Latest / Morrow Marriage | Disrupting Divorce / A Recovered Narcissist Teaches You How To Feel Empathy | The 'NEW' Marriage | Ep458

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A Recovered Narcissist Teaches You How To Feel Empathy | The 'NEW' Marriage | Ep458 · Morrow Marriage | Disrupting Divorce

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: How to be empathetic towards my partner.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Your partner's trauma is a gift.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: The hokey pokey is.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: She saw her touch my feet.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: My narcissistic behaviors.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: My managing sphere narcissism.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you afraid of rejection?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: How to be empathetic towards my partner.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the Morrow Marriage Podcast, where I am excited to bring this to you.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what I'm excited about?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_02: The narcissist is teaching on empathy today.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Ah, so glad you brought that up because Isn't that great, guys?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited because I'm gonna show you some ways to adapt if you don't feel empathy.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so if you don't know, I'm a recovered narcissist.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Something that um I've struggled with, obviously, is empathy because we don't have it.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I've had to learn to adapt.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now, most of you, yes.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: I want to make sure I tell the story of the first time that I recognized empathy in you.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: So let me know when it's a good time to do that.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, go ahead.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Go right on.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: So he always used to say that he didn't feel empathy and he would try, and he was like, Well, the only way that I can feel empathy, and you've said this on the podcast before, is if you think about like if someone's wife dies, if he thinks about himself me dying, how would he feel?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: He has to create that in his mind, and then he has to teach himself that that must be what that other person is feeling.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, when Riddick was a baby, he was probably I don't know, six weeks old or three months old.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: He wasn't very old, and he was crying.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: He's now five.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: And and you said one day you were like, I just uh when he cries, I just I just feel so terrible.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: I I just want to fix it.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: I hate when he's upset.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, That's empathy, honey.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: And you were like, It's such a weird feeling.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: I've never felt anything like this before, or something.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: He said, I said, This is your first time.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: This is a breakthrough.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: You're feeling real empathy.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it was our our crying infant who was actually totally fine, but it was somehow pulling on my husband's heart.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll tell you, so that's actually a great way to introduce everything.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: So I would argue that that possibly could be compassion, and that's a lot of the work that I've done is like, am I being empathetic or is it compassion?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like, have I trained myself to go far enough with these kinds of examples, i.e., make it about it.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: You hadn't trained yourself very much at that point.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: At that point, I've trained.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: That was 2021.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I didn't train myself at all at that time.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you didn't even know you were a narcissist probably back then.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't, you know, recall exactly how I was feeling.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it's possible because the nice guy that we talk about, the person who wants to fix or solve the problems, would feel bad if they couldn't do it.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now it would depend.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: The reason why Catherine's probably saying um empathetic is because uh I would have, if I was in the zone where I didn't feel good enough about myself or failure, I would have been mad at Riddick because I couldn't make him feel better.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning you want to fix it, but you can't.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so then you start to get upset.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: You start to take it personal.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like, so let's say I'm rocking him and I was rocking him as I bounce.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say I'm rocking him, we're doing a little bouncy bounce, and he's still crying.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Typically, no empathy, what are you gonna do?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna get mad.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: I can't fix this.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: What the heck?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a skill that I think a lot of people have to learn whether they have empathy or not.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's just you you mean your kid falls over, what do you want to do?
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Run over and grab them, right?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Like kids crying, you want to help.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now, as they get older, you're like, you have a lot less patience for that.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's not a lack of empathy.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_02: I had an incident this morning.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's not that's not a lack of empathy, that's a lot less patience because they cry for fucking everything.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_02: One of our kids cries for everything.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_02: Today her boots were uncomfortable.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: I had a big talk with her last night.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: I had to talk to her about being a part of the family and creating joy and life and the life that you want because she was so miserable with you yesterday.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, today again.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh and then she was mean to Veil who's helping her with her dog, right?
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Our kids all have kind of pets that are their responsibility and their their pets.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that's not a lack of empathy, that's a lack of patience, right?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: We can understand how they feel.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we need to force more empathy so that we can create more patience.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: But the the problem is a lot of you guys, there's two categories here.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's the one like me who doesn't feel empathy and has to work for it.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I have gotten to a point where I do feel something, but almost always in reflection, even real-time reflection, I'm noticing that it's about me.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say a client gives a wonderful testimonial, then all of a sudden I get teary-eyed and I'm I'm super excited.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's actually about me.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's the shitty thing.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I have to work hard to realize it's actually about them.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: But then there's the other person, there's the version of most of you that you grew up with some sort of empathy.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's pretty normal.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: I would like to talk to you about your thoughts on why that disappears before we go into bringing empathy back.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have any thoughts on that?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know about empathy disappearing.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Can you can you give me more insight on that?
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because people care more inherently about themselves, so they lack empathy, they'll become more defensive, they'll want to criticize and blame, and that's not showing a reflection of empathy, that's showing a reflection of self-preservation, in essence, a narcissistic trait.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not saying that you're narcissistic, I'm just saying it's very easy to not care about your partner when you don't have your needs beyond.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I do have a comment on that.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't say that empathy goes away.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think that empathy is masked or buried by defensiveness.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like they don't care?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: No, so if if we use us for an example, so I'm very empathetic, extremely empathetic.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: And but when I was learning how to um interact with my husband, I had never experienced a person like you before.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I guess I've had like some I I I guess that's a lie, but never like in an intimate relationship where I got to know someone and had that intimate relationship.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I was faced with his behaviors, I didn't have the skills, I did not know what to do.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so naturally, natural human nature, normal human nature is to get defensive.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: Now I was still empathetic underneath, but because I'm in self-preservation mode and I'm defending myself because I'm being attacked or I'm afraid, whatever it was, the empathy is way down the list of characteristics that are going to shine through.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: So it doesn't go away.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not a choice necessarily, it's just you're in that moment.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's reactive human nature, I think.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: So it's it's almost like like there's a reason that they call it fight or flight.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: It it's from like the jungle, isn't it?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Like I don't know.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: If you're being if you're being chased by a lion, you have to figure out if you're going to fight or if you're going to run.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like it's and then there it's fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely don't freeze.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: But fight or flight are the ones that Oh, don't fawn it.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think the lion's gonna care if you fight.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think so, no.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, let me that cute little mane.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Let me bring that mean.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: So so but that but it's that there's a reason that fight or flight, everybody knows what it is, because that is what your your um your amygdala takes over.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: So your brain, your amygdala is your lizard brain.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: Lizards don't have logic or they can't rationalize anything, and so they have to decide based on like we have to decide whether amygdala when we're when we're acting like a lizard.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: I'm putting it into like layman's terms.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it's what your body does when your brain shifts from functioning in the uh prefrontal cortex, I think it's called, to the amygdala.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Which until you have well, I'm not even gonna say skills, until you train, you develop skills, you hone in, you can't change that.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: And if no, and if you know anything about what we've taught, I mean, we believe that even though you have a primary and a secondary fight, flight, freezer, fawn, you're going to end up rotating through them all as the cycle gets worse and worse.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: And you can and you can change that.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you can, but you have to, well, we have a bunch of work to put you through.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: However, let's stick to empathy for a second.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: So if we're not focused on fight, flight, freeze or fawn, i.e., we're focused on empathy, some tricks to make sure that you can try to bring that back in your relationship.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, let's just use the example like me.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: You do have to make it about you, but you don't stop there.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is really, really important.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: You have to understand that that has to transfer back over.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, in the example that Catherine gave, uh actually, I'll use something that's more common.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: If you guys know we have lots of animals, Catherine loves them, they die a lot, a lot of them.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's just so many old ones, sick ones.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so Catherine, depending on the relationship with the animal, will become more or less sad about the animal and the sadness, you know, uh, and how she feels about losing the animal.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: That means not like zero to me, except for I know that my wife and specifically one daughter are going to be very, very upset.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: It means that I don't need to touch Catherine, I just need to be able to reassure her.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't even know what that like feels like.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have to imagine if it was something that mattered to me, I have my own dog and I would not feel the exact same way.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: I imagine it might take 17 years because I had one for 17 years, and I remember being very sad when she passed.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: But otherwise, it's probably just uh it's the I well, I have to think about that actually, really to be able to relate back to the animals that you've bonded with because Catherine will bond in a day.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Briar, she needs a hug.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: She needs to be like, just help.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Don't say anything.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's nothing you can do, just hug her.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the same thing, I have to imagine.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_02: And she needs to talk about it 17 times in a row.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she needs to keep telling you the details.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_02: That's how she processes.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the first step is to relate it back to you.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: The second step is to realize that's what they're feeling, and then you act on it and give them what they need.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Catherine doesn't need touch, Briar does.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so Catherine just wants to hear that that I care.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Briar wants to talk about it.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're a normal person, then you're gonna have some sort of empathy, but you have to reach down deep inside and have to realize this isn't about you, whatever you're feeling.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: And this goes, by the way, for anything that you can think of.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you're fighting because there's a lack of partnership, because there's a betrayal, because um somebody's complaining about who spends what on what money and what thing or whatever, you have to understand what they're going through to practice empathy because typically you're making it about you.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: You defy the boundary with the budget.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: We're not supposed to, this is the rules of marriage.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's no such thing as betrayal in our marriage.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: You said you wouldn't, blah, blah, blah.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: The amount of people that come to us and they're like, yeah, but we made a goal.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the reasons we got married, because we would never do this.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like, listen, that's not who you are today.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so you have to understand what would make them want to do something that let's call it extracurricular, like out of the norm, not normal or allowed.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: You have to really dig deep because you're taking it personal, like you're such a fuck up, you're such a failure.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: Chances are you're a big part of the equation.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: By chances I mean you definitely are.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: But then when you realize that you can focus on more about them, and if you need to, I dare, and I'll hear what you have to say, but I dare say you could bring that back to you and go, Well, what did I do to fuck it up?
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_01: Because then you can realize that you're part of the same sadness.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: They're feeling the same sadness.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: They just felt it before you and went to cope with something else.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: That's it, whether it was the shopping or the emotional affair or whatever.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have anything you want to add to that?
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_02: No, but uh, you confused me a little bit.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: So if someone is feeling a feeling, you somehow brought it back to you and said, How did I fuck that up?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because you guys, if you can't tell.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: How did you just because someone has a feeling doesn't mean you fucked something up?
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: No, it doesn't, but I'm talking about major things.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like we broke the budget rule, the boundary, the plan we got, we had the goal, we had the affair.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: In those cases, something led to them.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: If you need to practice empathy to understand, but like how did you enable the situation to get this far?
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, correct.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: If you want, if you want to be empathetic, then you have to realize that you're part of the fuck up.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody just goes and has an affair.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody, like all you people with budget problems, chances are most of you stuck to the budget for a while and then it became an issue.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's just these examples, guys.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like at the end of the day, something led to it.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: And if you want to realize that you can feel this is why, maybe this is where I lost you guys.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: But you guys, I'm only one person today.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: Today, all y'all.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just assuming if you lost it, they lost it because you understand me.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: So um, if you can understand that by the by the time something very bad happens in your relationship and you want to take it personal, you don't practice empathy.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: If you can realize you were a part of that, you can be sad together.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's no need, and this will feed into the next episode.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_02: So, what he's describing, guys, is high-level empathy.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: So, regular empathy is when somebody has a feeling and you can feel that feeling with them.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_02: This is this is very high level.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_02: This is when you're being empathetic to someone's um uh shortcomings, failures, um, breaches in communication, connection boundaries.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_02: This is like, this is look listen to this, you're like super high-level teaching right now.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I wasn't expecting it to go this way.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I was like, what are you talking about?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: No, this is really high level.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: So if he makes a mistake, because let's just say I have financial boundaries, neither one of us really has financial boundaries, but let's just say that I'm the one with the financial boundaries and he goes and spends a bunch of money, I'm upset with it, he whatever feeling he's gonna feel because I'm angry with him, well, why am I not showing empathy to the fact that he just went and spent however many thousands of dollars without like there's is that kind of what you're going?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: So he does something to breach the connection, and instead of me saying, Well, why did this happen?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: How did I enable this to happen?
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Where is the connection?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Where is the communication?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: You need to instead of doing that, if I'm angry, then there is no empathy, there's no connection, there's no validation, there's no compassion.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: I might have said compassion twice.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: So how did we get here?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you take in order to be empathetic with what I've done, she can focus on how did we get here, what was my role, what was my part, and then we can start to realize we can we can bridge everything now rather than focus on the anger, focus on the guilt and shame over here.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Her anger, my guilt, and shame, we get nowhere.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so I wanted to go high level because if you can do high level, then you can go down low when it's just something that has nothing to do with you, which is where you thought we were going, right?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: The animals have nothing to do with me other than I support the family.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I can go low level.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Can I go high level and actually get past the bullshit?
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I want.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: I want the new marriage.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Okay?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you guys next time.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_02: Bye.