Evan: 1:28

Welcome to another episode of the Unmentionables. I'm Evan with Melissa, as always. Welcome, melissa. Thanks, so good to see you.

Melissa: 1:38

Because I didn't see you most of my day.

Evan: 1:41

Well, we spend a lot of time together, that's for sure.

Melissa: 1:45

We sure do.

Evan: 1:46

Just to let everybody know, we will be dropping new episodes on a regular basis on Tuesdays at 6 am, but for those of you who become subscribers, you'll get it two days earlier.

Melissa: 2:00

What do they have to do to become a subscriber? Because, if they're anything like me, they really don't know anything about this.

Evan: 2:06

Just go to our website podcasttheunmentionablespodcom and you'll see the subscribers link and right there you cancom and you'll see the subscribers link and right there you can subscribe and you'll get access earlier. You'll get access to subscribers only content. We're going to do some interviews with your staff and with yourself right and give people some inside information about who we are and why we do this.

Melissa: 2:29

So if they're going to subscribe, what does it cost them? Is it like their firstborn or do they get to pick?

Evan: 2:39

No, it's not their firstborn at all, it's $3.

Melissa: 2:42

Because we don't want any more children. That's right.

Evan: 2:45

That's right. $3 a month gets you that early access.

Melissa: 2:48

Awesome. I know I've had some people asking me what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. So, if you're here and you're listening, the Unmentionables.

Evan: 2:56

Podcast. You can also get us through our website. You can send us a message there about things you might want to hear us talk about.

Melissa: 3:23

Well, and I know one of the things that we talked about wanting to do is even some call-ins or just answering questions from people and doing some subscriber episodes that were more oriented like that.

Evan: 3:37

Absolutely. We want this to be a relational show, not just something that we do Right, we want you guys to be involved in it as well. So I want you to feel free to reach out to us, to contact us, and we want to talk about things that you want to hear us talking about. We sure do. People might be tuning in for the first time, melissa. They may not know you. They may not know much about you or your practice or what you do. Maybe they found us through their favorite podcast application because they can get us anywhere. Sure, they might have found us through social media and they may not know this about you, but you are one of an elite class of clinicians very few people in the world who have studied under Dr Romani Diversola Correct and have become a certified narcissistic abuse treatment clinician. Why don't you tell us a little bit about what that means and why it's important when we talk about our topic today, which is narcissism?

Melissa: 4:30

Sure, you know, I think it's a topic that's often misconstrued. There's a lot of misunderstanding and misuse of the term. Honestly, and as a mental health clinician, if we don't know about antagonistic personalities, it can actually do a lot of damage to people. There's a lot of people that go to counseling and feel even more confused than when they started or, for example, with couples being able to identify what is antagonistic. Otherwise, we really risk making things far worse than even when somebody came in to start therapy. So you know, my background was in doing trauma and treating all kinds of different trauma, and most trauma therapists get there from learned experiences and life and our own stuff, and it's no different for those of us that specialize in narcissism. It's something that we've probably come into contact with and it's impacted us pretty deeply.

Evan: 5:43

People throw around the term narcissism all the time. You see it on social media, you see it in the news. You see it all over the place. Why don't you help us define narcissism? Because I think there's probably a difference, maybe, between what people might see in their day-to-day lives as narcissism and what a clinical definition of narcissism or a disorder related to narcissism might be.

Melissa: 6:06

Sure, it's interesting because when we look at any variety of things, it changes over time. So you might have an experience that gives you anxiety, and so you have anxiety for a period of a couple hours or even minutes, and when we don't address that then we turn into an anxious person. So now it's not just one scenario, it's a part of who I am, a trait, a character trait, and then in the trauma world we say that when we don't deal with that it turns into a physical manifestation and we can't just avoid things. So when we look at a diagnosis like narcissistic personality disorder, we're not just talking about one trait, or this person is so selfish or everything is about them, they think they're special or entitled. We're talking about a consistent pattern of conduct that can be traced all the way back into childhood or adolescence.

Melissa: 7:20

And again, it's not something where they're just a jerk at work and pay attention to me at work. You see it at work. You see it at their kids, sports. You see it at home, in relationships. You see it among their friendships or lack of friendships, because especially narcissistic personality disorder impacts social functioning. These people don't want people to see who they are. So from a clinical perspective. Everybody has a trait or two that's included in the definition of narcissistic personality disorder. The question is does it rise to a level of impact and of consistency of their behavioral and thought patterns that we can actually say this is a disorder and we don't take that lightly?

Evan: 8:18

Can you give us an idea of what some of those traits are?

Melissa: 8:21

Sure, I mean I did just name a few. One of the big ones is what we see as entitlement. I'm special and I should have what I want. Special and I should have what I want. This is that person that goes into the restaurant and will complain that the carrot shreds are missing off their salad. So take my salad back and make it right how they treat the people around them where you can just tell that they believe they are more important or more valuable as a human.

Evan: 8:53

Does that mean that everybody who returns a food item is a narcissist?

Melissa: 8:58

No, I think it's how you do it though.

Evan: 9:00

Okay, fair.

Melissa: 9:09

But another one is just exaggerating achievements, changing those stories to make yourself seem like you've accomplished more, done more and, in the broader frame of reference, it just isn't what they're saying.

Evan: 9:22

Don't we all kind of do that on our resumes, though? When we write our resumes, don't we play up a little bit what we've accomplished, and maybe that's just putting an emphasis on something. Maybe it's talking about how this thing that you worked on was so important and in reality it was probably less important than you make it out to be Not saying that, you're lying, necessarily, but people all the time embellish on their resumes to get looked at at a new job. Does that make them a narcissist?

Melissa: 9:54

Definitely not, and you know what? It might be a trait that they do have. These are often the people that are leaving out key details, so they're taking a sliver of the truth. For example, I played basketball in high school and I was the star, and what they leave out is that they attended a school that had 50 students and they played other tiny schools, and amongst those 50 students they may have been the star, but if you put them in a bigger fish pond, they really don't know much and probably haven't actually accomplished much.

Evan: 10:36

They're more average, or below average perhaps, than they suggest.

Melissa: 10:41

Absolutely Okay, absolutely. Another big one here is that they will use other people for their own gain. These are people that know they're attracted to people that have something that they don't. They have something to offer, and this is in their partners. This is in who they associate with. They don't look for people that are lacking. They look for people that bring them up so that they can then take on those accomplishments.

Evan: 11:15

Does that mean that everybody that networks with people who are in a status class, maybe above them, people, for example, who aspire to be a business owner or you know, to be in a certain profession, that hang out or want to surround themselves with the elites in those classes or those situations that make all of those people narcissists? Or can that just be somebody that is trying to network in the best way possible by surrounding themselves with talented people?

Melissa: 11:45

Yeah, you know, it could be that. And what we look at with narcissistic personality disorder is do they have five or more of these traits? So there's a total of nine and they've got to have at least five of them. And that's where we say you know, you can be a very selfish human and still not have narcissistic personality disorder. This is why, when this word is thrown around, it's very misleading, because the diagnosis really is the culmination of a variety of traits that really do impact how someone functions in society.

Evan: 12:29

Yeah, I think it'd be great to at some point have an episode maybe where we go over all of the traits or dig into several of them, you know, really get down and into the weeds on them. But I know we don't have a lot of that time today so we'll come back to that at another point. It's a very good point that you say there that you know we can all have elements of this to some degree. I mean I'm not sure that America would exist without some level of narcissism. I mean it took our founders having quite the belief in themselves to tell the king of England to piss off.

Melissa: 13:05

Right. They had a lot of dreams of things being so much better than what they were and some people would look at that as grandiosity and say, gosh, you know you're crazy for thinking that things can be that much better than they are. And the King of England probably looked over and said you know, this is as good as it gets. You're not going to get any better.

Evan: 13:31

And did I mean? That happened quite often, in fact. There were members of the delegation in Philadelphia that signed the Declaration of Independence. Ultimately, that said, this is a really bad idea, like we should not be doing this. We are protected by this you know empire we are taking care of and the least we can do is send them some money. And like they fought against this idea of independence up until the point where they saw that the British were willing to just start massacring and killing people over here to keep them in line.

Melissa: 14:06

You know that's really not unlike a relationship with one of these people Because, just like the King of England, they'll tell you you know you can't do any better. And we continue to convince ourselves that. You know, maybe we can't and maybe this isn't a good idea, and the reasons that we should stay, because there are beneficial aspects and we often know that things are going to get way worse if we try to leave. So you make a good case for the king of England being a narcissist.

Evan: 14:56

I don't think that you have important people, billionaires, influencers, ceos, monarchs without some level of narcissism, and I would venture to guess that in a monarchical system, especially old-timey England, where the royals could do no wrong, they were given the free reign to do as they please. Maybe not even that far back, I mean, we have one of the royals was at one of the princes that was being accused of pedophilia or hanging out with Jeffrey Epstein. Right, they get to do whatever they want.

Melissa: 15:25

Wasn't that Andrew Andrew? Was that Prince Andrew? That's who it was, prince Andrew, yeah.

Evan: 15:29

You have the Kennedys that get to do whatever they want and nobody questions them.

Melissa: 15:34

The Clintons Well, that's that level of entitlement where they even recognize that they can get away with whatever they want. And really with some of these people I would look at, do they have any level of empathy? And even again, talking about the difference between sympathy and empathy, because sympathy is oh, poor baby, you fell in a hole. I feel bad for you, but I don't feel what you feel. And when we talk about empathy or empaths, in particular these are people who deeply feel what emanates off of others or what others are experiencing.

Evan: 16:15

Yeah, the other night I was watching Gutfeld on the way to sleep and Greg made a comment about good narcissism and I'm using air quotes and I know when I mentioned that to you in the past you kind of were like well, there's no such thing, there isn't.

Evan: 16:31

But when you think about these CEOs, politicians, athletes, highly successful people that have that some element or elements of narcissism, narcissistic traits, I guess those are the things that drive those individuals to be successful. We talk about somebody like Elon Musk, who may not be everybody's cup of tea, but he created amazing things along the way so far in his life. He's done PayPal. He did Tesla, which you know whether you like that or not now for a long time it was the preeminent electric car company. It was the only car company that was out there that was really focused on building a new mode of travel that could satisfy the greens and bring people, advance people, away from fossil fuels, for example. He's built SpaceX. He's done solar. He's done just incredible things. With his narcissistic personality. If you ever hear Elon Musk talk, he thinks very highly of himself and he thinks he's very critical of others, which I would suggest is probably. Those are probably narcissistic traits.

Melissa: 17:51

And again, that's where you say the word narcissist. And these days it's one of those words that you've got to watch where you say it. If you say that word in a courtroom, you're going to be crucified, because there's such a stigma and this sense of overuse. And that's where saying yes, there are traits that are part of narcissism, just like there are ingredients that are part of a cake, but we wouldn't say that flour's a cake, would we? No, are eggs a cake?

Evan: 18:29

No, it's just an ingredient, it's an element.

Melissa: 18:30

Is sugar a cake? No, it's not a cake, and so it's what can become very frustrating as a clinician, hearing this word tossed around so flagrantly and recognizing the true depth of what it actually means, and then, when you come across it, or when you've had experience with it and seen the impact and the harm that it causes, to not be taken seriously, to not have anyone truly understand how awful it is to interact, to live with someone like this, to wake up one day and not recognize yourself in a mirror because you just have lost who you are. It's hard for people to not actually use the term the way it's intended.

Evan: 19:28

I think there are a lot of people who you know look at their partners or look at people that are close to them and maybe somewhere in the back of their head they think this person's a narcissist. Or, you know, they may recognize it there in some way, but maybe they can't admit it out loud or maybe they don't, they try to shut it down. What kind of damage does it do to put yourself in the proximity of, or keep yourself in the proximity of, a narcissist?

Melissa: 19:53

Well, it takes away from who you are as a human, because narcissists truly do thrive off of the identity of others. They start out as very, very neutral, charming, and don't have strong views or strong personality traits, because they're adapting it to fit into what they're finding out you want them to be. It's part of how they grip their nails in. It's by becoming everything that somebody else wants, but it's not truly who they are. It's all a mask and a facade.

Evan: 20:37

It sounds like sociopathic.

Melissa: 20:38

Well, take narcissism up another step and you do have antisocial personality disorder. But they do. They wear a costume and, depending on who they're with what they're doing, their whole personality will shift. They're going to change the type of music they like or the environments that they want to go to. They're going to change if they like to isolate more. They're going to change sports that they like, teams that they enjoy. They're going to change anything they need to to fit in, to leech off of somebody else's identity.

Evan: 21:21

That's interesting because for me, for example, I know that in different settings I can go and listen to country music at a country concert, I can turn around and go to a heavy metal concert, I can go to a rap concert.

Melissa: 21:32

How can you do that? What's underneath that, though?

Evan: 21:36

Appreciation, I think, for the environment. Some of it is so quite candidly. We went a few months ago with our daughter to see the Dead Kennedys. Right, Not in my top thousand, no, I'm just kidding, no not in my top thousand.

Evan: 21:56

Not something that I'm super interested in going to, but she was interested. It's her favorite band, she wanted to go see them and it was important enough to me to want to go. We just went the other night to see Benson Boone with our other daughter. Benson Boone and definitely not my cup of tea, not my music choice. I think I was able to maybe handle the Dead Kennedys in a way that you weren't, and then, vice versa.

Evan: 22:27

I think you appreciated Benson Boone a little bit more than I did. Definitely, just, you know, based on our preferences. Also, the environment and the environment, yeah yeah, I mean, there are totally different places. Right, the TLA in Philly, where the Dead Kennedys played, is a very intimate venue. If you haven't been, it's just basically a dance floor, and everybody jams in there until the fire code goes off and Benson Boone played the Wells Fargo Center. It was sold out, but still it was cushy. It was cushy. Yeah, a little bit different environment.

Melissa: 23:01

So here's the difference, though. The difference is I'm dating you and you love country, and I never was a fan of country, but now I love country. Country is my favorite. And then you date somebody else and their thing is rock and roll. Rock and roll is my favorite. I've always loved rock and roll. Let's do something with rock and roll. The person who's never gone to a concert in their life and finds out you enjoy going to concerts, so now concerts are their favorite, and finds out you enjoy going to concerts, so now concerts are their favorite thing. They absolutely love going to concerts.

Evan: 23:34

It's all that's different, though, than like us. For example, right when we started getting you know, dating and getting together, we were we do things, like you know. For those of you that don't know, we do things together. We go to concerts, we go to sporting events. Well, you know. For those of you that don't know, we do things together. We go to concerts, we go to sporting events. Well, you know.

Melissa: 23:52

I had never been.

Evan: 23:53

You'd never done any of this before, Right, and you know it's becoming things that you know, something that we enjoy doing, and that's different. Finding a new thing that you enjoy is different than just adopting someone else's thing.

Melissa: 24:08

And being open to it. So when you invited me to my first Flyers game, I had never watched ice hockey, I'd never been to a Flyers game. I went because it's something you love, and I was honest and said I've never been to anything like this before, but I'd love to go and experience it, and seeing you have joy also brings me joy. It's that level of honesty, though, in saying, hey, you know what? I'm not really a fan of Metallica, but I'll go to the concert with you and I'm sure that I'll enjoy feeling the music and just experiencing something new as opposed to oh my gosh, my favorite band's Metallica. I've always loved them.

Evan: 24:53

I get it, so it's not just a narcissist would adopt that and say, yeah, I've always loved them, even if they don't know a word of their songs.

Melissa: 25:02

They adopt your values, they adopt your desires. Somebody who may not have wanted kids, but wants to appear normal. So they get together with someone who does want kids and now suddenly they want to get married and have kids.

Evan: 25:18

Is that the concept of future faking that I've heard about?

Melissa: 25:23

Yes. It's also, though, promising she wants to go camping and buy an RV. So, oh, we're definitely going to do that. Let's buy an RV one day, or we're going to do that house one day, or we're going to go here, there or the other place or do this or whatever it is. We're going to do that one day because it keeps you hooked, it keeps you hoping, which is a lot of why people stay, because who they met day one wasn't real, and there's always this hope that the person I met they're going to come back. That person really does exist, without realizing. They just don't.

Evan: 26:10

It's a con game. It absolutely is People go to jail for this.

Melissa: 26:23

But not for being narcissistic. Further, that abuse onto their children, which is a whole other ballgame of how everyone is merely an extension of them. For people who truly have narcissistic personality disorder, they are the center of the world and everything else revolves around them as that core or center, whereas to the average person there's a lot of world going on around me and I'm just a little peon in it and my existence on a grand scale doesn't really mean a lot.

Evan: 27:07

It sounds like there's a big correlation between narcissism and abuse, whether it's emotional, verbal, physical, sexual abuse. Would you say that most of those kinds of actions, those abuse cycles, are initiated by narcissists? Cycles are initiated by narcissists.

Melissa: 27:27

So not every abuser is a narcissist, but every narcissist is an abuser and fundamentally it is because they believe that they are the most important person in the room and everyone else is just there to please them, to satisfy them, to do what they want and to somehow meet their needs. So when you look at it from that perspective, to those people you're just a means to an end, and what then happens is abuse. You need to do what I want. I need to have control over how you're thinking, how you're feeling, where you're going, who you're with, because anything that threatens their existence they have to get rid of. This is why we see so much isolation among people who are in relationships with narcissists. We see people who don't have their own thoughts or opinions. They steer away from other people to protect the narcissist and make sure that their life stays the way. It is because, ultimately, at the end of the day, if the narcissist isn't happy, your life is miserable. So the goal then becomes keep this person happy, no matter what.

Evan: 28:55

Yeah, so along those lines right. A lot of times people you know suffer in silence right through these kinds of narcissistic relationships, and maybe people around them don't know that this other person's a narcissist. Can you talk just generally about the concepts of overt and covert narcissism and what that looks like and how that relates to maybe people not being able to see those narcissistic traits in someone?

Melissa: 29:26

Sure, I think more important to talk about is the covert narcissism, because that is the charm on the outside and nobody knows what's happening behind closed doors, and part of that. We talked a little bit about generational things in our first episode. A lot of that is because our generation was taught to sweep things under the rug. We were taught that you get married, you stay married. It's not necessarily a good marriage, but you stay. It doesn't really matter what happens. These are the people that are cheating, that have addictions that can be physically abusive as well. They're the absent parent, often Physically they might be there, but they're emotionally not present, because they really don't have the capacity to experience emotions.

Evan: 30:19

Are they teachers who go right up to the line of inappropriateness?

Melissa: 30:24

That would be that whole concept of exploitation Exploiting people, making people feel uncomfortable. Exploitation exploiting people, making people feel uncomfortable. These are the people that know what's going to irritate you and they poke right in there to elicit the reaction. So you look like the crazy one. So think about it from the perspective of that partner, who is now feeling like oh my gosh A, is this all my fault? What have I done wrong? And part of that is because someone who truly has narcissistic personality disorder will choose a partner that's probably already been a victim of abuse in another way. It's somebody that's already been desensitized in some ways to this, that doesn't have value of self, doesn't believe that they're worth more.

Evan: 31:17

Yeah, and again, people that are close to these people, friends and colleagues, and they may not even see this stuff, so that when you do get to a situation where maybe somebody is in a relationship with a narcissist a marriage or something like that, and it ends up devolving into a court situation where kids are involved or other kinds of situations, it's really difficult for the legal system to account for that kind of nuanced narcissism right when they may be able to project that you are the problem by antagonizing you, and I think you call that antagonistic, reactive abuse, reactive abuse. So how can you, when you recognize the narcissism in your partner, how can you help yourself to not react or put yourself in a better position?

Melissa: 32:12

Well, therapy and you're kind of touching on something important, because most often everyone else around you will pick up on it before you do, and part of that is a term that we call betrayal blindness. It's where it is so hard to see that someone who's supposed to love you. I often say in sessions you know, we didn't get married thinking, gee, I'd really like to marry this person, buy a house, have a couple kids, maybe have a career, and then you know what? I think it would be awesome to just have it all implode and realize that this person is not at all who I ever thought that they were. They're going to abuse me and the kids. Nobody's going to believe me because they're charming on the outside. I'm going to be condemned by the police because I must just be a vindictive woman who's trying to get custody of my kids, and the court system won't care, because every parent deserves the right to parent. You know, all the while, single parenting because they're really not around. That sounds awesome. Let's sign up for that.

Evan: 33:30

Nobody does that. Nobody does that.

Melissa: 33:32

We don't because we don't see it, and then, by the time we do see it, it's too late and we stay because, fundamentally, we know our kids aren't safe and as a mother, as a mother who's done it, we will put ourselves in the middle. And this is something that the family courts aren't even equipped to understand, nor are they equipped to understand the impact that this pattern of conduct has on children. It's a gross lack of relationship that this individual has, not just in the family but in society, and when you look at kids, we want to know what's that big event that happened that caused this divide and the courts and even a lot of clinicians needing to understand. It's not one big event. It's complex developmental trauma. It's the fracture of what could have and should have been a relationship between a parent and child, and as a society we have a really hard time comprehending and accepting the fact that not every human is actually capable of relationship.

Evan: 34:50

Yeah, I think that's a really hard thing to try to convince ourselves is real right. We want to know, we want to believe that the world is good, that people are good in mass, that there's not a fair subset of the society that's just not capable of policing themselves in a traditional way. So you said it often comes from outside. You'll sort of hear things from out. What kind of things will you hear? And, by the way, I know you talked about being a mother in a relationship. This is not a gender-specific thing. Narcissism comes in male and female.

Melissa: 35:32

It absolutely does.

Evan: 35:33

So what kinds of things? If you're in a relationship with someone who's a narcissist, or maybe you have a child who is a manipulative narcissist, what kinds of things are you going to hear from outside?

Melissa: 35:45

Well, I first want to say children cannot be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.

Evan: 35:50

Okay.

Melissa: 35:51

This is something that has to be the characteristics, the traits will be present. But, as I said, we don't take this diagnosis lightly and it is not something that is made until after someone is an adult.

Evan: 36:05

So the other Does it have to do with the brain formation and lots of things that are going on at that time that may present multiple traits when it's really just a phase?

Melissa: 36:16

It does, and part of it being a personality disorder is it is actually ingrained in our personality. So it's a pattern of conduct over time, and that time isn't days. A narcissist's favorite thing is to say, well, I'm going to change, I'm going to do better, and it's words. There's not action that goes with it, and if there is any type of action, it's extremely short-lived. I came across something on it's Deep Minds Anonymous. I came across something on it's deep minds anonymous. That's just one of the organizations I guess groups that I follow personally on Facebook, and here's what it says.

Melissa: 37:22

This is how empaths and narcissists are born. Both come from childhoods where love felt unsafe, inconsistent or conditional. Both are children of trauma. Both found a way to survive. The empath survived by feeling more, scanning the room, reading emotions, anticipating needs, hoping that if they could keep everyone happy, they'd finally feel safe. The narcissist survived by feeling less, shutting down their vulnerability, building walls, deciding that if they only cared about themselves, no one could ever hurt them again. Neither is weak, neither is strong. Both are adaptations, both are wounds. But survival is not the same as healing. And if we don't heal, those childhood strategies can follow us into adulthood, shaping the way we love the way we connect and the way we see ourselves pain. And it goes back to how do I see that world around me? Am I the center or am I the little peon? And how do I use my powers? Do I?

Evan: 38:44

use my power of feeling and connecting for good, or do I use it for evil, right? So what kinds of things will you hear from friends or family-?

Melissa: 38:50

You won't.

Evan: 38:51

About a narcissist that would trigger you to say wait a minute. You won't.

Melissa: 38:57

You won't Because you've been married before.

Evan: 39:01

Yes.

Melissa: 39:03

If one of your friends or family members came to you and said this person's no good. These are the red flags. Don't do it. What would you have done? You'd have done it anyway.

Evan: 39:14

Yeah, I mean I might have had those kinds of conversations with, like, a parent that may or may not be a father.

Melissa: 39:20

Right. Well, and oftentimes again, you love this person. You're not marrying them because you don't like them and we get tunnel vision. We don't want to see other things, because there's a reason we're marrying them, whether that's because she's already pregnant and having your child, or whether it's because you're young and scared that you won't find anything better and you don't want to lose your hopes and dreams of having kids and a home and it's going to be okay, right.

Evan: 39:53

But some people have those friends, that will say something.

Melissa: 39:57

If somebody is not ready to hear it, though, they're not going to hear it.

Evan: 40:02

Fair enough.

Melissa: 40:02

So most often we either ignore feedback and sometimes we're cognizant enough to say you know what. You're right. That is definitely the case and there's nothing I can do about it, because I need to keep my children safe. Sure, and they won't be if I'm not there. So often people don't say anything because they also don't want to disrupt their relationship with you, and, from experience, as soon as they do say something, they then become enemy number one.

Evan: 40:36

What then becomes the generational impact of a narcissist? It sounds like that's just something that's going to be self-fulfilling over and over, and over and over again as generations progress.

Melissa: 40:49

So what happens is you have kids that either are extremely passive and people-pleasing and in that case these are people who never learn to stand up for themselves and then engage with abusive individuals who follow the same pattern as that parent. On the flip side of that, you have someone who's modeling this behavior for the next generation. They're modeling the lack of value in other humans, that respect isn't necessary, that everyone else is there to meet your needs, and then they perpetuate that same cycle. So you either have someone that has no idea or value no idea of who they are, because all they are is what they're told. You're going to do this.

Melissa: 41:39

This is the parent who demands their child go to school for nursing. Because they went to school for nursing or because they wanted to be a nurse, didn't make it to nursing school, maybe became a CNA or something instead, but will tell everyone that they're a nurse and that their child is going to be a nurse. Their kids live out their fantasies, their failures, that they can't accept. At the end of the day, the person with narcissistic personality disorder is the person who would rather walk away from everyone and maintain their own version of who they are than to be exposed.

Evan: 42:20

As a clinician, do you treat narcissists? Do you treat the people that are around narcissists?

Melissa: 42:25

Do I or does anybody?

Evan: 42:35

Narcissist? No, I'm specifically asking you because of your specialty, because of your knowledge and understanding of narcissism. Obviously, therapy, like many other professions, has lots of different levels of qualifications, right? Can you find somebody that's a CPA that will do your taxes improperly, absolutely? Can you find somebody that's a CPA that will do your taxes improperly, absolutely? Can you find somebody who's a therapist that will do your therapy, improperly or not?

Evan: 42:57

Absolutely At a high level, absolutely right. So there's always going to be different levels in each profession, but do you believe there's anything like a recovering narcissist, similar to like a recovering addict? Do you treat narcissists? Do you focus on trying to help people who have been victims of narcissists?

Melissa: 43:21

So for me personally, no, I do not treat narcissists and I will tell you, they are very infrequently found in a therapy room because they would have to have the ability to self-reflect and typically they don't have the ability to see themselves through a different lens.

Evan: 43:39

It's very rare they see themselves in the mirror and go God, I'm a narcissist, I got to change.

Melissa: 43:43

Exactly that's kind of part of what makes them a narcissist is they have an unrealistic view of themselves and their relationships with everybody around them.

Evan: 43:51

I guess kind of like the namesake of narcissism, narcissus right. Looks in the mirror and sees what it wants to see?

Melissa: 43:57

Absolutely. And it's not that these people are lying or delusional. They truly believe that reflection. So if somebody truly believes the reflection they see, why would they go to therapy? Well, most often because they're told by a partner you need to go with me if you have any hope. So if you find a narcissist in a therapy office, it's probably because they're forced to be there and they believe that merely by sitting there it's going to accomplish what they want, which is for the therapist to view them as the normal one and to tell the partner they're crazy.

Evan: 44:37

How does that usually go?

Melissa: 44:39

It depends on the therapist.

Evan: 44:42

In your practice.

Melissa: 44:43

It does not go well.

Melissa: 44:46

It does not go well because I have a habit of being very direct and it's part of why this training, and this certification specifically, is so important, because these are charming people and they will come in and they will convince a therapist that they're the harmed party, and this person just gets angry with them and puts them down and doesn't let them do anything, and then the other party will explode and say this is what they do. You know, none of this is real. It's an act, it's a show, and they look like the crazy one. So, as someone who's certified, I am certified to identify these patterns, to see through relationships, to the heart of what's going on, to dissect things, to look at the impact on things, like on people, like children, and look at the traits that children have and be able to see wow, this is probably where this comes from. Let's look a little deeper. I am also certified to treat the survivors of this abuse because it comes with guilt and shame and an identity crisis of living so many years in confusion and chaos.

Evan: 46:13

Yeah, I know you said earlier that you have lived experience in what you do and I think it's important that people understand that, especially with you and I think with most people who have your level of training and certification, that you know most of the time you're individuals who have been through this yourselves and that you know, when you put yourself out there and you're ready to, you know to move on or transition from a narcissist and get away from that kind of a situation, that you look for someone who has that level of understanding that can help you through it, because it, I think, really does mean a lot knowing that the person sitting across from you has actively lived that or knows where you're coming from. And you know every circumstance is different. Right, everything is a little bit different. Nobody can really know what somebody else is feeling necessarily, but if you've been through something similar, if you've gone through that kind of trauma before, you have a much better chance of to feel crazy.

Melissa: 47:21

You understand what it's like to doubt if you're in reality to question if you are the devil, if everything this person has put in your mind is actually true, and recognizing that this person sitting with you can sit there and say, realizing that this person sitting with you can sit there and say, hey, you know what, I know what it's like to feel crazy to question everything about your decision-making, about your choices, your ability to survive, because you've been told you won't survive without me. Nobody else is going to want you and all of those things are very intentional to keep you there.

Evan: 48:16

And then what you're saying now, though, is that there's a way beyond that. There's a path beyond that. I heard you say that people that are in those situations feel like there's no other way. They have to be there for their kids and you know nobody will ever believe them, and all of those things, but there are people like you out there who will. There are people like you out there who can help them. There are people like you out there who will advocate for them.

Evan: 48:46

You know we could get in another episode talk about your CV and all the things that you've done you've done at various levels of the legal system, and all of those things, but the important part is, if you are listening to this and you are feeling any of this is like something that's touching your life that there are people if it's not Melissa, there's people like Melissa out there who can help you. There are people who can guide you in the right direction. There are people who have been through this before. You're not alone. You are not, you know, in a position that you're not able to get out of. There's a path forward, and you know the first step is to go ask.

Melissa: 49:27

Well, and one of the biggest pieces of it is you've lived in such confusion for so long that to go even to therapy with someone like me it's questioning again am I crazy? Am I a narcissist? Am I delusional? Am I doing the right thing? Because innately you've put everybody else first for so long that it's hard to see through the trees on that and it takes somebody who has a lot of skill and experience to help you look inside yourself for those answers. It's helping you trust your gut and your intuition again.

Evan: 50:12

Yeah, I mean the moral of the story that I heard from you before. The takeaway that I had was that, if you can ask yourself if you're a narcissist, you're not, you're not.

Melissa: 50:23

You're not. And these are also the people who ask themselves am I with somebody who's narcissistic? And then come up with 18 reasons to justify why they're not and what else it could possibly be, because it's that hard to face. Not only that you made that choice, but that by making that choice, you made that choice for your children.

Evan: 50:46

We're gonna talk about choices in a future episode, but I guess we've gotta leave it here. So again, if you are feeling any of these things, if any of this has touched you, we want you to find peace and find happiness and heal.

Melissa: 51:02

And we want you to reach out and share your story and know that you are not alone in this. Part of why we're doing this podcast is to bring light into some of these dark, dark places and to let people know you are not alone in this. And there's power in numbers, there's power in voices, there's power in people collectively coming together and saying no more. I am going to stand in this gap so that this does not pass on to my children and together, as a society, as communities, we can say our children deserve better.

Evan: 51:39

Yeah, evil flourishes in the darkness and the light exposes it. And I think, you know, we just have to be willing to have these kinds of discussions. We have to be willing to talk about these things and not be afraid to share our stories, not be afraid to, you know, be introspective, yes, but also, you know, be able to look at those around us, be able to look, you know, to our friends, to our family, and have these kinds of conversations in a much more open fashion than what we, you know, have recently. It's become taboo to have these kinds of discussions in a much more open fashion than what we have recently. It's become taboo to have these kinds of discussions, and we're here to talk about things that other people won't talk about.

Melissa: 52:17

And to increase education for people, so that instead of looking at someone and saying, gosh, why did you stay, it's an understanding of wow, that's really amazing that you stayed as long as you did and and were so protective and are continuing quite honestly to anybody who's with one of these people. Still, you're a rock star for continuing to stand in that gap and keep your kids safe.

Evan: 52:43

Yeah, and don't be afraid to say this is what I'm seeing, this is the truth, because even though you know that person may not want to hear it in that moment, if they don't ever hear it, then they'll never know what they're missing. So you know, don't be afraid to have those kinds of conversations and discussions.

Melissa: 53:02

And if you're unsafe, get help. Yeah.