JANILEE: I’m nervous all of a sudden that's okay.  Welcome, friends. You have found Janilee and Larissa at the corner of “I'm living my life” and “Someone else isn't happy about it.” This is VILIFIED. Each week, we talk about life and healing, using a question as a starting point. Today we begin with the question, “Am I a narcissist?” So, Larissa, what do you think? Am I a narcissist? Are you a narcissist?

LARISSA: Well, I don't think you're a…  I mean, I'm not qualified to diagnose anybody as a narcissist, but from my experience, no, you are definitely not a narcissist, and I don't think I'm one. I mean, could be. I guess.

JANILEE: Have you ever thought that you might be one? I feel like that's a separate question, but one that I feel so deeply where I'm like, yes, I have spent so many years of my life worried that I am a narcissist.

LARISSA: Exactly. I have spent years of my life terrified that I would become the people that were narcissistic in my life, and that led me to get assessed. And I've been told I am not a narcissist.

JANILEE: By a therapist, I'm guessing.

LARISSA: Yes, actually, I got psychoanalyzed just in case by, like, a doctoral diagnostician.

JANILEE: Psychoanalyzed, I love it.

LARISSA: So my mother didn't test me. I did, and I am not crazy.

JANILEE: Is that a Big Bang Theory reference?

LARISSA: It is.

JANILEE: YES! I'm so glad I got that.

JANILEE: Okay, I love what you said at first, though, that you're not qualified to determine whether or not you are a narcissist, right? And obviously neither of us are clinicians, and so we're not diagnosing each other or anyone else, but just talking about what narcissist could be from our own lived experience. So I went on to the dictionary, the very official dictionary of the interwebs, and I got a definition for us to work with here.

LARISSA: Okay.

JANILEE: It says “a person who has excessive interest or admiration of themselves”, which I feel like it's a good definition, but like mentioned, neither of us are qualified to define what excessive is. Right? Like you know, if you think this person has excessive care for themselves, it could be situational. It could be this and the other, which is why you need a qualified clinician to actually do the diagnoses. But other than that, what do you think of that definition? Does it fit?

LARISSA: I like it. I like it a lot because when I was looking up the term narcissist on the web and the origin of it, the Greek mythology of it was the person who.  Thought they were so gorgeous, they could not pull themselves away from their own image.  

JANILEE: Oh yeah, in the pond right?

LARISSA: Right, yes. In the pond. And I don't remember if it was Narcissa or Narcissist. I don't know if it was a male or a female version of that. It doesn't really matter. But  that's where the origin of the word came from, I guess, is that it was somebody who was so obsessed with themselves that they withered away from staring at themselves. That would be the most excessive.

JANILEE: Yeah. Well, and I love that you bring it up that way as well, because if you literally can't draw yourself away from looking at your reflection in a pond, you can't live a life, and so it becomes debilitating, right? There's a lot of people say, well, isn't everyone like ADHD? Or doesn't everyone have anxiety or depression? And those are topics we can get into deeper in the future. But more often than not, what makes the difference between having some anxiety and having clinical anxiety is a debilitating factor. It's the “I cannot live a normal functioning life because of the amount of anxiety I feel”, not just a little bit here and there. Right?

LARISSA: Right. I think there's a specific number of criteria in the Diagnostics Statistician’s Manual or something.

JANILEE: The DSM, yep.

LARISSA: I don't know what number we're on yet, but in nursing school, we learned about the different personality disorders. I think we spent a day on it total in four years, which…

JANILEE: You could probably spend all four years studying just that and still not have all of them down.

LARISSA: There are so many! Understanding of even one of them, you'd need more than four years, is my opinion, but what do I know?  But from my understanding, it has to impair your life. Like, think of the smurf - the narcissist smurf.  

JANILEE: Okay.

LARISSA: Where everybody around him has to pretty much pick up all the pieces of his life to keep him alive. Because he's staring at his own image.

JANILEE: Yeah. And let's say that he walks into traffic or something or is so ingrained staring at his image that he just doesn't eat for three days or whatever, then that's a debilitating extent to which you can't live your life.

LARISSA: Yeah. You need caretakers to literally run around you 100% of the time and fix it all.

JANILEE: Well, I'm grateful that the Smurfs have such a good support system in their society for Narcissist Smurf.

LARISSA: Yes, me too. And for depressed Smurf and all the other ones.

JANILEE: Yes, all of the Smurfs. Smurfs are great. We should just all be Smurfs.

LARISSA: I know, right?

JANILEE: Okay. So another thing we touched on at the beginning that I really like is that, broadly speaking, if you're afraid that you're a narcissist, you're probably not, right? Taking everything we've said into account, has to be a clinician, all of that kind of stuff. But if you're worried that you might be a narcissist, that in and of itself is an act of introspection of thinking about how you and your life impacts others and those around you. And that's just kind of the definition of what a narcissist doesn't do. Right?

LARISSA: Yeah. Is that the person can't look in on themselves and they can't self-reflect and realize that maybe they're the problem.

JANILEE: Exactly. And that's something that only you can tell yourself. Right. It's not like you can be like, you can go to a friend and say, do you think I'm a narcissist? And have that validation, because we all need validation, and that's valid. (That's a lot of time saying validation), but that doesn't mean that they can actually live our life and our experience and know if we do any true introspection.

LARISSA: Exactly. For example, I've had somebody say, “You don't know my mind. You don't know what I've been through.” Where I'm saying, “Well, you don't know what I have either, so please don't tell me how I'm supposed to feel.”

JANILEE: Right. It has to go both ways.

LARISSA: Saying, “no, I know exactly how you feel. You don't know that I know how you feel.” And I'm sitting there going, so it's kind of like the Friends episode where “they don't know that we don't know that they don't know.”

JANILEE: Right. “They don't know we don't know that they know that we are…” Exactly.

LARISSA: So you're sitting there just staring at the person going, “I don't even know how to like, where do start with how many things are wrong with that phrase?”

JANILEE: Yeah. Or it could be from Schitt's Creek. Like, “I have never heard so many wrong things said consecutively, one after another in a row.”  Hands up, back in a way I don't know how to start with you, right?”

LARISSA: Yeah.

JANILEE: Okay. I feel like that's super. Like.  Confusing and frustrating to have those kinds of people that we have to interact with as part of our lives, right? And I think that confusion is also something… look, you can talk to me, and I'm super confusing, and that doesn't mean I'm a narcissist. But if someone is going out of their way to confuse you every time you have a conversation and frustrate you into the point where “I can't even tell you how many things are super wrong with that,” I feel like that's a pretty good description of a conversation with the narcissist, yeah?

LARISSA: I would assume, but it's more and I've had conversations with that specific person saying, “Go get the help you need, please. I don't care who you seek it from at this point.”

JANILEE: Yeah. You're begging them to get any introspection,

LARISSA: And they're saying, “well, you're the one who needs help.” And I'm like, Well, I'm in 6 hours a week of therapy, so how about you do it too?”

JANILEE: Well, what they're saying when they are telling you that you are the one who needs help, what they're saying is that you are the one who needs to change. When you tell them, “Please get help.” It’s “I'm worried about you.” Right? Both of those statements are in regards to the other person. They don't have really anything to do with you, with Larissa. It has everything to do with [them saying] “I want you to change because you're making my life inconvenient.”

LARISSA: Exactly.  “You need to stop opposing my viewpoint and stop opposing what I'm saying because I'm right. You have to be wrong, and there's no other options,” and it's not always black and white. And there could be other options, and there could be other solutions, but nobody's getting into it and looking at it. I mean, this specific argument was over whether or not I was required to tell the person about a fleeting feeling I had had for 15 seconds.

JANILEE: Yeah. That’s…

LARISSA: A conversation about feelings should never result in an argument.

JANILEE: Right. It can result in “okay, you know what? This is a very heated and intense debate. Let's take a step away and finish this conversation later.” But it shouldn't result in “you know what your feeling is inconveniencing my life. You need to go get your feeling changed.”  That’s now how it works.

LARISSA: Or me sleeping on the couch or in another room.  I'm leaving the fight type... Yeah. And that's what happens, unfortunately. That's what happens in life. And you don't always know who people are before you end up dealing with them in ways like that.

JANILEE: Yeah.

LARISSA: I can't tell you how many arguments have lasted until two or three in the morning where I'm standing there going, “why are we even arguing?”

JANILEE: Right. Like, “I'm tired. I just want to go to bed.”

LARISSA: Exactly. “Can we please postpone this?” “No, I'm too angry. We shouldn't go to bed angry.”

JANILEE: Well, it's. I don't know, man.

LARISSA: Wake up and talk the next day.

JANILEE: Sometimes sleep, sleep makes me less angry. I am low on sleep and irritable. Right.

LARISSA: Yeah. I'm not as triggered. I've covered some of my emotions. I've processed everything I needed to process. I can come up with the statement I need to say. And there's nothing wrong with needing a little bit of processing time.

JANILEE: Exactly. Yeah.

LARISSA: But if it opens up a new argument the next day when you bring it up, then there's another problem, I think.

JANILEE: Yeah. Then that's usually a sign, I think, of more of that word chronic. It's more of a chronic problem than a one-off situation.

LARISS: Right, exactly. And unfortunately, I feel like there's so many examples I have of this in my life, and it's so tough to pick just one. But you wonder kind of, “Am I the problem? Am I gaslighting? Am I doing these things?” Because when this person is doing what they're doing, they're usually putting all of those blame words on you. They're saying, “you manipulated, you coerced, you gaslit. You're the emotional abuser. You're the physical abuser. It's your fault that I got physical. It's your fault that I did this.”  It's that saying, “it wasn't that bad, and if it was, it wasn't my fault..” or however that goes. I think I'm butchering the saying. But,

JANILEE: I mean, what you said sounds appalling. So it’s probably right.  

LARISSA: I mean, it's something along the lines of “it never happened, and if it did, it wasn't that bad, and if it was that bad, it wasn't my fault because you started it,” or something along those lines.

JANILEE: Yeah. Okay.  I love that phrase, and it's perfect. Okay. So sometimes when having conversations with friends, they will be encountering a narcissist and get very frustrated with how this narcissist is responding and doing things. And the question asked more than any other is “why? Why do they do this? Why do they do that?”

LARISSA: Like, oh, my goodness. Yes.

JANILEE: “Why is this my fault? Why am I the one that started it? Why am I responsible for picking your towel up off the floor? Why? Why? Why? Why?” Right. The towel situation just came out of nowhere, not specific to anyone, but the question is always “why?” Okay. So I want to explore that a little bit if you want to dive in there with me. Okay.

LARISSA: Yeah, let's do it.

JANILEE: So the answer is simply and always is “because they want to.”

LARISSA: It's so simple. It's like that Occam’s razor. It's the simplest answer, but it's such a frustrating answer because then you want to know why they want to.

JANILEE: Let's figure out why they want to. Okay. Because I also have dealt with I was raised by a narcissist, and so I have dealt with this frustration for years of I don't understand how a parent can actually treat their child this way. That makes no sense in comparison to everything I've ever heard or read about that parent-child relationship. It should be better, right? But it never was. And so “Why? Why? Why? Why?” I constantly ask myself these questions. So I've learned a little bit.

LARISSA: Okay, yeah. I would love to know more about it, because when I had my child that instant, it took almost a day because of the drugs from the C section. But…

JANILEE: Well, giving birth to children is kind of traumatic.

LARISSA: It really is. And I really had no prep. I was standing there going, I'm going to be a mom. I'm going to be a mom. In like 30 minutes, I'm going to be a mom. Oh, my gosh.  That concept had just hit me suddenly. It should have hit me a long time earlier, but that's a whole other argument. So when I had her and when I stared at her and I realized how important she was to me and the promise that I was making to myself in that moment and to her, to…  Almost Marlin-like, {Editor’s Note: Here Larissa is referring the character Marlin from the movie “Finding Nemo” to convey a protective parental figure.} to never let her get hurt, which is not overprotective. Right.  That I've had to overcome myself because of all of the trauma I've been through. I don't want my kiddo hurt in any way, but I have to let her have her own experiences in life, and that's been in my own struggle to learn, but…

JANILEE: we'll talk about it in a future episode.

LARISSA: That sounds great because I would love to process that. But it’s going and looking at that and saying, I never want her to suffer. And I know she has to, but looking back at my life, “why would these people who say they love me so much and cherish me want me to suffer? Why would they allow me to suffer purposefully?” And it's such a painful topic, like you were saying about your narcissistic parent. I mean, it's looking at it and going, “how are you comfortable hurting me this way when you supposedly have this level of love for me? Or maybe my love is different than other people's.” That's another thought I've had, is “maybe I'm just different.”

JANILEE: Right. And that is like a super common thought to have. But ultimately, when it comes down to it, the answer to the question is that you aren't a narcissist because you were worried about your daughter, you were worried about your child, and “Would she hurt? Would she be in pain? What would her life be like?” Those are all thoughts that you are having about someone that is not yourself.

LARISS: Exactly.

JANILEE: Okay, I'm going to explain to you something that is a really good kind of baseline for understanding the way that narcissists think.

LARISSA: Yeah.

JANILEE: They have their own reality that they live in. Okay? So it's like the term rose colored glasses where you put them on and everything looks rosy. It's like that, except they're like crap colored glasses and

LARISSA: *laughing* they muddy everything.

JANILEE: Exactly. But they muddy it in such a way that if you look at the world, you're going to see the narcissist as the center of that universe. Okay? So they're crap colored glasses put the narcissist as literally center of the universe syndrome. Like, the world revolves around me. Okay? And so let's say, for example.  In this reality, you can point at the sky and talk to someone wearing these glasses and say, “hey, look, the sky is blue”. And they'll look at you like you were the dumbest person that they've ever met. And they'll say, “no, the sky is actually green, idiot.” It makes zero sense because you weren't wearing those glasses. And what on earth is this person saying? This makes zero sense. Okay? And so that's kind of like the first step of the interaction from someone inside of this reality, someone wearing the glasses and someone outside of the reality, someone who's not wearing those glasses. They clash on the most basic things. And I use really big explanations to try and explain topics because they're true on a big level, they're true on a small level. But when they're on a small level, they're easier to explain away. Right? Like you were saying, “it's just me. I'm the problem. I must be loving differently than other people, right? I'm the problem” because it's so much easier to dismiss. But dismissing something like the sky is blue is a lot harder to dismiss because you know that a lot of people know the sky is blue. And it doesn't matter how many factual evidences you bring. It doesn't matter if you, like, shine a light through a prism and explain the scattering of light effect. And that's why the sky is blue. And if you bring, like, blue paint swatches and hold it up to the sky and they match exactly, it doesn't matter what you do to prove that the sky is actually blue, they're going to believe that you are wrong and the sky is green.

LARISSA: Well, and I think it's important also to look at the fact that everyone has some tendencies towards some form of narcissism. That doesn't mean you're a narcissist.

JANILEE: Yeah, taking care of yourself is not narcissism.

LARISSA: Right, exactly. Like boundaries. That's not narcissism. If you take your boundaries and insert them in certain ways and make them all encompassing and don't consider the other person in that. Then there's some more issues. But it’s interesting. I remember having a conversation with a guy one time, and I must have been really tired because I was convinced, and I was arguing with a farmer, that a chicken and a turkey made a chicken egg, not a rooster. And we had like a 20- or 30-minute argument about it before I realized, “oh, yeah, I am totally wrong. What on earth was I thinking?” And that doesn't mean I'm a narcissist. So if people are listening to this and they're thinking, “oh, my gosh, I thought something that was wrong, that makes me a narcissist,” that is not the case. That is not case, it does not prove that you are a narcissist. It's that your reality is so distorted, right, that I just want to make sure that I understand, too.  Me having a 30 minutes lapse of judgment and really just having the world doesn’t mean that I was gaslighting or even intentionally gaslighting or anything like that. I was literally just tired and confused.

JANILEE: No, and you're definitely not. Right? And even if it lasts more than 30 minutes, even if it lasts years of totally believing something and then realizing, you know what, maybe I'm wrong, like that level of introspection. First of all, no narcissist has but second of all, (and this is a really good transition, so thank you for bringing it up) The second point of this narcissist reality is that everyone is expected to conform. And so it's not like you expected the farmer to take a chicken and a turkey and put them in a room and turn on some romantic music and say, “make a chicken egg. Prove her right.” No!

LARISSA: I think it would have been hilarious if he had tried.

JANILEE: I would have loved to see the footage of that. It would be amazing, and I would watch it all the time and just laugh.

LARISSA: That would go viral on TikTok. So somebody should…

JANILEE: Definitely!

LARISSA: no, exactly. And I wasn't expecting that. I just…

JANILEE: You were confused about life and being confused about life. Hello. This is the human experience. If you're not confused about life, you're doing it wrong.  No, being confused is not the problem. It's when you expect everyone to not only say that the sky is green but go around convincing other people that the sky is green. And if the sky is about to rain, you can be like, “no, you should not change your actions and get an umbrella, because I say it's not going to rain. You should have all of your actions dictated by the way that I view the world through these crap colored glasses.”

LARISSA: Yeah.

JANILEE: That's the difference, right? There's a lot of things, and I think it's important to talk about topics in a huge, wide-ranging way, because there's a lot of things that can be considered narcissistic, but it's not just one thing. And it has to be something like that's, all-encompassing and debilitating and everything like that. It's not just one little thing here. I have a narcissistic trait. Like, no, what you have is a confusion trait from being human. And even if you did have a narcissistic trait, this does not make you a narcissist. Right? And I don't know who is ever going to listen to this podcast, but I can almost guarantee you that it's not going to be a narcissist.

LARRISSA: Yeah, I can pretty much guarantee you that, too.

JANILEE: And if a narcissist is listening, they're going to be the ones being like, “OH HELLS NO! You did not just say that. I'm about to disprove you and I'm going to block you and I'm going to make you… cancel culture, I'm going to make you quit, blah, blah, blah.” They're going to go off into comments and all of that because they are afraid that their internal self is being attacked because what they're hearing is making them uncomfortable.

LARISSA: Well, I mean and that's what the block button is for, quite honestly. Yes, the block button, it's amazing.

JANILEE: Exactly.Seriously, I've used that so many times in my life. It's amazing.  

JANILEE: So in this narcissistic reality, people don't really have relationships. What they have are roles. So there is going to be, like, someone who is responsible for cleaning and taking care of everyone. There's going to be people who are in charge of making sure that everyone else believes this. Kind of like a filter before they get to the narcissist. There's people whose job it is to tell the narcissist how amazing they are. There are people whose role is something even as simple as being the singer. Right. And this is like a little experience I had back with my narcissistic parent is: I was singing around the house, and this parent literally tells me to stop singing because, quote, “you are not the singer in this family.” Unquote.

LARISSA: wow.  

JANILEE: Just because I'm not the singer doesn't mean that I don't get to sing. I don't get to experience life or this, that, and the other. Now, if that person had wanted me to stop singing, they could have requested it. They could have gone about it in a different way. Right. But to just straight up be like, no, you're not the singer, that's not what you do here. Those types of comments are going to be really going to happen. Often your feelings - and this is relating back again to what you were saying - your feelings don't have a place here because your feelings do not impact your role. You have a role to fulfill, and you must do so. And what's interesting about it as well is that the narcissists are always like the king and the peasant. They want all of the respect and adoration that the king gets, but they want all of the pity and the presents that the peasants get. Right. Yeah. They are both roles. The only one that they're not, ironically, is they're never the hero and the villain.

LARISSA: That’s so interesting, they are.  I've never thought about it that way. That's a really interesting way to look at it. Yeah. They're never the villain. They're never villainified in their own little world.

JANILEE: Yeah. They're never vilified. And the only people who are [vilified] are the people who are trying to take off the glasses are the people who are trying to say, “I don't want to see the world this way anymore. I want to think independently for myself,”

LARISSA: or the people who are saying, “I can no longer put up with this.”

JANILEE: Right. Yeah. And so in those kind of, like, role based relationships right?

… I lost my train of thought. I'm sorry.

LARISSA: Okay. You were talking about role-based relationships and how if the person is only ever the hero, never the villain, but everywhere else, they're both parts, both polar opposites at the same time. They're that dichotomy.

JANILEE: Oh! Yes. I love the word dichotomy, though. That's perfect.

The narcissist is always going to be like the dichotomy of the good, the highest and the lowest, but never the dichotomy of the good and the bad, because even in this reality, be good is good. The hero is always the hero, and the villain is always the villain, because good and bad is more of a moral compass question than a classism place in society question. And so they have to be the good person because the world revolves around them. And why would the world revolve around a bad person?

LARISSA: Exactly. That brings something up that I remember from my experiences with narcissistic individuals. I one time had somebody, one of my narcissists in my life tell me “I'm not proud of everything I've done.” And I went to my therapist and she was like, “that's the best apology you're ever going to get run with.” And I was like, “seriously? When I was taught how to apologize, there were a set of rules that I had to follow.”

JANILEE: Exactly.

LARISSA: So how is that the best apology I'm ever going to get? It wasn’t until years later that I realized, “oh, that's why” So many light bulbs.

JANILEE: Well and that person didn't even say “I was wrong. My bad.” It was just “maybe I could have done better.”

LARISSA: Yeah, it was “I'm not proud of some stuff.” … like, okay.  Awesomeness.

JANILEE: So another aspect in order to fit everything into this narcissist reality is if they're the hero, then if something happens, it has to be because of them.  Well, it has to be because of them, but it's always to help them or to hurt them. Right? So if someone else makes an action individually on their own, the effects of that action are going to determine whether or not it was a good thing or a bad thing. Intention means nothing. All that matters is, “oh, this person decided to go to a lunch with a friend and they weren't available when I called them out of the blue, that person's out to get me. I'm not important enough in that person's life. They shouldn't have friends because if they have friends, they're not available when I meet them.”

LARISSA: Yeah. Or I remember trying to talk to one of my narcissists about the anxiety I was feeling that night and that person yelled at me instead of being like, “I'm sorry you're having anxiety. Do you want to talk about it? Do you want to pray about…” any kind of supportive response? It was, “Well, seek the fucking Lord.” Literally, that statement came out,

JANILEE: “Make it someone else's problem.”

LARISSA: And it was my fault that I felt that way, which, yes, feelings are your own internal thing, but because “I just wanted a pity party”, not… it had been like 4 hours of me trying to sleep before turning to this person and saying, “I'm struggling, can you help me a little bit?” Because I was also unintentionally keeping that person awake. And that was “me choosing to have a pity party and punish that person” instead of just, “I'm feeling something and it's interfering with my life. This isn't something I can control.” This wasn't an active choice. I sat down and said, oh, I'm going to feel anxiety tonight and stay awake until 02:00 a.m. And keep you up. Partly because I keep getting up and down and walking around and trying to get out the energy other ways. No, it's not that at all. That's never an intentional thing for a person who is neurotypical is kind of what I'm trying to say. And even neurodivergent, most neurodivergent people don't intentionally impact the world around them. They aren't trying to harm somebody. They aren't out to get people. So when, when the narcissist is like, “oh, you didn't have time for me at the last minute for lunch when I needed you? How dare you. You are no longer my friend.” That's completely narcissistic versus the person who's like, “I'm so sorry I'm asking at the last minute. I know you probably might be busy, but if you aren't, I would love to have you come for lunch. You aren't a last-minute afterthought I just randomly had time today to ask somebody out for lunch.” And that's the difference there. Right. That's kind of what you're…

JANILEE: Yeah, totally. I actually had some people in town this weekend, and they showed up for an night, and we decided they were coming to town Friday afternoon, and there was not a lot of time. It wasn't that I didn't want them there. It was just my schedule happened to free up, and “if you want to come, I'd love to have you there.” Right. And let's say that there was a friend that was like, “I need help. I need to work through some things,” and they call me, and I don't answer my phone because I'm at lunch. I can call back after lunch and help them. Then they're not going to be like, “you didn't answer the phone when I first called. Your chance is gone.” Right. There's the regular life stuff, that not a lot of people…  let me rephrase that. There's a lot of real-life stuff that Narcissists will use as reasons for, oh, you weren't there for me when what really is happening is you weren't there in that exact moment. Not that you weren't willing to be there, but you weren't there for them in the way that they wanted you to be there. They don't have allowances for real life getting in the way or for other people's differing opinions or other people's timetables or schedules or emotions. “You are going to be here when I need you on the dot, or you either are not my friend or you need to not have friends,” depending on if it's a narcissist, you have a more deep relationship to, like, family or romantic partner versus just a narcissistic friend.

LARISSA: Exactly. And I think that's important is that if you have a comprehensive boundary of, “I'm not going to take a call during my lunch with people from out of town,” that's not unreasonable. And that boundary is you showing respect for other individuals as well as yourself. As well as you're not even going to be able to be there fully for that person that's calling you. And so you're trying to show everyone in the picture respect. And I think that's part of the difference is that lack of respect for anything other than the narcissist. But I don't know, is that part of the narcissistic tendencies is the lack of respect for anyone other than the, the key person?

JANILEE: It's interesting you bring up the word respect because one of my favorite quotes about the word respect and I honestly don't remember where I saw or I would cite it, but it was how some people have different dictionaries. So a narcissist dictionary says the word respect means “to treat like an authority figure”, whereas the person being abused by the narcissist, their dictionary definition of respect is “to treat someone like a human being  or an equal right, to treat them with decency, with humanity.” Okay? And so if the narcissist then goes up and says, “hey, if you don't respect me, I won't respect you.” If we use those dictionary translations, what they're saying is, “if you don't treat me like an authority figure, I won't treat you like a human being.”

LARISSA: Yeah.

JANILEE: So to answer what I think was your intended question, they don't care. They don't really respect anyone, but they always demand respect in return. They always want to be the authority figure. They always want to be the most important. Again, remember, everything is always about them, but they're going to use these words that make them not sound as bad. “You weren't there for me” not giving the full context of the situation, or “you didn't respect me”, not giving the full context of the different dictionary definitions. And you mentioned as well, they'll use trigger words like, “You are the abuser. You are the one that's gaslighting me. You are the problem. You are dramatic. You are all of these things” because they're putting these words that people have used against them. They are like, “Oh, those hurt me. I'm going to use them as weapons against other people. Now, this is a new tool in my toolkit.”

LARISSA: Yeah. No, I can remember times where I've said, “if you want a different reaction, do differently, please.” And they'll say back to me, “well, the same goes for you.” And I'm like, “exactly. And that's why I tried this time when I'm talking to you about the same problem that we've had seven or 8 million times at this point, I'm going about it this way. That's why I approached it like this instead of like this, which is what I did the first time I had this conversation with you versus the second versus the third. I've tried different tactics here, and nothing is helping.”

JANILEE: And their response is always the same, I'm guessing?

Yeah, exactly. It was always, “You're the problem. It's your fault, you're the abuser. If I react it's the most, it's reactive abuse,” which I understand that reactive abuse exists. I've blown up and reacted in abuse situations back at the person and lost my cool. And it's having a sane reaction to an insane situation.  Unfortunately, in the narcissist's mind, it seemed like it wasn't acceptable that I was having that same reaction, but their reaction every single time is sane. And I was the insane one.

JANILEE: In that situation, though. Your reaction is insane because they're wearing crap-colored glasses.

LARISSA: That's so true. It's very difficult to think about it  in their world. That is exactly how it is. They are never wrong. They because wrong is bad. Their demand to change your boundaries or change what you've said you want happening, or that you never change your view or opinion, or that you never talk about something that they don't like is completely sane to them. Whereas

JANILEE: It's normal. It's what everyone does.

LARISSA: Exactly.

*talking over each other*

LARISSA: It's giving that grace to everyone versus only yourself.

JANILEE: Right. And what's interesting is that the narcissist view doesn't hold up when you apply it to reality, because that's normal to them, and that's how everyone reacts. But it doesn't work because if everyone actually did react that way, they wouldn't have anyone in their reality. They wouldn't have any little worker bees just going around keeping their reality afloat.

LARISSA: Right. Like somebody being mad that the blue herring keeps stealing the koi out of their pond. So they go outside in city limits with a BB gun and a three foot tall thing of tequila, and they shoot like the neighbor kid. That's not sane.

JANILEE: No, well it depends on what color glasses you're wearing. Are you wearing crap-colored glasses for this one specific narcissist? Right. In that case, that's exactly how you deal with your fishpbond! There's no other way.  Why would you think of doing anything less drastic than that?

LARISSA: Exactly. Or you try out the BB gun by saying, “Larissa, go stand over there.”  

JANILEE: ha ha ha, yeah. Don't fall for that.

LARISSA: There's an armadillo, Shoot that, please. You know?

JANILEE: Yeah. And so I love that you're bringing up, like, when things happen in these worlds. Right.  It doesn't matter what happens. They're going to start with the facts of what happened. “My fish got stolen.” And then there's always going to be the why. And it's “because someone's out to get me.” It's not because they didn't shut the door to the hen house and let the oxen no, the fox was like, “I could go steal this farmer’s chicken and turkey and make a chicken egg or I could go to this farmer. And I went to this farmer not because it was easier access because the door was left unlocked, but because I don't like the farmer.” It makes no sense. It's just human nature. The fox is going to go get the hens and the turkeys from anyone.  

LARISSA: The sane reaction would have been let's put a cover over the pond, right?

JANILEE: Like going back to the fish example. Why don't you just cover the pond?

LARISSA: Or close the door to the tur-chicken house?

JANILEE: Right – or the chick-ry.  

LARISSA: It would be really funny if it's actually a thing.

JANILEE: I don't know, man. I'm going to do some research after and find out because I want a chick-ry. That'd be fun.

JANILEE: So let's talk for a second about let's say there's someone living in this narcissist reality and they want to leave. They want to take off the glasses and they want to go live their own life and they are trying to break free of this reality. What's going to happen?

LARISSA: Well, and it's such a reasonable thing to want to do is to want to leave this horrible situation. There's nothing wrong with saying “this is toxic, let's go our separate ways while we can still be reasonable with each other.” But the narcissist what I've noticed is, “no, you can't do that. If you do that, I'm going to put some flying monkeys in the air and make your life hard,” or “I'm going to use post separation abuse in court”, or “I'm going to stalk you.” I mean, look at all of the crimes that have been happening in domestic situations and almost all of them, according to Dr. Romani, at least, any abusive, any domestic violence situation, whether it be parent, child, spouse to a spouse, child to a parent, whatever it might be, it's rooted in narcissism. Or at least I think that's what she said. I hope I did not just butcher that. Any of those situations that you hear about even on the news or on so many different platforms, it's impossible. And sometimes it's worse than living in that world.

JANILEE: Yeah,

LARISSA: Well, I know when I left I had to cut off just about everyone and.  I had nobody. And it was so hard to do that, to be alone like that. But I learned and I grew, and now I'm living a better life because of it. And now I'm stronger. And now I know that I'm capable and I know what I can and cannot put up with. And so it's almost like, “hey, thanks for putting me through that.” So a shout out to my person, because now I'm living my best life, and I wouldn't be had I not known how horrible this could be. I can now appreciate the great. Right. But it can be years of hell. Yeah.

JANILEE: Thinking back to my experience, because of this narcissistic parent and the family that they came from, I had to cut off contact with everyone from that side of the family. And when I had to do that, it was really hard. First of all, like you mentioned the years thing, this was a decision that I literally spent around two and a half to three years deciding, “am I going to leave or am I not?” And when I did make the decision that leaving was the best option for me in my situation, it was the hardest thing that I've ever had to do. And I have spent the majority of my life suicidal because of circumstances. And so when I made that decision, those tendencies came back, I thought extraordinarily suicidal. And I even ended up with a suicide attempt a couple of months later, because it really is the hardest thing. I'm thinking about, because we're using the analogy of glasses. Have you ever worn those beer goggle glasses that they have you wear in elementary school where you can see what it's like to view the world when you're drunk so that you don't want to get drunk?

LARISSA: They never had me wear those, but I had to wear cataract glasses, so I'm going to assume it's the same sort of thing. They had us wear those in nursing school.

JANILEE: Yeah. Okay.  Where your vision is so compromised that you can't function. Right. It's this whole debilitating factor, right? So when you are a person who chooses to leave this narcissist’s orbit, first of all, it's going to be nearly impossible to do, and the narcissist will try everything to get you back. We'll get to that in a minute. But for those of you who are leaving, it is the hardest thing to do. And it's so isolating and it's so lonely. I had, thankfully, at the time, like two, three people that I could heavily lean on for support. And I felt like I was so needy and that I was really whiny, and I kept bringing this up and of course, “I would just be better off dead,” like all these suicidal thoughts. But thankfully, those people were strong enough to say, we want you to stick around. And even after the attempt, they were like, “I'm really glad that you're still here.” And all of that happening just reinforced that these were the kinds of people I needed, because no narcissist would do that. No narcissist would be there for you through your lowest of lows and shed tears at the thought of you not being there. And so when you do leave the narcissist reality, it is going to be so hard and so lonely and so isolating. If you can have just one person to help you through that, it's better.  I mean, I am… I want to say - the fact that I have to do the math is a good sign - but it's been roughly four years for me since I have cut off contact. And in those four years, I have spent the longest consecutive time in my life not suicidal. And I have made the biggest changes in the way that I view the world. I have been able to grow as a person in ways that I never would have been able to had I stayed in that narcissist reality because I was able to live life for myself, right?

JANILEE: A book I'm reading, and I'll reference it in the show notes, but it talks about adult children of narcissistic, emotionally immature parents, which is a lot of narcissist stuff. But in there they mentioned that the author mentions when a person starts to have a glimmer of independent thought, the narcissists will jump at that because they know that independent thought is going to lead to “you don't want to spend the rest of your life waiting on me hand and foot? THE HORROR!” They're going to view it as their world ending. And when you leave, you have so much power that you don't realize because you're in that reality and you're just a peon. But when you leave, their reality shatters. They have to put it back together with duct tape.

LARISSA: Exactly.

JANILEE: And when they're putting it back together with duct tape, they're going to be the hero because they're saving the reality and blah, blah, blah. And you're going to be the villain. You're going to be vilified because you chose to leave. Because of course, everything that happens, happens to screw over or to help the narcissist. And so their reality is going to be shattering and crumbling, and they're going to try everything they can to get you back. And the hardest thing is to set those boundaries and to maintain them and to have enough self-respect to say - not that if it's a hard thing for you to do, you don't have self-respect -  but just loving yourself. And it's a hard, hard thing to do, but loving yourself enough to say, “I don't ever want to be in that position again.”

LARISSA: Exactly. For me, it was a feeling of worthiness. It was a feeling of, “am I even worthy to be alive?” I had somebody who I'm assuming in my life was a narcissist, or at least had a lot of traits tell me that they had wished I had died instead of another individual. And so a couple of years of hearing that I tried to join that person, so I've been there. I've been in that situation where I've been so suicidal that I actually and nobody knew, nobody around. I think maybe three people in my life knew how depressed I actually was until I made a serious enough and permanent enough attempt to end up needing care. And then it was, “oh, my gosh!” And because suicide had always been brought up as a control mechanism, it was, oh, she's just trying to control.  

JANILEE: They say its attention seeking right?

LARISSA: I was like “You have NO idea. This is not attention seeking. For me, this was a serious attempt. I'm going to downplay it now so I can get the heck out of this facility and get the heck out of the situation. Because now I realize that this is what was causing this.” And it wasn't until I actually attempted my life that I realized “I need to get away from this. And my plan either needs to be a year out or stay in here [facility] because I'm not going to survive much longer.” And it wasn't until then that I realized this is not okay. And it is completely understandable for anyone who's trying to escape a narcissist to become suicidal and to wonder whether or not they even have value on this Earth. And they do.

LARISSA: Every single one of you. You are so valuable not only to that narcissist, but to so many other people around you. And it's just going to take time to find out who those people are that are your true ride or die friends and who are your true ride or die family and who are your true going to support you no matter what.  Because those are the people that you have to find. And unfortunately, when you're enthralled in that narcissistic snare, for lack of a better term, you can't see the worth that you have. You can't see that you're in a shitty situation until you get out and until you experience something else. And that is the scariest thing for that narcissist. And that's why so much of the narcissist’s life is spent trying to control your reality and your world and everything else. Or at least that's the experience that I've had with it.

JANILEE: Yeah, it's sadly a rather universal experience, but along with everything Larissa said that was totally true, realize that if you are in that situation, you hold all of the cards, you have all of the power. And the reason this narcissist is fighting you so hard is because they are aware of just how much their world isn't going to work if you're not there.

LARISSA: Unless they have new supply, if they're willing to discard you, which, honestly, I think that's almost easier when they're willing to discard completely. When they're willing to just be like “totally BYE!”

JANILEE: If they give you that chance, TAKE IT!

LARISSA: Yeah, if you get that chance, run with it. Because that means they have somebody new that they were going to put right into your shoes. And I pity that person, quite honestly, in most of these situations, I'm like, “I don't wish this role on anyone. And I'm really sorry that somebody's going to have to go through it because I'm not.”

JANILEE: Right? And that, by the way, is not a selfish thing to do. I want to get into that more in depth next week with more time. But for those that are listening now, in that experience,  don't discount the power that you hold and don't discount how important and valuable you are, not just for what you can do, right? I remember when I was a child talking to my Narcissistic parent, I mentioned, “I don't ever want someone to love me or want to marry me because of what I can do for them, because I can clean the kitchen and the floor and I can make dinner and I can sew and all of those things. I want them to want to love me for who I am.” And this narcissistic parent responded to me with, “Well, if you take all that away, what's left?” And the answer to that question that I did not have then, and it devastated me at the time, but I can answer that question now. And what you have left is the most beautiful part of who you are. It's the essence of your individuality. And while the individuality scares the crap out of the narcissist, that doesn't make it bad. It honestly kind of makes it good. Not because the narcissist doesn't like it, but because it's who you are. (If the narcissist doesn't like it, though that's probably a pretty good sign that you should.)

LARISSA: Quite honestly. It's easy to say this when you're not in the situation anymore. It's easy to be like, this is what happened. But when you're in that narcissistic fog of constant stuff coming at your brain and at you and at your person, it is so hard

JANILEE: What we were talking about earlier.

LARISSA: Yeah, it's that fog and that confusion. And it's completely normal to feel that in that situation and to be like, I don't even know if I have value. I don't even know if I have I don't even know if I'm worth respect. But you are.

JANILEE: Absolutely.

LARISSA: And choosing it takes so much strength to stay in that narcissistic relationship because you have to survive, and it takes so much strength to leave. And so it's choosing where you want to put that strength. Do you want to put that strength into surviving, or do you want to put that strength into thriving? And it's looking at that goal. And I recommend to anyone looking at a situation and saying, should I leave? Give it a test run. Try to leave and see.

JANILEE: And if you can’t leave, if you write down a pro and con list, right? Like, what would happen this way or that way? Like I mentioned, it was a long decision for me, and it didn't happen all at once. It happened in stages. There was the drama of me no longer living with the narcissistic parent. It took me multiple tries to even not live with them anymore. And then once I didn't live with them, and then I made another decision that I wasn't going to go visit them every week, that I was only going to visit them twice a month. And then I was able to lessen that down to I'm only visiting once a month. And it happened in stages, and there was a cut off time where I'm not doing this at all anymore. That's it. Period. It's not like that happened overnight. So I did when I was considering moving out that pro con list. And if I were to look at that pro con list, from what I know about life now, it would be terrifying and disheartening because the pro would be, “I can go to bed when I'm tired, and I can eat food when I'm hungry, and I won't have to sleep outside, and I won't have to be cold.” I mean, like basic necessities were on my pro list. If you write a pro con list and you find yourself in that situation, give it a shot,

LARISSA: And it's okay to take it in chunks. It's okay to take it in whatever your tolerance is at the moment.  My extrication took a long time too. I mean, it took so much more damage, and I went back so many times. And that's okay. It is okay if you catch yourself back in that situation again, because the fact that you're catching it sooner and you're stopping it sooner means that you're growing. Means that you're catching it and your tolerance [for narcissism] is going down. And your ability to be resilient and cope and stand up for yourself and recognize your worth, which is not wrong to have. It is not wrong to have self-worth.

JANILEE: And it does not make you a narcissist if you have self-worth.

LARISSA: I worried about that so much for so long, I was terrified that if I had any self-worth or if I had any boundaries or if I had any idea who I was, that that meant that I was a narcissist, and it meant that I was choosing to be like them. And that I was going to hurt other people, and I didn't want to do that. And so it's completely reasonable to take it in small chunks and steps and going back and then leaving. Leaving doesn't have to be a one-time process and it doesn't have to be something you do as a last ditch effort. It can be like, “okay, I'm going to sit down and I'm going to start prepping this and leave when it's right.” And it's okay to leave in stages. It depends on the situation and the person and what, what's best for that person and how best to apply that strength.

JANILEE: Yeah. And another thing that I just want to point out, like we've talked a lot about, the narcissist will blame you for things, right? That's just because the narcissist cannot take accountability for their actions. If they didn't buy groceries on time, it's not their fault for getting to buy groceries. It's other people's fault for eating too much food. Right? And so their inability to take responsibility for their actions is going to come out more as you try and leave. They're going to start blaming you. They're going to be freaking out because their reality is shattering and crumbling and they're going to be blaming you for all of these things. That doesn't mean that you are doing all these things. It doesn't mean that you're responsible for their inability to take care of themselves or their own take responsibility for their actions. All it means that you are making a decision that inconveniences them. And like we've mentioned, that's not a good…  no. that's crap. I accept nothing from that.

LARISSA: I think one of the most impactful things that's been said to me about that is that “you have to be willing to let the narcissist hurt. You have to be willing to allow that pain.” Because I'm the kind of person who I'm like. I don't want anyone else to feel that pain. So, I'll sacrifice myself. And if you aren't willing to let them feel that pain, then you won't stand up for yourself the way you need to and you won't back away the way you need to. And that's so tough to get to that point. And it took so long for me to realize, “okay, if they suffer and they hurt and it's on them, let it be.” Let them. That's my motto for 2023, is “Let People”. Let people show you who they are, but only let them show you once. Let that be that.

JANILEE: If you're leaving and I feel like leaving situations comes in stages. Every one of those stages comes with boundaries, which is something that's next week's topic. So I'm excited to get more in depth with that.  But with that leaving in stages and setting those boundaries, there is the cycle of abuse, which summed up is the abuser thinking “I have to be nice at least some of the time so that the person will think that I'm nice all of the time and stick around.” So when Larissa and tell me if I'm wrong, but when Larissa says, “hey, let their actions prove them, let people”, that doesn't mean… no. If they make a bad choice once[again], I would go with that because you have literally years of experience. But if they change their mind and they make a good decision once, that doesn't … that's a singular decision. And don't let that be a cycle of abuse.

LARISSA; We're looking for patterns of behavior here, right? We're looking for longitudinal, which is long term behavior. If the person is for example, if somebody says, “I'm going to treat you with respect and integrity” and 20 hours later they're telling you off for the things that they agreed to do when they agreed to treat you with respect and integrity, that's showing right there that that's not going to stick. That's a really short, what they call “honeymoon period”. And that's in no way, shape or form going to help them help you. It is completely a facade and it's completely just “you are a means to an end. I need this end. So let me hook you back in and remind you how great I can be, and then I'm going to go back to doing what I want to do.”

JANILEE: Exactly that's perfect explanation of cycle of abuse, which I feel like would be a really great place to start for next week. So can we sum up what we talked about today?

LARISSA: Yeah. So a narcissist is someone who only sees the world through their own reality and they cannot in any way, shape or form, correct me if I'm wrong, understand the reality of others. So they are completely going along thinking that they are completely right. They can never be wrong. I mean, they might admit “I might not have been completely correct here,”

JANILEE: but they never use the word “wrong”, right?  

LARISSA: Yeah, unless they're in that honeymoon or, like, the recook phase of the cycle of abuse.  And there's somebody who will not be able to respect your boundaries, not be able to respect your worth, not be able to show respect for anyone other than themselves and their views, and that it is not your fault if you've gotten into a relationship or you've been born into a relationship or in any way, shape or form. If you have had to have a relationship with a narcissist, that is not any bad thing on you, and it is okay to leave, and it is okay to do that in any way that is safe for you to do it, and that's safe emotionally, physically, mentally, financially, all of it. Whatever it is that you need to do in that situation to protect your own identity, your self-worth, if you start wondering who you are and you no longer have a clue who you are, you're probably dealing with a narcissist, is what I’m getting.

JANILEE: Yeah!

LARISSA: It is okay. Also that if you are wondering if you are the narcissist, if you care, like, “I don't want to hurt this person,” you're probably not the narcissist.

JANILEE: We only say “probably” because we're not clinicians and we're not going to diagnose people. But when we say probably, we mean like 99.9% probability.  

LARISSA: I think the most impactful thing I was ever told by a clinician was “the fact that you are so worried about becoming that person, that harmful person to you means you are not going to become that person. It means you are not that person, means you are not the one doing the harming because you care so much about that person who's still harming you that you don't want them to suffer even though you're suffering.” And self sacrifice is only good in the movies.  

JANILEE: Ah! Okay, so I started writing down points about what I want to talk about for the conversation next week on boundaries. I literally put down on my list “meaningless self-sacrifice”. So yes, we're definitely going to talk about that. We're going to talk about boundaries. It's going to help in that process of leaving a situation that you don't want to be in. And we're going to talk about good ones, bad ones, fake ones, real ones, all of the things. But for today: Remember what a narcissist is. Remember that everything they do is in the form of their reality. If you ever find yourself asking “Why?”, the answer is, “Because they want to.” “Why are they being terrible?” “Because they want to.” Because it serves them and their center of the universe syndrome, and it is all about them and nothing they do is your fault. Just because they can't accept responsibility does not mean that you have to.

LARISSA: Exactly. And you'll probably never understand fully why you could ask, “well, why do they want to well, why do they want to do that? Well, why do they want to do that?” You're never going to get to the bottom of it, and being able to accept that is difficult.

JANILEE: It’s a process. But Larissa and I are here for you! We're going to start doing this once a week, so we hope that you join along in all of our conversations about things. If you have anything you want us to talk about, hit us up on the social media, which is almost set up, so I will include it in the show notes because I don't want to say anything that's wrong, but I know that it will be up before the first episode goes live.

LARISSA: Awesome. Yeah. So join us next week so that we can discuss this more and delve deeper and hopefully get some better understandings. Thank you so much, Janilee, for being willing to invite me onto the show and help me be a part of this. And I'm really grateful

JANILEE: Thanks for coming too!

LARISSA: Great.

JANILEE: I feel like it was a good conversation today.

LARISSA: Yeah, I think so too.

JANILEE: Awesome. So come along, be our friends and join us next week at the corner of “I'm living my life” and “Someone else isn't happy about it.”

LARISSA: This is VILIFIED.