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LOVE SAFETY
NET
Transcript
of June 29, 2009, program
“Narcissism: Questions and Answers”
STEVE: Hi and welcome to The
Love Safety Net.
KIM: I’m Kim.
STEVE: And I’m Steve. On
today’s show, we are handling listener’s questions. Now if you
want to send in a question for future shows….
KIM: Well, then please
subscribe to what is actually my email list—not Steve’s—that is
the one to start. And you will also from there be directed to
Steve’s email list if you want to join that as well. But the
place to subscribe is HYPERLINK "http://www.narcissismcured.com"
www.narcissismcured.com.
You can read more about us there, and there is a place to
subscribe. Once you subscribe you will get an email that you
can respond to and then you can start asking questions from
there. We have a mountain of questions to get to today,
haven’t we, Steve?
STEVE: We do. So Kim, can
you tell us where we are going with this week’s show with these
questions?
KIM: Well, it is really good
that you say that. What we are going to do is give all the time
each question we feel needs. My first reaction was, okay, we
are really going to have to rush through this because there is
so many of them. But then I thought, “No, I just can’t do
that.” I think it is better we give each question the time it
deserves, which means we are probably not going to get through
all the questions this show, and they may continue on into other
shows. I haven’t decided yet whether that will be next week or
whether we will do it once a month. We will have to figure that
out and see how popular this is.
But what I would like to do is
I would still like to give an overall direction of where we are
going with this, which is what I like to do each show—to have
some idea where we are taking this. It is a complicated
subject, there is a lot to it. I would say, Steve, that the
reason for today’s show I haven’t been able to a specific theme
because obviously with all these questions coming in there is a
lot of—
STEVE: A lot of different
topics.
KIM: Yes a lot of different
topics (laughing) and we are going to be ranging all over the
place. But I’ve got it down into about four general areas where
we can say we are going to take this.
What has come through loud and
clear from the questions I am getting is I have to give better
information about how to access our resources. There is a lot
of material we have now. There is a lot of material on line. A
lot of it is free, and we are working day and night at the
moment—I can’t believe how hard I have been working actually,
getting it all organized and easier to find. That is one thing
that throughout today’s show is highlight where things are, how
to access information, how it’s laid out so it also becomes
easier for you to find the answers you need for yourself.
The next is what recovery looks
like. There were quite a few questions around that theme. You
know, what to expect, how to know if things are improving, and
how to keep track of that yourself.
STEVE: And a couple of direct
questions about that…
KIM: Yep.
STEVE: Which I am hoping we
are going to get to.
KIM: Yeah, and they were very
good questions. We like those questions, but whether we think
the questions are good questions or bad questions, we are still
going to give them time. (laughing)
STEVE: That’s right.
KIM: Because even if we
think something is a bad question, it still gives an opportunity
to highlight how and why we think it’s a bad question.
Okay. The next thing is
motivation. We really want to help keep you motivated. We know
a lot of people who listen to our programs and who receive the
emails are in really very difficult marriages and very
difficult family situations. It is very easy to become
depressed and become despondent. We really want to keep you
motivated to just working in the right direction and
understanding that we are really compassionate. We don’t
think this is easy; we know that this is not. But it is
stuff that can change your life and it is stuff that really is
worth working on.
STEVE: And we had a previous
radio show before we signed up with Global Talk Radio that was
on the topic of 'setbacks' as well. We have to give some time
to that too and explain that somewhere in the show that setbacks
do happen.
KIM: Mmm….that there are
setbacks.
STEVE: And that motivation is
a real key. Setbacks you have to kind of expect. Let’s
hope you don’t get too many of them. But they are part of the
story.
KIM: It’s interesting you say
that, Steve. With the setbacks I get really scared, I guess,
because I just want people to understand this that sometimes as
absolutely heart wrenching that it can be and as devastating as
it can be—I mean I remember one of the biggest setbacks I had
with you and it was just awful. I was just beside myself
because things had been better for eight months. And that old
guy was just gone, and then suddenly he was back and I was just
devastated. Anyway, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going
to be. I got on top of it straight away. My support network
offered some really good help and advice that we can also impart
and pass on to you. And it was all over in a blip. We got
everything back under control and it was just—whew—what a
sigh of relief. But I’ve seen other people where it’s just
tragic for me where they face one setback and then they give
up. And it just doesn’t have to be the end of the road,
setbacks don’t.
STEVE: So motivation is
going to be a very large theme today.
KIM: Yeah, that is what we
are aiming for is to keep the motivation high with you (all).
The other, maybe a little bit
more academic theme, but we are going to come across this now
and then and I think it is a very meaty and very important one.
We are moving here beyond self-blame—this sort of card
flipping—where on one side we have self-blame and on the other
side we have victimhood. This is where I feel before we entered
this debate around narcissism where a lot of it was just
centered on “am I to blame, am I codependent, am I causing all
the problems here?”, or “is it my partner’s fault, is he a
monster, incurable, and there is nothing I can do and I really
just need a lynch mob”.
STEVE: (laughing)
KIM: (laughing) You know,
there is so much of each of that side out there. We would
really like to give a vision of moving beyond that and
into thinking instead where in your mind you are just thinking
“what is going to be effective?”. What is going to be
effective, what is going to be the most useful to me in this
situation to keep my family safe, to get things back on track
quickly, and to cause the least disruption to all members of the
family—what is effective, what is useful, how do I solve this,
what do I need to do now. I still ask myself that question all
the time—not because I have huge problems with you anymore—but
you know when you have a family (and there are a lot of people
in the family) there are always situations coming up with the
kids, you know the kids are pushing our boundaries in different
ways. I don’t want to give the impression here today, Steve,
that because we are answering all these questions that this is
easy.
STEVE: Yeah, sure.
KIM: You know, this takes a
lot of thought. That is the kind of idea I want to get to is
that you need to be stopping and asking yourself, “Okay, what is
going to be effective here. What do I need to do that is going
to produce the most positive effect, rather than the inner
dialogue of who is to blame?”
STEVE: Absolutely, so let’s
start with how to access resources, Kim.
KIM: Yep.
STEVE: You know we talked
earlier about subscribing to HYPERLINK "http://www.narcissismcured.com"
www.narcissismcured.com
and once you have done that you will get a confirmation email.
That is really one of the first steps to accessing our
resources, isn’t it, Kim?
KIM: Absolutely. That is just
so important. I mean, I have people who are friends that live
locally that come and ask us for help and we still tell them
exactly the same thing…
STEVE: (laughing) That’s
right.
KIM: “Go and subscribe to the
list”. It is a fantastic thing, automated email. Some people
find it impersonal. The letters that come out are automated.
But there is a whole process where once you subscribe you will
get an email every day for a little while, you will get
opportunities to buy our introductory specials, which are very
highly discounted and are the first things that you need. We
have a lot of smaller priced items for sale. We don’t sell
anything big and expensive and we’ve got heaps of free
stuff to offer. Once you buy only one product, you then go on a
customer list where you start getting movies and you start
getting all sorts of material. Even if you don’t buy anything,
you still get a lot of free information and you will get links
to all of our radio shows. So it really is very, very important
that you subscribe to that list, which is at HYPERLINK "http://www.narcissismcured.com"
www.narcissismcured.com.
Maybe you can’t look at every email as it comes in but you can
just save them somewhere so when you’ve got time to sit down you
can look at two or three at once, because all of the information
in there is very, very important. There are things like the
ways of de-escalating a fight in progress.
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right.
KIM: I mean that page is
worth its weight in gold.
STEVE: Absolutely.
KIM: I mean, how many
testimonials do we get about that?
STEVE: Absolutely. And there
is a lot to be said for the products that we have available, but
I would like to initially say that it’s not advisable to tackle
a lot of the problems you are facing without some kind of
guidebook. Without our guidebook, what we hear people saying is
you should get out.
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: Because we really
think it’s the best advice if you have a plan and if you have an
idea of what steps you are going to take. And you do need some
support, and that’s what our guidebook is. Isn’t that right,
Kim?
KIM: Yeah, I don’t think this
is something you should be tackling on your own. I mean, I did.
I didn’t have any choice. There wasn’t the resources or anybody
who had been through this successfully to help me and I had to
pick up information here, there, and all over the place. But I
still didn’t try and do this by myself. Most of what we
recommend and suggest has come from other professionals and from
me sifting through all sorts of things, and always testing it
against what works and what doesn’t. I think this is very
important. We are going to get into these questions, but I just
need to really make sure our listeners understand this before we
start. We may give simple answers to some of the questions
here, of just maybe what area is needing a little bit more
attention, but really it’s not that easy. There are four main
areas to our work and it is actually extremely important that
you are working on all four of those areas at once. Any
problems that you have and setbacks that you have, most of these
questions in one or more area there is a misunderstanding in.
So I would like to give you the
example, Steve of riding a bike. If you are learning to ride
a bike, you need balance, you need coordination, you need clear
vision and you need to be able to focus on where you are going
without being distracted. You need the right clothes.
STEVE: You need a little bit
of courage to get started.
KIM: (smiling) Yes, you need
courage. You need your equipment in working order, and you need
all of those things. You are not going to be successfully able
to ride a bike without all of those things happening. What is
going to happen is the first few times you are going to fall
off. For some people it’s going to be softer, for some people
it’s going to be slower, and for some people not everybody is
going to save their relationship. Some people are going to have
three, four or five goes at it and say “I’ve had it”, and they
will get off on their me-myself-and-me bike.
STEVE: (laughing)
KIM: (laughing) The
“I’ve-had-enough-of-this-bike”. That’s fine too. We are not
judgmental about that, but we are about you learning better
emotional skills that will help you in relationship, whether it
be in this one or in the next one. And it may seem completely
impossible learning how to ride that bike in the beginning. But
it’s not like you can just do one area at a time...you have to
actually be working on four of the discipline areas at once.
That is why we really do say it is vital to have our The Love
Safety Net Workbook, and also I would highly recommend that you
pay attention to the exercise at the very end of the workbook,
which is called the Four-Legged Stool. Also keep track of all
the work you are doing and what is going to arise is very
quickly you are going to see what areas you are avoiding. And
the areas you are avoiding are probably areas you are a bit
scared of the work you need to do there, as it’s new. But they
are the areas that are probably going to give you the fastest
and the best results and the courage to tackle them.
STEVE: Okay, so let’s get into
these questions, Kim.
KIM: Yep.
STEVE: And I was also going
to say that on the topic you just mentioned there are a lot of
people writing to say we didn’t save their marriage, but we
saved their sanity. And they are happier to have their sanity
than their marriage in the first place. So it’s a really good
example of how people are really getting the idea of what we are
talking about. There are areas you need to focus on and you
need to get them happening straight away. So there are no
guarantees here.
KIM: Yep.
STEVE: But we really do almost
want to 100% guarantee you are going to be happier with who you
are as a person. So let’s jump into the questions.
KIM: Okay…are you going to
ask the question?
STEVE: Yeah, I’ll ask this
first one. The question goes: “Narcissists do things that show
that they have no conscience, not just bad behavior, but
destructive and hurtful actions to those they supposedly love.
They do these things and then have no feeling of remorse. In
fact, they have no empathy for others at all. How can you say
these people can be rehabilitated?”
KIM: (laughing) Hmmmm…okay.
Well I have to admit when I first heard this question, it upset
me a bit. It actually made me a bit angry. But I think that is
actually the normal response to a question like this. Really
this is a very clear demonstration of passive-aggression. It is
not really a question at all.
STEVE: It’s a very loaded
question.
KIM: This person is making
broad generalizations about how all of these people
feel. She knows that they don’t feel remorse? I don’t know how
you can know what even one other person is feeling with
that kind of accuracy, let alone make a general blanket
statement of an entire group of people in society. This is
obviously coming from a lot of the material out there by Sam
Vaknin and people he has influenced. I think it’s really
important that people realize his PhD has been discredited
publicly. He is not a doctor. He has influenced an enormous
amount of people with his writing. NPD is not the same
thing as being a sociopath.
STEVE: I think he made the
original statement that there is nothing you can do and it’s had
a trickle-down effect over the past 16 years or so. There is
almost this established view that like what this person said in
this question that "they have no remorse, they have no empathy",
and who are we to say that they can be rehabilitated.
KIM: Yes—and this 'no empathy'
theme, we will get to that first, Steve. Because I look back on
the stuff you used to be doing with us. I won’t tell any big
stories on you, but I can think of some fairly shocking ones
where it really appeared that you had absolutely no empathy at
all. But now that you have come through the other side and our
communication is better and we can talk about this, I discovered
that wasn’t the case at all. You appeared extremely cold-hearted
and you had basically given up. You had shut down—you had just
given up, you know. We were all just doomed. It was all over.
STEVE: That was sort of a
passive-aggressive stance I was taking back then too. I
was actually putting up walls. And the game was I would say "I
don’t really care for you". And what I was really saying was "I
don’t care to discuss this further". Because I had a whole
fa�ade I was trying to protect. So pretending that I didn’t
care about anybody else was the way in which I protected that
fa�ade.
KIM: But it was more than
just conversation. And I mean this is what the question says is
narcissists she thinks have no conscious and it’s not just bad
behavior. Well, in my book bad behavior is bad behavior. And
we get into some pretty bad behavior on this show, right down to
physical violence and physical abuse. We don’t skirt around
these issues. Bad behavior is bad behavior. I don’t know what
is worse than bad behavior. It was very much that you were
showing no conscience. You would just do things that would have
the kids heartbroken.
STEVE: Hmmm.
KIM: I remember you not
letting one of our sons take his bicycle to school for something
and you had absolutely no feeling for him. He was just
completely destroyed. Anyway, I won’t get into a lot of
detail. But I know now that you have come through the other
side and you can talk about these things. Even though from the
outside it didn’t look like you had any feelings, you actually
did?
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right.
KIM: You were actually
feeling stuff. I don’t think it’s that easy for somebody else
to point a finger at someone and say “these people”, a whole
group of people, they have no feelings. That is one of the
things we teach is nobody has a right to tell you how you are
feeling.
STEVE: Hey, that’s a good
one.
KIM: Particularly at the end
of this question was “how can you say these people can be
rehabilitated?” Well, to be asking this question at all means
this person has subscribed to our list, which means she is not
really asking at all. She already knows the answer to that. We
say that because we have been through this.
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right.
KIM: We have been through
this. And she has obviously read all the testimonials on the
web site of all the other people, so she knows the answer of how
we can say this. That is not really the question. What she is
saying is how can you say this!
So she’s angry. This is a
person who is angry, who disagrees with what we are saying. And
fine, I don’t have a problem; some people disagree with this
stuff. But what frustrates me, and I get this mail now and then,
which really upsets me because I don’t like having stones thrown
at me. I don’t like it. I’m still a human being.
STEVE: Well, that’s one of
the reasons we employ somebody else to handle customer service,
because Kim would put 4, 5 or 6 hours in answering people’s mail
unpaid—
KIM: Every day.
STEVE: That’s not a month,
that’s every day. And then out of the blue somebody takes a
pot shot at you like this.
KIM: Yeah, once a week or
twice a week. And maybe it seems sort of innocent, but there is
passive-aggression in this question. I guess what frustrates me
the most is that this is the kind of person who is going to
benefit the most from what we have to offer. I mean, the fact
that she is saying, “How can you say these people”…I
mean, I can just hear this person saying this to a lot of people
in her life….”how can you do this to me?”
STEVE: I wonder what kind of
questions she is asking the people closest to her.
KIM: Yeah. And when you
start a question with “how can you”…you are immediately putting
yourself in the role of victim, putting the other person in the
role of perpetrator and you don’t really want an answer. You
are really giving the other person very limited ability to
respond without it going into some kind of a fight. I
understand that this person’s is probably quite hurt and has
probably been through some really difficult stuff. I really
appreciate that. I understand that she is angry. But I would
suggest that you have a look at how you are dealing with
things. If you have a disagreement with somebody else, be
straight and be polite. State, “I disagree with you for these
reasons”. Don’t come across like you have a question when
really you’re just trying to put across that you know better and
the other person is wrong. Because it’s just going to make them
angry.
STEVE: That’s right. And
there is no point in provoking confrontation if you don’t have
any idea about what kind of result you want to get from it. In
her question, she is saying “how can you say”. So it’s very
loaded and it’s very much just aimed at knocking out our
equilibrium to get us off balance, and she’s not really wanting
to get an answer, she is just trying to provoke us.
KIM: Yes….provocative.
STEVE: And we wonder about
what kind of skills she might be having to look at herself in
terms of nurturing, some skills in how to approach some pretty
confronting issues. I mean she is obviously very hurt about
what is going on in her life There needs to be some kind of
confrontation and there needs to be some kind of point she gets
to where she says, “OK, I’ve had enough of this”. And it could
turn into a really nasty confrontation but there are really good
ways of approaching this- and staying calm is a priority.
KIM: You mean with her
partner.
STEVE: Yeah, with her
partner. Yeah, she needs to learn to stay calm and not ask a
question that is going to—.
KIM: --be passive
aggressive.
STEVE: Be
passive-aggressive. Which is only going to produce defensiveness
and hostility in your partner.
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: And anybody else,
for that matter.
KIM: And that’s just a feeling
that this person doesn’t really want to fix the relationship
with her partner. I mean, I am hearing bitterness and this
person has given up. That is really sad, because where do you
go to from there?
And that gets back to what I
was saying at the beginning of the vision of where we are taking
this. Do you want to just play victimhood? To me, it sounds
like this person is just happy to play the victim, happy to say
that people who are narcissistic are just monsters, they are
incurable, and they all should just be taken out and shot and
that’s it; and I am completely innocent and how dare anybody
suggest there was anything that I could possibly have done to
protect myself better or to make things better for myself.
STEVE: Well, I hope that’s
clear. I hope she’s got an answer.
KIM: (laughing) Well,
anyway. That’s how I feel and I understand that because there
are a lot of people out there playing the victim. But moving
past that victimhood is a big part of getting better. You know,
and then you flip back to “maybe it’s all my fault, maybe I’m
really the one to blame”. And I don’t think either of those
roles are healthy. You want to move into saying “okay, what’s
effective, how to I stand up for myself, and how do I end the
abuse.”
STEVE: And you want to get
some certainty too about where you are going. There is a lot of
uncertainty whether you are causing the problems or your partner
is causing the problems. There is a lot of uncertainty there.
We are not saying we can really clarify that, but we are saying
there is a lot of certainty in you learning some new skills
about how to deal with it and learning to limit the abuse you
are receiving. Because that is the only way you are going to
find any kind of sanity…by knowing in yourself you have the
skills to deal with it.
KIM: Yeah, we can’t
guarantee your partner is going to have the same results as what
happened with Steve, but we’ve got hundreds and hundreds of
testimonials from people who say that their situation improved
dramatically from walking through the things we suggest.
Now, Steve, I missed one here
now, and I’m just going to have to get on it quickly here. It’s
not on our question list, so I’m just going to shoot it off.
But it was somebody saying they had had enough. She had taken
him to court. They said he could stay and she has had enough.
She wants to know how to get rid of him. And that’s valid too
and I just felt this was a good point to say that because we are
certainly not saying it is your responsibility to help these
people.
STEVE: That’s exactly
right.
KIM: You know, if you’ve had
enough and you want out of this relationship, good on you. It
is not your responsibility to stick around and try and help this
person if you don’t want to. I am not going to get into what
you do right here. At the end of “Back From the Looking Glass”
there is a very short chapter on that. It is a little bit
controversial, but it works.
STEVE: You do want to find
some closure.
KIM: Yeah, and you want to
make sure that you do it smart. Because if you are saying you
have a big, bad narcissist and it’s all their fault, see you
later and walk out the door, well then you are putting yourself
in a dangerous situation. You are not going to wear that, you
are not going to get closure, and there is the danger of them
retaliating and things really degenerating into something very
nasty.
STEVE: And since you have
been in the relationship in the first place, you do have some
responsibility to end it in an adult fashion.
KIM: Well, just
responsibility for yourself.
STEVE: Exactly.
KIM: Yeah, to keep yourself
safe.
STEVE: Well, moving right
along, Kim. The next one is to Kim and Steve: “There are no
words to describe what your program has done for me the past
weeks. I have struggled for years to uncover the problems in my
marriage. When I came upon your web site, it was as though a
door was unlocked. There is work yet to be done but now I know
I am going, thanks to you guys. May God richly bless your family
for sharing your lives to help others.”
KIM: Well, isn’t that sweet.
That’s not really a question, but that is more like what we get
most of the time, isn’t it.
STEVE: Absolutely. So we will
move onto the next one: “How do you distinguish the difference
between an NPD who lies and has affairs—many with the same for
years in addition to new ones—from an NPD with sexual
addiction.
KIM: Mmmmm. Okay. We are not
doctors and the person who asked this question is not a doctor,
so I would say you don’t. You don’t try and distinguish the
difference between this and this. We get this a lot. There may
even be more questions on this page like this, like how do I
tell the difference between NPD and a sociopath or a psychopath
is one we hear a lot.
STEVE: Yes, we get that
question a lot.
KIM: There is a difference.
Now that’s an important thing to know because there is a lot of
information out there that NPD and psychopath is the same, and
it’s not the same. But we are not doctors. And if you
are trying to figure out in somebody else, trying to diagnose
somebody else is going to:
Make you look crazy.
Is not going to help you at
all. It’s like if you are faced with a tiger that is in your
house what are you going to do? Sit there and get out your text
books and try and decide what kind of tiger it is? I mean,
really if somebody is abusing you in your life and this person
is lying and having affairs or having some problem with sexual
addition, I think it’s much more important that you get onto the
work that we present in our eBooks and our workbooks about how
to set better boundaries for yourself, how to limit this abuse,
how to set up a support network with people around you and your
family and your partner that are actually going to make them
take some accountability for what they are doing. I know that
isn’t easy and I know that is tough. There is the Personal Bill
of Rights exercise in The Love Safety Net Workbook that would be
a good place to start. But I don’t think putting a tag on your
partner is what you need to be doing. You need to learn to set
boundaries and limit the abuse.
STEVE: Absolutely. The next
question is another quick one: “Can a narcissist have a good
relationship with her children but not with any other adults,
including her husband?”
KIM: Okay, thanks for that.
This is a man writing in. I think that is really a good
question to highlight a very important area, which is what is a
good relationship with her children? I mean, that is what I
immediately wonder here. From the outside in a lot of ways
before you got better, Steve, it would be easy to say you had a
great relationship with the kids.
STEVE: Well, I was very good
at making them love me and play the clown and be the favorite.
I played favorite with the kids when they were younger. And it
seemed to work.
KIM: Yeah, and you could
entertain them, and juggle, and make faces and always make me be
the “baddie” who had to make them eat their vegetables, and make
me look crazy so they thought I was the weak person. But you
were also very lacking in empathy toward the kids. You
emotionally hurt the kids quite a lot back then because you
weren’t really interested in them.
STEVE: Well, I wasn’t really
interested in their emotional development because I figured that
wasn’t my role, so I didn’t involve myself in it.
KIM: And I think that’s what
this guy needs to do is he needs to ask some questions first of
what is a good relationship with her kids. If she really has a
good relationship with her kids, I don’t know. I’m not a doctor
and I can’t tell if that means she is NPD or not. But I would
doubt it. A good relationship with your kids means that you are
actually interested in what they have to say. You are not
always interested in solving their problems for them. You
regularly—one of the most important things with kids—is you
regularly enter into dialogue with your kids and in the dialogue
you let them lead. You are actively listening and validating
their point of view and helping them work through situations,
that you are doing emotional coaching with your kids. You are
helping them put names on the different emotions they are
feeling and not just forbidding those emotions, which is very
common. You know, when a child comes in angry, emotional, or
upset, that you just go “no, you’re not allowed to do that.
That’s bad, stop that.” This is very unhealthy for kids. These
kids grow up being very scared of their emotions and feeling
very panicked about their emotions when they have a parent that
acts like that rather than a parent who can come in and say,
“Obviously, you must be feeling really frustrated about that.
You must be really mad that he said that to you.”
STEVE: And Kim, you are really
good at keeping the kids connected in that way. You are really
good at active listening.
KIM: Thank you.
STEVE: Can I just direct you
back to the question in a different way I am reading it? I have
seen some of this. I see where sometimes Mom can be very focused
on being Super-Mom and a Perfect-Mom, but sort of putting their
relationship with the other adults—particularly her husband—as a
second or third priority. And I think that’s where Allen’s
question is trying to go here. I just wonder about that. I
know that is not an easy one. And I see that quite a bit and a
lot of people fall into that trap. Just my guess, I think there
is a lot of anxiety. I would like to say to Allen that women
are very anxious about being good mums. And sometimes that can
lead to perhaps being a little bit too obsessive building bonds
with the kids, packing a really nice lunch, having really nice
clothes all laundered, and all the things that go with being a
Super-Mom in the 21st century, but then perhaps not
giving as much time to the other adults and her husband in the
home. And I know that again I am not a doctor and I can’t say
that’s anxiety and that is where she is putting her energy, but
that would be my guess. Kim, it was amazing what you were
saying because we were really questioning whether she has a good
relationship with her kids or not, and if she is doing the
Super-Mom routine, maybe there is some of the emotional coaching
you were talking about that is lacking maybe? That hasn’t got a
priority? And it would be reflective in her relationship with
her husband. The same thing—she is not doing the emotional
coaching. She is not really being there and allowing other
people to take the lead when it is their turn. So I can see a
lot of dysfunctional parents come to mind here. (laughing)
KIM: (laughing)
STEVE: Including my own
mother, who was very much like that. She loved my sister and I
very well, but my dad and her ended up splitting up. She didn’t
have that same closeness with my dad.
KIM: And you’ve got a great
relationship with her now, but what came to mind before and what
you were saying before gets down to is it really a good
relationship with the kids, or are the kids just being well
managed?
STEVE: Yeah, exactly. That’s
exactly what I was trying to say.
KIM: And there is a big
difference between a kid who is being well managed and an actual
healthy relationship.
STEVE: From a person who was
well managed by his mother, I can say that I do love my mum for
providing everything that she did for me. I still love her and
I still rely on her in some respects. But, yes, I can see that
the way she went about managing us kids did leave my dad out in
the cold. She probably sees that now, but I don’t want to give
her a hard time or a grilling about it. But there are actually
some good questions within that question. You know, where is
the love going? And how can we balance it out a bit more?
KIM: Yeah.
STEVE: And it’s not easy in a
family.
KIM: No. And I think this
guy definitely needs to start working on attachment areas in
The Love Safety Net Workbook. Because it’s very difficult. I
mean, you may feel resentful about being left out, but you are
not actually going to get very far in building a healthy
attachment if you don’t get over that resentment and start
learning better yourself about how to form a warmer and closer
attachment. Because it takes two people and it takes time,
building trust.
STEVE: Absolutely. So The
Love Safety Net Workbook for you, now.
Okay, next question is: “Dear
Kim and Steve, How can we call home the spirit of a
narcissistic adult son or daughter who has decided to sever all
contact?” That is from Althea and she says thank you for your
wonderful work. Well, she is nice.
KIM: Yeah, and a very tough
situation, Althea. I really feel for you there. This is just
so sad and it’s part of why we work so hard at what we do
because there has just been too many years of people saying
“there is nothing you can do, there is nothing you can do” until
you end up with an adult child who has severed all contact.
Then you start to realize if you don’t do something the
situation is going to get worse and worse, and then what
happens. I know that this is not easy and I really feel for
your situation, and the pain and anguish you have been through,
without drawing directly on my family here. I won’t go into
that, but I do have some understanding of that with a family
member of ours who we have completely lost contact with. That
has been very difficult on my mother—very, very difficult.
I think the first thing you
need to do—and this is tough medicine—but you need to face your
own problems and you need to let them know you have done that.
This is about modeling. You have to be very honest about what
problems you may have had while they were growing up. This
doesn’t excuse their bad behavior, but it’s just you
acknowledging maybe you had a problem with drinking, maybe you
had a problem with tranquilizers, maybe you—
STEVE: --maybe you had a
problem with your anger, too distant, too nice?
KIM: Yes. Maybe you had a
problem with regulating your emotions. Maybe you just had a
problem with listening. Maybe you were tuned out somewhere else
when they wanted to talk to you. Maybe you expected too much of
them. I don’t know, I think you really have to do some soul
searching and find some area where you really can find some area
to demonstrate where you have made some changes and done some
work on yourself, that you’ve stopped drinking. That is a great
one because it’s really easy to demonstrate that you’ve made a
big change.
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right.
You pushed your emotional/physical/physiological/spiritual
barriers to stop drinking.
KIM: Yeah. Or that you got
fit, you stopped being a workaholic and you take more time off
work. Whatever it is, there will be some areas that you have
addressed and you have worked on. I am not saying this is easy
or that there is any quick fix to this, but I think that is kind
of an olive branch that you can hold out to say I really want to
open up contact with you. I am working on my stuff. I have done
this and I have done that. I think you also do need to be ready
that if they take this bait (well, it’s not just bait—it needs
to be real) that they resume contact, you really have to be able
to hold your own and not take any further abuse from them. You
know, you’ve got to be ready to run the game different than you
have in the past. So you need to have done some pretty serious
work on yourself first to be ready to resume that contact.
Because just saying that they get back in touch, that is just
when it all starts really.
STEVE: Yeah, that’s right. I
think the steps in “Back From the Looking Glass” are going to be
the ones that are really going to underpin a lot of that.
KIM: Well, that’s once they
resume contact and they come back. I would also really recommend
a book called Hold Onto Your Kids to Althea by Gordon
Neufeld. It is a beautiful book. It is not like a step-by-step
guide like our material, but it will give you a deep
understanding of where things could possibly go wrong and what
direction they might need to go for things to get better.
STEVE: It’s a great book,
Hold Onto Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld. Have a look for it.
The next question is a bit longer—and I know we are running out
of time: “I value your advice and unfortunately I came upon
this site too late to do anything for our marriage. My husband
and I are separated and I know that I would not be able to go
back there. I have 14-year-old and 12-year-old sons, the older
having suffered most of the emotional abuse and the younger
having suffered most of the physical abuse. Both have been in
therapy and suffered terribly in their treatment. I also have
an 11-year-old daughter who is the sane one, but feels terrible
guilt from the fact that she didn’t cop it as bad from dad. She
is also the most pragmatic of the three, saying she loves daddy,
but he isn’t a very good daddy. The boys, especially the older
one, are still on the never-ending merry-go-round of trying to
find something that pleases him. He has never been told he’s
narcissistic. The psychiatrist was saying he could actually be
more dangerous to the kids if confronted with the truth. I
would truly appreciate tips I could give them to somehow never
get in a new relationship with him. At the moment, he has
rewritten our past, and I am the one who—though no fault of his
own—rejected him. The children, in his eyes, were never abused,
and any issues they have are simply because I mollycoddled them
for years. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.” From
Suzie.
KIM: Hmm….(sigh)
STEVE: And this is one of
many emails we get very often, isn’t it? And it’s so heart
wrenching. We would love to be able to step in and do
something. You know, but we can’t. We are a million miles away
and we only have email.
KIM: Well I think it’s also a
really great example of why we get so upset in people thinking
divorce is some kind of easy option or the divorce is actually
going to solve the problems you faced with a narcissistic
partner, particularly when you have kids. Because from what we
see, unfortunately often the situation just gets worse. I am not
saying this woman should have stayed with somebody who was
deceiving her children—absolutely not. But what I am saying
from what I am hearing here is his opportunities to abuse the
children have actually continued. Now I am only guessing he
still has contact with them and she has no idea now what is
going on when he has contact with them. So that is the first
thing I would highlight in this. Before you start looking at
what is going to heal the damage from the past, that you make
very certain that the damage is not continuing and you do
anything you have to do to limit that damage, that you make
sure—whether it means you need to get a private investigator to
watch what is happening when your kids are with him—I don’t
know. I think you just have to do whatever you have to do.
STEVE: Right and how strong
and how far-reaching is your support network that we encourage
you to build from “Back From the Looking Glass”. I mean, if you
can get anybody close to him as part of your support network to
help report what is going on. They are your kids. You
should not be feeling bad about this situation. If you want to
try and take some practical steps about some serious
intervention, these are your kids. You’ve got the whole weight
of the law behind you.
KIM: Yeah, and you’ve also
got to teach your kids that it’s okay for them to talk to you
and to tell you if their father expressed disappointment in them
that it really doesn’t say anything about the kids, but it says
more about him. It is very important then you need to praise
them for letting you know. Now this is not into getting you to
telling your kids how bad their father is, or whose fault it
is—none of that. But you can simply say "that it’s not all
right that your father speaks to you that way". "I disagree
with that." "It isn’t healthy that he talks this way." "If he
speaks to you like that again, or if he does these things it is
very, very important that you tell me." "You won’t be in
trouble and I will also listen to your ideas about what you want
to have done about that." This is so they feel like they are in
control if they do talk. I know with kids that can be very
scary. They don’t want to talk about abuse that happens to them
because they don’t know what is going to happen after that.
They just get very scared that everything is going to erupt into
terrible fighting again. If you reassure them that everything
is going to be fine if they let you know. And you actually make
sure in yourself that you know that is going to be the case. You
are going to be the strong parent that is going to keep this
okay and keep your kids feeling secure and safe and they are
able to let you know if the abuse is continuing.
Beyond that, I know we need to
wind up pretty fast. We will get onto the rest of the questions
on our next show. Beyond that, I think what is very important
is you choose some very good role models for your kids, the male
role models. I am not saying to rush into a new partnership
with someone else or not, but just make sure your sons in
particular—but also your daughters—have some same-sex role older
role models around them of what a good parent is. So much can
be said for that. I would also recommend a book called
Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child. That will really
help you in being the best parent you can be.
STEVE: And keep that very much
in your head of mimicking others. That is what kids will do to
try and learn the way. They are trying to learn their own
character and they are building their own idiosyncrasies and all
of these things are happening on a conscious and unconscious
level. So if you can get a same-sex, older, upstanding
individual that is there that knows how to say certain things in
certain ways that are pleasing and healthy, that have healthy
responses to other people, the kids are going to pick up on
that.
KIM: And teach you values.
STEVE: Definitely.
Demonstrated values.
KIM: We have made an enormous
effort at that in the last couple years, haven’t we?
Surrounding our kids with better role models with older people.
People who are solid, people who are fit, people who don’t drink
or take drugs, people who are in healthy relationships with each
other. We really actively seek out those kinds of connections
with these people in our community now. Because it’s really the
most valuable thing you can give your kids…and yourself!
STEVE: Absolutely. Look, we
are probably going to have to wrap it up now, Kim. We won’t
really be able to move through the next lot of questions. We
didn’t really get through many of them, did we? But that’s
okay, we sort of expected that.
KIM: Yeah, for this first
show we really had to explain that it’s not as easy as some of
the ideas we are recommending, but hopefully we will get through
more of the questions next time.
STEVE: Yeah, and please
don’t be put off. Please send in some more questions because we
do love reading them, it does help us get our message a bit
clearer. We do want to know the kinds of situations you are
facing, because we are continuing to develop products and we are
continuing to develop Love Safety Net radio every week. And the
more you can contribute the more we appreciate it.
KIM: But do try and keep them
to 25 words or less and do try and keep them to one question,
not three or four.
STEVE: Yeah, one question
per question.
KIM: And as limited questions
as possible. (laughing)
STEVE: Absolutely. Well,
look, we will wrap it up. Thanks everyone for tuning in.
Thanks everyone from Global Talk Radio for making this happen
for us. See you next week.
KIM: Bye.
STEVE: Bye.
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