Identifying Toxic Relationships Part 3

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.

Hey there friends. I have a question for you. What does it mean to be unstoppable? What does it mean to you to be unstoppable? I know sometimes we get so busy taking care of everyone else, we sacrifice our own wants, needs and desires to take care of everyone else in our life. Have you ever sacrificed something you wanted for someone else and put everyone in your family, everyone in your workplace, everyone in front of you? I know, I feel you, girl. I have done the same exact thing. Well, I want you to think about being unstoppable. Unstoppable with your dreams, unstoppable with your goals, everything that you want to do in your life. I want you to be unstoppable. So have you heard about my Self Care mastery course starting March 15th? I'm telling you, this is your time to get in. You will learn how to love yourself, create that new life you've always wanted, and as an end result, you will be unstoppable. All right friends, let's get to the podcast. So this is the third part of a five part series that we started a couple of weeks ago about identifying whether or not you are in a toxic relationship with or a narcissistic relationship. Both are pretty much one and the same, but they do have some differences. Well, lesson five today is this is a great warning sign regarding whether or not you are with someone who has a toxic personality or is a narcissist. Do they have any long term friends? So pause for just a moment. Think about that person in your life. Do they have any long term friendships? Do they keep in contact with friends from high school, from college? And then I want you to ask yourself this. What is their relationship with their family? Do they have a close relationship with their mother, that their father, their siblings, or are they rather estranged? So just take stock and take note of that. So a really good warning if you are in a relationship with someone who is toxic or narcissistic is that they do not have any long term friendships and typically will not have a very good relationship with their friends or their family. So if most of his friends are surface acquaintance or business related only, chances are you're dealing with someone who is narcissistic. And if you're unsure, I would have you do this. Ask them. Tell me about some of your friends from college. Tell me about some of Your friends from high school, what is your relationship with your mother? Tell me more about your family. And if the person you're with goes into a long, drawn out conversation about how horrible their childhood was, how unfair they were treated while they were growing up, and how much they didn't fit in in high school, how they really didn't make any great connections in college. College was dumb. College was boring. What you're going to find if the person you're with does not have good relationships with their family or long term friendships, you're going to find that they will blame all the other people that you've asked about instead of taking stock of their own position in those friendships. A narcissistic person or a toxic individual, they're not capable of seeing themselves as being the problem. They are not capable of looking at that situation and saying, you know, I wasn't a very good friend, I rebelled in high school. My parents and I didn't get along in high school, but we do now. We had a lot of work to do, but we, we get along now, you're going to find that they, they are not capable of deep seated long term relationships because long term relationships, they're hard and they take time, they take nurturing, they take caring. And a toxic, narcissistic person can only think about one person and that is themselves. And when asked about their past relationships and friendships, they will blame other people for those relationships not being great, especially with their family members. If they are kind of a loner and they're just not very well connected with others, that is a huge red flag warning that I would have you definitely take stock of. And I would encourage you to get out that journal again and start writing down who are their friends, how long have they been friends? And I'm here to tell you, if you have to really write down the details of your time with that person, that in itself is a giant red flag. The whole purpose of this series is to create more awareness in your life of the toxic people that are there. Sometimes a toxic individual worms their way into your life and you don't even realize it until it's too late. They will look at people that are vulnerable, that are easy targets, that are extra kind, and they will take advantage of that person for their own needs to be filled. If you're with someone who fits that narrative, I want you to start placing some healthy, healthy boundaries around you. It's so important that you do that because otherwise you will be sucked into this negative, negative narcissistic abuse, which is quite Honestly, horrible. If you have been in a narcissistic relationship for a length of time, it will require some serious, serious counseling or coaching to get through. They have a way of almost manipulating your mind into thinking that you are the crazy one, that there's something wrong with you. And the reality is they are the ones that, that are wrong. They are the ones with the issues and with the problems. You're also going to find that narcissistic person will become very dominant of your time. And I mean every second of the day. They will dominate. And if you don't spend every minute of the day with him, he will make you feel guilty for every second that you did not spend with them. They will make a competition of things like, well, you spent X amount of time with your girlfriends. When do I get X amount of time for you to spend with me? And that is a giant red flag. If you are having a constant conflict with how much time you do or don't spend with them, that is a very, very big red flag that you are in a relationship with a narcissistic person. And I know you're thinking, but they're so nice some of the time. They have so many great qualities. I don't discount that at all. And I believe you when you say that. But I want you to know a narcissistic person or a toxic individual is not capable of having a healthy, unconditionally loved relationship with anyone. They can't even have that relationship with themselves. So if what I just said to you about the lack of long term friendships and an estranged relationship with family, I really want you to take a step back. Put some space between you and the narcissist or the toxic person. Get out that journal and write down your thoughts. Write down things that have happened in the past that just kind of made you scratch your head a little bit. Because when you start writing these things down, you're going to see a pattern. And the pattern is going to be very revealing to you of how toxic and how narcissistic this person is and how unhealthy they are for you. Now, I'm not saying a toxic person or a narcissist can't change. They can change some. But the problem with that is it's going to be a lot of hard work for them to change. Most of them will not be able to even see themselves as having a problem or being the one that has to change. They will definitely blame you that you are not doing what they need you to do. I had a narcissist say to me one time, if you would do everything for me that I needed you to do, I would be just fine. Wow, that felt like a sucker punch to the stomach. Because first of all, how dysfunctional is that? It put all of the blame on me of why they were not happy and what was going on in their own life. Friends, I can't make anyone else in this world happy. It's impossible, absolutely impossible. And I cannot rely on anyone else for my happiness or my self worth or my self respect. All of those things are inside jobs, especially when we're talking about happiness. It's an inside job. Friends, you are the only one who can create your own happiness. So that was lesson number five. Our next lesson is number six. The person you are with pick on you constantly. Just pause for a moment and think about that. Do you find that the narcissist is always making fun of you, putting you down, making a joke about you, just poking fun of little attributes. Like you come out to go out to dinner and they look at you and say, oh, is that what you're wearing? Almost as though to give you a complex, to make you think you don't look great, that what you chose isn't right, that they disapprove, they want to keep you walking on eggshells so you're always second guessing yourself. Or if you've been out in public, out with a group of people and you are the butt of every single joke that they tell that night. Because keep in mind, the narcissist is going to dominate the conversation. They will be the one that does 95% of the talking over an evening. And if during that talking and those conversations, you are the butt of every joke, and of course after a while it starts to hurt, starts to burn a little bit. I mean, we all need to have the ability to laugh at ourselves because let's face it, we do some pretty ridiculous things and we all goof up, we all stumble and fall and you've got to be able to laugh at yourself. I'm a firm believer in that. But when you are constantly the butt of the joke, you are the one to make look like a fool, feel like a fool, being laughed at in front of a crowd, that's when it's so dysfunctional and wrong. And here's the kicker. When you bring it up to him and say, you know, why do you always make fun of me? Geez, it's just a joke. I was only kidding.

Wow.

Can't you take a joke? Did you see what just happened there. When that is the response from the person that you're with, the person that supposedly loves you and cares about you, they completely turned your feelings around and made it about them. That is how they control you. That is how they manipulate you. They are masters at manipulation. And if you have experienced a narcissist or a toxic person before you, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Or maybe you've had this strange feeling but didn't really know what was going on. Now you do. You have to be on guard of that narcissist. Especially if you are a kind hearted person who is giving and forgiving and sees the good in everyone that you meet, you are the perfect target. If you are vulnerable in the least sense, having those little self esteem issues, those insecurities you've had, your own set of trauma that you have not dealt with, you are absolutely the prime target for a narcissist. You are the drug that a narcissist needs. You are the fix thereafter. That is why, friends, it is so important that you work on yourself that you heal all of the things within yourself that need to be healed. Because if it is not repaired, friends, it is repeated. That childhood baggage, the adult baggage that you've collected on the way to where you are today has to be dealt with. And it either has to be repaired or I'm sad to tell you, it will repeat again and again and again in your life. And you will also pass those past, those traits along to your children and your grandchildren. And I know you don't want that for them. You don't want your family, your children, the ones that you love so much. You would lay your life down for them to experience the same things that you are experiencing. The same insecurities, the same setbacks, the same low self worth. You have to work on yourself and you have to let go of that childhood baggage. And childhood baggage might mean you have to go back and reparent that child that was hurt. You might have to do that. It's hard work. It is hard work. But friends, you have to do the work to be able to be that unstoppable person that I know you want to be. So one more reminder on the Self Care Mastery course coming up starting March 15th on my website, there is a way for you to reserve your seat. There is also a way for you to do a payment plan instead of the full price at one time. And you're welcome to do the payment plan. Please reach out to me. Pamela Jean anewlifemail.com and I can get you hooked up or head on over to the website. Pamela jeananewlife.com Founding Member thank you so much for joining me. Have an incredible week and be unstoppable.

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