I can't stop watching your videos since I discovered you a few weeks ago. There are plenty of other channels that focus on narcisstic abuse but for some reason you have a real understanding that is above and beyond. Thank you again.
The abuse in my home of origin started when I was pre-verbal. The sexual abuse ended when I turned 13. By the time I was 14 I had completely suppressed any memories only retrieved when I turned 29. This was after 10 years of abusing alcohol and drugs and prostitution. I started attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings and here, for the first time, I felt safe enough to remember. The return of the memories of what had happened hit me so hard I went in and out of denial for several months. I eventually came to terms with it and stayed clean and sober. I had many relapses since then. I am now 51 and my life is somehow still chaotic and full of fear. I dissociate quite often still. I have been seeing a psychiatrist for the past 9 years and I have experienced what you described namely a connection with someone I could trust always. My psychiatrist is retiring at the end of this year. He has been instrumental not only in treating my bipolar disorder but also helping me to integrate myself better. As always, thank you for your wonderful messages of hope and that recovery is possible. I have come to realise that I am an incredibly strong person having survived what I did. I still struggle though with interpersonal relationships but I have some trustworthy and loving friends...some who I have known since my twenties. I have my own children now and I am grateful that I can be a better parent to them than what I had.
💪💗 Thank You For Sharing This, and Mounds of Respect to Your Past Present and on to Your Future Self. FYI I Felt Capable of Advocating For What I Needed When I Sought out a New Therapist thanks to the Skills Provided By the First "Good Enough" (*Smiles) Therapist I was Lucky to Stumble Into in a Time of Extreme Crisis. I Truly Am So Glad/More Hopeful that We are Breaking these Cycles, and Tilling the Ground Work to Ease the Paths to Be Made By Future Generations.
You ARE a strong woman. Our stories are similar. I just turned 58 last month. All of my locked away memories came flooding back after the birth of my second son with PPD. Put me in the hospital on the psych ward. I was watching TV. I remember it like I'm sitting there now. Watching Rosanne Barr come out and talk about her childhood sexual abuse. A couple similarities and I lost it! I mean I LOST it! What's frustrating is 30 years, lots of different Drs/shrinks/therapists or whatever.. Not one time the word narcissist was said to me! Not 1!!! I had to educate myself and figure it out. THAT is the sad part. With the amount of money wasted in this country, our mental health system/help is about as good as our justice system 🙄🤬. THEN because of the trauma you ensured, you're unable to hold a job? Stubborn hard headed German though, I'll fight it for years before I give in and allow myself to be deemed disabled. Our youth need this information SOOOO bad!!!! Mental health needs to be taught to our youth. Imo it's more important than English and math. Because I KNOW it's life and or death!!!
@@WarriorConstance , I am sorry to hear that you to suffered like this. Like you, I also only heard the term Narcissist a couple of years ago. As if my childhood wasn't bad enough I married a Narcissist because it felt familiar - the hostility, humiliation, degradation, shaming, blaming, criticism, constant manipulations. Thank God I got out of that nightmare 5 years ago. He is my children's dad and that is all we have in common. I wish you well on your healing journey.
@@fairygurl9269 , yes, I believe too that we need to talk about all of these things. And remember we became the scapegoats because we refused to live a lie even when the truth was excruciating to bear. And the truth is what sets me free, every day. Be blessed.
Dear Jay My mother was and is a malignant narcissist and I was subject to relentless shame, swearing, rages, beatings, sexual taunts, put downs, manipulation, being called every name under the sun since age 4 --- its only now at 36 I realise my whole existence and choices and personality was purely a way to survive and avoid any conflict and provoke any form of pain/anger ir slight in any human being. U adapt myself to make everyone happy lest they go off on rage or hate me or talk about me as then I feel intense shame and fear... ie i try to be nice inorder to avoid feeling worthless stupid or mean I was the best behaved child ever and even then I was called bitch bastard useless and beaten up few times per week. My brother and I thought our mum loved us and was disciplining us... and other mothers seemed dumb and passive. My mother would curse about sex, looks, intelligence, how i spoke ate breathed or stood or my face- constantly Calling me ugly how will i find a man etc etc from age 10... then she would say its because she loved us and is preparing us for life.... it's exhausting just thinking about it The point I want to make is that I have watched everyone on UA-cam who speaks about narcissists --and nobody and I mean nobody truly explains nor understands as you do! You capture it to the last detail, every facet and you explain it beautifully with such compassion softness humanity and intelligence. I feel validated and heard and sad at the same time... sometimes when these things happen ur brain cannot articulate the devastation but u put the essence of what it is into the ether. Many many thanks and blessings for what you do- its a service that is immeasurable. Blessings upon blessings and success to you. ❤️❤️❤️
I experienced all that, all of it, and I agree with you fully, especially about Dr. Reid. The information & explanations are explosive to me. I sometimes feel stunned.
So helpful. This was my experience exactly from my earliest years thank you . Having it so well and compassionately understood and articulated goes a long way toward healing.
It is worth a great deal when they fooled the whole world and only yoj and your sibling know the truth. My family was fairly affluent and that was why nobody believed us. I would’ve traded it for abject poverty if it meant my parents would love me.
I am still struggling with this split. I am thrown back and forth, depending on where my parents are..Everytime they are in their "good place ", I'm immediately convinced, let them back in, love them and then they suddenly turn on me and I'm shattered. I can't seem to handle them. I don't know how to practically "deal" with them.
remember their patterns - love ya, hate ya, you fill up with fear, and now they control you. I think they just have kids to drive tractors and pick vegetables for them . I think they percieve us as objects. So I reflect back - you think im a object , cause you object too- so I cant expect love from objects- it took me 60 years to wake up - it hurts to realize you loved a bunch of people who think your a refrigerator
Hi! My recommendation is to distance yourself as much as possible from your parents. Once you stop "throwing your pearls before swine," you'll feel better. Meaning that you & your feelings are important, and you are entitled to protect yourself. Work on finding friends or other family members who are loving & supportive of your hopes, dreams, & goals. Be aware that you may tend to gravitate towards other narcissistic people because it feels familiar. True friends will be kind, loving giving, and willing to share. When you do need to interact with your parents, remind yourself to limit any information about yourself & to focus on them like you're their therapist. They want to be the center of attention, so this will make the necessary interaction easier. Then walk away, blow off some steam, and reward yourself with a treat! Just understand that you deserve peace, love, and joy, & nobody should ever be allowed to take it away from you. Draw a circle, and decide who is safe to let inside, and who belongs outside. God bless you in your journey to healing!!!
@@qrisstrongmountain780 thank you - this is golden. I’m 54 and for me this is exactly the good advice to always remember. I’m going to copy it to my notes and then maybe a word doc and add just a couple things to it. I would add, for the caution of gravitating towards narcs because of familiarity (normal can be awkward) - also because of hyper vigilance for the bad “loc ness monster lurking” personality/object that Jay mentions. Because when we are hyper vigilant to mean behavior, we are uninterested in everything else and then good kind honest great people seem boring and we don’t notice them. And now I forgot the other thing I will add! It will come to me when I re-read it. And I just loved -so much!!!- what you said about our feelings being worthy of protecting! And the circle/boundary of safety thing. That also is something I am learning in my somatic experiencing therapy. I’m developing boundaries for the first time in my life. And lastly the advice to just behave as though you were the therapist for them. That is an incredible example of a plan to deal with them. - an easy guilt free way to limit contact to only when they contact you, and to limit the time length, and to create guidelines for not sharing anything personal and not expecting them to give anything (zero love/support and zero abuse/disrespect). Such good advice! Thanks again and have a beautiful day!
Jay, your expertise is outstanding. The way you describe everything is perfectly on point for me. It is so validating and each video feels like a leap in the right direction. Thank you again!
Another very poignant explanation of the experience of the child in these situations. Literally, tears....all of the gaslighting by the surrounding society makes it even harder to see and mend the split. Thank you Jay for adding to this awakening. 💓
Our society often rewards narcissistic tendencies. Think Hollywood, entrepreneurs, COOs, CEOs & their "golden parachutes" etc., subpar submersibles, etc. ad nauseam.
My 81-year old parents just came into town 2500 miles away where I grew up in my relocated home of Phoenix. (Didn't move to get away from them.. but later learned what a scapegoat was and was shocked to realize I have been with my whole life one way or another). Anyway, they bought me enough furniture to nicely completely refurbish my apartment, just so I could be short of the money needed of my own SSI money. Had I known they would keep forgoing their word, I would have filed for a different payee. I would have paid $10 a week to avoid that headache. Now I'm considering going back to work and just doing getting a different payee either way. I'm just 15 seconds into this video and it's like a moment of SYCRONICITY that this shows up just at this time in my email box. Because, man, I'm sure going to need this one!
My mother used to set me up for financial ruin over and over. She might spend an entire year desperately trying to win my trust. The very minute I would give in she would pull the rug out from under me to see me devasted. That was her payoff. That was all she wanted.
The Loch Ness analogy works also to describe the feeling of not being believed. It is like trying to explain a hiding monster for those who were born into a dysfunctional environment. It compounds an already horribly run system.
It feels Like a scary monster. I had a dream last night about giant hippopotamuses emerging from my little lake and them walking around destroying buildings and killing people. In my dream I was with crowds of people and I knew the danger, and that we needed to hide and come up with a plan to kill the monsters, but I knew in my dream that I had to rely on waiting for the crowd to also realize this. I too am so accustomed to not being believed and also to being instantly opposed and dismissed. I am the scapegoat/black sheep/outcast/reject of my parents and 5 siblings.
@@joellenklemek138 interesting how dreams can put things together and retelling the dream sounds distorted, like the distorted reality of being abused. I think the healing process is sorting through our individual distorted understanding of what was happening, without a resolution. Being from a situation that began preverbal is like seeing a cloud from a distance or being in fog. If your life began immersed in the delusional world of a mentally ill person the sense of normal is going to be a challenge to recalibrate.
@@203blessings so true ! Think about the hormone deluge involved when a mother gives birth and then the high percentage who experience postpartum depression. I had one baby and it happened to me for about a week. But my mother (and probably many other mothers who scapegoat their babies) had a mental illness. Paranoia. And that developed into her targeting me with delusional suspicions. this video was excellent for me to relate to and the comments are so helpful! Thank you.
@@203blessings it is. But when paranoid delusions are at play, it’s more than suspicion, it’s a delusional belief. The paranoid sufferer is mot interested in gathering information because the true factual information doesn’t make any sense. They have tunnel vision and obsess on their delusion. It’s up to the target to gather and look at the true information. If never abused in this manner as a developing child, the adult reaction would be to argue and present the facts and defend the truth and one’s self against the delusions. But someone like me had to split internally and the truth about myself had to be killed. I didn’t begin gathering information (seeing reality and the truth) until I was in my early 20’s. I’m 54 now and still devastated, trying so hard to rebirth the real me who had to die in order to live upon birth.
After watching this, I realize that my mother also was split by the terrible abuses she endured growing up during the Great Depression. She dominated our family, and nearly drove me to suicide at age 8. But in one home movie, she stands on the shore shivering violently in the winter wind, wearing only a thin cloth coat without hat or gloves. She is smiling at me as I blissfully skate on the ice. That compassionate, selfless woman was my true mother before the stressors of her childhood broke her. I dearly love the woman in the cloth coat. She is my true mom. Your videos are a tremendous blessing.
Dissociation…… I know I’ve handled many situations well into adulthood in this manner. Thought I was crazy. I’m not. I’m a survivor of narcissistic mother and enabler father who was verbally and physically abusive. I’m also a victim of sexual abuse from boys outside of my family. 💔😩😭. Decades of therapy off and on, helped me peel back the onion of my life. Finally feeling whole and ok. Learning, growing, beginning to thrive. Thank you so much for your work. It’s helping so many people.
I loved the bit about the Loch Ness Monster. I know it’s not meant to be amusing. I could relate to this video today and it was very interesting. Thank you.
If I could add one more thing lol. When I posted I hadn't watched the whole video. With the therapist, he listened to him. Growing up like this we are never heard! Told/showed our feelings didn't matter and our words definitely were never listened to.
In your example I could understand how the conversation with the therapist would help the client feel more at ease and offer them an important positive experience of people, but you go the extra distance to say that they get to experience the continuity of their being and so in essence they feel more real. Wow. I never would have made that connection on my own.
Unless I can get huge distances between myself and my family I do experience feelings of unreality. No contact for over a decade but I still need the huge distance to feel safe. Now I am 1200 miles away. It’s not enough. Later this year I am preparing to make it over 2000 miles. And I’m changing my name. Why should my abusers name be attached to me or my accomplishments, however small they may be?
A legal name change is in my plans for this year. I look at my name and it feels surreal, like I don't know who that person is anymore. I hope the physical changes you make help make your internal world feel more real
as an abuse victim i can agree that it sounds absolutely relatable and exactly what i need someone who is always there or atleast tries to be always present when i need them
Thank you, Jay, for the deeper dive into the split and the preverbal experience of trauma. It’s like an owners manual for the psyche. I use your course teachings and videos in my work with my therapist. You are reaching so many, thank you! 😊
I think you just described what I’ve heard adopted people try to describe. The adopters may be the most loving parents and while the adoptee goes along with the role of being their child then the adopters are “good”. But if the adoptee wants to know their original parents etc and the adopters are upset by that then they play the “bad” parent role, no matter how kind they are, because they are expecting another human being to entirely give every aspect of who they are as a human being - his or her history, name, medical history, family… everything, even legal rights to their own origins, in order for the adopters to experience parenthood as if the child had been born to them. And that just scratches the surface of the struggles experienced by those impacted by loss to adoption.
How do you deal with parents that switch from nice to horrible/cruel. I'm at my wids end of what to do with my parents. Either I'm in and get hurt over and over ( start hating myself and they tell me it's my fault) or I cut off. Has been like that for years now, a constant back and forth and both "solutions" don't seem to be fruitful. I don't know what to do..
Hi Jenaya_Laila, I encourage you read the books by Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, particularly Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents. It helped me immensely, along with Dr. Reid's great videos. I send best wishes to you. It is so difficult to have parents who abruptly change, rather than steady, calm, supportive ones. I send a warm hello and best wishes to you ✨️
I have been to a therapist at the medical center rated #2 in the world overall as recently as 2 yrs ago. It would be my last visit to a therapist. The therapist went to my childhood and insisted there had to have been drug or alcohol abuse for thrm to have behaved so malignantly. There were zero drugs or alcohol. The “drug” was religion. Therapist said I was in denial. She said nobody would behave that way without drugs or alcohol. This was all I could take. There was no point in going back. A lifetime of this. This therapist had no understanding of any of the concepts Dr. Reid talks about. None. I’m exhausted of this and have turned to just books now and UA-cam.
I'm sory you experienced that. I've had similar experiences but not so blatant. Many therapists are religious themselves so they are blind to the damage it can do when people treat it like a drug. My mom was like the mom from Carrie with my dad supporting her. Might have been nice if they had been drunk instead, maybe they would have passed out every once in a while. Instead they were sober and their methods were reinforced as the way to parent by their church, including cult like isolation from the world. There is increasing awareness of religious trauma in the therapy world but you have to be careful. My first question for therapists is not where they go to school but if they go to church.
Curious if you see any correlation between Borderline Personality Disorder and scapegoats of a narcissistic parent? I've read a lot lately they're one in the same, in my case yes and this video seems to support in a way, splitting is a symptom of BPD, perhaps left over survival from my mom.
I split and usually around abuse from a trusted other. I was diagnosed with Manic Depression at 25 around the time I was mentally abused by my narcissistic Mom and I was being stalked by a fiancé AND all I was trying to do that got me diagnosed was to GET AWAY from all of that! But I confided that in a higher upper at my work place! A workplace where my MOTHER was a “big wig” and NOBODY knew she was a terror at home! It’s from having to “fake” a normal life! We ain’t crazy we are MADE crazy from so much DAMN ABUSE! Also I am very smart everyone in my family is SMART! There’s no brain abnormalities making me psycho! Just PURE ABUSE!
@@cosmo43095 in this video, however Jay is speaking of a different type of splitting. Dissociation I believe. Even though a scapegoat will have a strong sense of justice and empathy, the exposure to the cruel scary abuse one minute (for no reason) and then back to nurturing safety the next during the developmental/dependent years of childhood or even in a long term adult relationship will devastate the inner psyche of the scapegoat. No one can reconcile opposing opposite truths inside their head. This is what I understood this video to be about.
@Trapdoor I think you misunderstood me. I'm wondering if BPD could begin with a scapegoat role and a narcisstic parent, not diagnosing scapegoats. Also, splitting in borderline personality disorder is not the same, it's the opposite. It's not the borderline who splits and becomes evil, it's their perception of who they're interacting with, they suddenly perceive that person as all bad. Something they had to do as a child to survive their narcisstic parent's splitting? I had to. I'm really curious Jay's thoughts because he's a licensed professional specializing in scapegoats with direct insight.
@@cosmo43095 Nicely said. One niece and one nephew from different families are now going to college to study psychology- interestingly, i almost went that direction as a result of growing up in a big messy dysfunctional family- where I was labelled the sensitive emotional one- yet in school I got straight "A's", awards and well- mannered; no records of having any psychological issues. My relatives, called me the lil mother- because I was so helpful with my 5 younger siblings.
Same. My mother was so bad my brother and I didn’t ever tell her ‘I love you’ or stay in the same room as her even as children. Too bad he lost all memories of past abuse and it’s now becoming a supply.
11:58 something like this happened to me, except I was the one who had to cancel, due to being out of the country. I came back a week later and contacted my therapist for an appointment. No response. For years she's always responded within 2 days tops. I accused her. I said, I don't appreciate you ghosting me. My therapist of several years then said, she swears in her kids life she wasn't ghosting me. And since i don't trust her she can't be my therapist anymore. It was extremely painful.
I lived with fear all my life , i think he enjoyed knowing the fear he put inside me , hes now passed , i cant exsplain the relife i feel , strange this split of love and fear , you keep hoping that loving parent will reappear , very confusing for any child.
All of my relationships mimic the toxic family of one minute they love you and treat you great and the next minute you are dirt. Friendships, coworkers, volunteer people and especially in my work life. It’s the dynamic that I’m used to so I’ve always known how to navigate it but I’m sick of it. I’m sick of these horrible people being so drawn to me because they are so miserable and so weak and they just hate happy people who, despite everything that’s happened still believe in love and God and the Universe and gratitude …the Bible is real and evil does exist. Never let the fact that they are your own family member keep you from that truth.
Painfully interesting, i identify. Ego obliterating violence, w/tissue damage. My personality was killed, i borrowed the older sib's. I need a sort of exorcism. Liked "...what therapy can do..."
The child absorbs all the emotional charges into their body of the pathological parent. They stay trapped there as if they're their own emotions. So sad!
I think your videos work better when you have one target audience for a specific video, either survivors of narcissistic abuse or therapists who treat them. This got a little convoluted as you tried to relate to both audiences, especially when using analogies and metaphors. The subject and object references often got interchanged in ways that proved to be unclear so at times your point got lost. But thank you for trying.
The good was few and far between. The bad finally overtook any of the good, in my later years, when God unveiled me. I had to go “no contact” in order to survive. I am still healing from childhood and adulthood traumas,… Reversing the generational curses from both sides of my bloodlines, in Jesus’s name.🌈 With God, All things are possible!!!❤️
Ah the "good enough" parents. Mythical creatures. I like the concept and idea of good enough parents and people walking around with secure attachment style but when I interact with the general population it really seems like everyone I meet are just one unmet need or violated boundary away from losing their minds underneath a thin veil of being a healthy neurotypical. I'm starting to think good enough parents and secure attachment style people do not actually exist and that it's ONLY mentally ill people running around in the world all running around with abandonment wounds and nothing but 8 billion anxious or avoidant souls on planet earth bumbling around fighting over resources and flexing their status to obtain partners they can stomach mating with.
Hi Reid, I’m not done listening to this and I have tears in my eyes. I never understood my 50/50 way of thinking, plus how in opposite ways my mind wants me to act. The part about feeling good/bad/ scared has been a cycle of my life for so long, I have lost so many friends because I am the life of the party, so joyful, full of abundance, but later on I can’t keep up withthe phone calls or texts. It’s like I need to hide from them. But I love them. I’ve tried explaining and just looked stupid cuz saying it out loud made no sense to them.Someone told me I over think things. I said no, something is going on! Thank you for validating my experiences! By the way, I am African and got the deep Narcissistic mum, enabler dad and golden boy child trio and coming from a deep patriarchal background, the torment to me as a middle child plus girl Child was like a sport for her. A sickening sport ! Please be my therapist! 💔❤️🩹
I can't stop watching your videos since I discovered you a few weeks ago. There are plenty of other channels that focus on narcisstic abuse but for some reason you have a real understanding that is above and beyond. Thank you again.
I can not pay attention to this it’s to confusing
I agree.
The abuse in my home of origin started when I was pre-verbal. The sexual abuse ended when I turned 13. By the time I was 14 I had completely suppressed any memories only retrieved when I turned 29. This was after 10 years of abusing alcohol and drugs and prostitution. I started attending Narcotics Anonymous meetings and here, for the first time, I felt safe enough to remember. The return of the memories of what had happened hit me so hard I went in and out of denial for several months. I eventually came to terms with it and stayed clean and sober. I had many relapses since then. I am now 51 and my life is somehow still chaotic and full of fear. I dissociate quite often still. I have been seeing a psychiatrist for the past 9 years and I have experienced what you described namely a connection with someone I could trust always. My psychiatrist is retiring at the end of this year. He has been instrumental not only in treating my bipolar disorder but also helping me to integrate myself better. As always, thank you for your wonderful messages of hope and that recovery is possible. I have come to realise that I am an incredibly strong person having survived what I did. I still struggle though with interpersonal relationships but I have some trustworthy and loving friends...some who I have known since my twenties. I have my own children now and I am grateful that I can be a better parent to them than what I had.
💪💗
Thank You For Sharing This, and Mounds of Respect to Your Past Present and on to Your Future Self.
FYI I Felt Capable of Advocating For What I Needed When I Sought out a New Therapist thanks to the Skills Provided By the First "Good Enough" (*Smiles) Therapist I was Lucky to Stumble Into in a Time of Extreme Crisis.
I Truly Am So Glad/More Hopeful that We are Breaking these Cycles, and Tilling the Ground Work to Ease the Paths to Be Made By Future Generations.
You ARE a strong woman. Our stories are similar. I just turned 58 last month. All of my locked away memories came flooding back after the birth of my second son with PPD. Put me in the hospital on the psych ward. I was watching TV. I remember it like I'm sitting there now. Watching Rosanne Barr come out and talk about her childhood sexual abuse. A couple similarities and I lost it! I mean I LOST it! What's frustrating is 30 years, lots of different Drs/shrinks/therapists or whatever.. Not one time the word narcissist was said to me! Not 1!!! I had to educate myself and figure it out. THAT is the sad part. With the amount of money wasted in this country, our mental health system/help is about as good as our justice system 🙄🤬. THEN because of the trauma you ensured, you're unable to hold a job? Stubborn hard headed German though, I'll fight it for years before I give in and allow myself to be deemed disabled. Our youth need this information SOOOO bad!!!! Mental health needs to be taught to our youth. Imo it's more important than English and math. Because I KNOW it's life and or death!!!
@@WarriorConstance , I am sorry to hear that you to suffered like this. Like you, I also only heard the term Narcissist a couple of years ago. As if my childhood wasn't bad enough I married a Narcissist because it felt familiar - the hostility, humiliation, degradation, shaming, blaming, criticism, constant manipulations. Thank God I got out of that nightmare 5 years ago. He is my children's dad and that is all we have in common. I wish you well on your healing journey.
@@fairygurl9269 , yes, I believe too that we need to talk about all of these things. And remember we became the scapegoats because we refused to live a lie even when the truth was excruciating to bear.
And the truth is what sets me free, every day. Be blessed.
@@jana6590 , thank you. It means a lot to me. May you be blessed.
Dear Jay
My mother was and is a malignant narcissist and I was subject to relentless shame, swearing, rages, beatings, sexual taunts, put downs, manipulation, being called every name under the sun since age 4 --- its only now at 36 I realise my whole existence and choices and personality was purely a way to survive and avoid any conflict and provoke any form of pain/anger ir slight in any human being. U adapt myself to make everyone happy lest they go off on rage or hate me or talk about me as then I feel intense shame and fear... ie i try to be nice inorder to avoid feeling worthless stupid or mean
I was the best behaved child ever and even then I was called bitch bastard useless and beaten up few times per week. My brother and I thought our mum loved us and was disciplining us... and other mothers seemed dumb and passive. My mother would curse about sex, looks, intelligence, how i spoke ate breathed or stood or my face- constantly Calling me ugly how will i find a man etc etc from age 10... then she would say its because she loved us and is preparing us for life....
it's exhausting just thinking about it
The point I want to make is that I have watched everyone on UA-cam who speaks about narcissists --and nobody and I mean nobody truly explains nor understands as you do! You capture it to the last detail, every facet and you explain it beautifully with such compassion softness humanity and intelligence. I feel validated and heard and sad at the same time... sometimes when these things happen ur brain cannot articulate the devastation but u put the essence of what it is into the ether.
Many many thanks and blessings for what you do- its a service that is immeasurable. Blessings upon blessings and success to you. ❤️❤️❤️
I experienced all that, all of it, and I agree with you fully, especially about Dr. Reid. The information & explanations are explosive to me. I sometimes feel stunned.
❤ I am so sorry you had to go through all that!!
So helpful. This was my experience exactly from my earliest years thank you . Having it so well and compassionately understood and articulated goes a long way toward healing.
It is worth a great deal when they fooled the whole world and only yoj and your sibling know the truth. My family was fairly affluent and that was why nobody believed us. I would’ve traded it for abject poverty if it meant my parents would love me.
I am still struggling with this split. I am thrown back and forth, depending on where my parents are..Everytime they are in their "good place ", I'm immediately convinced, let them back in, love them and then they suddenly turn on me and I'm shattered. I can't seem to handle them. I don't know how to practically "deal" with them.
remember their patterns - love ya, hate ya, you fill up with fear, and now they control you. I think they just have kids to drive tractors and pick vegetables for them . I think they percieve us as objects. So I reflect back - you think im a object , cause you object too- so I cant expect love from objects- it took me 60 years to wake up - it hurts to realize you loved a bunch of people who think your a refrigerator
Same here 😟
Hi! My recommendation is to distance yourself as much as possible from your parents. Once you stop "throwing your pearls before swine," you'll feel better. Meaning that you & your feelings are important, and you are entitled to protect yourself. Work on finding friends or other family members who are loving & supportive of your hopes, dreams, & goals. Be aware that you may tend to gravitate towards other narcissistic people because it feels familiar. True friends will be kind, loving giving, and willing to share. When you do need to interact with your parents, remind yourself to limit any information about yourself & to focus on them like you're their therapist. They want to be the center of attention, so this will make the necessary interaction easier. Then walk away, blow off some steam, and reward yourself with a treat!
Just understand that you deserve peace, love, and joy, & nobody should ever be allowed to take it away from you. Draw a circle, and decide who is safe to let inside, and who belongs outside. God bless you in your journey to healing!!!
@@qrisstrongmountain780 thank you - this is golden. I’m 54 and for me this is exactly the good advice to always remember. I’m going to copy it to my notes and then maybe a word doc and add just a couple things to it.
I would add, for the caution of gravitating towards narcs because of familiarity (normal can be awkward) - also because of hyper vigilance for the bad “loc ness monster lurking” personality/object that Jay mentions. Because when we are hyper vigilant to mean behavior, we are uninterested in everything else and then good kind honest great people seem boring and we don’t notice them.
And now I forgot the other thing I will add! It will come to me when I re-read it.
And I just loved -so much!!!- what you said about our feelings being worthy of protecting! And the circle/boundary of safety thing. That also is something I am learning in my somatic experiencing therapy. I’m developing boundaries for the first time in my life.
And lastly the advice to just behave as though you were the therapist for them. That is an incredible example of a plan to deal with them. - an easy guilt free way to limit contact to only when they contact you, and to limit the time length, and to create guidelines for not sharing anything personal and not expecting them to give anything (zero love/support and zero abuse/disrespect). Such good advice! Thanks again and have a beautiful day!
@@joellenklemek138 Hi JoEllen! I'm 60, and am just starting to get a handle on this myself. I'm truly delighted you found this helpful!
Jay, your expertise is outstanding. The way you describe everything is perfectly on point for me. It is so validating and each video feels like a leap in the right direction. Thank you again!
I loved the analogy of the Loch Ness monster and it is a lot effective to demonstrate the message. I feel it. Thank you so much!
Great video. The lack of concern for my feelings was the devastation.
Another very poignant explanation of the experience of the child in these situations. Literally, tears....all of the gaslighting by the surrounding society makes it even harder to see and mend the split. Thank you Jay for adding to this awakening. 💓
Our society often rewards narcissistic tendencies. Think Hollywood, entrepreneurs, COOs, CEOs & their "golden parachutes" etc., subpar submersibles, etc. ad nauseam.
Too young to know, too afraid to tell. Sounds like a complex trauma. So repression
My 81-year old parents just came into town 2500 miles away where I grew up in my relocated home of Phoenix. (Didn't move to get away from them.. but later learned what a scapegoat was and was shocked to realize I have been with my whole life one way or another).
Anyway, they bought me enough furniture to nicely completely refurbish my apartment, just so I could be short of the money needed of my own SSI money. Had I known they would keep forgoing their word, I would have filed for a different payee. I would have paid $10 a week to avoid that headache. Now
I'm considering going back to work and just doing getting a different payee either way.
I'm just 15 seconds into this video and it's like a moment of SYCRONICITY that this shows up just at this time in my email box. Because, man, I'm sure going to need this one!
My mother used to set me up for financial ruin over and over. She might spend an entire year desperately trying to win my trust. The very minute I would give in she would pull the rug out from under me to see me devasted. That was her payoff. That was all she wanted.
Thank you Jay. Another perfect analogy, swimming in Loch Ness.
The Loch Ness analogy works also to describe the feeling of not being believed. It is like trying to explain a hiding monster for those who were born into a dysfunctional environment. It compounds an already horribly run system.
It feels Like a scary monster. I had a dream last night about giant hippopotamuses emerging from my little lake and them walking around destroying buildings and killing people. In my dream I was with crowds of people and I knew the danger, and that we needed to hide and come up with a plan to kill the monsters, but I knew in my dream that I had to rely on waiting for the crowd to also realize this. I too am so accustomed to not being believed and also to being instantly opposed and dismissed. I am the scapegoat/black sheep/outcast/reject of my parents and 5 siblings.
@@joellenklemek138 interesting how dreams can put things together and retelling the dream sounds distorted, like the distorted reality of being abused. I think the healing process is sorting through our individual distorted understanding of what was happening, without a resolution. Being from a situation that began preverbal is like seeing a cloud from a distance or being in fog. If your life began immersed in the delusional world of a mentally ill person the sense of normal is going to be a challenge to recalibrate.
@@203blessings so true ! Think about the hormone deluge involved when a mother gives birth and then the high percentage who experience postpartum depression. I had one baby and it happened to me for about a week. But my mother (and probably many other mothers who scapegoat their babies) had a mental illness. Paranoia. And that developed into her targeting me with delusional suspicions. this video was excellent for me to relate to and the comments are so helpful! Thank you.
@@joellenklemek138what I learned from experience about that suspicion blame tactic it is a control/info gathering technique. A big power trip.
@@203blessings it is. But when paranoid delusions are at play, it’s more than suspicion, it’s a delusional belief. The paranoid sufferer is mot interested in gathering information because the true factual information doesn’t make any sense. They have tunnel vision and obsess on their delusion. It’s up to the target to gather and look at the true information. If never abused in this manner as a developing child, the adult reaction would be to argue and present the facts and defend the truth and one’s self against the delusions. But someone like me had to split internally and the truth about myself had to be killed. I didn’t begin gathering information (seeing reality and the truth) until I was in my early 20’s. I’m 54 now and still devastated, trying so hard to rebirth the real me who had to die in order to live upon birth.
After watching this, I realize that my mother also was split by the terrible abuses she endured growing up during the Great Depression. She dominated our family, and nearly drove me to suicide at age 8. But in one home movie, she stands on the shore shivering violently in the winter wind, wearing only a thin cloth coat without hat or gloves. She is smiling at me as I blissfully skate on the ice. That compassionate, selfless woman was my true mother before the stressors of her childhood broke her. I dearly love the woman in the cloth coat. She is my true mom. Your videos are a tremendous blessing.
Much Respect Sir
Dissociation…… I know I’ve handled many situations well into adulthood in this manner. Thought I was crazy. I’m not. I’m a survivor of narcissistic mother and enabler father who was verbally and physically abusive. I’m also a victim of sexual abuse from boys outside of my family. 💔😩😭. Decades of therapy off and on, helped me peel back the onion of my life. Finally feeling whole and ok. Learning, growing, beginning to thrive. Thank you so much for your work. It’s helping so many people.
I loved the bit about the Loch Ness Monster. I know it’s not meant to be amusing. I could relate to this video today and it was very interesting. Thank you.
If I could add one more thing lol. When I posted I hadn't watched the whole video. With the therapist, he listened to him. Growing up like this we are never heard! Told/showed our feelings didn't matter and our words definitely were never listened to.
In your example I could understand how the conversation with the therapist would help the client feel more at ease and offer them an important positive experience of people, but you go the extra distance to say that they get to experience the continuity of their being and so in essence they feel more real. Wow. I never would have made that connection on my own.
Unless I can get huge distances between myself and my family I do experience feelings of unreality. No contact for over a decade but I still need the huge distance to feel safe. Now I am 1200 miles away. It’s not enough. Later this year I am preparing to make it over 2000 miles. And I’m changing my name. Why should my abusers name be attached to me or my accomplishments, however small they may be?
A legal name change is in my plans for this year. I look at my name and it feels surreal, like I don't know who that person is anymore. I hope the physical changes you make help make your internal world feel more real
It takes a very skilled therapist and it takes a long time.
Thank you. The descriptions you give are exact. It’s so helpful to hear someone speak what seemed to be an unspeakable experience
as an abuse victim i can agree that it sounds absolutely relatable and exactly what i need someone who is always there or atleast tries to be always present when i need them
Whew! The beginning of this was very triggering. I had to comfort and secure myself, and I’m glad now that I can!
Yes I’m usually sobbing by the end.
Thank you, Jay, for the deeper dive into the split and the preverbal experience of trauma. It’s like an owners manual for the psyche. I use your course teachings and videos in my work with my therapist. You are reaching so many, thank you! 😊
You absolutely nailed it.
I am having trouble imagining the "good" bigger person. Easy to imagine the mean one though!
Same. The split for us must have occurred when we were newborns. I know that it did for me. I know that my mother had post pardom.
He understands the issue inside and out. I speak from experience.
Loved the way you described this video jay, the swing analogy everything. Always look forward to your videos
I think you just described what I’ve heard adopted people try to describe. The adopters may be the most loving parents and while the adoptee goes along with the role of being their child then the adopters are “good”. But if the adoptee wants to know their original parents etc and the adopters are upset by that then they play the “bad” parent role, no matter how kind they are, because they are expecting another human being to entirely give every aspect of who they are as a human being - his or her history, name, medical history, family… everything, even legal rights to their own origins, in order for the adopters to experience parenthood as if the child had been born to them. And that just scratches the surface of the struggles experienced by those impacted by loss to adoption.
I lived this.
Thank you for doing this video and for bringing light to the experience of preverbal trauma. I would love to more information on this content!
Dear Jay, thank you so very much for your very healing words.
Thank you, Jay! Love and light!! 💕
This makes me so sad. Thank you for your explanation
FTW…
Shit relationships and many decades into life- I have found my parents have fucked me up. Thanks mom…🙁
That would describe it.
Thank you. You are golden. This is best resource on this topic out there. So self focused and recovery focused.❤
How do you deal with parents that switch from nice to horrible/cruel. I'm at my wids end of what to do with my parents. Either I'm in and get hurt over and over ( start hating myself and they tell me it's my fault) or I cut off. Has been like that for years now, a constant back and forth and both "solutions" don't seem to be fruitful. I don't know what to do..
Hi Jenaya_Laila, I encourage you read the books by Dr. Lindsay C. Gibson, particularly Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents. It helped me immensely, along with Dr. Reid's great videos. I send best wishes to you. It is so difficult to have parents who abruptly change, rather than steady, calm, supportive ones. I send a warm hello and best wishes to you ✨️
I bet you do know what to do but it’ feels too scary.
I have been to a therapist at the medical center rated #2 in the world overall as recently as 2 yrs ago. It would be my last visit to a therapist. The therapist went to my childhood and insisted there had to have been drug or alcohol abuse for thrm to have behaved so malignantly. There were zero drugs or alcohol. The “drug” was religion. Therapist said I was in denial. She said nobody would behave that way without drugs or alcohol. This was all I could take. There was no point in going back. A lifetime of this. This therapist had no understanding of any of the concepts Dr. Reid talks about. None. I’m exhausted of this and have turned to just books now and UA-cam.
I'm sory you experienced that. I've had similar experiences but not so blatant. Many therapists are religious themselves so they are blind to the damage it can do when people treat it like a drug. My mom was like the mom from Carrie with my dad supporting her. Might have been nice if they had been drunk instead, maybe they would have passed out every once in a while. Instead they were sober and their methods were reinforced as the way to parent by their church, including cult like isolation from the world.
There is increasing awareness of religious trauma in the therapy world but you have to be careful. My first question for therapists is not where they go to school but if they go to church.
Curious if you see any correlation between Borderline Personality Disorder and scapegoats of a narcissistic parent? I've read a lot lately they're one in the same, in my case yes and this video seems to support in a way, splitting is a symptom of BPD, perhaps left over survival from my mom.
I split and usually around abuse from a trusted other. I was diagnosed with Manic Depression at 25 around the time I was mentally abused by my narcissistic Mom and I was being stalked by a fiancé AND all I was trying to do that got me diagnosed was to GET AWAY from all of that! But I confided that in a higher upper at my work place! A workplace where my MOTHER was a “big wig” and NOBODY knew she was a terror at home! It’s from having to “fake” a normal life! We ain’t crazy we are MADE crazy from so much DAMN ABUSE! Also I am very smart everyone in my family is SMART! There’s no brain abnormalities making me psycho! Just PURE ABUSE!
@@cosmo43095 in this video, however Jay is speaking of a different type of splitting. Dissociation I believe. Even though a scapegoat will have a strong sense of justice and empathy, the exposure to the cruel scary abuse one minute (for no reason) and then back to nurturing safety the next during the developmental/dependent years of childhood or even in a long term adult relationship will devastate the inner psyche of the scapegoat. No one can reconcile opposing opposite truths inside their head. This is what I understood this video to be about.
@Trapdoor I think you misunderstood me.
I'm wondering if BPD could begin with a scapegoat role and a narcisstic parent, not diagnosing scapegoats.
Also, splitting in borderline personality disorder is not the same, it's the opposite. It's not the borderline who splits and becomes evil, it's their perception of who they're interacting with, they suddenly perceive that person as all bad. Something they had to do as a child to survive their narcisstic parent's splitting? I had to.
I'm really curious Jay's thoughts because he's a licensed professional specializing in scapegoats with direct insight.
@@cosmo43095 Nicely said. One niece and one nephew from different families are now going to college to study psychology- interestingly, i almost went that direction as a result of growing up in a big messy dysfunctional family- where I was labelled the sensitive emotional one- yet in school I got straight "A's", awards and well- mannered; no records of having any psychological issues. My relatives, called me the lil mother- because I was so helpful with my 5 younger siblings.
This is an awesome explanation
Excellent.
I guess I was lucky with my mother..she was NEVER good..
BUT siblings changing were a long painful road of letting go...
Same. My mother was so bad my brother and I didn’t ever tell her ‘I love you’ or stay in the same room as her even as children. Too bad he lost all memories of past abuse and it’s now becoming a supply.
Your best video ever. In- depth sensitive exploration of ideas never mentioned by others yet life changing for us.
a lot of therapists out there that need this content (there are...said Yoda)
I am ALWAYS ready for the monster!
Every second of my life.
11:58 something like this happened to me, except I was the one who had to cancel, due to being out of the country.
I came back a week later and contacted my therapist for an appointment. No response. For years she's always responded within 2 days tops. I accused her. I said, I don't appreciate you ghosting me.
My therapist of several years then said, she swears in her kids life she wasn't ghosting me. And since i don't trust her she can't be my therapist anymore.
It was extremely painful.
I lived with fear all my life , i think he enjoyed knowing the fear he put inside me , hes now passed , i cant exsplain the relife i feel , strange this split of love and fear , you keep hoping that loving parent will reappear , very confusing for any child.
I relate to so much of what you say. Is there a way you can have your videos be louder?
All of my relationships mimic the toxic family of one minute they love you and treat you great and the next minute you are dirt. Friendships, coworkers, volunteer people and especially in my work life. It’s the dynamic that I’m used to so I’ve always known how to navigate it but I’m sick of it. I’m sick of these horrible people being so drawn to me because they are so miserable and so weak and they just hate happy people who, despite everything that’s happened still believe in love and God and the Universe and gratitude …the Bible is real and evil does exist. Never let the fact that they are your own family member keep you from that truth.
Painfully interesting, i identify. Ego obliterating violence, w/tissue damage. My personality was killed, i borrowed the older sib's. I need a sort of exorcism. Liked "...what therapy can do..."
Thanks
The child absorbs all the emotional charges into their body of the pathological parent.
They stay trapped there as if they're their own emotions.
So sad!
What do I do if I’m still living with a N? It’s so difficult - can I heal while in the middle of it?
Very doubtful, according to research.
What’s your MBTI?
I fortunately I experienced therapy abuse
Either way Loch Ness is a very, cold, deep, dark lake. 🥶
I think your videos work better when you have one target audience for a specific video, either survivors of narcissistic abuse or therapists who treat them. This got a little convoluted as you tried to relate to both audiences, especially when using analogies and metaphors. The subject and object references often got interchanged in ways that proved to be unclear so at times your point got lost. But thank you for trying.
The good was few and far between. The bad finally overtook any of the good, in my later years, when God unveiled me. I had to go “no contact” in order to survive. I am still healing from childhood and adulthood traumas,… Reversing the generational curses from both sides of my bloodlines, in Jesus’s name.🌈 With God, All things are possible!!!❤️
Ah the "good enough" parents. Mythical creatures.
I like the concept and idea of good enough parents and people walking around with secure attachment style but when I interact with the general population it really seems like everyone I meet are just one unmet need or violated boundary away from losing their minds underneath a thin veil of being a healthy neurotypical.
I'm starting to think good enough parents and secure attachment style people do not actually exist and that it's ONLY mentally ill people running around in the world all running around with abandonment wounds and nothing but 8 billion anxious or avoidant souls on planet earth bumbling around fighting over resources and flexing their status to obtain partners they can stomach mating with.
This was Pete Walkers concept. CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.
Unfortunately this "good" bigger person was never there. Just the evil one. ngl
I can’t listen with the cat banging
Hi Reid, I’m not done listening to this and I have tears in my eyes. I never understood my 50/50 way of thinking, plus how in opposite ways my mind wants me to act.
The part about feeling good/bad/ scared has been a cycle of my life for so long, I have lost so many friends because I am the life of the party, so joyful, full of abundance, but later on I can’t keep up withthe phone calls or texts. It’s like I need to hide from them. But I love them.
I’ve tried explaining and just looked stupid cuz saying it out loud made no sense to them.Someone told me I over think things. I said no, something is going on!
Thank you for validating my experiences!
By the way, I am African and got the deep Narcissistic mum, enabler dad and golden boy child trio and coming from a deep patriarchal background, the torment to me as a middle child plus girl Child was like a sport for her.
A sickening sport !
Please be my therapist! 💔❤️🩹