Latest / Surviving Narcissistic Abuse with Jill Wise / What Narcissists are TERRIFIED You Will Discover About Them

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What Narcissists are TERRIFIED You Will Discover About Them · Surviving Narcissistic Abuse with Jill Wise

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everyone and thank you so much for joining me on my podcast all about surviving narcissistic abuse.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jill Wise, your host and fellow lifelong survivor of narcissistic abuse.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in today's episode, we are going to talk about something I think is absolutely fascinating about narcissistic relationships because there is a contradiction at the center of them that explains so much of what survivors experience.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Narcissistic people often desperately want to be seen.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: They want attention, they want admiration, they want recognition, they want people to notice them, validate them, appreciate them, envy them, respect them, and believe the version of themselves they are presenting.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And yet at the same time, narcissistic people seem deeply uncomfortable with something entirely different, being truly known.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Because being noticed is not the same thing as being known.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: Being admired is not the same thing as being understood.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: And being seen the way you want to be seen is very different from somebody seeing the parts of you that you desperately work to conceal.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is where the idea of the narcissist mask becomes much more psychologically interesting than simply saying narcissists are fake.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because everybody, everybody has a public self.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: All of us present ourselves somewhat differently depending upon where we are and who we're with.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: You probably don't behave exactly the same way during a business meeting as you do, you know, sitting in your pajamas talking to your best friend.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: But that isn't necessarily deception.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's really pretty normal social behavior.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: What becomes different in a narcissistic dynamic is when protecting a particular image becomes so psychologically important that information contradicting that image feels threatening.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Then the image isn't simply presentation anymore.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: It can become something the person actually needs other people to believe.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that distinction matters because I don't think the most interesting question is what is underneath the narcissist's mask?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think the more interesting question is why can it become so threatening when somebody else begins to see underneath it?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why can a person spend years demanding to be understood and then become furious when you understand them too accurately?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: Why can they complain that nobody really knows them while simultaneously punishing the person who begins to recognize their patterns?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Why can they crave intimacy and yet behave in waves ways that make intimacy impossible?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think part of the answer is that genuine intimacy contains something narcissistic relationships can have tremendous difficulty tolerating.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that something is reality.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Real intimacy is not two people endlessly reflecting idealized versions of one another back and forth.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is the gradual experience of being accurately known by another human being and discovering that you can remain connected anyway.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody sees your strengths and your weaknesses.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: They see your generosity and your selfishness.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: They see the things you are proud of and the things that embarrass you.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_00: They see you when you are impressive and when you're absolutely not impressive.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: And healthy intimacy develops partly through discovering that imperfection does not automatically result in rejection.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: But that requires something very important, the ability to tolerate an imperfect view of yourself.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: If someone's self-esteem is extremely fragile, being accurately seen can feel much more dangerous.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: A mistake may not feel like something they did wrong, it may trigger shame about who they are.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Criticism may not feel like information that can be considered, it may feel like humiliation.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Being caught in a contradiction may not feel mildly embarrassing, it may feel like severe exposure.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And when those experiences are intolerable, the mind becomes highly motivated to defend against them.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: That defense can take many forms.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: They can manifest in the form of denial, projection, blame, rationalizations, minimization, rewriting what happened, or attacking the credibility of the person who noticed it.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly the conversation is no longer about the original behavior.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes about whether you had the right to notice it in the first place.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is one of the strangest experiences survivors describe.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can witness something with your own eyes, bring it up calmly, and somehow leave the conversation defending your character.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: You started with this happened.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Forty five minutes later, you're explaining that you aren't cruel, controlling, jealous, unstable, disrespectful, or whatever else has suddenly become the subject.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: The original issue disappears because the greater psychological emergency has become protecting the narcissist from what the issue might imply about them.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I think shame becomes extremely important to understand.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's important to understand that shame and guilt are not the same experience.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: Guilt says I did something bad.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Shame says there is something bad about me.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Guilt can be a good thing because it can motivate repair if I did something wrong.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I can acknowledge it, apologize, learn something, and behave differently.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: But shame can create a much more global threat to identity.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: When shame is intense and poorly tolerated, responsibility can feel psychologically dangerous because admitting wrongdoing feels dangerously close to admitting defectiveness.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of integrating an uncomfortable truth, yes, I lied, yes, I was jealous, yes, I behaved selfishly, yes, I hurt you.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: The person may need to remove the truth, reinterpret it, or place it somewhere else.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: And very often, that somewhere else is you.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is one reason projection is such an important concept in narcissistic relationships.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Projection is often described very simply as accusing somebody else of what you are doing.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: But psychologically, it can be more interesting than that.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Projection can also function as a way of relocating something that is difficult to tolerate internally.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: If I cannot tolerate seeing myself as dishonest, selfish, envious, controlling, or cruel, then locating those qualities in you allows me to preserve a more acceptable picture of myself.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't have to confront my behavior because I am busy defending myself against yours.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: And if you have lived through this, you know how absolutely crazy making it can become.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: You notice that apologies appear when consequences become real and disappear once the danger passes.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: You notice that the person who seems charming, generous, and reasonable to outsiders becomes someone entirely different behind closed doors.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: And once you see a pattern, it becomes very difficult to unsee it.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where the survivor's role in the narcissist's life can begin changing.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, you probably were an admirer.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: You reflected back the version of themselves they wanted to experience.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: You believed the stories, you accepted the explanations, you gave them the benefit of the doubt.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: You interpreted contradictions generously because that's what healthy, empathetic people tend to do.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: But over time, you acquire information, you have history now, you have context, you remember what happened before the story was rewritten, and this creates a fascinating shift.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: You stop being merely an audience for the narcissist's identity and become a witness to the discrepancies in it.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that distinction explains something survivors often find so incredibly confusing.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Why does the narcissist sometimes seem to resent the person who knows them best?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: We usually assume being known should create closeness, and in healthy relationships it often does.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: But if somebody's psychological stability depends heavily upon controlling how they are perceived, then the person who knows the most can also become the person whose perception it's hardest to control.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: A stranger sees the presentation while you know the history.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: A coworker sees the charm while you remember what happened afterward.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: A new partner hears the story while you know which pieces were removed.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: An acquaintance sees confidence while you have seen the insecurity underneath it.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now please understand that does not mean every narcissistic person is consciously walking around thinking this person knows too much, so I need to destroy them.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Human psychology is usually far less deliberate than that.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: But the emotional response can still be powerful.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Your presence may begin activating something uncomfortable because you carry a version of reality that cannot be completely managed.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And this may help explain why devaluation sometimes intensifies as relationships become more intimate.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: At the beginning of the relationship, you may be idealized partly because you don't yet possess contradictory information.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know the person primarily through what they tell you and what they show you.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Their stories arrive without footnotes, their explanations arrive without history.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: You don't yet know which promises repeatedly disappear, which conflicts follow the same script, or which part of their identity collapses under pressure.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: But intimacy creates data, time creates data, conflict creates data, and eventually you may know enough to stop accepting the explanation and start recognizing the pattern.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is often the point where survivors say, I finally saw who they really were.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I think there's something even more important happening than simply discovering the person behind the mask.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're beginning to recognize the enormous difference between who they need you to believe they are and who their behavior consistently shows them to be.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because eventually the words stop carrying as much weight.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: The charm stops distracting you.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: The explanations stop overriding what you've actually experienced.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: You begin paying attention to the patterns instead of the performance.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And once you start doing that, the contradictions become impossible to ignore.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: You don't necessarily need to figure out which version of them is the real one.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: You simply have to recognize that when someone repeatedly shows you something through their behavior, that behavior deserves to be taken seriously, no matter how convincing the mask may be.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the narcissist knows on some level that the gap exists.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: This is where impression management becomes fascinating.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: When someone is highly invested in managing other people's perceptions, different people may receive different versions of them.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: The boss gets one version, friends get another, social media gets another, the romantic partner gets another, and the persons closest to them may eventually experience behaviors that seem almost impossible to reconcile with the public personality.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is one of the reasons survivors can feel so isolated.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: You're not simply trying to explain abusive behavior, you're trying to explain abuse of behavior committed by somebody everybody else thinks is wonderful.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that unfortunately creates an extraordinary credibility problem because people naturally compare your description with their own experience.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: They think they've always been nice to me.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Of course they have.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: But your experience with someone is not necessarily evidence of how they behave in intimate relationships where there is more vulnerability, more dependency, more conflict, and more opportunity for control.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, survivors sometimes make the mistake of believing that if everyone else sees the charming version, perhaps the abusive version isn't real.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: But public charm does not cancel private harm.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: And private harm does not require public cruelty in order to be real.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the contrast itself can become part of what makes narcissistic abuse so psychologically destabilizing.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to reconcile two apparently incompatible people, the person everyone loves and the person you fear upsetting, the person who gives inspiring advice and the person who humiliates you privately.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: The person who appears compassionate towards strangers and seems strangely indifferent to your pain.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you begin asking yourself, which one is real?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps the better answer is that both behaviors are information.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: You do not have to solve the entire personality in order to trust what repeated behavior tells you.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: That is an incredibly freeing realization, too, because survivors can spend years trying to determine whether the good version or the bad version is the real one.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe if the loving person is the real one, then the cruel person is just wounded.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I can heal the wound.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: The loving person will remain permanently.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: But relationships are not built from someone's best moments.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: They are built from patterns.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Who is this person when frustrated?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Who are they when you disagree?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Who are they when you succeed?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Who are they when you need empathy?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Who are they when they get caught doing something wrong?
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: Those moments tell you far more about relational capacity than charm ever could.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And this brings us to another fascinating contradiction.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Narcissistic people may want closeness while simultaneously defending themselves against the very vulnerability closeness requires.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Real intimacy requires relinquishing some control over how another person sees you.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: To be loved intimately, you have to allow somebody to know things about you that are not impressive.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: You have to risk being ordinary.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: You have to risk being wrong.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: You have to risk needing someone.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: You have to risk apologizing without controlling how quickly they forgive you.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps most importantly, you have to risk allowing another person to have an independent interpretation of you.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that last part is enormous because you cannot have genuine intimacy while completely controlling another person's perception of you.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: They may see something differently than you do.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: They may disagree with your explanation.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: They may recognize a pattern you would prefer not to acknowledge.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: They may love you and still say, no, what you did was wrong.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Healthy intimacy survives that.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Fragile identity may experience it as betrayal.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: And suddenly the person who once said, Nobody understands me like you do, may begin behaving as though your understanding is the problem.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: I think many survivors have experienced that transformation without ever having language for it.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, your insight may have been praised.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: You were perceptive, you understood them, you saw things other people didn't see.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_00: But eventually that same perceptiveness becomes threatening when it stops serving admiration and starts producing discernment.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: You begin noticing inconsistencies, you begin trusting your memory, you stop accepting every explanation, you recognize when the emotional reaction is disproportionate.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: You realize that confusion itself has become a recurring feature of the relationship.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps most importantly, you stop automatically assuming that every problem arises.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Originates with you.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is a profound shift in power because manipulation works best when the target distrusts their own perception.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: The moment you begin trusting what you see, the dynamic changes.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: This is why recovering your perception is such an important part of healing from narcissistic abuse.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Survivors often think recovery means learning everything possible about narcissism.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: An education can absolutely be helpful, but eventually, recovery becomes less about understanding them and more about trusting yourself.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: I saw what I saw.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: I remember what happened.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: I know how I was treated.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: I do not need the person who hurt me to agree with my interpretation before I am allowed to respond to it.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: That is true psychological freedom.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is also why trying to expose a narcissistic person to themselves can become such a frustrating mission.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: Survivors sometimes believe that if they can simply present enough evidence, the narcissist will finally understand.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So they explain, they collect screenshots, they remember dates, they reconstruct conversations, they point out contradictions, they think, surely, if I show them clearly enough, they'll have to see it.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: But information cannot create insight in someone who is psychologically committed to defending against the implication of that information.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: Meaningful change can only occur when someone is willing to engage with true reality and honesty.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the key word is willing.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot force self-awareness into another person by becoming increasingly brilliant at explaining them to themselves.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Survivors need to hear that because many of us wasted years of extraordinary amounts of energy trying to achieve the perfect explanation.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: We thought clarity would produce accountability, but sometimes it produces defensiveness instead, because the issue was never that you failed to explain it clearly enough.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: The issue was what acknowledging your explanation would require them to confront.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: And once you understand that, you can stop standing in the courtroom presenting exhibit A through exhibit Z to someone who has already decided the trial is illegitimate.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need a unanimous verdict in order to leave the courtroom.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: And this brings us to one of the most important realizations in recovery.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually, the narcissist may lose control not only over how you see them, but over how you see yourself.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that may be the bigger threat.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: For a long time, the relationship may have trained you to experience yourself through their eyes.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: If they were pleased with you, you felt okay.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: If they withdrew, you questioned yourself.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: If they praised you, you felt valuable.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: If they criticized you, your confidence collapsed.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Their perception became your mirror, but healing changes the mirror.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: You begin developing an internal reference point again.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: You stop asking, what do they think of me, and begin asking, what do I think of what just happened?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: That question changes everything because now the narcissist is no longer the sole narrator of the relationship.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: You are observing too, you are evaluating to, you are deciding to, and perhaps that is one of the most important things survivors eventually discover behind the mask.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: Not some dramatic secret about the narcissist, but the realization that the narcissist's version of reality was never the only version available.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Your perception existed the entire time.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: It was simply buried underneath years of being told not to trust it.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Once you reclaim that perception, the mask becomes far less powerful because you no longer require the performance to make sense.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to decide whether every kind gesture was fake.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to decide whether every loving moment was manipulation.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: You don't need to solve every contradiction.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: You can simply say, whatever else was true, this pattern harmed me.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: That is enough information to make decisions.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is where survivors finally begin stepping out of the psychological maze.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: You stop obsessing over which version of them was real and start asking whether the relationship was healthy for you.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: You stop trying to diagnose every motive and start evaluating behavior.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: You stop needing them to confess what they were doing in order for you to believe what you know you experienced.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because the ultimate freedom isn't exposing the narcissist.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's no longer needing the narcissist to validate your reality.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a completely different kind of power.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've ever wondered why somebody who seemed desperate to be understood eventually became angry when you understood them too well, remember the distinction we talked about here today.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Being admired is not the same as being known.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Attention is not the same as intimacy.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: And having somebody reflect your preferred identity back to you is very different from allowing another human being to see you accurately and maintain an independent mind.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you weren't becoming harder to love.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you were becoming harder to fool.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you weren't suddenly too critical.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you had accumulated enough information to recognize the pattern.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe the moment you finally saw behind the mask was not actually the moment you discovered who they were.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was the moment you finally stopped allowing them to tell you what you were seeing.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And if this episode resonated with you and you are trying to make sense of a narcissistic relationship, rebuild your self-trust, break a trauma bond, or understand what happened to your sense of reality during the abuse, I offer one-on-one coaching.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: I also have a comprehensive narcissistic abuse recovery course and my private recovery community where we go much deeper into these dynamics and the healing process.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can find all of those resources on my website at www.jillwise.com.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And as always, thank you so much for spending this time with me.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you know somebody who has spent years questioning their own perception because the person hurting them looked completely different to everyone else, please consider sharing this episode with them.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And this week, instead of asking yourself whether the narcissist agrees with your version of what happened, I want you to ask yourself something much more important.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: What do the patterns tell me?
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: Because you don't need permission to believe your own eyes.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the thing the narcissist is most afraid you'll discover behind the mask isn't simply who they are.