Narcissistic Parental Abuse and Addiction: Survival of the Family Scapegoat

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:09] Welcome to The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I am Dr. Mark Leeds and I will be your host. Join me in exploring the world of addiction treatment. How can we improve the ways that we help individuals to overcome addiction? The goal of treatment is to save lives and help people to get back on track to a path towards success and happiness in life. Welcome to the Rehab Podcast, and I want to introduce my guest today. How are you today?

B. Flakelar [00:50] I’m very well, thank you. Mark, how are you?

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:52] Oh, I’m great, great, thank you. And the reason I asked you to come on is that I came across an article that you wrote and someone had shared it with me on social media and I read it and it was incredible. I mean, the stories that I’ve heard from patients that I’ve treated in my practice, just the way that story described their experience so precisely and you put names on things that didn’t have names and when I went to the bottom and read the comments, a lot of other people said the same thing that you basically told their story. And it was incredible. So I was wondering, how did you come up with this article?

B. Flakelar [01:31] I had been wanting to write about narcissism for a very, very long time before I wrote that article. And I come from a narcissistic family unit, and I didn’t actually discover that or the depth of that until about five years ago. But it was in the last when I finally went no contact again but it was in the last three years particularly that I really realized after all my research, you know, looking up Sam Vaknin, HG Tudor, all of the sociopaths themselves and reading their work, they clarified for me a lot of what had been going on in my life and in my narcissistic family unit. So that article actually came about through my own experience as being the family scapegoat. And I wrote that article because basically I am sick of narcissistic abuse and I am sick of the impact that it has on people. And I have felt I’m one of these people where I have trouble saying it, but I’m better off writing it, you know. And I wanted, I knew that if I wrote that experience down, that numerous people would say, this is my life, this has happened to me, and I do have that ability to articulate, you know, what has happened to me. But it was through all the different resources that I gained, all the information, all the knowledge, and I went, yep, this is me, and now I’m going to put it from my perspective and say how they felt. And what was really interesting is that I actually, I didn’t mean to, but I actually published it on the date of my narcissistic parents’ birthday. So it was like a bit of a birthday present subconsciously, you know, because it has been severe mental anguish and people have such a lack of knowledge about narcissistic abuse and they have such a lack of knowledge about the severe emotional impact it has on somebody to be absolutely shunned and ostracized and to have all of their reactions to abuse magnified and pathologized being the behavior of a crazy person when it’s not the behavior of a crazy person it’s the behavior of somebody who’s living in significant mental abuse.

Dr. Mark Leeds [04:05] Until recently, I didn’t know what a narcissist was. If you had asked me a year ago, I would have imagined it’s someone that takes a lot of selfie pictures and that they like to look at their picture or look in the mirror and admire themselves. I had no idea how deep the whole concept was, that it’s a malicious, maybe a psychopathic person that basically tortures people. And a word that comes to mind, I don’t know if you guys in Australia get the show Young and the Restless, the soap opera. […] And they were talking about, in fact, Young and the Restless features a few famous Australian actors, I think. They were featuring the word gaslighting. They were talking about, you know, you’re gaslighting me. And it was like the vocabulary word of the week on the show. And you’re familiar with that term, right, gaslighting?

B. Flakelar [05:05] Yes, yes. Yes, I have been. Well, I spent 30, I’m 37 now. I spent 32 years being gaslighted or gaslit by my narcissistic parent. And basically it sends you to a point where you feel like you were going crazy and people can actually go crazy from gaslighting.

Dr. Mark Leeds [05:28] In my medical practice, I treat addiction, mostly opioid use disorder, people who are addicted to things like pain pills and heroin. And in some cases, the families are very supportive and loving and they just want to get their family member better and get them treatment. And in some cases, the families just really come down on them and basically mentally torture them. And you wonder, you know, what came first? Was it the addiction that made the family hate the patient? Or was it maybe the narcissistic abuse that actually led to the addiction?

B. Flakelar [06:05] From my perspective on that, I too have seen, you know, some beautifully loving families be so supportive of their loved ones who have addiction problems, you know, or temper issues even, you know, or whatever. And they’ve allowed these people to kind of go through the spiral of addiction and the behavioral issues. And they’ve really just accepted it and embraced it and loved them anyway. However, in the narcissistic family, generally from what I know is that the family scapegoat or the rebel child is another name for the family scapegoat. They are generally the one who ends up getting addicted to drugs. If anybody is going to get addicted to drugs, it’s going to be them. And when they do, they’re generally scapegoated for that again. So in my family of origin, I had some addiction issues around marijuana and then alcohol. And, you know, I had to go home and live with my parents at the time. And I guess they did offer support. However, though, behind my back, it was very non-supportive and it was very like, you know, some of the behaviour that I engaged in, which wasn’t, which was, you know, drug addiction behaviour and poor impulse control and things like that. My secrets were told behind my back to other family members. And, you know, I was shunned from things. A family member wouldn’t allow me to have contact with their children. And in the scheme of things, I was only addicted to pot. Like, you know, I wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t a violent person or anything like that. But in a narcissistic family unit, in circumstances like that, all of your secrets will be told. You know, your narcissistic parent might get on the phone and tell aunts and uncles and all these people, all these things that you’re doing that you know they’re private things that parents really need to just keep in the family but they use it against that scapegoated victim to basically just say you know you are no good and you are our so basically the scapegoat becomes the identified patient more so I mean they’ve been told their whole lives there is something fundamentally wrong with them because they’re the child that’s usually exposed the family system they’re usually the challenging child, the cheeky child, highly intelligent, a lot of them are. And they will, so they’re not clone-like. So the other siblings, they often become cloned. And things that are very distressing, the cloned-like siblings, they won’t get distressed about those things. Whereas the scapegoat, they’re the more enlightened one. And they kind of go, well, that’s actually not really okay what you’re doing. And so they will challenge that. And how I believe this leads to drug addiction is that because they expose the narcissist in the family unit, the narcissist has to actually turn that back around and say, well, actually, no, I’m not the one doing anything wrong because narcissists can’t be accountable for anything and everything is your fault in any arguments that you have with them. So what they do is they end up turning that around onto this scapegoated child who might just be you know 10 or 11 and just saying well actually mum you know I don’t like what you’re doing or I’d prefer that you didn’t call me that name or it’s usually very assertive but then what can happen is the narcissist because they don’t want to be accountable they’ll turn around and say well we’ve got a problem child here you know because they’re reacting to the things that the narcissist says or does. So the narcissist might goad them and provoke and provoke and provoke. And because the scapegoat is the more, I guess, you know, they’ll react to the abuse and engage with the narcissist, which narcissists love. They end up, you know, the narcissist ends up going, well, I can get a reaction out of you whenever I want. So I’m just going to provoke you even more. And then they start to brainwash the entire family into thinking that this child has a behavioural issue and that they have all these problems. Or if they start talking about the abuse, they might say that the child’s a liar, you know, things like this. And then the child just grows up with this really poor self-image and this is what happened to me and the self-esteem is so bad and they’ve got no confidence because they’re constantly being gaslighted, told that what they saw didn’t happen, told that they’re overreacting, to abusive behavior. So, you know, they’re second guessing themselves all the time and they don’t know what’s going on. And then they can grow up, you know, getting into drug addiction. And my narcissistic parent actually told me, because I came, I come from a fundamentalist Christian family and I’ve experienced significant spiritual abuse. And I was told by my narcissistic parent that I was pure evil. And what I mean is she didn’t actually say you’re pure evil. I was actually told though that I was like, so I would react to the abuse and I would get into the arguments and say, you need to stop saying that to me. That’s not okay. I would do all of that. And then I got identified as the patient in the family because I was reactive to the abuse. And I got told that I was like my narcissistic parent’s mother, who was a vile alcoholic, who abused all of the children and allowed all the boyfriends to abuse the children and all of the, you know, family, all of the children had to leave her and never speak to her again because she was so psychopathic and I got compared to her. So every time I would stand up for myself, it would be, you’re like my mother. So from the age of 14 to about 24, because we as children, we were all told that this woman was, you know, a terrible, terrible person. And I grew up thinking that I was pure evil because we were told that she was pure evil. And I was suicidal from about 14 till about 27. And I didn’t want friendships with people and I didn’t want anyone to come near me because I thought that I was going to end up being an alcoholic and I was going to end up, you know, bashing my children. And this is what I was told by my covert narcissistic parent, because the covert narcissist has to have you believe that you are all bad so as they can have complete control over you. And because my narcissistic parent couldn’t control me, I got told that I was basically no good. And that did, I believe, that impacted me so badly that I believe that when I had that first cone, that was in a way for me, that kept me alive until I, because I was so suicidal, I was so convinced I was going to be like this terrible woman, that, you know, I needed to, I felt that I needed to medicate that pain away. Because I felt that I was so inferior and so dirty and so disgusting that I couldn’t go on unless I medicated that pain away. But that’s all subconscious because I didn’t realize that at the time.

Dr. Mark Leeds [13:47] And I love the vocabulary that you use, the golden child, the flying monkey.

B. Flakelar [13:54] Yes, yes, we’ll see, the golden child. Well, I have a golden child sibling in my family, and I have two golden children. So there’s two golden children in my family and there’s two scapegoats. And the scapegoats, we’re more opinionated and we’re just no good apparently. But the golden children, they are, especially one of them, the cold or golden child, they can do absolutely no wrong, like nothing. Everything they say is to perfection in the narcissist’s eyes and they are absolutely perfect, whereas a scapegoated person like me, everything a scapegoated child does is wrong. So if a scapegoated child points out that their golden child siblings are abusing them, the narcissist will actually say, well, no, no, that’s not true. Or, you know, for example, in these families it’s so toxic that if a scapegoated child gets hit or smacked by, you know, a golden child sibling, narcissistic parent would just turn around and say, well, that was your fault. You brought that upon yourself, you know. And this is what went on in my family. And, you know, being told that you are, you know, all bad, that you’re absolutely no good because it’s narcissistic splitting, right? So narcissists can only view you as either all good, which means you’re perfect, you can do no wrong or you’re all bad which means that you’re no good you’ll never amount to anything and everything you do is wrong and once a narcissist sees the children in this light then both children are actually in danger one’s in danger of becoming really entitled and then becoming so narcissistic that they think it’s okay to commit all sorts of crimes even heinous ones at times. And then the scapegoat, though, they just feel like a piece of rubbish and they can end up getting illnesses like schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, borderline personality disorder. Yeah, they end up in relationships with other narcissists who scapegoat them as well. So wherever they go, they just keep getting scapegoated and they just keep thinking it’s their fault.

Dr. Mark Leeds [16:10] It reminds me of a story that a doctor had told me that they struggled through going through college and medical school and doing everything possible to try to impress and please their parents. And that no matter what he did, his sibling, his brother, was treated basically as a golden child, his brother who hadn’t accomplished very much in life and had struggled and didn’t have much success, was constantly praised and being told, you know, we’re proud of you and, you know, you’re doing a great job. And then the one who was actually successful working through college and school and doing everything right was being told, well, you know, you’re the black sheep of the family. Well, maybe not being told that directly, but very strongly implied, you know, you’re the black sheep, you’re the outcast, you’re the one who, you know, the unusual one with problems, and here’s our good son who’s responsible and, you know, handles the family business. You know, so it’s just incredible to hear these examples, like how can everybody around them not see this? How can the larger family structure not look in and see, well, this is completely obvious that the golden child is maybe even a failure in life and basically what you call the trash can or the scapegoat is doing everything right or trying to and having some success and still being treated like the trash can. And it’s just unbelievable. But extended family members do actually fall for it and become, I guess, additional flying monkeys. And then you have those family members, as you described, cousins that can see through it.

B. Flakelar [17:51] Yes. Well, okay, so why this happens, and this is very important, and a lot of people find this really hard to kind of grasp. The scapegoat, they undo the narcissistic illusion. Okay? So I once had my narcissistic parents say to me, I don’t understand you. I just do not understand you. And what they didn’t understand about me is that I couldn’t be controlled. So a narcissist, if you have a different opinion from a narcissist, it could be over the most ridiculous thing you could get thrown out of your family home. So the reason this happens is because the golden child they will often they will praise the narcissist all the time right so the narcissist they need adoration they need to be praised all the time they constantly need to be told all these amazing things about themselves but the scapegoated individual they’re just believing behaving you know completely normally just disagreeing with opinions that is the hugest narcissistic injury to a narcissistic parent so what and so what often happens is you do get a lot of scapegoats who are high achievers they go out and they achieve all these amazing things and you know meanwhile their their golden child sibling isn’t achieving anything amazing and then the scapegoated child just goes well but I can’t get any approval here and I’m you know a good person I’m you know helping with charities I’m caring for the community I would do anything for my nurse my parent I would I would take them out everywhere do their shopping do it and this is how I was in my family but they still approved of the golden child and not me because I broke the narcissistic illusion and I would say I would disagree and say well actually when they tried to gaslight me and say well I didn’t do that or whatever, I’d say, well, no, you did, you know. And whereas the golden child won’t, they will go, they’re more compliant. So they’re more compliant and they will go, actually, okay, all right, then, if you say you didn’t do it, you didn’t do it, you know what I mean? Whereas the scapegoat, because they’re highly intelligent, they go, well, you actually did do that or you did say that or, you know, and they will also demand respect and they’ll say, I don’t like how you’re talking to me. But a lot of golden children, they see things and, like, just for example, right you know you know you might have an unhygienic parent who doesn’t wash their hands all the time right or something like that an escape goat will say well can you wash your hands when you cook my dinner a golden child though often who’s clone like won’t ask for that you know what I mean so basically you’re being non-compliant a scapegoat is being non-compliant and that is a huge narcissistic injury because narcissists are so hypersensitive they cannot take any criticism to their authority. So that is why it doesn’t matter what you do as a scapegoat, unless you are prepared to agree with absolutely every opinion the narcissist has, don’t disagree on anything that they see as right or whatever, you’re going to be scapegoated. So it doesn’t matter what you achieve. You’re never going to be approved of because you won’t allow them to control you. But you won’t allow them to control your opinions, your beliefs, and your behavior.

Dr. Mark Leeds [21:22] It almost seems like the process could even be nonverbal, where the scapegoat might not even necessarily confront the narcissist and break the illusion. But maybe just by example, just by how they’re living their life, makes it maybe obvious to outsiders. And so the narcissist has to come down on them and say to the outsider people looking in, And no, you don’t realize how bad they are. You know, yeah, of course, they look good to you from the outside. But let me tell you, trust me, they’re really bad.

B. Flakelar [21:50] Yes. And what will happen a lot. And there’s there’s this great website. I think it’s angry alcoholics dot com. I’m not sure. But they this woman, she wrote this amazing article about how the scapegoat can be, you know, being really, really successful in life, doing really, really well. And, you know, no contact, all of that stuff. And then very often what a narcissistic parent will do is they will hoover that child back into the family system. Now, I’ve had this done to me. They will hoover you back in, you know, they’ll try and get in your life. Psychotherapists say that narcissistic parents will often try and get back into a child’s life when there’s a crisis. So they will act like parent of the year or whatever. But what they’re actually doing is they’re dragging you back in so they can goad you and bait you into a reaction and then when the scapegoat kind of reacts to the abuse and there’s an argument because narcissists always deem everybody’s emotions as meaning that they’ve got a mental illness rather than you know just being normal healthy anger then they will use that reaction so they create this big crazy making situation and then when you’ve gone no contact again, then they’ll just smear you and tell everybody how crazy you were and how bananas you were and then the golden child feels really great because then they go, but this child’s such a good child, you know, and they’re so amazing, but look at what she did or whatever. So, no, she or he, they’re not really that great. They’re not really that smart. Yeah, they’ve got a degree and they might seem successful, but they’re actually just really crazy, you know. And they will. They will drag you in because they want you back in their role so you can give them narcissistic supply, more fuel and more drama. And the scapegoat is the best. I believe they’re the best source of drama in the narcissistic family unit because they will engage with the narcissist and they will try to get the narcissist before they know about narcissistic abuse. This is all not knowing about narcissistic abuse. They will try and this year I was that child they will try to get the narcissist to see that they’re doing the wrong thing and then what the narcissist will do is they will keep goading them for a reaction because they’re getting more and more fuel out of it then the scapegoat will have a reaction and then the narcissist gets their fuel on many different levels because then they get to go off to you know aunties and uncles or whoever get on the phone and say that child of mine they’re crazy we just had a big fight here because of this and this and they get to play the victim and say I’ve got these really bad children you know what I mean like so the scapegoat though is a great source of narcissistic supply because they engage

Dr. Mark Leeds [24:41] Yeah no it seems like therapy might be helpful and it probably is in some cases you know to for the scapegoat of the family to go to therapy and maybe see a psychologist and get help but it seems like for example well, family therapy might be something very dangerous. The therapist, in a setting of family therapy, could even be drawn in and take the side of the narcissist and take the side against, which I think I’ve even seen happen. I’ve actually talked to a therapist for a patient and wondered why is this therapist beating up on my patient? Aren’t they supposed to be helping them? And it turns out it was a family therapist working with the whole family, and the therapist actually took the side of the rest of the family against my patient. I’m like, well, I know my patient and I know they’re not a bad person. And I think in that case, it really was the right thing was for the patient to walk away from the entire situation.

B. Flakelar [25:38] Yes, because therapists, I mean, I was very lucky. I had a therapist who really understood my family dynamic really well. But a lot of therapists, they can get manipulated into believing that the reaction is the problem rather than the abuse itself. You know and my whole theory is that if people are reacting and they’re you know getting into arguments it’s generally you know that there are there’s a reason for it my therapist used to say because I used to say to her a lot I used to say you know but I feel like it must be my fault because I can just explode and lose my temper you know like because of what’s been going on and she said yeah but you know they’re goading you they’re baiting you they want a reaction this is the name of the game you know and you have to stop dancing with them and you have to disengage and you know unfortunately that becomes the role because the scapegoat’s being picked at so much they can become quite reactive to the abuse and you need a therapist who knows why those reactions are happening, you know. And a lot of them, they don’t realise that a scapegoated victim’s behaviour is being pathologised and they don’t realise that they’re being goaded and baited because, you know, there are a number of reasons. Maybe the victim, the scapegoat, doesn’t even know at the time that they’re being goaded. They don’t have the technical terms, you know. So I think they’d be better off definitely with one-on-one therapy. But before I went in, I had no knowledge of narcissism. I went into therapy thinking that I was the crazy one, and it was all my fault.

Dr. Mark Leeds [27:46] And 12-step programs can be useful for people with addiction issues, but I think that a person who’s working the 12 steps with a sponsor has to be careful. You know, don’t let your narcissistic parent sit over your shoulder and say, oh, did you do your fourth step and your fifth step? Did you get all those defects and shortcomings down on paper? Are you ready to do your ninth step and give me my apology yet? You know, pay me back the money you owe me. And, I mean, so you’ve got to kind of keep it separated and think, you know, when you’re working through these steps and your sponsor might be saying, you know, let’s look at what you did wrong. And let’s see what your responsibility is in your own addiction, you have to look at the bigger picture and say, well, this isn’t all my fault. There’s other people involved in this. And I’ve heard that. I actually heard a parent of one of my patients say that my child is involved in recovery and I just can’t wait to get my apology when they get to the ninth step. And it’s just sickening to hear that. Because the steps are for the person working them, not for the family.

B. Flakelar [28:59] Well, see, I never did the 12-step program, but I do know a lot about it because I’ve had friends who have done it and all of that. But I think the important thing for anyone who is not being supported in their recovery by their parents or the parents are using their drug addiction to scapegoat them more, to smear them, to gaslight them and to try and, you know, and to behave like the victim. If that’s what the parent’s doing, like they’re behaving like the victim in it all, like, you know, I’ve got this terrible child that’s a drug addict. If they’re doing all of that stuff, then you don’t want to involve them in your 12-step program. It’s none of their business. You know and that’s what happened when it came to my family I mean because all of my secrets and personal things used to get distributed all over the phone to aunties and uncles every time I did something you know that was inappropriate or whatever in my addictive state it was always used against me and so I quickly learn I do not want to tell these people any personal information about me

Dr. Mark Leeds [30:18] And finally at the end of the article the most important thing is walking away and people in this situation might not even realize that they’re in this situation they may very likely actually believe that they’re a bad person and somehow it doesn’t make sense It’s not logical, but somehow, you know, they’ve done something wrong and they continue to take the abuse. And it would be really sad to think someone might be 50, 60 years old and look back in their life and say, I could have walked away 30 years ago. You know, I didn’t have to sit through this abuse for decades.

B. Flakelar [30:59] That happens a lot. I get a lot of people writing on my blog saying I’m 50 and I finally left my family. For me, I found that what happens when you come from a dysfunctional family as a child is it’s like you’re living in a fog. And it’s very, very difficult with a narcissistic parent because they’re constantly love-bombing you. They’re constantly hoovering you. They’re constantly idealizing you, then devaluing you, and then discarding you. And that becomes your childhood and you don’t even know what’s going on. So one minute in my family it was this child is a really good child. This would happen every week in my family, my whole childhood. This child’s really great. They’re really awesome. And then the following week it would be the same child that was really great and really awesome would be told that they were really bad and that they were no good. And that would go on and on and on and on. But it became very, very confusing because then that same narcissistic parent would put on a massive 21st birthday, right? And then the devaluation would begin and then you’d get discarded and then you’d get hoovered again with some gifts. So you just don’t know. Children from narcissistic families, they have no idea what is going on. And the only way I believe they’re truly going to know that what is going on is by starting with therapy. So the most important thing is to stop the addiction first, go into therapy while you’re stopping the addiction. And it could take years. I’ve had 14 years of counseling because of my narcissistic childhood. And it took me years and years and years to see that I was in a narcissistically abusive family. And I had given up my original addiction at the age of 24. And it wasn’t until, so eight years later, after eight years of therapy, because once you get into therapy, if you get good therapists, they’re going to say to you need to go no contact with your family. And I was told that three times and I actually, like I’ve gone no contact four times, this is my fourth time. The last time after I had a parent die and I went back into the family, I was told by my therapist at the time, you know, you really shouldn’t be doing that. You know, it’s probably going to blow up again. And so it’s getting into therapy. That’s when you’re going to find out you’re in a narcissistic family because it’s such it’s like being in a vortex. It’s like having, you know, a big black veil over your head because of all this, you know, love bombing and everything. You can’t work out what’s going on because the thing with narcissistic abuse is people keep thinking, yeah, but what can happen for adult children? They think, yeah, but they’re being really nice to me today, so they must be okay. So then they end up getting what I like to call relationship amnesia where they think everything’s okay and then they end up, you know, reinstating contact or whatever. And then it all blows up again. And this is because what people don’t realize with a narcissistic personality disorder, a narcissistic personality disordered individual is they’re not a real person. They’re a false self and the relationship’s never going to work. But you’re not going to realize that until you start having the therapy because what happens with therapy is it slowly but surely gets the victim out of the fog.

Dr. Mark Leeds [34:41] Now you say a narcissist is a false person, almost seems like a person who’s not capable of being self-aware. Is a narcissist even capable of ever confronting themselves and seeing what they are, that they are a narcissist?

B. Flakelar [34:57] No no they’re not they’re not I remember speaking to my narcissistic parent and saying you know you told me that I was like this evil woman and you know it nearly ruined my life I nearly committed suicide because of this and I was told instead of being apologized to I was told that I wanted blood and that I need to get over it and move on. So because they don’t have empathy. So they have absolutely no empathy. So and they have no insight. And unfortunately, a lot of narcissistic parents, you know, we’re victims of victims. They’ve been really abused themselves. Yeah, really abused, like extreme abuse. And then they can’t love their own children. So I think, you know, you see Sam Vaknin and you see HG Tudor and they’ve come out and they’ve said, yep, we are narcissists, we’ve been told that and we’re working on our recovery. I think it’s, you know, a 2% chance. They say it’s an incurable disease.

Dr. Mark Leeds [36:04] Yeah. Yeah, I mean, when I started reading up on it recently and seeing how people describe a narcissist, I mean, I had to think, you know, just like in medical school, you read through medical textbooks and you think you have every condition in the book. And I started thinking, wait, am I the narcissist? You know, maybe it’s me and I don’t even realize it, which I hope I’m not. But I imagine that might even be a new thing now, now that it’s more in the media, that you might have the narcissist telling the scapegoat, well, you’re the narcissist here in the family, you know, using that as an attack.

B. Flakelar [36:41] Look they will they’ll turn it around and they will tell you that you’re the narcissist because everything is about deflecting from their shortcomings they’re so incredibly manipulative these people so if they I don’t know for example they go and they bait you and they cause this massive thing and then you turn around and you yell at them well then they’ll go well that’s the problem here is that you yelled at me but they won’t accept that what the problem was that they actually, you know, are saying really awful, horrible things to you know, like my mother used to say to me, she used to tell me that I was like my horrible grandmother, and then I would get upset with her about it. And then she goes, see, told you she was crazy to everyone, you know. But I used to think that I was the narcissist. I was in therapy. And I remember only a couple of years ago, because I’ve really struggled with no contact. It’s been full-on mental anguish for me. And I remember sitting in therapy only two years ago going, you know, but maybe I am the narcissist because I have reacted. Like I have been very, you know, I’ve had pretty big reactions to this. And, you know, and then I’ve had my counselor who was so lovely and, you know, such a loving person saying, well, you know, it doesn’t really matter, you know, even if the behavior’s been too extreme, you’re still not a narcissist. What’s happened is you’ve had your buttons poked your whole life so basically the tolerance for people provoking you is down because you’ve been overexposed to people provoking you know and she was and I was going yeah but are you sure I’m not the narcissist and she’d be like no no you are not the narcissist at all and I think sometimes because we don’t always behave appropriately to the narcissist because of how abusive they are I think we can think we’re the narcissist you know yeah but the thing with narcissists is they’re very vindictive they’re all about paying you back they’re all about smearing you they’re all about triangulating against you to other people and if you’re not doing that then you can’t be a narcissist and they usually say that if you’re sitting there wondering if you’re a narcissist then you can’t be a narcissist

Dr. Mark Leeds [38:50] So a person might feel like they want to manipulate a situation and they’ve been hurt by something and they have these feelings where they might think, well, I might be the narcissist. But an actual narcissist is going to do a coordinated attack and actually bring in all these other people in on it. And, you know, so it’s a whole nother level. It’s not the same thing.

B. Flakelar [39:15] Well they it is a whole nother level because what they’re so my narcissist is just amazing at brainwashing people I remember being in a room with that parent and you know within one hour they could have me brainwashed against somebody you know like now I’m aware of what they’re doing obviously not but this is how amazing these people are so you can have really close relationships with some of your family members, but it’s like being under the spell of mind control. My narcissist will bag a person out and smear them all day long, all day, every day. It’s like, you know, they want to get that person. They want to ruin their life. And before you know it’s literally like the people in their room are under the spell of mind control and they want to solve the problem for the narcissist. And they really do start to believe these half-truths that the narcissist has told them. So the narcissist will put in a little bit of truth and exaggerate the whole situation and then everybody will go in against a victim. And it happens in workplaces. It happens in friendship groups. They say that the psychopath can be the calmest in the room. They can be the most non-reactive person in the room. I’ve met psychopaths who are incredibly dangerous, but everybody thinks they’re lovely because they’re this really quiet, calm person who is not reactive at all. They are completely non-reactive. But they will turn everybody against one person through pathological lying. And then all these people in that room, they all start to think, and I’ve done it with my narcissistic parent. I used to think I’ve got to solve this problem for them. You start to think that you’ve got to solve the problem because they won’t stop talking about it and then you start acting as a flying monkey. And that was my childhood. We would all act as flying monkeys trying to solve problems for this narcissist that were their problems And it’s also, that’s codependency as well. So all the children in the narcissistic family are usually codependent. And codependents try to solve each other’s problems. They become fused. So instead of going, well, actually, you know, this is your problem and you need to go and discuss it with that person, they actually take the problem on board and try and solve it for their codependent partner. Happens all the time. And that’s how you have flying monkeys and friendship groups do it as well so instead of saying to their friend look you really need to go and talk to this person instead they start giving the person the cold shoulder or being a bit funny with them it’s flying monkey behaviour

Dr. Mark Leeds [42:08] And that’s an important thing to bring up children at a young age could be going through this at school with their friends And there could be an actual narcissistic friend who’s a nice, quiet one who’s basically a ringleader and brainwashing and making the nice, empathic children who are good people. Maybe they’re introverts and they’re creative, very nice people, and they’re being tortured and made to feel like there’s something wrong with them by their friend, who they think is their actual friend. And it’s not a real friend.

B. Flakelar [42:41] Yeah, well, that’s it. And often, you know, this one friend, you know, you see it at school with like the schoolyard bully or whatever. Everybody goes in to protect this one person. I think that’s a huge concern. If everybody is trying to protect this one person, I think you need to ask yourself why is everyone trying to protect them or feel such loyalty to them? Why isn’t the person actually taking charge of their own friendships and kind of sorting their problems out themselves? Because this person’s actually getting allies. That’s what they’re doing, and that’s what narcissists do. They need allies. They’re always searching out allies.

Dr. Mark Leeds [43:24] So if you have children and the one kid at school is getting mad because you’re friends with somebody else, and now they’re not your friend, and then they’re your friend the next week and back and forth, and they’re concerned about who your friends are in the group, that’s the person you might point out and say, well, that’s the one you really have to stay away from.

B. Flakelar [43:44] Well, that’s right. And in my life, you know, like my own personal experiences, like even with like narcissistic partners and that kind of thing, you know, now I stay away from really shy, quiet men, because I find that the ones I’ve met have been serious, covert narcissists. And what can happen is even when you’re friends with this person, you can kind of go, I know something’s wrong, but I don’t really know what’s wrong. Like they seem so nice and they seem so lovely, but I’ve just got this feeling that they might be talking about me behind my back all the time because their friends are acting a bit strangely towards me. Things like that, you know, that’s when you might be dealing with a narcissist. Yeah. Or even a narcissistic friend or, you know, whatever. But look, they really should. I think they really should be talking to children about narcissism and teenagers in the school system because I didn’t know anything about it until I went into counseling. So I had no idea that sociopaths even existed. I didn’t know what one was.

Dr. Mark Leeds [44:48] Yeah, I mean, when I think of that, I think of a person who has no feeling whatsoever about another person’s feelings. Yeah, that’s what I always imagine, like someone who has no actual feelings or empathy whatsoever.

B. Flakelar [45:04] Well no because there’s different degrees of narcissism like you know you’ve got your overt narcissists who they’re pretty much straight out you know we’ve all met them they just got to control everybody in their room and you know they’re really kind of forthright you know we’ve met those kind of narcissists but I’ve met people like that they’ve definitely you know on the spectrum I guess of narcissism but they’re not dangerous like they won’t triangulate people against each other. When you’re looking at malignant narcissism and your covert narcissists are the worst, covert narcissists, and that’s what my narcissist is, they often are very, very quiet people. They don’t have a lot of self-esteem, whereas your overt narcissist has, you kind of, what you see is what you get with them, but your covert, it’s that devious behavior that is really dangerous, you know?

Dr. Mark Leeds [45:55] That’s probably the one I am, but hopefully I’m not.

B. Flakelar [45:59] Well, I guess we can all kind of wonder. But, I mean, I don’t know. I’ve often wondered if I’m a narcissist.

Dr. Mark Leeds [46:05] Yeah, I actually joined two Facebook groups on empathy, you know, a spiritual empath group, and then one of the empaths who are recovering from narcissistic abuse. And the descriptions just, I started feeling like I’m, you know, either these people have it wrong or I’m definitely one of them. And I just quit that group finally.

B. Flakelar [46:30] Yeah, yeah, no, I know. But I think, I mean, I think there’s a few warning signs and one of them is very judgmental. So narcissists are very, very judgmental. They’re always judging people and picking people to bits. This person is no good. That person’s no good because of this reason or that reason. So very judgmental, very deceptive. A lack of empathy, not wanting to take responsibility for your own behavior, projecting your behavior onto other people. And see, this is what happens with the scapegoat child. They get projected onto. So that child, and this is why I believe that those narcissistic projections of the narcissist’s own badness onto that child, right, instead of positive projections that they give the golden child, those really dark, horrible, fatal narcissistic projections, I call them, onto the scapegoated child, I believe that they can push someone into drug addiction for sure.

Dr. Mark Leeds [47:41] Yeah, definitely. You reminded me when you were talking about how the narcissist, how they organize people against the scapegoat. It reminded me of the quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and small minds discuss people. And a narcissist would be a small mind.

B. Flakelar [48:05] Definitely. They definitely are a small mind. I mean, that’s all they do. I mean, my narcissist just sits there and talks about people all day long and how no good anybody is. And you just kind of go, well, you know get a life but the best thing to do I think is and this is really hard for people who are not used to you know trying to work out who’s a sociopath and who’s not they’re all they’re all red flags someone who’s sitting there constantly talking about other people all day you want to get the hell away from them as quickly as you can because they’ll be talking about you soon you know or they could possibly scapegoat you soon so what they what they do is they have this art of making people feel that they’re really amazing while everyone else is really awful. But eventually, but that’s just the idealization stage. Before you know it, they’ll hit devaluation like the other person. And then if they, you know, disagree with their opinion or whatever, then they get discarded, you know. So as soon as you run into somebody who’s really judgmental, who’s talking about people all the time, who doesn’t, who seems to not have a lack of, who seems to have a lack of empathy and doesn’t want to take responsibility for their actions, you just run away. And who’s love bombing you to love bombing you and being way too kind and all of that? They’re big red flags.

Dr. Mark Leeds [49:25] Now, what does that mean, love bombing? I’ve read that in some of these forums and discussions, and I’m not really sure what that means.

B. Flakelar [49:32] OK, so love bombing parents do it to their children. But also it happens to a lot of people in early on in their relationship. So they’ll meet a very charismatic personality, a narcissist or a sociopath, psychopath. And it happens a lot for people who end up joining cults. So, for example, right, a scapegoated child of a narcissist, they’re actually very vulnerable to love bombing in their future relationships because they’ve never really know what love is and they’ve been rejected so much. So what can happen for a lot of really vulnerable codependent people who haven’t had a lot of love in their lives, they can fall into the hands of a psychopath because this person will tell them how amazing they are, how wonderful they are, how they’re just so fantastic, buying them presents, you know, cooking all the meals in the household, this kind of stuff, and putting them on that pedestal of you are so amazing and you are the best person I’ve ever met. And that’s called love bombing. And a lot of cult leaders do it to bring in the cult members and they just treat you like you’re just amazing. So really vulnerable children from abusive households, you know, teenagers, like the suicide bombers and all that. A lot of them get love bombed. And you get told that you’re so amazing. And what happens is it’s really manipulative because when you start to be devalued, so get into the devaluation phase, then you want the love bombing back. So then you’re under their control, right? So you’re constantly trying to get this idealization phase back. And you’re like, what have I done wrong? What can I do to make it better? And you basically try to perfect yourself. So because in devaluation, they start picking you to bits and they start brainwashing you and they start telling you that you’re no good and they start to try to want to get, and narcissistic parents do this, they want to get control of your thoughts, opinions, and your behavior. So they want, and that’s where in devaluation, that’s where all the gaslighting starts to happen. And basically they want control of your entire mind. And for you to get that love bombing stage back, you start, you know, working really, really hard to get their approval again and then they may give you little bits of love bombing, little bits of you are okay, you are an excellent person and then the victim kind of, you know, their anxiety dies a little bit because they’re getting told again how wonderful they are But before they know it, their behavior starts to get picked at again and all of this. And then they have to work really hard again to try and get more praise, if you know what I mean. And that’s kind of what love bombing is. And that’s the effect. And children growing up in that, it’s awful. They end up with people-pleaser syndrome and hypervigilant and approval-seeking behavior and all of that.

Dr. Mark Leeds [52:34] Have you ever known people in your life who are narcissistic to kind of break out of character and actually take pride in their ability to manipulate people and maybe even brag to you about their ability in that area?

B. Flakelar [52:47] Yes, yes. I actually had a few narcissistic partners because I’ve gone for people who are like my narcissistic parent. And so I’ve had some covert narcissistic partners. And I’ve actually had them, I had one give me pointers on what to do to manipulate people, you know. One used to say, well, you know, if that person’s annoying you or they’re upsetting you, like you just walk up to their car and you just write down their number by number, like, you know, they also told me about the stare, like how you stare someone out, like to scare them and intimidate them. Yeah and used to give me kind of lessons on how to manipulate if you know and of course I never took them on because I’m an empath but and I mean I didn’t I mean I was very vulnerable at the time but I didn’t really see what was going on because I was so taken by all the love bombing but yeah now I look back and I go wow that was really that was really manipulative behavior so, yeah.

Dr. Mark Leeds [54:00] Yeah. I mean, it probably even sounds great. Like, wow, I can go out there and use these techniques. And then you’re out there with other people and you’re like, I don’t want to control other people.

B. Flakelar [54:10] No, no. But they, I mean, the thing with narcissists is they actually do, you know, like as an empath, you do kind of learn. I mean, you do get taught by these narcissists how to turn things around. Like, you know, you kind of could become quite skilled at it if you wanted to. Like if you’re watching them, you know, you learn from their behavior. Yeah. But, I mean, I guess the thing with that is, you know, learning how narcissists work, you know, it is good because you can use that to your advantage with them, you know, not in a manipulative way, but to kind of get them out of your life, you know. You can kind of use their you know their forthrightness you can also take on that forthrightness you know what I mean that kind of thing and you can use that to get them out of your life you know yeah so

Dr. Mark Leeds [55:07] Yeah that makes sense and now can you talk a little bit about I mean this is kind of a new concept for me also empath where I mean a person who has been victimized their whole life you know when they may learn that they’re an empath and it’s almost like they have you know like a superpower you know that they can know how other people are feeling around them and maybe the anxiety that people feel out in public and in social situations is that they’re picking up the emotions or feelings of so many people around them

B. Flakelar [55:35] Yeah I’m an empath and I can pick up other people’s anger yeah my whole body tells me that someone’s got anger and I mean because I was a child of a narcissist, I used to think that anger was my fault, you know, and then I would try and get their approval, whereas now I don’t. I just go, no, I’m feeling that anger from that person and I’m going to get away. I can pick up other people’s hurt and distress really easily. You know, I think being a child of a narcissist too, like you become completely hypervigilant to what’s wrong with everybody else and you’re constantly checking out your environment. And trying to work out what’s wrong with everybody so you can work out whether or not you’re safe. And I still do that. But basically, yeah, we, you know, hypervigilant. A lot of empaths are hypervigilant. We’re constantly studying people’s faces. We’re constantly picking up their moods. Yeah, I don’t have a lot to say about that. But that’s what I’m – and feeling everything too. That’s another one, feeling everything. Empaths tend to, you know, we might watch the news and hear that somebody’s died and then we go and cry. Yeah. That kind of stuff. That’s kind of what it’s like being an empath. Or being, for me, I’ve got children, and with my children, like my son has special needs and he gets so distressed if he thinks that, you know, he’s in trouble or people don’t like him or whatever. And I guess as an empath I sit there and I try and explain things for him and, you know, I can really feel his pain and I guess that’s kind of hard to explain but I can kind of feel what he feels because I think we’re so in touch with our own emotions that we know what those emotions feel like and we try to make people feel better about their own emotions and to fix the problem, you know, which is why we often end up with narcissists too.

Dr. Mark Leeds [57:39] Yeah. The point is that the scapegoat walks away and gains freedom and in any any abusive situation the key is to identify that abuse is happening I mean if when someone is being being hit you know and beaten and things are being thrown at their head you know they know that they’re being abused hopefully you know but psychological abuse verbal abuse is not always is clear and once you’ve identified the abuse in all cases of any form of abuse the right thing to do is to walk away or to run away to get away from the abuse and that’s and to seek freedom

B. Flakelar [58:17] Yes yes freedom from control and freedom from mind control so for me I’m five and a half years into no contact with my family. And for the first time in my life, I’m not having my every move judged and I’m not being talked about behind my back just before I arrive at a family function, you know, like I’m not, you know, basically once you leave, like it’s really painful and it’s horrible. But I’ve written somewhere in my article that basically those, you know, basically it’s like the chains that abuse creates around one’s soul, they start to dissolve and they do. In narcissistic families you can’t be assertive, you can’t have a different opinion. You have to be everything the narcissist wants you to be. So as they’re happy because it’s all about them. And when you get out of that, you can start to find yourself again and you can start to, you know, confront situations and be assertive or disagree with someone else’s opinion and there’s not going to be a huge backlash, you know. And in time, you know, after five or so years, you know, basically the price you pay for leaving, Like even though it’s extremely painful and it’s really horrible, it can feel really horrible for a very long time, eventually you’re going to come out of it a stronger person, a happier person, a more assertive person and a more confident person. You cannot be confident and you cannot retain your self-esteem around people who want to control your entire mind.

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:00:10] And I want to thank you for joining me today. This has really been an incredible episode and I hope that everyone listens to this and I want to link to your article and I hope everyone will go read it and I know that this is going to help a lot of people to identify the situation in their life so thank you for joining me today on the podcast

B. Flakelar [1:00:30] Thank you for having me

Dr. Mark Leeds [1:00:35] Thank you for joining us today on The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network I hope that you have found this show to be interesting and useful. If so, please subscribe to the Rehab Podcast and share on social media. I appreciate your taking the time to listen to the Rehab. Thank you.