Understanding Narcissistic Rage, Shame, and Relationship Cycles

just when a person hits the Breaking Point with a narcissistic person that the rage and all of the invalidation and the Bering and the humiliation finally gets to a person and they take a stand against the narcissist the narcissist is masterful at playing the sulking petulant victim so let&#39;s talk about the shame rage spiral in narcissism now I recently had the pleasure of reading a 2015 academic article written by cran and johar from Iowa State University and the article was on narcissistic rage it was a really great paper that broke down narcissistic rage and the different ways it shows based on whether a person is more of a grandiose narcissist or a vulnerable narcissist but the authors did a nice job of also shedding light on something that is really worth talking about on this channel called the shame rage spiral their manuscript and they were talking about other people&#39;s research too it brings up a quote from a famous theorist who studied narcissism named Hines cohut and he wrote the need for revenge for writing a wrong for undoing a hurt by whatever means and a deeply anchored unrelenting compulsion in the pursuit of all these aims are the characteristic features of narcissistic rage in all its forms so so it&#39;s a fancy way of saying it but cohut and many other authors point out basically that if you question a narcissist reality they will punch back which is really interesting because one of their primary Maneuvers is to question your reality and Gaslight you now remember the narcissist has to construct a false self and an egocentric sense of reality to protect their rather broken confused invariable sense of self and self self-esteem so they get really angry if you poke at their grandiose or victimize sense of self and they get really defensive rageful and mean and all that&#39;s the stuff I talk about on the narcissistic rage video if you want to check that out so let&#39;s talk about the shame rage cycle theorists such as Lewis who write about shame and mental health in general have very much described this cycle in a much more scientific well articulated way basically when a narcissist gets activated perhaps someone questions them or does better than them or asks for a little more from them or just simply holds the narcissist accountable The Narcissist experiences two things kind of in order shame and then rage the rage is a manifestation of vindictiveness retaliation punishment in essence wanting their perceived perpetrator to feel as bad as them so let&#39;s talk about shame narcissists are not the only ones who feel shame we all do it&#39;s a universal emotional state shame is a sort of public emotion based on the idea that we will be seen and then subsequently rejected or discarded for our shortcomings our deficits our vulnerabilities and that the uncomfortable parts of ourselves will will be exposed to the world and that&#39;s really uncomfortable and when we don&#39;t process our shame some of which we carry from Early Childhood it turns into negative emotional states that can plague us throughout our lives negative emotions such as depression anxiety hostility and these are these appear to be when they appear we get triggered or they get triggered by shame inducing a and why does that happen because we&#39;re afraid our deficiencies will be seen shame harms us from the outside in and the inside out so narcissists get into a real cycle of anger when their shame is triggered which actually works well for them because at that moment when they&#39;re like I&#39;m not dealing with this they aren&#39;t having to Grapple with the really horrible internal feelings that shame evokes instead what they do is instead of dealing with the feelings they just get angry at the person who evoked the shame whether the the other person intended to do so or not and then they blame the other person and project feelings onto that person or they just fully discard them they want to get ahead of being discarded themselves now that their shame is public now other researchers such as Roar have pointed out that shame doesn&#39;t just elicit rage it can also elicit a passive aggressive response especially in covert narcissists and this can devolve into the narcissist ruminating about their plan to finally punish or dominate or control the person who called them out or triggered their shame so whether it&#39;s traditional oldfashioned in-your-face Rage or the passive aggressive Solen resentful brooding obsessive rage the reaction is Rage so then over time as that does turn more and more into rage the narcissistic person then chronically start starts to rage at people who evoke their feelings of Shame now rage isn&#39;t good and people don&#39;t judge rageful people well it&#39;s not a good look so now the narcissist get stuck in a cycle of feeling shame lashing out with rage feeling more shame as a result lashing out with more rage and you can see how that escalates most of the narcissist rage has a shame-based origin and in this way the entire world can feel like one big shame inducing threat for narcissists thus they have their grandiosity their defensiveness their entitlement all of these are their suits of armor that protect those narcissists from shame but they&#39;re not always going to work so the short story is the narcissist fear of being found out means that they are at constant risk of Shame inevitably the shame gets triggered boom and then they rage and this is why so many people get stuck in the eggshell walking cycle around narcissists nobody wants to trigger them but most people aren&#39;t clear that the thing that you&#39;re actually trying to avoid triggering is the shame because that&#39;s what leads to the rage it makes it all but impossible to have a healthy relationship with the narcissist because you never know what&#39;s going to trigger their shame and it may be something that has nothing to do with you they just take it out on you they may get triggered because it may happen because you didn&#39;t notice that they did something around the house it may happen because you reject a second helping of something they cooked it may happen because you get a promotion and they don&#39;t it may happen because you called them out on a lie that they told it may happen because you caught them watching porn it may happen because they aren&#39;t able to change a child&#39;s diaper it may happen because they didn&#39;t get into the college they wanted or the job they wanted it may happen because their brother bought a bigger house than them it may happen because they didn&#39;t make their sales quota it may happen because not enough people like their Instagram post it may happen because they saw their friend was sharing a new success on social media it may happen because someone insulted them so as you can see all of these are experiences that May reveal the vulnerabilities or deficiencies of the narcissist to the world and those are the kinds of things that trigger the shame cycle so you can also see how shame sets off rage sets off shame sets off rage so without understanding it most people in these relationships live in confusion walk on the proverbial eggshells and hope to goodness that things go okay but that would only work if you&#39;re the only person in the narcissist life the narcissistic person likely goes to work or goes to the store or is on social media or goes to a social Gathering and something might happen there and then when they get back to you they just spread that rage toward you because they need a Target now when experiences occur in the narcissist life that uncover their deficiencies the cycle is typically then to rage at other people blame other people become vindictive towards other people and then feel more shame when people push back on their bad behavior for generally being a raging jerk so what are you supposed to do if you&#39;re in a relationship with a narcissist honestly not much as a therapist I get to work with clients who are narcissistic as well as clients who have experienced narcissistic abuse I must say that the wor of Shame is the hardest work of all with a narcissistic individual to let them know that they are just as solid a person with or without the promotion or the better car or even if they told a lie my work then becomes to teach them the appropriate ways of addressing those moments without raging at people and it&#39;s a tough battle because the shame sequence gets activated so quickly when a narcissist perceives that they&#39;re going going to get found out maybe some of you are but in general with your loved ones you aren&#39;t their therapist to The Narcissist in your life so it&#39;s not your role to do this and listen carefully and even if you did it wouldn&#39;t work and the narcissist May rage at you even more and treat you with even more contempt for trying to soothe them again the shame gets activated this shame rage cycle is why sometimes narcissists will come around with a apologies after going on a rage Bender they want to erase it in a way and if you don&#39;t accept their apology voila the cycle starts again because their vulnerability was made public the shame rage cycle is why so often these relationships are almost impossible to fix the kind of therapy The Narcissist requires is hard work requires long-term commitment a very skilled therapist and regular therapy for a very long time these things are not available to most people and most narcissists are very contemptuous of therapy anyhow when the therapist really starts going in deep that&#39;s often when they drop out so perhaps if you understand this cycle though it&#39;s my hope that you won&#39;t personalize the shame rage cycle there isn&#39;t much you can do there&#39;s actually to me something quite tragic about this Dynamic that fear that paralyzing fear what would happen if someone really saw your faults being such a destabilizing space and compassion in these spaces can get very tricky as many of you know I&#39;m a big believer in balancing on that Razor&#39;s Edge of compassion and self-preservation and it&#39;s a really tough spot with the narcissistic people in your life especially because in your compassion you want to be there for someone and not contribute to their cycle of shame but to be a punching bag for their rage helps no one and is actually very bad for your health this all brings up larger societal issues of why don&#39;t we work with P families and especially with parents and also with health care providers and Educators to help people learn to just be okay with themselves fals and all listen carefully again shame has no place in a child&#39;s life and for both both narcissists who likely were shamed for not being good enough as kids and for their victims who were also shamed for not being good enough as kids we can see how this cycle puts into place this whole system almost of Oppression and victimization of these narcissist who rage and of people who endure the rage and on both sides it&#39;s happening because of early messages of not being good enough and of Shame listen I can&#39;t change that tide by myself it&#39;s a societal shift that frankly I have to believe will have to take will take many generations to happen if it ever can but in your life now right now if you&#39;re stuck in a rage cycle with a narcissist at a minimum I hope this sheds some light on it lifts some of the blame off of you and encourages you need encourages you to seek out the help you need to process this and lift the burden of responsibility to be the one who fixes this problem off of your shoulders The Narcissist themselves can and must seek out help to end this cycle you can&#39;t do it for them so I do hope this illuminates some of this and also to give you another example think of the shame cycle the shame rage cycle you know where it often manifests social media posts ever see that happen Facebook Instagram Twitter insult insult insult back and forth they get into rages they get into they get into all kinds of shouting matches on social media that&#39;s a great example of the shame rage cycle someone says something maybe they don&#39;t like the narcissist post or the narcissist makes a comment and people kind of say that&#39;s not okay the shame gets activated why because social media is a public space and then that narcissist escalates escalates escalates many of you have seen this happen where a narcissist may actually in some cases lose their career lose lose a lot of things because they can&#39;t stop themselves in these spaces they tend to often take their rage to social media they tend to take their rage to Yelp they tend to take their rage to these places where they can be angry at people then people shame them you&#39;ve seen this cycle before so this shame rage cycle plays out in lots of places individual relationships families and in public stages like social media so how do you handle flying monkeys we can make this a short video and just say say disengage and be done with it but the challenge is that it&#39;s not that easy and sometimes the flying monkeys in your life they&#39;re not as toxic as the original narcissist so let&#39;s address ways for managing the flying monkeys that are inevitably a part of your life if you have a narcissist in your life let&#39;s start by breaking down what flying monkeys are they are typically enablers but they can also be people who are ignorant about narcissistic patterns and do not see it and are like clay in the narcissistic person&#39;s hands who can manipulate them with ease flying monkeys are typically people who were at one time or may still be connected to both you and the narcissist these could be family members friends co-workers neighbors the narcissistic person will mobilize the flying monkeys typically at times when things aren&#39;t going well between you and the narcissist maybe it&#39;s a close relationship that&#39;s unraveling a contentious family relationship a difficult workplace situation or a friendship that&#39;s falling apart because the narcissistic person is always looking for a way to create Advantage for themselves and they want to maintain a narrative that deflects any blame and responsibility from them and place it on someone else and they have to end up looking wonderful in everybody else&#39;s eyes right mobilizing the flying monkeys is a way for them to achieve all three of those things and put the blame on you now that means that there are people around you around all of us that can be mobilized into that role of flying monkey one of the most painful parts of flying monkey that is that these are people they&#39;re often people who you may have considered to be friends or trusted family or just good people in your life unfortunately because narcissistic people are so skilled at wearing a mask they may have tricked these people and there are so many people out there who don&#39;t want to believe that there can be the darkness of narcissism in our midst and any of us who have been through narcissistic abuse and really get it I think we&#39;re regularly shocked at how a few people out in the World At Large do get it now flying monkeys are people who are often vulnerable and recruitable and the manipulations of the narcissist IST are no match for their Rosy eyed or naive vision of the world flying monkeys like I said can be enablers and often want to maintain a sort of pretty and simple view of the world and who can blame them I wish the world was simpler than the the way the view of it that I&#39;ve got these days but that makes the flying monkeys vulnerable to a twisted narrative and also one with the narcissistic person beautifully is able to paint themselves as a victim now just like the the original flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz they&#39;re A Flock they&#39;re almost like a flock of birds they mob and come at you as a group which leaves you feeling even more gaslighted because it seems like an entire group of people are on the same page in a way that is completely at odds with your reality and siding with the narcissist this can be devastating if it is a family and you actually believe that some of these family members had your back or you&#39;ve had their back and been there for them in the past or it could be a long-standing group of friends whom you have known for years in fact you might have been friends with them even before the narcissist became friends with them or colleagues that you have supported for years it&#39;s a betrayal and because it&#39;s a betrayal at such a large scale it is overwhelming and unsettling so to the original concept of this video how are you supposed to protect yourself when it comes to flying monkeys sadly there isn&#39;t much that you can do from a prevention standpoint it&#39;s an exhausting life to have to continually monitor your life and wonder is that person going to become a flying monkey is that person going to become a flying monkey is this there no way to live in some ways all you can do is go through your life as your best you and if the people around you don&#39;t seem to understand narcissism be careful around them because they are the ones that that will be the most recruitable as flying monkeys it&#39;s really where we can address the flying monkeys is what you do as it&#39;s happening or after it happens number one you got to hold on to your reality it&#39;s very easy to be gaslighted and start to doubt yourself and feel deeply confused when lots of people are sharing the same distorted narrative trust yourself there can be so much grief when you&#39;re experiencing the whole flying monkey phenomenon and that grief can drain you and sometimes leave you doubting yourself even more you know you you know what you experienced and even if the flying monkeys want to gasl light you alongside the narcissist you got to hold on to your reality number two don&#39;t try to convert the flying monkeys the group of flying monkeys with the narcissist leading the fry can feel a little bit culty and sometimes the flying monkeys can get really zealous about their support of the narcissist and the idea that you may be to blame all you can do is calmly and gracefully stand in your truth even if you&#39;re so angry inside don&#39;t get into the mud with them they will want to hear your side of things and if you choose to do that stick to the behaviors of the narcissist and don&#39;t get lost in talking about gaslighting and narcissism and other words that might put them on the defensive because when you use those words with flying monkeys they&#39;ll often push back and try to paint you as the bad person number three keep in mind that sometimes flying monkeys come back around before you welcome them back with open arms pay attention to who they were and don&#39;t forget what they were willing to do flying monkeys may come around for a variety of reasons they may get burned by The Narcissist or see them more clearly or see that you aren&#39;t reacting to them it doesn&#39;t mean you have to give up on the friendship or the relationship with the Flying Monkey but you may want to proce proed with more firm boundaries and be armed with the recognition that this person was a friend that became a flying monkey that they were able to do that to you one of the Hallmarks of survival from narcissistic abuse is to move cautiously and slowly but it&#39;s important that you learn to not justify and to not get lost in the cognitive dissonant swamp sadly going forward it may feel like a friendship or relationship with this former flying monkey that&#39;s less deep again a key Mantra of narcissistic abuse survivorship is to protect yourself on the basis of the wisdom of the lessons that you&#39;ve learned from the narcissistic relationship and that means caution and boundaries number four not all flying monkeys are created the same some are trying to play Both Sides being your friend and the narcissistic person&#39;s friend tread very lightly there you do not want to be a source of Intel for the narcissist with a flying monkey telling them what&#39;s going on so keep your answers and thoughts tur and brief and don&#39;t show your hand to the flying monkeys some flying monkeys are as bad as the narcissist and want to jump on the bandwagon of harming you in that case do not engage some flying monkeys are just stupid almost like the dimwitted kid in high school who just wanted to be friends with the cool kids no matter what and sadly in adult life The Narcissist often is the cool kid the stupid flying monkeys aren&#39;t always dangerous but they are definitely not a great person for you you can do better number five hard as it may be build new sources of support there&#39;s nothing like a band of flying monkeys coming at you to be the wakeup call that you need to switch up your game and find some new people this may start in places like therapy but lead you to cultivate friendships with folks who are separate from the narcissist and don&#39;t know them and make sure you do have a safe space like therapy to talk about this because the Betrayal grief and confusion of a flying monkey attack can be overwhelming flying monkeys are a deeply painful situation and flying monkey situations have destroyed families ended friendships and even harmed careers and all of that on top of having to weather the narcissistic abuse many times people will tell you when you talk about this idea of flying monkeys it&#39;s all in your head remember it&#39;s a real phenomenon so just hold on to your reality and watch your head in your back and if any of you have some suggestions on how to man manage uh flying monkeys that you&#39;ve used that have worked for you please drop them in the comments I&#39;ve only offered up five but you may have techniques that I haven&#39;t thought of let&#39;s talk about the victim bully I know you&#39;ve heard about it but let&#39;s just really break it down it&#39;s really going to help you understand narcissism a lot more clearly and if any of you have really encountered that victim bully dynamic in your narcissistic relationship drop it in the comments but the fact is if you have a narcissist in your life I can already guarantee you you have encountered this Dynamic so the narcissist we could actually almost called narcissism victim bully but yeah we call it narcissism so the victim bully is one of the most classical Dynamics in the narcissistic personality and in the narcissistic relationship and like I said I surprised I haven&#39;t talked about it I think I&#39;ve it inserted itself here and there but it&#39;s really important to understand this Dynamic the victim bully accurately because it also sheds a lot of light onto understanding the trauma bont now let me lay out a scenario for you in a rough way so there&#39;s a big bad bullying bossy narcissist about raging around yelling demanding being selfish entitled the basic expectable stuff from a narcissist people are kind of afraid of this person they walk on eggshells everyone is is typically cutting the narcissistic bully a really wide birth finally someone snaps they don&#39;t even care about the narcissistic person&#39;s rage and they snap back and they say you are such an a-hole just stop you are such a jerk you are ruining everybody&#39;s day around here nobody wants to be here anymore because of you we just wish you would leave you are such an awful person okay they say that to the narcissist then the narcissist does a Charlie Brown on you head down and they start in on okay I was just trying to do what people wanted I spent the whole day I spent the whole day trying to make sure I got you guys the right food and the right stuff I was just trying to help everyone and then they may lean into saying things like oh God you guys have always been out to get me I am so good to everyone why do you always Target me okay if that&#39;s what you want you want me to leave okay I guess I&#39;m gonna leave if nobody wants me here they may even walk away right I know I know you don&#39;t want me anymore you just use me right so why don&#39;t you all just have a good time without me and it&#39;s always seemed that no you just expect me to just bring all the stuff and do everything for y&#39;all but you have more fun when I&#39;m not here and honestly none of you understand understand me none of you even want to understand me and then they sort of shamefully walk out of the room and the whole thing is sort of sad and pathetic to watch right and then you the empathic soul that you are after seeing that you want to reach after them and say listen okay I&#39;m sorry I&#39;m sorry all right we don&#39;t need to do this anymore right I was so harsh it&#39;s amazing how quickly you forget how ragy and awful they were just a few minutes ago no I I listen I didn&#39;t mean to hurt you you&#39;re just getting you were getting rough on everyone but we really we we want you to stay okay and then they&#39;re going to m a little while longer and you try even harder to pull them in and before you know it the very bully all of you were scared and aggravated about a little while ago is the victim that you are now trying to soothe and appease and make sure everything&#39;s okay it&#39;s the ultimate slight of hand the switching of the masks the shapeshifting move that they&#39;re so good at it&#39;s the victim bully sequence narcissistic folks have this mastered to a magical art form vulnerable narcissists tend to be the ones that are the best at it but every narcissist does it it&#39;s what makes the trauma Bond so traumatic just when a person hits the Breaking Point with a narcissistic person that the rage and all of the invalidation and the berading and the humiliation finally gets to a person and they take a stand against the narcissist the narcissist is masterful at playing the sulking petulent victim and because most people stuck in narcissistic relationships tend to be pretty good kind compassionate empathic people they struggle with seeing the sort of the the consequences like that leave the narcissist looking so victimized and sad and they recant and they find them El trying to cheer up the victimized narcissist because people whove suffered narcissistic abuse are uncomfortable with that tension with that conflict it&#39;s a brilliant but sick maneuver by the narcissistic person in one quick second they are able to turn the tables from someone actually being really angry with them or upset about them to someone trying to appease them in many cases narcissistic people are so good at playing the victim that people tend to forget The Bullying sequence that just happened and just focus their their energies on making sure that the narcissist is okay another way that the victim bully sequence plays out is when you do call them out on their bad behavior they try to play it off as a joke you may say you know what you just did or said it was hurtful or it was wrong and they will come back with oh come on that was a joke I was just joking can&#39;t you take a joke and if you push harder and say it&#39;s not really okay to make jokes at another person&#39;s expense or that hurts them and that it sort of felt abusive that&#39;s when they&#39;ll start to become rageful because basically at that point you&#39;re kind of calling them out as a bit of a rotten abusive person and that inflames the whole shame rage spiral at their deepest core narcissistic people know that they&#39;re not nice people and when that Primal stuff gets stirred up their claws come out trying to make it about being a joke frankly is gaslighting and it puts them in the victim position of being oh so misunderstood you didn&#39;t understand my joke the structural reason for this is because every narcissist has both the grandiose and the vulnerable elements encompassed with them they&#39;re grandiose when stuff&#39;s going well right but when the grandiose stuff isn&#39;t working stuff in their life isn&#39;t going their way or they get called out or they experience something that activates their shame for example someone calling out on their behavior then the vulnerable narcissist comes out to play and then the victimhood descends the victim bully sequence confuses people but once you recognize it as a strategy or a tactic by the narcissistic person it makes more sense than seeing it as the narcissist being two different people they are in fact one person one very tactical manipulative person over time this victim bully thing has worked worked for them don&#39;t get me wrong when they are hurt and for them hurt means ego injury not necessarily hurt feelings per se but when something happens something that makes them not look good to other people or they feel that they aren&#39;t being adequately appreciated it doesn&#39;t feel good for them and that&#39;s when they VI slide immediately into the victimized wo is me that part in and of itself isn&#39;t that interesting many of us even not narcissists can pretty easily fall into a victimized space when people are calling us out the difference is that the narcissistic people have the bully piece alongside the victim piece so the Jos of the two is what is so striking that they can go from being such jerks to being so victimized just like that I am thinking of one situation I had observed the guy was a wo H class narcissist arrogant superficial validation seeking insecure angry treated people around him horribly at one point the person he was dating and because he was so insecure he would waste lots of money on gifts not just for her but for everyone around him was notoriously big Tipper that kind of thing well at one point she was witnessing yet another of his rage festivals and yelling he was yelling at various household employees and family members but this time his girlfriend who wasn&#39;t very nice herself she had had it with him and it turns out that he had also just purchased a very expensive gift for her he gave her the day before but because she was so exasperated with him she left because she thought he was acting like such an awful person after she left he became an insta victim he couldn&#39;t believe that nobody could appreciate him he took such good care of everyone he buys everyone so much gifts he spent so much on her so now his narrative was that she was just using him and then he slumped into a deflated balloon he cried he told her he missed her and that people have always left him and he would buy her anything she wanted and you know nobody likes him and he knew knows the only reason anyone likes him is because he spends money who knows if she came back to him because of the gift or because of him she claimed she came back to him because she felt so bad for him because he was so pathetic and she felt guilty like she was to blame and as far as I know I don&#39;t have contact with these people anymore the cycle still continues between these two they are caught in their trauma bonded dance he vacillates between bullying and then when people call him out becoming the victim and anytime she finds her strength to leave his victimhood and I&#39;m guessing the rather expensive gifts that he purchases pull her back in this was a toxic dance wrapped in a transactional mess narcissistic relationship the victim bully is every narcissist ever we see it all the time for example when idiot celebrities tweet or post stupid thoughtless opinions on social media without thinking about who they would hurt or how insensitive the comment would be and folks this is on all sides of the political Spectrum right left and everybody in between I think maybe normal people do this too but when normal people do it nobody cares but then the celebrity gets called out and then it&#39;s a whole victimized oh okay I know I want wasn&#39;t thinking I was misunderstood it&#39;s so hard to be a celebrity I&#39;m shutting down my social media because I&#39;m so misunderstood blah blah blah it&#39;s the same thing celebrities and politicians with their enormous platforms and egos can be bullies and then they immediately behave like victims when they get called out for behaving so badly the main reason narcissistic people get away with stuff it&#39;s actually quite interesting we understand frankly that three-year-old children need consequences for their behavior if they mouth off they get a consequence they don&#39;t tidy up their toys maybe they get a consequence if they throw their food a consequence hit their sibling consequence don&#39;t clean up their cubby at school consequence but adult narcissist no consequences the victim play that&#39;s their response to a consequence we we hold them accountable narcissist every so often we hold them accountable and then they immediately become a victim and all of us for fall for it oh poor sad narcissist but really bullies don&#39;t like consequences if consequences are good enough for a three-year-old then they are good enough for a 43y old so when you feel pulled to rescue the victimized bully stop yourself and recognize that they&#39;re just a three-year-old that&#39;s pissed off about time off it makes it a lot easier to try to not get in there and appease them and remember the narcissist isn&#39;t two people they are just one well-oiled manipulation machine Let&#39;s Take on this issue of devaluing and discarding the classical narcissistic fairy tale starts with idealization and then moves on to devaluation and then discarding everyone thinks it won&#39;t happen to them and yet without exception The Story Goes Down the same way every time to feel thrown away by another person is an awful experience but yet it is sort of a universal part of the narcissistic relationship so let&#39;s start by taking a look at the narcissistic relationship cycle in most cases not all not all by any means but many most the ideal ization often takes the form of love bombing which is another video in this series so love bombing or idealization lasts just long enough to get you stuck in this relationship Dynamic just when you exhale and believe in the fairy tale then bam that&#39;s when the devaluation phase starts devaluation can start slow it&#39;s when the little criticisms begin when you start experiencing the contempt when the gifts and the big nights out go away when the narcissist&#39;s phone becomes much more interesting than you sitting in front of them and when the sideways comments like I don&#39;t know like are you really going to wear that and other comments of that ilk start to creep into the relationship it can be a real time of intense confusion in the relationship because you can&#39;t figure out when the love bombing ended and when the contempt began all you know is it&#39;s though the weather changed it went from being very warm to very cold kind of quickly the devaluing phase tends to happen just as you start to feel more settled into the relationship as a real relationship you may have actually been resisting the relationship for a while and you might have even have been Savvy enough to think H this love bombing is a little bit too good to be true I&#39;m not going to be played and then just when you settled in when you felt like it was a real and whole relationship that is when the devaluation Begins the reason for this sort of shift it&#39;s a bit nuanced but it largely happens because at the deepest deep a narcissist self-loathing is actually so deep and so unprocessed that just as someone does see the good in them it&#39;s as though it activates their self contempt which they then project onto you and then voila devaluation it&#39;s as though they project their devaluation of themselves onto you now devaluation can last for months years and even decades it becomes before you know it&#39;s sort of a new normal your life tends to be punctuated by insults and by invalidation the discard is just what it sounds like discarding is honestly like throwing out the trash it&#39;s like they&#39;re done with you now sometimes discarding never really truly happens you may just kind of get stuck in the Purgatory of devaluation forever but discarding happens when they cast you aside and it this is almost like discarding is like it can be really cold and you can actually have a narcissistic relationship that keeps happening even when you&#39;ve been discarded so for example your narcissist may have an affair an extra marital Affair just cheat on you and so you were in essence discarded but you still stay in the relationship or they may take a job or take advantage of an opportunity that doesn&#39;t take you into consideration so either you have to leave your life behind to join them or be left behind so they&#39;re just kind of doing what works for them the discarding is often motivated for the narcissist from a place of both contempt and of boredom basically your narcissistic supply has become quite stale and narcissists tend to be very novelty seeking so it all depends on your story no matter what it feels awful to be discarded from a relationship that you actually believe that you&#39;re in many narcissists expect you often to do the Dirty Work and end the relationship so they can turn around and say h she was the one who left me he was the one who filed for divorce she moved out and walked out on me and the kids uh he walked away from his family when that happens they get to look good to the world and since the narcissist is often going to turn around and tell the world a false story then you look like the one who is unfeeling or unkind or willing to walk away from something which doesn&#39;t feel good now the mistakes that people most often make during the devaluation in the discarding phase is to ask that killer question why during the devaluation phase they&#39;re going to Gaslight you and deny that they are devaluing you and in fact they may turn around and call you paranoid or hypers sensitive or crazy now during the discarding phase if you try to make them accountable for their behavior again you&#39;re going to run into more gaslighting now people want to make sense of this process so asking why is understandable but there&#39;s really no sense to be made of it because the narcissist isn&#39;t going to cop to it the narcissist isn&#39;t going to turn around and say yeah I&#39;m not capable of making healthy attachments and I&#39;m deeply insecure and I have contempt for intimacy so I am actually yeah I&#39;m rejecting you and I&#39;m treating you badly to see and test my hypothesis that you will observe my insecurity and that you will leave me and my fantasy is that&#39;s the case and then let&#39;s see if that comes true no they are not going to say that to you even though that&#39;s the dynamic that&#39;s likely unfolding so asking them for an explanation is likely to bring more harm than good because they themselves aren&#39;t in touch with what&#39;s happening now the devaluing and discarding S Cycles happen in families as well in general if you weren&#39;t just blindly going along with a narcissist agenda then they often think that you are against them and in a family this can happen when you just don&#39;t go along with the program with what the narcissistic parent or sibling or Aunt or grandparent want your family members the family members will find out that if you or they learn that if you appease the narcissistic family remember then you will be able to keep them calm and stay in their good graces and this can be particularly profound if the narcissist has some kind of power so for example the money that they may use to control family members so if you do lay down some real boundaries that&#39;s when often in a family the devaluation and discarding cycle can begin now for scapegoats in a family system the discard and devaluation cycle is an eternal part of the scapegoats role in the family system they&#39;re constantly being devalued constantly being devalued and if the scapegoat tries to set a boundary boom they&#39;ll be discarded now devaluing and discarding can also absolutely take place in workplace settings and in those cases it&#39;s in which narcissistic bosses and narcissistic managers and leaders devel value the people that they think aren&#39;t their team players basically these are the people who are not the Yes Men or the yes women and then ultimately they may make life so miserable for the people who don&#39;t just sign on with whatever Twisted agenda they have that those people actually end up leaving or may get fired now the devaluation and discarding cycle is sadly enough often followed by hoovering that&#39;s why it&#39;s a dysfunctional cycle some people get so disgusted by the discarding cycle that they do ultimately leave but it&#39;s not unusual for that insecure narcissist who wants to keep control to try to Hoover them back now if you fall for it and allow yourself to be sucked in that whole cycle is going to begin again idealization devaluation and discarding it&#39;s just sort of this eternal cycle that&#39;s really only going to end if you&#39;re the one who&#39;s going to be courageous enough to break it and it can really be quite addictive lots of people confuse the excitement of hoovering and idealization with love it&#39;s really not it&#39;s abuse and therapy becomes a key tool to at least start thinking about how to end the confusion and the conflation that love and abusive relationship Cycles are the same thing now narcissist devalue and discard for many of the reasons mentioned but also because they devalue intimacy and because they have very limited empathy They Don&#39;t Really Care how these Cycles are hurting you or impacting you they just do it without thinking and in some ways the chaos it feels comfortable for them they don&#39;t have any regard for how it hurts you but they do kind of like the excitement and the roller coaster nature of this cycle now these toxic Cycles take a tremendous toll on the people who get stuck in them basically this turns relationships into roller coasters and almost like addictive cycles and these can often perpetuate Early Childhood patterns you may have had around rejection in some ways these toxic Cycles keep their relationship exciting for the narcissist and it&#39;s very easy to get sucked into their Vortex and cycle and for some people this cycle strangely enough becomes sort of a re enactment of trying to win over their unwinable parent in childhood it almost feels familiar to be rejected and it can feel exciting when you are hoovered back in and idealized for a minute and in that moment you&#39;re almost taken back to Childhood where you feel like I&#39;ve won that parent over but then when the devaluing and discard Cycles happen and it&#39;s inevitable that they will sadly those Cycles feel familiar too and your ancient script of feeling like you&#39;re not enough gets activated again now some people allow these devaluation and discarding Cycles to happen because they&#39;ll often buy into the narcissist narrative about how difficult their lives were and and the narcissist lives may very well have been quite difficult The Narcissist will often share a story about having never seeing love when they were growing up and that it was so terrible for them and you endure the narcissist cycle because you believe it&#39;s the loving thing to do that maybe you&#39;re going to correct it for the narcissist and it&#39;s not allowing yourself to be harmed in the Name of Love isn&#39;t love their tale of Woe or abuse or trauma it may be very very true they may have actually had a very rough childhood and it is you&#39;re sorry about that but it&#39;s not your responsibility it&#39;s not your responsib ability you can&#39;t change their history and remaining there as an object that at times they value but more often reject is not only not doing the narcissist any favors it&#39;s taking a tremendous toll on your mental and physical health there are no winners here now being discarded is an awful feeling it can raise tremendous triggers around abandonment and rejection and lots of people will fight for the relationship at that point they want to maintain that fantasy of the happy relationship or the Happy Family the fact is in some ways we are really stubborn creatures we human beings and we fight for those things we can&#39;t have we get stuck on the things we can&#39;t have and things often become much more interesting when they&#39;re slipping away or we&#39;re just not allowed to have them we&#39;re all the kids who want the thing in the cookie jar and don&#39;t fall for that trick if you have been devalued and then you&#39;re being discarded receive it believe it or not as a gift I know that sounds paradoxical but it&#39;s a chance to get away from a relationship that is likely making you sick but to do that you have to Value yourself first and that requires a deeper dive into where those scripts about self- devaluation come from and flipping yourself over into a space of self-compassion now keep in mind that self-compassion is like Kryptonite against the charms of the narcissist once you have self-compassion honestly the narcissist is rendered powerless and you can finally walk away it&#39;s interesting to think that in a discard and a devalue cycle that you could actually get that kind of power you often feel like you&#39;re stuck at the whims of the narcissist when they will devalue you when they will discard you whether that&#39;s a partner family member or even a boss but the fact of the matter is ultimately believe it or not in these Cycles you have a lot more power than you think in the form of self-compassion self-compassion not only allows you to say yeah no I&#39;m not doing this cycle I see what it is it&#39;s not good for me and allow you allow to step allow you to step away but self-compassion also allows you to feel compassion for the other and as difficult and challenging as these narcissistic relationships are as I said many times narcissistic individuals have had very difficult backstories in fact it&#39;s what explains a lot of their personality and why it&#39;s organized the way it is there is no need for you to engage in those kinds of toxic Cycles you don&#39;t have to De devalue and discard for from a place of self-compassion you can also let them go from a place of compassion and in your heart hope that maybe they can go and get the help they need to grow into a healthier future however that&#39;s not your job self-preservation is a right and if you&#39;re going to preserve yourself in these Cycles you&#39;ve got to exercise that right and break the devaluation and discard cycle thank you again for tuning in I hope this video helped you understand the theme the terms devaluation and more importantly discarding which are very much a part of the narcissistic relationship cycle as always if you like this content I just ask that you hit the Bell subscribe to this channel not only will you get notifications about the rest of this series but all of our future series and the weekly content we put out 52 weeks a year so thanks again for tuning into this series and look forward to seeing you on the next episode

just when a person hits the Breaking Point with a narcissistic person that the rage and all of the invalidation and the Bering and the humiliation finally gets to a person and they take a stand against the narcissist the narcissist is masterful at playing the sulking petulant victim so let&amp;#39;s talk about the shame rage spiral in narcissism now I recently had the pleasure of reading a 2015 academic article written by cran and johar from Iowa State University and the article was on narcissistic rage it was a really great paper that broke down narcissistic rage and the different ways it shows based on whether a person is more of a grandiose narcissist or a vulnerable narcissist but the authors did a nice job of also shedding light on something that is really worth talking about on this channel called the shame rage spiral their manuscript and they were talking about other people&amp;#39;s research too it brings up a quote from a famous theorist who studied narcissism named Hines cohut and he wrote the need for revenge for writing a wrong for undoing a hurt by whatever means and a deeply anchored unrelenting compulsion in the pursuit of all these aims are the characteristic features of narcissistic rage in all its forms so so it&amp;#39;s a fancy way of saying it but cohut and many other authors point out basically that if you question a narcissist reality they will punch back which is really interesting because one of their primary Maneuvers is to question your reality and Gaslight you now remember the narcissist has to construct a false self and an egocentric sense of reality to protect their rather broken confused invariable sense of self and self self-esteem so they get really angry if you poke at their grandiose or victimize sense of self and they get really defensive rageful and mean and all that&amp;#39;s the stuff I talk about on the narcissistic rage video if you want to check that out so let&amp;#39;s talk about the shame rage cycle theorists such as Lewis who write about shame and mental health in general have very much described this cycle in a much more scientific well articulated way basically when a narcissist gets activated perhaps someone questions them or does better than them or asks for a little more from them or just simply holds the narcissist accountable The Narcissist experiences two things kind of in order shame and then rage the rage is a manifestation of vindictiveness retaliation punishment in essence wanting their perceived perpetrator to feel as bad as them so let&amp;#39;s talk about shame narcissists are not the only ones who feel shame we all do it&amp;#39;s a universal emotional state shame is a sort of public emotion based on the idea that we will be seen and then subsequently rejected or discarded for our shortcomings our deficits our vulnerabilities and that the uncomfortable parts of ourselves will will be exposed to the world and that&amp;#39;s really uncomfortable and when we don&amp;#39;t process our shame some of which we carry from Early Childhood it turns into negative emotional states that can plague us throughout our lives negative emotions such as depression anxiety hostility and these are these appear to be when they appear we get triggered or they get triggered by shame inducing a and why does that happen because we&amp;#39;re afraid our deficiencies will be seen shame harms us from the outside in and the inside out so narcissists get into a real cycle of anger when their shame is triggered which actually works well for them because at that moment when they&amp;#39;re like I&amp;#39;m not dealing with this they aren&amp;#39;t having to Grapple with the really horrible internal feelings that shame evokes instead what they do is instead of dealing with the feelings they just get angry at the person who evoked the shame whether the the other person intended to do so or not and then they blame the other person and project feelings onto that person or they just fully discard them they want to get ahead of being discarded themselves now that their shame is public now other researchers such as Roar have pointed out that shame doesn&amp;#39;t just elicit rage it can also elicit a passive aggressive response especially in covert narcissists and this can devolve into the narcissist ruminating about their plan to finally punish or dominate or control the person who called them out or triggered their shame so whether it&amp;#39;s traditional oldfashioned in-your-face Rage or the passive aggressive Solen resentful brooding obsessive rage the reaction is Rage so then over time as that does turn more and more into rage the narcissistic person then chronically start starts to rage at people who evoke their feelings of Shame now rage isn&amp;#39;t good and people don&amp;#39;t judge rageful people well it&amp;#39;s not a good look so now the narcissist get stuck in a cycle of feeling shame lashing out with rage feeling more shame as a result lashing out with more rage and you can see how that escalates most of the narcissist rage has a shame-based origin and in this way the entire world can feel like one big shame inducing threat for narcissists thus they have their grandiosity their defensiveness their entitlement all of these are their suits of armor that protect those narcissists from shame but they&amp;#39;re not always going to work so the short story is the narcissist fear of being found out means that they are at constant risk of Shame inevitably the shame gets triggered boom and then they rage and this is why so many people get stuck in the eggshell walking cycle around narcissists nobody wants to trigger them but most people aren&amp;#39;t clear that the thing that you&amp;#39;re actually trying to avoid triggering is the shame because that&amp;#39;s what leads to the rage it makes it all but impossible to have a healthy relationship with the narcissist because you never know what&amp;#39;s going to trigger their shame and it may be something that has nothing to do with you they just take it out on you they may get triggered because it may happen because you didn&amp;#39;t notice that they did something around the house it may happen because you reject a second helping of something they cooked it may happen because you get a promotion and they don&amp;#39;t it may happen because you called them out on a lie that they told it may happen because you caught them watching porn it may happen because they aren&amp;#39;t able to change a child&amp;#39;s diaper it may happen because they didn&amp;#39;t get into the college they wanted or the job they wanted it may happen because their brother bought a bigger house than them it may happen because they didn&amp;#39;t make their sales quota it may happen because not enough people like their Instagram post it may happen because they saw their friend was sharing a new success on social media it may happen because someone insulted them so as you can see all of these are experiences that May reveal the vulnerabilities or deficiencies of the narcissist to the world and those are the kinds of things that trigger the shame cycle so you can also see how shame sets off rage sets off shame sets off rage so without understanding it most people in these relationships live in confusion walk on the proverbial eggshells and hope to goodness that things go okay but that would only work if you&amp;#39;re the only person in the narcissist life the narcissistic person likely goes to work or goes to the store or is on social media or goes to a social Gathering and something might happen there and then when they get back to you they just spread that rage toward you because they need a Target now when experiences occur in the narcissist life that uncover their deficiencies the cycle is typically then to rage at other people blame other people become vindictive towards other people and then feel more shame when people push back on their bad behavior for generally being a raging jerk so what are you supposed to do if you&amp;#39;re in a relationship with a narcissist honestly not much as a therapist I get to work with clients who are narcissistic as well as clients who have experienced narcissistic abuse I must say that the wor of Shame is the hardest work of all with a narcissistic individual to let them know that they are just as solid a person with or without the promotion or the better car or even if they told a lie my work then becomes to teach them the appropriate ways of addressing those moments without raging at people and it&amp;#39;s a tough battle because the shame sequence gets activated so quickly when a narcissist perceives that they&amp;#39;re going going to get found out maybe some of you are but in general with your loved ones you aren&amp;#39;t their therapist to The Narcissist in your life so it&amp;#39;s not your role to do this and listen carefully and even if you did it wouldn&amp;#39;t work and the narcissist May rage at you even more and treat you with even more contempt for trying to soothe them again the shame gets activated this shame rage cycle is why sometimes narcissists will come around with a apologies after going on a rage Bender they want to erase it in a way and if you don&amp;#39;t accept their apology voila the cycle starts again because their vulnerability was made public the shame rage cycle is why so often these relationships are almost impossible to fix the kind of therapy The Narcissist requires is hard work requires long-term commitment a very skilled therapist and regular therapy for a very long time these things are not available to most people and most narcissists are very contemptuous of therapy anyhow when the therapist really starts going in deep that&amp;#39;s often when they drop out so perhaps if you understand this cycle though it&amp;#39;s my hope that you won&amp;#39;t personalize the shame rage cycle there isn&amp;#39;t much you can do there&amp;#39;s actually to me something quite tragic about this Dynamic that fear that paralyzing fear what would happen if someone really saw your faults being such a destabilizing space and compassion in these spaces can get very tricky as many of you know I&amp;#39;m a big believer in balancing on that Razor&amp;#39;s Edge of compassion and self-preservation and it&amp;#39;s a really tough spot with the narcissistic people in your life especially because in your compassion you want to be there for someone and not contribute to their cycle of shame but to be a punching bag for their rage helps no one and is actually very bad for your health this all brings up larger societal issues of why don&amp;#39;t we work with P families and especially with parents and also with health care providers and Educators to help people learn to just be okay with themselves fals and all listen carefully again shame has no place in a child&amp;#39;s life and for both both narcissists who likely were shamed for not being good enough as kids and for their victims who were also shamed for not being good enough as kids we can see how this cycle puts into place this whole system almost of Oppression and victimization of these narcissist who rage and of people who endure the rage and on both sides it&amp;#39;s happening because of early messages of not being good enough and of Shame listen I can&amp;#39;t change that tide by myself it&amp;#39;s a societal shift that frankly I have to believe will have to take will take many generations to happen if it ever can but in your life now right now if you&amp;#39;re stuck in a rage cycle with a narcissist at a minimum I hope this sheds some light on it lifts some of the blame off of you and encourages you need encourages you to seek out the help you need to process this and lift the burden of responsibility to be the one who fixes this problem off of your shoulders The Narcissist themselves can and must seek out help to end this cycle you can&amp;#39;t do it for them so I do hope this illuminates some of this and also to give you another example think of the shame cycle the shame rage cycle you know where it often manifests social media posts ever see that happen Facebook Instagram Twitter insult insult insult back and forth they get into rages they get into they get into all kinds of shouting matches on social media that&amp;#39;s a great example of the shame rage cycle someone says something maybe they don&amp;#39;t like the narcissist post or the narcissist makes a comment and people kind of say that&amp;#39;s not okay the shame gets activated why because social media is a public space and then that narcissist escalates escalates escalates many of you have seen this happen where a narcissist may actually in some cases lose their career lose lose a lot of things because they can&amp;#39;t stop themselves in these spaces they tend to often take their rage to social media they tend to take their rage to Yelp they tend to take their rage to these places where they can be angry at people then people shame them you&amp;#39;ve seen this cycle before so this shame rage cycle plays out in lots of places individual relationships families and in public stages like social media so how do you handle flying monkeys we can make this a short video and just say say disengage and be done with it but the challenge is that it&amp;#39;s not that easy and sometimes the flying monkeys in your life they&amp;#39;re not as toxic as the original narcissist so let&amp;#39;s address ways for managing the flying monkeys that are inevitably a part of your life if you have a narcissist in your life let&amp;#39;s start by breaking down what flying monkeys are they are typically enablers but they can also be people who are ignorant about narcissistic patterns and do not see it and are like clay in the narcissistic person&amp;#39;s hands who can manipulate them with ease flying monkeys are typically people who were at one time or may still be connected to both you and the narcissist these could be family members friends co-workers neighbors the narcissistic person will mobilize the flying monkeys typically at times when things aren&amp;#39;t going well between you and the narcissist maybe it&amp;#39;s a close relationship that&amp;#39;s unraveling a contentious family relationship a difficult workplace situation or a friendship that&amp;#39;s falling apart because the narcissistic person is always looking for a way to create Advantage for themselves and they want to maintain a narrative that deflects any blame and responsibility from them and place it on someone else and they have to end up looking wonderful in everybody else&amp;#39;s eyes right mobilizing the flying monkeys is a way for them to achieve all three of those things and put the blame on you now that means that there are people around you around all of us that can be mobilized into that role of flying monkey one of the most painful parts of flying monkey that is that these are people they&amp;#39;re often people who you may have considered to be friends or trusted family or just good people in your life unfortunately because narcissistic people are so skilled at wearing a mask they may have tricked these people and there are so many people out there who don&amp;#39;t want to believe that there can be the darkness of narcissism in our midst and any of us who have been through narcissistic abuse and really get it I think we&amp;#39;re regularly shocked at how a few people out in the World At Large do get it now flying monkeys are people who are often vulnerable and recruitable and the manipulations of the narcissist IST are no match for their Rosy eyed or naive vision of the world flying monkeys like I said can be enablers and often want to maintain a sort of pretty and simple view of the world and who can blame them I wish the world was simpler than the the way the view of it that I&amp;#39;ve got these days but that makes the flying monkeys vulnerable to a twisted narrative and also one with the narcissistic person beautifully is able to paint themselves as a victim now just like the the original flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz they&amp;#39;re A Flock they&amp;#39;re almost like a flock of birds they mob and come at you as a group which leaves you feeling even more gaslighted because it seems like an entire group of people are on the same page in a way that is completely at odds with your reality and siding with the narcissist this can be devastating if it is a family and you actually believe that some of these family members had your back or you&amp;#39;ve had their back and been there for them in the past or it could be a long-standing group of friends whom you have known for years in fact you might have been friends with them even before the narcissist became friends with them or colleagues that you have supported for years it&amp;#39;s a betrayal and because it&amp;#39;s a betrayal at such a large scale it is overwhelming and unsettling so to the original concept of this video how are you supposed to protect yourself when it comes to flying monkeys sadly there isn&amp;#39;t much that you can do from a prevention standpoint it&amp;#39;s an exhausting life to have to continually monitor your life and wonder is that person going to become a flying monkey is that person going to become a flying monkey is this there no way to live in some ways all you can do is go through your life as your best you and if the people around you don&amp;#39;t seem to understand narcissism be careful around them because they are the ones that that will be the most recruitable as flying monkeys it&amp;#39;s really where we can address the flying monkeys is what you do as it&amp;#39;s happening or after it happens number one you got to hold on to your reality it&amp;#39;s very easy to be gaslighted and start to doubt yourself and feel deeply confused when lots of people are sharing the same distorted narrative trust yourself there can be so much grief when you&amp;#39;re experiencing the whole flying monkey phenomenon and that grief can drain you and sometimes leave you doubting yourself even more you know you you know what you experienced and even if the flying monkeys want to gasl light you alongside the narcissist you got to hold on to your reality number two don&amp;#39;t try to convert the flying monkeys the group of flying monkeys with the narcissist leading the fry can feel a little bit culty and sometimes the flying monkeys can get really zealous about their support of the narcissist and the idea that you may be to blame all you can do is calmly and gracefully stand in your truth even if you&amp;#39;re so angry inside don&amp;#39;t get into the mud with them they will want to hear your side of things and if you choose to do that stick to the behaviors of the narcissist and don&amp;#39;t get lost in talking about gaslighting and narcissism and other words that might put them on the defensive because when you use those words with flying monkeys they&amp;#39;ll often push back and try to paint you as the bad person number three keep in mind that sometimes flying monkeys come back around before you welcome them back with open arms pay attention to who they were and don&amp;#39;t forget what they were willing to do flying monkeys may come around for a variety of reasons they may get burned by The Narcissist or see them more clearly or see that you aren&amp;#39;t reacting to them it doesn&amp;#39;t mean you have to give up on the friendship or the relationship with the Flying Monkey but you may want to proce proed with more firm boundaries and be armed with the recognition that this person was a friend that became a flying monkey that they were able to do that to you one of the Hallmarks of survival from narcissistic abuse is to move cautiously and slowly but it&amp;#39;s important that you learn to not justify and to not get lost in the cognitive dissonant swamp sadly going forward it may feel like a friendship or relationship with this former flying monkey that&amp;#39;s less deep again a key Mantra of narcissistic abuse survivorship is to protect yourself on the basis of the wisdom of the lessons that you&amp;#39;ve learned from the narcissistic relationship and that means caution and boundaries number four not all flying monkeys are created the same some are trying to play Both Sides being your friend and the narcissistic person&amp;#39;s friend tread very lightly there you do not want to be a source of Intel for the narcissist with a flying monkey telling them what&amp;#39;s going on so keep your answers and thoughts tur and brief and don&amp;#39;t show your hand to the flying monkeys some flying monkeys are as bad as the narcissist and want to jump on the bandwagon of harming you in that case do not engage some flying monkeys are just stupid almost like the dimwitted kid in high school who just wanted to be friends with the cool kids no matter what and sadly in adult life The Narcissist often is the cool kid the stupid flying monkeys aren&amp;#39;t always dangerous but they are definitely not a great person for you you can do better number five hard as it may be build new sources of support there&amp;#39;s nothing like a band of flying monkeys coming at you to be the wakeup call that you need to switch up your game and find some new people this may start in places like therapy but lead you to cultivate friendships with folks who are separate from the narcissist and don&amp;#39;t know them and make sure you do have a safe space like therapy to talk about this because the Betrayal grief and confusion of a flying monkey attack can be overwhelming flying monkeys are a deeply painful situation and flying monkey situations have destroyed families ended friendships and even harmed careers and all of that on top of having to weather the narcissistic abuse many times people will tell you when you talk about this idea of flying monkeys it&amp;#39;s all in your head remember it&amp;#39;s a real phenomenon so just hold on to your reality and watch your head in your back and if any of you have some suggestions on how to man manage uh flying monkeys that you&amp;#39;ve used that have worked for you please drop them in the comments I&amp;#39;ve only offered up five but you may have techniques that I haven&amp;#39;t thought of let&amp;#39;s talk about the victim bully I know you&amp;#39;ve heard about it but let&amp;#39;s just really break it down it&amp;#39;s really going to help you understand narcissism a lot more clearly and if any of you have really encountered that victim bully dynamic in your narcissistic relationship drop it in the comments but the fact is if you have a narcissist in your life I can already guarantee you you have encountered this Dynamic so the narcissist we could actually almost called narcissism victim bully but yeah we call it narcissism so the victim bully is one of the most classical Dynamics in the narcissistic personality and in the narcissistic relationship and like I said I surprised I haven&amp;#39;t talked about it I think I&amp;#39;ve it inserted itself here and there but it&amp;#39;s really important to understand this Dynamic the victim bully accurately because it also sheds a lot of light onto understanding the trauma bont now let me lay out a scenario for you in a rough way so there&amp;#39;s a big bad bullying bossy narcissist about raging around yelling demanding being selfish entitled the basic expectable stuff from a narcissist people are kind of afraid of this person they walk on eggshells everyone is is typically cutting the narcissistic bully a really wide birth finally someone snaps they don&amp;#39;t even care about the narcissistic person&amp;#39;s rage and they snap back and they say you are such an a-hole just stop you are such a jerk you are ruining everybody&amp;#39;s day around here nobody wants to be here anymore because of you we just wish you would leave you are such an awful person okay they say that to the narcissist then the narcissist does a Charlie Brown on you head down and they start in on okay I was just trying to do what people wanted I spent the whole day I spent the whole day trying to make sure I got you guys the right food and the right stuff I was just trying to help everyone and then they may lean into saying things like oh God you guys have always been out to get me I am so good to everyone why do you always Target me okay if that&amp;#39;s what you want you want me to leave okay I guess I&amp;#39;m gonna leave if nobody wants me here they may even walk away right I know I know you don&amp;#39;t want me anymore you just use me right so why don&amp;#39;t you all just have a good time without me and it&amp;#39;s always seemed that no you just expect me to just bring all the stuff and do everything for y&amp;#39;all but you have more fun when I&amp;#39;m not here and honestly none of you understand understand me none of you even want to understand me and then they sort of shamefully walk out of the room and the whole thing is sort of sad and pathetic to watch right and then you the empathic soul that you are after seeing that you want to reach after them and say listen okay I&amp;#39;m sorry I&amp;#39;m sorry all right we don&amp;#39;t need to do this anymore right I was so harsh it&amp;#39;s amazing how quickly you forget how ragy and awful they were just a few minutes ago no I I listen I didn&amp;#39;t mean to hurt you you&amp;#39;re just getting you were getting rough on everyone but we really we we want you to stay okay and then they&amp;#39;re going to m a little while longer and you try even harder to pull them in and before you know it the very bully all of you were scared and aggravated about a little while ago is the victim that you are now trying to soothe and appease and make sure everything&amp;#39;s okay it&amp;#39;s the ultimate slight of hand the switching of the masks the shapeshifting move that they&amp;#39;re so good at it&amp;#39;s the victim bully sequence narcissistic folks have this mastered to a magical art form vulnerable narcissists tend to be the ones that are the best at it but every narcissist does it it&amp;#39;s what makes the trauma Bond so traumatic just when a person hits the Breaking Point with a narcissistic person that the rage and all of the invalidation and the berading and the humiliation finally gets to a person and they take a stand against the narcissist the narcissist is masterful at playing the sulking petulent victim and because most people stuck in narcissistic relationships tend to be pretty good kind compassionate empathic people they struggle with seeing the sort of the the consequences like that leave the narcissist looking so victimized and sad and they recant and they find them El trying to cheer up the victimized narcissist because people whove suffered narcissistic abuse are uncomfortable with that tension with that conflict it&amp;#39;s a brilliant but sick maneuver by the narcissistic person in one quick second they are able to turn the tables from someone actually being really angry with them or upset about them to someone trying to appease them in many cases narcissistic people are so good at playing the victim that people tend to forget The Bullying sequence that just happened and just focus their their energies on making sure that the narcissist is okay another way that the victim bully sequence plays out is when you do call them out on their bad behavior they try to play it off as a joke you may say you know what you just did or said it was hurtful or it was wrong and they will come back with oh come on that was a joke I was just joking can&amp;#39;t you take a joke and if you push harder and say it&amp;#39;s not really okay to make jokes at another person&amp;#39;s expense or that hurts them and that it sort of felt abusive that&amp;#39;s when they&amp;#39;ll start to become rageful because basically at that point you&amp;#39;re kind of calling them out as a bit of a rotten abusive person and that inflames the whole shame rage spiral at their deepest core narcissistic people know that they&amp;#39;re not nice people and when that Primal stuff gets stirred up their claws come out trying to make it about being a joke frankly is gaslighting and it puts them in the victim position of being oh so misunderstood you didn&amp;#39;t understand my joke the structural reason for this is because every narcissist has both the grandiose and the vulnerable elements encompassed with them they&amp;#39;re grandiose when stuff&amp;#39;s going well right but when the grandiose stuff isn&amp;#39;t working stuff in their life isn&amp;#39;t going their way or they get called out or they experience something that activates their shame for example someone calling out on their behavior then the vulnerable narcissist comes out to play and then the victimhood descends the victim bully sequence confuses people but once you recognize it as a strategy or a tactic by the narcissistic person it makes more sense than seeing it as the narcissist being two different people they are in fact one person one very tactical manipulative person over time this victim bully thing has worked worked for them don&amp;#39;t get me wrong when they are hurt and for them hurt means ego injury not necessarily hurt feelings per se but when something happens something that makes them not look good to other people or they feel that they aren&amp;#39;t being adequately appreciated it doesn&amp;#39;t feel good for them and that&amp;#39;s when they VI slide immediately into the victimized wo is me that part in and of itself isn&amp;#39;t that interesting many of us even not narcissists can pretty easily fall into a victimized space when people are calling us out the difference is that the narcissistic people have the bully piece alongside the victim piece so the Jos of the two is what is so striking that they can go from being such jerks to being so victimized just like that I am thinking of one situation I had observed the guy was a wo H class narcissist arrogant superficial validation seeking insecure angry treated people around him horribly at one point the person he was dating and because he was so insecure he would waste lots of money on gifts not just for her but for everyone around him was notoriously big Tipper that kind of thing well at one point she was witnessing yet another of his rage festivals and yelling he was yelling at various household employees and family members but this time his girlfriend who wasn&amp;#39;t very nice herself she had had it with him and it turns out that he had also just purchased a very expensive gift for her he gave her the day before but because she was so exasperated with him she left because she thought he was acting like such an awful person after she left he became an insta victim he couldn&amp;#39;t believe that nobody could appreciate him he took such good care of everyone he buys everyone so much gifts he spent so much on her so now his narrative was that she was just using him and then he slumped into a deflated balloon he cried he told her he missed her and that people have always left him and he would buy her anything she wanted and you know nobody likes him and he knew knows the only reason anyone likes him is because he spends money who knows if she came back to him because of the gift or because of him she claimed she came back to him because she felt so bad for him because he was so pathetic and she felt guilty like she was to blame and as far as I know I don&amp;#39;t have contact with these people anymore the cycle still continues between these two they are caught in their trauma bonded dance he vacillates between bullying and then when people call him out becoming the victim and anytime she finds her strength to leave his victimhood and I&amp;#39;m guessing the rather expensive gifts that he purchases pull her back in this was a toxic dance wrapped in a transactional mess narcissistic relationship the victim bully is every narcissist ever we see it all the time for example when idiot celebrities tweet or post stupid thoughtless opinions on social media without thinking about who they would hurt or how insensitive the comment would be and folks this is on all sides of the political Spectrum right left and everybody in between I think maybe normal people do this too but when normal people do it nobody cares but then the celebrity gets called out and then it&amp;#39;s a whole victimized oh okay I know I want wasn&amp;#39;t thinking I was misunderstood it&amp;#39;s so hard to be a celebrity I&amp;#39;m shutting down my social media because I&amp;#39;m so misunderstood blah blah blah it&amp;#39;s the same thing celebrities and politicians with their enormous platforms and egos can be bullies and then they immediately behave like victims when they get called out for behaving so badly the main reason narcissistic people get away with stuff it&amp;#39;s actually quite interesting we understand frankly that three-year-old children need consequences for their behavior if they mouth off they get a consequence they don&amp;#39;t tidy up their toys maybe they get a consequence if they throw their food a consequence hit their sibling consequence don&amp;#39;t clean up their cubby at school consequence but adult narcissist no consequences the victim play that&amp;#39;s their response to a consequence we we hold them accountable narcissist every so often we hold them accountable and then they immediately become a victim and all of us for fall for it oh poor sad narcissist but really bullies don&amp;#39;t like consequences if consequences are good enough for a three-year-old then they are good enough for a 43y old so when you feel pulled to rescue the victimized bully stop yourself and recognize that they&amp;#39;re just a three-year-old that&amp;#39;s pissed off about time off it makes it a lot easier to try to not get in there and appease them and remember the narcissist isn&amp;#39;t two people they are just one well-oiled manipulation machine Let&amp;#39;s Take on this issue of devaluing and discarding the classical narcissistic fairy tale starts with idealization and then moves on to devaluation and then discarding everyone thinks it won&amp;#39;t happen to them and yet without exception The Story Goes Down the same way every time to feel thrown away by another person is an awful experience but yet it is sort of a universal part of the narcissistic relationship so let&amp;#39;s start by taking a look at the narcissistic relationship cycle in most cases not all not all by any means but many most the ideal ization often takes the form of love bombing which is another video in this series so love bombing or idealization lasts just long enough to get you stuck in this relationship Dynamic just when you exhale and believe in the fairy tale then bam that&amp;#39;s when the devaluation phase starts devaluation can start slow it&amp;#39;s when the little criticisms begin when you start experiencing the contempt when the gifts and the big nights out go away when the narcissist&amp;#39;s phone becomes much more interesting than you sitting in front of them and when the sideways comments like I don&amp;#39;t know like are you really going to wear that and other comments of that ilk start to creep into the relationship it can be a real time of intense confusion in the relationship because you can&amp;#39;t figure out when the love bombing ended and when the contempt began all you know is it&amp;#39;s though the weather changed it went from being very warm to very cold kind of quickly the devaluing phase tends to happen just as you start to feel more settled into the relationship as a real relationship you may have actually been resisting the relationship for a while and you might have even have been Savvy enough to think H this love bombing is a little bit too good to be true I&amp;#39;m not going to be played and then just when you settled in when you felt like it was a real and whole relationship that is when the devaluation Begins the reason for this sort of shift it&amp;#39;s a bit nuanced but it largely happens because at the deepest deep a narcissist self-loathing is actually so deep and so unprocessed that just as someone does see the good in them it&amp;#39;s as though it activates their self contempt which they then project onto you and then voila devaluation it&amp;#39;s as though they project their devaluation of themselves onto you now devaluation can last for months years and even decades it becomes before you know it&amp;#39;s sort of a new normal your life tends to be punctuated by insults and by invalidation the discard is just what it sounds like discarding is honestly like throwing out the trash it&amp;#39;s like they&amp;#39;re done with you now sometimes discarding never really truly happens you may just kind of get stuck in the Purgatory of devaluation forever but discarding happens when they cast you aside and it this is almost like discarding is like it can be really cold and you can actually have a narcissistic relationship that keeps happening even when you&amp;#39;ve been discarded so for example your narcissist may have an affair an extra marital Affair just cheat on you and so you were in essence discarded but you still stay in the relationship or they may take a job or take advantage of an opportunity that doesn&amp;#39;t take you into consideration so either you have to leave your life behind to join them or be left behind so they&amp;#39;re just kind of doing what works for them the discarding is often motivated for the narcissist from a place of both contempt and of boredom basically your narcissistic supply has become quite stale and narcissists tend to be very novelty seeking so it all depends on your story no matter what it feels awful to be discarded from a relationship that you actually believe that you&amp;#39;re in many narcissists expect you often to do the Dirty Work and end the relationship so they can turn around and say h she was the one who left me he was the one who filed for divorce she moved out and walked out on me and the kids uh he walked away from his family when that happens they get to look good to the world and since the narcissist is often going to turn around and tell the world a false story then you look like the one who is unfeeling or unkind or willing to walk away from something which doesn&amp;#39;t feel good now the mistakes that people most often make during the devaluation in the discarding phase is to ask that killer question why during the devaluation phase they&amp;#39;re going to Gaslight you and deny that they are devaluing you and in fact they may turn around and call you paranoid or hypers sensitive or crazy now during the discarding phase if you try to make them accountable for their behavior again you&amp;#39;re going to run into more gaslighting now people want to make sense of this process so asking why is understandable but there&amp;#39;s really no sense to be made of it because the narcissist isn&amp;#39;t going to cop to it the narcissist isn&amp;#39;t going to turn around and say yeah I&amp;#39;m not capable of making healthy attachments and I&amp;#39;m deeply insecure and I have contempt for intimacy so I am actually yeah I&amp;#39;m rejecting you and I&amp;#39;m treating you badly to see and test my hypothesis that you will observe my insecurity and that you will leave me and my fantasy is that&amp;#39;s the case and then let&amp;#39;s see if that comes true no they are not going to say that to you even though that&amp;#39;s the dynamic that&amp;#39;s likely unfolding so asking them for an explanation is likely to bring more harm than good because they themselves aren&amp;#39;t in touch with what&amp;#39;s happening now the devaluing and discarding S Cycles happen in families as well in general if you weren&amp;#39;t just blindly going along with a narcissist agenda then they often think that you are against them and in a family this can happen when you just don&amp;#39;t go along with the program with what the narcissistic parent or sibling or Aunt or grandparent want your family members the family members will find out that if you or they learn that if you appease the narcissistic family remember then you will be able to keep them calm and stay in their good graces and this can be particularly profound if the narcissist has some kind of power so for example the money that they may use to control family members so if you do lay down some real boundaries that&amp;#39;s when often in a family the devaluation and discarding cycle can begin now for scapegoats in a family system the discard and devaluation cycle is an eternal part of the scapegoats role in the family system they&amp;#39;re constantly being devalued constantly being devalued and if the scapegoat tries to set a boundary boom they&amp;#39;ll be discarded now devaluing and discarding can also absolutely take place in workplace settings and in those cases it&amp;#39;s in which narcissistic bosses and narcissistic managers and leaders devel value the people that they think aren&amp;#39;t their team players basically these are the people who are not the Yes Men or the yes women and then ultimately they may make life so miserable for the people who don&amp;#39;t just sign on with whatever Twisted agenda they have that those people actually end up leaving or may get fired now the devaluation and discarding cycle is sadly enough often followed by hoovering that&amp;#39;s why it&amp;#39;s a dysfunctional cycle some people get so disgusted by the discarding cycle that they do ultimately leave but it&amp;#39;s not unusual for that insecure narcissist who wants to keep control to try to Hoover them back now if you fall for it and allow yourself to be sucked in that whole cycle is going to begin again idealization devaluation and discarding it&amp;#39;s just sort of this eternal cycle that&amp;#39;s really only going to end if you&amp;#39;re the one who&amp;#39;s going to be courageous enough to break it and it can really be quite addictive lots of people confuse the excitement of hoovering and idealization with love it&amp;#39;s really not it&amp;#39;s abuse and therapy becomes a key tool to at least start thinking about how to end the confusion and the conflation that love and abusive relationship Cycles are the same thing now narcissist devalue and discard for many of the reasons mentioned but also because they devalue intimacy and because they have very limited empathy They Don&amp;#39;t Really Care how these Cycles are hurting you or impacting you they just do it without thinking and in some ways the chaos it feels comfortable for them they don&amp;#39;t have any regard for how it hurts you but they do kind of like the excitement and the roller coaster nature of this cycle now these toxic Cycles take a tremendous toll on the people who get stuck in them basically this turns relationships into roller coasters and almost like addictive cycles and these can often perpetuate Early Childhood patterns you may have had around rejection in some ways these toxic Cycles keep their relationship exciting for the narcissist and it&amp;#39;s very easy to get sucked into their Vortex and cycle and for some people this cycle strangely enough becomes sort of a re enactment of trying to win over their unwinable parent in childhood it almost feels familiar to be rejected and it can feel exciting when you are hoovered back in and idealized for a minute and in that moment you&amp;#39;re almost taken back to Childhood where you feel like I&amp;#39;ve won that parent over but then when the devaluing and discard Cycles happen and it&amp;#39;s inevitable that they will sadly those Cycles feel familiar too and your ancient script of feeling like you&amp;#39;re not enough gets activated again now some people allow these devaluation and discarding Cycles to happen because they&amp;#39;ll often buy into the narcissist narrative about how difficult their lives were and and the narcissist lives may very well have been quite difficult The Narcissist will often share a story about having never seeing love when they were growing up and that it was so terrible for them and you endure the narcissist cycle because you believe it&amp;#39;s the loving thing to do that maybe you&amp;#39;re going to correct it for the narcissist and it&amp;#39;s not allowing yourself to be harmed in the Name of Love isn&amp;#39;t love their tale of Woe or abuse or trauma it may be very very true they may have actually had a very rough childhood and it is you&amp;#39;re sorry about that but it&amp;#39;s not your responsibility it&amp;#39;s not your responsib ability you can&amp;#39;t change their history and remaining there as an object that at times they value but more often reject is not only not doing the narcissist any favors it&amp;#39;s taking a tremendous toll on your mental and physical health there are no winners here now being discarded is an awful feeling it can raise tremendous triggers around abandonment and rejection and lots of people will fight for the relationship at that point they want to maintain that fantasy of the happy relationship or the Happy Family the fact is in some ways we are really stubborn creatures we human beings and we fight for those things we can&amp;#39;t have we get stuck on the things we can&amp;#39;t have and things often become much more interesting when they&amp;#39;re slipping away or we&amp;#39;re just not allowed to have them we&amp;#39;re all the kids who want the thing in the cookie jar and don&amp;#39;t fall for that trick if you have been devalued and then you&amp;#39;re being discarded receive it believe it or not as a gift I know that sounds paradoxical but it&amp;#39;s a chance to get away from a relationship that is likely making you sick but to do that you have to Value yourself first and that requires a deeper dive into where those scripts about self- devaluation come from and flipping yourself over into a space of self-compassion now keep in mind that self-compassion is like Kryptonite against the charms of the narcissist once you have self-compassion honestly the narcissist is rendered powerless and you can finally walk away it&amp;#39;s interesting to think that in a discard and a devalue cycle that you could actually get that kind of power you often feel like you&amp;#39;re stuck at the whims of the narcissist when they will devalue you when they will discard you whether that&amp;#39;s a partner family member or even a boss but the fact of the matter is ultimately believe it or not in these Cycles you have a lot more power than you think in the form of self-compassion self-compassion not only allows you to say yeah no I&amp;#39;m not doing this cycle I see what it is it&amp;#39;s not good for me and allow you allow to step allow you to step away but self-compassion also allows you to feel compassion for the other and as difficult and challenging as these narcissistic relationships are as I said many times narcissistic individuals have had very difficult backstories in fact it&amp;#39;s what explains a lot of their personality and why it&amp;#39;s organized the way it is there is no need for you to engage in those kinds of toxic Cycles you don&amp;#39;t have to De devalue and discard for from a place of self-compassion you can also let them go from a place of compassion and in your heart hope that maybe they can go and get the help they need to grow into a healthier future however that&amp;#39;s not your job self-preservation is a right and if you&amp;#39;re going to preserve yourself in these Cycles you&amp;#39;ve got to exercise that right and break the devaluation and discard cycle thank you again for tuning in I hope this video helped you understand the theme the terms devaluation and more importantly discarding which are very much a part of the narcissistic relationship cycle as always if you like this content I just ask that you hit the Bell subscribe to this channel not only will you get notifications about the rest of this series but all of our future series and the weekly content we put out 52 weeks a year so thanks again for tuning into this series and look forward to seeing you on the next episode

Transcript for:Understanding Narcissistic Rage, Shame, and Relationship Cycles

Transcript for:
Understanding Narcissistic Rage, Shame, and Relationship Cycles