Identifying Toxic Relationships Part 1

Welcome to a New Life podcast with Pamela Jean where it's all about empowering women to empower more women. Get ready friends to create a new life. And here is your host, Pamela Jean.

Hello friends. Before we get started with today's podcast, I wanted to let you know about myself. Care Mastery course coming up. It is so exciting. I cannot wait to get started with this. The course officially begins on March 15th. Friends, this is a chance for you to begin a new beginning for your life. How it is going to work is there's a founding members club that is available for a limited time. We're only letting in a very few number of people into the founding members club and this is a 12 week course of self Care Mastery Learning to love yourself from the inside out. Friends, happiness is an inside job and it is so important that you take the time to love you first before you move into good healthy relationships. So if you are interested I would love for you to go check it out on the website. Pamela janeanewlife.com Foundingmembers of course you can send me a private message. I would be happy to answer any questions that you have or send me an email. Pamelajean anewlifemail.com okay, so today's podcast. This is the beginning of a five part series. I'm so excited about this. This ties right into the Learning to Love Yourself series. It's fun in that we're gonna talk about toxic narcissistic relations and what are the signs of those relationships and how you put forth good, healthy boundaries. Not only the boundaries that are necessary, but also to have an awareness, a conscious awareness that you are dealing with a toxic person or in the midst of a toxic relationship. I think sometimes we get into a situation or into a relationship and you don't even realize it's toxic until a certain amount of time has gone by and you're thinking, how, how did this happen? What in the world is going on here? So I want to give you in the next probably, I think this is going to end up being about a five part series. So you're going to have to stick with me for several weeks on this. It's going to be so fantastic. But what I want to help you with is to identify those toxic relationships. Now, a lot of what I'm going to be talking about is going to deal more with a romantic relationship. But that isn't necessarily the only place that narcissism exists. It could be with friendships. It can be a narcissistic relationship from a family member, a parent or A sibling. So although I'll be referencing more from a dating standpoint or a marriage standpoint, it does not mean that it is exclusive to that. It really is relationships across the board. So be open minded. You may be in a toxic relationship with a friend and not even know it. And perhaps after tuning into this series, you will have a better vision, a little more clarity on what that actually means. So we're going to start with lesson number one today. And it's about, are you dating a narcissist? The first lesson is they were charming at first. So think back to the very first time that you were dating. Think back to that time and remember how absolutely everything felt right. I mean, everything. Remember how the phone would ring and your heart would just leap. You would feel this tingle through your whole body, or the text message would come, or the private message would come in and you could feel. Everything about it felt so right. He doted on you, complimented you, told you everything that you had wished you had ever heard in any kind of relationship before in the past. Just think back to the courting time where he went above and beyond, dotted all the I's, crossed all the t's, and everything was so, so perfect. But then one day, out of the blue, something changed. Something changed. The look on their face, the glint in their eye. Something was different. And the first thing that you did was to think back in your memory bank, what did I do wrong? What did I do? Did I say something yesterday? Did I say something last week? Did I do something? Your first reaction was to look at yourself and wonder, what did I do? How did I screw this up? What did I do wrong? And you really raked yourself over the coals trying to figure it off, figure it out. That what did you do that set him off? What did you do to make that whole entire courting time change? That time that you first started dating, where you were head over heels and he was head over heels. How did it change? And I want you to remember the first thing that you thought of was not what's wrong with him? But what's wrong with me. The immediate reaction was, what's wrong with me? What did I do wrong? How did I screw this up? How did I make him upset? What did I do? What did I say? But, friends, this is what I want you to remember. How a narcissist treats you has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with you. I want you to say that out loud. If you're not really listening, come back to me and listen to this How a narcissist treats you has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with their issues and their low self esteem. A narcissist sees you and your relationship and your attention as a game. It's a game to them. It's almost as though you're a drug and you are their fix to their addiction. How they treat you has everything to do with their issues and their own low self esteem. And I think that's one of the hardest things to understand and to wrap your head around when you are in that relationship. Because oftentimes you've been in the relationship long enough that you don't even know how you got to where you were. Because everything was so great, it was so perfect. It just. It seemed like this person was heaven sent that God chose him for you and all the planets lined up and he was perfect for you. And then all of a sudden one day it just changed. And your initial reaction was trying to figure out what you did wrong. How did you fall short? Where did you screw up? How did you mess it up? But in all reality, it's part of the game that the narcissist plays. They got you, they have you. They don't have to play in the game anymore. They've gotten their fix. It's like that addict that's going after the next drug to suffice. But I want you to remember, and this is so important for you to remember, that their issues really have nothing to do with you. It's their own low self esteem that is doing all of the speaking. And when the game is done for them, they're kind of done with you. But yet you keep going back to those, those dating days, those first days thinking, but how could something so perfect go so wrong like overnight? And I want you to keep in mind friends, that oftentimes when you're involved in a toxic relationship or a narcissistic relationship, all of those red flags that your friends and family might be seeing, you are not able to see them. And I don't want you to ever discredit any instinct of question or something just doesn't seem right here. I don't want you to glaze that over with. You must be imagining it, or you must be having a bad day or you are having a problem, because that's not the case at all. If in your gut even the tiniest bit of something doesn't feel right, my friend, follow your gut. Never discredit your intuition, never discredit your gut instincts. You are born with instinctive reactions to things. But because we don't want to offend anyone, we don't want anyone to feel bad, you gloss that over into thinking, oh, you must be imagining it. Take more time to pay attention to your instincts, pay attention to that gut feeling, that pit in your stomach, that gut feeling, and give it some time to think about it and absorb it and process what your, your instincts are telling you. And if you're not able to depict what that instinct is or what that red flag is, talk to a good trusted friend, talk to a trusted family member, talk to your life coach or your, your counselor and just say something feels off and allow them to help you process that information. Friends, you are not responsible for anyone else's happiness, but your own happiness is an inside job and it starts from within you and it starts from within other people. You cannot make someone else possible. And when you are in a toxic, narcissistic relationship, you are going to make yourself crazy trying to make the other person happy or to be looking at yourself at fault constantly because they are not happy. Happiness is an inside job. So that is lesson number one. They were charming at first. Lesson number two, if you are in a relationship with a narcissist or a toxic personality, toxic person, this could again, I want to just remind you, this could be a friendship. This could be a parent, sibling, a co worker, a boss. We are going to reference a little bit more relational types of conversation here, but all of these elements can be shared across the board. So if you're in a true toxic relationship, the person you are in that relationship with will dominate every single conversation and you will hear over and over again how great they are. This is the kind of person that has, instead of two ears and one mouth, they have two mouths and one ear, or oftentimes three mouths. They don't listen or want to listen to someone else, they just want to hear themselves talk. And the thing about a person that is a two mouth, one ear person, they only care about themselves. They only care about what makes them feel good and what makes them sound good. There's always that one person that when you get together with a group of friends or, or even in the workplace that they dominate every single conversation. And if you experience that type of person, I want you to just to pause and step back instead of having that, you know, eyeball rolling moment where, oh, here they go again, I want you to take a step back and listen truly to what they're saying. And I want you to take note of how many times they reference themselves, their accomplishments, how great they are, just take note of that. Just take a mental count of how many times they've said that. Because if this is what you're experiencing, if you're experiencing someone who constantly has to remind you of how great they are, then my friends, you absolutely are in a toxic relationship or dealing with a toxic person. They will go on and on about their accomplishments and embellish them every step of the way. In fact, you're going to find that you're going to hear the same stories over and over and over. And each time you hear that story repeated, it just gets a little bit juicier. It just gets a little bit better. And if you are in this situation, if you can right now identify that you are in this situation and you are dealing with a toxic person, I want you to run from that relationship. Seriously, I mean, run as fast as you can to get away from that situation. You have to separate yourself and create a healthy boundary around this person and yourself and start avoiding this person. If you're in the workplace, obviously showing respect to other people is very important because the respect you show for others is truly a direct reflection of the own self respect that you have, the respect you have for you. So it's important to be respectful. But you don't have to listen and participate in somebody else's narcissistic embellishment and rants. A narcissist will inflate their ego as long as someone is willing to listen. And friends, that's where you are in control. You're in control of whether or not you're going to stand around the water cooler in the office and how long you're going to listen. Because of their extreme, and I mean extreme, low self esteem and lack of real confidence and self love. They build themselves up through conversation. I know that you have witnessed this behavior. I know that you have. I would like for you to take some time today to get out your journal and write about this. Write about this because it's important that you identify the people in your life that are toxic. Write their names down, write down the occasions that you've listened to the story over and over and over again and try to identify their lack of confidence in themselves. Someone who is truly confident and has self love, self worth and respect, they will not be the one that is bragging about themselves. The self confident, self respect, high self worth person is going to be that listener, that is going to be the person with two ears and one mouth that listens, that listens to you, takes in what you're saying and participates in the conversation doesn't dominate a conversation. So I hope you enjoyed lessons one and two today. They were charming at first and then something changed. And lesson two is they dominate every conversation. I hope you enjoyed that this little commentary today, because I think it's important that we are able to identify and discern when we're dealing with toxic people before it's too late. Toxic people are pretty shifty. They are smooth, they're charismatic, they find ways to worm their way in and before you know it, you are under full attack of a toxic narcissistic person. They are very good at what they do. Oftentimes your toxic individual will not only be a narcissist, but they have sociopathic tendencies as well. And if you don't know what that means, just Google narcissistic sociopath and do a little reading because that in itself will give you a clear definition of what you're dealing with and also what to avoid. So friends, thanks for joining me today. I hope you are off to a great start of the week. It's Monday, February 1st. I can't believe we're into a new month. I hope you're having a great day so far. I want you to keep in mind about the Self Care Mastery course that is all about learning how to love yourself from the Insight Inside out. It's a 12 week course where each week a new lesson is dropped and you will be given a PDF workbook to go along with each lesson. Friends, this is where you get down and dirty and do the work to change your life. It's not just reading a book, reading a lesson. It's about you getting up to the task and doing the work. So if you'd like more information or would like to sign up and reserve your seat in the Founding Members Class Founding Members Club, go to Pamela jeanneanewlife.com Foundingmembers have a great day friends. Thank you so much for joining me. We'll see you next week.

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