Video Transcript: Narcissists and The Codependent Dance

Hey, I want to start today by throwing a word at you. And I want you to contemplate this word. It's the word dependency. Do you ever think of yourself as being a dependent kind of person? Now, we often tend to think in stereotypes. And we think of a dependent person, perhaps as someone that goes slobbering up next to someone else saying, Please, please make my decisions for me. And so if you're not that kind of person, you might say, I don't think I'm very dependent. Well think it through carefully. Now, as it relates to the emotional dimension dependency can mean that you're allowing your inner mood, or your inner sense of direction to be determined by outer circumstances. For example, you're with someone and they are in a good mood. And so it brings a good mood out of you, or that other person may be in a foul mood, and it can bring a foul mood from you, you wind up reacting to the people or events and circumstances in front of you. And that's part of our dependency. And frankly, it's just part of being human. This is something that begins on the in the earliest days of life, as a little child, you feed off of what's in front of you. And then it can continue all the way into your adult years, actually, there's a learning curve that hopefully is happening where you learn how not to be so dependent upon people in circumstances but and so as you come into the adult years, you want to bring that into balance, but it remains in there and then it's not a wrong or a bad thing. Until it becomes something that becomes that rather dysfunctional. Now when you throw the narcissist into the equation, then they're going to create what I refer to as the narcissistic, codependent dance. Now narcissists do not want to say this out loud, because this would just seem to be just awful to them, it would ruin their reputation, so to speak, but they have a highly emotionally dependent nature. Now, they like to say no, I'm very independent, because they like to be forceful and in charge and do things their own way. But that's not necessarily the definition of what we're referring to here. Keep in mind, they allow their moods to be easily swayed by the outer circumstances, in fact, quite a bit. And they can be set off in all sorts of emotional directions by what you say or think or do or how you prioritize and that becomes their dependent response to you. And the narcissistic codependent dance means that they feed off of you, you feed off of them, they're becoming a reactor, you become a reactor and before you know it, and you're getting into this pattern of relating, that's very unhealthy for each of you. And this is something we want to learn how to opt out of. Now, before we continue, I do want to make you aware of the fact that we have resources available to you. Down below the video, you're gonna see some links to some of the books that we have. I have my book when it's called entitled When pleasing you is killing me. And in this particular topic, you're gonna find that it's going to be a very pertinent book for you. We have Laura Kranz, his book, ugly love and she speaking as a survivor who's been through narcissistic relationships, and she's writing about what she's learned about. And then also, we'd like to have you subscribe to our channel so that as new videos come out, then you can avail yourself to that and we'll keep you informed as we go along and you can be part of our community. Now back to this whole thing about dependency codependency, we tend to think of a codependent relationship is one where there's a lot of enabling behavior going on, you know, somebody has some negative behaviors, and you're keeping it keeping going. Well, that's very much what happens when you engage with a narcissist. How many times have you thought to yourself, whenever I'm around that person, I wind up acting in ways that I don't like and before you know it, I'm actually feeding the very behavior in that narcissism that I don't like, they become worse and I become a pretty poor version of who I am. Well, let me see if I can zero in on eight different characteristics that are a part of this codependent dance. And then we're going to be looking at some ways that we can get beyond that so that you don't get caught up quite so dysfunctional, even with that individual. Now, the first thing I want to mention, that's part of that codependency and this would come as no surprise is that when you're in that codependent kind of relationship, your moods become quickly imbalanced. Now, it can be a mood of anger, or insecurity or fear or agitation. When you try to think about it, it's like no, I don't want to be that kind of person, but because of the situation in front of you. Then you wind up going into a dark place in your emotions. And then on the Narcissus side their mood is affected as well. And they become agitated typically and they become very manipulative and they become agita error impatient and annoyed and intolerant. Your mood is impacted their mood is impacted you both wind feeding off of one another in a very unhealthy kind of frenzy or a second ingredient, this part of the codependent dance. And that is you can each show characteristics that are a part of your deep history of dysfunction. Let's suppose that you had a family relationship, and you thought yourself, there are just certain characteristics that I was exposed to as a kid that I don't want to perpetuate. But yet you get into this adult situation with a person, and they bring out some of those old habits that you wish you could set aside, the narcissist is probably not thinking very deeply, but they perpetuate old habits that have been there for years and years, because they just keep cranking away, trying to make sure everything goes according to them. And it's like some of the dysfunction from years past just keeps popping up over and over again, there's not a lot of learning. But there's just a lot of repetition of crummy kinds of exchanges between the two of you, both of you, in your own separate way can get caught up in that that's the CO dependency. Or a third characteristic of that codependent dance is that there is a very tight tendency towards defensiveness. If there's criticism, if there are suggestions about things that could go differently, or better one, or then both of you are going to start going into a critical mode, Hey, quit saying that kind of stuff to me, or I don't like that. Or you have to justify or rationalize and try to explain why it's okay for you to be you. And then if you talk to that narcissist about who they are, they become defensive. And both of you can be in that mode where there's a wall up, neither one of you is hearing very carefully, because you're each so busy trying to defend your position has that ever happened in your world, or a fourth ingredient that is part of the codependent dance. And that is you can nurse fantasy thoughts about the ideal way that things might be. Now the narcissist has a lot of ideals. It all happens to revolve around themselves. Why can't you just see that I'm the wonderful person that I am. And why can't you just give me the entitlement that I think that I deserve? And so they've got that ideal notion as to how they're supposed to be the king or the queen of whatever their universe is. And then your idealism can be, why don't why do we have to do this? Why can't we just get along with each other? Why can't we just have more of a sense of cooperation and a feeling of teamwork. And so you can have your wishful thinking, the narcissist has their wishful thinking, and you each can feed off of one another, with a lot of futility that it just isn't happening happening according to the proper agenda, or a fifth characteristic. And this kind of goes along with that and defensive part, you wind up being in a very guarded, cautious calculated way of interacting with each other honesty goes flying out the window, it's like, I don't know that I can share who I really am. And the narcissist is over there thinking, I don't really want you to know what's going on inside of me that that you might take advantage of. Or, for example, they don't like to admit their futility or their humanity or their failures. They just want to talk about the good stuff. And so you have this kind of mutually quiet agreement that says, Let's not be authentic with each other, we're just going to keep up our images of what we think ought to be. Or a sixth characteristic of that codependent dance is there's a lot of blame a lot of accusation, the blamer, the accuser is more or less pointing to that other person saying if you will act right then I can feel okay. And so the narcissist has their way of doing that