Strategies And Insights To Surviving Narcissistic Abuse With Dana Diaz
Abuse comes in many forms, often concealed beyond our immediate perception. The effects are just as debilitating. Today’s guest has had a life-long experience with narcissistic abuse, beginning in childhood. Today, she is a proud voice for fellow victims who are unable, afraid, or ashamed to share their experiences. Tom Dardick is with Dana Diaz—a wife, mother, and author of the best-selling book, GASPING FOR AIR: THE STRANGLEHOLD OF NARCISSISTIC ABUSE. Together, they discuss various forms of abuse, emphasizing the impacts of narcissistic abuse. They share personal experiences and insights on the effects of abuse and the importance of self-awareness and healthy relationships. They also explored the ethical implications of ghostwriting for narcissists and the potential for identifying narcissistic traits in others. Culminating with a poignant reflection on the significance of a supportive social circle for personal growth and healing, this episode stands as a testament to the resilience and the importance of shedding light on the shadows of abuse.
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Strategies And Insights To Surviving Narcissistic Abuse With Dana Diaz
It's my pleasure today to welcome Dana Diaz to the show. Dana's story is a dramatic one. It's not one that I would wish on anybody, but it's something that happens far too often as it relates to abuse, specifically narcissistic abuse. She's a survivor of that, both in childhood and through a 25-year marriage.
She's come out of it with shining colors and strong enough to share her story and give people insights that can only come from somebody who's walked that regrettable walk but it's a pattern. It's one of these things that goes through generations. It's an energy. It's a trap. We get into all these dynamics about this. I’m very thankful that Dana's decided to join us. Welcome, Dana.
Your experience has been with narcissistic abuse, is what the themes of what I've heard you talk about so far, Dana. That's not the only form of abuse. People can be in an abusive relationship because the person is psychopathic, sociopathic, or broken in some other way besides narcissistic. Is that true or not true?
Yes. What I'll clarify is that narcissistic abuse is simply what it sounds like. It is when a narcissist abuses you, but it doesn't matter who abuses you, the abuse is the abuse. What makes narcissistic abuse different is that, for example, in my childhood, my stepfather physically abused me and verbally abused me. A narcissist will use any and all forms of abuse to achieve whatever ego fulfillment they're looking for. It can be physical, verbal, sexual, psychological, legal, or financial. They will do anything.
A narcissist will use any and all forms of abuse to achieve whatever ego fulfillment they're looking for.
There are these patterns, and the patterns can have multiple sources, and they can be very complicated. Would that be true in your experience?
That is true but the complication comes in the sense that the victim is overwhelmed with multiple abuses so it's not just negotiating the fact that somebody beats you when you have done something that they perceive as wrong. It's that you're being beaten. You're being told every day all these diminishing, demeaning, and insulting things about yourself to where you internalize them.
Also, financial abuse where either restricts your use of the checkbook, isolates you in some way, or prevents you from some position or some success or achievement. There are so many things that they do. Legal abuse is very common as well where they either threaten you with legal consequences of something. Oftentimes in a marriage or romantic situation where there are children involved, the legal abuse comes in where the perpetrator is spreading lies and telling people that you are abusive to the children.
You're unfit to be a parent, all these things, and they take your children away from you legally, and you have nothing to do because it's hard to disprove something that hasn't even been proven. We're dealing with gaslighting and manipulation. That's where the power aspect comes in for victims of abuse, your power is taken away because of the narrative that's created around you and about you.
However, the perpetrators of abuse typically isolate their victims so you are afraid to speak to anybody, even your own mother, sister, or any family. You don't have friends anymore because they make it very difficult starting with guilt but definitely, “I don't like your family. I don't like your friends. I don't want you to hang out with this person.” They create issues around people so that you don't have outside influence. They want you just to be at their mercy, and they are your only friend. They are your only everything. The world revolves around the narcissist.
In that way, they take everything about yourself away, your sense of yourself, your sense of who you are, even because they dictate everything to you down to what you wear and what you say. My ex-husband went so far. In the 25 years I was with this man, he would ask me a question and then immediately follow it with, “You are supposed to answer by saying so on and so forth.”
Talk about your power being taken away. I wasn't allowed to have a thought and opinion of my own. The irony is I was much more highly educated than he was. I was on track to have much more success in my career than anything, but when you're in a marriage, you seek to be united in that as a couple. You want to build a life together. You want to share those successes together and use those as a mutual advantage, not as a competition. That's where it came into play. I had to be diminished so he could feel good about himself.
That's generally narcissism in a very simplistic and tiny nutshell but to have your sense of who you are and who you want to be and all your wishes, dreams, and your plans for your future completely squashed and diminished, it's overwhelming and exhausting to think I did that for 25 years. However, the idea of the power is that it unfortunately took me that long to realize that I had been the one to give him that power. It wasn't him.
Yes, he was a lot of things that we won't say out loud, but I had the power. I allowed him to tell me what my life was going to be. I was a Stepford wife. “Yes, sir. Whatever you want, sir. Is that what you want for dinner? This is the lipstick I should wear and the outfit.” He dictated what lipstick I could wear, what I could wear, how I should look, and what we ate for dinner.
That seems exhausting from your side, but also I was thinking, that if I was trying to control somebody to the minute, it takes a lot of energy to control somebody like that. That's hard to relate to.
It is and the strange thing about it is that I didn't realize this until I was out of the marriage. When I finally realized that power in me and realized that I had been the one that had put that collar and that leash around my neck and I finally unhooked it and got out of there, I realized that this narcissism is a thing. It is considered a psychotic antisocial mental disorder.
However, what's interesting to me is that in my research about narcissism and even communicating with other people in this realm who have experienced it, they all say the same thing. They use the same verbiage to their victims, and they use the same tactics. You would think that maybe if we got a step ahead of that and created this awareness and let people know what's going on they would be more aware of it when they see it in their relationship. It’s these red flags that people always want to know about but it's gone so far as people trying to determine how a narcissist is developed. There's the nature versus nurture theory.
I don't mean to be judgmental with my laughing, but there is a large group of people who think that narcissists are aliens because it's almost as if they have this software downloaded into their brains to know exactly what to do and what to say that they do and say the same exact things yet here we are. I was college-educated and very strong-willed. I have a little bit of a personality so I'm not just this mousey little thing that was trying to submit to some man, but it can happen to anybody.
They're effective and that's why I think they use all these tactics. I don't know that they've necessarily been downloaded with this from some vortex in the universe, but somehow they do know how to specifically control and push all the right buttons to get the reactions and achieve the goals that they're looking for out of their partner or whoever it is.
You just laid down a whole bunch of stuff and I got a whole bunch of. One thing that I want to point towards is the patterns that you were talking about of narcissists where you'd think they're so universal it seems like they're alien. That's an interesting thing because what it shows from my perspective is the nature of human psychology and human nature. I think we would do a good service to our readers by maybe identifying what some of those patterns look like.
You've done some of that already. We've been touching on it but when you talk about verbiage specifically, what are some of the things that if you hear somebody that you're dating, close to, or considering going into business with or whatever the longer term relationship might be, if you hear this, it should be an immediate, “Wait a minute here. Hold on.”
Yes, absolutely. The number one, hands down and anybody who's been a victim of a narcissist knows this, “You are crazy.” This is something that people will say casually in conversation, but narcissists love to say, “You're crazy,” because that's their way of completely dismissing anything you have said. You have probably called them out on something that they don't want to acknowledge about themselves or have addressed some action that they have done to you that is not considered nice, so to speak but they can't be perceived as anything less than perfect. They can't handle that insult to their egos or that offense so you are crazy because that's going to tell everybody, including you, that you don't know what you're talking about.
That's the beginning of gaslighting. That's the lack as it relates to a conversation that is a mutual exploration of a topic.
Yes, but it goes further. I unfortunately experienced this to such a damaging extent that the narrative of, “She's crazy,” with everybody else, including his mother and my mother so that they begin to think that I am mentally unstable or have issues. It’s so that in the future, anything that I might say about him or about our interactions or anything that has happened will not be deemed credible because I'm crazy.
That was a pattern that you experienced in your younger life as a girl with your stepdad. A heartbreaking part of your story was the exact opposite of what a father figure should do, build us up and give us confidence, you got the exact opposite treatment. Then when you railed against that with as much willpower as you could get, the family disbelieved you and you had to go away to a facility of some kind, is what I understand.
Yes. My mother was one who turned her head and looked the other way. She didn't want to acknowledge what was happening. She allowed her husband to verbally and physically abuse me. He is the king of all narcissists. That's how far they took it. They created a narrative among the family. At first, I was difficult because I was standing up for myself when I was being talked down to, beaten, and things like strangling and being beaten with a phone when I tried to call for help.
The being difficult as a child turned into they said I was bipolar even though I had not had that diagnosis nor visited a psychiatrist ever but people believed them. If your adult child calls you and says, “My kid's bipolar,” why would you have any reason to disbelieve that? If you're at a family function and somebody says, “My kid's bipolar,” why would you not believe them? The whole family believes it.
Only if you know the person. It depends how much you're around them but if you know the person, then you can tell whether or not they're true.
It’s true and false because people tend to believe it. I am exiled from all my family on all sides. I had a cousin call me, and she even said that she asked my mother why we don't communicate and why we're estranged. My mother said, “It’s because she's bipolar and I can't handle that.” I'm like, “What?” I'd love to know when I was bipolar but the irony, and going back to that, yes, they did go so far.
My mother and stepfather, as to the night that I was sixteen years old, I was strangled and beaten because I had used some bad words. I had asked, “Why the f*** don't you care about me?” They didn't like the language so I was slapped, thrown down to the ground, straddled, beaten, strangled, and thrown down a half flight of stairs and ran out of the house. The authorities picked me up at school the next day, and it turned out that they told the authorities that I was lying. They told Child Services I was lying and that I self-inflicted these wounds, therefore, I was deemed crazy.
Did they get away with that?
They did because they interviewed the people that worked for my mother and stepfather. They interviewed neighbors and everybody said, “They're wonderful. They're amazing.” Of course, their employees are going to say that. They wanted their jobs and the neighbors, nobody knew anything because we were at the block parties. Everybody's smiling and putting on the happy family facade. I had to play my role in that because I knew better than to speak up. If I had told anybody the truth about what was happening in that house all those years, nobody would've believed me anyway and neither did child services when I was a teenager.
I was the one put in a facility and the irony of it was we were in a wealthier suburb of Chicago. On my first day in that facility, I walked in. It's a big open room just like you see in the movies. It’s a community area and I saw a kid from my high school that was in my grade that had disappeared off the face of the earth for the last month. I said, “You've been in here all this time?” He said, “Yeah. My mother got drunk and I tried to prevent her from harming herself. She called the authorities and said that I was the one trying to harm her. They said that something's wrong with me so I ended up here.”
I thought, “Is this what rich people do with their money is that when their kids misbehave or do something or say something they don't like, they throw them in here?” I'm laughing about it now, and I'm glad I can laugh about it but it was traumatic because my roommate was somebody that's a twelve-year-old girl that stabbed her friend to death. Do you want to talk about trauma? I couldn't sleep there. I had a very difficult time but fortunately, the people that worked there recognized that I was fine.
I was released not long after, but even in my first marriage, my ex-husband did the same again. He is creating this narrative that I'm crazy going so far as to make me believe. Again, I don't know what's with the bipolar thing. I think because bipolar gives people the impression that, “She might seem fine with you, but there's this other side.” He convinced me I was bipolar to the extent that I went to a psychiatrist voluntarily of my own volition answering all the questions based on what my ex-husband had said to me about my behavior and my mental health. I came home with two prescriptions for it.
The psychiatrist was on anecdotal enough evidence was willing to say, “Sure. Here you go. Here's the drugs.”
Yes, and I was on those drugs for almost twenty years. That's why when people say, “How did you stay in the situation so long?” I was so numb.
You didn't have your wits about you.
The two drugs were to stabilize my mood but I'll never forget one time, a very close friend of mine, I don't even know what we were conversing about. I was stone-faced, I was blank. She said, “How come you're not reacting? You should be upset and sad and all these things. She's like, it's like you're cold. I don't know when you became cold.” It wasn't that I was cold, but those prescriptions erased my ability to express feelings. I didn't cry. I honestly didn't cry for years. Not when somebody died. I was blank-faced like a zombie.
It almost robs you of yourself in a way. You're not even able to manifest the real Dana.
I didn't. That's what allowed our marriage to continue because we were together for 25 years in total.
I can see how the, “She's bipolar,” can go because you got prescriptions. Why would people disbelieve that they have a problem here? If you're taking those, you believe it.
Yes. I even put it in my book. I wrote a book. I published a book about the narcissistic abuse in my marriage. Even in the book, I put in there about how I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It's out there. It was a diagnosis, but it's not funny at all but once I was out of the marriage, I was doing well. Every year, I had a follow-up appointment with the psychiatrist and he said, “I think we can back off of these medications.”
GASPING FOR AIR: THE STRANGLEHOLD OF NARCISSISTIC ABUSE
We backed off and six months later he is like, “We don't normally do this, especially with bipolar disorder, but see what happens if you back off a little more.” I was still doing fine and after that initial appointment, I'm not on anything and I'm fine. He retracted his diagnosis. He said, “I am so sorry.” He said, “I had no idea you were in an abusive marriage. I had no idea about your childhood. I misdiagnosed you.” He said, “You were having normal reactions to mistreatment and abuse.”
I don't know enough to make any sort of accusation or anything like that but that sounds like pretty poor performance in the role to miss those two things.
Unfortunately, it is hard to do because I have met too many people since the release of my book that has had the same experience because the gene that carries depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar disorder, and some very similar what we consider mental disorders is diagnosed based on the symptoms you present.
In my case, in many cases, you're going in and having a ten-minute appointment with a doctor. They go down a list of questions and you're answering them but in my case, when everything has been dictated to me, I'm answering the questions as my ex-husband has told me, and my mother and stepfather before that have said, “This is what you are.” I'm answering the questions, therefore getting the diagnosis.
Do you remember during COVID, every time you went online for anything, it was, “Do you exhibit signs of a fever? Yes or no?” “Do you have a sore throat? Yes or no?” You're checking the boxes but if you check all the boxes for yes, even if you don't have those things, people are going to think you have COVID or they did. It's the same thing.
I don't know that it necessarily reflected specifically on that doctor because I give him credit for acknowledging that I had been okay all along but at the same time, I look back and say, “Thank God I had those meds,” because we had some domestic violence situations. Maybe I needed to be subdued to endure what I had to endure to maintain some sense of a stable mood for my son, who fortunately didn't witness even a quarter of what was happening.
I think being able to maintain more of a stable mood and a stable presence for him and to be consistent helped him have whatever normalcy he could have in a situation like that because definitely the irony is his dad, the abusive one, his behavior was so erratic. He could flip a switch in a second, but those medications allowed me to be stable and calm and that's how my son is. It's a double-edged sword.
How's he doing now?
He's amazing. I'm sure there's something deep down in there. As I said, he witnessed a lot but he has no idea because he didn't need to know those things. I wanted him to be a kid and live his life. Even now that he's an adult, he doesn't need to know. He hasn't read the book. We don't talk about the book. He doesn't listen to my podcasts, and it's fine because to him, I'm a mom and that's all I need to be. He knows I'm the stable one. He knows I'm the consistent one. After the divorce, he chose to stay with me, and I'm still the person he turns to when he needs an actual parent. I don't mean that as a nasty thing to say about my ex, but you want to talk about erratic behavior and add into that his alcohol abuse and all kinds of other things. My kid knows who to come to.
Alcohol abuse is another factor. Anybody who's substance abusing in any way is not going to be a reliable partner in any format, right?
Exactly, but it didn't help the situation. You take away my ability to think for myself, make decisions for myself, and do anything on my own accord, and then you add to that fear of provoking the aggression and hostility that came after the consumption of alcohol. It was more than a volatile situation. That’s where I say it's not that I was submissive by nature. I was submissive by choice because I needed to maintain some sanity for myself and for my kid.
In a sense, I knew I had that power because I knew how to tread and navigate the waters to get the outcome that I needed for me and my kid but I didn't realize that power until towards the end that I needed to use it more to get out of the situation completely and not to navigate the mucky waters that we're still going to be mucky no matter what.
I was thinking about the nature of alcohol. If you look at alcohol and all the bad outcomes from the abuse of it, it's no wonder we had prohibition back in the day. There are good reasons to not have it around. Now, having said that prohibition didn't work, it's not going to work. It’s the same thing with other things, but it shows that we all have to be raised and socialized with personal responsibility that allows us to rise above whatever might be baked into our DNA or our social conditioning to abuse or to let ourselves go to substances or anything else outside of ourselves.
That is absolutely true. It's unfortunate. I think a lot of people who are abusive in a way abuse themselves as well because to be an abuser conveys some sense of deep-seated insecurity. Also, something about yourself that you feel is ugly and awful that you have to gain that sense of superiority or importance or whatever it is through abusing other people with that domination and that control.
However, I think that also plays into why they abuse alcohol and drugs because somebody like you and I, can go have a glass of wine with a friend or have a couple of beers when we're watching a game or on a holiday, but we don't abuse it. There's a point where “I'm just having this socially. I don't use it like my ex wanted. His intention when he started drinking, which was almost every night, was to completely get wasted, but he wanted to forget who he was and how he was and forget life altogether.
That's a depressive and a manic action. It's so harmful to yourself. It's like you want to harm yourself as well. These kinds of people, unfortunately, don't have the capacity to be responsible to anybody else never mind themselves. That's why I as the thinking one in the relationship after we had our son, stopped drinking altogether. Not even a glass of wine on Christmas or whatever.
It was like, “No, because if he was going to go that far off the one end, I had to balance it out by not drinking at all because of what happened if our son got pneumonia or had a fever in the middle of the night and somebody had to drive him to the emergency room. Certainly, it wasn't going to be my ex. I had to be the responsible one.
What this all reminds me of Dana is that we have energy patterns. They're both personal and they're both impersonal in the sense that they cross generations. They ripple across families and people in places. You had this pattern with multiple people that we use the term narcissist. We know that that's a spectrum of things. There are abusive narcissists. There are people that are high on themselves. There are other people that might be a little arrogant. The word is very commonly used, but yes, it's not precisely understood in all situations.
As I said, in a nutshell, a narcissist is somebody who needs to have admiration and praise to feel important. That's a very basic term but I 100% agree and I always say, it depends on who you talk to or what you read, there are supposedly multiple types of narcissists. I've experienced two very heavily but there is a severity level because I agree there are narcissists. I explain them like brain tumors. I know that sounds terrible, but you can have a benign tumor anywhere in your body that doesn't bother you. It's just there and it is a tumor.
A narcissist is somebody who needs to have admiration and praise to feel important.
Those are your narcissists who have this healthy self-esteem and are taking selfies of themselves. You're like, “You do look that good so I can't contradict your feeling about yourself. I'd feel the same way if I looked like that.” You then have the malignant tumors. Those cause you problems. Those are going to create issues for you long term. They might even kill you. Those are the malignant narcissists. Those are the ones that unfortunately I have dealt with.
Certainly, there's a pattern of narcissism in between but it gets very complicated because there are also a lot of people that have narcissistic qualities, but they're not necessarily narcissists. One of those groups of people are survivors or victims, depending on which one you are, of child abuse. Let's be real. Even my own son whom I birthed and raised to be a humble, good, and moral human being had the influence of his father. To what extent will that present? I guess we're going to find out. I have seen some things that worry me. That's my worst nightmare that my son would be one of those.
However, I am hoping that it's just narcissistic qualities that he picked up because of his father. Your father, no matter what kind of a person he is, is your primary male role model so we'll find out. Again, it's just like mental diagnoses. It's how it presents. Everybody's different, and everybody's tolerance level is different, and expectations in relationships are different.
Whereas I suffered physically and mentally as a result of being in those toxic relationships, I absolutely broke the cycle finally for myself and hopefully, for my family, assuming my son is not a narcissist. It's something that you have to realize some people are okay with and some aren't. There's somebody for everybody. Malignant narcissists are not for me.
I wouldn't think that would be for anybody, honestly.
You’d be surprised though. Some people do choose it.
Everything has a match. Everything is there for a reason. When you were talking about the definition of narcissism, I think it's a basic human need that we all want to be seen for who we are and valued. When that picture of ourselves is distorted or broken, then we have different strategies. We think we don't want to be seen, we don't want to look at ourselves
We're not going to do the Carl Jung face the shadow type of work and therefore we spend all of our energy creating an image. We want the persona to be the reality and that's a losing game. It sucks you into a negative death spiral, basically and no amount of drinking and of abusing somebody else is ever going to change that. It's a lose-lose proposition.
Again, from a clinical perspective, we can say that and we can avoid those sorts of things if we know when we're outside of it. I want to get back into what we started to talk about which are the signs that keep those that aren't sucked into the wormhole of craziness. They're either being called crazy themselves or being in a situation that if they would step back and look, they would never actually accept.
Other than the, “You're crazy,” the other big one is, and a lot of this is gaslighting at its finest. Another big one is to say, “I was just joking,” because maybe you have expressed like, “I'm hurt that you said this. It hurt my feelings. It was insulting,” or whatever it was. “I was just joking,” and it's like, “But you weren't joking. You were expressing it truthfully but now you're saying you're joking.>” Now, we're creating self-doubt in the victim where the victim is questioning whether were they joking.
Now, you're wondering about their tone and analyzing the gestures that they were using when they spoke it. Talk about creating hyperhypervigilance in another human being. You're analyzing everything. Even when I walk into a room, I get overwhelmed to this day because I am serving the situation. I am looking at every person trying to feel their energy and determine if there are threats. I'm looking at finger movements, eye movements, body language, and all this stuff because that's what creating the self-doubt in the victim does.
You are now trying to figure out, “If I read this situation wrong if I misinterpreted that, what else am I missing?” Now, everything else that's said, everything else that's done, they're negating it. They're saying, it didn't happen. I never said that and all this stuff. It's almost like a form of brainwashing. They want you to believe what their version of reality is because your version of reality is all wrong. Again, you're crazy because you're delusional. You don't know what you're talking about. You can't be trusted to think correctly.
A narcissistic abuser wants you to believe their version of reality because your version of reality is all wrong.
You can fall into traps of paranoia and self-consciousness.
Absolutely.
The thing that I'm thinking about there, Dana, triggered off for me is the idea of, “This person knows and I don't or what am I not seeing,” so you have this self-doubt. The proper framing in the world, the best I can tell is that nobody knows anything. In other words, we all have our stories. Take the psychiatrist we're talking about. Lots of schooling, lots of experience, and lots of tools at the disposal. Some type of an authority type of figure because of the relative knowledge compared to those of us that aren't trained like that but what there is to know is in the dark. In other words, I can easily mistake somebody as bipolar who has just been abused serially.
Was I depressed? Absolutely. I still have moments of depression and anxiety but that doesn't mean that I don't laugh at a joke or smile when I'm happy. That doesn't make me bipolar. However, the problem is that a narcissist have to remember, in their mind, they cannot even grasp the concept that there's anything wrong with them because of this self-hatred that's buried so deep in there. They can't handle it.
It’s the biggest threat in their life.
They know everything because
They've got to get that picture. The picture's got to be real. As you take anything away from that picture, it threatens the whole thing.
This is why they manipulate and abuse you to get you to react the way that they need you to so that they feel the way they want to feel about themselves which is better than you, more important than you, more superior than you, and all-knowing because a lot of narcissists like my stepfather knows everything. The man never made it past the sixth grade and I'm not saying that that means he's stupid, but he honestly thinks he is the end all be all of any possible subject that you can speak of. He knows everything.
Even when I could prove him wrong with facts, he was right and you do not want to go against him. To try to get them to think that you might be right or that you might know something more than them, or God forbid, if you ask them to be self-aware and try to maybe change their behavior or that they should be sorry for any behaviors or actions they have taken good luck. They don't go to psychiatrists. They don't go for therapy because nothing's wrong with them. If they do, the only reason they go is to make sure that the person that you're sitting in front of thinks that you are the problem. You are the crazy one. You're the one provoking all these issues because they're just perfect.
That reminds me of an experience I had a few years back. I ghostwrote a book for somebody. It wasn't the exact same story as yours, but it was the victim of a narcissist and in the attempt to get away, there were all kinds of absolutely zany things that you wouldn't believe anybody would ever do type stuff. At one point she was like, “Maybe I'm a narcissist.” In retrospect, I think that she probably is not in the same way that he was but she has a lot of these qualities that you would use to recognize and label somebody but maybe not in an abusive way.
I'll tell you, I can see patterns because here was a case where we were working on a project a couple of years in and you can imagine going through these details and capturing them in a book form how intimate that project could get. I'm married. That's a strain. There was an ethical question whether I should even do something like that. I thought it was an important enough thing. I thought it was worth the risk, but the thing that I say is that she's probably at least close, and again, this is why I wonder about the spectrum of narcissism.
She decided, “I'm done with you.” She started looking for excuses to try to separate from me essentially and one day said, “We're just different. We're not partners. That's it.” It was done in a way that she wouldn't talk other than in a public place when we were out for breakfast and had a meeting that constrained the time that we could talk that she had to leave for. I never talked to her since. I've never experienced that kind of thing before in my life. I know well enough to know that there were other partnerships she had. She is a little bit maybe of a serial user in a way. Once she had the manuscript, she didn't need anything more kind of thing.
I'll speak to a little bit of that because you sparked a few thoughts about that. I'm not saying this is necessarily the case because I don't know her and I don't know specifically the things that she deals with because we all deal with things differently. I'm not sure that she's necessarily a narcissist but again, here's a situation where somebody exhibits narcissistic qualities
I am going to admit, that I have noticed in myself, and this is because victims of abuse, specifically narcissistic abuse, sometimes I know me, I want to control a situation. It could be the most meaningless thing. However for me, there's an element of safety in controlling it maybe like she was with the time parameters and the specific appointments and not crossing that boundary of anything more than a business relationship and when it was done, it was done.
No, that wasn't the pattern. That was the exception to the pattern.
I'm curious because the other thought I had was that something triggered her to react like that. Again, I can't speak to her specifically. I just know that for myself, it's so dumb. I remember that my husband wanted to make chili and he took a brand new package of ground beef out of the freezer. I said, “No, you can't use that one. You have to use the other package of ground beef that we've already taken a chunk out of because we have to use the one that was already opened.”
He looked at me and God loved this man. He's so patient and wonderful but I had to stop myself and be like, “I don't need to control which ground beef. This is not something that should be an issue.” I sometimes get overwhelmed, but I feel like I have to control every tiny little thing because I don't like surprises and I have expectations. Also, it makes me feel safe because of my past. In the past, I never knew what was going to happen, but the ground beef was not going to hurt me. No matter which package it came from, it was going into chili so it was okay. I had to stop myself and be like, “Okay, I'm sorry. Use whatever ground beef you want. It doesn't matter. We're going to eat it all anyway.”
You have a point there because if you use the new one and not the old one and the old one's going to go bad, you're going to throw it out and waste food. It's not like you didn't have any factual point there.
I know. My husband doesn't think that way and I understand that. I'm using that. Maybe it's not the best example but it is an example of somebody. I am not trying to be controlling, but sometimes I can control the most minute and meaningless things about life just because I feel better. I like structure because the structure makes me feel safe and secure, unlike the life I lived prior to now. Sometimes people do things or react in certain ways when they are triggered for some reason.
Structure can make us feel safe and secure.
I think in that instant it was because my God, I would've been yelled at by my ex-husband if I had even thought to open a brand new package. I think his taking that package of meat triggered me back to where I had to control the situation to correct it. Everything was going to be okay and nothing was going to happen but in your case with this person, as I said, I don't know if she's a narcissist or not, but certainly, sometimes things can change.
I know that even in my life now, I think I'm a pretty nice person and I have good qualities to offer in friendships and relationships but I think because when I'm in social situations, I'm so nervous. I've lived 40-some years being scared mainly of people because people hurt. In social situations, I come off as standoffish or I'll be the girl standing in the corner not talking to anybody. Sometimes people perceive me as not wanting to talk to them or I'm stuck up or arrogant. It's not that at all. I'm just afraid to approach people.
Let me ask you about that, Dana because is that how you'd want to be? What have you done to try to move in a direction that wouldn't be your reaction?
It depends on the people. If I am around people, there are people that unfortunately, whether they're related to me in some way or not, where I have heard that they have said things that aren't very nice or perhaps, fortunately in my situation with multiple narcissists, all that have abused me and still live near me, things have been said about me. I know what people I've heard. I'm not immune to it. We all have people who tell us, “So and so said this about you,” or that. Should I care what people think? No, but knowing what people have said to me behind my back does make me feel a certain way about wanting to engage with them in social situations.
I don't have the desire to participate in any kind of interactions with people who are going to be so close-minded as to believe things based on no premise just on hearsay but I live in a small town. Unfortunately, there's not much to do except go to a bar, go to Walmart, and talk about other people. It's something that I'm aware of and some days, I might be feeling a little bolder or feeling a little extra special about myself that I can go up to people and be more social.
However, for the most part, I am that girl that hangs back. If somebody approaches me, we can have the best conversation ever but if I don't feel safe around certain people, I don't want to approach them. I will not. I think it's a matter of self-preservation because I've withstood so much. Is it unreasonable? Maybe. At this point in my life, yes, maybe but after 40 years of not being well-received and being treated badly by people, I'm okay with it. I'm perfectly fine because I do have people that I feel very safe with and who know that the last thing that I am is shy or reserved.
I can be fun and I'm outspoken. I have opinions and I can be a great conversationalist. I just choose who I want to be to give that part of myself to. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I think that speaks to the power that I have given myself because we have so many people in our lives. We have so much to offer. Once you realize your worth, you don't want to give yourself to people that aren't want to receive you or want to be part of that or who you are. If you can't support me and or even be kind to me, then I'm not going to have a conflict with you but I'm not going to say, “Let's go to dinner,” or, “Let's have an hour-long conversation.”
Are you familiar with Don Miguel Ruiz’ The Four Agreements?
I am not.
That's a book that I recommend in almost every conversation I have. If I'm working with a client or something like that, it's one of those foundational things. I'm thinking about it as I share this aspect of your walkthrough life, Dana because one of The Four Agreements is to take nothing personally. All four of the agreements are to be impeccable with your word, take nothing personally, make no assumptions, and always do your best. Those are the four.
They're all simple and easy to remember. I remembered them to you right there but very hard to do. It's a lifetime of pursuit to bring them to maturity. Don Miguel says when you reach a place where there's mastery, you reach a state of imperturbability, which means you can't be moved off center whether somebody's been talking behind your back. For him it's extremes. I remember in another one of his books where he was having a heart attack and he knew it. He sat down and marshaled his resources and was able to get it under control so he could eventually get medical attention.
However, you get to a point of strength through endless pursuit of the truth. I see it as the end game of what we're trying to do with the Eye of Power, which is to fully express yourself in this world. It looks like this imperturbability idea that Don Miguel has, which means that no matter what other people of the world do, you're still solidly there. People can't throw you off.
Also, the people who want to play games or manipulate or something like that give up quickly because they can sense immediately that they're not going to get fed from this particular well here. There's nothing there for them. I think that's something that no matter who I'm talking to, I always share this piece because I think it's something for all of us to move towards if we can.
I think that applies in my realm as a survivor of multiple abuses because certainly, I don't think that the healing ever ends. I think I'm much further along than I was a few years ago versus many years ago. The beautiful thing is when you do realize who you are, you rediscover that and realize that you have the power to be who you want to be and to make those changes.
That's a level of self-awareness that not everybody has, nor does anybody want and that's the key thing. However, if you want that, you can take these ideas like the ones you just shared and apply them, but everything's going to be practiced just like somebody like me who has PTSD. I'm doing so good, but I had to learn how to self-regulate in social situations where a look from somebody or a comment or whatever. I might break down crying or I might have a panic attack. I don't have panic attacks anymore.
I have learned to take it and say, “I’m sorry you feel that way,” or just not say anything at all and move on because I know who I am and I'm good with that. There are plenty of people who see value in me and I am not for everybody and that's okay. Whereas when I met my ex-husband when I was nineteen years old, I was straight out of an abusive childhood. I was codependent and people-pleasing like a dog that would do anything for that little treat of affection and love.
It was a perfect storm literally. It was like serving me up on a silver platter to somebody who wants servitude. Do I look back and say shame on me? No. All those experiences created and developed who I am now but the beautiful thing is I'm still evolving. I'm still transforming. Again, that is self-awareness. People like you and I will read these books.
It's short. It's easy. It's to the point. It's one of the best. It’s one of the most read books I know.
I love when you can take something like that and apply it to all lives and all aspects of your life because it all comes down to who we are. Do we know who we are? Are we who we want to be? Are we living our authentic lives? We are all very complex and unique but unique does not have to be different or unusual. It can be that you are who you are and it's okay.
It's like you said, some of these things are very simple, but the power in that is amazing because I am not standing here saying that I am perfect or, “I'm healed from all this abuse.” I'm not. I have my moments. I have my days. I am not perfect, but I'm okay with it. I'm not broken. I'm not damaged. I am a product of what I've been through in my life as we all are.
I'm smiling because one of the biggest paradoxes to me in our life is how universal everything is. In other words, we're all the same, and at the very same time, everybody is so unique, and just like a fingerprint, everybody is their own thing and nobody else knows their story. Can we walk in their shoes? Both those things are true at the same time. That's one of the complexities and beauties.
I think it's beautiful because we're all the same. That means we're all in a position to help each other and because we're all different, we're all in a position to help each other in a unique way. That goes back to what you were pointing to earlier where we want to be seen for who we are. Narcissists want to be seen for who they wish they were in a way or they think themselves they are, but they don't want to be seen for who they are because they don't think who they are is worthy to be seen in some way.
However, it's weird because it seems to me even in cases with both the narcissists in your life and the ones that are the selfies, it's based somewhat on truth. In other words, usually, narcissists have good reason to think highly because they might be very good-looking. They might be very charming. They might be very smart. They have some things that stand out a lot of the time and then they see it in a mere sort of way.
Yes, they don't see it so they seek validation through others' reactions to them. That's why they will manipulate situations and people to give them admiration and praise. They want to be the life of the party that has all the friends. They want to get all the thumbs up and the likes on social media. They want everybody to think they're great. My ex though took it to a whole level. I had to throw a parade if he took the garbage out. It becomes exhausting to a certain extent but again, there is a spectrum of the different narcissists and what they are seeking to get from whoever it is because it can be your child.
It can be even at work. There's a lot of narcissists in the workforce. A lot of them like their titles and their income and drive their flashy cars. They wear their suits and have their hair done a certain way or their nails. We see it all the time. They'll take credit for work that you did and take credit for things they never said or did at all but as long as it gets some level up on somebody else, then they're willing to take it.
I’ve seen some psychologists say that they think that maybe 30% of CEOs are full sprint-out narcissists.
Also, medical and legal professionals. I think it's funny when you ask kids what they want to be when they grow up because I hate to say when raising my son, there was one boy that stuck out. I didn't want to say the N-word. Narcissist is the N-word to me by the way but I didn't want to say if a boy were his parents raising one like there was no other. If you ask kids who what do you want to be, if they say doctor, lawyer, or president of the United States, I'm like, “Watch out for that one.”
There's not no shortage of narcissism in politics.
Also, there's always that one kid. There was another one that I remember meeting for the first time in kindergarten. I thought, “I hate to say this out loud, but that kid's going to be a serial killer when he grows up.” I'm laughing but I'm hoping to God that's not the case but his patterns now that he's older are, are indicative of that. That's another reality when you look at narcissist abuse, over 20% of our prison population in the US are criminals. Males, primarily criminals are considered narcissists. There is something to be said about their desire for power and domination or at least the facade of it.
There are numerous traps. We've talked about a bunch of them. Certainly, one of them is, “I matter more than you.” “What I want trumps whatever you want.” That gives you a lot of permission to do things that go against the rights of others, which is criminality.
It delves into all aspects of life, this narcissism but it is all based on power. That's essentially what they're looking for.
By way tying all this together to wrap ourselves up here because I'm loving this conversation. I think it can go on forever but we started down the road of things for people to pay attention to. You've talked about if somebody tells you you're crazy, they try to gaslight you in any way or they were just joking, they try to convince you that what happened was in your mind and not in reality.
If they’re substance abusers or those things, make sure that you have your antenna up. If you see they have maybe less tolerance for that behavior than you might otherwise. In other conversations, some of the traps I've heard you talk about, one thing that I think perhaps paved the way down into the spiral was wanting to avoid conflict. You'd say you just would rather not fight, so you just give in.
That was handing over. It was like getting down onto my knees and bowing down. I’m like, “Yes, whatever you say, whatever you want,” because if it's going to prevent me from some physical threats or a verbal assault of some sort or some other thing or prevent my son from having to experience something that might traumatize him, then yes. I am waving the white flag.
Would you say that is a process that has gotten momentum to it? I think of it as a negative feedback lead.
It does because I saw this in my childhood and then you talked about cycles. I repeated the cycle with my ex-husband because my mother when I would go to her knew what my stepfather was doing was wrong. I knew what he was saying to me and I would stand up for myself and it would get me physical consequences that I didn't like very much so I learned to keep my mouth shut.
However, I'd go to my mother expecting her to do something to save me, to protect me, say something to him, and she gaslit me. She was, “I don't think he said that. I think you just want attention and you're just saying that to get attention.” She enabled and excused it. She was willing to tolerate it. At the point where we became estranged and my adult life, I point blank said to her, “We may not have the best relationship, but you're my mother. I want to have whatever relationship we can have. If you want to go talk, say what you have to say. Whatever it is I don't understand, tell me what it is so that we can move on and move forward with that understanding about each other.
She said no. Do you know why she said no? It’s because she said that she liked her life with her husband because he most of it fraudulently because he liked to dupe people but they have a very large home. They drive a Jaguar, Lexus, and Corvettes. She has nice things and she can walk into any store and buy whatever she wants. She said, “You live your life. You're a mother. You're a wife. You're doing your thing. All I have is him and I can't have any of this without him.” She chose that and she said she couldn't have all that and be my mother. She chose to end our relationship.
She's not the only one. This is an archetype.
It happens a lot but that's the thing about it is that people have the power to make those choices. I could go on and overanalyze my mother, but even with my ex-husband, everything comes back to what they want. They are incapable of understanding or even comprehending that you might want things or need things too. They're not able to meet other people's needs. They are just trying to sustain.
In my mother's mind, she was trying to sustain her marriage and her life by removing me from her life altogether. In her mind, that's what she was doing just like I was being submissive and avoiding provoking my ex so that we could have some peace. I think we all do what we need to do to have whatever it is we are looking for in our lives.
It's sad that some of us had to sacrifice ourselves in the process. The most thought-provoking question for me that changed my life and caused me to finally divorce my ex is asking myself, “What do I want?” I had never been allowed to even ask myself that because everything was dictated to me but I think it's important to understand it's not selfish to ask yourself that nor does it mean you're a narcissist or any of these other awful things. I think it's important to know what you want because in my mother's case, she's fine being married to a narcissist who abused her daughter and that's fine. I don't know if she has endured abuse, but I'm guessing she probably has in some way.
We all do what we need to do to have whatever it is we are looking for in our lives. It's just sad that some of us have had to sacrifice ourselves in the process.
However, she's choosing that and that's the life that she wants. That is what she thinks is it? For me, it wasn't but she is choosing that. I think that's where the power lies, even when we're in those submissive situations. She wants that. I was in that situation and didn't want it, but I gave into it because for me it was a greater purpose. It was mostly for my kid because if it had been me, I'm pretty sure I would've just walked out and said, “Forget this.” I didn't want cars. I didn't want the house. I didn't want the money. I just wanted to be done but my kid wanted a mom and dad in a normal family unit trying to live a normal life. I tried to give that to him.
If that required prescription drugs, waving the white flag, and bowing down to his narcissistic father, then I did what I felt I had to do at that moment. He was a senior in high school when we divorced, and we are perfectly fine. Life is good and I'm healthier. I'm not crazy apparently so everything's good. However, I gave myself that permission by asking myself what I wanted. I wanted to be married. I wanted to be happily married. I did not want to be abused anymore. I wanted to end that cycle for myself, for my son, and for anybody else in my family that thought that this was a family curse like my grandma always said because there was a pattern in our family on my mother's side of marrying abusive men.
That has ended now. I am remarried to a gentle giant. He is much taller and much bigger than me, but the gentlest and sweetest man. I've known his family for years. He wasn't a stranger. He is been a long-time friend but it's amazing. We have a healthy relationship. We have a few bumps in the road when I'm triggered or if I get down about something that comes back to haunt me from my past but for the most part, I honestly was surprised that we could have a healthy, loving, respectful, and reciprocal relationship.
You’ve come a long way in a short amount of time. I think that's something that people who feel despair, no matter whether they're in an abusive situation or whatever the hell they happen to be in at the moment, the path out might seem so distant, but it's much closer than what it appears in general.
It's about giving yourself permission and taking control back because being controlling doesn't have to be a bad thing. Controlling your future, knowing what you want, envisioning it, and then enacting the steps towards that is not a bad thing.
Two stray thoughts. One thing is when you're talking about your mom's choice. I couldn't help but think of the movie The Matrix. It’s like the red pill blue pill question. She chose the blue pill and a lot of people do because the red pill's not the easier path. That's the harder path. You're not going to be in the created world of comfort and convenience, pampering, and all the gilded path. You don't get that which again is the harsh real world of being threatened and having all kinds of problems and having to deal with things straight out so it's a choice.
Why would anybody ever choose the red pill? That's where all your power is. That's where your real life is. That's where the actual world is because with blue you're a prisoner and red you're free. That's the difference. Give Me liberty or give me death. It's one of those things. The other thing that as we're sort of wrapping up, that I think sounded like a spiral that people can find themselves in was when you were talking about the isolation piece. It’s where if you find you're in a relationship or you're in a situation where you're seeing fewer and fewer people or everything's being judged or whatever, that might be something to take more exception to than you might.
It all plays into the control aspect which is probably the biggest thing I tell people to be careful of. It goes back to being dictated. If somebody is telling you this is how it's going to be and they don't want you to see those friends. “Let's not go to your family. I don't like them. They don't like me. I want you to wear this. I want you to cook this. You're not allowed to read books.” I didn't even have a smartphone until my marriage ended because he didn't want me on the internet. He didn't like me on the computer at home. If I opened my laptop, it's like the world would end because God forbid I was influenced by others because I wanted to read things and know things.
It's pretty sad but when anybody is trying to control you, that's a problem. Again, my issues were more extreme because I still have, and it's in my book, twice in our marriage, he left me actual pieces of paper that said how to be a good wife with lists of what I was to do and not to do. The sad thing is the one that I had kept as a reminder of why I left, I had checked off some of the things like a list of chores because I wanted peace. I thought, “Maybe if I did these things, he'd be happy,” but he never was going to be happy. I had to finally make myself happy by releasing myself from the burden of going through all that.
I know we're trying to wrap up, but here's another burning question I want to ask you. Twenty-five years of this abusive scenario that didn't like family, friends, or whatever you were isolated with. Do you have a best friend or tight friends now?
Yes.
I'm wondering about the friend side of things, not the family side. You found a wonderful man and you have a great relationship now, which is awesome. It sounds like you're very tight with your son. The family's rebuilding, but the friend's side, I'm wondering just about that a little bit because that can be a tough thing to get to.
Yes, especially when you are socially anxious, introverted, and trying to avoid social situations and people. The beauty of that is that this is some advice I give people all the time because I get asked a lot about dating, relationships, and marriage. Do you know when you meet somebody and you just click? You could finish each other's sentences and feel like, “Where have you been all my life because I feel like I've known you forever.”
I have been fortunate that I have found four people in random situations that I have been in that we clicked. One, I've known for 30 years, but the others are fairly new in my life and we clicked but they are my people. They are my tribe. They are my family. The other nice thing is that I was so focused when I was in this cloud and fog of this marriage and my situation and my own miserable circumstances, that I couldn't see beyond it but there were people and many more than I expected that saw and suspected or knew. Maybe they didn't, but they still loved and cared about me even though there was maybe no communication or no contact. Now, that I've gotten out of that and have put myself out there, especially with the book, it's hard to go unnoticed when you publish a book, especially in a small town.
Take the opportunity to name the book for people.
It's called Gasping for Air: The Stranglehold of Narcissistic Abuse. I had all these people come back into my life, I felt so bad that I had been so focused on who didn't accept me and who didn't love me. Also, who didn't want to interact with me, that I had completely ignored all these people who did. Now that I see things clearly, this goes back to what we talked about before.
If I have some time to socialize, do I want to go with these people over here who I don't have a very good feeling around, who make me feel anxious, and make me feel less than even though I shouldn't, or do I go with these people over here who have waited so patiently to enjoy and see me succeed? They want to support me and encourage me. It's all about who you associate with. It's a big thing in life. I would rather be around that positive energy than waste my time around all that negativity that has kept me or that I thought was keeping me in the circumstances that I was in.
It's all about who you associate with. It's a big thing in life. Be around that positive energy rather than waste your time around the negativity.
I think that's a good place for us to put a bow on it because we do need other people. That's one of the nefarious things about the isolation tactic, where you're robbing people of a need that we all have and to be seen in all that. To me, the kind of thing that we're talking about that you've lived through, it's almost worse than murder because you're stealing the soul from somebody.
That's what it feels like.
You have that in your rearview mirror. You're brave enough and loving enough to share that with people. Thank you very much. It's not the topic we talk about a lot. I have power, but it is very crucial and we can fall into these things in big and small ways. I think the lessons are more universal than what might meet the eye. What you're doing is important. Your voice is strong right now. Thank you for being with us in the show. I appreciate it so much, Dana.
I appreciate you having me. It's an important conversation to have. It's unfortunate that too many people can relate to it in some way or another, but we want people to be able to stand on their own two feet, be firm in who they are, and know that it's enough.
I'd like to thank again, Dana Diaz for being our guest. Dana, I enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for being on. We could and could have gone on much longer and there's so much to this story, but these are some of the highlights that I'd like to make sure we take away in the Eye of Power community. Recognizing things before they get chronic is one thing. I know that these are patterns.
Narcissistic abusers look for a certain type of person who's maybe been beaten down and more susceptible. They don't have their full personal power manifested so they're easier prey to be able to control and get what it is that they're looking for. How can we help people avoid this or get out before things get too bad? We talked a little bit about if you hear somebody telling you you're crazy or they try to change the past on you, and that whole idea of who are you going to believe me or your lying eyes.
Whenever you hear anything like that, whether it be somebody close to you or maybe even a politician who's trying to sell you a bill of goods, maybe we need to be a little bit more skeptical, hesitant, and quicker to move away from that person. Also, substance abusers. Anybody who doesn't have their full power and they've given their power away to something outside of themselves is not going to be a good partner.
They are not going to be somebody that you want to invest in if you have the choice to get away. She mentioned her husband saying, “I was just joking.” He says something hurtful. You called out on it, “That was just a joke. It’s very funny, right?” That kind of technique is not going to play out too well. Another one that I took away was the trap of avoiding conflict. Whenever we put conflict off, does it get better? Typically, not.
It pesters, multiplies, and gets worse, especially the important things. For that reason, if we feel conflict-averse, which some of us very much are. Some of us like it. Some of us don't but if you're the kind of person that does not want to have conflict, it's probably better to take the medicine quicker, sooner, and more decisively than what your instincts might otherwise lead you to play out.
The other thing she pointed to was the technique of the narcissist of isolating their victim. That allows them to control more fully isolating both from friends, and family, and also from the outside world. Dana shared with me that she only got a smartphone after she was done with her relationship with her husband of 25 years. He didn't want her getting on the internet and seeing what the world might have to say about things.
If somebody is poo-pooing or impeding your progress forward, they're not your ally so don't ally with them. Those are the takeaways that I had and I very much appreciate Dana's time. I hope you got something of value out of it. The importance of our personal power and our agency. We're here to be our full selves. What do you want, and then be in the business of making that happen? That's what we're here to do together in the show. Thank you for being here and I hope to see you again soon.
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About Dana Diaz
Dana S. Diaz is a wife, mother, and author of the best-selling book GASPING FOR AIR: THE STRANGLEHOLD OF NARCISSISTIC ABUSE. Dana has had life-long experience with narcissistic abuse, beginning in childhood. Her education in journalism and psychology at DePaul University in Chicago gave her the ability to accurately verbalize and express how narcissistic abuse creates confusion and conflict within victims, so that she can help other victims know they are not alone and better understand their own circumstances.
Today, Dana is a proud voice for fellow victims who are unable, afraid, or ashamed to share their experiences. She strives to create awareness
and understanding to ensure victims are given the support they need to first understand their situation and then begin the healing process. Her
first book, chronicling her own abusive marriage that lasted nearly three decades, started as a journal that she hid under the couch cushion in thebasement.
Dana lives with her husband in Illinois and is in the process of publishing the prequel and sequel to GASPING FOR AIR.