Identifying Toxic Relationships Part 2

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. Welcome to this week's episode of A New Life podcast. Before we get started, I want to talk to you about the Self Care Mastery course coming up on March 15th. TikTok friends, time is passing by. Isn't it time that you start to invest in yourself, learn to love yourself and go through what you need to go through to get rid of the self doubt, the low self worth. Bring back some self respect and some healthy boundaries into your life. I know you want to do it. So the mastery course begins March 15th. It is a 12 week hands on deck do the work course. Each week you will be given a module, a lesson plan for you to go through and do the hard work. Friends, it's not going to be easy. I'm not going to lie to you and say it's going to be easy peasy because it is not going to be easy. But it is absolutely worth doing the hard work. So March 15th is the starting date. If you have not reserved your seat, you are missing out friends. And I want to tell you too, you do have the option of doing a payment plan if you would like. The cost of the founding members course is only 397, not much at all. That is a tiny investment when you think about it in the big picture. You can go shopping and blow that much money on an outfit that you're not going to like in six weeks. This is a life changing course. You don't want to miss out on it. So go to my website Pamela jeanneannewife.com foundingmembers to get all the information you need to get. And now we are going to go ahead and dive into part two of our series Identifying toxic relationships. Part two of a series of five. Last week we talked about lesson one was they were charming at first. We discussed how when you first got into relationship with your toxic person, everything was so perfect it was like living a fairy tale. And then all of a sudden one day it changed. Lesson number two was that they hog every conversation, they dominate all the conversation and really leave you left to be seen and not heard. So those were lessons number one and number two today lesson number three is they feed off of your compliments. Now as I said last week, this podcast is not only about a husband, wife, a boyfriend, girlfriend, any type of romantic relationship. This can be applied to the workplace, a toxic boss or coworker a toxic sibling, someone who you always thought was a friend can become toxic or have been toxic all along and you just didn't even realize it. So we're going to talk more in terms about relationships, dating relationships, married relationships. But I want you to know this is applicable to all relationships. So they feed off your compliments. What do I mean by that? Well, on the outside, a narcissist or a toxic person seems super confident. You know, they walk in and command a room. You know, that person that walks in and they just have an air about them that commands the attention of a room. But in all reality, these people are incredibly weak and frail and filled with insecurities. So much so that they will fish for compliments continuously. So have you ever been with a friend? Let's just say it's been one of your friends that you're hanging out with and they're constantly fishing for some kind of a compliment. You know, did you notice I'm wearing a new outfit today? Did you see I got my nails done? Did you see that I've lost five pounds since I saw you last? The person that is always looking for a compliment, they're looking for a way for you to start saying, oh my gosh, you look great. I love your nails, I love the outfit. Have you lost weight? That they're always looking for reasons to talk about themselves. So take note of that. I want you to take note of that. So when you're in your normal circles with your spouse, with your, the person you're dating, friendships at work, take note of that person that is always looking for a compliment. You know who they are, you've experienced them. I know you have. We all do. And it's important that you understand who that person is and you identify them. And the only way to have any sort of normalcy with a toxic person is to have a healthy boundary. And I say that because you may have to be in life with a toxic person. There are circumstances where you. You simply cannot delete them from your life. But you can implement good, healthy boundaries, but you can't have a boundary if you can't ident the toxic person or people in your life. I do hope that you're in a situation, though, that if you are dealing with a toxic individual, you are able to separate yourself from them, spend less time with them if at all possible. A toxic person requires a lot of praise in order to feel validated and worthy, which is exactly why they're always fishing for and feeding off of compliments. The difference between a Confident person and a narcissistic person is a confident person lifts other people up and has the ability to lift themselves up. In fact, a confident person feels better about themselves when they're lifting up other people. If you've ever heard an athlete being interviewed at the end of the game, you can pinpoint a narcissistic athlete and a confident, confident athlete first and foremost by how they give credit to their teammates. If you're listening to that post game interview and the athlete is talking about what I did, if I didn't do this, if I hadn't done that, my great play, my great catch, my great shot. That is typically a toxic, narcissistic person who lacks confidence and needs to have that praise. But if you're listening to a confident, self assured athlete, they are talking about, I couldn't have done this without my teammates. If my teammates didn't rally in the fourth quarter, we would not have won the game. It's not just about me, it's about my teammates and how well we played together. That's the difference between a confident person and a toxic, potentially narcissistic person. A narcissist oftentimes needs to degrade other people to feel good about themselves. So if you're ever out in public and you hear the person you're with, criticize the others around you, talking about how someone looks or how someone sounds or what kind of car they drive, they have to tear down other people to feel good about themselves. That is a huge red flag, my friend, that you are with a narcissistic person. And the best way for you to discern the toxic people in your life is truly to journal. I know I've talked to you about journaling and I know some of you are going to say, but I'm not a good writer, blah, blah, blah. That's just an excuse. Friends, you don't have to be a good writer because you are the only one who's going to be reading this journal unless you choose to share it with other people. The purpose of this journal is for you to write down your experiences to help you identify those red flag moments in your life. We are busy people. Life is busy. If you are working, you have careers, you have children, you have lives, you have a lot going on, you volunteer your time. There's a lot happening. It is so easy in the busyness of life for you to not see the warning signs of a toxic, narcissistic person worming their way into your life. They weave their way in when you least expect it. When your guards are down by journaling and writing down experiences, things that just feel off, things that just don't feel quite right, will help you identify and see those red flags. So, friends, no excuses on the journaling. Write down these occasions so you can identify the good and bad people in your life and the people that you need to have either a good solid boundary with or eliminate them altogether if at all possible. So, friends, I want to divert slightly here. This is Valentine's Day week. This is the week before Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day is on Sunday, if you have forgotten. And I want to have a quick talk about that before we move on to lesson four. So Valentine's Day can be a make or break week for many people. It's a week where you don't always feel loved and worthy of love. But I want to tell you this. If you love yourself enough, if you love yourself unconditionally 110% through and through, if you are in a place where you want to date you, that you are dating yourself and doing all the things for yourself that at one point in your life you waited for other people to do for you, then, friends, you are on the path of loving yourself. February is considered the Love Month, but I want to call it the Love Yourself Month. And oftentimes people go through in an entire week of Valentine's Day, dreading the holiday for fear of being forgotten, for fear of feeling unloved. And I want to tell you this little secret. No one can make you feel unloved unless you let them. Unless you allow it. So, friends, go buy the flowers, go buy the box of chocolates, go get yourself a spa day, get together with some girlfriends. If you don't have that someone special in your life right now, there is no reason to be alone on Valentine's Day unless you choose to. Some of my best Valentine's Days were spent with my Galentines. We had dinner, we had a couple of drinks, we had a lot of laughs. And there was nothing left to expectation at all because we made our own fun with people that we deeply love and care about. I can remember as a little kid we did these things called candy grams at Valentine's Day at school. Do you remember those? Did you do candy grams? Well, the intention of a candy gram was to raise money for an organization or a club at the school, which is always a great idea because clubs need additional funding at school. But what a candy gram was is where you would have a secret admirer send you a candy gram. It was a heart with usually a lollipop or a sucker stuck to it. And you would get delivered these candy grams first thing in the morning. And if you were ever the child that didn't get a candy graham on your desk first thing in the morning, you know exactly what I'm saying and exactly how that felt. Because there's nothing more disappointing than not being included in the candy grams. And you had some people would have eight or 10 or five or seven at their desk each morning, and you were lucky to have one or two. If there is something that doesn't make you feel more unloved and unworthy than something like not receiving a candy gram when you're in the fifth grade, I don't know what what does. But friends, you are adults. You have control over Valentine's Day and how you feel and your expectation, even if you're with someone right now who doesn't value you, who doesn't treasure you. Treat yourself to flowers. Buy yourself the flowers because you love you. I know I've told you this before, but every week I have fresh flowers in my house. Every week I get a bouquet of fresh flowers for me because I love them. I don't wait for anyone to send me flowers because that is a validation of worthiness. I don't need someone else to bring me flowers to make me feel good or to make me feel good about myself. I buy my own flowers. And if the person I love happens to bring me flowers, well, you can bet I appreciate that. And I feel incredibly loved. But loving yourself and feeling loved unconditionally has to happen with you first. You first. If you are not dating someone right now, if you find yourself alone, I want you to make a promise to yourself and a promise to me that you will date yourself for at minimum six months before you start dating someone else. Fall in love with you, see and feel how worthy you are because you know you're worthy, that you're not going to be valuing your worth on somebody else's opinion of you, because your opinion of you is the only one that matters. Okay, off of that soapbox and back on to lesson number four. So lesson number four is the narcissist or toxic person in your life, they lack empathy. Do you know what that feels like? Have you ever tried to share your feelings with someone? Whether it be your spouse, who you're dating, a friend, an employer? You try to share your feelings and somehow they turn what you just shared with them around and it becomes about them. And you're thinking, wait a minute, how Are how is this about you? When I was telling you how I was feeling burned out about work or burned out at home or burned out as a parent? How are we talking about everything you do for the family? Or how are we talking about your problems at work when I really was just trying to share with you how I was feeling and the struggle I was going through? They lack empathy. They're not capable of having that listening ear. They're not capable of, if you remember from last week, two ears and one mouth. They really only have two mouths and no ears because they're not capable of just listening with empathy and trying to understand where you come from. And if after doing a process of understanding, they can perhaps give you some advice or encouragement or. Or even if it's just an empathetic hug and saying, you know what, it's going to be okay, this will all work out. Oftentimes this person doesn't even act like they're interested or that they're listening. And even worse, when you're trying to share that intimate feelings of something that you're going through, it all becomes about them. Man, that's frustrating. If you have ever been in that situation before, you know how frustrating that can be. And I know for me, when that's happened to me in the past, it's caused me to shut down. It's caused me to not want to talk or not want to share my feelings because I don't feel valued. I don't feel that anything I'm telling you matters because every time I try to share my feelings, we end up in a fight or a heated discussion about you and your struggles and how I'm not meeting your needs when in reality, this isn't even about you. This is about something I was experiencing today. And I think, if we're honest, being empathetic is something we all can work on. We all need to work on being better listeners and less talkers. Having the two ears and one mouth. I mean, God gave us those attributes for a reason. For us to be good listeners and to be able to understand where other people are coming from. It doesn't mean that we have to agree with what the other person is telling us. But to think about them through an empathetic mind of why do you believe what you believe or why are you thinking what you're thinking? Finding that place to be able to agree to disagree and still value them as a person and value your thoughts and value their feelings because I don't know about you, that's definitely how I want to feel. I want to feel valued, I want to feel worthy. I want to feel like I'm appreciated and loved and. But it will be impossible for me to ever be able to accept that from other people if I have not accepted myself in that same way. So friends, we're going to wrap it up with that lesson three, that they feed off of your compliments. And lesson four, they lack empathy for anyone but themselves. If you haven't noticed a common theme, you're going to notice it right now that a narcissist or a toxic person is one of the most self centered individuals you will ever possibly come across. But here's what I want you to remember and write this down in your journal as a big red flag. A person like that is starving for attention. They're starving for attention because of some trauma and some event in their life that has created this incredibly low self self esteem individual. And I want you to write down, friends, that this is not about you. You have not done anything wrong. The characteristics and attributes of a narcissist that make them incredibly selfish has not nothing to do with you. And that's what I want you to remember. It is not about me. It is about their insecurities and their low self worth. So stop beating your head against the wall trying to figure out what you did wrong. Because friends, I'm here to tell you, you have not done anything wrong. All right, we're going to leave it there and wrap it up next week. We're going to move on to part three. I can't wait to dig into that. There's so much good information here and I hope you have your journal out and taking great notes. Friends, have a wonderful week. Have a fantastic second week of February and I want you to have a wonderful Valentine's Day. Taking great care of yourself, loving you from the inside out is the best thing that you can do for yourself. Take good care, friends and I love you all.

Thank you for joining us today on a New Life podcast. We will see you next time.