Why Didn’t They Believe Me w/ Dr. Ingrid Clayton - Part 1

when listening. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, I Heart Media, or their employees. Gas Lighting doesn't just make you question the event itself, It makes you question every current and when I think about that, when when you sort of go wow, how we minimize eyes this psychological and emotional abuse as though it's not that damaging.

It's like he went into my psyche and extracted pieces of me that I to this day feel like I will never get back. Growing up with a toxic, narcissistic, lee abusive parent is like living with unexploded bombs. You never know what will set them off. And children in these homes tiptoe through their childhoods. This has made even worse when none of the adults in the homes step in and protect the children, and instead double down and continue to gaslight children who are already confused, scared, and

blaming themselves. Today, we are going to hear from Dr Ingrid Clayton, a psychologist who as a survivor of complex post traumatic stress originating from narcissistic abuse. Hers is a story of childhood narcissistic abuse, familiar gas lighting, the impacts on her adult life and relationships, and how these stories

can end up. Ingrid has written a powerful memoir entitled Believing Me, Healing from Narcissistic Abuse and Complex Trauma, and her book is a reminder that sometimes one person's story can remind us that one is often the story of many. In this first episode, we will be hearing about Ingrid's abusive childhood and how the toxic dynamics in her childhood home magnified the challenges of her transitions in late adolescence into adulthood. What a pleasure we have, Doctor Ingrid Clayton here,

who I mean? Your book? I have to say, You've written a memoir called Believing Me Ingrid, you know a lot of people come to me with books. Can you read my book? From my book? That could be a full time job for me. It doesn't be. So when you asked, it was I'm like, this is somebody who lives in my town who is a fellow professional. I get the cup of you, sit on the couch, and I start reading. Three hours later had not left to

my position. I am not fussy about much. I am fussy about books and writing, and I mean, it was unbelievable. Everyone needs to go out and read this book. And if you've had any form of trauma, especially childhood relational trauma in your life, you have to read this book because the amount of empathy in those pages was overwhelming.

But as a clinician, the clarity of your story, it was like, what she's just because I'd like, Okay, is this person Nope, there it is, There's that, there's that, there's that, and I just was thinking, this is amazing. So here we get ever, all of you get the pleasure I got. First of all, you got to read her book, and we'll be information here on the show notes on how to get that book. But you know, Ingrid, I'd like to just just start with your story, and let's

start at the top. Can you tell us about yourself and where you're from and unspooled some of that story for us. Yes, well, thank you so much for having me. It's a little surreal to be honest, to be here with you. I followed your work and the gifts that you give to so many survivors. You are really, to me, the expert in the field, and I was taking a

gamble sending you my story. There's this part of me, actually, the little girl part of me, that I'm very proud of her for going to the expert in the field in narcissistic abuse, because even though I wrote it with such honesty and vulnerability, there's a part of me that goes, was it narcissistic abuse? Am I still making it up? Right? I still suffer from that self gas lighting after having

grown up in gas lighting. And it wouldn't have surprised me if you had written back and said, well Ingrid, let's talk about what you've written here, and in fact you had the opposite take. And so what you so freely offer so many people in all of the venues in terms of validation, you have given to me personally, and it's a gift I can quite frankly never repay. So thank you for having me here. I appreciate it. Again. I can't stress enough. I almost think every clinician should

read this book. Even more important than Christians could read this book and say this is what this looks like. That's right, and that's really why I wrote it. So I always knew that I grew up in a dysfunctional home. I knew I grew up in an alcoholic home. I had that language. I went on to become an alcoholic myself. I got sober, eventually went back to school, got three degrees in psychology, became a private practice clinician. And yet I didn't know that my experience was really a classic

telling of narcissistic abuse. I never had that language. Not only that, but I became a trauma therapist specializing in trauma because of this gas lighting that I just spoke to and the minimization that comes with that, Well, this wasn't real trauma. I also couldn't see myself as a

trauma survivor. And without that language, I stayed stuck, almost like I was on this hamster wheel for decades, doing the same thing is engaging in the same dysfunctional relationships and yet trying so hard, asking asking the questions, going to talk therapy, many therapists over the years. I didn't forget my story. I knew what happened. I shared it. No one ever gave me the language of narcissism, no

one ever gave me the language of trauma. And because it's my story, my lived experience, it was very hard for me to apply those terms. Until my stepfather died. He is the narcissist, and just him not being on this earth anymore, something was freer in me than it

had ever been my whole life. I felt safer in the world literally, And then I was called to write my story in a way that I didn't even know what I was writing for many years, and I could look back at my own story in black and white from a clinician's lens and go, this is complex trauma. This is the traumatic experiences. These are my trauma responses unhealed that I've lived with for so long. And then

this is what healing looks like. And I finally made sense to myself, I think for the first time ever. And so if I'm walking around with these degrees in this clinical information and years of training and trauma, and I couldn't see that I had complex PTSD, unresolved, complex trauma that originated from narcissistic abuse. How many people are walking around not knowing and similarly going to three twelve step programs, showing up to personal therapy, going on the retreats,

trying to be spiritual. I did all the things, you know, I did all the things, and none of them gave me this lens and this language to help me finally feel like I'm not broken. I love how you position that that I have complex trauma that originated from narcissistic abuse. That's actually more elegantly put than I've heard anyone ever

say it before. That's what's getting sort of miss is that that becomes the origination point, that the narcissistic dynamics are what drives the complex trauma, and it is the the upside down is the confusion and not only can't you not escape physically, you can't escape mentally, and that it's not viewed as trauma like it's and it's often viewed as well, this is just how relationships are and families are complicated, and that's what a lot of people face and so once you give language to it, you

can start again lifting that self blame seeing it more clearly. It's not an instant heal, but it allows you to lift your head long enough to do the work. So can you, then, for listeners, lay out the story like

just sort of. I know it's a complicated story, and obviously the details really do need to read the book, but you know, starting with how your mother and father your early childhood, and your mother and father divorced and that led to your mom remarrying and then your stepdad, if you could just lay out that story for us, what those experiences were like and as you also highlighted that you grew up in an alcoholic household and how

all that played a role in this. So I was about twelve, maybe eleven, I guess, when my parents divorced, and pretty immediately after they split, my mom was living with Randy, who is my stepdad, and he had been in my life my whole life because he was my dad's best friend. I mean, that's how they knew each other,

so I had some familiarity with him. But the way that I experienced it is that almost when he moved in even though my mom was there and she was still present, it was as though I saw her step into his shadow, where she didn't say something unless he had already endorsed it or said it before. It was almost like I could see her body moving only when she had permission by him to move it. I literally lost my mom to this man, even when she was standing three ft in front of me. And so that

was so painful and so confusing. And then couple that with their alcoholism, daily drinkers, and just the instability and confusion around that. I knew that something was off. I knew that something was wrong. I thought, really it was related to the drugs and alcohol, and so I became this detective. I would look, you know, where are things hidden? And what else do I not know? And I was constantly trying to figure things out. Now I know it's hyper vigilance, and so I was trying to seek safety

through a sense of knowing what was going on. There was not enough information to gather. I could feel that there were lies and secrets and sort of smoke screens. I felt like, I know my stepdad has a colored past, but I'd only get little bits and pieces dropped in and one of the stories I share in the book is that this this man called our house one night my parents were at the bar, and I answered the phone and I hear, is Ben Webber there, like like

a kid making like a crank phone call. And I was like, well, no, you must have the wrong member. Is Ben Webber there? It was so creepy, and I was like, you have the wrong number. And then he went into a normal voice and he said, how about Randy? Is he there? And I was like, whoa, what is

going on? So the next morning I say to my stepdad, this creepy guy called he then he asked for you, and he said to ask you who Ben Webber is, And as though we were talking about just the most normal thing, he said, oh, well, when I took John to Florida, which is his youngest son, and by took him to Florida means he abducted his own son when he was four years old and lived under this assumed name of Ben Webber for almost three years. So he tells me this story as though he's telling me, would

you like some orange juice? And I'm looking to my mom like this sounds horrible, Like he stole John away and they lived in another state, and he had an assumed name. The way he said it was, that's when I was on the lamb. I was like on the lamb, like sounds like some big venture. So there were all of these this combination of all of these things. I didn't know what was up what was down. I knew

my home situation was different than other people. And then I started to feel what I now have the language for. I did not have the language for then, which was this grooming behavior of just flirtatiousness and really, I I see you, and you're such a talented singer and really propping me up in these ways that were really important to me and that really mattered. And then he would just rip it all away and start giving me the silent treatment for no reason. And I didn't even have

the language of the silent treatment. I was just like why, It's like I don't exist in my own home. I literally felt like a ghost. It was so lonely. And we lived in the mountains in the middle kind of of nowhere in Colorado, so it's like you're out in the middle of nowhere, you don't even exist in your own home. And the cycle started to play out where largely it's like he detests me. I get in trouble for just the tiniest things, and then the punishments were

really steep. It's like you're grounded for months at a time, You're under his thumb all the time, and then out of the blue, there's I'd like to take you to lunch, taking me to this wonderful lunch in town, just he and I picking me up on a school day. Let's go buy some jewelry across the street. These gifts would start to come, and I remember feeling I can see myself in that restaurant. It's as though I go from this black and white version of myself into color, like

I actually exist for the first time. And I know in my then sixteen year old, fifteen year old brain that he's manipulating me. I know that he's still an asshole. I know this isn't going to last, and I don't care. I don't care. I will do whatever it takes to stay in his good graces for as long as I

possibly can, because the alternative is so much worse. Of course, Ingrid highlights such a key dynamic here, this idea of I will do what I need to do to keep a good moment, going to avoid a bad moment, to be on their good side. This is such a complex dynamic. Partly it's done to avoid the rages and the passive aggression and the cruelty, but partly it's done to stay in something that feels good for a minute. Regardless of

the kind of relationship it is. This shape shifting or even giving in in any way can be to avoid the bad stuff and to extend what feels like a good moment, and all of that makes these relationships horribly confusing. It contributes not only to the anxiety and unpredictability, but also to a sense of shame in some survivors that they did go along with what the narcissistic person wanted.

But survivors are often unable to see this as a survival mechanism in that what I learned to tolerate the imprinting of trauma bonding, that was just this lived experience of I know how to navigate this kind of chaos was woven into the fabric of my being in such a way that it didn't matter how far away I moved or how much you know, quote unquote worked I had done on myself. I couldn't override my own body.

I couldn't override my own conditioning. I kept repeating this trauma reenactment over and over with primarily these romantic partners, unavailable men, actively addicted men, married men, these really toxic dynamics that I didn't see coming. And yet I'd go, why am I in this relationship again? Why can't I have a healthy relationship? I'm working so hard on myself, and this is the thing. I literally said, the therapists,

what is going on? And maybe we would talk about my story, but it never made the change in me that needed to happen. And I'm heartbroken about that. So when you say this is for clinicians, I go, yes, I want every therapist, every coach I wanted in grad schools. No one was talking to me in grad school about narcissistic abuse, about gas lighting, about trauma bonding. These are terms that I learned on Instagram. I mean, what a

shame that is? What's so powerful? You use this term grooming right, It's something that's come up over and over again as we've talked to people. And what was so troubling in your story was it was what we can only call intra familial grooming like it was. It was interesting because your family life was, like you said, it was dysfunctional, It was lacking, You were lonely, you were isolated.

Those are prime conditions for someone outside of a family to groom somewhere, right, So somebody would sense this person is a little isolated. They'd see a young person, oh, you know, compliment them on the thing that made what a groomer's emulate. They learn what matters, and then they take advantage of that situation. In your case, your groomer was not only creating the emptiness and the fear and the desolation, but then was becoming the sort of the

validation and the admiration that the groomer does. I mean to me, there is no more toxic dynamic, which is why the intra familial grooming, the intra familial abuse is so much more toxic because it's the same person engaging in both patterns, and which I think makes the trauma bond that's all the more profound. And I want to go back and ask you a question that I'm curious about. You were eleven twelve when your parents divorced, and you said that when your mother got into this second marriage.

It was as though she didn't even see you anymore. She was only oriented towards your stepfather. Was that her behavior she was married to your father as well? Was she similar did she behave similarly in her original marriage with your biological farm? There was a difference, But it's hard for me to say because I was even so

much younger than my memories of childhood. You know, I'm very aware that there was bongs and weed all over the house, and lots of drinking and the rock and roll and parties across the street at the neighbors where my parents and all their friends are naked and skinny, tipping and right. So there was that sort of an atmosphere.

But I feel like the way I've seen it is almost like my mom and my dad are kind of the same person in their codependent tendencies, you know, both active alcoholics, both kind of wanting to be taken care of, and I think that's in part why they didn't last. You know, that is that's actually really interesting. You know, I rarely get to talk to somebody who's married to two parents who had co dependent characteristics. It's usually the

codependent parent and the abusive parents. But to have both is that see a pretty interesting, unique and honestly troubling combination because honestly, nobody's minding the store. Then you know they're so mired in their own stuff. And so your mother breaks out of this and actually finds the new relationships she's in, which it sounds like it happened pretty quickly, and they're likely was some sense of betrayal that your

father experienced because this is his best friend. You may only bring this up because that's the backdrop to this, right, betrayals starting to almost get normalized in a strange way that that's just sort of part of a relational story. It takes me to my next question. As you're getting older, your stepfather is issuing these draconian, severe punishments, grounded for months and all of that. Where is your mother and

all of this? Because you're her biological child, that's right, and you would think that there'd be some primacy in that, and yet he is coming in and taking in this rather severe role. Where issue and all this is she just signing off on this? Is she's saying nothing? Like what was her functioning? She said nothing. She's largely not there for these conversations. If she's there, she's so far in the background. I mean, we just know that she

doesn't have a voice. So at a certain point I stopped looking over to her to get eye contact and go, are you tracking this? Because I know it's pointless it yeah, right there, though I'm looking at her to get eye

contact to see if she's tracking it. That loss of a mirror, that idea that there's somebody else there, because we know, we know that when people are experiencing narcissistic abuse and invalidation and these patterns in the family, sometimes it just takes one pair of eyes on you, even if they're not empowered enough to intervene, but that mirror that you're valid I see you, I see what's happening.

Is actually can be really restorative for people. You didn't have that, and I don't think that's an uncommon experience for survivors. Well, I had it maybe once every I don't know how many years. I would see a glimpse she would say we got to get out of here, and I'd say, yes, let's do this, we can do this, and it would last, you know, for forty five minutes, and then the next day it's like, no, that was a ridiculous idea. So I had these glimpses that she was in there, which I think, in a way is

what endeared me. It was like the tiniest bit of connection. It was enough for me to feel connected to her that I knew that she was under a spell, and I just kept waiting, like when is she When is she going to come out of this? What's troubling is that you now know you're calling it a spell. Right. She didn't do the work, she didn't go into therapy. But she's also a parent, and I guess I have to own my own stuff here, and that I get really angry because I feel like once parenthood enters a

person's life, there is a level of responsibility. It's like you need to figure your stuff out because this is how the intergenerational cycles persist. My session with Ingrid will continue after this break. So time is going on. He's going back and forth. He's you're a great singer, you're a special person. Let's go to lunch and then loneliness, desolation, rage, punishments, back and forth. You nailed it, Ingrid. That's the trauma bond,

that's where it begins. But it seems like things then started to escalate, And in your book you talk about a trip. Could you share that, because I think that was a real turning point in the story. Yeah. So my mom, who rarely traveled alone and really had a life outside of their relationship her father, my grandfather, became really ill and she had to leave and go and be with them to help out. So for the first time, maybe ever, we were really in the house without her.

And this is pre cell phones and constant contact with folks. She was gone, she was out of the house. So one night, my stepdad comes back to my room like a Wednesday, random wednes Day, and he's standing in my doorframe and he says, hey, how do you like to go to Vegas? I don't even know what he's talking about, Like he knows I want to be a musician. Sure, maybe I want to go to New York l A, Okay, Vegas, And so I just said, yeah, I'd like to go there some day and he goes, no, this weekend. You

want to go to Vegas this weekend? And I was like, what are you talking about? It goes well. Obviously as a singer, you want to witness that sort of professionalism and he was also a musician, pianist, singer, so he really used that as a way to connect with me. And I was like, what are you talking about. He goes, listen, a friend of mine gave me free tickets. It's no big deal, you know. If you don't want to go,

I'll take John. And John is his biological son, the golden child, the one that always gets everything when my brother Josh and I seem to get the breadcrumbs. So I'm like, well, I don't want him to take John. You know I want to go. But he said, but you can't. You can't tell anyone about it. You know, the boys will be jealous. I can only take one of you. But again, if don't want to go, So I was like, oh, I mean, I could just feel the bind. Keeping secrets is such a classical part of

all kinds of abusive family systems. It is one of the many mechanisms by which a bond with an abuser evolves. Here he is asking Ingrid to keep a secret from her brother's and asking her to keep secrets becomes one more way to not only groom her but also control her. And yet again, like I said, sitting at that table, at the restaurant. When you go from being I stout to not literally existing in your own home to now somebody wants to take you on a trip, there's no

not going. There's no not going. And so I said okay, and he's like, great, pack your bags, leave them hidden all, come back and get the luggage tomorrow after I've dropped you all at school. So he leaves and I am just pins and needles. I'm like, what is and bring to Vegas? You know. I'm like, I know nothing about this, but there is this excitement. There is this like I wonder what could happen in Vegas? You know? And I pack, I try to go to bed. I can't sleep. This

adrenaline is coursing through me. There's fear. So I pick up the phone. And again this is pre cell phones, right, So you have one landline for a house, and I knew that there were times that he would be listening on the other end when I was on the phone. So I'm terrified that he's going to know that I'm on the phone. He's going to pick it up and hear it. But I call his eldest son, who doesn't live with us but lives nearby, and I say, Sean, dad wants to take me to Vegas this weekend and

not tell anyone about it. And he's like, that's son of a bitch, like he knew who his dad was. And so we were talking about the reality. We weren't sugarcoating it, but at the same time we're both caught in that maybe maybe it is just a fun trip and maybe he doesn't want the boys to be jealous. And it's almost like when you're so used to just living for these moments, you go, I'm just gonna take

it and hope that I get through unscathed. And so we just sort of joined in, not thinking except he said, I'm gonna get you the phone number of some people in Vegas, some friends of his, so that I had someone locally to call. And he said, I don't care if it's the middle of the night. If you call me, I will get in the car from Colorado and I will drive to come and get you. So I was like, okay, all right, you know I'm gonna do this thing, and so are we really going to do this? I don't know.

And we were sitting on the plane when he said, listen, this trip is costing me a fortune. So I only got us one hotel room, and I can feel, even in this moment, the seatbelt just strapping me in, you know, And I was like, okay. And so suddenly I'm thinking about Ben Weber and taking John away for almost three years. And this other story that I know about him where

his second wife, because my mom was his third. I knew that she was really young, and I think she was about my age and he was older when they got married. And I'm going Vegas and marriage and on the lamb and all these things, and I'm going, this

trip cost you a fortune. You told me you've got free tickets, right, So his lies are already not matching up, and so he takes me on this weekend where the whole time I'm just I'm doing exactly what Sean and I said I would do, which is I'm going to show up and I'm just gonna try to make the best of it that I can. He said, I have to take you shopping. You gotta dress more sophisticated in Vegas,

so he's kind of dressing me up. He said, you have to hold my hand everywhere you go because miners aren't allowed in casinos, and you could get kicked out, and I could get arrested or get in trouble. And I'm going, I don't know what the rules are. I know he's lying, but I don't know what the truth is, and there's no way for me to find out. So here I am holding his hand in these casinos, dress singing clothes that they made me feel older, they made

me feel more sophisticated. And we were there all weekend. See, the part of me that knew that he was manipulating, and the part of me that knew that he was grandiose and that he needed all the praise. I was going to play into that. And I said, this trip is amazing that you're giving me, like this could change my life. You're gonna expose me to all these things, so I don't understand why I can't tell anyone about it.

So I was trying to get him to go, yes, of course, I want to share how amazing this is. And he said, all right, listen, I'll tell the family, but you have to let me do it my way. So it gave me just enough, right, and then we went on this trip, and there's all kinds of details surrounding this in the story itself, but eventually we came home. No one ever knew. I'm holding it as the secret. Did it even really happen? Did he really parade me around what felt like a girlfriend? He never called me

a girlfriend. Maybe he didn't. He didn't try to sleep with me. He got us a suite with a huge bed with mirrors on the ceiling. The stage was set, The stage was set, and I could feel it. But essentially, he didn't physically assault me that weekend, And in my mind it went if he didn't physically assault me, was it really that bad? I mean, he took me to Vegas?

What's the big deal? And so here's where these you know, mixed messages and experiences are sort of lodged in my brain where I don't again, don't know what end is up. I don't know what's mostly true. I know what I felt, I know the terror in my body. I know I didn't feel safe. My intuition is that he didn't want to assault me. He wanted me to want him, and if he gave me enough and set the stage in this way, I just might And that was never in

a million years going to happen. And so when it didn't, it would flip again where I don't exist, You're dead to me. He couldn't tolerate that I didn't see him that way and give him all the praise and the glory and the love that he wanted me to. You know, it's so interesting because there's an infantile quality to grandiosity, right, and what grandiosity does, and we see this narcissistic dynamic.

It literally glosses away any form of reason, even if resistance from and I can't imagine distancing from this is a child. This is exploitative, this is abusive, This is a violation of trust, even though that this is this is my wife's daughter. The wrongs were so piled up like we can't even list them all. But the grandiosity, again, in the infantile nature of it is I have a little fantasy here, and I want to hear that my

my little fantasy can come true. Infantilizes is the word that keeps coming to my mind, and grandiosity, by its nature is right. It's the child putting a Superman cape on. You know, it's charming when a person is five. It ceases to be charming a little bit after that. And so that's the struggle here and the absolute terror that it had put you in. And you use the word bread crumb and talk about breadcrumbing, is that in trying to sort of get a special experience out of your

your young life. You're an adolescent at that point, but trying to get a special experience. And this is so classical in these families. You have to endure so much discomfort just to pull a tiny bit of what we even think could be joy. And it wasn't even joyful that you were in this absolutely tense, clenched experience. But it as though at least this is the only way I could see something new or something different, or get

exposed to music. This part of your book was so affecting for me when I read the part in Vegas, because I felt myself clenching up. I'm like, this son of a bitch is going to harm her, you know, and I'm you know, i mean the rage that's boiling up in me. So I'm feeling that tension as a reader. And what then when I put that part of the book down, I thought what this sixteen year old girl felt being broad into the setting, thinking there is only one thing that's going to happen here, and I don't

even know what to do about it. The terror, and that this is what these are, childhoods of terror. You know, you know, we did not physically assault you. You were being assaulted. Every sense in your body was being assaulted. The fear your brain doesn't know from fear from real right, your brain was reacting as though the real, terrible thing was happening. That's right, over and over in any minute, any minute. And that's what I carried with me for so long, next to a story that was saying, but

it wasn't that bad. And so when you think about complex trauma and the fragmentation that we live in, this compartmentalization that we live in, this disconnect from self is so profound, and yet you can see how that was created by design in all of those moments, correct, and the justification like, well, maybe that wasn't what happened, right, That justification is the core element of the trauma bonding experience that I'm going to find things, well, I wasn't assaulted,

this happened, or maybe it wasn't this, and none and enough even when there's inconsistencies, and it goes back to that cognitive dissonance. None of the pieces fit, so we're going to tell ourselves a story to make it fit. Now, after Las Vegas, dynamics changed in your relationship, you come back. Nobody knows except Sean in essence, you know, And I did tell my best friend, but that was that that There were the two people that knew. But above all else,

your mother didn't know as far as I knew. I mean, Randy said he was going to tell her, but she never brought it up to me, and we never talked about it. So I assumed that things changed, okay, and the dynamics and the relationship changed, And so what would you say, just even briefly, where was the shift after Vegas? So it largely went back to the silent treatment, and I didn't exist except one time when I was walking

through his room, he said, hey, can we talk? And he sat me down on his bed in their bedroom. My mom wasn't there. I don't know where she was, and he admitted to me, actually, he said, listen, I have so much love for you, and I know it's not the love that I should have for a step daughter. And when I am feeling that love and I want to give you the world. You know, it's when I

treat you whatever. Like he was basically laying out, I know exactly what I'm doing and when I'm doing it, and then the guilt gets too big and I have to shut it down and I basically have to give you the sound treatment. And I'm sitting there. It's such a weird experience because I'm like, he knows that this is what he's doing. It didn't occur to me that he could say it so succinctly that he had that much consciousness around it. And in the consciousness there's a

little bit of hope. I'm like, is he telling me that he's gonna, like go and get some help and and figure this out? And he doesn't, in fact do that what he's using this information to do. Initially it felt like a confession. My body knows it's coercion. I want you to see how much I suffer in my love for you. And I said to him, I am glad that you're talking about it. I'm probably not the most appropriate person to tell It's remarkable to me that

you had the presence of mind to respond. It is remarkable to me, to be honest, because what I was feeling was just rage. I'm just great. And then when I said that, it's like everything he just told me played out on his face. He went from loving me to hating me too. You don't exist, and he just stormed out of the room and walked away. And Ingrid also, he's talking about these emotional states he's having about you, as though any of this is appropriate, any of this

should be shared anywhere. But therapy is a not just point a delusional radiosity and you know, disconnection and all of that. My session with Ingrid will continue after this break. So at some point you're going through adolescence, you graduate from high school, Okay, as it comes to the point where you're getting close to graduating high school, which for many people would mean sort of a logical time you could leave the home. Were there any instances where physically

he was coercive or attempted to harm you? Or was it this ongoing silent treatment sharing inappropriate feelings cycle. I was close to graduating, so I felt like there was light at the end of this tunnel and was kind of hanging in there for just a little bit longer.

And there was one night where I'm back in my bedroom and he comes back to my room again, similar to Vegas standing in the doorway, but I'm sort of meeting him there, and there's this look that I will just never forget where he is there, but he's not really there. There's this darkness in his eyes, as though there's just a vacancy. It was a very scary look on his face. And with that he leaned in and he kissed me, a very forceful, not a fatherly kiss

at all, and I was just honestly stunned. I think I was frozen. And he pulled back and he looked at me, and then he went in to do it again. And when he came in again, I pushed him off of me. I just yelled his name. I said what are you doing? And without like any real reaction, I sort of saw him as though he came back into his body in a way, and he said I'm sorry, and he turned around and he walked away. And we

never talked about it again. But I did eventually tell the story about Vegas and his confession and this kiss to the counselor at school, and she finally said, Ingrid, this is a problem and we have to call social services. And honestly, it felt like she knew that I she knew the whole story. She knew I didn't have bruises, she knew that he didn't physically assault me in that hotel room, and yet she still said it was reportable. And I was like, Oh, that's that's hopeful. That's interesting.

It seemed like she not only wanted to advocate for me, but she was thinking as a mom herself, and she's like, I want to advocate for your mom, and maybe we bring your mom in first before Randy comes into the equation with social services. And to be honest, this is what led to what feels to me even more traumatic than Vegas, because it led to a series of events where I heard my mom say, I believe that you believe those things happened, but I don't believe that they did.

You're right, I mean that that moment when where there should be that moment of recognition, it's the loss of recognition that is at the core of what this trauma is. Right. To not have that recognition happen in real time right there, when there's even another person bearing witness in the room, it is like an eradication of your very existence. Yeah, that's right, And it changed me forever. Can you tell

what was that change for you? I think I had some hopefulness even through childhood, right these moments we're going to leave or you know, I would see her actually inhabiting her own body in a way that felt hopeful to me. But when I laid everything out in front of a school counselor to social workers, my brothers were there, and I genuinely thought, Okay, here's the moment where she's going to rally, and the hopelessness in that is so deep.

And yet I think, like most children, the loss of connection to a caregiver or parents is so severe because we're wired for survival through our relationships with these people that I literally couldn't tolerate that she discarded me, She abandoned me in that moment. So a part of me clocked it, knowing that that's what happened, and another part of me said, I will live the rest of my life trying to prove her wrong, and I will do it through a whole host of trauma responses, through perfectionism,

through achievement. You know, all of this betterment that I did. It was in part genuine interest, but in part it's like I am going to evolve to such a place that it's so obvious that I am not the manipulative liar that you're making me out to be, and eventually still waiting waiting for her to come out of this fog and this shell and back into herself to say, of course, I would never abandon my daughter. That you

brought up a couple of things here. One is that this issue of hope, hope is an extraordinarily dangerous thing in a narcissistic relationship because what it does is it keeps people on the chain a little bit further. You know, we talked about future faking. You know, it's almost self future figure, right, Okay, this is it the social work, or is everyone's in the room, this will be the moment? Right? And what gets harder is each one of these hopes

gets dashed. It's actually multiplies the level of devastation. The other thing you said, and I'm so glad you said, because I don't think we talked about this enough is in many survivors of the complex trauma, the narcissistic abuse you endured, they double down on perfectionism. I'm going to be more, I'm going to achieve this. I'm going to do everything, and we will see people the perfectionism will get to the point of obsession. Sometimes we'll see disordered

eating or even Frank diagnosed eating disorders. I'm gonna have the perfect body. I'm going to you know, I'm gonna some people will start taking drugs so they can succeed at school. They'll take, you know, stimulants like I'm going to stay up all night. I don't know that perfectionism is ever a good thing, but it's destructive perfectionism as

this is not who I am. So I'm going to have to show the world in this externalized kind of achievement orientation rather than an internalized simply I'm not this person. And I hope that for a lot of people listening to this that they may say, you know, I was not sitting there as the quote unquote like sort of damaged person who didn't get out of bed. I was

doing and doing and doing all the time. And that to understand that where that emanates from, because in a way it's that incredible things are achieved from doing that, but it's such a profound loss instead of doing it because you know you're good and this is what I want to do, and this is what I'm going to go achieve this. It's it's this act of defiance that

harms you. That's the problem with the sort of perfectionistic trauma research, and it just reinforces the wound because none of the Listen, if these things solved the problem that I was trying to solve, I would be like fantastic. But the problem with it is that they didn't. And so now if I have three degrees in psychology and IDA did all the things that I was seeking out to solve this problem and I still have it, then Rominy,

the depth of my brokenness must be so deep. And these things satiated me for maybe thirty seconds, that's how long they felt good. I was instantly surveying the land of what's the next thing that I gotta do because this one didn't fix it. And so it's the flight response. Right. We think of the flight trauma response as just the animal who flees in danger, but it also looks like staying in perpetual motion. Right. It's the obsessive compulsive, it's

the perfectionist, it's and I live in that space. I lived in that space. I am grateful for some of the things that came out of it, but for the part of me that was doing it because she genuinely thought she was broken and stupid and unlovable. I mean, the devastation of that. I can't really even speak to it. I can't articulate that internal lived experience. It's it's brutal. It's brutal. I mean, I'm a fellow traveler with you

on that. So even as you're saying this, I'm filling this in a very heart, you know, deep way in the sense if I look at the manic quality of my life and to this day, you know, when people say you're doing a good job, I'm like, I sort of smile politely and it's onto the next thing, because it's all an offset to the internal damage I experienced within myself. You know, Romany is a flawed person, so she does good things. It's almost like putting perfume on

myself instead of taking a shower. You know, the stink of my badness is going to come out. But I'm doing these good things, but it's never enough. You're never going to get away from that. So I think you're articulating something that's a real universal experience for all of us. We are sort of hyperachieving survivors. So thank you for so eloquently bringing voice to that. So now you're graduate high school, what happens? You just get to move out?

What what? Because now you're eighteen, right the game change. I'm still seventeen. I graduated seventeen, but I did sort of figure out how to apply for school, mostly because my friends were doing it. You know, it wasn't like there were these like there wasn't regular parenting where you go, you know, how can we help you grow and and achieve as a person. So I'm like fumbling along trying to cobble this thing together. And I apply to school

State School. I got in by the skin of my teeth, and I'm packing up my bathroom, ready to pack up my car and leave, and Randy comes back. And I literally genuinely thought in that moment, like, oh, maybe he's going to try to leave on good terms, right, maybe there's a pep talk coming. And he said, if you're going to go to college and spread the lies that you've been spreading around here all these years, you should go and tell him you're an orphan, because that would

be closer to the truth. And so I literally said thanks for the pep talk, and he walked away and that was it. And then I put stuff in my car. My mom comes out to see me off. She's experiencing the empty nest sadness. Oh my goodness, my daughter's leaving and she's crying, and did you say goodbye to Randy, you know? And I'm like, yeah, we said goodbye, you know.

And I got in the car and I drove away, And there was this real feeling that I had, not only then, but many other times in my life where it's like, there's going to be a clean slate, there's gonna be I get to start over, I get to show up, maybe be in a normal environment. I'm going to rebuild myself essentially from the ground up. As Ingrid leaves for college. There are two things that arise in

this sequence. First, there is that infernal hope that characterizes these traumatizing, narcissistic family systems, the hope that her stepfather was genuinely going to come and say goodbye and wish her well. Then her mother having the superficial sort of empty nest reaction, the same mother who denied her experience of abuse in front of a social worker It was an absolute disconnect, as though her mother was playing the role of mother in a play or something like that,

but she really wasn't invested in what motherhood meant. In narcissistic family systems, the children exist to serve rental needs, be what the parents want, or literally simply serve as props in the parents picture. And what I ultimately experienced over and over and over again is that cliche thing that I brought myself with me. I brought my conditioning with me. I brought my low self worth, my inability

to trust myself. This is the thing I say that I didn't quite understand for a long time that gas lighting doesn't just make you question the event itself, it makes you question every correct And when I think about that, when you sort of go, wow, how we minimize this psychological and emotional abuse as though it's not that damaging. It's like he went into my psyche and extracted pieces of me that I to this day feel like I

will never get back. And so that's who I brought with me to college, trying to show up in these dorms with other kids and these fresh faces, and I'm going to get a pretty duvet it's a nice idea, but all the while I don't want to get out of bed in the morning. My alcoholism is taking off full speed. I do not have the skills to cope, not just with these external expectations of what I didn't learn how to study. I didn't know how to right.

So I'm just literally cobbling it together. And only stayed for a year because I didn't have more money to keep going to school. I wasn't going to take out loans. I wasn't really there to learn. I was there just I was trying to be a normal girl in the world. And so then if I feel like I couldn't cut it there, what am I going to do now? You know?

So just a series of events that eventually I moved to New York when I was nineteen, because now I'm gonna take back that other thing that I thought he stole from me, which was a connection to my love of music and to my voice as a singer, and I'm going to go and do that. I always find it fascinating when survivors of narcissistic abuse want to pursue

their artistry music, dance, acting, visual art writing. These types of family systems steal a person's voice, and being an artist of any kind is such a pure expression of taking back that voice again and having it be seen, read, or heard by the world. I always say, instead of moving to New York to be a rock star, I

got sober instead, Like that's basically what happened. I just fell on my face, But that brought me to this really loving community of people that I eventually sort of stumbled into that started to give me that experience of being seen and even being seen in my time of need and brokenness in a way that I was like, what is happening? And I couldn't really tolerate it, to be honest, and so my body knew it was there, knew that it needed it, like life or death needed it.

But I ended up going to a different meeting every single day, different twelve step meeting, different twelve step meetings every day because I didn't want you to recognize me and try to have a conversation. It felt too threatening. But I needed to go and I needed to show up. So I'm just like in that directory every day, like the options are getting thin, right, It's like I'm going to different meeting every day for ninety days. I went to a different meeting until I finally found one that

I was like, I feel safe enough. I think I can come back. And I kept coming back and stay there my whole first year, and it was foundational. Like I said, it got me sober, but it really gave me this sense of a family that I was always seeking in a way that was profound. I'm so grateful for that. What it is, too, is that I didn't want to be seen. I'd keep going to different meetings.

It's that how intimacy gets to be such a co opted space when we were experienced narcissistic abuse, especially early in life, and in your case, it was even more so because intimacy became a sullied space. Right. Intimacy then was any sort of embedded, as it were, into an inappropriate sharing of emotion and feeling. You didn't see a normalized intimacy either between your own biological parents or your mother and your stepfather, and any sort of sharing of

it was in this again, in this inappropriate way. So how could intimacy in any form be safe for you? So the going to the ninety different meetings actually really speaks to you, know that again, what is what is a trauma survivors, you know, sort of quest it's safety, Where am I safe? The other thing, and maybe you can speak to this. I'm very surprised at how people are responding to this element of what I wrote in the book because I thought it was personal to me.

I thought a lot of this was just personal to me. So I'm very surprised at how common of a story this is. But one of the reasons I didn't go back to the same meeting twice for so long is I knew that I couldn't stop drinking. And okay, maybe we have that shared experience, but I really believed, and this is the word that I used to myself, that I was evil And I thought, I need you so desperately to save my life. But if you really know me, you're gonna know that I'm evil. And so I really

thought about it when I was writing the book. I was like, angered, are you really going to use that word? Like, isn't it being a little dramatic? And I was like, that is what I felt, and that's what I'm going to write. And how many people have reached out and said I thought I was the only one that felt that way, that I was evil, because everything that was evil about my stepdad, it's like he implanted it in me. And then my mom said, yes, that's where the evil lives.

It lives in you. And it wasn't the whole of me. It's never been the whole of me. But a part of me said, maybe they're right again that sentiment, and I was so glad you had written it that way, because there's not a survivor I've ever worked with clinically who hasn't uttered that sentence. One must be, you know, Dr Ron, Me, isn't me? I feel like maybe I'm the evil one. And I mean, like you, just bright

light walking through the world, and I'm thinking evil. And yet then the fact that they uttered it like that, that's even like you said, it's not the all of them. And I certainly weren't walking around the world in the sense that they're evil, but that there was even a part of them. And like you said, it's almost like this parasite that gets implanted in you. That's such a great word. As a result of these kinds of experiences,

here are my takeaways from part one of ingrid story. First, achievement and perfectionism are not uncommon fallouts of childhood narcissistic abuse and are often missed because who is going to pathologize a high achieving child or adolescent. It's not unusual for survivors to put their head down or disprove the family rhetoric that the targeted child is a liar or too sensitive or manipulative. In grid story, she highlights her focus on achieving and being perfect, a story that is

echoed in many survivors. However, there is no such thing as good perfectionism, and these patterns can culminate in compulsive behaviors, obsessive thoughts, rigidity, or even disregulation. For this next takeaway, being from a narcissistic family system often means living with not being seen or not being chosen, and what we witness an ingrid story is that this got distorted to another level. She was often not seen or chosen, but when she was finally seen or chosen, it was a distorted,

abusive experience. Survivors of narcissistic abuse are often pendulum ng between wanting to be seen and wanting to avoid being seen, which can be exhausting and confusing, and because both expi variances were often unhealthy for most survivors, it can feel as though there is no safe way to show up in the world. For this next takeaway, Ingrid said something in the episode that is very reminiscent of what many survivors of emotional abuse or other forms of abuse experience

when there are no visible bruises left behind. Ingrid was clearly abused above and beyond the emotional narcissistic abuse. She was coerced to share a bed and was forcibly kissed while she was a miner. But Ingrid shares that she grappled with what so many survivors struggled with. Was it abuse if there are no bruises. If the bruises of emotional abuse showed up on a person's face or body, they would be rushed to the hospital immediately, no questions asked.

We must, at all levels create this awareness, with educators, how health care providers, therapists, clergy, social service agencies, domestic abuse programs, policymakers and law enforcement all needing to understand that abuse is not something that can be detected just by looking at someone. Ingrid story is so rich and complex that we are sharing it across two episodes, and our next episode will explore how these patterns of narcissistic

abuse affected Ingrid as an adult. Just because she moved out of the family home doesn't mean that these patterns stopped affecting her. In our next episode, you will hear how these patterns shape adult behaviors, relationships and hopes, and how these cycles can sometimes feel impossible to break. Ingrid story is less about whether you can ever come home again, but rather about whether you can ever completely leave home. A big thank you to our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith,

Valen Jethro, Ellen, Rakitin, and Dr rominey der Vassila. And thank you to our producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Mara Della Rosa, and consultant Kelly Ebling. And finally, thank you to our editors and sound engineers Devin Donnahee and Calvin Bailiff.