What the Dog Knew: How a Covert Narcissist Treats Their Pets

Have you ever watched the way your partner treats the family dog or cat and felt a knot in your stomach?

Maybe you've noticed how they speak to the animal, how quickly their patience disappears, or how the pet seems to react differently when they're around.

Sometimes, the family pet sees what we've spent years trying to understand.

How a covert narcissist treats the animals in their home can reveal a great deal about how they view control, power, responsibility, and relationships. And sometimes, the animal's behavior toward them can tell us just as much.

Because the same patterns that show up in relationships with people can show up in relationships with pets, too.

It Isn't Really About the Pet

As with relationships, their treatment of the pet often isn't about the pet. It's about what the pet provides them.

Think about what a dog or cat offers: unconditional affection, excitement, attention, and admiration. They greet you at the door as if you're the most important person in the world. They're happy to see you whether you've been gone an hour or a week.

For someone who craves attention and validation, a pet can become another source of supply.

But there's an important difference between loving an animal and loving what that animal provides.

Where we see a companion and a relationship built on mutual care, a covert narcissist may see an extension of themselves, something that makes them look good, or a source of attention.

The pet can even become a trophy.

They might constantly post pictures, brag about how wonderful their dog is, or show off the animal's tricks when company comes over. Yet behind the scenes, someone else may be doing all the work.

You might be the one feeding the dog, taking it to the vet, walking it every day, cleaning up after it, and spending hours training it.

But when the dog performs a trick in front of company, guess who gets the attention?

They take the glory without doing the work. It's another example of a pattern many survivors recognize all too well.

The question isn't whether someone enjoys showing off their pet. Plenty of loving pet owners do that. The question is what happens when the camera is off and the animal requires patience, responsibility, and consistent care.

Control, Dominance, and the Need to Be in Charge

Pets are dependent on us. They rely on us for food, water, shelter, safety, and affection.

For someone who needs to be dominant and in control, that dependence can become another opportunity to exercise power.

I saw this in my own home.

My husband had to establish that he was in charge, and it wasn't limited to his relationships with me and our children. It extended to our pets.

If we gave our German shepherd a bone while she was happily chewing on it, he would take it away simply to show her who was boss.

When I asked him why, he actually said, "To show her who is in charge."

If she became upset, he would yell at her until she backed down.

Think about the message being communicated:

I will give you affection when I want. I will play with you when I want. I will take away the things you enjoy when I want. And you will not show any unhappiness about it.

Now replace the dog with a spouse or a child.

Does that sound familiar?

For many survivors, it describes exactly what they've experienced in their own relationships.

Fear is not respect. And having the power to control someone doesn't mean you've built a healthy relationship with them.

Love Bombing Followed by Neglect

The same cycle of excessive attention followed by neglect can happen with pets.

At first, the animal might receive everything. The expensive toys, the beautiful bed, the fancy collar, and an overwhelming amount of attention.

The pet becomes a prized possession.

But eventually, the novelty wears off.

Then come the everyday responsibilities: walking the dog in the rain, cleaning up accidents, paying vet bills, dealing with shedding, and getting up early because the animal needs to go outside.

When the pet becomes inconvenient, the attention can disappear.

The animal may be ignored, yelled at, punished, or intimidated for behaving like an animal.

A dog barks at the mail carrier. A cat scratches the furniture. A puppy has an accident on the floor.

These are normal animal behaviors, but someone who takes everything personally may interpret them as disrespect or defiance.

And suddenly, the reaction is completely out of proportion.

We've seen this same pattern with children and spouses. A small mistake becomes a major offense. A forgotten errand becomes proof that nobody cares. A normal human reaction becomes an attack.

Everything becomes personal because everything is about them.

When the Pet Becomes a Pawn

Another way pets can become part of the dynamic is through triangulation.

Triangulation happens when a third party is brought into a relationship to create competition, jealousy, insecurity, or instability.

And yes, that third party can have four legs.

It might look like saying, "At least the dog is happy to see me," to make a partner feel inadequate.

It might mean lavishing affection on the pet in front of someone who hasn't received kindness or affection in weeks.

Or it might involve using the pet to gain sympathy and attention from others.

But this behavior can become especially painful during separation and divorce.

If you have a strong bond with your pet, that relationship may become another source of leverage.

Your partner might threaten to give the animal away, refuse to let you see it, or use visitation and ownership as a way to prolong conflict.

They may not have been particularly involved in the animal's care before. But suddenly, they insist on having control.

It isn't necessarily about how much they love the pet. It may be about knowing how much the animal means to you.

If you're experiencing this, I want you to understand something: your grief and fear are real. That animal may have been your closest companion through some of the hardest years of your life. You aren't being silly or overly emotional for wanting to protect that relationship.

What Does This Do to the Animal?

Animals are incredibly responsive to their surroundings.

They notice changes in our moods, the tension in a room, and the emotional atmosphere in their home.

When care and attention are inconsistent, when affection is followed by harshness, and when the environment feels unpredictable, animals can become anxious and stressed.

You might notice:

• Hiding or cowering when someone enters the room.

• Becoming unusually clingy with one person.

• Avoiding or withdrawing from another person.

• Increased barking, growling, or snapping.

• Guarding food, toys, or favorite spaces.

• Becoming more reactive or unsettled.

Sometimes these behaviors are then used against the animal.

"That dog is aggressive."

"That dog is out of control."

"That dog doesn't respect me."

And the response may be to become even more controlling, making the situation worse.

I've seen something similar happen to survivors.

When you live in an unpredictable environment long enough, you can become reactive, defensive, jumpy, and hypervigilant. Then those reactions are used as evidence that you're the problem.

"You're too sensitive."

"You're so emotional."

"See, this is why I can't talk to you."

The dog doesn't get to explain herself. But you do.

And part of healing is recognizing that your reactions may have made sense given the environment you were living in.

What My German Shepherd Knew

I want to share something that happened in my own home.

The day my husband moved out, my German shepherd changed.

Before that day, she had become increasingly reactive. She was opinionated, sometimes snarled at us, and I was genuinely worried she might eventually bite him.

But when he moved out, something shifted.

She had never been allowed on our bed. Yet that day, I walked upstairs and found her lying right in the middle of what was now MY bed.

Her tail was wagging. She was relaxed. She looked completely comfortable.

It was almost as if she was saying, "This is our place now."

Over time, her reactions settled down. She became more cooperative, relaxed, and comfortable in her environment.

I had spent years questioning whether my reactions to my husband were reasonable. I had been told, in so many different ways, that I was too sensitive, too reactive, and that the problem was me.

But my dog didn't have that history.

She didn't have my upbringing, my memories, or my doubts. She wasn't trying to protect a relationship or make excuses for anyone.

She simply responded to what was happening around her.

And when the tension left, she relaxed.

That doesn't prove anything in a courtroom. But for me, it was a gift. It was a quiet confirmation from the one member of our household who had no reason to take sides.

Her reactions became one more piece of evidence I could hold onto when I started questioning myself.

Listening to the Witness

If you shared a home with someone whose treatment of animals made you uncomfortable, I want you to think about a few things.

How did your pet respond to this person compared to how it responded to you or other people?

Did your animal seem relaxed, or did it seem to brace itself when that person entered the room?

Did you notice your pet hiding, becoming quiet, or staying close to you when the tension in the home increased?

Did you ever excuse or explain away the way your partner treated the animal, just as you excused or explained away the way they treated you?

And here's one more question:

If you believed your pet's reactions were valid, what would that say about your own reactions?

You would never tell a frightened dog that she's being dramatic. You would want to help her feel safe. You would give her time, patience, and reassurance.

You deserve that same care.

Protecting Your Pet During Separation and Divorce

If you're preparing to leave an abusive relationship and are concerned about your pet, there are some practical steps you can take.

Document the care. Keep records of who pays for food, veterinary care, grooming, and licensing. Keep track of who walks, trains, feeds, and provides daily care for the animal.

Talk to an attorney. Ask specifically about how pets are handled during separation and divorce. In many places, pets are legally treated as property, although laws vary. If threats have been made toward your animal, ask whether protective orders in your state can include pets.

Explore available resources. Some domestic violence shelters and programs help survivors find safe arrangements for their animals. The National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) can help connect you with resources in your area.

And please don't assume you have to figure everything out alone.

I understand how difficult this can be. For some survivors, the family pet has been the one consistent source of uncomplicated love in an otherwise painful home.

You deserve to be safe, and your pet deserves to be safe, too.

You Were Not Imagining It

How someone treats an animal can tell us a great deal about how they view power, responsibility, empathy, and relationships.

If something about the way your partner treated your dog or cat made you uncomfortable, don't automatically dismiss what you noticed.

The pet didn't need a diagnosis to respond to what was happening. Neither do you.

The next time you find yourself questioning your memory, your feelings, or your reactions, remember the witness who had no reason to lie.

Remember the dog who growled, the cat who disappeared under the bed, or the animal who finally relaxed when the tension in the home was gone.

And remember this:

You're allowed to relax, too. You're allowed to take up the middle of the bed.

This Is Not Okay: You Deserve to Understand What You've Lived Through

If this article has brought up memories or made you reconsider things you once dismissed, I want you to know that you aren't alone.

My book, This Is Not Okay: Escaping the Invisible Grip of Covert Narcissistic Abuse, was written for those who have spent years questioning their reality, struggling to explain what they've experienced, and wondering whether they were somehow the problem.

It helps put language to the invisible patterns of covert narcissistic abuse and offers a path toward understanding, untangling, and healing.

You are not imagining it. You are not alone. And this is not okay.

The book is available now in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

Visit www.covertnarcissism.com to learn more.

This article is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional clinical care. The experiences and patterns discussed reflect personal experiences and stories shared over many years. They should not be used to diagnose or label any specific individual.

What Is a Narcissist? Understanding the Lack of Empathy Behind the Relationship

Have you ever tried to explain your hurt to someone you love, only to walk away feeling like your feelings were the problem?

You explain what happened. You try to choose your words carefully. You hope that if you can just help them understand, something will finally change. Instead, you're told you're too sensitive, you're overreacting, or you need to stop making everything such a big deal.

Over time, you may begin to question yourself. Are you expecting too much? Did you explain it the wrong way? Why does it seem so difficult for someone who claims to love you to care about how you feel?

For many survivors of covert narcissistic abuse, these questions become part of everyday life.

In the first part of this two-part series, Renee Swanson explores one of the defining characteristics that can make a close relationship with a narcissistic individual so painful: a lack of empathy.

What Does It Really Mean to Be a Narcissist?

The word narcissist is used frequently these days. Someone forgets to call, becomes impatient, withdraws from a social gathering, or says something insensitive, and the label quickly follows.

But one hurtful moment doesn't define a person. We all make mistakes, become distracted, and occasionally fail to consider how our behavior affects others.

The more important question is whether we're looking at a consistent pattern.

Rather than trying to diagnose someone based on a checklist or a handful of behaviors, it can be more helpful to look at the patterns that repeatedly affect the relationship. Are your feelings consistently dismissed? Is there genuine concern when you're hurting? Can the other person recognize the impact of their behavior and respond with care?

These questions can help you examine your experience without needing to determine a clinical diagnosis.

Knowing How You Feel Isn't the Same as Caring

One of the most confusing aspects of covert narcissistic abuse is that the person hurting you may seem to understand you remarkably well.

They know what makes you anxious. They recognize your insecurities. They may know exactly which words will hurt the most or when you're feeling particularly vulnerable.

How can someone seem so perceptive about your emotions and yet show so little care for them?

The answer lies in the difference between recognizing another person's feelings and responding to those feelings with compassion.

Understanding someone's pain is not the same as caring enough to change the behavior that causes it.

A person may recognize that you're upset without offering comfort. They may understand why something hurt you but still dismiss your reaction. They may even use their knowledge of your vulnerabilities in ways that leave you feeling smaller and less secure.

For survivors, this distinction can be a difficult but important realization. You may have spent years believing that if someone understands how much they're hurting you, they'll eventually stop.

But understanding alone doesn't guarantee compassion, accountability, or change.

How a Lack of Empathy Shows Up in Everyday Life

A lack of empathy doesn't always appear as obvious cruelty. Sometimes, it's found in the small moments when you need comfort, understanding, or reassurance and repeatedly receive something else.

Consider a few examples:

• When you're grieving: Instead of asking how you're coping, the person minimizes your loss and quickly changes the subject.

• When you're sick: Rather than offering help, they complain about how your illness inconveniences them.

• When you've had a difficult day: You begin sharing what happened, but the conversation quickly becomes about their problems.

• When you're frightened: Your concerns are dismissed as overreacting or making a big deal out of nothing.

• When they've hurt you: Instead of acknowledging your pain, they tell you that you're too sensitive or that it was only a joke.

• When something good happens to you: Your excitement receives little attention before the conversation turns back to them.

Any one of these moments can happen in an ordinary relationship. What matters is the repeated pattern and what happens when you try to address it.

Do they listen? Do they show concern? Are they willing to understand your experience, even when it differs from their own?

Or does every conversation about your feelings end with you defending yourself?

The Hidden Cost of Being Dismissed

When your feelings are repeatedly minimized, you eventually begin to adapt.

You may stop sharing your worries because you already know how the conversation will end. You may keep good news to yourself because you don't want your excitement diminished. You may even rehearse what you're going to say, searching for the perfect words to prevent another argument.

Little by little, you begin carrying your struggles alone.

This can create one of the loneliest experiences in a relationship: being with someone while feeling that you have no one to turn to.

The person who is supposed to offer comfort becomes the person you hesitate to approach when you're hurting.

And when this happens repeatedly, you may begin to question your own emotional responses. If you're constantly told you're too sensitive, you might start wondering whether your feelings are reasonable at all.

You learn to minimize your needs, anticipate their reactions, and manage your emotions around what they can tolerate.

You can be in a relationship and still feel profoundly alone.

That loneliness isn't necessarily about how much time you spend together. It's about whether you feel safe being known, heard, and cared for.

When Being Understood Becomes Painful

Healthy intimacy involves more than being known by another person. It involves being treated with care once you're known.

In a healthy relationship, sharing your fears and insecurities creates an opportunity for connection. Your partner may not always understand your perspective immediately, but they're willing to listen and try.

When empathy is consistently absent, that same openness can begin to feel dangerous.

You may discover that the things you've shared in confidence later become ammunition during disagreements. Your insecurities are brought up when you're already hurting. Your fears are dismissed, mocked, or used to undermine your confidence.

You begin to realize that someone can know you very well without treating your vulnerable places with care.

That experience can leave you feeling exposed rather than connected.

And it can explain why you eventually stop sharing parts of yourself that you once offered freely.

Why You Keep Trying to Explain

If you've experienced this pattern, you may recognize the urge to keep trying.

Perhaps you believe the next conversation will be different. Maybe you think you need to explain the impact more clearly, find a better example, or wait until the other person is in a better mood.

You may remember moments when they seemed genuinely caring and hold onto the hope that those moments will become the norm.

It's understandable to want someone you love to understand your pain. Wanting to be heard is not a weakness, and trying to repair a relationship isn't inherently wrong.

But there's an important distinction between a communication problem and a repeated unwillingness to respond with care.

You can improve how you communicate. You can choose a better time to talk. You can express your needs calmly and clearly.

You cannot make another person care simply by finding the perfect words.

When you've explained the same hurt repeatedly and the pattern continues, it may be time to stop asking, How can I make them understand? and start asking, What is their behavior consistently showing me?

That shift doesn't require you to label or diagnose the other person. It asks you to pay attention to your own experience.

The Other Side of the Door

Lack of empathy is only one part of the relationship pattern Renee explores in this series.

The second characteristic is a lack of vulnerability.

Empathy allows another person's feelings to reach you. Vulnerability allows your own feelings to be seen. Both are essential to genuine intimacy.

When someone consistently dismisses your feelings while also refusing to acknowledge their own mistakes, fears, or insecurities, meaningful connection becomes incredibly difficult.

You may find yourself doing all the emotional work: explaining, repairing, apologizing, and trying to restore closeness while the other person remains protected from accountability.

In the next part of this series, Renee explores why a lack of vulnerability can keep relationships trapped in defensiveness, blame, and unresolved hurt.

You Don't Have to Keep Proving That Your Feelings Matter

If you've spent years trying to explain your pain to someone who repeatedly dismisses it, you may be exhausted.

You may have questioned your memory, your judgment, and even your right to feel what you feel.

But your experience deserves attention, too.

You don't need to diagnose another person to recognize a harmful pattern. You don't need to explain your feelings perfectly to deserve respect. And you don't have to spend the rest of your life searching for the words that will finally make someone treat you with care.

Your healing can begin when you start trusting yourself enough to notice what's happening and consider what you need.

If this article describes something you've lived through, you are not alone. Understanding these patterns can be an important step toward reclaiming your voice, rebuilding trust in yourself, and moving forward.

Continue listening: Explore The Covert Narcissism Podcast with Renee Swanson for more conversations about recognizing covert narcissistic abuse, understanding its effects, and finding a path toward healing.

And look for Renee's book, This Is Not Okay: Escaping the Invisible Grip of Covert Narcissistic Abuse, for further support in putting words to your experience and taking steps toward recovery.

This article is for educational purposes and is not intended to diagnose any individual or replace professional mental health care.

What Is a Narcissist? Two Defining Characteristics That Destroy Relationships

The word narcissist is everywhere these days. We hear it used to describe a spouse who forgot to call, a friend who was short-tempered, or a coworker who seemed self-centered. But occasional thoughtlessness and ordinary human mistakes don't automatically make someone a narcissist.

So what does narcissism really look like, especially when it shows up in your closest relationships?

If you've spent hours reading lists of narcissistic traits, trying to understand someone in your life, you may have found yourself caught between recognition and confusion. Some behaviors fit perfectly. Others don't. And somewhere along the way, you may have started questioning your own judgment.

I'm not here to diagnose anyone. But through my own experiences, years of studying these patterns, and listening to the stories of survivors, I've come to recognize two characteristics that can make genuine intimacy incredibly difficult: a lack of empathy and a lack of vulnerability.

Understanding these patterns can help explain why some relationships leave you feeling so unseen, unheard, and emotionally alone.

The Door That Never Opens

Imagine standing outside an old castle. Its walls are thick, its door is heavily bolted, and no matter how many times you knock, nothing happens.

You try a gentle approach. You explain your feelings more carefully. You wait for the right moment. You change your tone, choose your words, and try again.

You tell yourself that if you can just explain it the right way, the door will finally open.

But it never does.

That's the experience many survivors describe. They keep trying to reach someone who seems to understand their words but never truly receives their feelings. They keep hoping that if they can find the right key, the relationship will finally become what they've been longing for.

But what if the problem was never how you were knocking?

The castle door represents two things. The first is a lack of empathy: your feelings can't get in. The second is a lack of vulnerability: the other person never truly lets you see what's happening inside.

Together, these patterns can create a relationship where one person keeps reaching for connection while the other remains emotionally closed off.

1. When Someone Understands Your Feelings but Doesn't Care About Your Pain

One of the most confusing things about covert narcissistic relationships is that the person may seem to understand you remarkably well.

They know your insecurities. They recognize when you're upset. They may even know exactly what to say to comfort you when they want to.

So how can someone who seems so perceptive also appear so lacking in empathy?

The answer lies in an important distinction between cognitive empathy and emotional empathy.

Knowing what you feel isn't the same as caring

Cognitive empathy is the ability to recognize and understand another person's feelings. You can tell when someone is sad, frightened, embarrassed, or angry. You may understand what caused those feelings and even predict how they'll respond.

Emotional or compassionate empathy involves something more. It's being moved by another person's experience and caring enough to respond with consideration.

You don't just recognize their pain. Their pain matters to you.

Some survivors describe relationships in which the person seemed to have a strong understanding of their emotional vulnerabilities but showed little consistent concern for how their behavior affected them.

That difference can be devastating.

When someone knows where you're vulnerable but doesn't handle that knowledge with care, their words can land in the places that hurt the most.

You may find yourself wondering, How could they know me so well and still treat me this way?

It's a painful question, especially when you remember moments when their kindness seemed genuine.

The important thing is to look at the pattern over time, rather than relying on isolated moments of connection.

What a lack of empathy can look like in everyday life

A lack of empathy doesn't always announce itself through dramatic cruelty. Sometimes, it appears in small moments that gradually change how safe you feel sharing your life with someone.

When you're grieving, you may need someone to sit with you and acknowledge your loss. Instead, they minimize it or quickly change the subject.

When you're sick, you may hope they'll notice your exhaustion and offer help. Instead, they criticize you for not keeping up with your responsibilities.

When you've had a difficult day, you may want someone to listen. Instead, they turn the conversation toward their own problems.

When you share good news, you may hope they'll celebrate with you. Instead, they seem bored, dismiss your accomplishment, or redirect the attention to themselves.

And when you tell them they've hurt you, you may hear:

• "You're too sensitive."

• "It was just a joke."

• "You're making a big deal out of nothing."

• "Why do you always have to take things the wrong way?"

One incident doesn't establish a pattern of narcissism. We all have moments when we're distracted, defensive, or emotionally unavailable.

What matters is the repeated pattern: Do they make room for your feelings? Can they recognize the impact of their behavior? Do they show a willingness to respond differently?

Or do your feelings repeatedly become another problem you have to manage on your own?

The loneliness of being unheard

Over time, something begins to change.

You stop telling them when you're hurting because you already know how the conversation is likely to end. You rehearse what you want to say, edit your feelings, and decide whether speaking up is worth the emotional cost.

Eventually, you may stop sharing altogether.

This creates a particular kind of loneliness. From the outside, you may look like a couple, a family, or two close friends. But inside the relationship, you feel as though you're carrying your hardest moments alone.

The person who should be a source of comfort becomes the last person you want to approach when you're struggling.

And when your feelings are repeatedly minimized, you may begin to question yourself.

Am I too sensitive? Am I asking for too much? Should I just let this go?

You start shrinking your feelings to make the relationship easier to maintain.

But your feelings aren't automatically wrong because someone else doesn't want to hear them.

Being known by someone who doesn't handle your vulnerable places with care isn't the same as being emotionally safe with them.

2. When Someone Can't Admit They're Wrong

The second characteristic is a lack of vulnerability.

Real vulnerability means allowing yourself to be seen, even when you're not at your best. It means being able to say:

• "I was wrong."

• "I don't know what to do."

• "I'm afraid."

• "I need help."

• "I'm sorry I hurt you."

These statements require a willingness to be imperfect in front of another person.

Healthy relationships don't require either person to be right all the time. They require both people to be willing to acknowledge mistakes, take responsibility, and work toward repair.

But when someone consistently experiences being wrong as a threat, vulnerability can be replaced by defensiveness.

Instead of saying, "I made a mistake," they explain why the mistake wasn't really their fault.

Instead of saying, "I hurt you, and I'm sorry," they respond, "I'm sorry you feel that way."

Instead of acknowledging your experience, they insist that you've misunderstood, misremembered, or misinterpreted what happened.

Even a simple correction can become an argument about why you always have to prove them wrong.

The original issue gets lost, and you're left defending your right to bring it up in the first place.

When accountability is always missing

Every relationship has conflict. The difference between a healthy relationship and an unhealthy one isn't whether disagreements happen. It's whether the people involved can work through them.

Repair requires some willingness to look inward.

It might sound like, "I can see why that hurt you. I shouldn't have spoken to you that way."

It might mean acknowledging that your intentions were good but your actions still caused harm.

It means understanding that you can be a good person and still make a mistake that requires an apology.

When one person consistently refuses to acknowledge their part, problems don't disappear. They accumulate.

The other person often ends up carrying the emotional responsibility for both.

You become the one who initiates difficult conversations, explains what went wrong, offers apologies, and tries to restore peace.

You may even begin apologizing for things you didn't do simply because you can't bear another argument.

Over time, you learn to walk on eggshells. You watch their tone, their silence, their sighs, and their smallest changes in mood, trying to anticipate what might upset them.

That constant monitoring is exhausting.

And the relationship becomes increasingly unequal: one person is expected to be accountable for everything, while the other seems accountable for very little.

3. Counterfeit Vulnerability: When Their Pain Becomes the Focus

This is where things can become especially confusing for people experiencing covert narcissistic patterns.

You may be thinking, But this person talks about their feelings all the time. They tell me how much they've suffered. They tell me nobody understands them.

At first glance, that may look like vulnerability.

But expressing pain and taking responsibility are not the same thing.

I use the term counterfeit vulnerability to describe a pattern in which expressions of hurt, hardship, or victimhood appear to redirect attention away from the person's behavior and toward their need for reassurance, sympathy, or control.

Consider what happens when you finally raise an issue that's been hurting you.

You begin by explaining what they did and how it affected you.

Before long, they're talking about how difficult their life has been, how nobody appreciates them, or how they can never do anything right.

Suddenly, you're comforting them.

The original issue disappears, and you may feel guilty for bringing it up at all.

You entered the conversation hoping for understanding. You leave feeling responsible for their feelings.

How can you recognize the difference?

Genuine vulnerability can include fear, embarrassment, sadness, and uncertainty. But it also leaves room for responsibility.

A person might say, "I had a difficult day, and I reacted badly. That wasn't fair to you. I'm sorry."

Counterfeit vulnerability, as described here, may sound more like, "After everything I've done for you, I can't believe you're criticizing me."

The difference isn't whether someone cries, shares their struggles, or expresses hurt. Those things can be entirely genuine.

The question is what happens next.

Can they acknowledge your experience, too? Can the conversation return to the original concern? Is there room for accountability and repair?

Or does their distress consistently end the conversation, leaving you to comfort them while your hurt remains unresolved?

Real vulnerability makes room for honesty. It doesn't require the other person to abandon their own feelings.

4. When Empathy and Vulnerability Are Both Missing

Now imagine what happens when these two patterns exist together.

You tell someone they've hurt you. Empathy would allow your pain to matter to them. Vulnerability would allow them to acknowledge their part in causing it.

Both are needed for meaningful repair.

Without empathy, they may not respond to your pain with genuine concern.

Without vulnerability, they may struggle to admit that their behavior contributed to the problem.

The conversation goes nowhere. You explain yourself again. They defend themselves again. You leave feeling unheard, and nothing changes.

This is why apologies can feel so hollow when they aren't accompanied by accountability.

"I'm sorry you feel that way" acknowledges that you're upset, but it doesn't necessarily acknowledge what happened.

"I'm sorry I hurt you. I understand why that was painful, and I'll work on responding differently" communicates something more: recognition, responsibility, and a willingness to change.

Words alone aren't enough, of course. What matters is whether behavior changes over time.

When repair repeatedly fails, the relationship can become a cycle of hurt, conflict, temporary calm, and renewed hurt.

You may spend years trying to find the right explanation, the right moment, or the right approach.

You might believe that if you could only help them understand, everything would finally be different.

But you cannot create mutual intimacy by doing the emotional work for two people.

5. What This Means for You

If you've recognized parts of your own experience in this article, I want you to pause for a moment.

You may have spent a long time believing that the relationship struggled because you didn't communicate well enough.

Perhaps you tried to be gentler, more patient, more understanding, or less demanding. Perhaps you worked hard to anticipate their needs while pushing your own aside.

You may have believed that if you could just find the right words, you could finally reach them.

But healthy communication requires more than one person's effort.

You can express your feelings clearly and respectfully. You can listen, reflect, and take responsibility for your own mistakes. You can make room for another person's perspective.

You cannot make another person care about your feelings, acknowledge their impact, or become vulnerable if they are consistently unwilling to do so.

That realization can be painful. It may mean grieving the relationship you hoped you could have, rather than continuing to work toward a version of it that never seems to arrive.

But it can also be the beginning of a different kind of freedom.

Protect your vulnerability

Recognizing these patterns doesn't mean you need to become guarded with everyone or stop trusting people.

It means learning to be thoughtful about whom you trust with your most tender feelings.

Pay attention to how people respond when you disagree, make a mistake, express hurt, or need support.

Can they listen without immediately becoming defensive? Can they apologize without turning the situation back on you? Can they celebrate your happiness without competing with it?

Look for consistency over time.

Your vulnerability is valuable. It deserves to be met with respect, care, and consideration.

And if someone repeatedly uses what you've shared against you, you're allowed to reconsider what you share with them.

You don't have to keep exposing your deepest feelings to someone who has repeatedly shown you that they won't handle them carefully.

You Deserve a Relationship Where the Door Opens Both Ways

A lack of empathy and a lack of vulnerability can create a relationship in which one person keeps reaching for connection while the other remains emotionally unavailable.

You try to make your feelings understood, but they aren't received with care. You hope for honesty, but defensiveness takes its place. You look for repair, but the same unresolved issues keep returning.

Eventually, you may begin to believe that the problem is you.

But a relationship cannot become emotionally intimate through one person's effort alone.

You deserve to have your feelings heard without being ridiculed or minimized. You deserve to be able to raise concerns without automatically becoming the problem. You deserve apologies that include accountability and relationships where both people are willing to grow.

You also deserve to give yourself the same empathy you've spent so much time offering someone else.

You don't have to keep searching for the perfect key to a door that someone else refuses to open.

You deserve relationships where the door opens both ways. Where your pain reaches someone. Where someone can say, "I was wrong," "I'm scared," and "I need you."

And you deserve to let your own feelings matter without needing anyone else's permission.

If you're beginning to recognize these patterns, take your time. You don't need to diagnose anyone to acknowledge that a relationship has been painful, understand what you've experienced, or decide what you need moving forward.

Your healing can begin with trusting yourself enough to notice what the relationship has been asking you to carry.

This article is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health care. These patterns should not be used to diagnose a specific person. If you need support with your own circumstances, consider reaching out to a qualified professional.

Counterfeit Kindness: Why Even Their “Good” Behavior Is Manipulation

What if the good days aren’t proof that things are changing? What if they’re the very thing keeping you hoping, waiting, and hurting?

Have you ever felt like you married an actor or an actress?

You thought you knew who this person was. They were attentive, thoughtful, charming, and loving. They knew what to say and when to say it. They made you feel special. You believed you had found someone you could trust.

Then, slowly, things changed.

The person you came to know behind closed doors didn't always match the person you fell in love with. The warmth faded. The compassion disappeared. The behavior became hurtful, confusing, or controlling.

And yet, every so often, that familiar, loving person would return.

Suddenly, they were attentive again. They remembered the little things. They offered affection, made a thoughtful gesture, or gave you a glimpse of the relationship you had always wanted.

And you thought, There you are. That's the person I married.

But what if those moments weren't evidence that things were getting better?

What if they were part of the very pattern keeping you stuck?

When You Fall in Love With the Character

Think about Cliff Huxtable from The Cosby Show. He was warm, funny, playful, and devoted to his family. Millions of viewers trusted the character they saw on television.

Then the public learned about the serious allegations against the actor who portrayed him, Bill Cosby, whose criminal and civil cases brought years of disturbing accounts into public view.

The contrast between the beloved character and the real person became difficult to ignore.

I'm not diagnosing anyone. I'm using this example to illustrate something important: the person we believe we know and the person revealed through their behavior can be two very different things.

Now consider your own relationship.

Perhaps you fell in love with someone who seemed compassionate and considerate. You saw their tenderness. You experienced their attention. You heard their promises.

Those experiences were real. You really did experience them.

But they may not have represented the whole person or what you could consistently expect from the relationship.

Over time, you began seeing another side. The person who once seemed so understanding became dismissive. The person who promised to protect your heart became the source of your pain.

Still, the loving version kept appearing just often enough to make you question what you knew.

And that brings us to a pattern many survivors struggle to understand.

What If the “Good” Behavior Isn't Good at All?

I hear survivors say things like:

• “He's being good right now.”

• “She's in a good place this week.”

• “Things have been better lately, so I don't want to rock the boat.”

• “I know how bad it can get, but they're not always like that.”

I understand why we say these things. I said them myself.

When you've experienced hurtful behavior, a peaceful evening can feel like a tremendous relief. A thoughtful gesture can soften the pain. A few days of affection can make you believe that perhaps the relationship is finally changing.

But I want to challenge the word good.

When we describe someone as being good, we may begin treating that behavior as the truth and everything else as an exception. We call the cruelty a bad day, the withdrawal stress, and the lack of empathy a misunderstanding.

We keep making room for the person we hope they are while struggling to face the pattern we actually experience.

In my work, I've come to call this counterfeit kindness.

What Is Counterfeit Kindness?

Think about counterfeit money.

A convincing counterfeit bill looks real. It feels real in your hand. At first glance, you might never question it.

That's what makes it effective.

But when you need that money to have genuine value, you discover that appearances aren't enough.

Counterfeit kindness works in a similar way.

It's the thoughtful gift after weeks of emotional distance. The affectionate conversation after a painful argument. The sudden interest in your day when you've begun pulling away. The loving weekend that makes you feel as though you've finally gotten your partner back.

It looks real. It feels real. It can pass inspection.

But the important question is this: Can you rely on that kindness when you genuinely need it?

Does it remain when you're struggling, when you disagree, when you set a boundary, or when you need accountability?

Or does it disappear as soon as you stop giving the other person what they want?

Kindness isn't defined by one beautiful evening or one thoughtful gesture. Its meaning becomes clearer when you look at the pattern surrounding it.

Five Things Counterfeit Kindness Can Buy

When kindness is being used as a tool of manipulation, it can have a powerful effect on the person receiving it. In the patterns I've heard from survivors and experienced in my own life, it can serve several purposes.

1. It Buys Your Attention

Perhaps you've started pulling away emotionally. You're tired of trying, tired of being dismissed, and tired of feeling invisible.

Then suddenly, your partner wants to know about your day. They send a thoughtful text, ask questions, or remember something you mentioned weeks ago.

After months of feeling overlooked, that attention can feel wonderful.

You turn back toward them because you've been longing to feel seen.

But pay attention to the larger pattern. Does their interest continue when they have your attention again, or does it fade once they feel secure that you're emotionally available?

2. It Buys Your Love

A little affection can reopen a heart that's been trying to protect itself.

After weeks of distance, your partner becomes tender. They hold your hand, offer a compliment, or behave like the person you remember.

You want to believe the closeness is returning.

And why wouldn't you? You miss feeling connected. You miss the relationship you thought you had.

The problem isn't that you respond to affection. The problem is when affection repeatedly draws you back into a relationship where the underlying hurt remains unaddressed.

3. It Buys Your Gratitude and Trust

When someone does something thoughtful, it's natural to appreciate it.

But consider what happens when a small gesture makes you feel obligated to overlook much larger problems.

Perhaps they buy you a gift, help with a task, or have one unusually considerate evening. Suddenly, you feel guilty bringing up the issue that has been hurting you for months.

You may even find yourself defending them to friends and family.

The gesture becomes evidence that they're a good partner, even though the larger pattern hasn't changed.

Real kindness doesn't require you to ignore your pain in exchange for it.

And a gift is not a substitute for accountability.

4. It Buys Your Willingness

Sometimes, the sudden warmth appears just before a request.

Perhaps your partner wants you to agree to a family visit, sign paperwork, make a purchase, or drop a difficult conversation you've been trying to have.

After several affectionate days, saying no can feel especially difficult.

You don't want to spoil the good atmosphere. You don't want to start another argument. You may even feel that agreeing is a small price to pay to keep things peaceful.

But ask yourself whether you would make the same decision if you weren't afraid of losing their affection.

You should be able to say no without having to earn your way back into someone's kindness.

5. It Buys Your Hope

Perhaps the most powerful thing counterfeit kindness buys is your continued investment in the relationship.

Every time the loving version returns, you remember why you fell in love. You remember the good times and the future you imagined.

You tell yourself that this is who they really are.

Maybe, if you are patient enough, understanding enough, or careful enough with your words, that person will finally stay.

But you cannot create lasting change by working harder to keep someone else's loving behavior alive.

Hope is not the problem. Hope becomes painful when it repeatedly asks you to disregard the reality you're living.

Why the Good Moments Can Hurt More Than the Bad Ones

When someone is openly critical, cold, or cruel, you may begin protecting yourself. You recognize that something is wrong.

But when the same person becomes loving again, your defenses may come down.

You relax. You reconnect. You share your feelings. You start believing again.

Then the hurtful behavior returns.

This unpredictable cycle of affection and pain can deepen emotional attachment and make it harder to step back. For some survivors, it contributes to what is commonly called a trauma bond.

You aren't necessarily holding on because you don't understand the bad behavior. You may be holding on because you've also experienced the good behavior and desperately want it to become consistent.

The loving moments can feel like proof that the relationship is worth saving.

But a moment of kindness doesn't tell you whether someone is willing to acknowledge the harm they've caused, make meaningful changes, and sustain those changes over time.

A good day is an experience. Lasting change is a pattern.

Those are two very different things.

How Survivors End Up Holding the Mask in Place

One of the most painful patterns in covert narcissistic abuse is how much energy survivors spend protecting the other person's image.

You may find yourself explaining away their behavior to family members. You soften their harsh words. You excuse their withdrawal because they're tired or stressed. You smile through a painful family gathering so nobody asks questions.

You may even minimize your own experiences because you don't want others to think badly of the person you love.

Why do we do this?

Sometimes, we genuinely believe the loving version is the real person and that the hurtful behavior is an exception. Sometimes, we fear the consequences of exposing what's happening. Sometimes, we're trying to preserve our family, our relationships, or the hope that things will improve.

There is no shame in wanting the person you love to be good.

I wanted that, too.

But over time, you can become so invested in protecting the person you hoped they were that you lose sight of what protecting yourself requires.

You become part of the effort to maintain their image.

You aren't foolish for doing this. You may have been trying to preserve something precious to you.

But you deserve to stop carrying the responsibility for making someone else's behavior look better than it feels.

You can love someone and still tell yourself the truth about how they treat you.

Four Questions to Help You Recognize Real Kindness

How can you begin distinguishing genuine kindness from a pattern that leaves you feeling confused or indebted?

Here are four questions to consider.

1. Who Benefits From the Kindness?

Does the person show care when you're sick, exhausted, upset, or struggling, even when there's nothing in it for them?

Or does their kindness tend to appear when you've begun pulling away, when other people are watching, or when they need something from you?

One gesture won't answer this question. Look for a pattern over time.

2. What Happens Afterward?

Does the kindness stand on its own, or does it eventually become something you're expected to repay?

Do you hear comments such as, “After everything I've done for you”?

Does the gift or favor become a reason you should stop discussing the hurt that hasn't been resolved?

Genuine kindness doesn't erase the need for accountability.

3. Does the Kindness Survive a Boundary?

What happens when you disagree, say no, or ask for something you need?

Does the person remain respectful, even if they're disappointed?

Or does their warmth suddenly disappear, replaced by silence, criticism, guilt, or punishment?

You don't have to provoke a reaction to find out. Simply pay attention to what happens when you express reasonable needs and boundaries.

4. Is the Behavior Consistent in Private and in Public?

Is your partner considerate around friends and family but dismissive when you're alone?

Do other people see a charming, generous person while you experience a very different reality at home?

Differences between public and private behavior don't automatically establish someone's motives. But if the discrepancy is persistent, it deserves your attention.

You don't need to convince everyone else of what you're experiencing before you can take your own experiences seriously.

A Simple Recovery Tool: Give the Character a Name

One tool I encourage survivors to try is giving the loving persona a character name.

It might be “Mr. Romantic,” “Sweet Steve,” or “Dr. Perfect.”

Choose something that makes sense to you. It can even be a little silly.

The purpose isn't to diagnose your partner or make fun of them. It's to help you create enough emotional distance to observe the pattern instead of immediately getting swept up in it.

Here's how to try it.

Step 1: Describe the character.

What does this version of your partner say and do? Perhaps they leave thoughtful notes, cook your favorite meal, or suddenly become affectionate after a period of distance.

Write down the behaviors you recognize.

Step 2: Notice when the character appears.

Does this behavior tend to follow an argument? Does it happen when you begin pulling away, ask for accountability, or need to make a decision?

You're not trying to prove a motive. You're noticing whether there is a recurring pattern.

Step 3: Notice what happens next.

Does the considerate behavior continue? Is there genuine accountability? Do you see sustained changes?

Or does the behavior fade once the person has regained your attention, received your agreement, or moved past an uncomfortable conversation?

Step 4: Remind yourself to observe rather than assume.

When the familiar character appears, you might quietly tell yourself, “I've seen this pattern before. I'll pay attention to what happens next.”

You don't have to reject the kindness, start an argument, or confront the person.

You're simply giving yourself permission to observe the whole picture.

This tool is for your own clarity, not something you need to announce to your partner. If you believe confrontation could lead to retaliation or increased control, prioritize your safety and seek appropriate support.

You Don't Have to Stop Hoping to Start Seeing Clearly

If you've spent years holding on to the good moments, I want you to understand something.

There is nothing shameful about having loved someone. There is nothing foolish about wanting to believe their kindness was genuine. And there is nothing wrong with remembering the moments when you felt happy.

Those experiences mattered to you.

But you can acknowledge the good moments without allowing them to erase the painful ones.

You can appreciate a thoughtful gesture without deciding that everything has changed.

You can remain open to the possibility of change while looking for evidence of accountability, respect, and consistency.

And you can stop measuring the relationship by its best moments and begin paying attention to the pattern of how you're treated.

Ask yourself the question I once asked myself:

Is this a good person having a bad month, or a person showing me a good day?

You don't have to answer that question immediately. Give yourself time to look honestly at the relationship you're living in, not only the one you remember or hope to have.

You deserve kindness you can rely on. You deserve care that doesn't disappear when you disagree. You deserve a relationship where accountability isn't replaced by a gift, an apology isn't replaced by affection, and peace doesn't depend on your willingness to overlook your own pain.

Most importantly, you deserve to stop holding someone else's mask in place at the expense of your own well-being.

Your Healing Can Begin With Seeing the Pattern

Recognizing counterfeit kindness isn't about becoming suspicious of every thoughtful gesture. It's about learning to distinguish an isolated moment from a consistent pattern of care.

Healthy relationships aren't perfect. People make mistakes, have difficult days, and sometimes disappoint one another.

What matters is what happens afterward. Can the person acknowledge the harm? Can they listen without turning everything back on you? Can they respect your boundaries and make changes that last?

You don't need to label someone to ask those questions.

You don't need to prove their intentions before taking your own experiences seriously.

And you don't need to keep waiting for the character you fell in love with to become the person you can actually rely on.

If you understand the patterns but still feel stuck in the cycle, support can help you begin untangling what you've experienced and deciding what comes next.

Learn more about Renee's coaching program at covertnarcissism.com.

You don't have to chase the good moments. You can learn to recognize what is consistently real.

COVERT NARCISSISM: WHO’S AFRAID TO DISAGREE IN YOUR RELATIONSHIP?

Who’s Afraid to Disagree in Your Relationship?

A restaurant. A friend. A dog. A wedding. The radio.

None of these things should be relationship emergencies.

But what happens when simply having a different opinion can lead to an hour-long lecture, a loyalty test, the silent treatment, or an explosion?

Over time, you learn something.

Keeping your opinion to yourself is safer.

And slowly, you stop disagreeing.

Not because you agree.

Because you're afraid.

When Having an Opinion Comes With a Price

Imagine you're driving past a restaurant with your partner.

They tell you it's the best restaurant in town. You simply say, "I don't really like eating there."

Suddenly, you're being lectured about your lack of taste.

Maybe you're reminded of another time you ordered something they didn't approve of. Somehow, your simple opinion about a restaurant has turned into a conversation about your character.

Or maybe your partner says a mutual friend is selfish.

You say, "She's always been kind to me."

Now you're accused of taking her side.

"Whose side are you even on?"

You weren't choosing sides. You were sharing your experience.

But suddenly, you're spending the evening proving your loyalty.

Or maybe it's something as simple as your dog's weight.

You mention that the veterinarian says the dog is healthy.

Your partner responds, "Fine. I guess I'm just a terrible pet owner."

Now you're comforting them.

The conversation isn't about the dog anymore.

It's about their feelings.

Then there is the wedding you want to attend, the music you like, the movie you want to watch, the way you load the dishwasher, or what you want for dinner.

The topics change.

The pattern doesn't.

When Disagreement Stops Feeling Safe

In a healthy relationship, disagreement doesn't have to mean conflict.

You can say:

"I don't like that restaurant."

And your partner can say:

"Really? More for me."

You can have different opinions about a friend and still respect each other's perspectives.

You can disagree about the dog, the wedding, the music, or dinner without someone being punished.

Maybe you have a tense conversation. Maybe you don't see things the same way.

But eventually, you move on.

You don't spend hours defending yourself.

Nobody gives you the silent treatment for days.

Nobody makes you prove your love.

Nobody makes you afraid to speak.

That's what healthy disagreement teaches us: I can be myself, disagree with you, and our relationship can still be okay.

But when disagreement repeatedly comes with a price, you learn something very different.

You learn to stay quiet.

Keeping the Peace Isn't the Same as Being Peaceful

This distinction matters.

You might look at your relationship from the outside and think, "We don't fight that much."

But maybe you don't fight because you've stopped saying what you think.

Maybe you've learned to say:

"Yeah, this is good."

Even when you hate the music.

Maybe you say:

"Whatever you want."

Even when you have a preference.

Maybe you cancel your plans because you already know what will happen if you disagree.

From the outside, everything may look peaceful.

But inside, you're constantly monitoring.

What mood are they in?

Is this a good time?

How should I phrase this?

Should I even say it?

What happens if they disagree?

That's not peace. That's self-silencing.

Who Is Afraid to Disagree?

Here's a question I encourage you to ask:

Who in this relationship is afraid to disagree?

Not who is louder.

Not who talks more.

Not who appears more confident.

Who is afraid to express a different opinion?

Because that question can reveal something important about the relationship.

One person may freely share their opinions while the other rehearses every sentence before speaking.

One person may state their perspective as fact while the other carefully edits themselves.

One person may be able to disagree without consequences.

The other may spend hours trying to prevent the next reaction.

Pay attention to that difference.

What Happens When You Disagree?

Ask yourself:

• What happens after I disagree?

• How long does the reaction last?

• Do I end up comforting them?

• Do I end up apologizing for having an opinion?

• Does the reaction seem much bigger than the topic?

• Do I rehearse what I'm going to say before I say it?

• Do I avoid certain subjects altogether?

• Am I keeping the peace, or do I actually feel peaceful?

These questions can sometimes be easier to answer than the much bigger question, "Is this abuse?"

When you're living inside a confusing relationship, the bigger picture can be difficult to see.

But you may be able to see one small pattern very clearly:

Can I disagree with this person and be okay afterward?

And just as importantly:

Can they disagree with me and be okay afterward?

When You Start Losing Your Voice

This doesn't usually happen overnight.

It happens through repetition.

You disagree.

You get the lecture.

You disagree again.

You get the cold shoulder.

You share your opinion.

You're accused of being difficult, selfish, controlling, disloyal, or unreasonable.

Eventually, your brain starts doing the math.

Is this opinion worth the reaction?

Is this restaurant worth two hours of arguing?

Is this wedding worth being yelled at?

Is this song worth the tension?

More and more, the answer becomes no.

So you stop talking.

You start fawning.

You agree.

You accommodate.

You smooth things over.

And eventually, you may not even know what you think anymore.

Someone asks, "What do you want for dinner?"

And you genuinely don't know.

Because for so long, the question wasn't really What do you want?

The question was:

What will keep the peace?

Your Silence May Be a Survival Strategy

If you've learned to stay quiet in order to avoid someone's reaction, I want you to hear this:

That doesn't mean you're weak.

You adapted.

You learned what happened when you spoke up, and you found ways to protect yourself.

Your silence may have been a survival strategy.

The problem isn't that you adapted.

The problem is that you were in an environment that required you to.

And if you've been living this way for years, it makes sense that speaking up can feel frightening—even with safe people.

You didn't get the opportunity to practice healthy disagreement.

You can't learn that disagreement is safe when disagreement was never safe.

What About the Quiet Partner?

Sometimes people ask, "What if my partner is the quiet one?"

That's an important question.

Covert narcissistic behavior doesn't always look loud or domineering.

Someone can be quiet, withdrawn, or seemingly sensitive while still expressing disagreement through passive-aggressive behavior.

The difference is often in what the silence is doing.

One person may go quiet because they're afraid of what will happen if they speak.

Another may use silence to create discomfort, punish, withdraw affection, or make the other person scramble to fix things.

Think about the difference between:

"I'm quiet because I'm scared."

And:

"I'm quiet because I want you to feel the consequences of disagreeing with me."

From the outside, those two people may look identical.

Inside the relationship, they are very different experiences.

Finding Your Voice Again

If you've spent years swallowing your opinions, you don't have to suddenly become confrontational.

This isn't about picking a fight.

It's about slowly finding your way back to yourself.

Start privately.

Ask yourself:

What do I actually like?

What do I think?

What would I choose if nobody else had an opinion?

What music do I enjoy?

What restaurants do I like?

What do I want for dinner?

You may be surprised by what you discover.

Then, when it feels safe, practice small disagreements with people you trust.

"I'd rather have Thai tonight."

"I actually saw that movie differently."

"I don't really like that restaurant."

Notice what happens.

A safe person might simply say, "Okay."

And then life goes on.

Those moments matter.

Every safe disagreement teaches you something new:

I can have my own thoughts.

I can express them.

And I'm still okay.

You Don't Have to Lose Yourself to Keep the Peace

If you've become afraid to disagree, please don't shame yourself for it.

There is a reason you learned to be careful.

There is a reason you started editing yourself.

There is a reason you learned to read the room before speaking.

But your opinions didn't disappear.

They went into hiding.

And with time, safety, and support, you can begin finding them again.

So I'll leave you with the question we started with:

Who's afraid to disagree in your relationship?

If the answer is you, your fear doesn't mean you're broken.

It may mean you've learned from experience that speaking honestly comes with a cost.

And you deserve relationships where you can be fully yourself—including the parts of you that see things differently.

Keeping the peace is not the same thing as being peaceful.

And you should never have to disappear to make a relationship work.

This Is Not Okay, Renee's new book, releases October 20. Learn more at covertnarcissism.com.

Covert Narcissism and Parenting: When a Parent Argues Like a Sibling

What happens when a parent stops acting like the adult in the room?

I’ve had so many clients tell me that being married to a covert narcissist felt like raising an extra child. I understand that feeling because I lived it, too.

I wasn’t raising two kids.

I was raising three.

Except one of them thought he was already grown.

It Can Start With Something So Small

I want to start with something small. Almost embarrassingly small, actually, because that is often the nature of covert narcissistic abuse.

It can be over the smallest things.

We would be outside tossing a football around—me, my husband, and the boys. It wasn’t a game. Nobody was keeping score. We were just spending time together.

But if the ball happened to come back to me a couple of times in a row, he would take offense.

Not just annoyed.

Offended.

He would sigh, huff, roll his eyes, or make it very clear that he felt left out. So we would pay attention and make sure he got the ball.

Then we would start goofing around again.

Maybe one of the boys made a spectacular catch. Maybe something funny happened. Maybe the ball simply happened to come back to me again.

And suddenly, it started all over.

Eventually, he would storm inside and slam the door hard enough for everyone outside to hear it.

When I later asked him about it, he was very clear about what he believed:

We had left him out.

And we had done it on purpose.

That was the part that was so difficult.

It didn’t matter what had actually happened.

It could have been completely random. It could have been funny. It could have been a two-second, harmless moment that nobody else even thought about.

But in his mind, there was only one explanation:

It was intentional.

It was personal.

It was an attack.

I wasn’t throwing a football with another adult and two kids.

I was throwing a football with three kids.

When the Parent Becomes the Child

I’ve heard so many clients describe this same feeling in their own relationships: It felt like I was raising an extra child.

A counselor once gave me language for what I was seeing that I will never forget.

I was worried that my boys were somehow picking up narcissistic behaviors. The counselor said:

“The problem is not that the kids are acting like their dad. The problem is that dad is acting like the kids.”

That stopped me in my tracks.

Because that was exactly what I was seeing.

It wasn’t just about football.

Maybe in your family it was who got asked a question first.

Maybe it was where someone sat at the dinner table.

Maybe it was whose joke got the biggest laugh.

Maybe your child said something completely innocent, and your partner interpreted it as disrespectful or intentional.

The details can be different, but the pattern can look remarkably similar.

Something neutral happens, and it gets filtered through a belief that says:

They did that on purpose.

They are trying to disrespect me.

They are trying to undermine me.

They are doing this to me.

And suddenly, something that should have been forgotten in thirty seconds becomes a conflict.

When an Adult Argues With a Two-Year-Old

This pattern can become even more disturbing when it happens between a parent and a very young child.

Recently, a client described watching his wife interact with their two-year-old daughter during conflict.

He said it felt like watching siblings rather than a mother and child.

That description really stood out to me.

Because there is a fundamental difference between a parent and a toddler.

A two-year-old is still learning how to regulate emotions.

A toddler gets upset because they don’t get what they want. They have a meltdown. They cry. They scream. They become overwhelmed.

That is part of being two.

The parent, however, is supposed to be the more regulated person in the room.

The parent sets the boundary.

The parent stays as calm as possible.

The parent helps the child move through the emotion.

The parent doesn’t need the toddler to validate them.

And the parent certainly shouldn’t need to win.

But when an adult begins arguing with a two-year-old as though the child were a worthy opponent, the roles begin to collapse.

Instead of correcting, redirecting, or guiding the child, the parent is arguing back.

They are matching the child's energy.

They are trying to come out on top.

And the other parent may suddenly find themselves in a very strange position.

Instead of helping the child regulate, they are trying to help their spouse regulate.

A Two-Year-Old Cannot Be Your Opponent

A two-year-old cannot be your opponent.

She isn't strategically trying to gain the upper hand.

She isn't plotting how to disrespect you.

She isn't trying to win some invisible power struggle.

She's two.

She wants what she wants, and when she doesn't get it, she doesn't yet have the emotional skills to handle that disappointment.

Her whole body tells you that she's overwhelmed.

When a parent responds by treating that child like an opponent, something important has shifted.

The issue is no longer simply the child's behavior.

It becomes about what is happening inside the parent.

And I see three important pieces to this pattern.

1. Everything Feels Like a Threat

The first is the parent's felt sense of threat.

Think back to the football.

A neutral moment wasn't experienced as neutral.

It was immediately filtered through an “on purpose” lens.

Are they disrespecting me?

Are they undermining me?

Are they making fun of me?

Are they leaving me out intentionally?

The filter doesn't stop and check the circumstances.

It doesn't say, Wait, this was probably random.

It doesn't say, They're just having fun.

It doesn't say, This is a two-year-old who doesn't even understand the conflict I'm having with her.

The reaction happens quickly.

Something feels threatening, and the response follows.

2. There Is a Need to Win

The second piece is the need to win.

There is a huge difference between correcting a child's behavior and needing to come out on top of an interaction with a child.

Correction is about teaching.

Winning is about proving something.

A regulated parent can allow a two-year-old to have a tantrum without turning it into a personal battle.

They can let their child be upset without becoming upset at the child.

They don't need to prove that they are right.

But when someone's sense of self is tied to never being wrong, never backing down, or never losing control, that need doesn't necessarily disappear when the other person is small.

The child may become the person they feel they have to defeat.

And that changes the entire emotional environment of the home.

3. The Parent-Child Roles Collapse

The third piece is the loss of the parent role.

Being the adult in the room requires emotional generosity.

It means giving patience, calm, guidance, and regulation without expecting the child to give those things back.

That is what parenting requires, especially when children are young.

You give.

You guide.

You regulate.

You teach.

You show up again and again.

A parent operating from a narcissistic pattern may struggle with that one-directional giving because it requires putting the child's developmental needs ahead of their own need to feel right, respected, competent, or in control.

So instead of holding the adult position, they drop down to the child's level.

Not to comfort the child.

Not to understand the child.

But to argue with them.

To win a disagreement the child doesn't even realize they're having.

From the outside, it can look like siblings arguing.

But one of them is supposed to be the parent.

What Does This Teach the Child?

I don't want to speculate clinically about every child or every family. Every situation is different.

But I do think it is important to talk about what children need from their parents.

Young children need co-regulation.

They need a steady adult presence to help them calm their nervous system when they aren't capable of doing it on their own yet.

They need safety.

They need reassurance.

They need to experience relationships as places where difficult emotions can be worked through—not places where every disagreement becomes a competition.

When a child repeatedly experiences their parent as a rival, they may instead have their own dysregulation mirrored back at them and even amplified.

Over time, conflict can begin to feel like something that has to be won.

Being upset can feel like an invitation to fight rather than an opportunity for comfort and connection.

And the adults who are supposed to be their safe harbor may not feel safe at all.

That's a lot for a child to carry.

It's a lot for anyone to carry.

What It's Like to Watch This as the Other Parent

And if you're the parent standing in the doorway watching your spouse argue with your child like a sibling, I want to acknowledge how disorienting that can be.

You're watching something that doesn't quite fit the usual definition of bad parenting.

It's different from a parent missing a soccer game or being impatient after a long day.

You're watching the role itself disappear.

The adult isn't holding the adult role.

And you may find yourself stepping in—not just to help your child, but to help your spouse regulate.

You may begin anticipating the next reaction.

You may start monitoring everyone's behavior to prevent another explosion.

You may find yourself constantly explaining your child's behavior or trying to convince your partner that your child didn't mean anything by what they did.

And eventually, you may start wondering:

Why am I parenting my children and parenting my partner, too?

If you've ever watched a parent argue with a young child as though the child were a peer, you are not alone in finding that experience incredibly confusing.

Sometimes, putting language to what you're seeing is the beginning of understanding it.

And sometimes, that is where healing begins.

You don't have to keep questioning what you see just because someone else insists that you're seeing it wrong.

The information provided by Renee Swanson, Covert Narcissism Podcast, and CNG Life Coaching is for educational purposes only and is not intended for diagnosis or as a substitute for clinical care. Please consult a healthcare provider for guidance specific to your situation.

This material discusses narcissism in general. Renee shares stories from her personal experiences as well as from people she has spoken with over the years. This material does not claim that any specific person has narcissism and should not be used to refer to any specific person as having narcissism.

The Reset Button: Why a Gift Isn’t an Apology (And Why We Were Trained to Accept It Anyway)

Have you ever been hurt by someone, only to have flowers show up afterward? Maybe they planned a nice dinner, bought your favorite dessert, fixed something around the house, or suddenly became warm and affectionate.

And for a moment, you exhaled.

Maybe things are going to be okay. Maybe they know they hurt me. Maybe this is their way of apologizing.

But there’s something important to notice:

Nobody actually said, “I’m sorry.”

Nobody named what happened. Nobody acknowledged the behavior. Nobody sat in the discomfort of having hurt you.

Instead, a gesture took the place of an apology.

And that gesture can feel like a reset button.

When the gesture becomes the apology

A kind gesture isn't inherently bad. Flowers are lovely. Dinner can be meaningful. Affection, generosity, and acts of service can all be wonderful parts of a relationship.

The problem comes when the gesture is the entire response.

When it arrives instead of an apology, it can create the feeling that everything has been resolved without actually addressing what happened.

The tension lifts. You feel relief. The relationship feels peaceful again.

But nothing has necessarily been repaired.

A real apology requires something much harder: accountability, humility, vulnerability, and a willingness to tolerate discomfort.

Accountability means naming what happened.

Not, “It wasn't that big of a deal.”

Not, “I don't remember it that way.”

Not, “Let's just forget about it.”

It means being able to say, “I'm sorry I yelled at you,” or “I'm sorry I shut down when you tried to talk to me.”

Specific. Named. Owned.

The part of an apology that makes it uncomfortable

A genuine apology isn't always comfortable. In fact, it's supposed to involve some discomfort.

You have to be able to look at your own behavior and acknowledge that you caused harm.

That requires humility.

It requires vulnerability.

And it requires resisting the urge to immediately make yourself feel better.

That's why the word “but” can change everything.

“I'm sorry, but you pushed me to it.”

The apology has now shifted the responsibility back onto the person who was hurt.

The discomfort is no longer theirs to carry. They've handed some of it back to you.

A real apology means being able to sit with the uncomfortable truth: I did something that hurt you, and I need to take responsibility for that.

A gift can't do that work.

The slushie

In my upcoming book, This Is Not Okay, I share a moment that changed the way I understood this pattern.

I was standing in my kitchen watching my young teenage son struggle after his father had belittled him and left the room.

Later, his father gave him a Sonic slushie.

My son looked down at the drink and said, “I think this is Dad's way of apologizing, so it's okay, Mom.”

My heart broke.

Because the slushie hadn't addressed what happened.

It hadn't named the hurt.

It hadn't acknowledged the behavior.

It hadn't offered accountability.

But my son had learned to accept the gesture because accepting it meant the tension could end.

He could have peace again.

And then I realized something even harder:

He had learned this from watching me.

I had accepted peace offerings in place of apologies. I had learned to let a gesture close the conversation because it was easier than continuing to sit in the discomfort.

My son was learning the same thing.

The slushie became a stand-in for an apology that never came.

What's your reset button?

Maybe yours wasn't a Sonic slushie.

Maybe it was flowers.

Maybe it was a spontaneous date night after days of tension.

Maybe it was a sudden burst of affection or intimacy.

Maybe it was a chore — the garage suddenly cleaned, the car washed, or something fixed around the house right after an argument.

Maybe it was charm.

Or maybe it was a text saying, “I love you so much,” without ever mentioning what happened.

These gestures aren't inherently wrong.

The problem is when the gesture is the entire response.

When it arrives instead of, “I'm sorry I said that to you.”

That's when the gesture becomes a reset button.

It creates the feeling of resolution without doing the work required for real resolution.

Why we learn to accept it

Here's something else I've been thinking about:

Where did we learn to do this?

Many of us were taught from childhood.

Think about a playground. One child pulls another child's hair. The child who was hurt cries.

An adult steps in.

“Tell her you're sorry.”

The child says, “Sorry.”

And then comes the next instruction:

“Now tell him it's okay.”

But it wasn't okay.

The child pulled her hair. She was hurt.

Yet we're teaching the child who was hurt to announce that the hurt doesn't matter anymore.

A different response could be:

“Thank you for the apology.”

That small change matters.

It allows the child to acknowledge the apology without pretending the original behavior was acceptable.

The two things can exist together:

You apologized.

And what happened was not okay.

That's an important lesson for children — and an important lesson for adults who were never taught it.

You can accept the gesture without accepting it as an apology

If you're currently in a relationship where gestures regularly replace accountability, I'm not asking you to reject every gift.

Take the flowers.

Enjoy the dinner.

Accept the kindness if you want to.

But you can also recognize what it is.

“This is a gesture. It is not an apology. I'm allowed to want both.”

If it feels safe, you might say:

“I appreciate this, and I still need us to talk about what happened.”

What happens next can tell you something important.

Are they willing to have the conversation?

Can they acknowledge what happened?

Can they tolerate the discomfort of taking responsibility?

Or does asking for accountability lead to anger, blame, defensiveness, or making themselves the victim?

Pay attention.

The response to your request for accountability is information too.

You don't have to say “it's okay” when it wasn't

One of the simplest changes we can make is to retire the automatic response:

“It's okay.”

When something wasn't okay, you don't have to say that it was.

Instead, you can say:

“Thank you for apologizing.”

Or:

“I appreciate you saying that.”

Those words allow you to acknowledge an apology without erasing your own experience.

And if you're raising children, caring for grandchildren, teaching, or simply spending time with kids, you can give them that language too.

When one child hurts another, teach them to apologize.

But don't require the child who was hurt to announce that everything is okay.

Let them keep the truth of their experience.

The difference matters

This isn't about becoming someone who rejects every kind gesture or questions every act of kindness.

It's about knowing the difference between a gesture and an apology.

A gesture can be loving.

An apology requires accountability.

A gift can make you feel better.

An apology addresses what happened.

A nice dinner can restore a moment of connection.

But only accountability can begin to repair a breach of trust.

You don't have to swallow your pain just because someone handed you something beautiful afterward.

You can appreciate the gesture and still know:

This doesn't erase what happened.

And you don't have to call something “okay” just because doing so makes everyone else more comfortable.

Your experience matters.

Your hurt matters.

And a real apology doesn't ask you to pretend that it didn't.

This Is Not Okay officially launches October 20th, with the book and audiobook available to help put words to the moments that can be so easy to explain away — and so difficult to name.

Disclaimer: The information provided by Renee Swanson, Covert Narcissism Podcast, and CNG Life Coaching is for educational purposes only and is not intended for diagnosis or as a substitute for clinical care. Please consult a health care provider for guidance specific to your situation. This material discusses narcissism in general and reflects personal experiences and experiences shared by people Renee has spoken with. It does not claim that any specific person has narcissism and should not be used to make such an allegation.

Covert Narcissism and Circular Conversations: Why You Always End Up Fighting Something You Never Said

Covert narcissism doesn’t always look like screaming matches or dramatic blowups. Sometimes, it looks like a completely ordinary conversation that somehow ends with you defending yourself against something you never said.

I call this the Blender Effect.

It’s what happens when everything you say — even something neutral, caring, or simple — gets put through a filter that isn't actually listening for what you mean. Instead, it's listening for a reason to feel attacked, offended, wronged, or superior.

And somehow, it finds one.

Every. Single. Time.

A Misunderstanding Is Not the Same Thing

We all misunderstand each other sometimes.

You might say, “Can you grab milk on your way home?”

Your partner comes home with whole milk, but you meant oat milk.

You say, “Oh, I meant the oat milk.”

They might respond, “I didn't realize. I should have asked.”

And that's it.

Maybe one of you goes back to the store. Maybe you get it tomorrow. The misunderstanding is resolved.

Nobody's character has been attacked. Nobody has to defend themselves. Nobody is suddenly being accused of being selfish, controlling, ungrateful, or incompetent.

That's a misunderstanding.

There was a genuine difference in how two people interpreted the same words, and once it was clarified, the gap closed.

But what happens when the conversation goes through the blender?

You say, “Oh, I meant the oat milk.”

Suddenly, you're being told that you never communicate clearly. You always make things difficult. You're micromanaging. You spend too much money. You don't appreciate what they do for you.

Before you know it, you're defending yourself against an eye doctor's appointment, a budget problem, their work schedule, and a dozen other things that had absolutely nothing to do with milk.

Your original sentence was simply:

“Oh, I meant the oat milk.”

That's the Blender Effect.

When “Around 6” Becomes “You Don't Respect Me”

Here's another example.

You say:

“I'll be home around 6.”

You walk through the door at 6:12.

In a healthy misunderstanding, your partner might say, “I thought you meant by 6. I was starting to worry.”

You explain that work was crazy and you weren't sure exactly when you'd get home.

They might say, “I think I heard you differently than you meant it.”

Done.

But in a circular conversation, those twelve minutes can become evidence that you don't respect their time.

Then it's about all the other times you've supposedly been late.

Then it's about how they plan their entire evening around you.

Then it's about how they can't trust you.

Then it's about how they always end up waiting on you.

Suddenly, twelve minutes has become proof that you are fundamentally inconsiderate.

But go back to your original words:

“I'll be home around 6.”

That wasn't a promise to the minute. It wasn't a statement about how much you respect your partner. It was simply what you believed your arrival time would be.

The verdict was already sitting there, waiting.

Your twelve minutes didn't create the anger. It simply gave it something to attach itself to.

The Blender Turns Neutral Words Into Accusations

Here's where this gets especially confusing.

You come home after a long day and say you're tired. You mention a few things that went well. You mention that the house has gotten a little out of control and needs to be picked up this weekend.

That's it.

But somehow your partner becomes defensive about the shoes sitting by the door.

“You said you would pick them up. You don't have to be mean about it.”

You're left thinking:

“Wait. I didn't even mention your shoes.”

But the words you actually said aren't necessarily what they heard.

“Tired.”

“Overwhelmed.”

“House needs picking up.”

Their interpretation becomes:

“You're angry with me. You're criticizing me. You're upset about my shoes.”

The words went into the blender one way and came out completely differently.

When Checking In Still Isn't Enough

Another common example involves making plans.

You tell your partner your mom invited both of you over for lunch Sunday.

They say they were hoping for a lazy day.

You tell them that's fine and that you just wanted to check before turning your mom down.

They say, “Whatever you want to do is fine.”

You tell them you'd actually like to go, but that you understand if they really want the day at home.

They say, “It's fine. Let's just go.”

You even ask again because you can sense they aren't enthusiastic.

And later, you're accused of always choosing your family over them.

But look at what actually happened.

You checked in.

You offered to say no.

You asked what they wanted.

You gave them multiple opportunities to tell you they didn't want to go.

And somehow you still end up being accused of not caring about their needs.

The conversation went through the blender.

Even “We” Can Become “You”

Money conversations can be another easy place for this pattern to appear.

You say:

“I was looking at the credit card statement, and I think we spent more than we meant to on eating out this month.”

Notice the word we.

You're talking about the two of you.

You suggest cooking more during the week and saving restaurants for the weekend so you can reach a savings goal you've discussed together.

But suddenly you're accused of monitoring their spending.

Keeping score.

Controlling them.

Making them feel like they can't do anything without being watched.

You weren't even talking about their individual spending.

You were talking about something you believed the two of you needed to work on together.

Yet somewhere inside the blender, “we spent more than we meant to” became “you're keeping track of everything I do.”

And now you're defending yourself against something you never thought, never meant, and never said.

The Opposite of the Benefit of the Doubt

Most of us understand the phrase “benefit of the doubt.”

When something is ambiguous, we tend to give the person we trust a reasonable interpretation.

We think:

Maybe they didn't mean it that way.

Maybe they were tired.

Maybe I misunderstood.

I know they love me, so I don't think they were trying to hurt me.

But what happens in the Blender Effect is almost the exact opposite.

Instead of filling in the gaps with good faith, the gaps are filled with the worst possible interpretation.

You don't get the benefit of the doubt.

You're assumed to have bad intentions.

There's actually a psychological term that relates to this: hostile attribution bias — the tendency to interpret neutral or ambiguous behavior as intentionally hostile.

And that's an important distinction.

This isn't simply someone misunderstanding your words.

They're assigning an intention to you that wasn't there.

You say, “I'm tired.”

They hear criticism.

You say, “I'd like to go to my mom's.”

They hear rejection.

You say, “We spent more than we planned.”

They hear control.

You say, “I meant oat milk.”

They hear an attack on their competence.

The words aren't merely being misunderstood.

They're being transformed.

The Closer You Are, the Less Grace You Receive

This is one of the most painful parts.

Your spouse is supposed to be one of the people who knows you best.

They're supposed to know your heart, your history, your intentions.

If there is anyone in your life who should be able to give you the benefit of the doubt, it would seem to be the person you've chosen to do life with.

But in this dynamic, the opposite can happen.

Strangers get more grace.

Coworkers get more grace.

Acquaintances get more grace.

And the closer you get, the less good faith you're given.

The more vulnerable you become, the more evidence seems to be found against you.

That destroys something incredibly important in a relationship:

safety.

You can't make yourself feel safe with someone who continually assumes the worst of you.

Eventually, You Start Editing Yourself

And this is where the long-term cost becomes enormous.

It's not just the argument itself.

It's what these conversations teach you to do afterward.

You start pre-editing everything you say.

You rehearse simple sentences in your head, trying to figure out how they could possibly be twisted.

You stop mentioning that you're tired because you don't know what it might mean to them.

You become careful about mentioning your family.

You explain your intentions before you've even finished your thought.

You start saying things like:

“I'm not criticizing you.”

“That's not what I mean.”

“I'm not saying you did anything wrong.”

“I'm just trying to explain.”

You're no longer simply having a conversation.

You're trying to prevent the conversation from becoming ammunition.

How Do You Know It's a Pattern?

A genuine misunderstanding happens occasionally.

And importantly, clarification resolves it.

You explain what you meant, the other person understands, and you move forward.

A circular conversation doesn't work that way.

You clarify, but the accusation simply moves somewhere else.

You say, “That's not what I meant.”

They say, “Well, that's what you really meant.”

You explain yourself.

They reinterpret the explanation.

You defend that.

They find something else.

Eventually, you're standing there wondering:

“How did we get here?”

And sometimes, you can't even find the sentence you're supposedly defending because you never said it.

You are being asked to defend yourself against invisible words.

The Blender Effect

Think about a blender.

You put something in one way.

It gets chopped up, mixed together, and comes out looking completely different.

That's what these circular conversations can feel like.

You said something small.

Something ordinary.

Something that wasn't an accusation.

And somehow, it comes back to you as blame, criticism, selfishness, disrespect, control, or malicious intent.

The problem isn't that you haven't found the perfect words yet.

You could spend the rest of your life trying to become the perfect communicator, carefully choosing every sentence, anticipating every possible interpretation.

But if the other person is already looking for a reason to feel attacked, there may be no perfectly safe sentence.

The problem isn't always what you said. Sometimes it's the filter your words are being put through.

And if you've been thinking, “This isn't one isolated conversation. This is almost every conversation I have,” that distinction matters.

A pattern of conversations that continually turn neutral statements into accusations is very different from an occasional misunderstanding.

You don't have to keep standing there trying to defend yourself against words you never said.

Until next time, I wish you so much peace on your journey of healing.

How to Spot Passive-Aggressive Behavior and What to Actually Do About It

Passive-aggressive behavior can be incredibly confusing.

Someone says, “I’m fine,” but their tone says otherwise. They agree to something, but then suddenly become unavailable. They insist everything is okay while their behavior communicates that it absolutely is not.

And if you’ve experienced covert narcissistic abuse, that confusion can feel especially triggering.

But here’s something important: passive-aggressive behavior isn’t always narcissistic.

Sometimes it comes from fear. Sometimes it comes from an attempt to protect someone’s feelings. And sometimes, yes, it’s a control tactic.

The behavior may look exactly the same on the outside. The difference is often found in what happens when you gently address it.

Not All Passive Aggression Is Narcissistic

Passive-aggressive behavior is essentially expressing a real feeling sideways instead of saying it directly.

Some people do this because they are genuinely afraid of conflict.

Maybe they grew up learning that speaking up wasn't safe. Their feelings weren't taken seriously, or they were punished when they expressed anger, disagreement, or disappointment.

So instead of saying, “I don't like that,” they say:

“It's fine. Don't worry about it.”

But their tone, body language, or behavior tells you that it isn't fine at all.

Someone might say, “Yeah, sure,” when they really don't want to do something, hoping you'll notice and change the plans yourself. They may stall, stop responding, or put little effort into following through.

They aren't necessarily trying to control you. They may simply not know how to express disagreement safely.

Passive aggression can also come from a desire to protect someone's feelings.

A friend may have concerns about your new business but doesn't want to discourage you, so instead of telling you what they really think, they change the subject.

A parent may worry about your relationship but doesn't want to hurt your feelings, so they repeatedly ask, “Are you sure he's the one?” instead of actually telling you what concerns them.

A coworker may notice an error in your work but doesn't want to embarrass you, so they quietly fix it without saying anything.

The intention may be care.

But even passive aggression that comes from fear or care can damage a relationship.

Healthy relationships require honest communication. When someone's words and behavior don't match, the other person is left trying to figure out what is actually happening.

And that's where the overthinking begins.

Covert Narcissistic Passive Aggression Is Different

Covert narcissists can use these exact same behaviors.

But instead of coming from fear or concern about hurting someone, passive aggression can become a way to control, punish, destabilize, or manipulate.

The person gets what they want while maintaining plausible deniability.

And this is part of what makes covert narcissistic abuse so difficult to explain.

The behavior itself doesn't always tell you the motivation.

That's why it's important not to decide based on one interaction.

Instead, watch the pattern.

Survivors Can Become Passive-Aggressive Too

There's another piece of this conversation that I think is incredibly important.

Survivors of covert narcissistic abuse can become passive-aggressive themselves.

If you've spent years around someone who becomes angry, punishes you, withdraws, or turns your feelings against you whenever you speak honestly, you may learn to communicate sideways.

You may become afraid to say what you actually think.

You may say, “It's okay,” when it isn't.

You may avoid asking directly for what you need because you already know what happens when you do.

This is one reason survivors sometimes come to me worried that they are the narcissist.

They see their own passive-aggressive behavior and assume it means something is fundamentally wrong with them.

But noticing your behavior, questioning it, and wanting to change it matters.

You can learn a different way of communicating.

How Do You Know When Someone Is Being Passive-Aggressive?

Have you ever had that feeling that someone's words say one thing, but everything else about them says something completely different?

They say, “I'm fine,” but their shoulders are turned away.

They say, “It's totally okay,” but suddenly the entire atmosphere feels different.

Something inside you says:

Wait. That didn't match.

Pay attention to that feeling.

Your nervous system notices tone, pacing, body language, and other cues incredibly quickly. Sometimes you register that something is off before you can consciously explain why.

That doesn't automatically mean your interpretation is correct.

But the feeling is information.

Instead of immediately dismissing yourself as dramatic, too sensitive, or someone who is “reading into things,” pause and get curious.

Ask yourself:

Do their words and their delivery match?

Don't just listen to the literal words.

Pay attention to the tone, body language, facial expression, and pacing.

Someone saying “I'm okay” while communicating obvious anger is giving you conflicting information.

Does what they say match what they do?

Someone might say:

“Sure, that sounds great.”

Then they become distant, give short answers, and suddenly have no time for the plans.

Again, one interaction doesn't necessarily mean anything.

But if this keeps happening, you have a pattern.

Does this happen repeatedly?

Everyone has bad days.

Everyone gets stressed, tired, irritated, or overwhelmed.

So don't make a major judgment based on one strange interaction.

Instead, collect information.

Does this happen only when they're stressed?

Or does it happen every time they don't get their way?

Does the behavior improve when you talk about it?

Or does it get worse?

What happens in your body?

Notice your own reaction.

Do you suddenly feel the need to:

• Apologize?

• Over-explain?

• Fix the situation?

• Take responsibility for something you aren't sure you did?

• Smooth everything over?

• Figure out what they're really thinking?

That physical reaction can give you an important clue about what just happened.

Gently Calling It Out

Once you've noticed a pattern, you can gently address it.

And “gently” doesn't mean being vague.

It doesn't mean apologizing for bringing it up.

It means naming what you noticed without immediately assigning a motive.

You're not saying:

“You're being passive-aggressive.”

Instead, you're saying:

“Here's what I noticed, and here's how it landed for me.”

Then stop talking.

Let them respond.

For example:

With a partner:

“When I asked if you were okay, you said you were fine, but you've been pretty quiet since. I want to check in for real. What's going on?”

With a friend:

“I noticed you got quiet when I brought up my business idea. I'd rather hear your honest thoughts than have you just go along with it.”

With a parent:

“You've asked me a couple of times if I'm sure about him. I get the sense there's something you actually want to say. I'd rather hear it straight than keep guessing.”

With a coworker:

“I noticed some of my numbers were changed overnight without me knowing. If something was off, I'd genuinely rather you tell me directly so I can learn from it.”

Notice what these statements have in common.

They don't accuse.

You're simply holding up the mismatch and asking the other person to explain it.

And this is where you get some of your most valuable information.

Their Response Is the Real Test

The original passive-aggressive behavior doesn't necessarily tell you whether you're dealing with fear, care, or control.

Their response when you address it can tell you much more.

Someone who is passive-aggressive because they're afraid of conflict may initially become embarrassed or defensive.

But underneath that, you'll often see some willingness to own their part.

They might say:

“I honestly didn't want to make it a whole thing.”

Or:

“I didn't want to hurt your feelings, so I didn't say anything.”

They may struggle with direct communication, but they are willing to move toward honesty.

A controlling or narcissistic response tends to look very different.

Instead of addressing the behavior, the conversation gets turned back onto you.

Suddenly you're:

• Too sensitive.

• Making something out of nothing.

• Misremembering.

• Creating conflict.

• Accusing them unfairly.

You came into the conversation trying to understand what happened, and somehow you leave believing you are the problem.

That flip is important information.

And don't just watch one response.

Watch the trajectory.

A person who is afraid of conflict may slowly become more honest as they feel safer.

A person operating from control may become increasingly defensive, punishing, or manipulative each time you bring the issue up.

Softening over time versus hardening over time can tell you a lot.

So What Do You Actually Do?

Once you've identified the pattern, you don't need the other person to admit, “Yes, I'm being passive-aggressive.”

You can talk about the impact instead.

You might say:

“When I don't get a straight answer, I end up assuming the worst about myself.”

Or:

“It feels better to me to get an honest answer, even if I don't like it.”

Then watch what happens next.

With a Partner

If the behavior comes from fear or care, your goal is to create enough safety for honesty to become possible.

When they finally tell you something difficult, try to respond in a way that reinforces direct communication.

You can say:

“You're allowed to tell me you don't like the plan. I'd genuinely rather know.”

Consistency matters.

But if you're dealing with a narcissistic pattern, stop chasing the explanation.

You don't need them to confirm what you already know.

State what you need and watch their behavior over time.

If they consistently refuse direct communication and continue turning everything back onto you, that is information.

With Family

Fear-based communication patterns can be decades old.

Be patient, but be clear.

You might say:

“I'd rather you just tell me if something is bothering you.”

Then reinforce the relationship when they actually try.

But if a family member repeatedly uses vulnerability against you, you don't have to keep having deeply vulnerable conversations with them.

Sometimes keeping a relationship more surface-level is a healthy form of self-protection.

With Friends

If the behavior seems rooted in fear or care, have the conversation privately.

Give your friend room to be honest without an audience.

If the behavior is consistently manipulative, you don't have to keep proving that you're not “too sensitive.”

You can create some distance.

That doesn't necessarily mean ending the friendship.

Sometimes it simply means stop handing someone an audience for behavior that hurts you.

With Coworkers

With coworkers, directness can often make a huge difference.

You can simply say:

“Please just tell me directly if there's an issue with my work. I'd rather hear it from you than find out another way.”

If the coworker is avoiding conflict, they may actually appreciate the invitation.

If the behavior appears controlling or manipulative, keep things professional and document important communication.

You don't need to get pulled into the drama.

And What If You Recognize Yourself?

Maybe while reading this, you realized that you sometimes communicate this way.

That's okay.

Especially if you've spent years in an environment where being direct didn't feel safe.

Don't demand perfection from yourself.

You can learn direct communication gradually.

And don't start practicing with the hardest person in your life.

If you're dealing with a covert narcissist, they are probably not the person to practice vulnerability and direct communication with.

Start with people who are already safe.

Tell a friend what you actually want.

Tell someone when something hurt your feelings.

Practice saying no without over-explaining.

Practice expressing an opinion without immediately softening it.

Let yourself discover what healthy communication feels like.

You Don't Have to Live in the Guessing Game

Passive-aggressive behavior is confusing because the words can sound completely harmless while the message underneath feels completely different.

But you don't have to spend your life trying to decode everyone around you.

Notice the mismatch.

Pay attention to the pattern.

Gently address what you're seeing.

And then watch the response.

That's where the real information is.

Healthy relationships don't require you to constantly guess what someone means.

They allow people to say what they feel, repair misunderstandings, and move toward greater honesty.

And if you've spent years in a relationship where direct communication wasn't safe, learning to communicate openly again may take time.

Give yourself that time.

Healing isn't just about learning to recognize unhealthy relationships.

It's also about learning what healthy connection feels like.

Passive-Aggressive Isn’t Always Narcissistic — But It’s Never Harmless

Have you ever asked someone, “Are you okay?” and gotten a four-syllable “I’m fine” that clearly meant the opposite?

You can hear it in their tone. You can see it in their body language. Something is wrong—but they aren't actually telling you what it is.

So now you're left wondering:

Do I push? Do I let it go? Did I do something wrong? Am I imagining this?

That is one of the most frustrating things about passive-aggressive behavior. It rarely announces itself. There may be no yelling, no slammed doors, and no obvious confrontation.

Instead, it's the sigh.

The “Whatever you want.”

The compliment that somehow leaves you feeling worse.

The sudden silence.

And when you try to address it, there is often an escape hatch:

“I was just joking.”
“I'm fine.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“That wasn't about you.”

That's what makes passive aggression so difficult to name. It's often built around deniability.

What Is Passive-Aggressive Behavior?

Passive-aggressive behavior happens when someone has a feeling, desire, anger, resentment, or frustration—but expresses it indirectly instead of communicating it openly.

The feeling may be completely real.

It's the delivery that is sideways.

And it can show up almost anywhere.

In Romantic Relationships

You might hear:

“No, go ahead. Have fun without me. I'll just stay home.”

Or you ask what's wrong and hear:

“Nothing.”

But suddenly the texting changes. Their answers become short. Affection disappears. They pull away without explaining why.

You're left playing a guessing game.

You start wondering what you did wrong and whether you're somehow “in trouble.”

And that uncertainty can be incredibly stressful because you're trying to solve a problem that the other person refuses to actually identify.

In Families

Family passive aggression can be especially complicated because there is usually years of history underneath it.

Maybe a family member says:

“Oh, I didn't think you'd want me there. You never invite me to anything anymore.”

Or:

“Good for you. I guess you didn't want to tell me about your promotion.”

On the surface, these statements can sound innocent.

But underneath them may be resentment, jealousy, hurt, or an attempt to make you feel guilty.

Family dynamics can also bring out an old instinct to scan for what you did wrong.

You may find yourself editing what you say, downplaying your accomplishments, or carefully rehearsing conversations because you already know how easily something can become a criticism or a scorecard.

In Friendships

Passive aggression between friends often hides behind humor.

“Wow, you're actually coming this time?”

Then comes the inevitable:

“I'm just kidding!”

Or maybe someone gives you a compliment that contains a little sting:

“I love that you just don't care what people think about your outfits.”

Was that a compliment?

Or was it a criticism disguised as one?

Sometimes the indirectness happens publicly. A vague comment appears in a group chat after an argument:

“Some people really don't value other people's time.”

You know it's about you.

But if you ask, you're told:

“Why would you assume I was talking about you?”

Now you're not just hurt—you’re questioning yourself.

At Work

Passive aggression can be especially difficult in the workplace because it's often hidden underneath a professional tone.

Someone copies your boss on an email that didn't need to include them.

Someone brings up your mistake in a team meeting instead of speaking to you privately.

Or you receive a compliment like:

“I'm really proud of you for stepping up. I know it's usually not your strong suit.”

Technically, they praised you.

But somehow you walk away feeling smaller.

That's part of the problem with passive aggression. The words can be difficult to challenge because they have been packaged in a way that makes the other person look reasonable.

The Pattern Behind Passive Aggression

Across romantic relationships, families, friendships, and workplaces, the same basic ingredients often appear:

There is a real feeling underneath.

Anger. Jealousy. Resentment. Hurt. Judgment.

But the feeling isn't communicated directly.

Instead, it comes out through silence, sarcasm, withdrawal, backhanded compliments, vague comments, or subtle punishment.

And then there is deniability.

If you challenge it, they can say:

“I didn't mean anything.”

“You're too sensitive.”

“I was joking.”

“I said I was fine.”

And suddenly you're the person defending why you were hurt in the first place.

Is All Passive-Aggressive Behavior Narcissistic?

This is where an important distinction needs to be made.

No.

Not everyone who behaves passively aggressively is a narcissist.

And I think that's an important distinction, particularly for people recovering from covert narcissistic abuse.

We can become so familiar with narcissistic behavior that we start connecting every uncomfortable behavior to narcissism.

But passive aggression by itself does not tell you that someone is a narcissist.

There are different reasons someone may communicate indirectly.

One important difference is fear versus control.

Fear-Based Passive Aggression

Some people become passive aggressive because they are genuinely afraid of conflict.

Maybe they grew up in an environment where disagreement wasn't safe.

Speaking up may have resulted in yelling, punishment, rejection, or dismissal.

So they learned:

“It's safer not to say what I really feel.”

Instead, their frustration leaks out indirectly.

This person may not be trying to manipulate you.

They may actually want the relationship to work but don't know how to communicate safely.

And here's an important clue:

What happens when you gently address the behavior?

A fear-based person may become defensive at first. But if they feel safe enough, they can eventually recognize what they're doing.

They may say:

“You're right. I should have just told you I was upset.”

That's an entirely different response from someone who is using passive aggression as a deliberate strategy.

Narcissistic Passive Aggression

With narcissistic passive aggression, the indirectness can become a tool of control.

The goal isn't simply to avoid conflict.

It can be about punishing you, destabilizing you, making you feel guilty, getting their way, or keeping you off balance—all while maintaining plausible deniability.

And one of the biggest clues is what happens when you name the behavior.

Instead of:

“You're right. I should have told you I was upset.”

You might hear:

“Why are you making this into a thing?”

Or:

“You're really reading into this.”

Or:

“I was actually being nice, and this is how you repay me?”

The focus shifts away from their behavior and onto your reaction.

And this isn't usually an isolated incident.

It's a pattern.

Every time you do something they don't like, you get the silence.

Every disagreement turns into withdrawal.

Every conflict somehow ends with you apologizing just to restore peace.

That's when passive aggression becomes much more concerning.

The Behavior May Be Similar—But the Relationship Is Different

This distinction matters because it changes your strategy.

Someone who is afraid of conflict may be capable of learning healthier communication.

You can encourage them to tell you directly when they're upset.

You can create space for honest conversations.

You can expect growth.

But when passive aggression is being used as a control tactic, repeatedly inviting more openness may simply give the other person more opportunities to manipulate the conversation.

The behavior may look similar on the surface.

But the intention, pattern, and response to accountability can be very different.

You Don't Have to Accept It Just Because They're Not a Narcissist

There is another important piece here.

Even if someone's passive aggression comes from fear rather than narcissism, that doesn't mean you have to live with it indefinitely.

Fear may explain a behavior.

It doesn't automatically make the behavior healthy.

If someone repeatedly refuses to communicate directly, gives you the silent treatment, expects you to decode their feelings, or leaves you constantly wondering what you've done wrong, the relationship is still being affected.

You can't build genuine connection on guesswork.

Healthy relationships require room for people to say:

“I'm angry.”

“That hurt me.”

“I need something different.”

“I'm not okay.”

And they require the other person to be able to hear those things without turning every conversation into a battle.

So don't get stuck on the question:

“Are they a narcissist?”

Sometimes the more useful question is:

“Is this relationship healthy for me?”

Because you don't need a diagnosis to recognize that a behavior is hurting you.

You are allowed to want direct communication.

You are allowed to set boundaries around the silent treatment.

You are allowed to stop participating in the guessing game.

And you are allowed to expect relationships in which you don't have to constantly decode what someone really means.

Not every passive-aggressive person is narcissistic—but you still don't have to live with behavior that keeps honest communication out of reach.

Covert Narcissism and Fight or Flight: 8 Tools for Lowering Your Baseline

You can learn to manage the fight-or-flight spike, catch yourself mid-reaction, and stay regulated during difficult interactions—and still find yourself lying awake at night with your jaw clenched, shoulders tense, and mind racing.

That’s because managing the spike isn’t the same as lowering your baseline.

After years of walking on eggshells, dealing with gaslighting, circular arguments, unpredictable moods, and chronic emotional tension, your nervous system can learn to stay on high alert even when nothing is actively happening. You may find yourself constantly braced, rehearsing conversations in your head, or waiting for the next thing to go wrong.

This is the chronic side of hypervigilance.

When Your Nervous System Gets Stuck “On”

There is a term for the accumulated impact of chronic stress: allostatic load.

In simple terms, your body has been asked to adapt to stress for so long that being braced can start to feel normal. Your shoulders stay tense. Your jaw stays tight. Your sleep becomes restless. Your mind keeps scanning for what might happen next.

Eventually, you may forget what it even feels like to completely relax.

The goal isn't to force yourself to “calm down.” It’s to give your nervous system repeated evidence that it is allowed to come down.

8 Ways to Begin Lowering Your Baseline

These tools aren't designed for the middle of a crisis. They're meant to help you slowly retrain a nervous system that has spent too long in the “on” position.

1. Worry Spot

Choose a specific place where you can intentionally give your worries and rumination a limited amount of time.

Set a timer for five to ten minutes. Let yourself think, speak, or write about what's bothering you. When the timer ends, physically walk away and tell yourself, “That's it for now.”

When the thoughts return later, remind yourself: Not now. I have a time set aside for this.

2. Villain Voice

Catch yourself replaying an argument in your head?

Try replaying the entire conversation in an exaggerated cartoon-villain voice.

It sounds ridiculous—and that's the point.

You're not minimizing what happened. You're taking some of the power and urgency out of the mental replay and reminding your nervous system that this conversation is not happening right now.

3. Letter to Future You

Write a letter to yourself about where you are today.

What is difficult? What are you proud of? What are you learning? Where do you still feel stuck?

Seal it and choose a date—six months or a year from now—to open it.

Later, you'll have tangible evidence of how far you've come.

4. The Doorway Reset

Every time you walk through a doorway, take a breath and notice one thing in the room you're entering.

You can also use a phrase such as:

“New room, new moment.”

The doorway becomes a physical reminder that whatever happened in the previous room doesn't automatically have to follow you into the next moment.

5. The Off-Duty Ritual

Choose one small physical action that tells your body, “The day is over. I can rest now.”

Maybe it's a cup of tea, changing into pajamas, lighting a candle, or playing a particular song.

Repeat it consistently so your body begins to associate that ritual with safety and rest.

6. Compliment Jar

Every night, write one true, kind sentence about yourself and put it in a jar.

After years of being told your feelings, memories, perceptions, or reactions were wrong, rebuilding your relationship with your own self-perception matters.

This gives you a growing collection of evidence—in your own words—that you can trust yourself.

7. The Do-Nothing Timer

Set a timer for five minutes and do absolutely nothing productive.

No phone. No laundry. No planning.

Just sit.

For someone who has lived in chronic hypervigilance, doing nothing can feel surprisingly uncomfortable. This practice gives your body the opportunity to learn that stillness doesn't automatically mean something is wrong.

8. The Petty Playlist

Choose one ridiculous, dramatic, over-the-top song and dance to it.

Badly.

No one is watching. No one is judging you.

You've spent enough time managing everyone else's reactions. This is one moment that belongs completely to you.

You Don't Have to Do All Eight

Healing doesn't have to become another thing you have to do perfectly.

Choose the tools that actually appeal to you. Maybe one makes you laugh. Maybe another feels calming. Maybe one sounds completely ridiculous but turns out to be exactly what you needed.

Start there.

These practices aren't about forcing your nervous system to relax through willpower. They're about giving it small, repeated experiences of safety until it begins to understand that it doesn't have to stay on guard forever.

You don't have to live in the “on” position forever.

This article is adapted from Part 2 of the Covert Narcissism Podcast series on fight or flight.

Disclaimer: This material is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for clinical care or diagnosis. Please consult a healthcare provider for guidance specific to your situation.

Covert Narcissism and Fight or Flight: 8 Tools to Break the Spiral

Have you ever felt your chest tighten before your phone even finishes ringing?

Maybe you see his name on your screen and immediately feel your body change.

Or maybe a friend invites you to dinner, and before you’ve even told your partner, you’re already rehearsing how you’re going to explain yourself.

Maybe you’re taking a class, going to work, meeting a friend, or simply doing something ordinary—and instead of enjoying it, part of your mind is already thinking:

How is he going to react?

What mood will he be in when I get home?

Is this going to become a problem?

These moments may look insignificant from the outside. But when you’ve spent years experiencing unpredictable reactions, criticism, withdrawal, guilt, or conflict around ordinary parts of your life, your body can learn to anticipate danger before anything actually happens.

That is hypervigilance.

And it can be exhausting.

Your Body Learned to Brace

One of the things I want survivors to understand is that these reactions aren't necessarily about the phone call, the dinner, or the class.

They're about what your body has learned to expect.

When ordinary things repeatedly come with an emotional price—silent treatment, criticism, anger, guilt, accusations, or some other reaction—you can begin to associate autonomy with danger.

You make plans.

You pay a price.

You spend time with friends.

You pay a price.

You take a class.

You pay a price.

Eventually, your nervous system starts anticipating the price before you've even done anything.

That is why you might find yourself bracing in the grocery store, at work, in the classroom, or lying in bed at night.

Your body has learned the pattern.

And this doesn't mean you're "too sensitive."

It doesn't mean you're weak.

It doesn't mean you're overreacting.

Your nervous system is attempting to protect you based on what it has experienced repeatedly.

The problem is that eventually the alarm can start going off even when the immediate situation isn't dangerous.

Fight, Flight, Freeze, or Fawn

Fight or flight is part of the body's survival response. When your brain perceives a threat—whether that threat is immediate or something your nervous system has learned to associate with danger—your body can become activated.

Your heart may race.

Your breathing may change.

Your muscles may tense.

Your thoughts may speed up.

You may feel an overwhelming urge to act, escape, defend yourself, or make the situation better immediately.

And fight or flight isn't the only way this response can appear.

You may:

Fight: become angry, defensive, or feel an overwhelming need to argue your point.

Flight: want to escape, leave, disappear, or avoid the situation altogether.

Freeze: become quiet, numb, disconnected, or unable to figure out what to say.

Fawn: immediately apologize, appease, explain, or try to make the other person happy.

These aren't four completely different problems.

They're different ways your nervous system may have learned to survive.

Why "Just Calm Down" Doesn't Work

One of the most frustrating things about being activated is knowing intellectually that you're safe while your body is screaming that you're not.

You may tell yourself:

"I'm fine."

"This isn't a big deal."

"I need to calm down."

But your body isn't necessarily responding to logic in that moment.

That's why trying to simply think your way out of the reaction can be so difficult.

Instead of fighting the response, try working with your body.

That brings us to the tools.

8 Tools for When Your Body Starts to Spiral

You don't need to use all eight.

In fact, I recommend choosing one or two that feel realistic for you and practicing them when you're calm. That way, they're easier to remember when you're activated.

1. Match & Release

When you're emotionally overwhelmed, your body may have a tremendous amount of physical energy.

Instead of forcing yourself to immediately become calm, try giving your body a safe way to release some of that energy.

You might:

• Shake your arms and body.

• Do jumping jacks.

• Run up and down stairs.

• Stomp your feet.

• Move your body vigorously for a short period of time.

The goal isn't to punish yourself or become more agitated.

It's to allow some of that physical activation to move through you.

Once the intensity begins to come down, then move into grounding.

2. Cold Shock

Cold sensations can be a quick way to shift your physical state.

Try splashing cool or cold water on your face, running cool water over your wrists, or holding something cold.

If cold exposure causes you discomfort or isn't appropriate for you, skip this one and choose another tool.

3. Deep Roar

Sometimes your body needs to make noise.

If you're somewhere private—or safely alone in your car—you can try a forceful vocalization such as a growl, roar, or strong exhale.

It may feel ridiculous at first.

That's okay.

Sometimes healing isn't particularly dignified.

The goal is to interrupt the tension and give yourself permission to express some of the energy your body is holding.

4. Squeeze & Drop

This is a quieter option when you can't jump around or shake your entire body.

Tense your muscles for several seconds.

Clench your fists.

Tighten your shoulders.

Tighten your legs and core.

Then release everything at once.

You can do this sitting at a desk, in your car, or even standing in line.

No one has to know.

5. Circuit Breaker

Sometimes the best tool is simply leaving the environment for a moment.

Go outside.

Walk to another room.

Step into your car.

Take a short walk.

Get some fresh air.

This isn't necessarily avoidance.

Sometimes your nervous system needs a change in environment before it can begin to settle.

Think of it as flipping the circuit breaker.

6. Butterfly Tapping

Cross your arms over your chest and gently alternate tapping your left and right shoulders.

Left.

Right.

Left.

Right.

Keep the rhythm slow and steady.

This is a form of bilateral stimulation that some people find calming and grounding.

It's also discreet enough to use when you're somewhere you don't want other people to know you're struggling.

7. Weighted Pressure

Sometimes your body responds well to firm, steady pressure.

You can:

• Give yourself a firm hug.

• Press your palms firmly against a wall.

• Wrap yourself in a blanket.

• Use a weighted blanket if that is comfortable and appropriate for you.

The goal is to provide your body with a steady physical sensation that can help you feel more grounded.

8. Get Curious

This may be my favorite tool.

When you're deeply reactive, your brain is focused on what is happening and what you need to do about it.

Curiosity changes the question.

Instead of immediately reacting, ask yourself:

What will happen if I don't act on this in the next five minutes?

Why does this feel so urgent?

Where am I feeling this in my body?

What would help my body feel better right now?

If I had to give this feeling a name, what would I call it?

Is it fear?

Dread?

Grief?

Anger?

Shame?

Feeling like you're in trouble?

The goal isn't to talk yourself out of the feeling.

It's to become an observer of the feeling.

You are creating just enough space between you and the reaction to interrupt the spiral.

The Sequence Matters

One thing I've learned is that you don't necessarily have to jump straight into quiet grounding techniques when your body is at its highest level of activation.

Sometimes your body needs to move first.

Think:

Curiosity → Physical Release → Grounding

First, get curious.

Then, if necessary, give your body a safe way to discharge some of that physical energy.

Then move into grounding.

Deep breathing.

Sensory awareness.

Music.

Feeling your feet on the floor.

Noticing what's around you.

The goal isn't to force yourself to become perfectly calm.

The goal is to help your body come back down.

What About Prevention?

These tools are incredibly useful when you're already activated.

But there is another piece of healing that matters just as much: lowering your baseline.

If your nervous system is constantly operating at a high level of alertness, you're going to spend a lot of time putting out fires.

Prevention means working on the system when you aren't in crisis.

That might include:

Regulating regularly

Practice calming and regulating activities when you're already relatively calm—not only when you're overwhelmed.

Protecting your sleep

Sleep deprivation can make emotional regulation much harder. Rest isn't a luxury when you're healing. It's part of taking care of your nervous system.

Moving your body

Regular movement can be another way to release accumulated stress and support overall regulation.

Rebuilding your outside world

Isolation can make everything feel bigger.

Reconnect with friends.

Find community.

Have people in your life who aren't part of the relationship dynamic.

Your entire emotional world should not have to revolve around one person's moods.

Learning your triggers

Pay attention to the situations that consistently activate you.

Maybe it's making plans.

Maybe it's coming home after spending time with friends.

Maybe it's receiving a certain type of text.

Maybe it's silence.

When you know your patterns, you can recognize activation sooner.

Practicing small boundaries

You don't have to begin with the biggest, hardest boundary of your life.

Start small.

Practice using your voice in situations that feel safer.

Writing down reality

When your perception has repeatedly been questioned, documenting your own experience can help you stay connected to what you actually experienced.

What happened?

What did you feel?

What did you observe?

You don't need to convince anyone else.

This is about staying connected to yourself.

Reducing unnecessary exposure

When you have choices about how often you communicate, how much you explain, or how available you make yourself for escalating conversations, reducing unnecessary exposure can give your nervous system fewer opportunities to go into alarm mode.

Of course, this isn't possible for everyone—especially when children, co-parenting, finances, or other circumstances require continued contact.

Do what is realistically available to you.

Your Body Isn't Betraying You

I think about that woman in the grocery store.

Phone against her ear.

Chest tight.

Hands cold.

Bracing before anything had even happened.

I wish I could go back and tell her something.

Your body isn't betraying you.

Your body learned to protect you.

It learned through repetition.

Phone call by phone call.

Conversation by conversation.

Reaction by reaction.

And just as your nervous system learned to brace, it can gradually learn something different.

Not through willpower.

Not by telling yourself to stop overreacting.

Not by pretending you aren't afraid.

But by understanding what is happening, learning tools that help you move through activation, and creating a life where your nervous system has more opportunities to experience safety.

And I want to be honest about something:

This isn't a one-time fix.

I still catch myself bracing sometimes.

A delayed text.

A silence in a room.

A situation that reminds my body of something it learned a long time ago.

That's not failure.

It's an old pattern taking time to unlearn.

The difference is that now I recognize what's happening.

I have language for it.

And I have tools.

Some days curiosity is enough.

Some days my body needs movement first.

Some days I need to shake it out, walk, breathe, and then ground myself.

All of that is okay.

The goal isn't to become a person who never gets activated.

The goal is to become someone who can come back down faster, recognize what is happening sooner, and trust herself again.

If your body has been bracing for a long time, be patient with it.

It was trying to protect you.

Now you can begin teaching it something new.

A note from Renee: The information provided by Renee Swanson, the Covert Narcissism Podcast, and CNG Life Coaching is for educational purposes only. It is not intended for diagnosis or to substitute for clinical care. Please consult an appropriate health care provider for guidance specific to your situation.

This material discusses narcissism in general. Renee shares experiences from her own life and from conversations with survivors over many years. This material does not claim that any specific person has narcissism and should not be used to make or support an allegation that a specific person is a narcissist. Permission is not granted to link to or repost this material for that purpose.

This Is Not Okay — The Book Is Coming

“So it’s okay, Mom.”

Those four words came out of my young teenage son’s mouth after his dad handed him a cherry slushie from Sonic.

A peace offering.

A reset button.

A way to make the hurt disappear without ever naming it, acknowledging it, or taking responsibility for it.

And in that moment, something in me screamed:

No. It isn’t. This is NOT okay.

That moment in my kitchen nearly ten years ago is where my book started.

Not the writing of it—that came later.

But the seeing of it.

It was the moment the fog cleared just long enough for me to recognize what I had been living inside for years.

And I knew: This is not okay.

Today, I finally get to tell you something I’ve been sitting on for a long time.

My book, This Is Not Okay: Escaping the Invisible Grip of Covert Narcissistic Abuse, is coming this fall.

And I cannot wait to share it with you.

Why I Wrote This Book

If you’ve been part of this community for a while, you know the Covert Narcissism Podcast began as a place to name what so many of us couldn’t name for years.

The confusion.

The self-doubt.

The exhaustion of loving someone who always seemed just out of reach.

The feeling that their kindness came with conditions.

Being told you were “too sensitive” so many times that eventually you started believing it yourself.

Defending someone to your friends and family, only to go home and wonder why you felt so small.

This podcast has always been about giving those experiences language.

But it has also been about something bigger: community.

The book is the next step.

It’s the fuller version of everything we’ve been talking about here—organized, expanded, and put into your hands so you can return to it whenever you need it.

I didn’t set out to write a book.

I set out to survive a relationship.

I didn’t set out to become an expert on covert narcissism.

I set out to create a family and a home.

I never saw this part of my journey coming.

For years, I did what so many survivors do.

I told myself:

It’s not that bad.

Every marriage has problems.

At least there aren’t police reports.

At least there aren’t broken bones.

I should be grateful.

I minimized everything.

I excused everything.

I stretched myself thin trying to keep the peace, convinced that if I just loved harder, communicated more clearly, and stayed patient enough, everything would finally be okay.

It would finally be enough.

And we would finally be happy.

It never was enough.

Because that’s not how this kind of abuse works.

When Abuse Doesn't Look Like Abuse

Covert narcissism doesn’t always announce itself.

It doesn’t necessarily rage in public or leave marks anyone can see.

It’s quiet.

It’s a slow turn of a dial rather than an on/off switch.

I describe it in the book like trying to catch a ghost.

You see it clearly for one second, but then it blurs.

You grasp it and think, I’ve got it now.

And then it disappears.

You’re left wondering if you imagined the whole thing.

Until it appears again.

Undeniable.

And then it’s gone again.

I wrote this book because I lived in that confusion.

I spent years trying to understand what was happening.

I dug in desperately because I wanted to save my boys from the pain they were experiencing.

Since then, I’ve spent even more years working with clients who are living through the exact same patterns.

And I realized something:

The world needs more than descriptions of narcissism that focus only on the loud, obvious version.

We need language for the quiet version.

For the person who keeps asking:

“Is this really abuse if no one is yelling?”

“Is this really abuse if no one is bleeding?”

The answer is yes.

The Five Stages of the Book

This book moves through five stages, because healing rarely happens in a straight line.

It’s a journey of:

Recognizing. Understanding. Seeing. Untangling. Reclaiming.

Each stage takes you a little deeper into understanding covert narcissism, its impact, and what happens to us when we live inside these dynamics.

1. Understanding Covert Narcissism

Maybe this is where you are right now.

Something is happening in your relationship, but you don’t have the words for it yet.

This stage gives you those words.

Not every covert narcissist looks the same.

Some withdraw into silence.

Some charm everyone around them.

Some quote scripture on Sunday.

Some yell and rage.

There isn’t one single mask.

I describe covert narcissism as a spectrum—not an on/off switch.

The packaging changes.

The harm doesn’t.

2. Identifying the Strategies

This is where we get specific.

Very specific.

We break down the strategies that create the grip: avoidance, reality distortion, emotional manipulation, gaslighting, blame shifting, triangulation, love bombing, devaluing, and the ways control can show up in intimacy and sex.

One concept I explore is what I call the mental list.

It’s the list of things you decide you will never say again.

I’ll never bring that up again.

I won’t talk about that subject.

I’ll wait until they’re in a better mood.

I know what happens when I say that.

The list starts small.

A subject here.

A tone there.

A particular time of day you learn to avoid.

And eventually, you look up and realize how much of yourself you’ve edited out.

Your words.

Your humor.

Your smile.

Your honesty.

Your personality.

I wrote:

“Every expression becomes a calculation: Will this upset them? Will they twist it? Will I pay for this later?”

That realization can be painful.

But it can also be the beginning of reclaiming yourself.

3. Seeing the Invisible Framework

Covert narcissism doesn’t stay contained inside an argument.

It walks with you.

It seeps into the way you talk to yourself.

It affects your children, sometimes before they even have language for what they’re absorbing.

And it shapes how the outside world sees you—especially when other people only ever see the charming version of the person you experience behind closed doors.

This stage explores FOG: fear, obligation, and guilt.

It also looks at what happens to children raised inside these dynamics and how they learn to read a room before they learn to understand what they’re feeling.

If you’re a parent, this may be one of the hardest—and most important—parts of the journey.

Because covert narcissistic abuse doesn’t just affect the person experiencing it directly.

It affects the whole family system.

4. Understanding the Trap

At this point, we stop looking only at the narcissist and begin looking at you.

Not to blame you.

Absolutely not.

But to understand you.

Why didn’t you see it sooner?

Why did you keep making excuses?

Why did you doubt yourself?

Why did you stay?

This is where we begin to understand cognitive dissonance and the ways our minds try to protect us when reality becomes too difficult to reconcile.

This stage also addresses something many survivors carry enormous shame about: reactive abuse.

Maybe you finally snapped.

Maybe you yelled.

Maybe you slammed a door.

Maybe you said something you regret.

And then they stood there calmly and said:

“See? This is why we can’t talk. You’re the abusive one.”

I wrote:

“Reactive abuse doesn’t mean you’re unstable, abusive, or incapable of emotional control. It means you’ve been living in an environment that repeatedly overwhelms your nervous system while offering no repair, no accountability, and no genuine connection.”

Just because you were the one who eventually broke does not automatically make you the problem.

Understanding the larger pattern matters.

5. Reclaiming Yourself

This is the stage I hold with the most hope.

Because awareness isn’t the destination.

Awareness says:

“This is not okay.”

Healing says:

“Now I’m going to do something about it.”

Reclaiming yourself can happen whether you leave or whether staying is the reality of your life right now.

There is no ultimatum here.

There is no single path that every survivor must follow.

There is simply a way forward—at your own pace.

Throughout the book, I also weave in grounding and nervous-system practices because I don’t want you to understand your story only intellectually.

Sometimes your mind knows something long before your body feels safe enough to believe it.

Healing means helping your mind and body get back on the same page.

This Was Never Just My Story

There’s something that matters to me even more than the book itself.

The community.

This was never supposed to be about my story.

From the beginning—before there was a podcast, before there was a manuscript—the mission was always bigger than me.

The moment I realized I wasn’t the only one living this nightmare, I desperately wanted to find the others who were there too.

I wanted to hear their stories.

I wanted to connect through the struggle.

To cry together.

To laugh together.

To finally be able to say:

“Me too.”

My mission became about neighbor helping neighbor.

It became about the idea that none of us are supposed to do this alone.

Because the moment one person stands up and says, “This is not okay,” it becomes easier for the next person to stand up too.

And then the next.

And the next.

That’s how an entire room eventually ends up standing together.

That’s how community works.

This book has my name on the cover.

But it was never mine alone.

It comes from thousands of conversations with people just like you—people who trusted me with their stories so that someone else could finally see their own story reflected back at them.

Every chapter carries pieces of this community inside it.

This isn’t my voice anymore. It’s ours.

You Don't Have to Heal Alone

If you’ve spent time in CNG, you already know what community can look like.

Our Facebook group exists because people needed a place to say the quiet part out loud and be met with:

“Me too.”

Not:

“You’re overreacting.”

Not:

“Why didn’t you just leave?”

Not:

“They seem so nice.”

Just:

“I understand.”

Group coaching exists because healing can go deeper when you’re not doing it in isolation.

And our retreats have shown me something I will never forget.

I recently returned home from our retreat in Colorado, and honestly, it was the best one we’ve ever had.

There is something powerful about survivors sitting across from one another, face to face, and realizing:

I’m not the only one.

I’m not broken.

I’m not too much.

I’m not imagining this.

People walk into these retreats as strangers carrying stories they’ve often never said out loud.

And they leave with real friendships and a community of people who understand.

Watching that happen reminded me all over again why this work has never been about me.

It’s about all of us standing in a circle together.

This Book Is an Invitation

So when This Is Not Okay comes out this fall, I want you to think of it less like my memoir and more like an invitation into our community.

An invitation to bring more people into this circle.

More neighbors.

More voices.

More survivors who no longer have to sit alone in their kitchen wondering if what they’re experiencing is real.

More people who don’t have to cry in the night feeling completely invisible.

The book opens the door.

The community is waiting on the other side.

Whatever has been confusing you in your relationship, whatever you’ve minimized because it wasn’t loud enough to count—it counts.

You don’t have to wait for things to become worse before you’re allowed to acknowledge that something is wrong.

You don’t have to have bruises.

You don’t have to have a police report.

You don’t have to convince anyone else.

If something inside you keeps saying, This isn’t okay, listen.

That voice may be the beginning of seeing clearly again.

And this fall, I get to put the words to that journey into your hands.

This Is Not Okay.

And you don’t have to walk through it alone.

As always, I wish you so much peace on your journey of healing.

Did I Make Him a Narcissist by Reading Too Much?

When I first started learning about covert narcissism, I was terrified.

Not just because of what I was reading—but because of what I began to recognize.

I hid the books. I deleted my browser history. I worried about what would happen if my husband discovered I was trying to understand our relationship. But eventually, another fear took hold.

What if I was wrong?

What if I had read so much about covert narcissism that I had convinced myself it was happening? What if I had taken a flawed, difficult, imperfect human being and unknowingly forced him into a label that didn't belong?

If you've ever had that thought, you are far from alone.

When "Narcissist" Becomes a Buzzword

Today, the word narcissist is everywhere. People use it to describe ex-partners, difficult bosses, family members, celebrities—even strangers online. When a word becomes that common, it's easy to wonder whether it's losing its meaning.

That can create an unsettling question for survivors:

"Am I seeing something that's really there... or am I seeing what I've been reading about?"

That question doesn't make you irrational.

It actually speaks to your integrity.

Most survivors don't want to unfairly judge another person. They desperately want to get it right.

The Difference Between Looking for Evidence and Finding Recognition

Before I ever read a book about narcissism, I read countless books on relationships.

I wanted to fix my marriage.

I read about communication, love languages, conflict resolution, and healthy relationships. While those books were helpful, none of them stopped me in my tracks.

Then I opened The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists by Eleanor Payson.

Something happened that had never happened before.

The words didn't simply make sense intellectually.

They landed in my body.

Certain passages felt like someone had been secretly watching my life and writing it down. I wasn't searching for proof against my husband. I was discovering language for experiences I had never been able to explain.

That wasn't manifestation.

It was recognition.

One Question Changed Everything

One idea from Eleanor Payson's book became the measuring stick I still use today.

She explains that all of us become self-centered during difficult seasons. We all have moments when we need extra support or become more focused on ourselves.

That's part of being human.

But healthy people eventually return to balance.

They reconnect.

They repair.

They begin giving again after a season of taking.

That simple question became incredibly powerful for me:

Do they return to baseline?

Not, "Have they ever acted selfishly?"

Not, "Have they ever had a bad year?"

But...

Do they come back?

Do they genuinely reconnect?

Do they show empathy again?

Do they consistently care about your experience—not just their own?

That distinction helped separate ordinary human imperfection from an enduring narcissistic pattern.

You Didn't Create What You Recognized

Many survivors worry that reading about narcissism somehow planted the idea in their minds.

But books don't create personality patterns.

Podcasts don't invent manipulation.

Education doesn't manufacture emotional abuse.

What education does is give language to experiences your nervous system has often recognized long before your mind could explain them.

Sometimes your body knows the truth years before your vocabulary catches up.

Trust What You've Been Seeing

If certain words or descriptions have leapt off the page for you, don't immediately assume you've imagined everything.

Instead, gently ask yourself:

• Does this person consistently return to empathy?

• Is there genuine repair after conflict?

• Do their actions eventually match their words?

• Or have I been waiting for that return trip for years?

Those questions aren't about diagnosing someone.

They're about understanding your own lived experience.

Final Thoughts

If you've been afraid that you've somehow "created" the narcissism by reading too much about it, I hope you can let that burden go.

You didn't build someone out of the pages of a book.

You finally found words for what your heart and body had been trying to tell you all along.

And sometimes, healing begins not when we discover something new—but when we finally trust what we've known all along.

Narcissistic Entitlement Explained: The Role They Expected You to Play

If you had asked me years ago to describe my marriage, I would not have used words like covert narcissism, coercive control, gaslighting, or passive-aggressive behavior.

I didn't have the language for what was happening.

I didn't even have the awareness.

For a long time, I thought my husband and I simply had different expectations. Different ways of communicating. Different ideas about marriage, parenting, respect, and what it meant to be a family.

But eventually, I began to see something I had been living inside for years.

Our expectations weren't simply different.

They were fundamentally different kinds of expectations.

My Expectations Were About “Us.” His Were About “Me.”

I expected shared communication and mutual respect.

He expected to be communicated with and respected.

I expected feelings to be shared and carried by both of us.

He expected to share his feelings and have me carry them.

I expected us to learn and grow together.

He expected me to learn, grow, and become better at meeting his expectations.

I expected happiness together.

He expected to be happy—and believed it was my job to make that happen.

It took me a long time to understand the difference.

My expectations had a “we” built into them.

His expectations had an “I” at the center, with everyone else positioned around him.

I expected communication to go both directions. He expected me to communicate at him.

I expected both of us to carry our emotions. He expected me to hold what he felt.

I expected growth to happen side by side. He expected me to keep improving at meeting his standard.

I expected us to create happiness together. He expected me to produce his happiness.

I wasn't in a marriage with mismatched expectations.

I was in a marriage where only one of us was actually expecting a marriage.

The other person was expecting a role to be played.

The Role of “Wife”

As his wife, the expectations of me were concrete and behavioral.

I was expected to:

• Take care of the family

• Clean the house

• Have dinner ready

• Care for the children

• Spend time with him

• Watch what he wanted to watch

• Be available to him

• Be intimate with him

These were all things I actually did.

They were tasks and behaviors. Things that could be evaluated, criticized, or corrected.

But his expectations of himself looked completely different.

As the husband, his expectations were largely about how he would be treated.

He expected to be respected.

Honored.

Valued.

Cared for.

Given attention when he came home.

Notice the difference?

His expectations were not primarily about what he was going to do.

They were about what he was going to receive.

It was as if he believed that simply being “the husband” entitled him to respect and admiration, regardless of how he treated me.

He didn't have to earn respect through his behavior.

He simply had to occupy the position.

And it was my job to provide the respect, the attention, the admiration, and the emotional care he believed he was owed.

His self-expectation wasn't really a self-expectation at all.

It was an expectation of everyone around him.

When the Rules Are Different for Each Person

This dynamic often hides inside ordinary, everyday moments.

He corrected how I parked the car and insisted I do it his way.

He corrected how I cleaned the bathroom, even though he rarely cleaned it himself.

Because he was the husband, he automatically assumed he knew the best way to do things.

The issue wasn't necessarily the parking.

Or the bathroom.

The deeper issue was that I was expected to perform my role correctly while he was entitled to occupy his.

If he was home, I was expected to be home with him.

If we watched television, he chose what we watched.

If he wanted to spend hours gaming or doing something on his own, he simply did it.

He didn't need to ask whether I wanted to do something else.

But if I wanted to spend time doing my own things, I was made to feel selfish or as though I wasn't giving him enough attention.

The same behavior was treated completely differently depending on who was doing it.

His needs were legitimate.

Mine required justification.

He was entitled to time for himself.

I felt guilty for wanting the same thing.

And that is how entitlement can become difficult to recognize from inside a relationship.

It doesn't always look like arrogance.

Sometimes it looks like two people having different expectations.

Sometimes it looks like normal marriage friction.

Sometimes it looks like compromise.

But if only one person is consistently expected to adjust, improve, accommodate, and reflect, the relationship is not operating on mutual standards.

The Exhaustion of Being the Only One Who Reflects

When a self-reflective, growth-oriented, empathetic person is in a relationship with someone who is self-focused and unwilling to examine themselves, the imbalance can become devastating.

A self-reflective person enters conflict asking:

What was my part in this?

What could I have done differently?

What can I learn from this?

Those are healthy questions when both people are willing to ask them.

But what happens when only one person is doing the self-examination?

Every disagreement begins to get filtered through the person who is willing to look at themselves.

Over time, that person starts carrying the weight of both sides of every problem.

Not because they caused both sides.

Because they are the only one willing to examine their own.

Meanwhile, the other person may be focused on:

• Whether they are being respected

• Whether they are being treated properly

• Whether their image is being protected

• Whether they are receiving the attention they believe they deserve

The result is not a fifty-fifty relationship where both people are reflecting and growing.

It is one person doing nearly all of the self-examination while the other person waits for them to fix the problem by fixing themselves.

This is why it can be so exhausting.

You keep searching for your fifty percent of the problem.

You genuinely want to find it.

You want to grow.

You want to do better.

But the other fifty percent is never actually being carried by the other person.

When “Husband” Becomes “Dad”

Eventually, I began to recognize that this same mindset did not only exist in the role of “husband.”

It also existed in the role of “dad.”

If our children did not eagerly greet him the moment he walked through the door, he could take it as a personal offense.

If he was talking to them, they were expected to give him their complete and undivided attention.

One moment has stayed with me.

Our son was about seven years old and standing against the living room wall while his dad was fussing at him.

I don't even remember what the issue was.

Our son looked defeated.

Worn down.

As he stood there listening, he began moving a pencil in his fingers.

Nothing dramatic.

Just the kind of small movement children often make when they are overwhelmed or trying to regulate themselves.

His dad noticed.

“Why can't you just pay attention to me?”

Our son let the pencil fall from his fingers.

On other occasions, his dad would simply stop talking mid-sentence.

Then he would wait.

Silently.

He would wait until our son realized why his father had stopped talking.

And our son would eventually drop whatever was distracting him, visibly ashamed.

That wasn't teaching.

Teaching is about helping another person learn.

This was about control.

It was about demonstrating power and dominance because he was “the father.”

The content of what he was saying almost didn't matter.

What mattered was whether the room was oriented toward him.

The focus was on the child's response to him.

Not on his responsibility to the child.

And that distinction matters.

Because being a father is not a status that automatically makes someone worthy of unquestioned attention.

Being a father comes with responsibility.

The same is true of being a husband.

Or a wife.

Or a mother.

A title does not automatically make someone entitled to special treatment.

Behavioral Standards vs. Status Standards

This distinction helped me understand narcissistic entitlement in a way I had never been able to before.

There are behavioral standards.

These are expectations about what you actually do.

You can meet them.

You can fail them.

They require ongoing effort.

I was held to a behavioral standard throughout my marriage.

I was expected to behave a certain way, dress a certain way, be available, be attentive, and continually improve.

I could always be doing something wrong.

I could always be corrected.

I could always be told I needed to do better.

Then there are what I would call status standards.

A status standard is not primarily about what you do.

It is about how you expect to be treated.

And the treatment is assumed to be owed because of your position.

“The husband.”

“The dad.”

“The wife.”

“The mom.”

The title itself becomes attached to authority.

The person doesn't have to continually earn the treatment they expect.

Everyone else is expected to provide it.

That is the difference.

A behavioral standard requires you to keep putting in effort.

A status standard requires everyone else to keep complying with your image of who you are and what you deserve.

One is a role you perform.

The other is closer to a throne you occupy.

Narcissistic Entitlement: “I Am Owed This Regardless”

We often talk about narcissistic entitlement as a sense of being special or deserving more than other people.

But I think there is a more precise way to understand it.

It is the difference between:

“I have to act a certain way to be loved and respected.”

And:

“I am owed a certain kind of treatment regardless of how I act.”

The first requires you to keep earning something.

The second requires everyone else to keep showing up correctly.

When the person with the status standard is not treated the way they believe they deserve, the problem is rarely considered to be their own behavior.

If I took time for myself, I was selfish.

If our son looked away while being lectured, he was disrespectful.

The question was rarely:

What am I expecting from them?

Am I treating them with the same respect I demand?

What responsibility do I have in this relationship?

The issue was always what everyone else was doing wrong.

When You Are the Only One “In Trouble”

If you've spent years feeling like you are the only person in the relationship whose behavior is constantly examined, corrected, and managed, this may be something worth looking at.

If the other person's behavior somehow never becomes the subject of the conversation, that may not be because you are actually worse at relationships.

It may be because you are operating under a behavioral standard while the other person is operating under a status standard.

Two completely different sets of rules.

Applied within the same household.

This is also why conversations about narcissistic abuse can become so confusing.

You may try to point out the double standard.

You may try to explain that the expectations are not mutual.

And instead of curiosity or self-reflection, you may receive defensiveness, blame, attacks, or a reversal of the situation.

You may find yourself being accused of the very thing you were trying to discuss.

This is where patterns like gaslighting and DARVO can become part of the dynamic.

You are trying to talk about the gap.

The conversation gets turned back onto you.

And suddenly, you are once again the person defending your behavior.

You Are Allowed to Notice the Gap

If you recognize pieces of your own life in this, I want you to know something:

You are allowed to notice the difference between the standards being applied to you and the standards being applied to the other person.

You are allowed to notice when expectations are not mutual.

You are allowed to say:

“The rules seem to be different for each of us.”

You are allowed to ask:

“Why am I expected to change while your behavior is never part of the conversation?”

And you are allowed to observe what happens next.

Do you receive curiosity?

Self-reflection?

Mutual understanding?

Or do you receive defensiveness, attacking, blame, and a reversal of the conversation?

You don't have to win the argument to see the pattern.

You don't have to make the other person agree with your reality in order for you to recognize it.

Sometimes self-advocacy begins with something much quieter.

Simply seeing things for what they are.

You may not have been in a relationship with two people who had different expectations.

You may have been in a relationship where one person expected mutuality—and the other expected a role to be played.

And recognizing that difference can be an important first step in understanding what you have actually been living through.

You deserve relationships where respect is mutual.

Where emotional responsibility is shared.

Where growth goes in both directions.

Where your needs are not treated as selfish simply because someone else has needs too.

And where no one is placed on a throne while everyone else is expected to serve.

Covert Narcissism in Disney: What Beauty and the Beast and Tangled Teach Us About Abuse

What if two of Disney’s most beloved love stories actually reveal two very different patterns of narcissistic control?

Both Beauty and the Beast and Tangled appear, on the surface, to be love stories. Both end with a rescue, a transformation, and a happy ending set to music.

But look more closely, and these stories reveal two very different ways control can operate.

One is loud.

There is rage, intimidation, imprisonment, and an explosive temper. There are moments you can point to and say, “There. That’s when something went terribly wrong.”

The other is quiet.

There is no screaming. No obvious locked door. No dramatic moment that immediately looks like abuse. Instead, control is wrapped in concern, affection, guilt, and protection.

And yet, by the end, a young woman has spent her entire life trapped in a tower believing that her cage is love.

These two stories offer a fascinating way to understand the difference between overt abuse and covert control—and why covert narcissistic abuse can be so difficult to recognize.

Sometimes control looks like rage. Sometimes it looks like a warm smile and a locked tower door.

Beauty and the Beast: Control Before Consent

Let's begin with Beauty and the Beast.

The terms of this relationship are established before Belle ever has a meaningful choice.

Belle's father enters the Beast's property while seeking shelter from a storm. The Beast's response is immediate imprisonment. When Belle arrives looking for her father, she is not offered a conversation or a negotiation.

Instead, she is given a choice:

Her father goes free if she takes his place.

One imprisonment is exchanged for another.

The relationship begins under duress. Belle's freedom is traded for her father's, and she has no say in the terms.

This is not love at first sight.

It is a hostage exchange that the story gradually reframes as the beginning of a love story.

The early clues about the Beast's character seem to disappear as the story progresses. The imprisonment becomes part of the backstory. The rage becomes something we are encouraged to look past.

The story asks us to focus on the moments when he is kind.

But the earlier behavior still happened.

The Temper and the Rules

Once Belle is in the castle, the Beast does not welcome her with gentleness and hospitality.

He intimidates her.

He roars at her.

He scares her.

He forbids her from entering the West Wing without explaining why. When she gets close to it, his anger escalates.

Eventually, Belle flees into the night and into a snowstorm rather than remain near him.

Sit with that for a moment.

She is frightened enough of him to risk wolves and a blizzard rather than stay in the same building.

That is a person recognizing, on some level, that she does not feel safe.

Many survivors of abuse describe something similar: rules that were never explained, only enforced. A temper that made asking questions feel dangerous. A constant underlying sense that something could change at any moment.

A life lived on eggshells.

When the Source of Fear Becomes the Source of Safety

Then comes one of the most psychologically significant moments in the story.

After Belle flees, wolves attack her.

The Beast follows her and fights them off, protecting her. He is injured in the process.

The story treats this as the moment Belle begins to soften toward him.

But look at the sequence:

The Beast's rage is what caused Belle to flee into the dangerous night.

Then he becomes the person who rescues her from the danger.

The source of fear becomes the source of safety.

This is the foundation of trauma bonding.

The nervous system can begin to associate the person who creates the danger with the relief that follows when the danger ends.

Fear is followed by relief.

Rage is followed by kindness.

Threat is followed by rescue.

And that relief can be misinterpreted as love.

This is one of the most powerful dynamics in a narcissistic relationship.

Kindness Does Not Erase the Pattern

After the wolf attack, the Beast begins showing Belle glimpses of kindness.

He gives her access to the library. He learns to treat her differently. He shows vulnerability. They dance.

These moments are compelling.

And they are real.

That is what makes these relationships so confusing.

The person may genuinely be capable of kindness. They may be warm, vulnerable, funny, generous, and loving at times.

But kindness in isolated moments does not necessarily mean the entire pattern has changed.

The kindness may coexist with the volatility.

The mask and the crown can exist at the same time.

The library and the dancing are the mask.

The person who imprisoned a stranger and screamed a young woman into a blizzard is also part of the same person.

Both realities have to be considered.

In real life, we often make the mistake of deciding that the gentle version is the person's "true self," while the frightening version is some separate malfunction.

But what if both are simply parts of the same person?

Why Belle Stays

Belle stays because she is smart, kind, and observant.

Not despite those qualities—because of them.

She recognizes that there is gentleness in the Beast.

And she is not wrong.

That is what makes this dynamic so disorienting. The problem is not that she fails to see the truth.

The problem is that two truths exist at the same time.

He is capable of gentleness.

He is also capable of rage.

The mistake is believing that the gentle version is the "real" person and the frightening version is somehow separate.

Add isolation to the equation, and the dynamic becomes even more difficult to escape.

Belle is in a castle far from everyone she knows. There is no community around her. No outside perspective. No one regularly reminding her what normal looks like.

Whether isolation is physical or emotional, the impact can be devastating.

It creates the conditions that allow someone to remain in a relationship long after they have begun to recognize that something is wrong.

Tangled: The Quiet Cage

Now let's move to the other end of the spectrum.

Tangled offers a powerful example of covert control.

Mother Gothel does not control Rapunzel through explosive rage.

She does not need to scream.

She does not need to physically force her back into the tower.

Instead, she uses guilt, fear, doubt, and conditional warmth.

And that is precisely what makes her control so difficult to recognize.

When a Cage Is Reframed as Protection

Rapunzel has been isolated in a tower for essentially her entire life.

Described plainly, it sounds like imprisonment.

But Gothel does not present the tower as a prison.

She presents it as protection.

The outside world is dangerous.

The tower is safe.

Gothel is the person who knows best.

Rapunzel is safer staying where she is.

This is isolation dressed up as devotion.

Rapunzel does not initially experience the tower as a cage because it was never presented to her as one.

It was presented as love.

But a cage is still a cage, even when it is decorated with flowers.

This is one of the defining features of covert control.

It rarely announces itself as control.

It presents itself as concern.

As protection.

As devotion.

As love.

Many survivors describe relationships where a partner discourages friendships, questions family members, casts the outside world as dangerous, and subtly communicates that they are the only person who can truly be trusted.

All of it is framed as love.

Guilt as a Tool of Control

Gothel does not need to say, "You are not allowed to leave."

Instead, she undermines Rapunzel's confidence.

She questions her readiness.

She casts doubt on her ability to survive.

She makes Rapunzel's desire for independence seem naive or dangerous.

Eventually, Rapunzel begins to doubt herself.

That is the power of covert control.

The controller does not always need to say no.

They simply need to make you arrive at no on your own.

You begin to believe:

Maybe I'm not ready.

Maybe I'm being selfish.

Maybe I don't know what's best for me.

Maybe the person controlling me is actually protecting me.

If you have ever left a conversation feeling smaller, more confused, or more doubtful of yourself—but could not point to one obviously cruel thing that was said—you may recognize this pattern.

The control is hidden inside the language of love.

Conditional Warmth

One of the most revealing aspects of Gothel's behavior is that she can be genuinely warm.

She is playful.

Affectionate.

Loving.

But when Rapunzel wants something that does not serve Gothel's interests, that warmth changes.

It may not turn into rage.

Instead, it becomes disappointment.

Hurt.

Guilt.

Victimhood.

Reminders of everything Gothel has supposedly sacrificed.

There may be no single moment that clearly announces, This is abuse.

Instead, there is a pattern.

Affection is available as long as Rapunzel remains small, grateful, and compliant.

The moment she begins to separate, question, or want something different, the warmth begins to disappear.

This is what can make covert abuse so difficult to name.

Nothing feels dramatic enough.

There is no obvious villain moment.

Just a slow erosion of confidence and freedom.

The Real Motive Beneath the Mask

Once you see Gothel's relationship with Rapunzel clearly, the underlying motive becomes impossible to ignore.

The relationship is not centered on Rapunzel's wellbeing.

It is centered on what Rapunzel provides.

The relationship serves Gothel.

That is the crown beneath the mask.

The mask is the sweetness, the playfulness, and the appearance of care.

The crown is the guilt, manipulation, victimhood, and coercive control.

In many covert relationships, the connection is organized around what the other person provides.

Emotional support.

Attention.

Resources.

Status.

Caregiving.

Validation.

The relationship may appear loving, but underneath the affection is a constant question:

What are you providing me?

When that usefulness is threatened, the manipulation surfaces.

This is not love desperately trying to protect a relationship.

It is self-interest trying to protect a resource.

Why Rapunzel Stays

Rapunzel stays because the tower is the only relational world she has ever known.

She has no comparison point.

No outside reference.

No experience of what freedom feels like.

The tower does not initially feel like confinement.

It feels like home.

Even when she begins to question Gothel, she does not immediately distrust Gothel.

She distrusts herself.

And this is one of the deepest forms of damage caused by covert control.

It does not simply limit what you are allowed to do.

It changes what you believe you are allowed to want.

Wanting more begins to feel like a character flaw.

Wanting freedom feels selfish.

Wanting independence feels dangerous.

You begin to believe that you are the problem.

Overt Abuse vs. Covert Control

Put these two stories next to each other, and the contrast becomes clear.

The Beast controls through visible volatility.

You can feel the danger in the room.

Your body knows something is wrong.

Gothel controls through invisible erosion.

Nothing seems dramatic enough to name.

Both are control.

Both shrink another person down to fit someone else's needs.

But covert control can be especially difficult to recognize because there may be no single moment that clearly announces itself as abuse.

Belle has memories of real fear.

Rapunzel has decades of smiling faces, familiar songs, and messages telling her that the tower is home.

With overt abuse, you may know you are afraid.

With covert abuse, you may spend years wondering whether you are allowed to be unhappy.

When Trauma Bonding Becomes Obligation

There is another important difference between these two stories.

At first, Belle is afraid of the Beast.

She is afraid to leave because she is afraid of what might happen.

But as kindness and vulnerability begin to appear, something changes.

Intermittent reinforcement begins to take hold.

The moments of tenderness are mixed in with the rage and harshness.

The good moments create hope.

And eventually, the person may stop staying because they are afraid.

They begin staying because they feel responsible.

Because they believe no one else understands this person.

Because they believe they are the only one who can help.

Because they have seen the vulnerable side.

Because they keep waiting for the gentle version to become permanent.

That is how trauma bonding can shift from fear into obligation.

And even in Beauty and the Beast, Belle eventually defends the Beast to others.

The story gives us a happy ending.

But we never see what happens after the credits.

We do not see what their relationship looks like years later.

We do not see whether the Beast's transformation is permanent.

We simply receive a feel-good ending.

Real life does not come with a final song and a closing scene.

The Reframe

If you have ever loved someone who scared you sometimes and soothed you other times, that does not necessarily mean you had a uniquely powerful love.

It may have been a trauma bond.

If you have ever felt loved and small around the same person, that may have been covert control.

If someone repeatedly discouraged you from wanting more—not through a direct "no," but through doubt they quietly planted inside you—you were not weak for wanting more.

You were being conditioned to doubt yourself.

Real character is not measured by the best five minutes after the worst thirty.

It is not measured by the best day after the worst month.

It is measured by consistency.

By how someone treats you when there is no crisis to recover from.

By whether they can celebrate your happiness without making your joy about their disappointment.

You do not have to keep waiting for someone's library-and-roses version to become their permanent character.

And you do not have to keep mistaking a warm tower for safety.

Whether you are dealing with a romantic relationship or a family relationship, coercive control is damaging.

You are allowed to want love that does not require you to survive someone's rage.

You are allowed to want love that does not require you to shrink yourself to keep someone else comfortable.

Genuine love does not require control.

You are allowed to care for yourself.

You are allowed to prioritize your needs.

That is not selfishness.

That is not cruelty.

That is not meanness.

You were never broken.

You were surviving what you had been taught to call love.

And now, you are allowed to learn something different.

You are allowed to choose yourself.

Teaching Your Kids to Trust Their Own Signals After Covert Narcissistic Abuse

When you are co-parenting with someone who refuses accountability, the hardest part is often not the custody schedule, the communication, or the logistics.

It is watching your children experience the same emotional confusion that you spent years trying to understand yourself.

Recently, I received a message from a listener in her early 50s. She had filed for divorce a year ago, and her husband had finally moved out. She was now navigating shared custody with two teenage daughters, ages 13 and 15.

The schedule was split: four nights with her, three nights with him.

She described her ex as someone who “presents as the nice, generous guy.” When her daughters expressed hurt or frustration, his response was often to buy them something instead of addressing the emotion underneath. No repair. No accountability. No real conversation.

Then she said something that stayed with me:

“His crown is on, and no one can ever penetrate his self-defense system.”

If you listened to the episode about the covert narcissist’s mask, you understand what she meant by “crown.”

It is that protective structure some people build around themselves. A place where vulnerability, accountability, and genuine connection cannot get through.

Instead of hearing:

“I hurt you. I’m sorry. Let’s talk about what happened.”

Children may experience:

“You’re too sensitive.”
“That didn’t happen.”
“You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

Or sometimes, an apology is replaced with a gift, a distraction, or an attempt to move on without ever addressing the wound.

And over time, children can start learning the same lesson many survivors learned:

Maybe my feelings aren’t trustworthy.

That is the part we need to change.

Why Traditional Co-Parenting Advice Often Doesn’t Work

Most co-parenting advice assumes both parents are acting in good faith.

It assumes both people want the same thing: a healthy relationship with their children.

In those situations, communication tools can be helpful. Shared calendars, respectful conversations, conflict-resolution strategies, and a united approach can benefit children.

But that advice does not always fit when one parent cannot tolerate accountability.

You cannot create emotional safety with someone who experiences every feeling, concern, or disagreement as an attack on their identity.

You cannot build true repair with someone whose entire emotional system is built around never being wrong.

This is why many protective parents feel like they are failing when traditional co-parenting advice does not work.

You are not failing.

You may simply be using a tool that was not designed for this situation.

The goal is not to fix the other parent.

The goal is to help your child build such a strong relationship with themselves that they do not need someone else’s approval to know what they feel.

Teaching Your Child About Their Emotional Hunger Signals

One of the most powerful ways to explain this to children is through something they already understand: hunger.

When your child was younger, you taught them to notice physical signals.

A stomach growl.
Low energy.
Feeling cranky.
Difficulty concentrating.

Those were signs their body was asking for something.

You taught them:

“Notice the signal. Respond to the signal.”

Emotional signals work the same way.

A tight chest.
A sinking feeling in the stomach.
A clenched jaw.
A racing heart.
A desire to shut down.

These are messages from the body saying:

“Something here needs your attention.”

The problem is that many children growing up around emotional invalidation learn to ignore those signals.

When a child repeatedly hears:

“You’re overreacting.”
“That’s not what happened.”
“You shouldn’t feel that way.”

They begin looking outside themselves for permission to know what is true.

The feeling does not disappear.

It simply goes unheard.

And eventually, those ignored signals can come out as anxiety, panic, anger, withdrawal, or emotional overwhelm.

Help Your Child Build Their Inner Compass

A message you can begin teaching your child is:

“Your feelings are like hunger. They don’t need anyone else’s permission to exist. Your job is to notice them and take care of them.”

You can help them explore this by asking questions like:

“Do you remember what your body feels like right before you get really hungry?”

Then:

“Do you notice anything similar happening in your body before you feel really upset or overwhelmed?”

This is not about teaching them what to think.

It is about helping them learn how to listen to themselves.

Teach Them What Repair Actually Looks Like

One of the most confusing things for children is when kindness and harm exist together.

A parent may be generous.
A parent may buy gifts.
A parent may appear loving.

But generosity is not the same thing as repair.

Repair sounds like:

“I understand that hurt you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I will try to do something differently next time.”

A new phone does not erase a broken promise.

A trip to the mall does not replace accountability.

When children learn what real repair looks like, they become less confused by actions that look loving but avoid responsibility.

Four Tools to Help Your Child Trust Themselves

1. Teach the Body Check-In

Before asking:

“Who was right?”

“Who was wrong?”

“What should I say?”

Teach your child to ask:

“What am I feeling in my body right now?”

The body is often the first place we receive information.

2. Separate Someone Else’s Reaction From Their Reality

If your child says:

“Dad says I’m too sensitive.”

Help them understand:

“That is something Dad believes. It does not automatically mean it is true about you.”

Another person’s reaction is information about them.

It is not a definition of your child.

3. Encourage Journaling

A simple journal can help children recognize patterns:

• What happened?

• What did I feel in my body?

• What emotions came up?

This is not about collecting evidence against a parent.

It is about helping your child trust their own observations.

4. Create a Self-Validation Phrase

Give your child language they can use when they feel dismissed.

Examples:

“My feelings are real even if someone disagrees.”

“I can trust what I feel.”

“My experience matters.”

Let them create their own words. The goal is ownership.

What Protective Parents Should Avoid

When you finally understand the pattern, it can feel almost impossible not to explain it to your child.

You may want to say:

“Your dad is a narcissist.”

“You’re being gaslighted.”

“See what he is doing?”

But even when your concerns are valid, children need space to come to their own understanding.

Their healing does not come from replacing one person’s version of reality with another.

It comes from learning:

“I can trust myself.”

Instead of labeling the other parent, focus on validating the child.

Try:

“That sounds really confusing.”

“That sounds like it hurt.”

“I can understand why you would feel that way.”

Your role is not to convince them.

Your role is to be the safe place where their experiences are heard.

The Greatest Gift You Can Give Your Child

Many of us grew up learning to ignore our own signals.

We learned to override our feelings.
To question our reactions.
To wait for someone else to tell us what was real.

Teaching your children to trust themselves may feel unfamiliar because many of us are still learning this ourselves.

But that is also what makes it such a powerful gift.

Your children do not need you to have everything figured out.

They need you to model curiosity.

They need you to say:

“Let’s listen to what your body is telling you.”

“Let’s pay attention to what you feel.”

“Your experience matters.”

The goal is not to make your child choose a side.

The goal is to help them stay connected to themselves.

Because a child who trusts their own inner compass is far harder to convince that their reality does not matter.

And that is one of the greatest gifts we can give them.

Covert Narcissist Relationships: Love Bombing, Smear Campaigns, and Surviving the Aftermath

I was 17 years into my marriage when I first read the words covert narcissism.

Those words didn’t mean anything to me at first. But the rest of it certainly did.

If you’ve lived it, you know what I mean.

• Circular conversations from hell

• Walking on eggshells in your own home

• Apologizing for things you don’t understand

• Gaslit until you doubt your own memory

• Twisting your words until you don’t recognize them

• Walking away more confused than you walked in

And then there’s the image vs. reality:

• Living two versions of the same person—the one the world sees, and the one you live with

• The relationship that looks fine from the outside and feels like drowning from the inside

And the emotional toll:

• Loneliness inside your own marriage

• Being unseen even when you’re being looked right at

• Exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix

And the control, obligation, and guilt:

• Feeling guilty for having needs

• Never measuring up, never being enough

• Feeling responsible for emotions that were never yours to carry

• Working overtime for basic decency

• Love that feels like a performance review

• Conversations that end with you comforting them for hurting you

When you read words like this, something in you knows. They don’t just land—they resonate. They feel like they’ve been inside you the whole time.

And that’s often the beginning.

Not of confusion—but of clarity.

Hitting the Wall

Last week I talked about what it feels like to hit that wall—when you can no longer unsee what you’ve been living inside.

That moment isn’t the end.

It’s the beginning of truth.

But here’s what I also need to be honest about:

The beginning of truth is often not peaceful.

It is validating. It brings relief. Sometimes even a deep exhale you didn’t know you were holding.

But that relief doesn’t always last.

Because once you start speaking your truth—especially to them—you step into something else entirely.

The aftermath.

The Aftermath of Speaking Your Truth

When I started saying the words out loud, I was terrified.

There was relief—finally naming what I had been carrying for years.

But it was quickly followed by something heavier:

The weight of everything I had just set in motion.

A marriage. A family. A life I had built. A system I had tried for years to fix.

And now… it was all in motion.

Not resolving.

Moving.

Changing.

Collapsing in some places.

And the person on the other side of my truth?

They did not simply accept it.

They rarely do.

What Your Covert Narcissist Does Next

When a covert narcissist feels their control slipping, the response is almost always about one thing:

Regaining control—not repairing connection.

What that looks like can vary, but patterns are consistent.

Love bombing / hoovering

Suddenly, they become everything you needed them to be.

• Attentive

• Kind

• Apologetic

• Present

• Emotionally available in ways you’ve longed for

It can feel like hope.

Like maybe this is the turning point.

But in most cases, this is not transformation.

It is response.

A system trying to stabilize itself after a disruption.

And when the threat passes, the pattern often returns.

This is why looking at consistency over time matters more than emotional intensity in the moment.

Escalation and punishment

Other times, the response looks very different:

• Increased criticism

• Emotional withdrawal

• Rage or volatility

• Intimidation

• Punishing silence or contempt

This is often designed—consciously or unconsciously—to make you question yourself.

To make you feel like:

• “I shouldn’t have said anything.”

• “I broke something.”

• “This is my fault.”

It isn’t.

It is a reaction to losing control—not evidence that your truth was wrong.

Smear campaigns

Another common response is narrative control.

They may begin shaping a story about you to others:

• Family

• Friends

• Mutual connections

• Even children

In this version of the story, you are often the unstable one, the problem, the cause of the rupture.

This is one of the most painful parts of the aftermath—watching your private reality get rewritten publicly.

We’ll come back to this.

The Emotional Whiplash Inside You

The internal experience of this season is often what confuses people the most.

Because it is not one emotion.

It is many—stacked on top of each other.

Grief

For what you hoped it would be.
For what you wanted them to be.
For the family you thought you were building.

Anger

Often long-suppressed and suddenly alive.

Relief

Followed quickly by guilt for feeling it.

Fear

Of finances, children, loneliness, uncertainty.

Desperation

The urge to do something immediately to fix the discomfort.

None of this means you are unstable.

It means your system is overloaded.

The Second-Guessing

After clarity comes doubt.

Did I overreact?
Was it really that bad?
Maybe they’re changing now.
Maybe I misread everything.

This is not new information.

This is old conditioning returning.

When this happens, go back to what cracked it open.

Not the recent behavior.

The pattern.

The exhaustion.

The moment your body could no longer carry it.

That is truth too.

The Loneliness of Speaking the Truth

There is a very specific kind of loneliness in this season.

You finally say it.

And still… you are not fully heard.

From the outside, people may not understand what’s happening. Even well-meaning people may minimize it, question it, or try to fix it too quickly.

And inside your home, the dynamic continues—but in a different form.

This creates a deep sense of isolation:

“I said it… but I’m still alone in it.”

This is why support matters so much here.

Not advice.

Not pressure.

Witnessing.

Your Body in the Aftermath

Your body has been carrying this for a long time.

Now it reacts.

• Anxiety

• Sleep disruption

• Fatigue

• Hypervigilance

• Emotional swings between calm and panic

This is not dysfunction.

This is a nervous system trying to recalibrate after chronic stress.

Be patient with it.

It is doing exactly what it was designed to do: survive.

What Happens to Your Family

Children

Children feel shifts before they can explain them.

They may:

• Act out

• Withdraw

• Ask unexpected questions

Your job is not to manage their perception of the other parent.

Your job is to be steady, safe, and consistent.

Keep routines where possible.
Answer age-appropriately.
Reassure them: this is not their fault.

Extended family

Covert narcissists often maintain strong external images.

When conflict arises, narratives may be reshaped:

• You are unstable

• You are the problem

• You are overreacting

Not everyone will see through this immediately.

Some never will.

Your energy is limited.

Spend it where there is receptivity—not resistance.

What You Need Right Now

Don’t make permanent decisions in the storm

This is not the time for irreversible choices made under emotional overload.

Start smaller:

• Take space

• Stay with safe people

• Slow down decisions where possible

Find safe people

Safe people:

• Don’t minimize your experience

• Don’t pressure reconciliation

• Don’t debate your reality

• Don’t make you prove your pain

They simply stay with you in it.

Ground your nervous system

Start simple:

• Walks

• Journaling

• Movement

• Time with people who feel grounding

These are not extras.

They are stabilizers.

Consider support

If you can access a therapist or coach who understands narcissistic abuse, this is the season where support matters most.

Not because something is wrong with you.

But because what you’re navigating is complex—and you shouldn’t have to do it alone.

The Aftermath Is Not the End

This season is disorienting.

It is painful.

It is confusing.

And it will test your certainty more than once.

But it is not the end of your story.

It is the beginning of something else:

Reconnection with yourself.

Reclaiming your clarity.

Rebuilding from truth instead of adaptation.

You are not losing your mind.

You are leaving a system that depended on you not fully seeing it.

And you do not have to walk the rest of this alone.

When You Can't Live the Lie Anymore: Hitting the Wall in a Covert Narcissistic Relationship

There comes a moment in many covert narcissistic relationships when something inside you changes. It isn't always dramatic. Sometimes there's no explosive argument or shocking betrayal. Sometimes it's simply the realization that you cannot keep living the life you've been living.

I call this hitting the wall.

For me, it wasn't anger that finally ended the cycle. It wasn't even sadness. It was numbness.

After spending two decades trying to fix a marriage that couldn't be fixed alone, I simply ran out of emotional energy. I had spent years carefully choosing my words, managing someone else's emotions, questioning my own reality, and believing that if I just tried harder, things would finally get better.

Then one day, there was nothing left to give.

When I finally spoke the word divorce, I felt almost nothing. No relief. No panic. No grief. Just a quiet certainty that I could no longer live a lie.

The Two Ways We Hit the Wall

In my own experience—and through the stories of countless survivors I've worked with—I've noticed that people usually arrive at this point in one of two ways.

The Slow Erosion

For many of us, there isn't one defining moment. Instead, we slowly disappear.

Mentally, we become exhausted from constantly filtering every conversation, anticipating every reaction, and trying to prevent conflict before it starts.

Emotionally, we lose access to ourselves. People who once felt deeply begin feeling... nothing.

Physically, our bodies begin sounding the alarm through chronic fatigue, headaches, muscle tension, digestive problems, anxiety, or illnesses that seem impossible to explain.

Our minds and bodies aren't failing us.

They're trying to save us.

The Breaking Point

Others experience a single event that changes everything.

Maybe it's catching another lie.

Maybe it's watching your child become the next target.

Maybe it's hearing one sentence that suddenly causes years of confusion to make sense.

For me, that moment came during a quiet conversation. I asked my husband if he would go to therapy and explore the impact of his childhood and behavior on our marriage.

As we sat in silence, I realized something surprising.

I wasn't afraid of his answer anymore.

I knew, with complete clarity, that if he refused, my marriage was over.

He said no.

And in that moment, the fog lifted.

I would never see the relationship the same way again.

When You Stop Fighting Yourself

One of the strangest parts of hitting the wall is that many survivors don't immediately feel devastated.

They often feel relief.

Not because the situation is good—but because they finally stop fighting reality.

The endless internal debate begins to quiet.

The constant hope that tomorrow will somehow be different starts to fade.

You stop trying to convince yourself that what you're experiencing isn't happening.

This is often the first real step toward healing.

What Happens When You Finally Speak Up

Eventually, many survivors reach a place where they have to speak their truth.

Not because they expect the other person to suddenly understand.

But because they can no longer remain silent.

This conversation is terrifying.

Most people secretly hope that if they finally explain everything clearly enough, they'll finally be heard.

Unfortunately, that's rarely what happens with covert narcissism.

Instead, you may experience:

• Denial

• Blame shifting

• DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender)

• Minimization

• Emotional manipulation

• Sudden tears or victimhood

• An eerie calm designed to make you question yourself

The goal isn't resolution.

The goal is preserving control.

Speak Your Truth Anyway

The most important reason to have this conversation isn't to change them.

It's to hear yourself.

For years you've been taught to question your own perception.

Speaking your truth out loud becomes an act of reclaiming yourself.

You don't need their agreement for your experience to be real.

You don't need their validation for your pain to matter.

You don't need permission to acknowledge what you've lived through.

Hitting the Wall Isn't the End

Many people believe hitting the wall means they've failed.

I believe it's the opposite.

It's the moment your mind, body, and soul refuse to keep carrying what was never yours to bear.

It's the beginning of living in reality instead of survival.

Yes, what comes next is often messy.

There may be grief, fear, uncertainty, and enormous change.

But there is also something else waiting on the other side:

Freedom.

Because healing doesn't begin when someone else finally understands your pain.

Healing begins when you stop abandoning yourself.

And sometimes, hitting the wall is exactly where that journey begins.

Overthinking in a Covert Narcissistic Relationship: Why Your Mind Never Stops

Have you ever laid in bed at 2 a.m., replaying a conversation from days ago, trying to figure out what you said wrong — or what they meant by that tone, that look, that pause?

Maybe you’ve drafted a simple text message ten different ways before sending it. Maybe you rehearse conversations before they even happen. Or maybe your mind never really stops running worst-case scenarios, just in case.

If that sounds familiar, this isn’t a personality flaw.

It’s a survival response.

What Overthinking Really Is

Overthinking is not “being dramatic,” and it’s not a character defect.

Overthinking is what a brain does when it has learned, through experience, that it cannot afford to relax.

In a covert narcissistic relationship, your nervous system learns quickly: safety is inconsistent. Peace is temporary. Reactions are unpredictable.

So your mind adapts.

It starts scanning, predicting, analyzing, preparing — constantly.

Not because something is wrong with you, but because something once required you to stay alert to survive emotionally.

The “Alligator” Effect

Think of your mind like a security system.

In a safe home, the system stays quiet in the background.

But in a house where alarms have gone off before — where danger has been real and unpredictable — that system stays sensitive. Always watching. Always ready.

Now imagine something more personal.

A relationship where emotional danger is not constant, but it is real. Unpredictable. Close.

That’s what I often describe as the “alligator in the home.”

It doesn’t always attack. It doesn’t always move.

But you know it can.

And your nervous system never forgets that.

So you live alert. You think ahead. You monitor tone, mood, timing, facial expressions — trying to prevent the next reaction before it happens.

Of course your mind is overactive.

It has a reason to be.

Why Your Brain Won’t Shut Off

Overthinking often sounds like:

• “What did I say wrong?”

• “Should I have handled that differently?”

• “What mood are they in now?”

• “How do I prevent this from escalating?”

You’re not trying to create problems.

You’re trying to prevent them.

Your brain is searching for logic in a system that has not been consistent enough to produce it.

That’s why it keeps looping.

It’s trying to find patterns in something that keeps changing.

Living in Constant Analysis Mode

In these dynamics, your mind becomes a constant investigator.

You start:

• Replaying conversations

• Rehearsing responses

• Monitoring emotional shifts

• Predicting reactions

• Managing outcomes before they happen

Not because you want to.

Because it feels like the only way to stay emotionally safe.

Even small moments — a tone, a sigh, a silence — become data points your brain tries to decode.

When Kids Are In the Picture

When children are involved, overthinking intensifies.

Now you’re not only tracking your own emotional safety — you’re tracking theirs.

You notice:

• The way your child goes quiet after a tone changes

• The way they check faces before answering

• The way they start to people-please or apologize too quickly

And suddenly, the stakes double.

You’re not just trying to prevent conflict.

You’re trying to protect developing nervous systems inside it.

That level of awareness is exhausting.

And it often comes with deep, silent grief.

Why It’s Not “Just Anxiety”

There’s a common misunderstanding that overthinking is just anxiety or negativity.

But in these environments, overthinking is often patterned, learned vigilance.

Your brain has been trained by experience to believe:

“If I stay alert, I can prevent pain.”

That belief didn’t come from nowhere.

It came from repetition.

What Safety Actually Feels Like

A safe relationship doesn’t eliminate conflict.

It changes what happens after it.

In safety, you don’t have to decode meaning from silence.

You can ask questions and get direct answers.

You can bring up concerns without fear of emotional backlash.

You can repair after conflict instead of spiraling in uncertainty.

And most importantly:

Your nervous system is not constantly scanning for danger.

It gets to rest.

Why Your Mind Finally Slows Down in Safety

In a safe relationship:

• Communication is direct, not coded

• Emotions are expressed, not withheld

• Conflict has resolution, not lingering ambiguity

• Repair actually happens

• Predictability replaces confusion

And something profound begins to shift:

Your brain no longer has to do the job alone.

What Helps (Even Before Everything Changes)

You don’t need to “stop overthinking” by force.

You need to understand what your mind is doing.

A few gentle starting points:

1. Name it
“This is my brain trying to predict uncertainty.”

2. Externalize it
Say it out loud, write it down, or share it with someone safe. Rumination loses power when it leaves your head.

3. Look for safe reflection
A grounded friend, therapist, coach, or journal space where your thoughts don’t just loop internally.

A Final Word

Your mind is not broken.

It is not too sensitive.

It is not working against you.

It has been working for you — for a very long time — in an environment that required constant awareness just to feel emotionally safe.

The goal is not to force your mind to stop thinking.

The goal is to eventually no longer need that level of vigilance to feel okay.

And when that shift begins, it won’t feel like losing control of your thoughts.

It will feel like finally being able to rest inside them.