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The Narcissist Abuse Recovery Channel is a transformative and supportive Podcast, dedicated to helping those who are, or have been, abused by narcissists to heal from the ravages of narcissistic abuse. Our show is a lifeline for those who are looking for next steps in their emotional and psychological healing, offering expert guidance and practical solutions for those who are in narcissistic relationships or are rebuilding their lives after narcissistic abuse. The hosts are Attorney Padideh Jafari and Jon McKenney who have helped hundreds of people in their narcissistic abuse recovery and know the journey personally in their own lives.
Ultimately, it leaves your victim questioning their own reality and questioning absolutely everything about them. It really it destroys your mental capacity.
Voiceover:In a world of hurt and pain, we find our way to break the chain. A caring heart, a guiding light, lead us through the darkest night. With preservation in our soul, we'll rescue those who've lost control. Escape the grip of a narcissist on our journey to recovery bliss. Welcome to the Narcissist Abuse Recovery Channel with John McKenney and Padida Jafari.
Jon McKenney:Padida, it is so good to see you again. How are you doing?
Padideh Jafari:I'm doing well. How are you?
Jon McKenney:Good. It's good to see your smiling face. We were just talking about this offline a minute ago. I really miss you. It's like we've hardly seen each other or talked the last month or so.
Jon McKenney:I know you were sick like forever.
Padideh Jafari:Yeah. I was sick and then just getting through the holidays. And, but yeah, you know, I'm back and stronger than ever, so.
Jon McKenney:Fantastic. And guess what this is, season five.
Padideh Jafari:I know, amazing.
Jon McKenney:Can you believe that?
Padideh Jafari:Actually, I can't.
Jon McKenney:It's crazy. It's crazy.
Padideh Jafari:I'm actually at the OLAS Media studio today.
Jon McKenney:Oh, wonderful.
Padideh Jafari:Recording, and yes, and I was just talking with Lena, who is wonderful here.
Jon McKenney:They're amazing people there.
Padideh Jafari:JC and Lina, shout out to them. So she was like, I'm so proud of you guys. You guys are season
Padideh Jafari:five. So
Jon McKenney:We it's big made it over the hump, right? Didn't you tell me that most podcasts don't get beyond episode 20? And that would have been our twentieth.
Padideh Jafari:Yes. I'm really excited to be doing this with my bestie. So.
Jon McKenney:Yes. Amen to that. So good to see you. And, and we have a, we have kind of an interesting topic. Know we've kind of, we may have, we may have talked about this some, but really not in detail, but we wanted to talk today about how narcissists can kind of legit make you crazy.
Jon McKenney:Yep. And I'm not just talking about like, like crazy. I'm having a bad day. I'm talking about crazy. I'm having a bad life and completely out there with respect to my thinking.
Padideh Jafari:Yeah, I mean crazy to the point of wanting to be committed almost in a hospital to get away from them.
Jon McKenney:Yeah, my ex and her therapist actually were talking about doing that with me. So because I was, I was not in a good place from all of the narcissistic abuse. So, and she had, she found us a nice narcissistic therapist who who made my problems worse. So it was she was not willing to go deal with the narcissism in the room and wanted to continue to pretend, which ultimately made it an even worse deal. And when you've seen a therapist, and by the way, a lot of times therapists are not so helpful with respect to narcissistic abuse, especially if the narcissist is in the room.
Jon McKenney:I think I'm in the place right now. The only real value I had in going and seeing a therapist was that my narcissist ex got diagnosed, which is unusual. But that was done also by a counselor who happened to also be a coach in a narcissistic abuse arena. So she was able to very quickly help me. And ultimately my narcissist ex left.
Jon McKenney:She didn't want to counsel anyway. As soon as she found out that there was something wrong with her, she gone.
Padideh Jafari:So these are two different therapists you went to, correct?
Jon McKenney:I did. I did. I saw one up front more for marriage counseling, I just realized that she was a narcissist and actually brought that to the table. She said, Yeah, we'll deal with that, and never did. She would tell me one thing privately to myself.
Jon McKenney:She'd go, Oh yeah, she's a narcissist. She's this, that. She's doing this and this and that. And then with her in the room, she would actually flip the script and she would completely change the story. It was pretty ridiculous.
Jon McKenney:I felt like that was even that was part of the crazy making in my journey was not just the abuse from my narcissist ex, but also from a therapist who I was speaking the truth to. My ex was lying in every which way. And she was taking the side of my ex and would not deal with the deception. It was kind of crazy.
Padideh Jafari:Wow. So it's like being gaslit by your therapist. And wow, I actually haven't heard this story before, so I'm just a little bit shocked.
Jon McKenney:Yeah. Yeah. She, I mean, Ultimately, figured out through this article that my ex was a narcissist. Like that was my moment. Somebody had sent me an article and I read it by Shahid Ararabi about 20 tactics of narcissistic abuse.
Jon McKenney:Ultimately, I finally did get it and I'm like, okay, this is what's going on. And I'd like to discuss this and got there. I told her also that I'd like to have both of us in the room because I felt like my narcissist ex would just lie. She'd been to therapist by herself for years. And I'm sure she would just say, well, my husband's mean, my husband's angry without any of the side story and certainly her part of the equation.
Jon McKenney:And I realized we weren't getting anywhere. So I'm like, all right, fine. We need to go see somebody. We need to see somebody together. So I started there and the lady said, I'd really like to see you guys separately.
Jon McKenney:And I'm like, yeah, I'm really not interested in that. We've wasted enough money on that already. And I think we need to be together. She goes, no, I'll make sure that it works out. She saw my ex for two sessions and she said she'd talk to me about it and she didn't.
Jon McKenney:So I called her and I said, hey, you know, what's going on here? We haven't had a session. And she goes, Well, I'm going to go do this the way I like. And if you don't like that, you can hit the road. Oh, okay.
Jon McKenney:I hadn't really had much of a conversation with her except on the phone. And then it wound down to where we were together. She would tell me one story and would absolve my narcissist ex of all responsibility whatsoever. She would encourage lying and deception. Even if I said this is a lie, she goes, I don't care.
Jon McKenney:Then privately, she would say, Yeah, she's got personality distortions and she's got something similar to narcissistic personality disorder. It was really kind of crazy. It was very crazy making in and of itself. That's really kind of one of the things that brings a person to craziness, is somebody saying one thing and doing another. Not only did I have that from one person, I had it from two, and the second one was a therapist.
Jon McKenney:So, it was pretty wild.
Padideh Jafari:Yeah, I can just imagine. Oh my goodness. Wow.
Jon McKenney:Did you have any situations like that that kind of brought it over the top for you?
Padideh Jafari:I mean, we had several different therapists throughout our relationship. You know, we were, we were together for seven years, married for four of those, seven years. And, you know, it was just really tough because my ex husband looked good and he always presented well and was very charming. And women liked him and I don't blame them. I mean, that's why I fell for him too.
Jon McKenney:Is that the hard part right there? I hate to interrupt, but I want to pause at that. Narcissists look really charming and are attractive to the outside world. My narcissist ex looked the same to the therapist and to everybody else. Meanwhile, you're in this relationship privately just dying, and that adds to the craziness.
Padideh Jafari:Right. So the last therapist that I went to is when we had separated, and he was my therapist. And, you know, he had a couple sessions with him and then he said, I wanna meet your soon to be ex husband because we were still trying, right? Even though we were separated, we were still trying. And he met him and one time and then he said, okay, now it's good to meet you finally, put a face to the name.
Padideh Jafari:And then after that, the next session he told me, You have to leave, you have to move. And I said, What do you mean? And he said, This man is going to kill you you And don't so I really do owe him my life. He has since passed away. His name is Doctor.
Padideh Jafari:Shamsaan. He's helped a lot of Iranian families and he did a lot of work with children, his addiction and things like that. So, I owe that man my life because no one had ever said that to me. And without him saying narcissism or anything like that, he was like, No, this man is going to kill you. So, agree with you.
Padideh Jafari:I mean, I think, you know, and we meet a lot of therapists too because of what we do in our podcast, And someone to come on our podcast and we need to vet them very well because they can be the narcissist themselves.
Jon McKenney:Absolutely. In my situation, in fact, I had a friend, this happened years later, I had a friend who was a child of a narcissist who had actually seen this same therapist and he goes, Oh, she's horrible. Said, I could see why you had problems. She was the worst therapist I'd ever seen. That, you know, there were also helpful people out there and I'm grateful for those, but they really helped me.
Jon McKenney:They did not help her.
Padideh Jafari:Right.
Jon McKenney:So when you get into this situation where there's triangulation, where you got two on one, it also intensifies the feelings of actually going crazy. You go, Well, there are two people here. They see that car as beige. I must be the one that's off. Does everybody see that car is beige?
Jon McKenney:And you add that to gaslighting that's going on. Would you define gaslighting, Padida?
Padideh Jafari:Well, I mean, I guess gaslighting is where where you have a set of facts, right? And then you're trying to present the facts and the other person is saying, no, those are not the facts. And then they come up with some random arbitrary thing that they're calling facts. And so now you're having to disprove something and it's really difficult and it will make you crazy. And a lot of times I've seen this done in court with a judge because the judge doesn't know, you know, what's going on in the marriage.
Padideh Jafari:Right? Or what's going on with your child. So a lot of times opposing parties I've seen will gaslight the judge and say, no, no, no. It was this other way. Like, I'll give you a great example.
Padideh Jafari:Have a case right now where dad is saying that he is the primary caretaker of the children and mom is saying, no, it's actually the opposite. And we found out through minors council that the children don't even want to go with their father, there's three children. And so our argument is, if he was always a caretaker, then how come the children don't want to go with dad now?
Jon McKenney:Right.
Padideh Jafari:So, it's having to disprove is really, really difficult. I mean, we had to hire and have the court appoint minors counsel, and that's like a third party in the divorce now that's interviewing the children. So, gaslighting is very, very difficult to prove. You know, it's just, it's really hard. And again, this is the stuff that makes you crazy, that makes the innocent, you know, the victim, the innocent party, the survivor go crazy.
Jon McKenney:Yep. And that did you do you know where the term gaslighting came from?
Padideh Jafari:No. Actually, I don't.
Jon McKenney:It's it's actually a movie called Gaslight. I think it was made in the thirties or forties. And basically, this woman and gaslighting is a is a kind of deception. It's a kind of lying that that basically makes somebody feel like they're going crazy. You can I think I've said before, it's like coming home and showing your new car to your spouse and going, What do you think of my new car?
Jon McKenney:This car is blue. And they go, The car is red. I go, It's blue. I got the documentation right here. It's blue.
Jon McKenney:No, that's red. And you continue to try and talk them into the fact, into the truth. It's red. And they go, no, no, or it's blue. And they go, no, no, no.
Jon McKenney:It's red. It's red. I promise. Then you come home the next day. You give it up because you're not getting anywhere.
Jon McKenney:You come home the next day and they go, what a nice orange car. The car is still blue. We had this conversation yesterday. You said it was red yesterday. No, I didn't.
Jon McKenney:I didn't say that car was red. Yes, you did. You told me it was red. No, I didn't say anything like that. The car is orange.
Jon McKenney:Well, the car is not orange. The car is the car is blue. And you go on and you you give that up. And then the next day you come home and go, boy, what a nice yellow car you have. You know, the car is blue.
Jon McKenney:And it continues on like this to the point where you feel like you're going crazy. And this movie is exactly about that. This guy would move things around the house and literally made her go kind of insane. In fact, it's a good watch. I did watch it, really.
Jon McKenney:Although it can be kind of triggering for anybody who's in narcissistic abuse and has endured gaslighting real bad, but it's a really good example of what it is. You have this gaslighting that's going on constantly in your life and you can't ever resolve a situation. Never. There is no closure whatsoever in absolutely everything. For me, one of the places that most drove me nuts with with gaslighting with my ex, particularly here, was she had had an emotional obsession with another man by her own definition, by the way.
Jon McKenney:Those emotional obsessions were her words. I kind of never recovered from that in our marriage. And the reason I never recovered from it is, you know, I've said on past podcasts that there were times where she would be honest and they're very rare, but this was one of them where she had had this emotional obsession. And then three days later said, I don't know what you're talking about. After having confessed it to me and telling me that she'd she'd had one.
Jon McKenney:So I never did kind of move beyond this and would continue to press for closure in it. And she'd say to me one day, she'd go, well, you know, I didn't, I didn't emotionally abandon the relationship. I go, no, what did you do? I just protected myself. Okay.
Jon McKenney:Well, how did you protect yourself? Well, I just, I abandoned. I didn't abandon the relationship. Abandoned intimacy. And I go, well, intimacy is something two people have.
Jon McKenney:You kind of can't have intimacy by yourself. You know, and each time I would bring this topic up, she'd have another definition for what was taking place. So a friend of mine said, it's like moving a cup around the table. You go, okay, here, the cup's in one place. This is what's going on.
Jon McKenney:She goes, no, this isn't what's going on. This is what's going on. Moves the cup. Then he'd take the cup and move it again and say, no, here we are again. Three days after having confessed it to me.
Jon McKenney:And again, I've talked about how occasionally narcissists get honest, she did in this particular moment. And later on, I I mean, she just she said to me three days later, this never happened. I don't know what you're talking about. And for me, it was very hard to draw close. It was hard to continue to be engaged.
Jon McKenney:I knew I'd had that conversation with her and she continued to deny it. In fact, what I hear later is I didn't do anything wrong. Don't know what you're talking about. Don't know who you're talking about. And I tried to press for closure in our relationship because I couldn't go on without it.
Jon McKenney:Ultimately, I look back now, this was probably the demise of our relationship, the real beginning of the demise of our relationship because I couldn't go forward knowing that she'd had an emotional obsession with another man and absolutely refused to address it or even apologize or repent over it. In fact, I'd even ask her, are you sorry for it? She goes, no, I didn't do anything wrong. So I say, well, what happened in that moment? Why did you have an emotional obsession with this other man?
Jon McKenney:Well, you know, I didn't abandon our relationship like you're saying. I go, okay. Well, emotional obsession is kind of abandoning the relationship. What were you doing? I was protecting myself.
Jon McKenney:Well, how are you protecting myself? Well, I don't know. What were you protecting yourself from? I don't know. But I didn't do anything wrong.
Jon McKenney:Then we come back and address it the next day. Well, I didn't abandon you. I abandoned intimacy. Well, intimacy is something I tell her between two people, you kinda can't abandon the concept of intimacy intellectually and not abandon the person on the other side of that. And then she changed it again.
Jon McKenney:And it was like, every time we had this conversation, the story would change. When you're dealing with somebody who's got narcissistic abuse, that's exactly what happens. This is what gaslighting is like. Every time you go back to a situation, every time you revisit it, you get an entirely different story trying to explain what happened. It doesn't allow you to go heal or to move forward in any kind of way.
Padideh Jafari:Why didn't she just go back to that person? Why didn't she just leave you and go back to that person she was having an emotional I don't know.
Jon McKenney:Affair
Padideh Jafari:Because that would have been, right? I mean, sorry John, I married you. I thought I was over this other person. Let me just go and pursue that. Instead, she stayed with you for like eighteen years.
Jon McKenney:Well, in her defense, she said she never saw him, and I don't understand that. If you never saw him, then it would have been kind of a blip on the radar screen, and I even told her so. I said, violation here. The first conversation we had where she kind of confessed it all and it was the rare moment of honesty, to be truthful with you, I thought that was the breakthrough in our marriage. I thought if you can confess something like this and still be loved by your spouse, it'll change everything.
Jon McKenney:Because I was nothing but loving. I prayed with her. I held her. I told her it would be okay. And then three days later, goes, I don't know what you're talking about.
Jon McKenney:None of that ever happened. So I can remember going to a different therapist, yet a different one later, and telling her about all of this. And I said, so she's pretending it didn't happen. Said, and here we are nine years later. She still says nothing happened.
Jon McKenney:She still says she didn't see the guy. I don't know because she told me she had an emotional obsession with him. She said she was looking for him in stores and all of this other stuff. So so when somebody tells you something like that and then they go back on it, what do you think? And the therapist said, she's cheating on you.
Jon McKenney:I'm like, Yep. That's exactly right. And it never did get resolved. Therapist even tried to work with her on a letter telling her, you know, write a letter of confession and lay it all out to your husband. And she did.
Jon McKenney:And I looked at her and I said, if you change the words in this letter, if you tell me again that you didn't do anything wrong, I will grab it and tear it up. And I I had to do that because it was an exercise. It it was just more gaslighting. And I was getting to the place where it was driving me crazy to be to try to be in this relationship with somebody who said they had an emotional obsession with somebody else, and I couldn't I couldn't do it. Three days later, she goes, Yeah, that never happened.
Jon McKenney:And that's the kind of stuff that drives you absolutely batshit crazy.
Padideh Jafari:Right. So she had this emotional affair with this person in her mind, but then she never saw she says that she never saw the person. Do you know if that's Yes.
Jon McKenney:Have no idea. And with a narcissist, you ever tell. I know I've talked about before how my narcissist ex, how she said she had cancer one time. Wound up I had cancer on my back and some kind of skin cancer thing. Wasn't the worst thing, but I had cancer.
Jon McKenney:When I told her, she said, Oh, well, I had that. And I'm like, No, you didn't. You told me you went to the doctor and he removed a mole and it was not cancerous. And then she started to pretend, No, it was cancer. It was the same exact kind you had, and I'm going call the doctor and tell him you made a mistake.
Jon McKenney:So it occurred to me at one point in time, I go, I don't know what the truth is. The truth is she could have she could honestly have gone to the the dermatologist, had this big mole on her back, and then the said, Oh, that's skin cancer. And when I asked her about it, because she doesn't want to deal with any problems in life at all, I said, Was it cancer? She goes, No, it wasn't cancerous at all. So I don't know the truth.
Jon McKenney:She could have had it, but I don't think she did. When somebody gaslights you like that, these are the kinds of things that drive you absolutely insane because you don't ever know the truth and this person is sleeping in the same bed with you.
Padideh Jafari:Right. Oh my gosh, I feel like I'm trying to make sense of it right now. Like, did she see him? Did she not see him? Did he know?
Padideh Jafari:Did she really cheat on you physically? I mean, it's just, it's crazy making. And I remember those times of, you know, crazy making with my ex husband where I'm like, I just, just tell me the truth, you know, but they don't know the truth. They don't know how to be truthful and honest and vulnerable. They don't know John.
Padideh Jafari:They just don't know it. It's just, they don't know how to do it. And there's sparks of it. You're like, yes. You know, but then they'll go back on what they said like a couple days later, like you said.
Padideh Jafari:So, blueprint of the narcissist is the same, but our stories are a little bit different. But that's how I can relate to your story that you're saying because I understand it. Went to And
Jon McKenney:you're trying to figure it out. Right? You're trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. When she when she I can remember when she first said, I didn't say any of that. You go, wait a minute.
Jon McKenney:Wait. What did she say? Did she did she tell me she had emotional obsession? And it again, even just when it's the two of you go, wait a minute. I know we had that conversation.
Jon McKenney:And if you have enough of these kinds of things happen, you you stop trusting your own thinking. And it's like, I don't know what to do. I'm trying to figure all this out and I'm unable to go do it because of this gaslighting. And the other thing we ought to talk about in this particular situation is toxic amnesia. But before we move to that, you had a really good definition for gaslighting that you wanted to read.
Jon McKenney:Why don't we take to that real quick and insert that here into our podcast, because we need a good definition.
Padideh Jafari:Yeah. So, gaslighting is a practice of psychologically manipulating someone into questioning their own sanity, memory, and powers of reasoning.
Jon McKenney:Yep. And it's done through deception. It is it is constantly done through deception. You say one thing, you do another, you give completely different stories about real circumstances that took place. You change the story all the time, And ultimately, it leaves your victim questioning their own reality and questioning absolutely everything about them.
Jon McKenney:It really I'm trying to figure out words to say this. It destroys your mental capacity emotionally in just about every area of your life. Like, literally, you take this situation because ideally marriage or a relationship, if you're just in a relationship with somebody, boyfriend, girlfriend, this person is supposed to be kind of your soulmate, is supposed to be in the deepest place. And this is where the trust violation is. It's in this deep center that you've attached yourself to.
Jon McKenney:And it ultimately makes you question everything around you. It affects your ability to make decisions at work. Did I get that right? Did I, Do we have that conversation? I thought I heard that.
Jon McKenney:And you're constantly questioning yourself because you stop trusting your own thinking on the other end And of you literally, literally feel like you're going crazy. Even as I'm describing this story, I can feel a little bit of it. It's like, Did I hear that right? As I'm recalling it, I'm questioning myself and I'm telling our listeners, Did I hear that? Am I saying that right?
Jon McKenney:Did she that? Because it'll rattle around in your head going back through what you know is true versus their side of the story, and there's no way to go explain it like I was standing in front of that VW. How is it possible that he sees that car beige? I'm standing in front of it, I see it's green. And you have this disparity and you can't explain it and you don't know what to do with it.
Jon McKenney:Ultimately the end result is you think, yeah, think maybe I'm going crazy. There are two of them with the same color and the same thing happens with your spouse. Then your narcissist ex and narcissist spouse. Then you add triangulation on top of that, and they involve somebody else who believes they're a lie. Now it's two in one.
Jon McKenney:And then maybe three on one if you've children involved or other family members involved. Like my narcissist ex, I'm certain, told my parents things about me that are completely not true. My parents don't want deal with it. So now I've got to deal with them, or I've to deal with my kids, or I've to deal with my sisters. And anybody this narcissist has told the story to further triangulates you and further makes you feel like you're going crazy.
Padideh Jafari:Yeah, absolutely. It says in the definition psychological, it really is. It really is. And you know, let's give our listeners some things that we did that actually maybe helped, kind of when we were in in the stick of it. I mean, I know for me and I know for you, journaling was, was very important.
Padideh Jafari:And just to kind of write down what they've said or what happened and then going back to it and saying, no, no, no, I remember it because I wrote it down on this day and this is what you said, or this is what I said and, or this is what occurred. So I do recommend journaling to my clients even in some of them are like, what's that? And, some of my male clients are like, I don't really know what that is. So I just say, do a timeline, you know, do a timeline and, you know, I wanna see the timeline and do a timeline for yourself and just to keep things because she is gonna say something completely different. And we wanna know the facts.
Padideh Jafari:As attorneys, we wanna know the facts, we wanna present the facts as they are to the judge. So I think journaling or doing outlines with timetables is really, really an effective tool so that you put it down on paper, what happened, the time, the date, you know, and be very diligent about that. I know that that is something that definitely helped me.
Jon McKenney:And I had something that was separate from a regular journal for me. I had what I called a crazy journal. And the journal was specific about things that happened that my ex came back and said didn't happen. So I'd be trying to resolve a situation. She did this, and I would come back and have a conversation.
Jon McKenney:She would say this, and I would I would literally write down the details of the situation. And for me, at least, in order for that that kind of journal to work, it had to happen. I had to write it down quickly. I couldn't go two or three days later because then you're relying on your memory. The goal of this kind of journaling is to take it outside of your own personal recollection in your head and to put it down on paper.
Jon McKenney:So when they come back to you and say, this didn't happen, you go back in their journal and you go, oh, yeah, it did. In fact, on this date, it did happen. You go back and read it, and it'll reaffirm what you know to be true instead of them giving the giving it it giving them the opportunity to manipulate your mind in this psychological warfare. So that was
Padideh Jafari:That's a great point.
Jon McKenney:It it it has to it has you have to do it quick. You don't wanna do it two or three days later and try and recollect it. You wanna do it immediately as soon as they start gaslighting you. You wanna have that conversation. You wanna tell what happened.
Jon McKenney:You wanna write down the details of it, then put the journal away. Because they're they may tell you three, four, five, ten, 20 different renditions of the same story. And you're going need to go back to that and you go, okay, wait a minute, open up your journal. Here's the real story. Here's what actually happened.
Jon McKenney:So, so that for me was a lifesaver, was that crazy journal. I've since burned it. I don't have it anymore, but it was very helpful. The other thing for me that I found very helpful was having people I do trust around me that I could talk to about these kinds of things. There's a guy in my office who actually was a therapist at one point in time, we go to lunch just about every day.
Jon McKenney:And we're, he's like a brother to me in, in many, many ways. We've been working together for almost two decades now. And he's a trusted friend and soul. He doesn't mince words. He's pretty quick to tell you if something's if the truth is different in one place versus another.
Jon McKenney:So having these conversations with somebody and saying the same thing over to that person, having them kind of reaffirm back to you and tell you what they're hearing from you was also very, very helpful for me. Because if if I was miscommunicating something, you can come back and say, you know, that's not what you said last time, because you want it to be the truth. Ultimately, this keeping yourself out of this is a search for truth. Something happens, you write it down, and you do that because you want it to be true. Then you come back later and you can go revisit the truth and you can revisit the situation, and it's it's helpful for you.
Jon McKenney:So the same thing is happening. You're recounting this stuff to another person, and as you recount it to the other person, it's kind of like telling yourself again the truth because they'll tell you the inconsistencies if they're there.
Padideh Jafari:Yeah. I mean, having a trusted friend is great. You know, the problem with me is I super isolated at that time. Was just myself and him and his daughter, which obviously she was too young. But I super isolated because he isolated me from my family.
Padideh Jafari:Even though we lived in the same state, we lived twenty minutes away from them, he really said so many negative things about my family that I felt like I couldn't go to them. And so I really super isolated and that was very bad, very bad. And so again, there wasn't this community that we have now that talks about narcissism, so I also didn't know. So it was him, his daughter, and work. Those were like my three things that were priorities for me.
Padideh Jafari:So, you're absolutely right. If you can find someone that you really trust that is really invaluable.
Jon McKenney:Well, know, it's interesting you kind of bring that up. I mean, the goal oftentimes of a narcissist is to isolate you from other people. So it doesn't surprise me that you say, Well, I didn't have a whole lot of people around me at the time. And if you think you're going crazy, you don't necessarily want to be around people. Like, you start losing your own trust and your own judgment and you're thinking, Maybe I really am the problem?
Jon McKenney:Maybe I am the one going nuts here? That's not a call to go find new friends. It's not a call to go involve yourself with other people. If you already don't trust yourself, the desire to go have a conversation with somebody else about what's really going on is nil. You don't want to go do that.
Jon McKenney:Because then if they reaffirm your craziness, then you're really, really crazy. You've already been triangulated anyways. Now you take somebody else who might be trusted friend and they're telling you the same thing. You kind of wouldn't want to hear that. So this lack of judgment of your own mental capacity can also further isolate you from people, in addition to the narcissist doing that too.
Jon McKenney:But those are the things that I think mostly helped me. And then later on, was finding a therapist who happened to be a narcissist coach and understood exactly what I was going through. The problem with that is finding one. I would tell you that it's probably better to find a narcissist coach than it might be a therapist in a lot of these situations. Therapists, I'm not convinced that a lot of therapists really are so helpful when it comes to narcissistic abuse.
Jon McKenney:A lot of the stories sound unbelievable and maybe a lot of them are. And on top of that, you already don't trust your judgment. And if you bring the narcissist in the room, that adds even a worse random element to it. So I think if you are going to find a therapist or you are going to find a coach or somebody like that, my advice to you would be this: one, make sure they have experience in narcissistic abuse. You have to have somebody in your pocket that you are seeing that you can be honest with about all this insanity and that will help you anchor yourself.
Jon McKenney:The second thing I would tell you is this. If I had it all to do over again, I'd never bring my spouse into a therapy session. Although I'm grateful for the fact that she was diagnosed by my therapist as having narcissistic personality disorder living somewhere between narcissism and borderline. They're both cluster B personality disorders. I don't know that that was worth the hardship of the whole process and going through that.
Jon McKenney:Other than that, there was absolutely nothing of value, I think, that took place in the room with any of the counselors or therapists we saw with my narcissist ex. They're not helped. And the reason they're not helped is because they can't tell the truth. Then if you, if you don't tell the therapist the truth about what's really going on, you'll never get help. It's like, it's like saying, okay, help me with plan B, but I'm going to talk about plan A.
Jon McKenney:It, it, it just doesn't work. So ultimately that's why this whole thing kind of goes upside down and it's really problematic. So I wouldn't necessarily see a therapist, certainly if you're going with narcissist. I just don't think that's so valuable. You can find somebody who's a coach, find somebody who's a specialist in narcissistic abuse, yeah, it'd be completely different.
Padideh Jafari:Yeah, and there's I see this a lot too, if you have children with the narcissist, there are parenting coaches where they teach you about how to parallel parent with your narcissist ex. I've talked about this a lot about getting on an app, Talking Parents is a great app. I've written two articles for Talking Parents, go read those articles. It's really, really vitally important that you go low contact with these narcissists, especially if you have a child with them. If you don't have a child with them, then it's obviously a little bit easier, like in my situation where we file for divorce, that took a while to get through and finalize, but it was done, once it was done, it was done, I didn't ever have to see him again.
Padideh Jafari:So, it's really, really, really important that you use these resources that we're talking about here on this podcast and realize that you're not crazy, that you are, you know, you have to protect your mental health and to go low contact with them if you have a child or no contact if you don't have a child with them. So we believe you and, you know, we just, we want to see everybody heal and recover from narcissistic abuse, and that's why we're doing this episode.
Jon McKenney:Yeah, I can't emphasize what you said right there more. You're not going crazy. You're not going crazy. Let that sink in right now. And we believe you.
Jon McKenney:You know, we haven't heard your story. Our stories are the same, and we know what you're going through, and we believe you. There is a reality. There are things that happened, and nothing will erase that. And the good news: God knows the truth, And He knows how you handle the situation and He knows exactly what's taking place.
Jon McKenney:So you're not the only one on the planet that understands the truth of what you're going through. Find somebody else who will believe you as well in your local area. Go to a family member, a trusted friend, somebody, and begin to have these conversations. Get the journal out. Go buy a little notebook or do it on your phone.
Jon McKenney:Days, towards the end of it, what I would do is I dictated in a text app on my phone. You could do it that way and tell the stories there, but figure a way to go do these things so that you don't think you're going insane because living with a narcissist will drive you batty. And we'd like for you not to be in that place, especially if you're going to make decisions to leave and things like that. You you you have to have your wits about you. So make sure that you do that.
Jon McKenney:Good conversation, Padita.
Padideh Jafari:Yeah. I'm I'm thinking it's going to be very helpful to our listeners.
Jon McKenney:I hope so. It's a hard thing to talk about. It's like, I'm going crazy? Yeah. Yeah, it happens in this.
Jon McKenney:That's one of the most insidious things that takes place in narcissistic abuse is they make you think you're going insane. So I'm really glad we talked about this today. Next time around, we'll be talking about, going no contact and, the pluses and minuses of that, pros and cons. There's a lot to talk about there. So that'll be our next conversation, our next podcast.
Jon McKenney:And until then, Padida, we'll see you again soon.
Padideh Jafari:Thank you, John.
Jon McKenney:And have a wonderful afternoon and always be narc free.
Voiceover:Thank you for listening to the Narcissist Abuse Recovery Channel. Be sure to follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. To hear other episodes or read the associated blogs, visit www.narcissistabuserecoverychannel.com and be sure to follow us on Instagram with the handle narc. Podcast. The guest views, thoughts, and opinions expressed are their own.
Voiceover:The information presented is for general informational purposes only and is not intended to be legal advice. The co hosts are not licensed therapists. Seek professional help as information is often state specific. The Narcissist Abuse Recovery Channel is produced in studios in California and Georgia.