Transcription
One thing you got to be very careful of, whether you're in one or getting out of a narcissistic relationship, is be careful of the overshare. People who have been in narcissistic or toxic relationships of any kind start to do something over time. Most of you, most of us, learn to shut themselves up, shut ourselves up, and not talk anymore. There's a silence that envelops us, especially in the presence of the narcissistic person. But then it starts overtaking other places in our lives. We simply stop sharing. Maybe we stick to neutral topics like the weather, or the price of apples, or just the things that you need to talk about to get through the day.
And this tends to happen for people who are still in narcissistic relationships. It's sort of a symptom of the hypervigilance and the constriction that's raised by narcissistic relationships. And it also sustains that sense that a person in a narcissistic relationship basically has to shut down their true self to survive.
So what this means is that if a person has been in a narcissistic relationship and finds them, you found yourself perhaps through therapy or other forms of support, or you may recently be out of a narcissistic relationship, or you made the decision to go no contact, and you start to feel safe, or you finally have the opportunity to share, then you share a lot. You may even find that you almost can't stop yourself, and you keep going and going.
Listen, as a therapist who works with survivors of narcissistic relationships, it's great in the room. It's a chance in a non-judgmental space for a client to work through the rumination and safely talk about themselves. But the problem is, it can start to get tricky in other areas of life, and it puts survivors in a tricky spot of trying to find the sweet spot of feeling empowered enough to sharing, to share your feelings and beliefs and experiences and emotions, and allow your true selves to shine through, but not sharing too much, including sharing vulnerabilities, in the like and settings or with people where it may not always be good for you. And it may not necessarily be because the person that you are sharing with is narcissistic, but it also might be setting dependent. For example, oversharing at work, or oversharing in a way that might monopolize a conversation, or sharing oversharing with a person who may doubt you, you know, for example, who may be, um, may doubt your judgment because they may be evaluating you for a job or something like that.
Listen, none of this is fair. I get that. If we were simply to think of a person as a dynamic system, right, where pressure has to come out somewhere. If we never share, which is what happens to lots of people in narcissistic relationships, if we never share, then we get sick. All of that holding it in takes a physiological toll. But when the opportunity comes up to actually share, sometimes people can feel almost disregulated or overwhelmed. Think of it as not having eaten for an entire day, and then when you finally have food in front of you, you find that you eat too much, too quickly, and then afterwards you regret it and feel sick. This also happens to survivors who overshare, and who afterwards will ruminate about, "Oh my gosh, what did I do? I shared too much," or being worried about sounding strange, or saying the wrong thing, or taking over a conversation, or even sharing things you feel that you should not have, and that may now leave you feeling vulnerable.
As a person heals, this sort of dance of finding your stride in terms of how you share may be one of the most difficult parts of healing and of discernment. We know that people who are recovering and healing from trauma find themselves sort of stuck in a place of overregulation and numbing, and disregulation, and perhaps oversharing or strong and overwhelming emotion. The sweet spot in the middle is not always easy to get to, but it's important because in that more regulated spot, okay, it's sometimes called the window of tolerance. When we're in that window of tolerance, that's when we feel more in our bodies, more able to stay in touch with the present moment, and more able to discern and even inhibit, but also be open because we feel like we're present and able to judge the situation.
Because the fact is, survivors need, desperately need safe spaces to share. Therapy is one of them, but it's often not enough, right? At best, it's usually about an hour, maybe weekly, but it's at a scheduled time. It can't be the only thing a person has, and not everyone can afford it for the long term. And since the loss of social support is one of the first things that happens in a narcissistic relationship, building that up again takes time, and not being sure how to share of yourself can feel really challenging.
There's a tension that builds up in survivors after years, perhaps lifetimes, of not being seen or heard. There is a natural human tendency in us that screams out, "Please see me. Someone may person here." And that can also sometimes result in us, in an almost pressured way, wanting to get the words out and saying, "Okay, if I have this opportunity to talk, I have to do it, and do it fast." And then that can couple with that desperate need anyone has to feel seen, right? However, we don't always live in a very nice world, and discernment means finding that balance of not mistrusting everybody, but also slowly figuring out who we can actually trust. That's a slow process, a combination of being present in the moment, listening to our bodies, staying grounded, taking it slow, recognizing the back and forth of conversation. Are they listening to us? Is, is there listening to us actually being communicated in their responses? And the same for us, are we responding in a manner that reflects that we are listening to them, or are we just in a conversation where they talk about themselves and then it's our turn and we talk about ourselves, but there are actually no moments of reflecting on what the other person says? That kind of parallel conversation is also a problem.
Discernment means getting back into the moment and having a truly reciprocal and mutual conversation. Something I promise you has never happened in a narcissistic relationship. Those conversations were basically a narcissistic person's one-sided diatribes and us listening to their monologues and hoping that the conversation, or whatever you want to call it, didn't turn into them screaming at us, and us rarely, and certainly over time, definitely not sharing our side of something, because when we did, it would be shut down. Learning a new, healthier dance of conversation is part of healing. We lost the practice in hearing another person without dissociating, because sometimes, if not often, that was the only way to survive.
And having that reciprocal conversation, the overshare is also dangerous because there is a risk that we may do it with the wrong people, or in the presence of the wrong people. That it may happen on a first or early date, where maybe you feel safe because the other person is sharing their difficult stories, or it may happen with other new people you meet who may also be sharing a lot about themselves, or even in a workplace where people seem open to people sharing. The only thing worse about being harmed by a toxic person once is when we see it start happening again and again, because we encode and feel and really start to believe the world is truly dangerous, and we are a foolish person in that dangerous world. And when our sharing comes back to bite us, we feel that we're responsible for that.
Finding that stride in the middle, being open but also not laying out all of who we are too fast, takes a minute. And we tend to learn this by making mistakes. Maybe we want to share and have someone say that after hearing all that, that we're okay despite everything. Maybe it's a lifetime of holding it all back. Maybe we want to get it off of our chests. Maybe we just want to be seen and heard. As I said, therapy is a place to start, but what also has to happen is to move away from the dissociated space many of us occupied in the narcissistic relationship, where we weren't really listening, but instead we were enduring and hoping that what they were saying wouldn't spin into abuse and yelling, because our opinions and feedback and personhood didn't matter. So there wasn't the chance for a reciprocal conversation.
We have to slowly understand a new way of listening, of feeling safe, asking clarifying questions in a conversation, of responding to what, to what the other person shares, and then slowly, at the right time, sharing our own experience, of understanding that conversations are not what we call parallel play, with each person having separate experiences entirely with nothing shared, but rather a space where, of course, we're two different people, we're going to be having different experiences because we're different people, but there's also a shared experience, and we can bring our true self into that shared experience. That process takes time to trust. And as I said, while therapy helps in so many ways, it's actually something we can't always practice in therapy, because a therapist's job is really not to share about themselves, so it already is kind of one-sided. Finding those safer balance spaces in the real world, out of that room, is what's difficult.
Your story is beautiful because it's yours, but not everyone gets to hear it because they can't, at least not safely. The hardest part of being a person is figuring out who does get to hear that story, of holding space for the story of the other person, and not feeling we have to launch into rapid-fire one-sided monologues and take advantage of a singular moment of being heard. But it makes sense why this happens for survivors, and healing in so many ways is a long path forward of deep programming from the narcissistic relationships you have endured. This dance takes a minute, and it's not unusual for people who, who are healing to say, "Oh my gosh, I just sat there like a dud and said nothing." And then sometimes say, "What was wrong with me? Was I sounded like I was drunk? All I did was talk about myself." That's the nature. We're kind of go from place to place until we get to that middle ground. But when we're with safe people, it could really feel like we can find that stride. You'll get there, but it takes time. Just be careful with that overshare, because sometimes our vulnerabilities can be used against us. Any of us who've been through these relationships know that. So take your time, trust yourself, and it's okay if it takes a little longer than you think. Thanks again.