A narcissistic person cannot even do step A to help a relationship. You can wear the entire alphabet out multiple times, and they still haven't even found step A. Not even a tiny step. Nothing! The level of exhaustion that comes with this is unbelievable. It is a bone dry emptiness. I had absolutely nothing left in my tank. I was on empty! So why do we wear ourselves out so much trying to make the relationship work? Why do we work so hard at it? What if we put all that effort into ourselves? It ...
Jul 20, 2023•16 min•Ep. 150
To donate to the Covert Narcissism Podcast click the link below. https://patron.podbean.com/covertnarcissismpodcast “I can’t live like this anymore. I want out. I’m done.” So you say this to your spouse, totally exhausted and meaning every word. You are done. But then this strange thing happens. Here you are, still in the home with them. You might have said these words and left for a while, or maybe they left for a while. But evening comes, and here you are in the home together. Now what? Do I c...
Jul 16, 2023•19 min•Ep. 149
Victims of covert narcissism have so many questions running through their mind. While I do get asked many questions, some questions show up in almost every conversation. How did you realize you were with a covert narcissist? What is a covert narcissist? What does a relationship with a covert narcissist look like? What do I do now? Where can I find help? I was recently interviewed regarding covert narcissism. In this interview, I answer these questions and more. Here are clips from that interview...
Jul 13, 2023•17 min•Ep. 148
To donate to the Covert Narcissism Podcast click the link below. https://patron.podbean.com/covertnarcissismpodcast Everyone carries wounds from childhood. No matter how healthy and attentive your parents were, you did not get through childhood unscathed. No one does. Everyone has some wounds. That does not make you damaged or bad. It just makes you human. When we have an emotional need that is not met as a child, we often abandon that need in order to survive. Maybe it wasn’t met because our pa...
Jul 09, 2023•22 min•Ep. 53
Living with a covert narcissist is like trying to live in a war zone or in a courtroom when you are the one on trial. My son is traveling this week with his dad, who is a covert narcissist. I have been nervous about this trip and sincerely hope that everything goes well for them. I texted my son on their second day out and asked how it was going. His words spoke volumes. He said that it is going ok but it is just hard to relax. This is exactly how life is with a covert narcissist. You never feel...
Jul 06, 2023•22 min•Ep. 146
Today we are talking about conditioning, the process of training someone to behave in a certain way or to accept certain circumstances. In the Boy Who Cried Wolf, the villagers became conditioned to his cries. Like the boy in the story, covert narcissists set off alarm bells when they are not needed. They stir up drama and trouble when there isn’t any there. Claiming that they hate drama, they are the first ones to create it. It is almost as though they are bored with life unless the drama is th...
Jul 02, 2023•17 min•Ep. 145
Parenting with a toxic partner is the single hardest thing I have ever done in life. It is a living nightmare! You are not co-parenting. You are counter parenting. You are working against the negative energy of that other parent. You spend enormous amounts of energy simply trying to counter the damage that they are doing to their own children. It is exhausting and impossible. Yet for the sake of your own children, it is a task that you will give everything you have in order to be successful. I h...
Jun 29, 2023•22 min•Ep. 52
Will they ever grow up?? Am I dealing with a child or an adult? Sometimes I really am not sure. I’ve talked before about the lack of emotional growth in covert narcissists. They grow physically, mentally, even socially and in other ways. But not emotionally. Their emotional growth stopped at some point in their childhood, for various reasons, typically some sort of trauma including emotional neglect. So they can certainly seem like a child when it comes to emotions, but they are trapped in an ad...
Jun 25, 2023•17 min•Ep. 143
This podcast is audio taken from 2 short video clips that I made just recently. I want to share it here! The first piece is Shouldn't I just be Grateful that it isn't Worse? So many people have it worse than I do. Should I just be happy that I am not in their situation? Just because others may have it worse (and that is a matter of opinion itself) does not take anything away from the pain you are experiencing. If you are questioning this, please listen to this piece! The second part is Everythin...
Jun 22, 2023•20 min•Ep. 142
Why do I feel so guilty? After all they have done to me, what is wrong with me that I now feel guilty? Guilt is one massive piece of the confusing puzzle when you are dealing with a covert narcissist in your life. If it is your spouse, guilty that you don’t want to be around them anymore. Guilty that you have bad thoughts about them and can’t find any good thoughts anymore. Guilty that you are pulling away when they are in a love-bombing phase. Guilty that you don’t have the capacity to give the...
Jun 18, 2023•22 min•Ep. 141
Have you ever said...But we have some good times together. Remember that one day…. Remember that one time…. Are you building an intimate relationship on breadcrumbs? Sure, we would have some good times together. We had evenings that were successful and happy. We had the occasional weekends where his anger stayed in check. But I came to the realization that I was hanging on to those all-too-rare times and pretending that they were our reality. I was desperately trying to build a home and raise ki...
Jun 15, 2023•17 min•Ep. 51
Will you help me? Will you meet with me? I hear this from so many people. And yes, I will meet with anyone who needs that support. What I don’t hear often? Will you help me? I’m a covert narcissist. I now work with hundreds of victims of covert narcissism, both individually and in groups. I have so many who have reached out to me, telling me that my story resonates with them. It is like we have all been married to the same person. In all these years of running all this, I have had only a few peo...
Jun 11, 2023•18 min•Ep. 49
Many victims of covert narcissistic abuse wonder if they themselves are the narcissist. Why is this? We finally begin to identify what is going on in our world, and then we are met with an overwhelming amount of doubt. What if I am the problem? Is it me? Covert narcissists often accuse their victim of being a narcissist. They project their own behaviors onto their victim and blame them of many of the things they themselves are doing. They will point out things that you are doing that makes them ...
Jun 08, 2023•18 min•Ep. 50
I had heard of PTSD, but what is this C-PTSD? What’s the C stand for? What’s the difference between the two? Is it just another form of PTSD? The C stands for Complex. Well, that’s no joke. I’m going to tell you right now that everything about a relationship with a covert narcissist is complex. Choosing a restaurant is complex. Surviving the meal at the restaurant is complex. Hanging pictures in the house is complex. Borrowing a pen from them is complex. Asking them to pick something up from the...
Jun 04, 2023•19 min•Ep. 48
It is impossible to reconcile with a covert narcissist! All relationships have disagreements and misunderstandings. People in healthy relationships help carry each other's blame and responsibility. They both apologize, and they both give each other room for humanness. This is not the case when you are in a relationship with a covert narcissist. You are not allowed to be human. There is no room for mistakes or misunderstandings. Trying to reconcile with them is one of the most infuriating things ...
Jun 01, 2023•18 min•Ep. 136
Who wouldn’t want someone who doted over you all the time? Giving in to your every desire? Monitoring your mood constantly and adjusting accordingly? Working overtime to figure out whatever might possibly upset you and running interference before it happens? Doing all the work? Let’s be honest. It’s a great deal, right? Great for the covert narcissist. We spend all of our energy making them happy. We will bend over backwards, stand on our heads, spin in circles, jump up and down, or sit in a cor...
May 28, 2023•18 min•Ep. 46
One thing you must realize is that the way a covert narcissist interacts with you is not about you. They learned these interaction traits in childhood. Somewhere at a young age, they learned that offering give in a conversation is dangerous and painful. They learned that give equals attack. You can see this is how you react to their attacks. You learn that it isn't safe to offer peace in conversations with them. They learned this as a child and developed a phobia of give. They can't say somethin...
May 25, 2023•22 min•Ep. 47
It would have been so much easier if he just would have hit me, just once. But he didn’t. It would have been easier if he had just been a jerk to me all the time. But he wasn’t. It would be easier to see the abuse. It would be easier to talk about it and identify it. It would be easier to explain it to others. It would be easier to leave. It would be easier to not be in the relationship in the first place. It would just be easier if they were an asshole all the time. But they aren't. There certa...
May 21, 2023•16 min•Ep. 45
To donate to the Covert Narcissism Podcast click the link below. https://patron.podbean.com/covertnarcissismpodcast I am going to try to explain the unexplainable. The lack of give when communicating with a covert narcissist. The absence of the regular flow of give and take that thus makes you feel that you are talking to a void. It is painful, absolutely exhausting, and crushing to your spirit When in regular casual conversation with someone, we often confirm that we are hearing what the other ...
May 18, 2023•20 min•Ep. 132
I tried so hard to convince myself that my husband was not a narcissist. I truly did not want to accept this about him. At first, when I was researching narcissism, out of desperation and survival, many things lined up. I checked a whole lot of the boxes that applied. But then I would go back and rethink them. Well…maybe not this one. Maybe it doesn’t apply. Maybe that one isn’t true. At least not all the time. It’s normal to have some disagreements and some emotionally heated times. Maybe this ...
May 14, 2023•18 min•Ep. 44
Being trapped in a circular conversation with a covert narcissist is dreadful!! It is the loneliest place on earth. You feel completely destitute and isolated. If you have ever experienced this, you know what I am talking about. In these two episodes, I address and describe 8 signs of these circular conversations. Here is a quick list of those signs: 1. You find yourself teaching an adult about basic communication skills and basic human emotions. 2. You find yourself thinking, “If I could just f...
May 11, 2023•16 min•Ep. 130
To donate to the Covert Narcissism Podcast click the link below. https://patron.podbean.com/covertnarcissismpodcast What are some things you stopped doing because your covert narcissist made you feel weird or criticized you for it? I recently saw that someone had posted this question in the Covert Narcissism Facebook Group. If you’re not part of that yet, look it up. Join us! It’s simply called Covert Narcissism Group. The answers started pouring in! Person after person stated I stopped being my...
May 07, 2023•16 min•Ep. 129
Covert narcissists don't use conversations to find understanding, reconciliation, or compromise. They don't see them as a way to connect with a loved one, to spend time getting to know each other better. To them, conversations are about winning. They are for putting the other person down and showing their superiority. Conversations are competitions. One person comes out a winner, and one a loser. This is warfare. It is the single most lonely place on the face of this earth. If you have experienc...
May 04, 2023•17 min•Ep. 128
In January, on a cold wet day, sitting in my van in the parking lot of a restaurant, I sobbed uncontrollably. I dialed my dad's number, but when he answered, I could not speak. I just sat there and cried. He knew that I was having lunch with my husband that day. He knew that I was going to try to open up to him in an extremely raw and vulnerable way. And now, I just cried. Not even knowing the details of what had transpired, my dad cried with me. This was the single most painful moment in my mar...
Apr 30, 2023•18 min•Ep. 43
Covert narcissists feel like a trade up when we have been in an abusive relationship with a more overt narcissist in our past. It seems like such a win! Finally you have found a caring, empathic person. They can seem so genuine and real. But yet all the traits of narcissism are still there! They are just so covered and passive. We don't see them for who they are until we are hooked in and trapped. AND...then when we do see them, we still doubt what we are really seeing! I am Renee Swanson, and I...
Apr 27, 2023•27 min•Ep. 42
To donate to the Covert Narcissism Podcast click the link below. https://patron.podbean.com/covertnarcissismpodcast Escaping a relationship with a covert narcissist is a lot like living your teenage years all over again. You are back in a place of trying to find you…again. You are learning to stand up for yourself…again. Dealing with big emotions… Angry and reactive Who wants to go back and live their teenage years? I certainly don’t. To demonstrate this, we are going to use a Venn diagram. Do y...
Apr 23, 2023•19 min•Ep. 125
To donate to the Covert Narcissism Podcast click the link below. https://patron.podbean.com/covertnarcissismpodcast Erin Riley was born in New York City and attended Trenton State College in New Jersey where she studied as little as possible. At the tender age of 19, she escaped to Los Angeles and quite by accident fell into what would become an exciting and influential 40-year career in the music and entertainment industries, choosing hit songs for Major Market Radio stations and developing new...
Apr 21, 2023•26 min•Ep. 41
Do you know what the word of the year for 2022 was? According to Merriam Webster? Guess? Right now, what do you think that word was? I would have guessed narcissism or narcissist. Those two words are flying around everyone right now. Nope! Not those words, but yet still a word that we all know all too well. The word of the year was gaslighting! I wasn’t surprised when I read this. All of these words are getting thrown around an awful lot. Gaslighting is certainly one of those words. As popular a...
Apr 16, 2023•22 min•Ep. 40
To donate to the Covert Narcissism Podcast click the link below. https://patron.podbean.com/covertnarcissismpodcast Even people who are aware of narcissism and victims themselves can still end up in a relationship with a covert narcissist. They seem so real, genuine, open, and vulnerable. Why do they seem so genuine? A covert narcissist is more in love with the idea of being a compassionate person than actually being a compassionate person. They fool us because their desire to be that compassion...
Apr 14, 2023•15 min•Ep. 122
To donate to the Covert Narcissism Podcast click the link below. https://patron.podbean.com/covertnarcissismpodcast What exactly is the silent treatment? For many of us, we experienced this in middle school. Our best friend gets mad at us and stops talking to us. It’s a temper tantrum because we hurt their feelings or didn’t do what they wanted. “I’ll show you. I won’t talk to you anymore.” It’s a form of teaching someone a lesson. You no longer deserve my time, attention, and communication. You...
Apr 09, 2023•22 min•Ep. 39
