Welcome to the Relationship Recovery Podcast hosted by Jessica Knight , a certified life coach who specializes in narcissistic and emotional abuse . This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior , set boundaries with yourself and others , and heal the relationship with yourself so you can learn to love in a healthy way .
Hello , thank you for being here . I have been thinking about this topic a lot , especially in the last few days , and wanted to just talk about something that I believe comes up quite often with people that are self-aware , that are compassionate and that care about their own personal development .
And so I was eating dinner with a friend last night who was dealing with the postmortem of working for Silicon Valley Bank , and we got to talking about me later on in the conversation and I just I was like basically talking about something that I had been reflecting on and didn't have a ton of time , so I tried to give him the cliff notes , which were
basically you know , what I realized , or I've been learning , even in friendships , is that when there is dissonance , when something is going astray or something's going wrong , I tend to look inward first , which is a quality that I want to have , but it takes away from the ability to clearly look outward and ask myself what's happening and so , or like what I was
the other person treating me , is this , or the words and actions aligned , because typically I'll be like that I miss here , or my expectations too high . Am I not being kind ?
And that gets us into a tricky place , because it's like we can spend all day thinking about how are we showing up , what did we do , what are we doing wrong , when there's a good chance that if we are feeling that way and if we are evolved that we can really try and work that out and see is it me or is it the situation , or is it them or like what
is this ? But even in friendships , that ability to go wait , am I doing something ?
Has kept me from being able to see toxic behavior , red flags , manipulative behavior in others , and I know that a lot of other people feel this way , because it's so hard to find a place in between being constantly on guard to being a little bit more open , because , like we're taught , keep our guard up now , especially if we've been with a narcissist , and then
we are also taught , like you're not always right , other beliefs like that . I just think it's really makes it really hard to interact with others . And I had this relationship that a lot of the actions and the words didn't align and the words were amazing . The words were probably what I've always wanted to hear .
The actions were as close as they could be , but they were aligned . And when things got more aligned , more misaligned , more misaligned . What I did first was I said is it me ? Is it me , am I too tired ? Am I overworked ? Am I not prioritizing ? Am I inflexible ?
And so , if you feel like that's you , I wish I had a magic sequence of thoughts or journal prompts to help you work through what that is . But really and truly I don't know what the answer is .
The closest answer that I have is just move slow , slower than you want , slower than you think , and just spend time beginning to work these things out , because you'll know , you'll know if it's going astray . And sometimes you need the space .
In the same way that you need space away from a narcissistic or abusive relationship to really see what's happening , because it's almost impossible to see while you're inside of it . It has become your normal .
You need space away from new dynamics as well , or even friendships , to be able to see what's happening , what happens when you pull back a little bit , put the focus on yourself . Does the friendship feel closer ? Do you feel like the other person sort of steps forward In a relationship ?
If you are really busy and you're kind of caught , you're driving yourself crazy to be there for them , be there for yourself , be there for your kids , but like work is just crazy and you open up about that , do they then tell you you're not doing enough , or do they step forward and take those reins that you had to set down ?
Does somebody see you as a person , or do they only see you as a person so much as it benefits themself ?
I just think that this is a tough topic to think about , and so I just wanted to name it and frame it , and so if you feel like this is you , and if you feel like this is coming up in your world , as always , please feel free to reach out to me , jessica , at JessicaNightCoachingcom .
You can also find me on Instagram at JessicaNightCoaching , or at Emotional Abuse Coach , my website , emotionalabusecoachcom . I hope this helps .