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Kerry: Today we're going to do something a little different. In commemoration of the holiday, I'm going to revisit my favorite podcast interviews. We're going to first start off with Dr. Les Carter and the conversation I had with him about narcissistic people. Then we'll move to Lisa Sonni, who talks about breaking a trauma bond, and cap it with Dr. Robin Stern, revisiting the difficulties of identifying gaslighting in relationships. I hope you stay safe this weekend and come back and join me next Monday for a regular show, where we're going to have an interview with Eleni Sagredos about covert abuse.
This is Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse, and I'm your host, Dr. Kerry McAvoy, a mental health specialist with over 20 years of counseling experience. Each week, we're going to take a deep dive into the dynamics of narcissistic abuse. As a listener-supported podcast, thank you for considering becoming a subscriber for less than the cost of a cup of coffee.
Tara Blair Ball: Thank you so much for being here, Dr. Carter. What do you think people get wrong about [00:01:00] narcissists or being in narcissistic relationships or those of us with narcissistic patterns?
Dr. Les Carter: You know, one of the biggest questions, and it's a simple question, that people will ask whenever they are encountering narcissistic individuals is, "Why are you doing this to me?" They begin just seeing narcissists as having them in their scopes, thinking, "You're just taking target practice on me." One of the things I try to remind people of is narcissists are gonna be narcissists. You just happen to be a player on the stage. What they want to do is they bring their drama to you, and they have a real high attitude of entitlement and control and manipulation, and they operate with what I call alternate reality. When you say, "This doesn't work for me," or, "I don't understand quite why you're treating me the way that you are," then they'll come along and say, "Well, that's because you're dysfunctional." And so we think, "Well, then you're [00:02:00] just taking all your problems out on me." And obviously, in a sense, they are. But then when you ask, "Why are you doing this to me?" just drop the "to me" and ask, "Why are you doing this?" You know, when you say, "Why are you so argumentative when I'm with you?" just drop the "when I'm with you," "Why are you so argumentative?" And, you know, we can just go on and on with that, but they want us to take responsibility for their garbage because they don't do that well themselves. Sometimes we can fall into the pattern of thinking that we've gotta convince them otherwise. And then what they do is they just take you down that little rabbit hole and have fun with you when that begins to happen.
Kerry McAvoy: Do you think that they consciously are doing this, or how do you understand the makeup of a narcissist?
Dr. Les Carter: Well, let's kind of pull it back. One of the things that's so necessary to understand about narcissists is they live behind the shield of their false self. Okay? Now to make it real simple, you and I [00:03:00] hopefully, as we engage with one another, would buy into that old saying, "Honesty's the best policy." You know, "I just wanna be straight up with you. You be straight up with me." We have a word for that. It's called authenticity. Narcissists, they're thinking, "No, honesty's not necessarily the best policy here for me." They wanna be in control, but beneath it, they tend to be very fear-based and shame-based. Now, almost never will a narcissist come out and say what I just said, but what you'll hear is a lot of defensiveness. When you say, "Hey, we have a conflict between the two of us. Let's talk about that." Their defenses are part of their fear-based way of thinking, and so they can throw their walls up very quickly. They rationalize, they justify, and then they do the classic projection. They see in you what they won't come to terms with on the inside of themselves. When we say they're shame-based, narcissists started out just like you and I probably did as well, [00:04:00] knowing that there's a judgment system out there. That people are gonna grade you, and they're gonna see if you measure up to their schemes or not. Healthy individuals begin realizing, "You know, I don't really feel like I need to live according to someone else's judgments." But narcissists don't have the confidence to think that way. What they've done is they've decided, "Okay, I'm not gonna let you see the real me. Honesty's not always the best policy. What I'm gonna do, though, is I'm gonna pronounce shame on you." And so that's their projection. They see in you what they don't want to have to come to terms with on the inside of themselves. So when you're dealing with narcissists, you're dealing with people who are playing this smoke and mirrors game with you constantly. If they twist you around and bring frustration out of you, or then you say something or do something that has an anger element to it, they can point to you and say, "See, look how dysfunctional you are." They love playing those kinds of games.
Kerry McAvoy:What's intriguing to me is how narcissists need relationships in a way that's different than an average person. We want relationships, yeah. Most of us don't really wanna be alone. But there's something even more compulsive about a narcissistic's use of a relationship. Can you talk more about that, how it's almost kind of a parasitic experience?
Dr. Les Carter: It's not wrong at all to say, "I like being in a relationship," or, "When someone is kind to me, I appreciate that," or, "When I have someone that's loving or friendly or helpful, that really makes my day." That's all great. Narcissists, however, are basically empty on the inside. One of the things that they lack is introspection. They lack a sense of trying to know and understand who they are from the inside out. And because of that, they don't really have an inner strength to draw upon. So guess what that means? When [00:06:00] they latch onto you, it's like, "You're gonna become my strength." If I can get you to think this way, which is why they're so pushy, or if I can get you to do my bidding, which is why they're so manipulative, if I can get you to defer to me, which is why they have to be in that superior position, then I'm gonna feel great about who I am. And so their sense of well-being is very externally based. When they say they want a relationship, it's like, "I need somebody to feed me, feed me, feed me, feed me. Tell me how wonderful I am. Prove that I'm better than you, starting with you, and then everyone else." And so there's this seemingly high opinion of oneself that they bring to the equation, when in fact, beneath the surface, what we're drawing upon is just raw emptiness. And that's something that we need to see on the inside of them, because they can't see that. I just mentioned, they don't have enough self-reflection. Or even if they do say, "Yeah, I know sometimes I do things wrong," well, then they eventually circle around and say, "But it's your fault," or, "It was my mother's fault," or, "It was my ex's fault." They just have a very difficult time taking responsibility for all of the many difficulties they generate.
Tara Blair Ball: What do you think are the signs that someone can start to look at or point at and be like, "I'm absolutely in a relationship with a narcissist"?
Dr. Les Carter: How many times have you thought, "This person just continues to nitpick at me"? That would be a sign. Or, "This person has a pretty loose temper." In other words, all I have to do is one false move, and I'm gonna catch it. That's a sign. It may be that they're just super stubborn, and it's like, "If I have something to say to that narcissistic person, why would I listen to you?" That's low empathy. That's part of narcissism. These individuals might be secret keepers. "I want to know as much as I can about you because that allows me to have an upper hand, but certain things you're not gonna know about me." [00:08:00] So that's a sign. Or it may be that they are real good about talking to other individuals about how wonderful they are, but you see behind the scenes, there's this lack of consistency that they have. Your inner self and your outer self don't really match pitch. The more of an insider you are with them, the more you're gonna see. There's a whole lot of that. They can argue easily, they're easily critical and negative. If you see one or two of those kinds of things that I just mentioned occasionally, don't we all have some of our own blind spots or our moments where we're not really on top of our game? But with narcissists, the more you see them, you realize, "Man, this is persistent." And probably one of the biggest things is they absolutely won't take responsibility for relationship problems.
Kerry McAvoy: Thank you so much, Lisa, for being here.
Lisa Sonni: It's awesome to be talking about my most favorite subject.
Kerry McAvoy:
Kerry McAvoy: So, how did you actually become focused on trauma bonds?
Lisa Sonni: It was my own personal [00:09:00] experience with a narcissistically abusive relationship that really led me to dive into the awareness of why people stay. I had always felt like I was too smart. You, of course, find out that education has absolutely nothing to do with it. Intelligence is not a factor, but it was this need for me to understand why I stayed that led me to want to understand why do people stay. And while not everyone who stays or struggles to leave is in a trauma bond, many people are, and it's not something that people know about. I actually remember conversations with my own abuser, talking about, like, "I feel like I have Stockholm syndrome. I just don't understand." He would just roll his eyes, like, "Oh, okay, I'm your captor." And think it was this ridiculous thing. But as it turns out, there's such a similar dynamic to exactly that.
Kerry McAvoy: What were you feeling that you knew something's wrong? That this was not a normal connection?
Lisa Sonni: Well, in fairness, a lot of it felt normal. Not good, but normal. Even though it absolutely, I will unequivocally say, it is [00:10:00] not normal. But for me, what I was feeling at the time when I really felt like I could not leave was this feeling of being stuck. I would typically say to people, if you feel trapped, that's a huge part of it. I felt like I loved him and I hated him. He was the knife, he was the band-aid. He was the comfort, he was the pain. I couldn't leave. The thought of leaving, I would sometimes have panic attacks. I lost sleep over it. Just the thought of leaving, to say that it was overwhelming feels like not the right word, but it felt impossible. Leaving? No, that's not an option. I loved him too much. So you do feel like you love the person, and you also kind of often feel like you hate them. There can often be even this feeling of it's more than just love and hate. You empathize with them so much from knowing what they've been through that you start to feel what they feel to a degree that's more empathy than you could ever have imagined having for another person. But you're like making excuses. Whether it's he or [00:11:00] she—in my case, it was he—but he just doesn't know what love is. You feel like you're abandoning the person. You feel guilty for even thinking about leaving when they've been through so much, or you've been through so much together. When have you been through so much together? Or have they put you through so much that you've overcome together? But have you? They've put you through this abuse, and every time you overcome these big explosive or highly emotional arguments, you feel like we've overcome something. And I think it bonds you further, but ultimately, you just feel like you can't leave. You know you need to. Parts of you know that. The logical part of your brain is saying, "Leave. You need to leave. This is wrong. This is bad." You may even have friends and family telling you to leave, but you may also be hiding what's really going on from your friends and family. And I think if you start to know that you are unable to share, if you feel like you're trying to protect them, I think people protect for two reasons. One, they're protecting the reputation of your partner, but you're also protecting your own [00:12:00] reputation because if you stay, if you don't actually leave, then people are gonna look at you like you're insane for staying in a relationship that you yourself have described so poorly. All of these feelings, it's just this state of confusion. You just don't know what you're doing here. You struggle to reconcile why you're still in the relationship.
I think it's really important to recognize that it is beyond just normal empathy. It's empathy at a cost or at a sacrifice.
Tara Blair Ball: What would you consider other traits that someone might be able to recognize and point to if they are currently in one?
Lisa Sonni: I think the confusion around the hot and cold. So when I mean confusion, truly we're talking about cognitive dissonance, but if you don't recognize that as a term when you're in it, it's the absolute confusion where you are feeling like you're on eggshells. You don't know what version of them you're gonna get. When you come home or when they come home, you're like, "Ah, anxiety, is this gonna be good or bad? If I say this, is it gonna go south?" Sometimes it does and [00:13:00] sometimes it doesn't. But really, you're looking for this kind of intermittent kindness. You can't really pin down how to help them be in better moods or what you can do. If you feel like you're always wrong, every problem is your fault, or you're no longer trusting your own sense of reality, you start to question your own memories. All of these things together kind of combine, just lead you down this path of confusion.
Kerry McAvoy: It's not exclusive to romantic relationships.
Tara Blair Ball: Right.
Kerry McAvoy: Because I had one with my mom. Do you find that as common, that people have multiple trauma bonds?
Lisa Sonni: People can. Absolutely, you can have it with parents, siblings, work bosses, friends. So they can exist in multiple relationships, and you can have more than one at one time.
Tara Blair Ball: How would you talk to someone else about breaking the trauma bond?
Lisa Sonni: Once you start to recognize at least the confusion and some of the feelings and the feeling of you [00:14:00] constantly having to give, I describe being in a trauma bond as an intensely draining experience. You are giving. And I remember saying, "I have nothing left. I've given you more than everything. I am beyond empty. I can't refill myself fast enough to accommodate how much you seem to need." It was so challenging to figure out what I was experiencing, and I didn't hear the word trauma bond. To break out of them, I have three steps. It may sound so easy, right? It's three easy steps. It's three excruciatingly difficult steps. The first step, in my view, is clarity and education. So you need to start understanding, like, what is a trauma bond? Why do people stay? I think that was something that was absolutely eye-opening to me, was learning what cognitive dissonance really is, the confusion, and that it can be resolved or reduced. You can't see them as two people. They're one person. So doing work and looking for evidence, true evidence in your life that they are the [00:15:00] bad version, not the good version, and that the good exists almost exclusively to facilitate the bad. Fundamentally, it is manipulative. It's meant to keep you. My second step is starting to look inwardly, and this is where I really suggest licensed mental health work. Learning about your unmet needs, learning about what made this feel normal to me? What made this feel comfortable or acceptable? So really learning about your own childhood and your own responsibility for being here. Not responsible for the abuse, for clarity, but responsible for being where you are and not leaving at the first signs. And just what made it all feel like it made sense? How did you rationalize it? So you're getting more into your own self and listening to yourself. Then the last step is building a future that does not include them. That's the key. I see fear as a huge reason why people stay. What, where will I live? How will I support myself? What will I do? Will I be alone forever? That's why I say [00:16:00] it's three steps, but boy, they are not easy steps. But you can break these and learn how to leave.
Kerry: Dr. Stern, thank you so much for being here. There are a lot of conversations going on around gaslighting. So tell me first, what gaslighting is because I've noticed there's some confusion going on about it. Some people now think that gaslighting is when you make me feel uncomfortable, you kind of call me out on my feelings. Other people say, "No, it's just lying." What is gaslighting?
Dr. Robin Stern: Gaslighting is a part of what is gaslighting? It's manipulating your partner or the gaslightee such that the gaslightee begins to second-guess their own phone number, their character, their memory, their perception. So it's a kind of psychological abuse in manipulating your reality to join mine.
Kerry: Does the person who's doing the gaslighting know that [00:17:00] they're being manipulative or exploitative?
Dr. Robin Stern: Sometimes. In the 1944 movie Gaslight, where many people learned about gaslighting, the diabolical husband, played by Charles Boyer, manipulates his adoring wife, played by Ingrid Bergman, in order for him to have her trust him more so that he could have access to her old home where he knew that there were jewels upstairs that he wanted to steal. Very often, people either happen into the gaslighting because they're caught in, for example, an uncomfortable position. So I say to you, Kerry, "I haven't heard from you in days. Like, you haven't called me. Where were you?" And you say to me, "Are you so paranoid?" Because you don't want to tell me where you were and you know you haven't called me and you don't want to apologize and you don't feel badly. In that moment, you might happen into twisting the conversation to blame me rather than taking responsibility and it worked. [00:18:00] Because then I walk away and I'm thinking, "Maybe I am being paranoid." And what's worse is I start trying to prove to you I'm not. "I'm not really paranoid. Remember yesterday?" And so in that case, the gaslighting may be unintentional as I may not be trying to have you undermine all your judgment, but I am trying to get you to believe there's something wrong with you.
Kerry: Do you think that there are multiple reasons why people gaslight? That there are not only maybe different types of people who gaslight, but also different motivations for gaslighting?
Dr. Robin Stern: I do think so. The underlying motivation is to be in control of the reality in that moment. But the reason you want to be in control may be because you don't want to get caught in something. You don't like the way you're feeling, you're uncomfortable, and you've had the experience of knowing that when you can control reality, you feel better.
Kerry: Hmm.
Dr. Robin Stern: You want to deflect attention away from what [00:19:00] happened. You don't like a set of people. Again, you want to control. You want the power in the moment. So you want to control the way somebody thinks about something. And it's not always diabolical. It could just be you don't feel like going to that relative's house. And so you engage in gaslighting so that your gaslightee questions her own motivation or her own feelings or what other people are feeling about her. So you don't have to do what you don't want to do.
Kerry: It really sounds like it's a psychological maneuver to avoid discomfort but one that's actually costly to the relationship.
Dr. Robin Stern: Yes, it's costly to the relationship and costly to the person who's experiencing it, which I don't think at the time we realized that we're harming things when we do this. It's really a preservation of self is what I hear you saying.
Dr. Robin Stern: Exactly. Either to confirm some belief you have or to protect your ego from being wrong or to just protect what [00:20:00] you want to do in that moment. So it's always a bid for power and control. And the other thing that's important is that the gaslighter, right, is as eager to keep the connection together, to keep that sense of we're joined as the gaslightee is. So one of the things that gaslightees, that people who are gaslighted, really can't tolerate is the idea that they could pull away and just say, "Whatever, you have your own thoughts," but they won't necessarily get their partner's approval. So if your partner tells you, going back to my example earlier, if we're partners and I say to you, "You are so paranoid," or you say to me, "You are so paranoid," whoever is the gaslightee, in that moment, is going to be thinking, "I'm not paranoid. I can't stand it that you think I'm paranoid." And until you can say to [00:21:00] yourself, "That's his problem or her problem. If they think I'm paranoid, I know I'm not paranoid. And I'm just going to leave the conversation. I'm going to opt out." So that want to be joined, that need to feel like you have your gaslighter's approval, and you can't just want to prove that I'm a good employee, that I have a great work ethic, I'm a good friend, I am a good daughter. Don't you see that? Until you can let go of that need to convince the other, you may be stuck.
Kerry: I resonate with that statement because I had never picked up on that piece before, but the minute you said it, it made sense. Because as you well know, because I know you and I had a conversation, that I was severely narcissistically abused in my past, my second marriage. And this person was quite malevolent and extremely sophisticated at gaslighting, but I never picked up on the fact that he was trying to stay attached. But yet you're right. [00:22:00] In that moment, when I was faced with this gaslighting experience, and sometimes it was outrageous, though I knew it wasn't true, that I was facing a choice between staying connected by preserving his reality or betraying myself by relinquishing my reality, or my feelings, or myself, or whatever it was he was asking me to relinquish. But wow, I'm mind blown because we typically accuse narcissists and other toxic people of being so self-absorbed that they're not so concerned about the relationship. But actually, that's not true, is it?
Dr. Robin Stern: It's not true in that dynamic for sure, because the gaslighter has made you part of his reality. So the narcissist is very interested in keeping his kingdom together.
Kerry: Yeah.
Dr. Robin Stern: And you're part of him. The extension of his reality is your joining his reality, right? And we, as women particularly, and this is something that I think is so important, we are [00:23:00] taught to be accommodating. We're taught to be empathic and think about the other person and how they may be feeling. We get so lost in standing in other people's shoes that we forget we're even wearing shoes of our own. And so we are taught to accommodate, and when we accommodate quite a bit as children, we call that pathological accommodation. If we have a gaslighter parent and we're constantly giving up pieces of ourselves to join them, but it's no less pathological accommodation when we are grown up and we find ourselves giving over pieces of reality, giving over our feelings, giving over our voice or giving up our voice. In the stages of gaslighting, the last stage where people are often, as you described, like depressed and feel like your soul has been destroyed and your identity is destroyed, you find yourself [00:24:00] not, there's no reason to be complaining anymore because you've joined in thinking there's something wrong with you.
Kerry: Hmm.
Dr. Robin Stern: And the something wrong with you is not that you have a difference of opinion, but the real something wrong in that moment is that you've given up.
Kerry: Wow. Well, I hope you've enjoyed listening to these highlights as much as I have. And if you'd like to go back and hear any one of them, I've made sure to put the link in today's show notes. And would you do me a favor? Would you follow this show on your favorite podcast app and consider sharing your favorite episode with someone who might need to hear that kind of encouragement? When you take these steps, you're ensuring my ability to offer quality interviews. And I want to thank you for joining me on this holiday weekend, and I'll see you back here next week.
