The post Narcissistic Rage appeared first on Kris Godinez.

Have you ever wondered why abusers seem to lie all the time, about, well, everything? I’m sure you’ve heard the term “pathological” liar. Did you know that personality-disordered abusers lie upwards of 20 plus times a day, compared to non-personality-disordered people? Did you know that they KNOW they are lying and that it is done on purpose to create confusion and cognitive dissonance in the mind of their target of abuse?

Abusers use gaslighting, rewriting history, and denial all to create cognitive dissonance in which in coming information does not match what the victim of abuse had been told by the abuser and because the cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable the target of abuse will ignore the seemingly glaring red flags and stay with the abuser.

—

Hello and welcome to We Need To Talk with Kris Godinez podcast. I’m your host Kris Godinez, licensed professional counselor. I help people get out of, and stay out of, toxic relationships. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only the views and opinions stated herein are mine and mine alone. They do not represent the ACA, the APA or any other therapist for that matter.

I want to thank my sponsor betterhelp.com. They are an online therapy company. Whether you are in the US or international. They will set you up with a qualified licensed therapist. PhD level or Master’s level. If you are interested in more information, go to betterhelp.com/krisgodinez.

Okay, tons to go over today. So, in current events, I was reading the AP this morning, and there is now a new threat to survivors of abuse, and it is artificial intelligence deep fake porn. So, like we didn’t have enough to worry about. So, this was in the AP today, so hold on a second. artificial intelligence imaging can be used to create art, try on clothes, help design advertising, but there’s a darker side to it. And deep fakes are videos and images that have been digitally created or altered with artificial intelligence or machine learning porn created using the technology first began spreading across the Internet several years ago when a Reddit user shared clips that place the faces of female celebrities on the shoulders of porn actors. Since then, deep fake creators have disseminated similar videos and images targeting online influencers, journalists, and others with a public profile. 1000s of videos exist across a plethora of websites and have been offering users the opportunity to create their own images, essentially allowing anyone to turn whomever they wish into sexual fantasies without their consent or the use of technology to harm former partners.

Now, here’s my take on this. It is illegal in the United States to do revenge porn. I do not know if they cover artificial intelligence revenge porn or not. And if they don’t, they should. So again, guys, it’s time to get a hold of the senators, representative state and federal because if it is not covered if artificial intelligence deep fake porn is not covered in the revenge porn it needs to be because abusers’ dark triads are the ones who do this kind of crap. They’re the ones who look to humiliate shame, harm etc. their exes by doing revenge porn, which is a federal offense. Thank you very much. So, I strongly suggest again, if you are, you know if you’ve been the target of this, it’s illegal, you can go after them, you can absolutely file police charges, and you can go after now I do not know about artificial intelligence, deep fake porn stuff. So, I strongly recommend getting a hold of your Senators, getting a hold of your representatives, and just saying, Hey, this is not okay. And please remember this is not limited to male abusers doing this, female abusers also do revenge porn or deep fakes in order to harm or hurt a former lover.

So, yeah, you absolutely want to start writing your senators, start writing your representatives, get a hold of the state, get a hold of the federal, and let them know hey, this is a huge issue. This is so this article was actually about a woman in Australia that had to deal with it, and she got a bill passed that makes it a crime to do that. And also to fine companies that don’t take it down. So, she had a terrible time getting social media sites to take down the deep fakes have her, and it really some of the attitude of some of the social media places was just heinous. It was your typical, let’s blame the victim thing. Oh, well, you shouldn’t have been wearing that sexy dress, or you shouldn’t have had makeup on, or you shouldn’t have whatever it’s like. What a person wears does not determine whether somebody is going to abuse them or not. They’re going to abuse, period no matter what you’re wearing, or how your makeup and stuff, so anyway, it just it was very disturbing to me that she had to go through such hoops to get it banned in Australia and to have fines that would make the companies think twice about not taking it down. So, if you’re interested in reading this article, it is called Deep Fake Porn Could be a Growing Problem Amid AI Race. This is on the AP news. And this is by Haleluya Hadero. And it was just posted two hours ago. So that is my current event because this is an issue that survivors of abuse put up with. And this is an issue that needs to be addressed it’s not okay. I mean, it’s illegal to do revenge porn here in the United States. I don’t know if they cover AI stuff, and they should. If it doesn’t, it should. And this is the problem I see with our laws because it doesn’t keep up with technology. So, it’s so annoying to me because it’s like things keep evolving and keep growing and changing, and, and our systems don’t keep up with it. And so, they’re always playing this game of catch-up. And it’s really frustrating for survivors of abuse. So, for example, even got the AI porn, right.

We also have all the family systems stuff in the family courts that are decades old. You know, there’s no training on intimate partner violence, there’s no training on abuse by proxy using the court system to punish a former partner, etc. So, it really, I really strongly suggest that you write your senators and your representatives, and you say, Get with the program, guys, we have got to get faster legislation, we’ve got to keep up with technology, we need to protect the targets of abuse. And we need to get punishments going for those that decide to do AI porn, etc., etc., etc. So, there is that current event.

One more current event, we are now up to 1.5 mass shootings a day. I’m so over it. I’m done. It’s like it’s the canary in the coal mine. You know, they used to take canaries down in the coal mine to be like, Oh, if the canary dies, and we need to get out because it means there’s too much gas in here. So, it’s 1.5 mass shootings a day on average, 1.5. That is unacceptable. So, while you’re writing, why don’t you write your senators and your representatives because, again, the common denominator in all of this is not the weapons, although gun control probably a good idea. But it’s not the weapons; it’s the mental health. Healthy People do not pick up a weapon of any kind and decide to go kill somebody. Let’s be very clear about that. killing somebody is generally what psychopaths, antisocial, narcissists, dark triads, that’s what they do. So, the issue is the mental health in this country. Mental health has got to be addressed. And we’ve got to stop, you know, oh, I don’t see the pink elephant taking a crap in the corner. There’s no. There’s no…. there’s a pink elephant and the crap is getting pretty hot. 1.5 mass shootings a day. Write your Senators as demand; don’t ask demand mental health reform in this country. I’m just going to keep saying it until we actually do it. So there that is.

Okay. So, let’s get to today’s topic. So, today’s topic is all of the lies what the Holy cow, if their lips are moving, they’re lying. So, I pulled a whole bunch of articles out which I think you will like. So, there is I love this one. This is by Christian L. Hart. He’s a PhD. This is on psychology today. It’s called Some Lie a Lot. So, one of the hues and cries of the narcissist or the dark triad is that everybody lies, everybody lies. No, know they don’t. And now we got the studies to prove it. So, the abuser will come in and say, Oh, well, everybody lives as if that’s a justification for their lie. Because remember, they’re all about flipping the script. Okay. So, they ran these studies. This gentleman ran his research, ran his studies. And what they realized was 85% of the people don’t lie. And if they do lie, it’s zero to one lie a day. But the other percentage that were disordered we’re doing 25 + lies a day.

Kris Godinez  09:32

So, remember, narcissists, dark triad psychopaths, Machiavellian, you know, control freaks, they project. So, they love to go you, you right? The you, you you guns? Well, everybody lies, because they’re trying to justify their behavior. And remember, they’re trying to say that everyone is just like them. So, what they’re doing is okay, so no, it’s not because what they proved through this research is that people generally one zero to one a day, and on top of that, the one to maybe two lies. Were altruistic to save somebody’s feelings. Not what these jackasses do. Do you see where I’m going with that? So yes, a narcissist absolutely will make the statement that everybody lies. No, they don’t. And when the 85% do lie, it’s for altruistic reasons. It’s to save someone’s feelings. So, and that’s something that doesn’t even cross the mind of an abuser. So, I just wanted to point that out.

So, what makes a liar prolific liars tend to be people who have low self-esteem. Yeah, that makes sense. They tend to be low in conscientiousness, and they’re not open to new experiences. They investigated whether the lies one tells are associated with the attitude that one holds about dishonesty. We found that people who tend to view lying as an acceptable behavior in our culture also tend to be the more prolific liars, so in other words, they will be it’s okay to lie. It’s okay. It’s okay to do this. It’s okay. It’s okay to lie. Everyone lies. Oh, contraire. So, they have a very loosey-goosey moral compass, is a nice way to put it. A more or less nice way to put it is they wouldn’t know morality. If it walked up and did the Watusi with them, you know what I’m saying? So, they again project, and they justify, and they rationalize their behavior, and they see nothing wrong with it that, again, is antisocial. So, this is where you want to look at the dark triad. So Machiavellian is the control freak. They have to control everything. Psychopathic is the antisocial the rules of the society do not apply to them. narcissist is it’s all about me, me, me I, I,I, more my genitals. That’s what they’re about. So yeah, I really liked that study. And I just want to I just want to validate this study because when I used to do couples counseling, I literally would have cheaters who got caught. Sit on my couch and tell me everybody cheated. Or sit on my couch and tell me everybody lied. Really? Yeah. So, and then when you told them point blank, it’s like no, they would try to argue with will show me the research. Well, here it is. Suck it. You know what I’m saying? So, it’s so yeah, that’s what they do. They say everybody lies because that’s what they do.

Remember, they cannot conceive of somebody behaving differently than them. That’s why they’re paranoid. That’s why they think everybody’s out to get them. That’s why they’re vengeful. That’s why they’re nasty. That’s why they would do AI porn. That’s what because they think that somebody else would do that to them. So, they’re going to beat him to the punch. And they’re going to do this. And they’re going to do that. Because that’s how they think, they can’t imagine that somebody actually has a moral compass; they really truly cannot; it just blows their mind that somebody might actually have a moral compass. And then, when they figure out that somebody does have a moral compass, guess what they do? They make fun of them. And they try to make them wrong for having a moral compass. And they do that to their partners all the time in order to manipulate them into doing the morally questionable the, you know, the sex acts, you know, whatever that they want to do, and that they want their partners to do, so that they can then point at the park and go see You’re no better than me. They’re really sick, they are really truly sick.

Okay, so that was some Lie a lot. And that was by Christian L Hart, PhD. And let’s see, was there something else in here I wanted to make sure people high in control freakiness. So, Machiavellianism who manipulate are unemotional and indifferent to morality tend to tell significantly more lies than the typical person. So, this is a ginormous, ginormous, red flag in relationships. So, remember, dark triads are, what’s the word I’m looking for? They’re not going to make their lies obvious, okay? They’re going to, they’re going to be they’re going to have their mask, and they’re going to pretend, and they’re going to, you know, make it sound like they’re great. They may lie about their job; they may lie about their position. Most often, what I see abusers lying about is where they work, what they do, how much they make, and or military service. Isn’t that bizarre because you can look that stuff up. It’s like, Why would you lie about something that can be easily found out? Well?

This is another thing I wanted to talk about is that this one is called Why Liars Tell Pointless Lies. And this is also by Christian L. Hart PhD Why Liars Tell Pointless Lies is on psychology today. He wrote a book with Oh, what was Curtis’s first name? Hang on. Oh, he has a partner. Where did it go? I can’t think of where it is. Anyway, he wrote a book called pathological lying. And pathological liars are often lying for attention. They want to aggrandize themselves. So, if you’re dealing with somebody who is a narcissist, they are always going to be the hero of their story. They are always going to be telling these kinds of plausible but slightly outrageous things. They will lie about their job; they’ll lie about their military service. They’ll lie to make themselves look good. But it’s a house of cards, and eventually, it will fall apart. And in a weird way, it’s almost like they want to get caught. So, if you’ve ever watched and I love this show, because this is what I do for fun, I either watch paranormal, or I watch Signs of a Psychopath. So, in Signs of a Psychopath, the pathological liar will stick to the story, stick to the story. No one telling you them telling the truth, but then it starts changing. And then the lies just start flowing. And it’s funny to watch the investigators. They’re just kind of like, look, kid. I know you’re lying. Here’s the evidence. No, no, I’m telling the truth. And then, finally, they break down and tell the truth, but not before they start doing things that let the investigator know that they’re lying.

So, and we’re going to get into that hold on. So um, why liars tell pointless lies? It is mostly for attention. They engage in provocative behaviors, outlandish presentations, absurd antics, or even put themselves in danger to have people simply pay attention to them. Many pathological liars tell untruths aimed at garnering attention. Because remember, if you’re dealing with a narcissist if you are dealing with a dark triad, they are all about the attention; they need to be the focus of attention. 24/7, And so they lie. They lie about everything. You cannot trust anything a narcissist says, You can’t because they, again, no moral compass, two if dark triad, really no moral compass, and the social rules do not apply to them. They don’t see anything wrong with life. Here’s the other interesting thing in that article is that liars are not delusional. They know they’re lying. They know they’re lying. So, when they did their research and they were asking all sorts of questions, they absolutely knew they were lying. And they were betting that they could fool the other person. And remember, narcissists think they’re smarter than everybody else, and that it showed itself over and over again and signs of a psychopath because every single last one of the perpetrators thought that they were way smarter than the police way smarter than the DA, way smarter than the detective. It was very obvious. So, they are honestly, and they get a rush from it. So, they will lie about everything. They will literally lie about it. You cannot believe a word that comes out of their mouth. This plays into when you get divorced. So, they will say, Oh, well, you know, the kids told me X, Y, and Z did they really, you don’t know. Because this person is probably making it up to try to scare you or make you feel bad or make you fearful or whatever. So, listen, to verify, listen, but verify.

Kris Godinez  18:47

And that’s the big thing, don’t react when they’re, you know, if you’re going through a divorce, and they’re making all of these allegations, and this is something they love to do. They love to make allegations, unfounded to CPS to the police to whatever, don’t freak out because the truth always comes out. It does. It takes some time sometimes, but it does. And these people, they do it for vindictiveness. They’re acting on the level of a two-year-old. So, which was very obvious when I was watching signs of a psychopath is like, emotionally speaking, none of them were above two years old. They were like, self-centered, you know, magical thinking, I thought they were smarter than everybody else, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And it’s like, world doesn’t work that way. So, and they’re not delusional, though. They know they’re lying. They absolutely know they’re lying. So that’s when somebody who says, I hate apologists, I really do. Well, but they’re delusional, and you should cut them some slack. And I’m like, You should go pound sand. Nope, they know what they’re doing. They’re 110 freakin percent. They know what they’re doing. They absolutely do. And these studies back it up.

So cognitive dissonance. So, this is where people get all for clipped is that When they get involved with an abuser, the abuser fills their head full of all of this fluff. That’s not true. And the target of abuse, because they love them, wants to believe it. And we don’t know that it’s a lie at that point. So, remember in the beginning of the relationship, they love to do the love bombing, and this is where they do the look at how great I am. Look at look at my future, faking look what I can offer you look at this great future that we’re going to have all of this stuff, you know, look how much money I make. Look at my position, look at my power bla bla bla bla. And when we are in the relationship, it causes cognitive dissonance when we start getting those little nuggets of ooh, this person is not telling me the truth. Wait a minute. No, that can’t be right. No, I, I love them. They must be telling the truth. That’s cognitive dissonance.

So cognitive dissonance, let’s talk about this. Cognitive Dissonance is when incoming information contradicts what we want to believe, basically. So, the abuser has set up this beautiful story. But then family and friends say, Hey, here’s what I know about this person. Here’s what they said to me. You know, and then the target of abuse is like plop, plop, Fizz, fizz in the head. It’s like. Literally, the brain is just like, can’t deal with it? And it goes, no, no, that can’t be right. And we kick out the information that is uncomfortable. So that’s cognitive dissonance. That’s why these guys are so damn dangerous because they lie so convincingly.

So, you know, a common myth is, is that, oh, well, somebody who’s lying is not going to look you in the eye wrong. An incorrect response. No, they can look you in the eye. A practice psychopath can fool a lie detector. It’s happened, you know. And there, there’s, you know, it’s really, it’s micro facial stuff that you’re looking for. But that’s in the forensic books. Oh, my God, those are so interesting. Anyway, the point being is, yeah, they can look you straight in the eye and lie. They absolutely will look you straight in the eye, not flinch and lie. And that is just speaking to the level of psychopathy that you are dealing with.

So cognitive dissonance happens when we have believed them and we want to believe them. And yet, here comes this incoming information and we go no, no, no, no, that can’t be right. No, I’m going to kick out this information. I’m going to cling to this information. And that’s where we get into trouble. That’s what’s dangerous.

So, I’m in here let’s see… Is this the one I was looking for? No, that’s not what I was looking for. Okay, let’s look at this one. Yes, that is what I wanted to look for. All right, let’s consider cognitive dissonance. interrelationship Mary needs Jack, this is on Psychology Today, again, and this is by Ryan Anderson, PhD, How Cognitive Dissonance Relates to Relationships. Okay. So, okay, now let’s consider relationship. Mary meets Jack, let’s say, on a Tinder date or something like that. And they hit it off pretty much straight away. They move in together. Both are totally seemingly smitten with each other. Mary starts thinking to herself that Jack is the one. Everything in their relationship is going really well. And they’re both very happy. At this point. They’ve been together for six months and live together for most of that time. Now realize that they did not take time. They did not take time to really check each other out, etc. It was loving bombing. It was fast moving; it was moving in, and now we’re living together. Like seriously, you start dating the person, and then all of a sudden, your boyfriend and girlfriend within a week, and then within a month, you’re living together, and that’s not healthy because that’s what abusers count on is you rushing and not taking your time to really see how they react to different situations. So all right.

At this point, they’ve been together for six months and live together for most of that time. Mary feels as though she knows Jack reasonably well. She feels as though she can kind of predict what Jack will and won’t do in some situations. Mary loves Jack, and Mary believes that Jack loves Mary. Then it happens one night Jack lashes out. He hits Mary on the cheek. It isn’t hard enough to bruise her, but it’s still very painful and distressing. Mary is unhurt. Physically and emotionally, more than that, she’s confused. Why did Jack do this? She thinks and still thinks she knew him well. Mary has a cognitive dilemma. On the one hand, she really loves Jack and believes that he really loves her. But on the other hand, his behavior was horrible and not what you would expect from someone who loves you. Mary is now experiencing cognitive dissonance. Attitude A. She loves Jack. Attitude B She doesn’t love his behavior because the cognitive dissonance she has experienced makes her uncomfortable one of those attitudes has got to change. To solve the dissonance, the mind needs to make it so that the attitudes are consistent.

Essentially, Mary has a tough choice to make in order to rid herself of the uncomfortable dissonance; she can A. accept the behavior and rationalize staying in the relationship by convincing herself that there is some other reason for her staying. My parents will be upset Jack has plenty of money. Maybe it was something I said or did. Two. Accept the behavior, possibly rationalizing it somehow. Well,  he was drunk. He was stressed. His job was stressful. He got carried away. He has so many redeeming qualities. This could result in the modification of attitude B. End the relationship is another possibility. She doesn’t love Jack’s behavior or Jack. Obviously, people don’t always select one of the first two options, but it happens far too often.

So that is cognitive dissonance. It’s like here is this person that you really don’t know that you think you know. And they do something abusive because remember, they’re pushing the envelope. How far can I go? How far can I go? How far can I go? Mask slips, intermittent positive rewards. So oftentimes, what I hear is, you know, oh, well, um, but we’ve been together for so long.

Kris Godinez  26:27

I don’t care if you’ve been together for literally centuries. Anyone lays a hand on you; you be done. Anyone disrespects you, you be done. So that’s the time-invested fallacy. That’s a rationalization. That is the cognitive dissonance. Oh, but we’ve been together for so long. Listen to me. Now, believe me later, if John ever laid a hand on me, O-M-G, it’d be done. I’d be done. I’d be done. I simply will not put up with that if there’s any disrespect. And I don’t put up with that. I don’t because I value myself. So, this is where cognitive dissonance works on the mind of somebody who does not have good self-esteem. People with good self-esteem. Don’t put up with that kind of crap. But people that haven’t been taught that. People that have been raised by abusers right groomed. Hello, codependent. Hello. We’re the ones that make excuses for it. So, in my early days, yeah, I would have put up with that. I absolutely would have because I so desperately wanted to be loved because of my dad. Right? But then when I started working on myself, I was like, oh, hell to the no, I don’t put up with that from anybody, you know. So and, and this is why abusers start twisting and continue to lie and try to get you confused, fear, obligation, guilt, and they try to flip it around so that it’s all your fault. Well, you’re the reason I hit you. You’re the reason I abused you. You’re the reason I said X, Y, and Z. And then it continues with the cognitive dissonance, and then the target of abuse is having to constantly kick out information that doesn’t support the relationship, which is dangerous.

These, these mother cluckers want you dead. I cannot be more clear about this. In fact, I just did a blog yesterday that John’s going to put up on Krisgodinez.com, about cult leaders. And there was a new one in Kenya where four members starved to death, and the leader of the congregation did nothing. He knew they were dying; he didn’t care. So, they want you dead. They absolutely want soul death. They either want you to, you know, lose who you are completely, emotionally, spiritually, etc. Or they literally want you physically dead. I just cannot emphasize that enough. So, the cognitive dissonance is deadly. It is deadly. It is what keeps people stuck because we keep going. But I don’t like that information. But I want to believe them. Oh, God, please get out. Please, please, please get out. It’s scary. And it’s frustrating for the family, and the friends that bring the healthy information to the target of abuse, and the target of abuse just goes, nope, not interested. I’m going to go with the abuser. And there’s not much you can do because of the cognitive dissonance. It takes the target of abuse, finally being able to overcome the cognitive dissonance.

So how do you overcome cognitive dissonance? You have to work on self-esteem. You have to be willing to live with the uncomfortableness. Now, our society has taught us that Oh, uncomfortable is bad. Oh, we should know we shouldn’t grieve. No, we shouldn’t be angry. No, we shouldn’t be alone. baloney! Uncomfortable is where the growth happens. It is because it’s kind of like that’s where you get to use logic. And that’s where you get to go, huh? Is this a behavior I really want to contend with? Am I going to make excuses for it? Or am I going to take care of myself? Am I going to put myself on the front burner instead of the back burner? Because that’s the other thing that the cognitive dissonance sets up is the target starts believing the stories that the abuser tells about, oh, well, I had a bad childhood. That’s why I hit you. And then they go, I can fix them. No, you cannot. No, you cannot. You cannot fix them because you did not break them. They have no interest in being fixed. They want to continue the behavior; they want to continue the abuse because it’s power to them. That is their cocaine. Yeah, that is their narcissistic supply is watching you do somersaults to justify their behavior and their abuse, and it makes them feel frickin powerful.

So, the target of abuse really, truly needs to get into trauma therapists now what’s going to happen is, is that the abuser is going to prevent that. So, if you’re in an abusive relationship, if any of this sounds familiar to you, get with a therapist, but keep it silent. Do not let your abuser know that you’re in therapy. You can’t because if you tell them, hey, I’m seeing a therapist, they’re going to make sure you can’t. They’re going to either sabotage your ability to get to the therapy, sabotage your ability to talk to the therapist, sabotage your money situation. They don’t want you getting to a therapist because they know that they’re going to be exposed. They know that the therapist, if the therapist is good is going to be like oh, honey, child Uh, uh, get out. Yeah, this is not healthy. So um, yeah, you need to get with a good trauma therapist work on self-esteem. The Disease to Please is also for codependency, Glenn Schiraldi the Self-Esteem Workbook, or Disease to Please codependency, etc.

So yeah, so this is, this is all cognitive dissonance. So, they make us think that somehow, we’re bad and wrong. And that if we just do enough, they’ll be happy. Or if we just change our attitude, they’ll be happy. They are never going to be… you cannot appease an unappeasable person. You cannot appease them; you can’t please them. You can’t make them healthy. You can’t fix them. You cannot. It is not your job. It is beyond your means. The only person that can fix them is them. And from every study I have ever read, they are never going to get there. They don’t want the help, and they fear therapy. Or if they do go to therapy, they’ll find a therapist that does not know they’re a hole from a hole in the ground. Or they’ll go to a therapist maybe three times. Oh, yeah, I went. I’m well. I’m fixed and lie to the partner about what was talked about. So. Lord, there that is.

So basically, abusers know what they’re lying about. They do. They know they’re lying. They know they’re lying. They’re not delusional, you know. There’s no excuse for lying. There is no excuse for lying. And no, not everybody lies. So healthy people. 85% of the of the population in that particular study lied between zero and one, maybe two times. The other ones were personality disordered with strong traits of antisocial slash psychopath. And Control Freak Machiavellians. So yeah, and they would lie upwards of 25 times a day, and it was to aggrandize it was to make themselves look good. It was to impress it was, you know, whereas the healthy population, it was to save somebody’s feelings. So that is the huge difference.

This causes cognitive dissonance in the mind of the target because we love them. We love, they don’t let me just be clear about that. So many times, I will have people go but I love them. Yes, you did. You absolutely 100% But you were the only one in that relationship that was feeling love. Because you were the only one that loved they don’t love. They don’t everything to them as a transaction. Everything to them has got strings attached. They do not feel the way you and I feel. So yeah, you absolutely did love them. 110% and, and you have to allow yourself to feel uncomfortable. You have to allow that uncomfortableness and not kick out the logic, you know, it’s like okay, Jack hit me. Okay, let’s say I’m Mary. Jack hit me. I don’t like Jack’s behavior, but I love Jack.  Uncomfortable. What do I do? I love myself more. I choose me over Jack. You know what I’m saying? So, and you sit with that uncomfortableness, and you choose yourself. We don’t in our society, we don’t allow people to grieve. We tell them they’re wrong for feeling grief, we tell them they’re wrong for crying. I’ve seen abusers tell targets of abuse, don’t you be angry at me, I’ll give you something to be angry about. So, it’s really, it’s sitting with the uncomfortableness and choosing yourself as opposed to choosing somebody outside of you. And that’s, unfortunately, that’s how we were groomed by our family of origin is always choose somebody outside of ourselves. That’s why we get cognitive dissonance because we were groomed, to not listen to our gut. And to not look at the logic of it. It’s like, okay, well, you may love Jack but he hit you. That’s not okay. In any planet, on any planet, in any spot in the universe, that is not okay. That person does not get to be around you. If they’re abusive, if they’re hitting you, if they’re verbally abusive to you, ah, they have lost all privileges. Choose yourself, get with a good trauma therapist, start working C-PTSD From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker, do the Self-Esteem Workbook get the Disease to Please by Harriet Braiker, and really start doing the mirror work. That is important. Get back in touch with your gut. You know, it’s like in here’s another way, here’s something that I tell clients when they’re stuck in a situation like this, where there’s cognitive dissonance going on if this was your daughter if this was your son that was being abused? What would you tell them? I tell them to get out.

Kris Godinez  36:29

And treat yourself as if you were your own child? I cannot stress that enough. Would you want to sit by and allow somebody to abuse your own child? Hopefully, the answer to that is going to be no. So really, it’s like, what would you say if a friend was going through this? What would you tell them? I tell them to get out. Well, then, get out. Save yourself. You know what I’m saying? And that cognitive dissonance. So, you want to work through that inner child stuff. This is all connected, guys. I cannot stress this enough. It’s the inner child. It’s the grooming. It’s the lies we were told from our family of origin. It’s all of this stuff is what is dangerous and sets us up to be abused by a pathological liar by an abuser by a narcissist, by a dark triad.

So, start working those books. If you are working those books, hide them from the abuser. Do not allow the abuser to see you working on them. Because the second they see you working on them, they’ll hide, they’ll destroy them. I can’t tell you the number of times that’s happened. I’ve, you know, given people the books or told them to go get the books, and then they’ll come back the next week and go, I can’t find it. Well, yeah, because your abuser saw you working on it. And they didn’t like it. They don’t want you working on it. So, you are, Yeah. So there that is.

So that they lie to aggrandize themselves, they lie to manipulate, they lie to make you think that they’re better than they are. And when they start doing the intermittent positive rewards, they’re counting. They’re counting on the cognitive dissonance to keep you stuck because you love them.

Don’t ever love anyone more than you love yourself. I swear to God, and all that’s holy. So, it’s kind of like in therapy. One of the things that John Nixon told me was never work harder than the client. Right? So never love harder than your partner. It’s like it should be a match. It should be a match. It is a partnership, not a one-up, not a one-down. It’s a partnership. So anyway, there that is. So that is cognitive dissonance. They do know what they’re lying about. They’re absolutely manipulative. They will call the cops they will tell all of these lies. They will lie upwards of 25 plus times a day; they will tell you everyone lies. No, they don’t. So yeah. So, there it is.

All right, let’s hit the questions, shall we? With a narc lies. Would they recognize if their target doesn’t believe them? Yeah, they would. Or are they so caught up in their own lies that they can’t see that? No, what they will do is that they realize that this target of abuse is not buying it. They oh my god, they are double down. They are double down. That’s what I forgot to say when I was talking in the main lecture. So, what I saw watching signs of a psychopath is that as soon as the detective was like, you know, you’re lying. Right? You understand we have evidence catching you dead to rights on this, right? They’ll double down. They absolutely will double down. It’s like, they’ll just lie harder about the same topic. And they’ll, and that’s when the story starts changing, which I thought was really interesting.

So, to try to support their lie. Yeah, they’ll double down on it. They won’t ever go. Yeah, you’re right. I’m lying, or Yeah, that’s not the truth. No, they will. Not on this or any other planet ever admit to lying. They’ll never admit that they’re wrong. They’ll never, you know, and it’s just kind of like when they finally do get caught. You know, they don’t ever go Yeah, I’m lying. That’s more like, Okay, well just, you know, just arrest me, and put me in jail. You know, it’s like they never, they never confess they never, you know, I mean, they kind of, but they don’t you know what I’m saying? So yeah, it’s very much a, they know they’re lying. And they’ll never admit to it even when the target of abuse or whoever is catching them in it, they’ll never, they’ll never cop to it, and they’ll double down. They’ll double down on the lie harder. They’ll lie in different ways. They’ll try different avenues. You know, if the, if the outright lie is not working, then they’re going to go for the Boo hoo hoo, breaking into a million tears trying to get sympathy. And if that doesn’t work, then they’ll get intimidating. And if that doesn’t work, then they’ll try something else. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they know their lying And they can see that the target is not buying it. So. So again.

So, when I was in LA, when I was going to Disneyland last week, we had this scam artist come up to us. I think I talked about this last week, and he started with me with the whole Oh, you’re so pretty. And I’m just like, Oh, come on, please stop. Because I knew what he was up to, you know, and my brother was killed in gang violence, and I need money for the funeral, and I just was like, ah, not buying it point blank, not buying it. Then he became nasty. Well, you’re just a mean bitch. I’m like, uh huh, you’re right. I am. And then it was like, I don’t know what to do with that, you know? So um, you know, it’s really interesting to watch them switch tactics trying to get what they want. And yeah, that was an absolute lie. He didn’t have a brother. There was no gang violence. He didn’t need money for a funeral. He needed money for drugs. So yeah, anyway, there’s that.

Do narcissists lie by omission? Oh, Sweet baby Jesus. Yes. app. So literally, and they do not consider that line. So, let’s… moral compass lying by omission is lying, okay. narcissists, abusers, etc., lie by omission all the time. They leave out really important details. So, like, for example, if they’re lying about their military service, they’ll leave out the part that they were dishonorably discharged, and they only served, you know, a very short amount of time. Or they will lie about what they did. You know, they’ll leave out what they really did kind of thing. So, to them, lying by omission is not lying. I just didn’t say anything. I just didn’t tell you the whole truth. Well, that’s lying by omission. That’s still a lie. Yeah. But they will justify it. They will absolutely. You know, oh, well, I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you everything. Please.

My late narc mother never bothered to tell me when my dad died. Oh, and when my brother died. I had to find out through different people. Yeah, that’s a little different. That’s not so much lying by omission. It’s just, you know, especially now, it would be lying by omission. If you point blank said, Hey, how’s my dad and my brother doing? Oh, they’re fine. Okay, yeah, that’s fine. Now that’s lying now by omission. They’re both dead. And she’s saying they’re fine. So yeah. Um, something I was going to say about that. It’ll come back to me. Okay.

What to do about undisprovable lies. Borrow and work situation? When the boss believes the liar, okay, for example, a coworker says something happened in a meeting which did not, and there’s no recording? Hmm. Well, that’s when you go to HR. I hate to say it, but if you’ve got a coworker that’s going well, this happened in the meeting, and other people are not willing to stand up and go, No, it didn’t, then you want to look at your work situation in probably get out of there would be my suggestion. work situations are only as healthy as the upper management. And as we all know, not a whole lot of corporations are very healthy because a lot of them have got a lot of narcissists in the upper management. And if a boss is willing to take the word of one employee, one employee, over everybody else, there’s a problem. That’s a golden child situation. So, my suggestion would be to find a different job. You could claim a hostile work environment, I would file a complaint with the EEOC if you can prove it. So, I mean, especially if this person is going on record telling the boss all of these lies saying, Well, this happened, and that happened. And you know, it didn’t happen. That’s a hostile work environment. It absolutely is. So, you could talk to an attorney and see what your options are. I honestly, I would just leave, I would just leave. So, get a different job. That would be my suggestion. Okay.

Kris Godinez  44:59

Um, so My abusive narc family wants me dead. Yeah, that’s not really a question. It’s more of a statement. But yeah, essentially Narcissist’s ultimate power trip, and I wrote about this in the blog this week on cults. They get off on the ultimate power trip of life and death over their cult numbers. So, when you’re dealing with an abuser, okay, it’s all about power and control. It’s all about power and control. And when you’re dealing with a really dysfunctional family, if they’re narcissistic, psychopathic, very control freak, Machiavellian, etc. They want to control literally everything, just like a cult leader does because remember, a cult leader is essentially a dark triad. It’s a communal narcissist. They’re doing it on a grand scale, okay. And they’re usually hiding behind some sort of religious belief, whether you’re Christian or Buddhist, or new age or whatever, to gather their followers to them. But as soon as they have their followers there, then they start going well, I need to control more. And so, they tell them what they can wear. They tell them what they can eat. They tell them who they can sleep with. They tell them you know if they can see their kids or not. The sicker the family is, the more issues there are, such as incest and things like that. So essentially, narcissists get off on the power and the control. They’re sadistic. You’ve got to understand that they are sadists. The more Machiavellian they are, the more control freak they are, the more psychopath they are, the more sadistic they are, and they enjoy. They really truly enjoy watching the pain and suffering in the eyes of their target. And so that’s uh huh. When they beat a child, when they spank a child when they sexually molest a child, when they harm somebody, hit a spouse, scream at the spouse, they’re getting off on the pain that they’re inflicting. They don’t care what they do. They’re getting off on the power. It makes them feel powerful and to just shows us what pieces of crap they are and what cowards they are. So, but they’re sadistic, and they enjoy it, and they get off on it. So yeah, they essentially want you dead. It’s that kind of behavior, that constant line, that constant put down, that constant nastiness, is a soul death, it really it causes people to lose themselves. I cannot even begin to tell you well, you know this, if you’ve been in an abusive relationship, you lose yourself, you lose who you are, you lose what you love, you lose everything because they take it over, or they don’t let you do it, or they isolate you. So, you have no family and friends, you have no outside interests, and you start losing bits and pieces of yourself until you are a shell of your former self. So that’s a soul death that is absolutely soul death, and they love it. And that’s about the time that they then discard you and find another supply because now it’s no fun because you’re done. You’re used up you’re done. So yeah, they’re heinous. They’re sadistic. They’re cruel. They’re mean. They’re vicious. They’re, Yeah. And they do want you dead, and the ones who do the cults that control literally what you eat how much you can eat, like this one in Kenya where four people died. It’s like yeah. They get off on that it’s the ultimate power trip. Can I make my followers kill themselves for little old me. Jim Jones, David Koresh. All of those cults did the same thing, and they don’t care that they’re getting rid of their own narcissistic supply. They’re short-sighted they can’t believe they can’t understand, and they can’t wrap their heads around that eventually they’re going to get caught, and then eventually they’re going to have to face the consequences, and then they kill themselves rather than face the consequences which is what Koresh and Jones did so yeah, it’s heinous. They do want you to that absolutely soul death or an actual physical death. You betcha.

Do narcissists feel anything do they love no, they do not love. They do not love the way you and I understand love. Love is not contractual love does not have strings attached. To a narcissist. Everything is a contract. It’s like an it’s like a cash transaction. It is well what’s the value for this? If I do this for you? What are you going to do for it is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. So yes, it is it is like a you know, strings attached. They don’t love sweetie. They don’t they don’t feel love the way you and I do. Love does not hurt. You do not hurt intentionally. People that you love. You do not revel in their pain and suffering. That’s not love. If it hurts, it ain’t love. If it hurts, it ain’t love. And if they’re doing it intentionally if doing the lying and the cheating and the flipping the script and making it all about you? That’s not love lying by omission. That’s not love. That’s not love. Love is kind and gentle and altruistic, and you enjoy each other, and you want the best for each other, and you How do I explain this when you’re with the right person, you grow, they grow, you grow. It is mutually benefiting. relationship because there is respect. Love is Respect.

They don’t respect anybody. If that’s easier for you to wrap your head around. They don’t respect anybody. There’s no respect there. And if there’s no respect, there’s no love. Does that make sense? So no, they do not feel the same way that we do. Absolutely. 110%.

All right, guys. Well, that is it for this week. So next week, we are going to be talking about why it’s important to write it down. So why you want to write things down. Why you want to write and burn letters, why you want to document so we’re going to talk about documentation and how important that is in legal cases and stalking and divorces etc. We’re also going to be talking about what exactly writing stuff down does for you cognitively. So, we’re going to be talking about writing burning, we’re going to be talking about journaling, we’re going to be talking about documenting all of that sort of fun stuff. So, you guys go have a great week, drink plenty of water. And I will talk to you next Sunday.

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. You can always listen live on YouTube every week Sunday at noon, Arizona Mountain Standard Time. And if you want to find out more or listen to other episodes, you can go to Krisgodinez.com and if you have a chance, subscribe to this show on whatever podcast app you use and let other people know about. I want to thank my sponsor betterhelp.com. They are an online therapy company. Whether you are in the US or international. They will set you up with a qualified licensed therapist. PhD level or Master’s level. If you are interested in more information, go to betterhelp.com/krisgodinez.

You’ve been listening to the podcast version of We Need To Talk with Kris Godinez.

The post 04-16-2023 All The Lies appeared first on Kris Godinez.

Have you ever noticed some people either create chaos and drama or chaos and drama seems to follow them where ever they go? Have you also noticed that as much as they claim not to like chaos and drama, they still seem to be at the center of said chaos and drama? Red flag alert! You are dealing with someone who is disordered.

You may ask yourself, “Why? Why does this person blow up every relationship? Why does this person seem to enjoy the chaos and the drama? Why and who would want that in their lives?” Rest assured, the chaos and the drama are absolutely intentional on the part of an abuser. It serves many purposes, such as distraction so people are not focused on their wrongdoings and excitement, as many dark triads need adrenaline the way the rest of us need oxygen!

—

Hello and welcome to We Need To Talk with Kris Godinez podcast. I’m your host Kris Godinez, licensed professional counselor. I help people get out of, and stay out of, toxic relationships. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only the views and opinions stated herein are mine and mine alone. They do not represent the ACA, the APA or any other therapist for that matter.

I want to thank my sponsor betterhelp.com. They are an online therapy company. Whether you are in the US or international. They will set you up with a qualified licensed therapist. PhD level or Master’s level. If you are interested in more information, go to betterhelp.com/krisgodinez.

Current events, holy cow, all right, so Phoenix has a really nasty issue with wrong-way drivers. Sometimes the drivers are impaired like they’re on drugs or alcohol. And sometimes, the drivers are doing intentional…. They’re trying to commit suicide by having somebody else kill them. So just recently, John and I were just talking about this, there was this driver that wanted to commit suicide and left a suicide note in the car, intentionally drove the wrong way on the 101, and intentionally hit another car. She has minor injuries; the other guy is in the hospital in critical condition. So, the selfishness of that act, the selfishness of being impaired, knowing you’re drunk, knowing you’re on drugs, getting into a car, and then intentionally getting onto a public road and running into somebody. That’s inexcusable. I’m sorry. And this happens all the time. I don’t know if this happens in other major cities, but in Phoenix, there is not a month that goes by that we do not have somebody getting onto the wrong way. Wrong road, wrong-way drivers, and either intentionally or unintentionally hitting and killing other people.

It’s just so I looked up wrong-way drivers because we’re kind of on this topic of drama and chaos. And I asked the question. It’s like, are narcissists generally, aggressive drivers are problems driving, and it says are Narcissists as good at driving as they think they are. The answer is no! Narcissists lack empathy, are entitled, and believe that they are not bound by the normal rules. So that’s a little bit of antisocial. Narcissists also don’t believe they are bound by rules, but antisocial really does. So those are dark triads. So, Out of my way! Narcissism is linked to aggressive and reckless driving. So that’s my psychology today. So, I thought that was interesting because narcissists, and here we go, going into our topic here.

Narcissists love to create drama, and they love to create chaos. And it’s interesting because my dad and I write about this in the book. What’s wrong with your dad? He used to play chicken with us in the car and terrorize us, and you want to talk drama, you want to talk chaos, you want to talk screaming, so he would get into the car. And he’s been, you know, he would be, you know, deciding that he was going to, you know, drag race, or he was going to go into the other lane and play chicken with an oncoming car, and then he would enjoy the terror that he saw in our faces. In our eyes. He was a sadist, you know? And that’s generally what dark triads are, is that they’re narcissistic psychopathic Machiavellian. They are control freaks. And they’re sadistic. They enjoy watching the pain and suffering on their target of abuse of face. So, does that mean Phoenix has more narcissists? Well, if you’ve ever been to Scottsdale, you know what I’m saying? So, you know, it’s a possibility, I don’t know. But generally, it’s an absolute lack of concern, lack of empathy for the other person. You know, there was absolutely in that woman’s mind there was absolutely not a care in the world for the fact that she was going to take somebody else out in order to kill herself. There was not another thought of another person at all that that man’s family that that man, nothing, you know, and that to me is the ultimate in antisocial and narcissistic behavior because it’s like the Wow. So um, anyway, Psychology Today it’s all about how narcissists drive recklessly and create drama and chaos doing that.

So, what is up with that? Why do abusers, specifically narcissists, now but realize all of the cluster B’s do the drama and chaos thing. All of them do. So, I wanted to go through the different Cluster B things. So antisocial is a Cluster B, okay, so antisocial’s way of creating chaos is a little bit different than the narcissist way of creating chaos or the borderline’s way of creating chaos for the histrionic’s way. Okay, creating chaos. And realize when I’m talking about this, I’m talking about when they have slid from traits all the way down to completely malignant, okay, I’m not just talking traits of Gosh, it’s something that can be worked on. No, I’m talking, like, all the way down.

So um, antisocial personality disorder creates chaos by causing problems for the family based on their inability to recognize and conform to social norms. In other words, they get off on stealing, lying, cheating, all of this sort of fun stuff, getting in trouble with the law, pushing things, pushing the envelope, getting in trouble at school, that I mean trouble, like, real serious trouble, like violating other people’s privacy, rights, you know, etc., etc. Because the rules don’t apply to them in their minds. So um, so their way of creating chaos is more it affects the people around them. It’s, it’s disturbing to family members that see an antisocial child doing all of these things, arson, etc., etc., etc. If they’re good family members, if they’re not good family members, they don’t care, which is another topic for another day. Oh, God. Anyway, so.

So, the question, okay, so then all of these personality disorders, all of the cluster Bs tend to do chaos and drama, each in their own way. And each for different reasons. So, with the antisocial, it’s not so much to distract. They don’t. They’re not really thinking about the family, other family members, or how this is affecting them. For them. It’s about the adrenaline. It’s about the you know, I you know, I want, I see I take kind of thing. And so, they create legal drama and chaos for the family and for themselves, but it’s not so much with an objective or a goal in mind. However, with the other personality disorders, there is an objective and a goal in mind. So, let me just kind of go through these, um.

So histrionic personality disorder. So, they tend to be very, very, very dramatic, I mean, to the nth degree, so like, literally mountains out of molehills and, you know, a small thing is suddenly a screaming, MiMi. Oh, my God, there’s Oh, this is very dramatic, and they tend to be very shallow effect. And they have a lot of opinions, but they don’t have a lot of actual facts to back up those opinions. They also tend to be chameleons because they want to be liked. So, they are very dramatic, very chameleon-like, they have to be the center of attention. Honestly, I’m thinking that histrionic is probably going to get rolled over into other kinds of combined with other personality disorders. They have to be the center of attention. They tend to dress very provocatively. Now, this is kind of the thing that separates them from narcissists and separates them from borderline personality disorder. And I want to be very, very clear. Again, I in talking at the extreme end of the spectrum, I’m not talking about people have been diagnosed that still have an opportunity to work on themselves. I’m talking about the ones that have said no to therapy and have gone all the way over okay. histrionic personality disorder, they tend to be inappropriate in how they relate to other people, they dress provocatively. So, like, for example, you go to, you know, a meeting, and instead of being dressed in business casual, they look like they’re heading out to the nightclub, you know, that kind of thing. They tend to relate to people in a very sexual way, and it’s always sexual, and it’s always, you know, they’re very somatic. It’s very much about appearances. It’s very much about how they look, and they have to always be the center of attention, and everything is like DEF CON one, as far as drama is concerned. So, like, if they forget,

Kris Godinez  09:57

I don’t know their wallet at home instead. have, oh, I forgot my wallet at home, I need to turn around and go back. It’s this huge, generally Broadway production, you know, and it’s lots of crying and lots of screening and lots of upset and lots of blaming. So, personality disorders are very similar, but they’re distinct. So, they have a lot of overlap. Dealing with somebody who has histrionic personality disorder generally is difficult, and it’s difficult to get them into therapy. Because they again, do the whole, there’s nothing wrong with me, there’s nothing wrong with what I’m doing, you know, and the only time they generally go get therapy is when they are depressed. And generally, it has to do with if a relationship has failed. If a relationship’s failed, then they’ll go into therapy, and then they’ll get some help. But then, as soon as they start feeling better, they leave. That tends to be the way that one goes, you know, they’ll immediately get involved with another person to distract themselves from their issue. And there they go. So histrionic personality disorder tends to create a lot of drama, but it’s more, it’s more about them, you know, literally, like when somebody walks into a room and says, it’s all about me, oh, yeah, they’re not lying. Yeah, they’re not lying. And so, they will create a production, and all eyes must be on them. So, there is that so, um, histrionic personality disorder, self-centeredness, feeling uncomfortable when not the center of attention. And this is on Psychology Today, constantly seeking reassurance or approval, inappropriate. And here’s the here’s the distinction from the other one’s inappropriate, seductive appearance or behavior, rapidly shifting emotional states that appear shallow to others. So, they can literally go from sobbing to perfectly fine and laughing in, like, two seconds. I mean, there’s it. They shift gears like amazing, and then they can be angry, and then there’ll be back to perfectly fine and then, but it’s all really shallow. There’s no depth to it. It’s like it’s performative. It’s like it’s a show. It’s like they’re, you know, showing you their emotions as opposed to having their emotions, if that makes any sort of sense. All right, opinions are easily influenced by other people but difficult to back up with details. overly concerned with physical appearance, using physical appearance to draw attention to themselves, excessive dramatics with exaggerated displays of emotion. So, like Broadway show, they’re playing to the balcony, tendency to believe that relationships are more intimate than they actually are. Very clingy. And they will, you know, immediately they get into an office situation, and suddenly they’re best friends with everybody you know, and that’s kind of a red flag, highly suggestible, easily influenced by others. They lack self-awareness and have low emotional intelligence, so they can’t, they don’t even know who they are, let alone what other people are feeling. So, and causes again, genetics nurture nature, both? Is it related to narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, and histrionic personality disorder can sometimes overlap. These two disorders are within the Cluster B group of personality disorders. People in this group suffer thinking and behavior patterns that are unpredictable or erratic. They are also engulfed in high drama that is centered on the self. Okay. So, the histrionic way of doing drama, like I said, is generally more performative. It’s more like they lost their purse, they lost this that, you know, something, they broke up, something happened, and it’s the world is ending kind of thing. And it’s, you know, like I said, you know, going through all the emotions but not really feeling them, and it’s very performative. So, they create drama, that way. Okay, so that is histrionic.

So, borderline personality disorder, intense fear of abandonment, going to extreme measures to avoid real or imagined separation or rejection, a pattern of unstable intense personal relationships such as idealizing someone one moment and then suddenly believing that person doesn’t care enough, or is cruel the next. Rapid changes in self-identity and self-image that includes shifting goals and values and seeing yourself as all bad or that you don’t exist at all. periods of stress-related paranoia and loss of contact with reality lasting from a few minutes to a few hours, impulsive and risky behaviors such as gambling, reckless driving, unsafe sex spending sprees, binge eating and drug abuse, or sabotaging success by suddenly quitting a good job or ending a positive relationship. Suicidal gestures or behaviors or threats of self-injury, often in response to fear of separation or rejection. So that creates a lot of drama. Wide moods, wide mood swings lasting from a few hours to a few days, which can be happiness, irritability, shame or anxiety, ongoing feelings of emptiness, or sometimes described as boredom. So, they’re bored. Which is really not really. So as soon as, as soon as the client says they’re bored, I’m like, No, you’re not what’s really going on, because they’re either masking an uncomfortable feeling, or they just don’t know what they’re feeling. And so, they need help kind of figuring it out.

So, borderlines have a tendency to rage. And they have a tendency to go completely off the deep end. And they take things intensely personally, their form of drama is different than the narcissist different than the histrionic. So, it’s like. It’s a lot of miscommunication. And their fear is what drives the raging and the drama, and you don’t love me, and you know, the back and forth, and this and that. So, it’s, again, it’s a lot of drama, and it’s not stable there. The big difference with borderline personality disorder is it’s unstable, unstable personal relationships. It’s lots of enemies, they make lots of enemies, they have a tendency to come unglued over things that are not personal, but they’ll take them personally. So, if somebody sighs, just sighing because humans sigh. You know, if a dog yawns, probably, I’m going to yawn, you know, we sigh, we do things like that, but they’ll assume that it’s about them. Everything has to be about them. And it’s about them. And so, they have to go on the attack. And it’s a personal attack that you sighed because their thinking is disordered.

You have to understand they don’t think the way that healthy people think. They’ve got a very twisted way of thinking. And for them. It’s like if somebody sighs, “Oh, they’re going to abandon me, oh, they’re going to do this to me, Oh, they’re going to do that, to me, well, I need to go on the attack.” And it’s really it has nothing to do with the person who has borderline personality disorder. But they take things so intensely personally, and it’s not. And that’s drama because your… God, you’re walking on eggshells, Randy Krieger good book, get it, you’re walking on eggshells because the person with borderline personality disorder is going to take everything you do as a sign of abandonment, a sign of disrespect, a sign of your going to leave a sign of, you know like them. And it’s all in their head. It is all in their head and the only personality disorder therapy that works with borderline personality, I mean, really well. CBT does, okay. DBT does the best. So, if somebody’s got borderline personality disorder, and they want help go to a program that is specifically for dialectic behavioral therapy for Borderline Personality Disorder because they generally will do group sessions and individual and that’s the only thing that seems to work on that because you’ve really got to undo all of the maladaptive self-protective way of thinking that causes all this drama. Does that make sense? So, it and borderline if it’s caught in the earlier stages can be worked on because a lot of it is drama, trauma. Does that make sense? It’s trauma from the original family, if they get the drama from the original family that trauma happened with the family of origin. And so, these are all maladaptive behaviors that they’ve made to make themselves safe, and it doesn’t work, obviously. So um, so they’re very dramatic, they’re very intensely take things intensely personal, this is a personal attack on going to get you raging, etc.

So, the best thing to do with that is don’t play if somebody starts raging, you walk away, it’s like, you know, you can say, hey, my yawn, my sigh has nothing to do with you. And if they continue to rage, you simply walk out. You do not participate because they need an audience. So again, it’s this weird kind of validation attention that they’re getting, and we’re going to talk more about that because that then goes into narcissism. So, hold on, did I get everything, ongoing feelings of emptiness or boredom? Inappropriate, intense anger? Yeah, we talked about that.

Okay. So, narcissists, narcissists have to be the center of attention. We all know that narcissists literally say things like love me or hate me, just don’t ignore me.

Kris Godinez  19:37

Like literally, they…I’ve had classmates like that, you know, I mean, they will say and do things like that. They do things with an agenda. So, the difference between the narcissist and the borderline and the histrionic is that the narcissist lacks empathy completely, completely lacks empathy, probably with the anti-social as well. But with the narcissist, there’s no empathy there. They cannot put themselves in another person’s shoes. And the things that they do to create drama are intentional because they’re trying to control the narrative.

So, five terrifying ways that narcissists and this is on Psych central the ways narcissists and psychopaths manufacture chaos and drama to provoke you. They integrate, instigating crazy making arguments, logic loops, they bait you, they do things like that, it’s to get you wound up so that you’re the bad guy. That’s really what their goal is. They want you to think that you’re the one that’s the problem. So, they’ll sit there and poke the bear, poke the bear, poke the bear, poke the bear. Crazy arguments doesn’t make sense. Logic loop going in circles, word salad, that’s one of the things that they do. And of course, you know, a person that doesn’t understand this is trying to make sense of what they’re saying and try to respond to what everything that they’re saying. And you can’t because half the time, it doesn’t make sense because they’re just doing word salad. They’re just like, well, um, you know, will you do this and other than that, and it’s all of a sudden, you’re talking about a car, I mean it. They don’t make sense. And they’re trying to confuse you. And they’re trying to make you, they’re trying to gaslight you, and they’re trying to do all sorts of things to make you think that you’re the problem. That is their goal with those instigating arguments that make no sense doing the logic loops, doing the word salad to make you doubt yourself, and to drop the original issue that you wanted to bring up to them. Like, say, for example, they’re spending the money hand over fist that is coming into the household, right? Well, you bring it up to them, and what do they do? They flip the script. If you know, they know they’ve been caught red-handed. So now they’re going to do a logic loop, they’re going to flip it, and somehow, it’s now all your fault, or it doesn’t even make sense how they’re defending. They’re spending all of the money. Does that make sense? So, this is what they do, there’s an agenda, there’s an agenda for the way that they behave.

Okay, hold on back to the five terrifying ways ruining holidays, special occasions are sabotaging you before big events. So, narcissists absolutely have to be the center of attention. 110%. And if they’re not, it drives them crazy. They cannot stand it if somebody is doing something fun or enjoying themselves or whatever. So, this is why you will have at Thanksgiving, Christmas, you know, major holiday events where the family is together; everything is going great. And all of a sudden, the narcissist in the room says or does something that starts an argument or ruins the dinner, right? Or they do or say something, and somebody doesn’t want to misbehave. And so they get angry and storm out, and they fully expect the rest of the dinner to be ruined. They do this because it makes them feel powerful. It is all about power and control. It is it’s about them being right in their sick and twisted little minds. So, families of origin. I mean, I can’t tell you the number of holidays that were ruined by my dad because he would say or do something completely inappropriate. Or he would just, you know, I would say or do something he didn’t like, and he just turned around back hand me at the dinner table on me at the dinner table. You know? And then, of course, I would be like, Oh, hell no, you know, and it would be ruined, it would be ruined. So um, they do this because it makes them feel powerful. And if you’ll notice, they tend to pick on the family members that they don’t think are going to fight back or the family members that will fight back in such a way that will make them be like, oh, well, they’re crazy. Oh, well, that member is crazy. Oh, well done. You know, so the drama is intentional. They can’t stand happiness. Let me just be very clear. narcissists cannot stand happiness. They cannot. They don’t like it when other people are feeling emotions that they can’t feel it makes them angry because you have something that they don’t. And because they are operating on the level of less than a two-year-old. How dare you have something that they don’t, so they’re going to ruin it. They’re going to ruin it. Okay, so ruining holiday special events or sabotaging you before important events.

So, I had a roommate once back in the day when I was living in LA. I had an audition coming up, and he decided that he was going to suddenly have some sort of breakdown, right, and I can’t see; I’m blind I’m blind. I’m like, Okay, well there’s nothing that physically happened to you. There’s, you know, you need to go to a psych hospital. So, I ended up driving them to a psych hospital. And then, as soon as my audition was over, he was perfectly fine. And, of course, it didn’t get the job. So, you know, it just Things like that. It’s like they do those things on purpose. They create drama right before something important to sabotage you so that you don’t get the job, so that you don’t go on the vacation so that you don’t whatever because it makes them feel powerful to do that. So that instance would be called malingering. So, when somebody pretends to be ill, and they’re not, and it’s to control and manipulate, it’s called malingering. So, pretending to have a mental illness or physical illness in order to get the attention. That’s malingering. So anyway, um, okay.

It’s common, it’s not uncommon for narcissists to begin crazy, making arguments right before the day of a big event or interview to make you cry on your birthday or to purposely forget to give you a gift on your anniversary or Christmas or birthday or whatever. They may even ruin celebrations by actively provoking you behind closed doors before attending family events to make you look like the crazy one. Number three provoking jealousy and using love triangles to make you compete. Common with narcissists sleep deprivation. Yeah, stonewalling and silent treatment.

Okay, now let’s go over to the Drama Triangle. Are you stuck in a narcissist Drama Triangle? Three potential rules and how you can get out. So, narcissists love triangles of any kind. So, communication triangles, they love that they love to be the operator. So that’s another way to create drama. Well, so and so said such and such about you. Okay, so that’s them creating drama that way. And that’s also them turning you against another person that probably didn’t say what they’re saying that you said. They said, you said, Does that make sense? So, in a game of operator, the best way to stop that triangle is if the narcissist comes to you and says, so and so said such and such about you. Great. Get them on the phone. Get them on the phone. Let’s clear this up right now. That’s the best way to stop it. And usually, they backpedal. As soon as you do that, they’re like, oh, no, no, no, you know, so but the other triangle is the Drama Triangle. So, the Drama Triangle is the persecutor, which is usually the role the narcissist takes the victim, scapegoat, and the rescuer. So, they love to set up this Drama Triangle. The persecutor is a role that’s particularly suits the narcissist they dominate; they know best and ignore other people’s opinions. When things go wrong. It’s because if somebody else is useless, and it’s always somebody else’s fault, they may bully others and become aggressive if you don’t give them their way. They may use passive aggression as a means to be nasty to people by persecuting others, the narcissist’s fragile sense of identity is shored up, and their need to exert power over others is met. And they can switch between these roles. So, this is a game again that narcissists play to keep you off-centered. So, then they can flip from being the persecutor to the victim. Well, that’s over covert kind of victims view of the world as being against them. Like the persecutor. when anything goes wrong in their life, it isn’t their fault. They project a helpless image to those around them and manipulate others into helping them. I call them ask holes. They are exhausting to be around vulnerable narcissists in particular are often playing the victim so covert. So basically, it’s the Help me, Help me, Help me, to help them two seconds later, help me help. They’re assholes, and they want you to spend all of your energy fixing them. Don’t do it. If they are a black hole seriously, you cannot fix them because you did not break them. So, then the other part of the Drama Triangle is the rescuer rest narcissists can also be the rescuer.

Kris Godinez  29:21

They may surround themselves with people who they view as weaker than they. This also meets their need to be surrounded by people who feel too threatened to offer a challenge. Rescuing people can meet their need for attention, and they look like the good guy to everyone else. Being the rescuer can also mean that they can control the person that they’ve rescued. This is why I say be very careful when you are working with helping professions because my profession is filled with narcissists literally like I’ve seen some psychiatrists that I wanted to throat punch you know nurses, doctors, you’ve got to be careful if some if it walks like a narcissist and quacks like a narcissist and takes a dump like a narcissist, it’s a frickin narcissist, I don’t care if they have a PhD in front of their name, or behind their name or whatever. So be aware of that. So, the Drama Triangle, and they switch between all of these different roles depending on what suits them.

Now here’s the other thing I wanted to bring up. 11 reasons why narcissists create drama and chaos and 11 reasons why narcissists love drama, and this is on inner toxic relief. They crave attention of any kind. No attention is bad attention. They need to stay in the spotlight so that they can get their narcissistic needs met their cocaine. They get the adoration; they need to feel good. But even if it’s not admiration they’re after, even if they’re the bad guy, at least people are talking about them. And that makes them feel powerful. In their mind, others will see their superiority because they’re cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Narcissists want to control everyone. So, if they’re the ones that literally set off the bomb in the middle of the room, they will then sit back and enjoy it. You know, and feel like they are the ones in control that oh, look at what I did. Look at this disaster that I have brought, oh, look at this wonderful arguing going on, you know, and to them in their heads. They’re controlling the whole board. They have grandiose ideas of omnipotence, Narcissists cannot take responsibility when they have done something wrong; you can bet your sweet bippy they are going to do something to distract you from what they have done. So, because they cannot take personal responsibility, they’re going to blow something up, they’re going to create an argument, they’re going to do something and take your mind off of what they’ve done. And you have to go running around putting out all these little fires.

That’s another reason that narcissists create chaos and drama is to distract it so that you’re not paying attention. Hey, they did this, Hey, they’re the ones that set off the emotional bomb in the middle of the living room. Hey, they’re the ones that are, you know, cheating, lying, stealing, etc., etc., etc. Narcissists believe that being complicated equals being intelligent or equals being interesting. So many narcissists, particularly grandiose narcissists value intelligence as a sign of superiority. They also believe that a sign of intelligence is someone who is complicated or who thinks and acts in a complicated manner. So, if there’s an easy answer or a complicated answer, they’re always going to go for the convoluted, complicated answer because they think it makes them sound more intelligent. You know, or if they’re if they’re, you know, mysterious, you know, they a lot of the Guru’s a lot of the commute, communal narcissist, do the whole Oh, I’m so mysterious. I’m so complex on so, you know, this, that, and the other thing, so. Yeah. And so, it’s, again, it’s power and control, and they want to be perceived in a certain way. So, they try on these different roles.

Okay, narcissists want to keep you off balance. The main reason they cause drama and chaos is because they don’t want to give you too much time to think about what they are saying or doing. They fear often, rightly so, that you will figure out and the truth and be able to see through their manipulation. If that happens, one of their sources of narcissistic supply is in danger. And you might expose the ugly truth about their true nature, so they keep you off balance. That’s why they do the drama. If you’re constantly, you know, if you’re constantly trying to stay out of trouble and try not to get hit by dad or try not to be screened out by mom, you’re not going to have time to sit down and go wait a minute, you know what, none of this is normal. What, what, what? Do you see where I’m going with that.

So that’s why they do that’s why the parents do that. So really quickly, and we will get to questions. What ends up happening is hold on narcissist. Don’t care about your plans, especially if you made them, they would intentionally blow them up. narcissists always have a hidden agenda to manipulate to control to be in power to make you feel less than they absolutely will not go with the flow. If you’ve created something or you want to go do something, they’ll throw a monkey wrench into the plan every time because it makes them feel superior to upset plans at the last minute, and they don’t care about the drama and upset that it creates. narcissists get bored, and so it pleases them they’re sadistic to watch people be unhappy. They switch roles in the Drama Triangle, and they have to win.

So unfortunately, when we are raised in a family of origin where there is just drama, drama, drama, drama, drama, drama, chaos, chaos, chaos, chaos, chaos, we come out of that. And to us, that was normalized, so drama and chaos feel normal to us. And peace and serenity feel Scary. So that is a side effect of coming out of a family of origin. That was drama, and chaos is that we come out of it, and it’s peaceful and quiet, and we go, oh, how can I screw this up? How can I get some excitement? How can I? Oh, this is boring. You know, we tell ourselves now because they told us that, so you know, oh, this is boring peace and quiet as boring or, ooh, this feels scary. I don’t like it. I don’t feel safe. Well, it’s because we were used to the drama and the chaos that was going on in the family of origin, which then sets us up for if we do not go get help and do not read all of the books, sets us up for dating, or marrying an abuser because it feels familiar. The Chaos feels familiar. The drama. Oh, does he love me? Does he hate me? Does she love me? Does she hate me? Oh my gosh, the intermittent positive rewards, all of that is drama. And that sets us up because it feels familiar. And we’re attracted to that because it feels familiar.

That’s why it’s so vital to get with a damn good trauma therapist. I don’t care where you get them from. Just get one and start working on C-PTSD from Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker. The Disease to Please which works on codependency The Disease to Please by Harriet Braiker because you want to break that trauma Drama Triangle. Self-Esteem Workbook by Glenn Schiraldi, so you want to get to the point where you know yourself inside and out, and nobody can tell you who you are, you know who you are. Because remember, narcissists love to tell you who you are and what you like. So, start working those books, get with a good trauma therapist, work on yourself, and work on gee, this feels really familiar. Hmm, is that a good thing or a bad thing? Do you see where I’m going with that? Because we tend to go Oh, it feels familiar. It must be good. Okay, if you were raised in a healthy family, yeah, that would be okay. But being raised by a narcissist or borderline, histrionic, and there’s lots of drama, lots of chaos, lots of crying, lots of anger, lots of this, lots of that. Lots of distraction. That familiarity is not necessarily a good thing. You really want to take a look at what you’re attracted to, if it’s based on ooh, this feels familiar. So that’s why it’s really important. Get with a good trauma therapist start working on this stuff.

Okay, I think we’re going to dive into the questions now. So, to wrap it up in a nice little bow. So basically, the cluster bees are really adept at creating chaos and drama, and there’s a reason for it. And each one of the reasoning is a little different. Antisocial, they break all the rules break their families, hearts etc., etc., etc. Histrionic. It’s a lot of superficial feelings, lots of performative kind of thing look at me. Look at me inappropriate coming on to people and appropriate dressing etc. Borderline Personality Disorder, the fear of being abandoned, taking things intensely personally, deciding that that’s the reason, and then they just come unglued. Narcissist, though it’s to distract. They want you to not figure out that they are the problem. And it’s enjoyment for them. Because if they’re dark triad, antisocial psychopath, narcissist, they, you know, they enjoy it. And they’re sadistic, and they enjoy watching the target of abuse be confused. And they enjoy watching us run around in circles because and be in pain because they’re sadistic. And they don’t want us to figure out that they’re the problem. So. All right, let’s go to the questions, shall we?

Okay. ostracizing narc family that had no contact with me for more than 10 years. Came back after my cancer diagnosis. Why? Well on a guess, and of course, I don’t have them in front of me. So, I’m just I’m, what’s the word I’m looking for?

Kris Godinez  39:12

I’m extrapolating. No, that’s not the word. I’m sorry. My brain just went, Oh, it’s based on an educated guess. Okay. A medical diagnosis. That’s cancer is drama. It is. It’s a way for them to, you know, play the Drama Triangle, the persecutor, the victim, and the rescuer. So, in this case, if they’re narcissistic, and they’ve ostracized you, and you had nothing to do with them for 10 years, and they find out you have cancer. Now, all of a sudden, they want to get back in touch with you. Okay, that feels, and I could be wrong because I don’t have them in front of me, but it feels like speculating. Thank you. That’s the word I was looking for. Um, It feels like this is the socially correct thing to do. Oh, I haven’t had contact with this family member in 10 years, and now they’ve got cancer. I should go, you know, so I don’t look like the bad guy. Does that make sense? So, my whole thing of it is, it’s like if somebody has not had contact with you in 10 years, and their first contact with you is after they find out from somebody else that you have cancer, stay no, stay, no, stay no contact. You know, it’s they’re doing it for whatever reasons they have, you know, and if you’ve been happier without them, stay no contact. You know, I would be very cautious about getting back into touch with them. And usually, it’s, again, narcissists, psychopaths, whatever they dark triads. They love to give the appearance of being this, you know, loving, communal narcissist. They love to do this. Oh, I’m such a, I’m such a loving, kind family member. Oh, look, I’m caring for this family member that has a medical issue. Look at me, look at me, Look at me is basically what it is. So yeah, I would be very, very cautious. So usually, you know, if somebody really is a narcissist, if they are abusive, there is nothing that they do that does not have some sort of agenda for them. What how is this going to benefit them? That would be the question to ask yourself, how is that going to benefit them? Because it’s certainly not going to benefit you if you’ve been, you know, away from them for 10 years and perfectly happy. And they’re suddenly like, oh, no, I need to be in your life because now you’ve got cancer. How’s this going to benefit them? That’s the question you need to ask yourself. So, it’s always an agenda. It’s always with some reason. There’s some reason they’re doing it. And it’s usually to benefit themselves somehow.

Do narcissists think in a chaotic way? They seem to tell stories in a very disjointed way. Like they’re filling in the gaps with things they made up themselves and insist the truth. Oh, boy, okay. So, narcissists do not feel the way we do, okay? They do not have the empathy that we have. So, when we’re telling a story, you know, we’re telling a story with, like, full gusto, right? narcissists tend to lie for the sake of lying, especially if they are dark triads because they enjoy it because they want to see what they can get away with seriously, like, seriously, like, if they’ve got that antisocial psychopathic thing going on. They want to see what they can get away with. And I think I talked a few weeks ago about pathological lying. It’s not in the DSM five. It should be. But it’s when they lie, and they know they’re lying, but they will swear on the Bible that it’s God’s truth, what they’re saying. And they convinced themselves that what they’re saying is the truth. So. Ah, yeah. So yeah, they can tell well-rehearsed stories, but they tend to like lying because it gives them that rush, it gives them that adrenaline rush, can I get away with saying it? Can I get away with this story? That’s not true, and have them believe it? Because then that makes them feel powerful? Again? So yeah, that’s, yeah, they do they think in a chaotic way. Okay. So, here’s, here’s, here’s something to think about. You can have comorbidity between all of the diagnoses, like, you could be narcissistic and have major depression, you can be narcissistic, and have borderline, you can be narcissistic and have whatever fill in the blank. Um, so can they have chaotic thinking? Yeah, if they’re, if it’s comorbid, with Borderline freak, yeah, yeah, absolutely, they can have that. Um, it’s really interesting to watch somebody that has the two personality disorders. Because it’s like, you can almost see, when one takes over the other, and they tend to start doing this, the further down the line they get. So, all of the personality disorders start overlapping as you get more and more malignant. You know, so, again, its psychology is fascinating to me. It’s just the different ways that they do things, and psychopaths in particular, love to do pathological lying. And it’s almost like it’s almost like there’s a part of them. It’s like, can I get away with it? Can I fool this person, you know, but The problem of it is, is that they’re not very good at it.

So that that might be part of what you’re seeing. So, it’s like, so I was watching signs of a psychopath, right? And in almost every single one of the episodes, the person who did the crime would try to pull a fast one on the investigators. And yet, their stories, you know, trying to come up with on the fly. Their stories were disjointed like you said, and they would say things that would eventually get them caught, almost as if they wanted to be found out. So, it’s really a weird thing that narcissists do. They will point blank tell you I’m a narcissist, right? And a lot of times, and when somebody does that, that’s when I’m like, shields up. Red alert, you know? No, we’re not going there. Thank you. So, they give things away in what they say. It’s really, It’s interesting. Um, are they filling in the gaps is they made okay and insistence the truth. So, a pathological liar does that they will fill in the gaps was stuff they don’t really know.

And try to make it sound plausible. It’s just like they did on signs of a psychopath. Really good show, if you ever want to watch it. And yeah, and then they lie. And they insist that it’s the truth. And this one that I was watching and Signs of a Psychopath, the newest season. This kid was just insisting and insisting and insisting and insisting, thank God, the sheriff’s deputy or whoever was interviewing was just like, you know, that’s not the truth. I know that’s not the truth. And he just calm gray rock kept hammering at him. And finally, the kid finally broke down and told the truth, finally, you know, but he was going to go to the end, just continuing to lie. So yeah, they do that. Absolutely.

Um, is histrionic personality disorder caused by trauma like BPD? I think so. I do. Because it’s weird. It’s like histrionic; they need to be the center of attention. But their affect is very shallow. And it’s a lot of sexual stuff. It’s a lot of dressing provocatively and being overly dramatic. I mean, like, you know, seriously, like a Broadway show, but they’re playing to the, to the top pier of the, you know, the balcony, you know, that kind of thing. I think it is. I do. I do think it is it, in part is caused by trauma. So again, it’s like nature, nurture. Is there a predisposition to this? Yeah, I think there is. I think there is a predisposition to personality disorders, nurture than either pushes you over the cliff or holds you back from the cliff. So yeah, I do think it is caused by trauma. And I do think that getting with a good DBT therapist can help. I really do if they’re willing to go to therapy, that’s part of the problem. So again, there’s this little bit of narcissism also kind of in there, where they’re like, oh, there’s nothing wrong with me. So that’s why I’m saying I’m not so sure that histrionic is going to forever be its own diagnosis because it’s very overlapped with narcissism. It really is. There’s a lot of narcissistic traits in histrionic. So yeah, there that is, okay.

Could you explain withholding physical or mentally I mean, withholding of financial support, intimacy, physical, intellectual, emotional, social, spiritual. emotional abandonment happens when I’m upset or excited. They shut me down, as they aren’t capable of sitting without being the center of attention. Okay, so I’m assuming you’re talking about parents.

Kris Godinez  49:12

And this is true for parents or for romantic partners. Abusive parents, abusive, romantic partners do not feel the way that we feel they don’t. They don’t process emotions. When we feel, we feel it. You know, we’re empathic. We can put ourselves in somebody else’s shoes. When we’re joyful. We’re joyful. When we’re sad. We are truly sad. When we’re angry. Oh, boy, we’re angry. You know, they don’t feel those emotions the same way we do. So, when somebody is having an emotion, happy, sad, angry, whatever, they will shut them down. They will shut them down. I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve talked to adult children of narcissists and borderlines, etc. That would tell me that when they were growing up and would have an emotion, the parents would either oddly be, like, angry at them for having an emotion or just not care. So, like something happened, that was good. And the kid is excited about it, and the mom is like, Yeah, whatever. What? No, did you want to talk to that kid and be like, hey, good for you. That’s great. Tell me more, right? But a narcissistic parent, a borderline parent, if they’re malignant, they’re going to be like, I don’t care kid, whatever, go away kid, you bother me kind of thing. Or they’ll be angry at the child for being so happy. I’ve seen that that was their excuse for punishing them for abusing them. There’ll be angry at them for being angry; I’ll give you something to be angry, Oh, you think you’re angry? I’ll give you something to be angry. Or the kid is crying, oh, I’ll give you something to cry because they can’t feel they don’t have empathy.

So, a normal parent, when a child’s having an emotion. You engage with them. Oh, honey, I’m sorry. You’re sad? What’s happening? What are you sad about? How can I help? You know that kind of thing? Or you’re angry? I hear that you’re angry. What happened? Tell me more. You know, it’s like you engage with them. You don’t shut them down. You don’t shut them off. You don’t shove them to the side. You don’t, you know, but personality-disordered parents don’t understand the emotion. They can’t feel it themselves. They can’t understand why you’re feeling it. And that pisses them off. So, they’re going to shut you do because it makes them uncomfortable. Or, yeah, you’re the center of attention, you’re having this emotion of boy howdy, they’re going to shut you down because they need to be the center of attention. That’s what they do, because they’re disordered. That is not a normal parent. That is not a normal romantic partner, normal romantic partner, again, will engage and ask questions, and you know, do you mean anything? Can I do anything? You know that kind of thing. So. So there is that? Okay, let me see if I answered this question.

So withholding is also called stonewalling. So stonewalling is where the abuser just won’t talk to you. I’m not going to talk to you. You don’t exist. And then they ignore you for literally sometimes months until they finally deign to talk to you again, and then you’re expected to be, Oh, so grateful because they’re showering you with attention. So stonewalling is a way to inflict hurt. And they’ve shown in multiple studies that when somebody is shunned, it lights up the same pain centers in the brain as physical pain. It is physically painful to be shunned, to be stonewalled. So, they do this to manipulate to control, and to put you back in your place. So, if they want to make sure that you’re toeing the line, they’ll do the stonewalling. They’ll do the shunning so that you’re feeling pain and you’re begging for their attention. And, of course, they’re not going to give it to you until they feel like they are ready. And then they’ll give it to you, and then you’re expected to be extremely grateful for that. So, it’s a manipulation; it’s a control. It’s a punishment. It’s a way to make you compliant, basically, because then you live in fear of being shunned again. So, you know, what can I do? What can I do to keep from being shunned? You know that kind of thing. So yeah, I hope that answered the question.

Are narcissists addicted to negativity? They can be Yeah, absolutely. They keep creating all these bad events, drama and seem to revel in them. Yes. And that’s partly because of the Drama Triangle. So, the victim all these bad things are happening. Oh, it’s happening, and I had nothing to do with it. Why does this always happen to me bla bla bla bla bla, that is what they tend to do. So, they revel in the negative stuff because they can’t feel the good stuff. So, for example, there are I’ve heard multiple stories from multiple adult children of narcissists. And people who are married to children, adult children of narcissists, that the mother-in-law is just negative, negative negative negative negative and if something good happens she gets loosey-goosey like can’t stand it like ants the pants no can’t have happy you know that kind of thing and will set about to ruin it. Or if something happy happens they’ll immediately try to start bringing up negative stuff because that’s comfortable to them and they get to play the victim. So, everything has to be native Debbie Downer, you know, Danny Downer whatever, because they enjoy it fits their narrative, especially if they’re the victims all the time, if they’re the covert narcissist and they’re always, you know, this is always happening to me, Why does this always happen to me? You know, that kind of thing, looking for sympathy. So, into them again, it’s this weird, disordered thinking where it’s exciting to them, so they can’t muster excitement for happy things. But to them gossip and negativity, and that feels like intrigue. That feels like they’re important if they if they’ve got the end on something bad happening, that they’re somehow important and that they are very much attracted to that. So, you’re not wrong. So yeah, they do they are they love negativity like nobody’s business.

All right, kids, here is my thoughts on this. If you know somebody who is just a drama king, or a drama queen, constantly causing chaos. And this means this goes for every aspect of your life, whether this is at work, whether this is at home, whether this is with your family of origin, whether this is whatever, these people are dedicated to you not living your best life, and all of this smoke and mirrors that they’re doing is to keep you from figuring out that you’d be so much happier without them, basically. So, when you are confronted with somebody who is chaos, chaos, chaos, drama, drama, drama, and they’re a narcissist, get the hell out, get the hell out. You cannot fix them, because you did not break them. If they are histrionic. You know what, I’m not participating in this. This is not going to get you what you want. You need therapy. Here’s a DBT therapist go to town. Same thing with borderline, I’m not playing in this. I’m not going to engage in this. This is not personal. Get a DBT therapist, but don’t engage guys. Don’t play their game.

Don’t do any of the triangles don’t do the Drama Triangle rescuer, persecutor victim, and don’t do the communication triangle. Operator and then the two innocents over here that don’t know that this person is putting words in somebody else’s mouth. So basically, the big thing is don’t play, don’t play. It’s a game. It is a game. It is a game for each one of the cluster B’s there’s a different reason they’re doing it and there’s a different way it presents, but the end effect is that it drives the people around them. absolutely to distraction. It keeps people from living their best life. It creates anxiety and depression. And this person is not going to change if they’re willing to get if the if the histrionic and the borderline are willing to go get help hazzah! That’s great narcissists don’t. They’ll say they’ll go get help. They’ll say they’re going to change. They’ll go three times and then they’ll stop and declare the therapist incompetent. So, narcissists do this to take the pressure off of them. They don’t want us to figure out that they are the problem.

All right, my love’s there that is I have no idea what I’m talking about next week. But you guys so have a drama free week, a chaos free week. Go drink plenty of water, enjoy the sunshine, and hopefully everything goes well. And I will talk to you next week.

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. You can always listen live on YouTube every week Sunday at noon, Arizona Mountain Standard Time. And if you want to find out more or listen to other episodes, you can go to Krisgodinez.com and if you have a chance, subscribe to this show on whatever podcast app you use and let other people know about. I want to thank my sponsor betterhelp.com. They are an online therapy company. Whether you are in the US or international. They will set you up with a qualified licensed therapist. PhD level or Master’s level. If you are interested in more information, go to betterhelp.com/krisgodinez.

You’ve been listening to the podcast version of We Need To Talk with Kris Godinez.

The post 03-26-2023 Chaos and Drama appeared first on Kris Godinez.

We’ve all been there, and done that, dealing with a disordered corporation that has the office bully, cliques, screamers, and schemers. No one ever teaches us what to look out for when we go to interview for a job or why it is important to read not just employee reviews like glassdoor.com but customer reviews of any place you are interviewing for a job. How do you deal with a backstabbing, idea-stealing coworker? Or, even recognize that the coworker is even doing that?

More and more people are saying that HR does nothing but protect the corporation. That the corporations are only as healthy as the people at the top as doo-doo runs downhill. What are some things you can do to protect yourself should you have the misfortune of having a coworker or worse, boss who is a bully? These and many more questions will be answered in this week’s episode Office Shenanigans.

—

Hello and welcome to We Need To Talk with Kris Godinez podcast. I’m your host Kris Godinez, licensed professional counselor. I help people get out of, and stay out of, toxic relationships. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only the views and opinions stated herein are mine and mine alone. They do not represent the ACA, the APA or any other therapist for that matter.

I want to thank my sponsor betterhelp.com. They are an online therapy company. Whether you are in the US or international. They will set you up with a qualified licensed therapist. PhD level or Master’s level. If you are interested in more information, go to betterhelp.com/krisgodinez.

Okay, um, let’s see. Topic. So current events, so current events would be the Alex Murdaugh trial. So, I don’t know if you guys watched it or not. But do you remember how I was talking about crime ID and how prosecutors if they’re smart, they’re and educated in psychology, they watch the perpetrator to see what kind of emotions may or may not be going on. Hi, everybody, I see you in the chat. Thank you. So, Alex Murdoch, when he insisted, uh, first of all, back it up, back it up, back it up. He’s a lawyer. Okay. He insisted on testifying on his own behalf. Huge mistake. If I was his attorney, I would have said hell no, but I wasn’t. And I’m not I don’t play one on TV. But, during his testimony, he was emotionless there was no tears, no distress, no remorse, no upset, no emotion whatsoever. It took the jury 45 minutes to come back and be like, Oh, hell yeah, he did this. So, it’s interesting to me the hubris that these narcissistic types, not just him, but other people that that do heinous acts and then think that they can get away with it because they think they’re smarter than everybody else. But on the stand, no motion, no tears, no remorse, no, missing them, no, nothing, nothing. And he’s got a series of other crimes behind him.

So, you remember last week when we were talking about dark triads when we were talking about sociopaths, psychopaths, narcissists Machiavellian, they switch between crimes. So, they’re, they’re equally adept at doing white collar crimes as they are at doing robberies or murder or whatever. And so, it was really interesting to me to watch this trial and see that the jury didn’t buy his BS and that they actually convicted him. So again, it’s they are incapable of expressing normal human emotions. When you lose somebody, you love you are wreck, you’re a wreck. I mean, you are a wreck, capital W wreck. Okay. But if you’re a dark triad, it’s really hard to get that unless you’re a really good actor. And even at that, like I said, there was that one where the kid just, you know, boohoo, who’d on the stand, no tears, no need for a Kleenex, none of that. So, I really wish that our, our judicial system would be trained in psychology, they need to, they need to be trained in psychology, they absolutely must be trained in psychology, for so many reasons. One, you’ve got a bunch of dark triads out there committing heinous crimes, number two, the family court system, a bunch of dark triads out there, committing heinous crimes and doing parental alienation and everything else. So yeah, it’s it was a really interesting trial to watch. So anyway, there is that. So just another example of you get a dark triad on the stand or you get somebody who is disordered on the stand. And they think they’re smarter than everybody else, but they can’t genuinely give the emotion that is appropriate to the situation. Some of them can, but not a lot of them. So anyway, that’s the current events. All right.

So, let’s dive into today’s topic, which is office shenanigans. And next week, I’m going to be talking about how to deal with siblings because I think that is coming up for a lot of us so Alright, so office shenanigans. So, here’s the thing every single article I looked at whether it was Psychology Today or Yale or any of them that I pulled up, every single descriptor was a dark triad. Isn’t that interesting? So, when you are interviewing, let’s start at the very, very beginning, when you are interviewing for a job, how can you prevent yourself from getting into a situation that’s toxic?

So here are the 15 warning signs of a bad company to work for lack of team bonding and communication. So poor leadership skills, unclear objective, limited feedback, disengaged employees, like they’re there, they don’t care, and they’re quiet, quitting all of that. Damaged reputation. So, it used to be that you could go to glassdoor.com and look it up and get the reviews from the actual employees understanding now that that may not be such a great or accurate place to go. But you could go look and look, go and look at it, to see what people are saying about them. The best way to look at a company’s reputation, read the reviews for the company, how many people are happy with them, buying their products, or dealing with them? How many people are unhappy with them? So, if you’re coming across a lot of negative reviews, that’s a huge red flag right there because that says there’s something wrong with the company. Okay. Um, all right. damaged reputation. Okay. unmotivated employees. So external reflects the internal so happy employees make for satisfied customers, which is why I’m saying look at the customer reviews, people engaged at work, invest more time and effort in the work bringing their best each day, they also like to recommend and refer their companies to others. Yes. So, when you are working for a good company, okay, you brag about it, you’re like, Oh, my God, benefits are great, oh, my God, I get all this vacation time. Oh, my God, my supervisors. Awesome. Oh, my God, do you see where I’m going with that?

I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve had people working for large corporations here in the Phoenix area that are like, You must tell everyone not to work for this company, this company, this company, this company, and this company. Why? Because they treat their employees like doo-doo. So just look at the how the customers and they treat their customers like doodoo I mean, that’s the mark of arrogance. It’s like thinking you can just treat people horribly, and that they’ll still keep coming back. No, no, no. Doesn’t work that way.

So, okay, so continuing on, unmotivated employees. So, they don’t they tell if you hear about unmotivated employees, that is one of the red flags of a bad company, unmotivated employees damage the company’s overall look. And they’re also one of the warning signs of a bad company culture. They channel their displeasure into behaviors that decrease customer experience and satisfaction.

No recognition for your work, employee appreciation, it consists consistently ranks as one of the strongest drivers of engagement. And here’s the problem. A lot of companies lately have been going. Oh, here’s a pizza for all your hardware. Ah, people, money talks, pizza walks, you know what I’m saying? So, yeah, you want to get with a company that’s not just giving you pizza and being like, pat on the back. Good job. You know, keep doing all this incredibly hard work. No, you want somebody who’s compensating you and showing you your value. Hello. You know what I’m saying? Like I said, money talks, pizza walks, you keep that in your head because if they’re giving you pizza, and they’re not giving you money compensation, get the hell out, get a different job.

Kris Godinez  08:44

Okay, hold on. Um, unstable work-life balance. Now, when John was working for a company that I shall not name because I can’t because I don’t want to get sued. Here in the valley. IT. You’ll figure it out. Um, he was a nervous wreck. He had no work-life balance. They were insisting that he work, you know, 20 hours a day. They are still very big on hiring right out of college. And they’re still very big on, you know, working people, and they want people to stay until the wee hours of the morning. Well, that might be great if you’re obsessive about your job and you don’t have a family. But if you’ve got work-life balance, then you’re going to want to spend time with your family, your dog, your cat, your you know, whatever your friends Hello. So, work-life balance is huge. So, if you’re working with a corporation that is constantly having you do overtime, and your salary, Houston, we have a huge effing problem. Salary over time. You don’t get overtime, so your per-hour salary keeps going down, the more overtime you work. So, I love it when they go, we’ll give you a pizza. Ah, that that is three hours of my life, I’ll never get back. You know what I’m saying? It’s a work-life balance. And in companies that do this, they treat their employees like slaves, or treat their employees like indentured servants or treat their employees like this less than human. They generally have got at the top, somebody who has personality disorder guarantee and take it to the bank and earn interest on it. There’s a huge reason why I work for myself because I worked with enough corporations to go, you’re disordered, you’re disordered. Oh my God, no, I’m not even going to go interview there. You know what I’m saying? So um, so that that is the sign of somebody that is, it’s always from the top, it’s like, doo doo runs downhill. If the top of the corporation is unhealthy, the rest of the corporation is eventually going to become unhealthy.

Look at what happened to Disney. In the two years, two years it took Bob Chapek two years to completely FUBAR that company. And it had to take the previous CEO to come back and start trying to fix it. So, do you see where I’m going with that? It’s like it rolls down from the top, and it was clear the last time I went there; remember I told you in May, I went there, and maybe employees were unhappy. It was the unhappiest place on earth, not the happiest place on earth. And you could tell, and I’m sorry, but happy employees are what’s the word I’m looking for? It’s wonderful. I love walking into a place where the employees are genuinely happy. Not fake, happy, not oh my god, I have to do this because I need this paycheck. Like they genuinely like what they are doing. It makes me happy. So, for example, when we take our dogs in to get groomed, our groomer loves what she does. She loves the dogs. And you can tell. So yeah, it does. Yeah, okay, hold on.

So unstable work-life balance. So, if they’re insisting that you were over time, and you’re salaried. A lack of company and project direction. A strong company direction is a sign of a healthy workplace culture, from strategy and vision to well-defined projects. Employees who believe in the nation’s direction are more likely to invest in their work because they know it will make a difference. How many of us have worked for a corporation where it didn’t make a difference? Because they were constantly changing their direction, or they were constantly changing their focus, right? That’s part of the reason why I quit working at the homeless shelter is because we got taken over by a guy that was all about the Benjamins and not about the patients. So, it’s like, Ah, no, you’ve got to believe in what you’re doing. They’ve got to have a direction. They can’t just be willy-nilly all over the place, you know? And if they keep changing things on you, or if they get rid of people, and then pile on the work and go, Oh, well, we’re short-staffed, you need to take that up. That’s outside your scope. That is outside your scope. I did not join this organization to do two- or three people’s jobs. And that’s what I see happen. That’s abuse, guys. That’s abuse. Because then if they come back at you and go, Why didn’t you get this done? Why didn’t you get down? Because you didn’t hire enough people to do it. Mofo! You know what I’m saying?

So yeah, it I get very angry about this because it makes me angry that they take advantage, specifically, of younger workers. This is what I see happening. Is that some because I can’t tell you the number of clients, I’ve had to guide through their interview process and what’s going on in the corporation and oh, no, this is, this is this is not good. There. This is outside your scope nope they’re piling on too much. You know, because they don’t know because they haven’t had the experience. And disordered people, like we talked about two weeks ago lie they go for younger and younger targets of abuse. They like to be able to manipulate the naive those that don’t have the experience. So absolutely. If you’ve got children, grandchildren, nieces, great nieces, great nephews, whatever, educate them on the signs of a toxic company because the employers are betting that you guys are going to Oh, Johnny, if you could do me a huge favor, if you could put the eeoc.gov Eeoc.gov. That is where you go to report hostile work environment, racism, ageism, etc. So, eeoc.gov. All right, hold on.

So back to this scope creep. We started talking about that. So, scope creep occurs when employees are asked to work outside their defined responsibilities, which also includes them piling on other people’s work because that’s, that’s not cool. You’ve got your own work. Why should you be doing three other people’s work? It is typically a slow process that happens over time, first presented as a special request, but then it becomes expected. You are going to have to tell the boss No. Now, are you terrified of getting fired, probably. But here’s the deal. If you do not set boundaries with these Jack wagons, they will mow straight over you. And if you see them doing that to other people, then you may want to start looking at getting another job somewhere else. Because if they’re doing it to other people, they will eventually do it to you. A good boss knows not to do that, a good boss knows to go to their boss and go, ah, we need to hire more people. No, we’re not going to pile on more stuff to these guys. They’ve already got enough. Okay.

So going back to John, when he was working for this corporation, they started doing all this scope, creep and piling on work and bad supervisors and all this other stuff. And they were all using the stick instead of the carrot. So, abusers truly believe that if you just hit somebody hard enough and often enough that they’re suddenly going to start producing because they’re crazy, and they’re sadistic. So, when you start doing that to employees, they start getting sick, like physically and mentally. John was to the point with that one job that he was pacing up and down all night. He was nervous wreck. What is this guy going to pull? Now? How is he going to try to blame me this time? Does that sound familiar scapegoat? Oh, boy, corporations are only as healthy as the people at the top. And what I’ve spent seen happening they started promoting up and out the disordered wants to get them out of that particular, you know, group and into another one because they didn’t want to have to deal with them. Well, unfortunately, you keep doing that; those jerks seemingly become into positions of power. But they eventually fail because they cannot actually produce, they can only steal, they can only lie, they can only bully, okay, they need to be removed, and documentation needs to be done. We’re going to talk about that hold on just a second,

I want to go through the 15 warning signs, extreme criticism using the stick instead of the carrot. So, negativity has a significant impact on employee motivation and confidence when feedback crosses the line to extreme criticism slash abuse. It is one of the signs of a bad company culture, bad reputation and reviews, we talked about that aggressive political opinions seep into the workday. So, in our environment, now, it’s not a good idea to talk politics, politics, like American politics, or any politics in the workplace. If there is somebody in your workplace that is aggressively pushing their political view, that can be considered abuse, especially if it is in the policy that you guys do not discuss politics. So that is something else to watch out for, or religion or anything else that could cause division and upset inside the company. So, it’s all about cohesiveness. A good boss creates a cohesive, accepting, kind culture. A bad boss creates division, divide and conquer. That’s what narcissists do if they can get the two siblings fighting each other. They’re in power. They’re controlling, and they win. So, it’s the same thing in jobs.

Kris Godinez  18:18

Absence of core company values, clearly stated company values are a powerful declaration of a company’s intended culture. And they’re also the glue that holds the workplace together. It also helps define what is allowed and what is not allowed. And it sets the tone for hiring. Because in each of these instances, basically, the bottom line comes to you’ve got to have somebody who’s hiring, who’s well versed in disordered people so that if they see signs of this, they don’t hire them, or promote them, or do whatever. So, it’s on an individual level, and it’s on the corporate level. Okay, hold on.

Competition over collaboration. Competition is healthy in the workplace, especially when it is friendly and rooted in collaborative culture. However, culture can take a big, big hit when competition overcomes collaboration. Who does that sound like? That sounds like a narcissist. Everything is a competition. I have to win. That’s what they do. A company that has high turnover rates that is a huge red flag. The pay does not meet the responsibility level. They’re not meeting the industry standard. And that happens a lot here in Arizona. So, they’ll pay somebody less, and they’ll be like, oh, well, but it’s Arizona. And I’m like, Oh, well, but it doesn’t matter. Pay needs to meet the responsibility level. Employees rarely take lunch breaks or breaks at all. Federally mandated guys, federally mandated you get two breaks and a lunch break. Okay? And if you’re not taking a lunch break because they’re making You work on your lunch break, this is a bad company, okay? And they’re just going to keep pushing the boundaries pretty soon. Like I said, you’re going to have to work on weekends, you’re going to be taking phone calls all the time. And that’s another thing. Company phone. This needs to be clearly defined. You are there Monday through Friday, 8am to 5 pm or 6 pm. However late you work, but that’s it. They do not get to encroach on your weekends, period. And I’ve seen them do that. Okay, sense of boredom and unhappiness. So those are the 15 warning signs of a bad corporation.

Now here is work bullying, toxicity, I can’t say that word. This is by Harvard Business Review, how bullying manifests at work and how to stop it. Okay, there’s different types of bullying. So bullying facet, goal direction motivation, so the bullying feature is hostile or hot, or emotional. So, sample behaviors and outcomes, yelling at someone in anger, throwing things, lying to get someone fired, or otherwise make them suffer out of personal or identity-based hatred slash, harassment or intense insecurity. Hmm. Who does that sound like? Sounds like a dark triad. Sounds like a narcissist. Instrumental, aka cold spreading rumors, lies, distortions to remove a perceived threat, a claim of their office space funding position, or other resources. Okay, immediacy, direct, punching, yelling, open blaming, and shaming, sending angry messages, antagonistic and hostile body language indirect, spreading rumors, withholding information taking you off of important chats are taking you off of important emails circumventing and sabotaging.

Okay, visibility overt humiliating silencing someone in front of others telling somebody to shut up that’s abuse; sorry, period end stop, full stop. Full freakin stop. Second, if somebody tells you to shut up at work you get up you walk out, and you quit because you do not put up that is harassment. Covert, gaslighting, withholding information, subtle blaming. Isn’t it interesting how Harvard Business Review is using the terms that describe a narcissist or a dark triad in their bullying thing. And this is Harvard Business Review and business management November 4, 2022, by Ludmil Praslova, Ron Carucci and Caroline Stokes, How Bullying Manifests at Work and How to Stop it okay. Okay, targeting the boss, the bully boss, 65 reported cases there 65% of reported cases is the boss bullying downwards. Horizontal 20%, 21% are coworkers upward bullying by subordinates, 14% And then mixed. So, it causes physical illness burnout, disability, anxiety, depression, PTSD, insomnia, nightmares, loss of confidence, suicidal ideation, loss of reputation, friendships, trust support and professional networks, loss of income, loss of time productivity and revenue. turnover and replacement costs absence in health care costs, legal actions, reputational and brand damage, limited talent pool because people eventually stop working for these corporations.

Okay, so then, how do you deal with these people? These 15 features can be mapped to some of the common archetype bullies. Take the schemer. There are the Screamer, who is associated with yelling and fist banging, like hitting the fist on the on the desk. They do that too. Or the quieter but equally dangerous schemer, so you’ve got the Screamer and the schemer, who uses Machiavellian plotting, gaslighting and smear campaigns to strip others of resources or to push them out. The schemer doesn’t necessarily have a position of legitimate power and can present as a smiling and eager-to-help colleague or even an innocent-looking intern, while hostile motivation and overt tactics aligned with the Screamer bully archetype and instrumental. Indirect and covert bullying is typical of the schemer. A bully can have multiple motivations and use multiple tactics consciously or unconsciously. I would say consciously I don’t think any of this is unconscious.

Okay, so one of the ways that targets of abuse really get hammered by corporate culture is workplace bullying myths. Common myths about bullying, for example, is that it’s simply holding people to a higher standard. Oh, I’m being hard on them. Because I want them to do better. Can I just say Moo? We’re having a competitive, you know, personality, or we want competition. However, bullying in the myths about it hinders outcomes. There is a myth that bullies are often star performers. However, the actual star performers are more likely to be the targets rather than the bullies. The bullies are usually mediocre performers who may appear to be stars, while in fact, they often take credit for the work of others. Moreover, bullies are not motivated by organizational goals. They are driven by self-interest, often at the expense of organizations. Research indicates that bullies often envy and covertly victimized organization-focused high performers who are particularly capable, caring, and conscientious. Not only are bullies not the stars, but one toxic employee negates the gains of the performance of two superstars and likely creates additional costs. The motivation myth justifies bullying as management or motivation, helping low-performing individuals improve. indeed low performers are more likely to experience bullying than mediocre ones, but it does not help them improve. Rather it can further hinder the performance creativity, collaboration, and delivering on business goals due to employee distress like I was telling you about with John.

So okay, ineffective interventions, blaming the target, that’s that’s never going to work, demanding that the target prove that they haven’t done anything to deserve this, that’s never going to work. Placing the burden of proof and anti-bullying work on the target is never going to work. A reactive approach addresses bullying after the individual, and organizational harm has already occurred. However, the first line of defense against all workplace bullies should be prevention. A systematic approach to creating a worker a safer workplace indicates that you need to have organizational systems in place that will effectively screen out dark triads, so facilities that are in are inclusive and psychologically healthy. They do double duty and preventing bullying. effective anti-bullying mechanisms are indicated rooted in organizational justice, transparency, and focus on outcomes and the use of valid instruments and decision makings.

Kris Godinez  27:35

They’re supported by tools that facilitate inclusive, flexible work, voice, and participation, addressing hostile bullying, stopping the screamer, so you can stop the Screamer with obviously selection and training is your first line of defense don’t hire these people in the first place. Organizations legally can and must screen out based on negative characteristics that is demonstrably related to poor performance, such as arrogance in leadership. Training employees and nonviolent communication is another important tool. So, for example, it’s in your workplace culture, it’s in your workplace guidebooks, in your training. So, a violent or bullying would be you call this report this garbage is insulting; you don’t know how to write the way. A better way to say this would be I am disappointed that I cannot afford or use this draft of the report. I need clarity. Please arrange the numerical data in tables and write four or five clear bullet point takeaways. So, in other words, childish behavior versus adult behavior and correction. So, abusers go immediately for the anger, you know, and for the put-downs and for the nastiness.

So, stopping the schemer. So, you want to have performances are based on open ways of okay, so equitable, fair, legitimate ways to obtain rewards, promotions, resource allocation, and other crucial decisions should be based on transparent and accurately measured performance outcomes. eyeballing performance, rewards, bragging, credit, taking, and possessing external markers of privilege are not going to help. Moreover, ensuring justice and organization decisions requires mechanisms for correcting high-stakes decisions when necessary, such as if the information they were based on was incomplete or false. So basically, again, it’s making sure that it’s an open kind of thing. It’s not, you know, Oh, I did all the work, and I’m going to brag, and I’m going to stand up and tell everybody how great I am and therefore, I deserve all the credit. So that kind of thing.

Preventing bullying you basically if you have witnesses, that’s huge. You want to document everything. If somebody speaks to you in a way that is unacceptable. You stop them cold. You will not call me names, period. Okay, you were here. You saw that, right? You heard that right. Um, You’ve just got to be a little bit aggressive about it. You’ve got to be a little bit like ah; I’m not going to put up with us, you know, engaging the I statements. I am not going to put up with this when you can keep a civil tone in your head; please come see me other than that, I’m going to my boss bye. And you walk off you know you don’t put up with bullies; for the most part are cowards, absolute cowards. They like to do hit-and-run screw us. And they like to harm. They like to hurt, they like to embarrass, they like to intimidate. So, standing your ground with a bully, like seriously, body language is huge. Bullies look for people who are kind of unsure of themselves and kind of collapsed in on themselves if you are standing in your like, you will not talk to me like that; I will not put up with that they tend to back right the hell off because they know you’re not going to put up with it. And you haven’t said or done anything wrong. Now, if you’re in a corporate culture where they are making you that guy for standing up for yourself, quit, just quit, just quit. Leave them hanging, you know, it’s I have no sympathy for people, organizations that do that. Okay, so, alright, so that’s that one.

All right, and then how to stop workplace bullying, and then I will get to the questions. Okay, so we’ve gone over the types of bullying, you know, lacks empathy, has few friends, has a need for explaining power and control, struggling with interpersonal differences, feeling empowered by causing conflict or chaos, and making other feels threatened. They suffer from low self-esteem, they may have been bullied themselves. Who cares? Maybe a trauma survivor, I’m going to argue with that. So, a lot of times where I’ve heard is, there’s the new apologists out there. And Kim Saeed just did a fantastic article on this. And she talked about these apologists who are not psychologists who have not studied this stuff. And they’re like, Oh, poor abusers. They’ve been bullied themselves. Poor abusers. They’ve abused themselves. Okay. How many of us survivors were abused? How many of us went on to become abusers ourselves? Nobody. Wow. So, then I’m sorry. These bullies had ample opportunity to go get help, and they haven’t. Do you see where I’m going with that? So, when somebody does the apologist thing, oh, they were abused themselves. Oh, I’m going to make excuses for them. That’s exactly it. They’re making excuses for them. They know what they’re doing. They enjoy what they’re doing. They are sadistic. They are generally dark triads, which means a narcissist, psychopath Machiavellian, no empathy, guys. None, zip zero, zilch. There is no excuse. Let me just say that again. There is no excuse for bullying or abuse, period. I don’t give a flying rat’s ass what their background was. Okay. I don’t care if they were abused or if they have low self-esteem. Go get a therapist and frickin work on it! Ya jack wagon! Do you hear where I’m going with that? They know. They know what they are. They know what they’re doing. They’re not innocent. They’re choosing. They are choosing to be abusive. So don’t fall for that. And if some organization does the whole Oh, well, you know, they had a rough track. So, did I Biotch! I’m not putting up with this. Ah, this ain’t going to fly. So, and don’t listen to the apologists that sit there and tell you that narcissists can change. They can’t. They can’t, and they won’t. And if you ever get a hold of Kim Saeed I ever posted on my webpage. If you can find her article and read it, it’s excellent because she’s absolutely right. There’s apologists out there that want people to believe that the poor abuser are I have no sympathy, zip, zero, zilch. Nada. You got a choice. And if you’re abusing you’re less than dirt, in my opinion, so there it is. All right, where are we? Okay.

Relational bullying, gossiping, ignoring, excluding, or participating in cliques. Physical bullying, dirty looks invading personal space, you know, trying to intimidate, offensive gestures or facial expressions or physical assault, verbal ability, bullying; passive-aggressive comments, negative or critical comments about appearance or personality. So personal attack, demanding bossy behavior, rumors, hostile language in name-calling, stealing, or damaging items. A boss who swears of you puts you down calls your name or physically intimidates you by standing behind you while you work at your desk. A group of coworkers who make snarky comments, make faces at you, excludes you from social activities and make you feel unwelcome. A colleague who backstabs you by spreading rumors and prevents you from accessing resources that you need to get your work done, including causing a paper jam in your printer the day a big report was due healthy workplace environments can make you feel like part of the community. Meanwhile, unhealthy workplace environments where bullying is tolerated can have the opposite effect, and can be detrimental to your self-esteem, your mental health and possibly triggering or exacerbating conditions such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, trauma, PTSD, and more. Or it feels really familiar. Like you’re back in your family, holy cow. You know, if it feels familiar, get out. If it feels familiar in a bad way, get out.

Okay, so stop bullying at work. So, creating physical distance, keep your distance and keep your options open, keep your cool, gray rock, breathe deeply, and avoid being reactive. They need chaos, like the rest of us need oxygen. So, you’ve got to not engage, like the crazier they get, the calmer you get. Because that’ll do two things. One, they’ll lose it to the point where other people are going to see it because they can’t handle you not engaging because that’s what they’re trying to do, poking the bear trying to get you to roar back at them. And if you’re just cool as a cucumber, Mm hmm. All right, you’re done.

Kris Godinez  36:17

I’m not putting up with this. Drives them crazy. And that’s what you want. You want them to show their true colors. So, there is that? Um, okay, avoid interrupting or provoking bullies to de-escalate the situation. So don’t try to explain yourself. This is the big thing when somebody is dedicated to misunderstanding you. There is nothing you can say to make them see you for who you really are. Because they don’t care. They don’t care. They want you to be the bad guy. They want to take the stuff out on you. They want you to be the whipping post boy howdy. Nothing you say is going to change them. You cannot speak reason or logic to them. Because there is not there. There. Okay. Okay. Practice, okay, practice gray rock. She says practice empathy. I have no sympathy. I can have empathy; okay, they’re screwed up. They’re suffering, and that’s why they’re doing what they’re doing. However, I am not going to practice idiot compassion. I will not allow them to do that to me in my space or to any of my coworkers not on my watch. Have fun with that. If I could throw a middle finger, I would.

Be consciously responsive, not emotionally reactive. Hang on to your confidence. Remove yourself and seek assistance, say something to the bully, and document it. Maintain eye contact stay tall with your shoulders back, and hold your ground. Speak honestly, assertively and diplomatically. Use I statements just like I said, to express your feelings and set healthy boundaries demonstrate respect for yourself and others with a tone that is professional and firm. No yelling, no name calling, none of that be direct and neither passive nor aggressive when setting boundaries with statements such as I am not comfortable with the volume of this conversation. If we cannot speak calmly, I will need to end this call, or I will need to end this conversation. It is not okay to call me that name. I feel uncomfortable being blocked by you. I need you to move, please. You know, document what you said by writing it down and emailing it to yourself. So, you have a timestamp record in case the event happens again, or you need to file a form report. Keep it factual no emotions keep it objective and true. Today, Sue said you’re a loser and I replied, It is not okay to speak to me that way. This is that is workplace bullying, and I will not tolerate it. Boom. There you go. Tell someone and file a report. To tell someone else tell someone else what happened. Tell your boss. If it’s your boss, that’s the bully tell your boss’s boss if you feel comfortable going to HR do so now remember, HR is there to protect the company not so much the employees. But companies don’t like being sued. They do not like being sued. If you do not tell a trusted mentor or even co-worker who may have a trusted boss or supervisor higher up in the organization. That’s a great idea.

Some organizations even allow anonymous reporting of bullying or harassment in the workplace. So, look at your company’s employee policies and procedures. Seek a good therapist work on assertiveness. So, a lot of us coming out of abusive relationships find ourselves in abusive work relationships. Why? Well, inner child so oh my gosh, this feels really familiar. Must be okay. Kind of like the same thing with dating, right? Somebody that reminds us of the person we had the hardest time with. So, it is an inner child issue. It is. Trust your gut. If it feels familiar in a bad way. Do not accept the job. Do not accept the job. Don’t if they’re like, wow, this kind of sounds like you know my abuser. Ooh, maybe not, you know, don’t accept the job. Read the customer reviews, see what people are saying about this place; that’s going to tell you a lot, and yes, I am going to get to the questions. Okay, practice, practice mindfulness, deep breathing, and yoga. Create a support system at work by seeking out like-minded colleagues and find a trusted mentor. Work a mental fitness program such as the financial mindset fix of mental fitness program for an abundant life.

And then it says empower the bystander. So recent study shows that bystanders exist in 88% of workplace bullying incidences, and usually, the usual response is apathy and overlooking what they have observed rather than having the moral courage to stand up and say something and file a report fear is what prevents the silent observers from stepping in fear of becoming a target, fear of retaliation, and fear of making the situation worse. Empowering the bystander is one of the most effective ways to stop workplace bullying. Bystanders need to do one of three things say something right then and there in front of everyone. That’s not okay. I heard what you said. That’s not okay. Say something in private to the bully that wasn’t cool. Or the victim? Are you okay? Do you want help filing a report. Now see, I’m aggressive enough that I would say that’s not okay. I will help you fill out a report. Boom, bring it, bring it. Try me. You know what I’m saying? Um, okay, there’s that tell a supervisor or HR rep do not ignore workplace bullying, or nothing will change. And again, the corporate culture is truly going to influence whether observers are going to stand up or not. So, in corporations, they have got to make it a part of their policy. If you see something, you say something, you know, without fear of retribution or retaliation, the companies where there’s fear of retribution or fear period, are companies that are run by abusers, narcissists, borderlines, you know, that are just cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs that are malignant, you know, dark triads, they’re the ones that are running those corporations because they create a corporate culture of fear. And they create a corporate culture of retribution and vindictiveness. And I’ll get you my pretty, and that is all dark triad.

So, you want to make sure that you stand up for yourself. It’s not going to do any good to cower. It’s not going to do any good to hide. So the fight flight freeze or fawn response, when you’re dealing with a bully nine times out of 10, you’re gonna go to that response that you had when you were a kid, which is why it’s so important to get with a good trauma therapist, so that you can work on that so that you can stand up for yourself and be assertive, you know, no, and I mean it. So, it’s like, I taught my little kids when I was doing the grief, you know, groups, if somebody was bullying, or doing something that one of the kids didn’t like, we taught them if somebody’s doing something, you don’t like, put your hand out and say stop, and I mean it loudly. And then of course, that would get the attention of one of the volunteers and we would go mediate. And that’s what needs to happen, unfortunately, in corporate and culture, corporate culture, because they need to create a situation a culture of support, and no, we’re not going to tolerate this and stop and I mean, it also alerts people around that’s, that’s going to get people’s attention, stop and I mean it, period. That’s going to get people’s attention, and then you just turn around and walk off, go to HR file report, eeoc.gov eeoc.gov. That is for reporting harassment, sexism, racism, whatever. ageism, harassment, hostile work environment, you betcha.

So, and then get with a good attorney. If this is like going on and it’s causing you distress and it’s a corporate culture. And there’s other people get an attorney, get an attorney. It’s that’s the only thing some of these jerks understand. So, but don’t put up with it. There is not a reason on the face of the planet you should put up with it. Okay.

Um, I’ve been asked to put together communication guidelines for my office. Is it worthwhile to include standards for basic civility? Yes, we will office narcs subvert those anyway. Well, but if you put them into the guidelines for the office, and they start going around them, then you have a case for getting them fired because they’re not doing what they should be doing. So, in those standards for civility, no named calling so it’s basically what you’re going to do is you’re going to do a list of deal breakers. What will you not put up with no name-calling? No disrespect, no line, no gaslighting, no cheating, No stealing, you know, the whole thing but civility? Yeah, you’ll probably write it out, and now it’s in black and white, and if they are going against those guidelines. Now you have some, now you have some paper trail that you could go with so yeah, absofreakinglutely!

Is it very common for companies which are supposed to help people to have the most toxic people working for them? Yes. Because remember, abusers whether they are dark triads, narcissists, malignant borderlines, are attracted to positions of power. Okay. I think I’ve told you the story before. I had a peer support that worked for me that was an absolute abuser, I think, in my personal opinion, and he enjoyed laughing at the severely mentally ill, not okay, not okay.

Kris Godinez  45:43

So, we had a couple of clients at the homeless shelter more than a couple, but the two I’m thinking of that had schizophrenia, and they literally couldn’t follow directions because they were too busy listening to the good voice and the bad voice scream at each other. And then, the peer support was trying to give them directions. And then he would just get mad and yell at them. And I’m like, Ah, you Stop that crap right here right now. They can’t. And so, what I did is I had one person stand on one side of the peer support, another person stand on the other and scream and yell, and then me in front, try to give directions. He still didn’t get it, but at least he kind of was like, oh, no, like, yeah, that’s what they’re dealing with. You need to stand down, basically sit down and shut up. So yeah, they are attracted to positions of power. I found that in care work, coworkers were very much more toxic than in other companies. Yes. And the problem of it is, like I said, care workers are entrusted with the most vulnerable people in our population, the elderly, the demented, the mentally ill, and the very young hmm. Those are all easily abused populations. And it frightens me how many care organizations are filled with abusers, usually covert. They’re usually really good at hiding it. They’re usually really good at, you know, pretending to be nicey nicey. But then as soon as they’re not being watched, they’re, you know, yanking people around or, you know, hitting them or abusing them in some way, shape, or form. So, yes, there, you’re 110% Correct. And unfortunately, it starts at the top, and it rolls down. So, you want to take a look at who runs the company, and you want to take a look at what their policies are. And you want to take a look at how they deal with abuse claims. And, you know, sometimes my mom think God was in a really good care facility. There was no abuse going on, which was, and they loved her, which was really good. So, we knew she was really well taken care of. But we heard of other care facilities in that town where people were afraid to say anything because they were afraid of their loved ones being abused because they couldn’t put them into a care facility that was different. So, you cannot allow fear to stop you. Because if they’re doing it to your loved one, they’re going to do it to somebody else. And this is where you get the media involved. This is where you put as many eyes on it as you possibly can. There are cockroaches they scatter in the sun. So yeah, it’s unfortunate, but yes, in care positions, and I think we’ve talked about this a few weeks ago. They are attracted to positions of power, so they’re attracted to psychology. Yay. They’re attracted to medical nurses, doctors, counselors, peer support, eldercare childcare. That’s where you’re going to find nurses are also attracted to being judges, police officers, and attorneys. So anywhere that there is a position of power, they’re going to be attracted to that they’re going to want to be in that position because gives them that that narcissistic, Cocaine. you know what I’m saying? So, there is that so yeah, you’re not wrong.

Um, any advice for dealing with a boss who’s a narc? enabler in denial? Okay. It depends on the corporation. So, if they’re enabling the abusers around them, and they’re denying that these people are doing this, they’re either a narcissist themselves, or they’re just completely ignorant. So remember, flying monkeys are one of two things, so they’re either narcissists themselves or they do not understand how narcissists work and how detrimental really they are to the company because it forces all the good people out, and then pretty soon you’re left with a complete doo doo show, because it’s just a bunch of self-serving narcs that are not going to really do anything except trying to stroke their own ego, so I would, you know, you could try to educate them. But if it’s clear that they’re narcs themselves, their narcissistic themselves, and that they are enjoying the drama, and they’re enjoying the other narcissists, then I would start looking for another job. I really, truly would.

Okay, so next week, we will be talking about dealing with siblings. So, we’re going to be talking about dealing, if you’re dealing with a dark triad sibling, if you’re dealing with a borderline sibling, if you’re dealing with a disordered sibling, if you’re dealing with somebody who’s playing the games, a flying monkey sibling, we’re going to be talking about how to deal with that because that seems to be up for a lot of people. So all right, I think that’s it. You guys. Have a great week. I will talk to you on Wednesday with any questions I did not get to. And then next Sunday, we’ll be dealing with siblings. All right, my loves, you guys. Be good. And take care of yourselves, and I will talk to you later. Bye.

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. You can always listen live on YouTube every week Sunday at noon, Arizona Mountain Standard Time. And if you want to find out more or listen to other episodes, you can go to Krisgodinez.com and if you have a chance, subscribe to this show on whatever podcast app you use and let other people know about. I want to thank my sponsor betterhelp.com. They are an online therapy company. Whether you are in the US or international. They will set you up with a qualified licensed therapist. PhD level or Master’s level. If you are interested in more information, go to betterhelp.com/krisgodinez.

You’ve been listening to the podcast version of We Need To Talk with Kris Godinez.

The post 03-05-2023 Office Shenanigans appeared first on Kris Godinez.

“The rest of the family thinks YOU are crazy!” The abuser is basically letting you know they have
been smearing you to the rest of the family. The only family members that will side with them
are flying monkeys.
“Your mother/father is a whore/asshole/bastard/bitch!” They are attempting to do parental
alienation. Bad-mouthing the other parent hurts the child, and if the child is not in therapy and
understands the manipulation, they will do the Freudian ego defense of siding with the
aggressor to stay safe.
“Therapy is for losers! Only crazy people go to therapy! No child of mine will be in therapy!”
Abusers do not want the world to see that they are, in fact, not perfect. They also do not want
eyes on their abuse. They will actively interfere with therapy of their children by trying to
intimidate the therapist, demanding all notes, so the child has no privacy, or conveniently
“forgetting” to take them to the appointment when it is the abuser’s time with the child.
“You don’t need therapy! You need God!” and I will give you three guesses of who “God” is in
this statement. It isn’t the Almighty. It is the abuser. Communal narcissists align themselves
with hardcore fundamentalist religions, not just Christianity, and use that dogma as the excuse
to control, manipulate, and abuse.

“I had to beat you because YOU made me!” Abusers will never, ever, not on this or any other
planet, take responsibility for their words or actions. They always blame the target or someone
or something else. It is NEVER the fault of the target when an abuser abuses.
“I don’t want you to contact your sister/brother because they are a drug addict! I don’t want
you talking to your sister/brother because they are the reason my kids don’t talk to me!” The
first lie is a toxic parent lying about a healthy sibling because abusers are all about divide and
conquer. If there is nothing to smear they will make shit up! The second one is a disordered
sibling blaming a healthy sibling because the disordered sibling’s children have gone no contact,
and rather than go to therapy and figure out why they lash out at a sibling that they believe
they can abuse. They will cling to a false narrative even though the sibling had nothing to do
with the kids going no contact because, again, they cannot take responsibility for their own
actions and words.
“I never said/did that!” Gaslighting at its finest! Yes, they did say/did that!
‘You’re fat! You’re ugly! You’re too loud! You’re too sensitive! You laugh too much/too loud!”
No sane or healthy person would EVER speak to anyone like this. All of the above is intended to
break down the target’s self-esteem and make them doubt who they are, and conform to what
the abuser wants.
“So and so said such and such about you, and they agree with me!” Triangulation of
communication. My response to that is, “Great! Let’s get them on the phone right now and
clear this up, as I’m sure they wouldn’t want you speaking for them!” You’d be surprised how
quickly they back-paddle.”

The post Lies Dysfunctional Families Tell appeared first on Kris Godinez.

trap. That argument they start at 2 in the morning is intentional and intended to keep you up
an emotional mess all night. They want to be the first thing on your mind in the morning and
the last thing on your mind at night.
Dark Triad: An abuser who is a triple threat. An abuser who is a narcissist, a psychopath and a
control freak. Show me a stalker, I will show you someone who is a dark triad. NEVER, and I
mean NEVER, underestimate the vindictiveness and violence of a dark triad. They are the ones
who stalk, harass and sometimes murder their former lovers.
Order of Protection: Is a legal way of dealing with dark triads. It prevents the abuser from
stalking, harassing, or harming the target by there being consequences such as jail. It is only a
piece of paper, so the target MUST report all violations of the order, and the target CANNOT
contact the abuser. The abuser will often attempt a hoover in order to get the target to break
the order. Getting the order reinstated after the abused has broken it, is very difficult
Hoover: “Baby, I’ve changed. It will be different this time, I promise!” Sound familiar? After
devaluing us, gaslighting us, stonewalling us, and screaming at us, we leave. Soon the texts and
the phone calls start, telling us everything we wanted them to say ever since they stopped love
bombing. DO NOT FALL for it!!! The love-bombing will be short, but the abuse will be more
intense as they need to make you pay for leaving them.

The post Gaslighting appeared first on Kris Godinez.

The post November Holiday Blog appeared first on Kris Godinez.

The post Scary October!! appeared first on Kris Godinez.

The post May You Have Peace! appeared first on Kris Godinez.

The post Imposter Syndrome! appeared first on Kris Godinez.