissists do not take responsibility for their behavior. So their apologies were really about justifying their behaviors, because it was other people's fault. It was their jobs or their co workers.
Brian (09:21):
Yeah, exactly. It wasn't like, Oh, my God, I need to fix these behavior problems. It's it's I'm sorry. Here's why. Here's why it's justified. Then that would dovetail into the next step in both of these relationships was just continuing this this onslaught of complaining about their jobs, to where I started to feel responsible, that I needed to take on this this emotional regulation problem that they were having, what do I need to do about this? And so in both cases, I was like, well, we're living together, I make a good paycheck, you don't have to have this job. You could always look for another one. ButI think I went beyond you should look for another job, you should quit now this because they were both abusing
(10:02):
me. And they were both using their jobs and their physical and mentalhealth as their excuses. So it's like, okay, well, maybe you should quit your job with me in the back in my head going, maybe they'll stop abusing me if they quit their job, because now they won't have this horrible thing that they're putting up with us every day. So these both this happened within a few months,
Stephanie (10:20):
within a few months of meaning someone they are quitting their job, and relying exclusively on you.
Brian (10:26):
Yep, it was a way to establish financial control. Because with both of them, there was also this very heavy reliance on on my income, but then also, the finances were seen as our finances really more their finances or our finances
Stephanie (10:43):
You told l them to quit their jobs, so they should have an expectation that now you will be permanently financial responsible for them. And, you know, which is interesting, because you often hear about financial abuse, narcissistic abuse, somewhat from the other angle where the high paying spouse, or partner, usually, the man will control the the lower earner, you know, maybe actually telling her to quit her job so that he can now have financial control over and doling out the money, that path wasn't available to either of these women. You made more money, they both, as you say, struggled at work to kind of keep jobs or to make progress. Really, this was the way, they came at it from the other angle, they made
(11:30):
themselves financially dependent on you so that they could now financiallycontrol you
Brian (11:34):
It kind of fit into this puzzle that that was kind of this chaotic thing that was going on within these first, you know, a couple of months, that was testing my limits, seeing what kind of boundaries I had, seeing how I reacted to their abusive behaviors and how I let it go and stuff like that. So it was it was kind of like, okay, well, here's a natural next step. If I just quit my job, I'll make myself even more really reliant on this guy that is has made it clear that he's going to accept this abuse, and he's going to do whatever it takes to avoid this abuse.
Stephanie (12:09):
seems almost like a script, excessive love bombing, attention, moving, moving things along quickly, quickly, quickly, as you say, testing your boundaries to see what they can get away with it such that again, within three months, you're trapped in a living situation with these women and feeling not just financially responsible for them, but feeling responsible for their mental health, for their physical health, for their emotions and for their behaviors.
Brian (12:33):
Exactly right. Just falling in line very quickly.
Stephanie (12:37):
We listed out earlier the common characteristics of narcissist. Let's get a little more specific in our portraits of these two narcissists. Tell us a little bit more about our
Brian (12:47):
Okay. R was very conceited and arrogant, and she was often condescending, mostly only openly to me. But she spent a lot of time crafting her image, from the clothes she wore to the music, she listened to things like that. She went out of her way to make sure these things were noticed. She was bragging about how cool she was all the time and how she would do things before they became popular and kind of was bragging about her past a lot like all these all these crazy interesting things she had done in our past and, and would actually put me down for the fact that I didn't have these interesting things from my past. Like we're always making this parallel between the two of us that she was superior. Yeah, just just
(13:31):
everything about her and her image and her past everything was just farsuperior to me. And so she would use that a lot. And she would put down other people's tastes and things to either behind her back or to their face in different ways. Usually she would play it off his humor. And she worked really hard on her social media image and and definitely thrived on positive feedback that she got from the social media or just in person just and if she didn't get positive feedback, it was always kind of confusing, like she would you know, was clearly hurt by if she didn't receive the level of recognition she thought she deserved. She saw herself as a very intelligent and capable person. And she was certainly resourceful. But much
(14:14):
of that was really fragile. As far as I could tell. There seemed to be somekind of trauma from her childhood at the core of this behavior. I don't want to speculate too much into this, but she did tell you she did tell me some things about her past how she was regulated called stupid and irresponsible by her family and things like that. It seemed like anything that she felt the need to exaggerate about herself were the things she went out of her way to insult me for. So she called me stupid on almost a daily basis in various ways, sometimes just indirectly by like, ridiculing or belittling the things that I did, or said or and then other times just directly, like flat out just calling me stupid or other names, you know,
(14:52):
and often mocked me, you know, it's kind of like the childhood bullieswould do just like kind of just mocking behaviors and And she would try to pass this off its humor. Also, you know, like I said, with other people like just, she tried to pass her behavior office humor much of the time, especially if she went too far, but then would wind up just insulting my sense of humor after that. So it would wind up being this kind of double wave of insult.
Stephanie (15:19):
That's a good example of gaslighting, which we've mentioned a couple of times, and which we talked about in the last episode. I'll just explain it again, in case people are unfamiliar with that term, it actually comes from a very old movie, I can't remember who starred in it, where a husband was trying to drive his wife crazy. And the methodology he took was to go up into the attic,their their home was lit by gas lamps. So he would go up in the attic, and he would every day turned down the gas lights in very small amounts. And when his wife was starting to notice this and comment on it, that it was getting darker, he would say no, what are you talking about? It's not getting darker must be your eyesight, you must be
(15:59):
seeing things. So the process of gaslighting again is not just to lie tothe person, deceive the person, it is to destabilize the other person and make them think that their version of reality is not correct. That they have that they have no grasp on reality. So R would insult you. And when you would call her out on that as saying something unkind or abusive or hurtful, she would try to substitute that actual reality with her reality, which was like no, it's just you don't have a sense of humor, you're the problem in this equation. And so the next time she says something hurtful or insulting, you check yourself a little bit like, oh, maybe she's just being funny. And I'm just being too sensitive. You start to doubt yourself,
(16:43):
which is the point of gaslighting, you doubt yourself and your own sense ofreality. And you've described R as a successful narcissist, in that she did have a wide circle of friends who would validate her version of herself and her version of your relationship and her version of reality. So that made the gaslighting even more effective.
Brian (17:02):
Well, that and the fact that the majority of her abuse was hidden from others too. So it was kind of in the privacy or on home most of the time. So for example, we'd be we'd be in social settings, and she'd have kind of like code word ways of insulting me that she knew others wouldn't catch on to like, say, calling me saying the word vulture, because of my postures. And like that, just she would just say, filter and look at me like that. And so it was, you know, obviously, she knew this was not good behavior. So she was hiding it from other people. But then also kind of, I could tell she was reading my performance the whole time. We were like in the social setting. So as soon as we were back behind closed doors, then
(17:40):
she can let loose and let out all the all the abusive language that she hadwanting to be used the whole time. You know, once we were we were in a private setting, the insults were about absolutely everything. It wasn't just like calling me stupid, she insulted the way I dress, the way I walked, the way I talked the way I breathed, the way I ate my food. She body shamed me, it was pretty much every aspect of of myself, my body, my personality, the way it presented myself. Everything was insulted and undermined. And that went into the gaslighting because I started to believe these things about myself. She seemed to only see me as an extension of herself is what I came to find,
Stephanie (18:23):
which is really the issue of boundaries. narcissists have no boundaries on the other way, in the sense of everyone is resource to them. And you kind of trapped and codependent behaviors had no boundary against that as well.
Brian (18:39):
She also took several actions that amounted to financial abuse, like what we said earlier on about how she quit her job early on. And then from there forward, it was just kind of the sporadic part time jobs, it was always kind of just, I was allowing her to explore different personalities and different ways of of, of being interesting, you know,
Stephanie (19:00):
but as you said, she dictated everything you did with your money.
Brian (19:04):
Yeah, she was promoting this kind of extreme recklessness and irresponsibility when it came to our finances, and I never felt as though really I had a say in any of this.
Stephanie (19:14):
And to what end was the spending directed?
Brian (19:17):
At the root of it. She wanted and felt entitled to really a unique and exciting life and and she was expecting me to provide that either financially or some other resources. So we ran up a huge amount of credit card debt and, and lived from paycheck to paycheck for that entire relationship. Because of that, we are always spending beyond our means.
Stephanie (19:39):
You use the word fragile earlier to describe our sense of our own self worth. I think that's a good word to use in reference to narcissists because even though they can come off as extremely confident, that confidence rests on extremely shaky internal grounds intimates wholly dependent on external validation.
Brian (19:58):
Yes, R was constantly looking for ways to make herself seem more interesting or exciting. And she needed a partner that was not only a perfect reflection of that image that she was trying to push of herself, but also one that could help provide things she thought she needed and was entitled to, when it came to making her life look more interesting and exciting to other people. So when that person was unable to provide these things at any given moment, that's when she lashed out the abusive behaviors.
Stephanie (20:25):
And that person, unfortunately, for eight some years, was you
Brian (20:31):
Yes, I was always on alert for potential abuse. And I was in a permanent triggered state the entire time.
Stephanie (20:37):
It sounds like a replay of the G relationship, the behaviors that you developed to survive the G relationship as a young child, those were taking on responsibility for others emotions and needs, the one sided caretaking, the people pleasing the no boundaries, those were all activated in your relationship with our and then the trauma that you were already living with was extended.
Brian (21:02):
Yeah. And I think it actually became more severe as a result of that relationship.
Stephanie (21:08):
And it left you vulnerable to another narcissist. Yeah. So let's hear a portrait of that of J's narcissism.
Brian (21:16):
So J had many of the same sorts of traits, obviously, but was far less successful at getting other people to actually buy into those images than then our was. That is she didn't have nearly as many friends and she actually rubbed people the wrong way. She had this kind of bizarre way of presenting herself, especially online, most of the time, she was trying to put herself out there online. She exaggerated her interests like our two, but in such extreme ways that I think it was pretty obvious to the average person that she was insincere, or even just looking for attention. It was like she needed to be the number one fan with every interest that she lost herself on to some of the things that she claimed to be into. She didn't
(21:59):
actually even know hardly anything about like, claiming to be a huge fan ofcertain authors or philosophers, but never actually reading any books by those people like just finding quotes and like posting the quotes online. So it was like that, that became the extent of for interest in these things. She was also extremely immature, these kind of childish characteristics and in many ways, she acted like a young child including intemperate temper tantrums, childish eating habits and other kind of bizarre, like almost comical kind of immature behaviors. She also spent a lot of time on her public image, mostly online. She was active on a lot of forums, not just social media, she spent a lot of time working on our
(22:45):
image, what to show what to say about herself when not to show commentingon other people's things like love bombing people's posts, but also kind of like parading other people's posts, she regularly would get into arguments with people and then block them. I saw this happen all the time, and she must have had hundreds of people blocked on on Facebook, from what I've heard from other people who didn't really know where she came off is completely crazy online. And like our she was super paranoid and would get confused anytime someone didn't like her or said something negative about her. Like she was always assuming there was something just terribly wrong with the other person, really difficult time getting along with people
(23:24):
right. As I said, with both of those relationships, they had this problemwith work and physical and mental health. And her In particular she had this kind of mysterious illness that apparently she had had for years decades. And she pushed this at the time she called it Lyme disease, chronic Lyme disease she had bitten by a tick years ago, She diagnosed herself with chronic Lyme disease and this was causing all these problems you know with with her health , immune system, tiredness and different things. And also to treat me badly right so initially that was the main reason for the excuse for for the abuse. You know, right off the bat when she was still making excuses for the bad behavior, later both of them R and
(24:16):
J stop pedmaking excuses entirely, it was my fault that these abusivebehaviors were happening. No ownership whatsoever. I mean, that's a common narcissist thing, too. But in the beginning, it was just like, you know, not sure if I'm going to fall in line, you know, so there had to be some excuses. So it's just like, well, I feel tired, so I'm sorry, I'm sorry I acted that way but it's because I'm tired. It's a health issue. You know, all we have to do is figure out how to to make sure that I
Stephanie (24:43):
"We" have to figure
Brian (24:44):
"We" have to, exactly, we have to figure out how to deal with this health issue of mine. And it was it was like this this this illness thing was her identity online too. So it's just like any any any excuse anytime she needed an excuse for anything. It was the illness and she was on this quest to make sure everybody understood. She put a lot of people off and actually ended some of our combined friendships because of this, this attitude, like they had to all support this quest of hers and respond in very specific ways to it.
Stephanie (25:16):
You described R as the successful narcissist, and J as an unsuccessful narcissist. I think that's a useful distinction, we often have a stereotypical image in our head of what a narcissist is. They're very charming. They're very beautiful or handsome, they're very successful in their chosen field. But that was really a version of successful narcissists. Someone can be narcissistic, and have the same deep sense of entitlement, deep sense of superiority, excessive need for admiration, little or no empathy for other people, and not have the resources to charm people to be successful in their chosen field of work. That's a pretty terrible state to be in as a narcissist, to know to your core that you are
(26:01):
special and unique and entitled to good treatment. But to not be able toconvince anyone in your life if that's the case. It sounds like what happened with J, she decided this illness was going to be the thing that was going to make her special and unique and would entitle her to special treatment from everyone around her.
Brian (26:20):
Yeah, everyone had to respond to it in a way that she wanted them to respond to it. And like she said, everyone had to take it very seriously. Everyone had to give her the type of feedback she wanted in the way she wanted it.
Stephanie (26:31):
It became a fuel for her abuse of you as well.
Brian (26:35):
Yeah, with me her abuse started almost immediately to just look just like R but her abuse was different. Her abuse was consisted mostly of verbally violent outbursts and coercion and extreme controlling behavior. She saw that I would get very afraid and shrink down and freeze in these moments. And and I came to find that was really the only way to get out of these, you know, I tried the the flight, she would follow me I tried fawn, tried to talk her down, it wouldn't work. So just freeze, to sit there, take it, and then wait for it to end.
Stephanie (27:10):
And in the screaming would be anger shaming, belittling, the goal being control. If you in any way violated her control, you would be met with anger and shame and belittling.
Brian (27:25):
When I think back on the source of a lot of these, these extreme outbursts, it often was that somehow I missed something she said or didn't follow something she said or got something incorrect from what she said or or missed the detail of something she said. But part of the problem here was, first of all, she was a big verbal diarrhea person, she talked and talked and talked and talked and talked. And I found quickly that I needed to listen to every word I couldn't really interject. It actually often made her angry if I tried to interject. So I would listen and but what I didn't realize that there was gonna be a test afterwards, right? I had to not only hear everything, take in everything and understand everything but there
(28:09):
were often directions in there somewhere, right? So it would be like, I'mexpressing a view, the fact that you're not saying anything back or correcting me or changing anything, I'm assuming you agree with every single thing I'm saying, I'm expecting that you agree with everything I'm saying. So then later, the next day, next week, or whatever, if I say something that contradicts something that she said during one of these dumps? It would be like wait, no, you said you agreed you agreed to this. Last week I was talking you agreed! You said you were going to do this. So that kind of stuff, you know ? That would that was a very common reason. But there was a lot of reasons, she was extremely emotionally immature so
(28:46):
anything would set her off. The verbal violence was extremely triggeringfor me, much like R's methods of making me feel inadequate. Anytime I tried to point out the behavior though, she would either lash out more or swing to the other extreme, which is to kind of push hard for more sympathy, like making excuses for the behavior, which usually involve blaming the health condition. So this convinced the codependent parts of me really quickly that I needed to always be looking for ways to make her comfortable and safe. Because then you would be comfortable and say, Yeah, as long as i is i kept her safe I was going to be safe. So this became a continuous daily quest of mine that became all encompassing that I had this this feeling of
(29:29):
responsibility for caring for J in every way that I could. So similar to Rshe quit her job very early on, as soon as she possibly could after we moved in together, then wound up never getting a full time job again from that that point forward. Sometimes she didn't even work at all. But like R she was also completely dictating pretty much how our money would be spent to where I really didn't feel as though I could ever really do anything for myself. I wound up doing pretty much everything for J in that relationship. So for from providing the majority of her financial resources to doing all the grocery shopping, all the cooking all the cleaning all the house maintenance. And when she wasn't at work, which, like I said was only part
(30:12):
time or not at all, she mostly just took naps, laid around in bed on herphone or sat at a computer and seem to just be chatting with people or making comments on social media or watching YouTube videos, things like that. No matter how bad it got, though, I still never allowed myself to ever imagine ending that relationship,
Stephanie (30:31):
which we explore more in the previous episode on trauma bonding,
Brian (30:35):
So like with R my blinders were completely on. And I continued to just do everything I thought I needed to do to survive the relationship by trying to keep her happy and safe. Whatever it took to do that.
Stephanie (30:46):
At this point, you were pretty good at gaslighting yourself. That is, denying your own reality and buying into the reality of the abusive person.
Brian (30:57):
So after 12 years of narcissistic abuse, I really had no sense of my own reality. Any lingering sense of agency that I might have had before are is was pretty much wiped away at that point.
Stephanie (31:10):
So this is a tale of two narcissists. Both have a deep sense of entitlement, deep sense of how special and superior they are. We have on the one hand R convinced that she's entitled to a unique and interesting life. And if anything failed to live up to her expectations, or she felt small or threatened in some way that was not her responsibility or fault, that was your failure. And the abuse would follow - the insulting the belittling behavior, the gaslighting. And then on the other hand, we have J convinced that she suffers as no one else suffers and it's everyone else's responsibility to arrange their lives for her. And if she ever felt uncomfortable or threatened or uneasy again, that was not her
(32:03):
responsibility to address that was a failure on your part and abuse wouldfollow verbal attacks, coercive control, manipulating and gaslighting.
Brian (32:14):
Yeah, it's funny for a long time I pushed this narrative that J was better than than R, like just basically not as bad, you know? Only simply because at at the beginning, she never called me stupid. That was my benchmark, although actually she did wind up eventually doing that anyway. So I just I didn't want to see the similarities because I was struggling with a lot of confusion and shame both during and after those relationships about how I was treated and why I was with them.
Stephanie (32:45):
It's actually somewhat ironic how unique narcissists think they are given that there are all kinds of variations on the same theme. If they weren't so destructive, it would almost be amusing how banal and cliched they actually are.
Brian (33:02):
I mean, really understanding the narcissism and this codependent narcissist link helped me hugely,
Stephanie (33:09):
but the link isn't the whole story. There's still more to come
Brian (33:12):
right. At this point in the podcast, we've given a pretty clear and detailed look at the sources of my codependent behaviors, where it started. The most impactful relationships I had since then, that went to deepen and expand on those maladaptive behaviors. We've explained what we mean by codependency and the types of behaviors that fall under that umbrella. But equally as important as exploring and understanding the source of my codependent behaviors, though, is a more thorough look at the actual behaviors themselves. As we've mentioned, throughout the previous episodes, there was this kind of web of behaviors that all played off each other in such a way that I kept myself mostly ignorant of not only those behaviors,
(33:57):
but even just acknowledging the abuse that came from other people. We'regoing to spend the next couple of episodes focusing on those various behaviors in more detail and how they worked. Starting with this concept that we've mentioned a few times already that I had this lack of agency over my life.
Stephanie (34:14):
We hope you will join us for that discussion. If you have comments or questions or want to contribute your own stories, you can find us on Facebook or Instagram by searching codependent mind.
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