The 8 Ways to Navigate Narcissistic Parents as an Adult
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https://shethrives.thrivecart.com/empowered-boundaries/
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My meditations on Insight Timer:
https://insig.ht/2Ym63Vh2vRb?utm_source=copy_link&utm_medium=live_stream_share
EPISODES MENTIONED:
EPISODE ON GREY ROCK METHOD
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-grey-rock-method-how-to-deal-with-a-narcissist/id1662241353?i=1000648879776
EPISODES ON SETTING BOUNDARIES:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-set-boundaries-as-a-people-pleaser/id1662241353?i=1000679893439
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-set-healthy-boundaries-without-guilt/id1662241353?i=1000697670273
BENEFITS OF GOING NO CONTACT:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/but-still-she-thrives-narcissistic-abuse-toxic-relationships/id1662241353?i=1000611416531
TRANSCRIPT:
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh, I am so excited for this episode. It is highly requested and it's so deep and there's a lot to it. So it took me a while to really get my stuff together. I wanted to make sure that I covered everything and I think I got it. So grab your favorite drink and sit on back. It's going to be some good stuff in here. So take notes too. Get a pen, get a journal, make it fun. Do a little doodle. Who else doodles. Do you still doodle? I'm 45. I still doodle everywhere. Hey, Queens, welcome to, but still she thrives. Do you want to stop getting caught up in that wicked web of a creepy crawling narcissist? You find yourself up late at night replaying the abuse you put up with and wondering how you can heal now, do you wake up hoping for healthy relationships and peace only to feel totally exhausted?
(00:54)
And mind ed? Girl, I see you. I'm Christie. I too had to disconnect from toxic people in my life and I wished I could undo the damage. I felt ashamed, lonely, and kind of lost. But I'm a stubborn Italian and I refuse to give up. I found ways to recalibrate my mind and body more quickly than I thought and can now share them with you. In this podcast, you will find coping tools, healing methods, and confidence boosters so you can trust yourself and find peace and freedom. So shields up ladies, let's go protect our peace.
(01:31)
Alright, so we're going to talk about eight different ways. Eight. I wanted to keep it to five, but I couldn't how to deal with a narcissistic parent. So the first thing is understanding narcissistic behavior. So if you're here, you're already probably trying to do that, and we have episodes. I will link them in the description of the podcast on certain toxic traits to look at different behaviors they have. So you're looking for lack of empathy, manipulation, gaslighting, blame shifting. Do you ever have that where they, as soon as you go to them with something, they will shift it back to you. And in general, emotional abuse and even being super dismissive is maybe some, don't call it abuse, but it is a behavior that is narcissistic and is never fun. It's not healthy when people dismiss you and demean you. Also, knowing this is still part of the narcissistic behavior, but knowing they are unlikely to change their behavior.
(02:36)
This is something some of you know, right? And you're here and you're kind of like, I know they're not going to change. What can I do? Others of you have hope and I get it. I had hope for someone for a very long time that I could help them change. I could help them see that if they would just listen long enough, they could understand, but they don't seem to want to understand. But I know that deep down, maybe they do right? All of those things that we tell ourselves and we think this way because guess what? Most people we know would be rational people that would be able to change. If you go to them with something, Hey, this is bothering me. Is there a way we can compromise on this so you can change this behavior? A lot of people would love to grow.
(03:21)
Narcissists do not really want to grow. They don't think anything's wrong with them, and we know deep, deep down they do. But we're talking about day-to-day behaviors. They're not going to accept blame. They're not going to have accountability. If they do, it's from a very desperate place of if you're literally like, I'm going to leave you and divorce you, they may put on a facade of normal behavior as such as, okay, I'm sorry, I'll never do it again. But then the broken promise cycle should show you that they're not going to keep their promises. So focusing on your responses and not fixing them, right? They're not likely to change. So what can you do? And then that'll bring us to step two, which is, well, not step two, but tip two, I guess setting boundaries. One of my favorite words in the world, and some people hate this word, it feels maybe rigid.
(04:15)
It feels if you're a people pleaser, you really might not like this, right? You're like, oh, I got to set boundaries. I got to stand up and do something. No, you're maybe more passive. I have a strong personality, so I'm a boundary setter. It's a little easier for me than some, but listen to what I have to say. Before you feel like putting on the brakes, you don't want to have to handle setting boundaries. There's a way to do it out of love. And remember that you're protecting yourself, not like trying to stop someone else. That's how I view it. I got to protect my peace. We know all about the peace bubble here at, but still she thrives. Okay, so first you're going to identify what behaviors are unacceptable to me. We just went over some of the gaslighting, all that guilt tripping, Ooh, heck no.
(05:02)
What about those feelings that maybe you don't even know how to pinpoint, but you know, feel like you're walking on eggshells and we're like, that's a no. That doesn't feel good. Any controlling behavior. This next one, I swear almost every one of my clients, probably all, but I never like to say a hundred percent invalidating your Emos. Can you raise your hand if you're sure. Remember that commercial? No. Raise your hand if the narcissist in your life who in this case is apparent, invalidates your emotions. Or like I said, dismisses them does not give you that cuddly feeling of support whenever you have emotions. They may even say, you're oversensitive, you're crazy, you're dramatic, you're just blah, blah, blah, blah. Right? Okay, so first it's identifying what you're not okay with. Then it's communicating your limits. This is where it gets tricky, but this is what you have to do if you are in touch with your parents, and we'll get to that too later.
(06:10)
But if you are in touch with them and you feel like you cannot not be in touch with them, which I understand it is very difficult with parents, that is an option to disconnect, but we'll talk about that later. I don't want to discuss this topic is something I in my own life have had to say to a narcissist, right? I will not discuss this topic or I'm not going to however you want to phrase it. I'm not going to discuss this topic another way. If I had someone that would yell at me often, not necessarily a narcissist, but same thing, responding with something like I need space. When you raise your voice. For me, that's a little gentler, but I'm trying to give some gentle responses for those of us who are not where I am at and I am a little more harsh I guess you could call it, but for me more just like it's a truth of mine.
(07:10)
I am X years old. Listen now it's 45. I will not accept you raising your voice to me. And I actually give a consequence. I say, if that happens again, I'm going to hang up the phone or I'm going to exit the room. I'm going to whatever it is, right? I'm going to leave your house. But I let them know that's not something I'm going to tolerate and the hardest part maybe for many of us is sticking to the boundaries without over explaining or defending them. I won't discuss this topic. The more you discuss why you won't discuss this topic. Let's say you say, I don't want to discuss this topic because I feel this way, and that gives them so much more space to overtalk you, turn things around, convince you that you're wrong, right? Stand in your truth. You've already made the decision, so stick to it.
(08:14)
I'm not going to discuss this topic. You don't have to overexplain everything. You don't have to defend yourself. This is your truth. It's what you have decided is best for you in your life, and only you can do that. Only you know yourself the best. So yes, they will easily try to shift things. If you give them the room, don't give them the room. Write that in big letters. Don't give them room. This should be short and simple limits, and if you don't want to call 'em boundaries, you can call 'em limits. Make yourself feel a little fluffier, a little better, right? Whatever. It's your preferences, but it's a non-negotiable. It should be a non-negotiable because your peace at this point, honey, if you've been through it and you have a narcissistic parent and you're listening to this and you're either 25, 35, 45, that's decades of dealing with a bunch of Bs you shouldn't have had to deal with.
(09:08)
It is time for you to say no more, and I am okay with protecting my peace at this point. That's why you are here. You have to act on this. You've got to act on it and live it. Okay? Number three, detaching emotionally. Oh, this is one of the things that can be hard, but once you do it and you feel it for the first time that you're actually able to detach like this, it is the most freeing, just peaceful, calm, almost uncomfortable feeling. You may have never felt it before. If you have had parents that are narcissists or someone in your life for so long, you're like, I don't even know. I could feel like this. First, you want to reduce your emotional dependence on their validation. We talked about they don't validate what I feel you don't need them to. That's what we have to get to.
(10:09)
And that's not overnight, but we can chalk this down. That's not a saying. I'm making it one. Now we're going to chalk this down where request in the Facebook group, if you're not in it, please join that it's in my description box, but go in there request. Say, Hey, I'd love to hear more details on detaching emotionally or the validation, whatever. So I'm just trying to touch on these so you get a bigger picture and then we can zoom in later. But the dependence on their validation is what keeps you on the string of a narcissist in that web. You want their validation. You've got to let go of that desire and you can do cord cutting meditations even.
(10:56)
And some people are against those. Look, I was raised Catholic, I'm Christian. I have certain different beliefs of different things, but I'm very much a God person, a Christian person, and I sometimes use those tools like meditations to help me, but it's always in prayer. It's always with God and I say, God, please guide me on this journey. And it's just sometimes good to have a voice guiding me through something like saying, please, and you can just say a prayer if you want, right? God, please help me emotionally detach from needing their validation, right? The next thing is the gray rock method, and I will put that special episode that many love. It's one of my most listen to episodes of the Gray Rock Method. So this is pretty much keeping interactions dull and non-reactive to avoid being a target. Like I said, the more you give them, the more space and words you give to them, they are going to chomp it up.
(12:04)
They're going to get in there, they're going to twist shit. They're going to confuse you. They make you wonder about yourself, going to make you go to loco in the cocoa. We don't want that. So simple and very short, very basic non-emotional practices. The gray rock method, it's a real method out there and I have a whole podcast episode on it. If you have not listened to that or you need a refresh because we all do, go listen to that. I'll put it in the description box and accepting that they may not acknowledge your feelings or experiences. I say may not, but now I'm out of 10 narcissists. Do not acknowledge your feeling or experiences. If they do, they're probably just doing it for their own benefit. So 10 out of 10 narcissists. Do not acknowledge your feelings or experiences. They're not here for that.
(12:59)
They're here for them. I call 'em their own up their butt, right? They're just up their own butt. They don't, don't care about your feelings or experiences. They're out for themselves. They want the power. So if they take a millisecond to actually feel or care for you, there goes their power. They think, right? That's not true, that's not rational, but they're not true rational people. Alright, moving on to the fourth, managing guilt and emotional triggers. So expect the guilt tripping, right? The expectations just know what you're getting. This is text to book. What they're going to do, they're going to guilt trip. They are going to emotionally bat you around and manipulate you, right? Expect it and know what to do with it. You say their emotions, their behaviors are not mine and they're not yours to carry. Their emotions aren't yours. Don't take the bait.
(13:54)
They get all riled up and angry. That doesn't mean you have to get riled up and angry. What do you do? Come on class. What do you do? We learned this already. We say I'm not going to accept this and I'm going to what? Walk away. You have that right baby, okay? Even if it's your parent blood or not, I don't give a, yeah, you have that permission from me and then we want to reframe the guilt. So choosing your wellbeing. It's not selfish, it's self preserving. It's necessary. I'm going to say it again. Choosing your wellbeing. They have made you think it's selfish. They twist everything around to tell you, you are selfish. You are selfish. That is the most frequent thing I heard from my narcissist. You are selfish. You are selfish. It is deflecting. It is them turning what they are onto you.
(14:57)
It is them trying to make you believe something so that they have the upper hand and it's bullshit and it's necessary to choose your wellbeing, especially when it comes to a narcissist. They will drag you through coals and not care. Okay, five. Here we go. We talked about that. Limiting contact or no contact, so if it's necessary, go very low contact. I feel it's necessary in most cases. Okay, I'm going to give you the options, but I hope you lean toward the more conservative approach of very limited contact if you have a narcissist in your life. Co-parenting is a different story. I know some parenting situations are tricky, but this is minimal controlled interactions. Maybe having a buffer of another person around or my personal favorite is no contact if the relationship is too toxic. If you're here, it probably is no contact and I have an episode about that.
(16:05)
I'm going to have to try to remember, I'm going to have to listen to this again and put all these episodes in the description box. It's so important and you need to, when you enter limited or no contact for the limited, decide on clear rules for your communication. You get to decide that I just worked on this with a client the other day. We're going to emails only. That's it. That is it. You get to make the rules. Obviously if there's a lawyer involved, this was a co-parenting situation and it was okay. It was agreed upon. Email was okay, they're not going to want it to be okay. They're going to want to have the upper hand and they decide, but you get to decide email only. I prefer that over text, especially over phone. Everything is in writing. You can do it through an app.
(16:53)
There are apps out there, especially if you're in co-parenting situations. Ask your lawyers to put an addendum on to only speak through certain apps, and that's a great way to have. It's like through a third party. Everything is there. If it goes something legal, all the evidence is there. Get everything in writing and keep it short and sweet. I have literally written a bunch of emails for my clients to their exes just because they felt like they would get emotional. So I'm like, all right, what points do we need? Let's keep it clear, short, concise, and it's worked really beautifully so that definitely get clear on the rules and they can't have unannounced visits, any of that BS no more. And I know I'm talking about exes too. That's because I know a lot of situations, if you have had narcissistic parents, you may have narcissistic exes too.
(17:51)
That is something that you can give yourself permission to do. I'm only going to communicate with them through this or keep it to a limited time instead of answering all their calls. Say, I can talk to you Sundays at this time. It depends on your situation. That's why all of these situations, look, they're very different. Everyone's going to have a different story, but you can get a general idea of this and if you want to work with me one-on-one, we go into obviously customize plans for everybody. We got blueprints over here, so if you are going low contact, have those rules in place and prepare for backlash. Guess who doesn't like losing control? My queen narcissist. They hate it. It's their least favorite thing. You have to stay firm.
(18:44)
It's not for the fan of heart, but you are a strong queen. I see you. You're on here for a reason. Just know I'm telling you, no one really told me when I went through all of my stuff earlier in life, a lot of stuff, I've had different layers of it, but one of the biggest ones, no one really told me about the backlash, how severe it would be, and just I wasn't really prepared. I wish I would've been more prepared. So I'm glad you're here. Prepare. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but you have support. You can be in my Facebook group, get support there from other people in your situation. Get support from me and stay firm in your boundaries. So let's go on to number six, strengthening your support system. Speak in a witch. Do an evaluation of your friends.
(19:33)
You're going to need healthy friends around here. If you're trying to take out the narcissist trash, you're going to need healthy friends supporting you, people who uplift you, people who don't make you question yourself, not people who are mutual friends with these people and are questioning you or family members that might see both sides because they're a flying monkey for the narcissist. None of that. Focus on the support of those. Have your back and that can be friends, that can be family, it can be a therapist, it can be yours, truly over here, Krista, Jade. Hey girl. If you need one-on-one support from someone who really knows what you're going through, I'm all for therapy. I love therapists. You have to have the right one that really knows what they're talking about. So you might have to date around therapy or a support group. There are actual support groups, and then there's my Facebook group.
(20:34)
Like I said, connect with people who uplift rather than drain you. You don't have time to drain and disturb your peace anymore. We're done, right? Can I get an amen? What? Are you still with me? I'm waking you up. Number seven, prioritizing your healing. Okay? This is the better stuff, right? We have to deal with all that crap and how to navigate this is self-care, okay? Meditation. Guys, if you have not done my four minute meditation, it's a great place to start. You do it every morning, you can do it midday. If you have a few minutes and you do, everyone has a few minutes, go out to your dang car, right? Instead of a water break, smoke break, pee break, hold your pee and meditate. Just kidding, we can all find four minutes, but especially in the morning, you can wake up four minutes earlier.
(21:25)
I'm telling you, just this tiny meditation will give you a peek into meditation and what it can do for you. I love guided meditations. You can find 'em all over YouTube. I have my own on the insight timer app. I should put that in my description box. I don't think of all the things, but I have multiple ones. I have one's for anxiety, one's for abundance, all sorts of healing, meditations, journaling. If you love to write, write in a journal I write every morning, I pray and then I journal about it, right? Therapy is a form of self-care. Going to some sort of narcissistic help with coach, like a coach like me or somebody else is going to be self-help. Is that a word? Or spiritual practices? Whatever makes you feel good and comfortable, do more of it. Then you want to work on that inner child healing.
(22:25)
I do this with my coaching, but I also do this with somatic healing. If you don't know, I'm a somatic heal healer, which facilitator, whatever you want to call it, and we heal from the inside out from the body. Somatic means body. Your body remembers everything. So you can do all the mindset stuff in the world. Your body's still going to remember. That's why we go back. We feel like real pumped up for a while, and then we can side back somatic healing, which I love to do both. I love to mix both. So we get both of it. The mindset and the body. You are going to have very lasting results. So inner child healing in whatever modality, right? So you're reparenting yourself with kindness and affirmation, which wouldn't that be nice if we had that. Maybe you did with one parent, but also shifting your mindset from victimhood to empowerment, and I know I might get an ass whooping on this one because I am validating that you were a victim.
(23:26)
I was a victim. I get it. I went through it. But we shall not use that as our identity. I would prefer you think of yourself as a survivor as empowered and using what happened now to catapult you into the greatest life you can have. Your parent, whoever, whatever narcissist in your life does not define you, okay? Let them have the bullshit. Let them hold that, right? They have the poison. We're going to step, yes, we got sprayed with poison. What are we going to do about it? We're going to spit it back in their damn faces and run. Alright. Number eight, staying grounded in your faith and truth. I am a God person. I don't care what you are. I hope you're God person. I love God. He's a good dude. Sky daddy. He's upstairs. If you want to ever talk to him, you just say, Hey, what's up?
(24:28)
God, no. If you're spiritual, pray, meditate to stay centered in your truth, not theirs. Again, you're not the one with all the poison that's theirs. Sit in it. Say, I don't have room for you. I don't have time for you. I want nothing to do with this poison and ask God for guidance. Every day I ask God, shine the light of my path, my obedience. Sometimes I say it for obedience to you or the healthy path for me, whatever I'm needing in that moment. Remember God, your higher power, whatever does not call you to suffer but to thrive. He wants you to thrive. We're not here to suffer. I know we may suffer. I get it. I know there's suffering and there's darkness in the world, but sky daddy, I think of him as the best dad out there who wants me to just do all the good things, help all the people be good to myself, help my family break the cycles of abuse, whatever He wants it all for me and for you.
(25:41)
So what does your God, your higher power want for you? Think about that. Write it down, and then trust yourself, which is hard for people who've gone through abuse. This can be tricky, but try to trust yourself. Your feelings, your needs, your worth are valid. It's all valid, even though it might not feel like it because you had somebody in your life invalidating you over and over and over. We're going to rewrite that. So these are the things. This is like, there's a lot of housing in here, which I will tell you. They say, Christie, don't give away all the how's. That's the whole thing you want to wait for. So you can do that in coaching. Well, I like to give shit away free because I care more about helping you than the dollars in my pocket. Honestly, I want to help as many people as I can, and if you want further, deeper help that I cannot, I'm trying to spit out as much as I can for you here, but whatever I can't get out in this podcast you want to delve deeper into, let me know.
(26:51)
I will put a link. There's always going to be a link there of how to work with me, whether it's a somatic healing or coaching or both. I will put the link in the top part so you know where to click, and if you want to just email me and chat and just see what kind of help you think you may need, you're kind of lost out there. Email me. My email is always on there too Fierce Mama C, that's me at Gmail. I hope you guys like this episode. I loved it. I think it's really important. I'm like, I love my episode. See what happens when you heal, you get confidence. Yeah, girl, no, I feel good about this because it's been asked for and I wanted to really make sure I covered a lot. If you have more questions, again, that Facebook group is where you want to ask anything, just post on there. Ask, request me to do, delve deeper into maybe self-care. Whatever you want to hear more about, let me know. I love that. And you can also put up your own, what wins have you had this week?
(28:00)
What have you done in your healing journey? Which one of these eight things are you doing? Maybe you're doing some of them already dealing with your narcissistic parent. That space is a safe space to share and have support from people that are going through the same thing we are. We love that, don't we? I love it. Alright, so that is it for this episode. Of course, I would love to help as many people as possible. I know not everyone can do one-on-one sessions, but that is where you're going to get the customized stuff right? We're going to really get some deep, long lasting healing, and I shift people pretty damn quickly. It's my specialty. I love that about me, but it is, I'm quick myself. One of my best friends calls me Bunny, and because I like to go through things quickly, I'm not going to be sitting.
(29:00)
I don't want to lay on that couch and cry about shit any more than I have to. I'm going to do it. I think emotions are important. You address them, you honor them, and then you say, this life is short. Let's fucking party. No, that's not what you say. Well, maybe I do. No, I want to thrive. What's my purpose? I want to feel happy again. I want to find the old me that was in there, or I want to find myself for the first time. I want to feel confident. I want to have joy. I want to break the cycle where I know that I'm not going to tolerate anyone else treating me poorly ever again. And I want my kids to see that there's all these things, right? So honor yourself, put your crown on. Let's do some affirmations to end this, okay? All right, we'll do it specific to this topic first. The first one, I am free of getting validation from my parent.
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