How To Respond to A Covert Narcissist When They Are Targeting You with Rebecca Zung on Negotiate Your Best Life #387

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N.Y.B.L. Podcast Ep 183 (How To Respond to A Covert Narcissist When They Are Targeting You)

[00:00:00] Rebecca Zung: Welcome to another episode of Negotiate Your Best Life. I’m Rebecca Zung. In this episode, we’re gonna be talking about how to respond to a narcissist when they are targeting you. And that is something that people always ask me how to respond to a narcissist when they’re targeting you. I also wanna remind you that I have a brand new book out.

[00:00:24] Slay the Bully, how to Negotiate With a Narcissist and Win. And if you go to slay the bully.com, you can actually pre-order it now and get early access to the entire manuscript. So make sure that you do that and also get access to all the bonuses that you can get access to there, which is nearly $400 worth of bonuses.

[00:00:48] And I have a brand new webinar of Masterclass that’s available now to break free from hell. How to break free emotionally, physically, [00:01:00] spiritually, and take back your power. So go to Breaking Free From Hell and and learn how to sign up there. All right, so let’s dive in to this incredible brand new episode of Negotiate Your Best Life.

[00:01:15] Covert narcissists are actually the ones that I personally have had to deal with myself. I have had to deal with it in a business situation, and my husband and I have had to deal with one in our family. So we personally know the horrible situation that it is with covert narcissists. I mean, they are the ones that are like, Stealth or under the radar, the ones that kind of seem nice on the surface, everybody thinks that they’re so nice and the ones that actually are the worst to deal with, because it’s like death by a thousand cuts.

[00:01:55] And the ones that when you go to tell people about how [00:02:00] they are, people go, well, I don’t know. That doesn’t seem so bad. Maybe it seems inadvertent. It couldn’t have really meant that because they seem so nice. That kind of thing. And I don’t know, I talk so much more all about their personality in my video, the covert passive aggressive narcissist.

[00:02:21] So you might wanna check out my video on that particular topic. But anyway, going back to how they have to distract themselves because they are actually really quite miserable people underneath the surface. So they have to distract themselves from their misery. And how do they do that? Well, they do that in a number of ways.

[00:02:43] Well, one of the ways that they do that is they find their supply and they have to constantly find new supply because once people are onto them, then they have to move on. You know, it’s like [00:03:00] vultures that are. Picking apart the, the carcass. You know, once that carcass is all picked over, then they have to move on down the road to find a new car, carcass to pick over.

[00:03:13] And by the way, they get bored of that carcass as well. You know, once they see a good, a better source of supply, they wanna move on. Extremely opportunistic. In fact, I remember, you know, like once you have seen the light, and you guys probably will understand exactly what I’m talking about, when you have seen the light, you start to look back and then you start to go, oh, I remember that conversation taking place.

[00:03:44] And it all starts to make more sense as you start to see, you go, oh, I remember that now I understand what was going on, and I remember this conversation with this person that I had a business situation with, and [00:04:00] she was referring to another situation that she had had actually another business situation with.

[00:04:07] And I remember her actually saying, well, you know, I. Got what I needed out of that situation and kind of took it as far as I could go. So I don’t really need that person anymore. And, and it was like, now that I understand what that person was about, it makes perfect sense, right? It didn’t need that person anymore.

[00:04:34] She’d kind of gotten what she needed out of it. Right? So finding and hanging out with their new supply is one of the things that they do to distract themselves from their misery. Ooh, shiny new object. Ooh, let me move on to this next one. So that’s number one. Number two is hanging out with their flying monkeys and talking about their targets.

[00:04:58] They [00:05:00] love to do that. So I remember actually that too. I was not the flying monkey. I was the target. And I remember knowing who the flying monkeys were and you know, of course, I was the one at the time that this business person had glommed onto as the source of supply. But then they glom onto that source of supply and then they want to devalue the supply or they want to show the supply how good they are or how they can be better than you or hang out with people that are another source of supply or whatever it is.

[00:05:47] And you know, you’re supposed to somehow be jealous or somehow wonder what they’re up to or something like that. And I remember thinking, am I supposed to be wondering what you’re talking about? Am I [00:06:00] supposed to be wondering what you’re doing? Because I remember thinking, I know that’s what you’re doing.

[00:06:05] And I remember thinking like, I don’t care what you’re doing. I don’t care what conversations you’re having, but yet I know that’s what you’re trying to get me to feel. And, and I, I remember thinking, I don’t enjoy the game. I don’t enjoy the attempt at manipulation. I just, I. Want to be out of this situation, but I knew that that was what was happening.

[00:06:34] I was aware that that was what was happening, and I remember thinking, how did I get here? How did I get sucked into the vortex of this ridiculous game? But I knew that that was what was happening. But hanging out with their flying monkeys and talking about their targets is something that they love to do to try to distract themselves.

[00:06:56] To escape their misery, for sure. They love that. [00:07:00] All right. Number three is screening and pretending that they are the person that they are masquerading themselves to be. They love to do that. I remember this so much, especially the two covert narcissists in my life. Both of the two covert narcissist in my life happened to be women.

[00:07:22] Definitely doesn’t have to be women. Certainly a lot of covert narcissists are men. You know, they love to preen, they love to parade and be the person that they want to portray themselves to be. So they love to be in situations where they can put themselves in to be that person. So, you know, what’s interesting to me is, you know, if it’s not working for them to be in a certain situation, they may say, I’m sick, or, you know, um, I can’t show up or whatever.

[00:07:56] They’ll cancel on you. But then [00:08:00] if there is a situation where they can put themselves in to look good, like rush to the side of somebody who’s sick or has cancer or something, you know, so that they can look good, then suddenly they’ve recovered from whatever it is that they might have had because they, they definitely wanna put themselves in a situation where they can portray themselves as the person that they want to portray themselves as.

[00:08:42] All right. So, and then the last one that they do to distract themselves is just desperately holding on to maintain that facade, desperately holding on, I mean, [00:09:00] desperately doing whatever they need to do to keep it going. So what do they need to do to maintain that facade? What have they set up in their life to keep it going?

[00:09:15] So, if it’s a work situation, if it’s a, a charity that they’re running, if it’s something that they’re doing at a volunteer situation, something within their family, whatever it is that they’ve got set up to keep themselves looking good, they’ve gotta keep that going so that they can maintain that picture of.

[00:09:40] Who they are. So they, whatever they need to do, they desperately keep that going, to distract themselves to escape their misery. And so those are the things that they do that covert narcissists do to continue to escape their misery. And when they go to negotiate, by the way, [00:10:00] it’s all of this on steroids and they keep going.

[00:10:03] But once it all starts to break down, then you become public enemy number one, and it all starts becoming so much worse. And when that happens, you need to be on high alert. Let’s talk about three examples of narcissists who play the victim. And really narcissists who play the victim are a form of covert narcissist.

[00:10:27] And if you wanna know more about the covert passive aggressive narcissist, you can definitely check out my video on that topic. And this is really my least favorite in a lot of ways because I had to deal with a covert, passive aggressive narcissist as a business partner myself. So let’s talk a little bit first about narcissist and then let’s talk about a covert passive aggressive narcissist.

[00:10:54] Cuz I think it’s really important that you understand what we’re [00:11:00] talking about before we talk about. These types of narcissists who play the victim. Okay? So a narcissist is a person who has no inner sense of value. This is a person who is really the most insecure person on the planet. Of course, they have no inner sense of value.

[00:11:18] And because of that, I kind of liken it to a person who’s like literally starving. There’s. Starving for a titan. They just need so much to have love and, and all of that. But, but it’s almost like those receptors have closed in a way. It’s like if, if a cell has receptors or something, it’s like that there’s a damage that has been done and nothing can really go inside anymore.

[00:11:46] So it’s not like you can love them and it’ll go and penetrate. It’s like they’re starving, but you can’t feed them. It. It’s like this black hole in a way, but yet they’re starving. They [00:12:00] feel like they have to grab food wherever they can. And this food that they’re trying to grab is what we call narcissistic supply.

[00:12:12] And they’re trying to feed their ego with it all the time. Feed, feed, feed, feed, feed. They’re going to try to feed it with external stuff. And you know, it’s going to either come in the form of what I call quote unquote good things, which is kind of the external things that you see, like adulation, compliments money, prestigious friends, prestigious jobs, you know, all the things that you necessarily see.

[00:12:41] And then there’s like what I call the dark underbelly of narcissistic supply, which is things that they wouldn’t necessarily want people to see, which is. The devaluing people, degrading people, treating people poorly, and they wouldn’t necessarily want people to see that. They treat people badly [00:13:00] all the time.

[00:13:00] They know that they shouldn’t necessarily do that. So usually they do that in private or whatever. We’re gonna get into this, the ones who play the victim here in a second. So those are, you know, how they get their supply in a, in a lot of ways. Okay. And then there’s like the covert narcissist, the overt narcissist, all those sorts of things.

[00:13:21] Okay. And it is a bit of a spectrum. And when you’re going to negotiate with them, which is what I focus on, it’s a very special type of situation because it’s not like a give and take this. Same way as when you’re dealing with a normal, reasonable person, you can’t have a situation the same way. You do have to deal with it in a very different way.

[00:13:50] Okay, so let’s talk about these narcissists who play the victim. These are the ones who aren’t the ones out there breaking [00:14:00] in, boastful, telling everybody how great they are. They are the ones that are much more tending to be what I call more passive aggressive. They seem more downtrodden. So the first one is, I’m not good enough.

[00:14:14] This is the one that’s like, they’re always putting themselves down. I’m not good enough to play that game, or I’m not good enough to go date that person, or I’m not good enough to go try out for the play or to go apply for that scholarship or whatever it is. But a lot of times this particular narcissist is doing this.

[00:14:42] Because they are trying to get people to pay attention to them. And it’s, again, it’s a way of manipulating, it’s a way of manipulating people around them. And sometimes they do it to pit people against each [00:15:00] other, and sometimes they do it to get people to feel guilty and sometimes they do it to get people to not do things that they would normally do or like have a life or whatever.

[00:15:12] So this is number one, the I’m not good enough. Narcissist number two is the, you are the bad ones. This is the super guilt trip one. So this is the one that is always on their high horse because maybe you cheated at one point or something. And so they get to lu that over you for the rest of your life.

[00:15:37] And because of that, they never have to ever look at anything that they ever did. One of the. The perfect examples I see I’ve seen of this is when I was practicing law and I practiced divorce law, I would see for example, a situation where a husband would be, you know, unfaithful. The wife would get to [00:16:00] tell everybody that the husband had been unfaithful and the person was the bad one.

[00:16:05] And you know, she got to play the victim. But what she didn’t mention was that, you know, she had sex with the husband in like five years. Before that. And you know that the husband, you know, by the time he had been unfaithful, you know, it was because she hadn’t had sex with him in several years. And you know, should he have probably left the marriage long before that, maybe, you know, and there’s a lot of things that go into that.

[00:16:32] But, you know, she got to play the victim because of that. And so, you know, she got to be on her high horse because of that. And so she got to play the victim. He was the bad one. So that’s number two. Number three is the poor me, the poor me narcissist. This is the one with that uses their SOB stories as a reason to not have a life, [00:17:00] as a reason to never do anything with themselves.

[00:17:04] Right. You know, like they, they constantly have attention for themselves because it allows them to continue to get attention that way. And, you know, there is a payoff sometimes for being the victim. And you know, for those of you who are out there watching this, I want you to listen to this sometimes because as long as sometimes you allow yourself to be the victim or that you point the finger at the other person as being the villain, then that continues to have you be the victim.

[00:17:36] And I want you to remember, I’m not saying that you’re the narcissist at all, by the way, but I’m just saying I. Don’t continue to have yourself be a victim either. But I’m saying that sometimes people who keep themselves stuck in these situations are because they are narcissistic, and it’s because they know that it keeps them having attention for themselves and they use it [00:18:00] to be manipulative.

[00:18:02] And I know that there’s somebody that, you know, my husband and I have in our lives that, you know, uses sickness and uses sob stories to, as a way of manipulating people in their lives and uses it to manipulate friends and family and, and that sort of thing. And it’s just not okay, especially when they use it as a way of passive aggression uses a, as a, as a way of pitting people against each other.

[00:18:29] And that’s what you see sometimes with narcissists. Now let’s talk about the worst things about covert narcissists. Well, first of all, I can just tell you that I’ve had to deal with two of them. And you know, I think malignant narcissists are heinous and awful. I think that overt or grandiose narcissists are terrible too.

[00:18:51] If you wanna know more about the main kinds of narcissists, check out my video on the main kinds of narcissists. None of them are great. All of them are awful, [00:19:00] but coverts are just the worst because you don’t see them coming, number one. And number two, there’s. So good at hiding their behavior to the rest of the world so that only their target, only their victim really sees who they are.

[00:19:17] And, um, they do things so that they have like this plausible deniability. In other words, it’s like really easy for them to just deny it and, and have it seem plausible what they’re denying. Like, you know, it’s really, really hard to prove. And so they do these little tiny things that make it worse for you.

[00:19:40] So I know the first thing that I thought of, um, when somebody pointed out that someone was a covert was some, somebody pointed out to me that one of the people that I was dealing with was a narcissist. That person did not use the word covert. That person just said that other person that you’re dealing with is [00:20:00] a narcissist and has cluster B, um, personality disorder.

[00:20:05] And I remember thinking, oh no, that can be right. Um, You know, to me, a narcissist was a person who was very, very boastful. Very, very braggadocios, really out there telling everybody how great they are all the time for no reason, just to tell people and, and, and, and didn’t have any care or compassion for others.

[00:20:30] I did know that narcissist lacked empathy and didn’t have the ability to care for others, but to me, the grandiose narcissist is the one that I had in my head. I didn’t have a picture of a covert narcissist. I had never even heard that term before, and it wasn’t. Until I read the book, the Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist, that I really started to understand the [00:21:00] personality type.

[00:21:01] And that book is by Debbie Meza. And I will definitely drop a link to that below. And if you wanna know more about the covert passive aggressive narcissist, check out my video on the covert passive aggressive narcissist. Um, that will definitely help you as well. But some of the worst things about, uh, that I think about covert narcissists is how underhanded they are.

[00:21:26] So they do things that are very passive aggressive. And that was one of the things that I really noticed about nar the narcissist that I was dealing with. You know, they would. Forget to call you back or email you or, um, or, or say that, um, do things that y y you know, they’re not supposed to do or, or, or, or are, are offensive.

[00:21:50] And, and you call them out on it and they, they say, oh, I thought we agreed to that. Um, and, and, and, and they tell the rest of the world, [00:22:00] um, how, you know, every, the rest of the world thinks that they’re so wonderful. They think that they’re so nice. They come across as like the nicest, most wonderful people.
[00:22:12] Sometimes they re even ca, you know, paint themselves as a victim. Um, you know, and, you know, maybe they’re sick all the time or something like that. And, um, and, and they just seem kind of like the world isn’t fair for them. And so they, they paint themselves in these pictures. Um, and, and, and covert narcissists also show up, by the way, as, um, clergy religious figures, um, leaders in a lot of ways.

[00:22:44] And so it’s really, really hard to pinpoint them. Um, and so in Craig Malkin’s book, uh, rethinking Narcissism, he talks about the three E’s and um, The three [00:23:00] E’s that that covert narcissists, or he calls them introverted narcissists have. So the first thing that he says that you see in covert narcissists is exploitation.

[00:23:11] A lot of narcissists do that. This, but, uh, coverts especially, they will exploit situations and people to use them so that they get more attention so that they feel more special. And that is definitely what happened with me. And, um, you know, it, it’s just something that they use to try to get narcissistic supply.

[00:23:33] They attach themselves to people so that they can suck supply out of them and almost like try to become that person. And, and so one of the things I want you to make sure that you understand is that narcissists don’t attach themselves to you because you have so little value, even though that’s what they want you to think, they attach themselves to you because you have so much value, because they [00:24:00] wouldn’t be interested in you if you couldn’t give them narcissistic supply.

[00:24:05] So exploitation is one of the things that you will definitely see, and it’s one of the worst things about covert narcissists.

[00:24:21] The second thing that you will see, the second e that Craig Malkin talks about in his book, rethinking Narcissism, is entitlement. They feel very entitled even to things that don’t have anything to do with them, even to, they, they, they wanna take credit for things that they didn’t do. Uh, they, they, they, they want to have attention for, for things that they didn’t accomplish, but they feel entitled they should sit in the seat of the best seat in the house, whatever that looks like, because they need that in order to feel special.

[00:24:56] And so entitlement is that second thing [00:25:00] that you often see in covert narcissists. And the third thing that he talks about is empathy impairment, which, you know, again, you see with, um, all narcissists, what I have seen with, with covert narcissists is they know what they need to see. Say, uh, in the moment that they need to say it.

[00:25:20] And, um, one of the things that I’ve noticed about covert narcissists is that when somebody is ill, or in the hospital or something like that, they are actually the first ones to show up. It’s unlike the other narcissist. But coverts will oftentimes be the first ones to show up, be at the bedside, sending gifts weekly, or doing whatever they need to, because they recognize that it’s an opportunity to look good, to recognize that it’s an opportunity for everybody to pay attention to the fact that, look at how wonderful this person was.

[00:25:58] They sat at the [00:26:00] bedside the entire time. And, you know, but they’ll, they’ll only be doing that if they think there’s going to be a vast audience that the right people will see it. It’s not, it’s not just because they actually care. The, the worst thing about covert narcissists is they know how they are supposed to behave, and they will do it if they need to, but it’s very strategic, very manipulative.

[00:26:27] And if nobody’s watching, they don’t care at all. And it becomes very, very clear when, um, they don’t have an audience because. Then, you know, suddenly, where are the phone calls? Where are they not showing up? Because they have this empathy impairment. You are dealing with a covert narcissist. They use this secret weapon against you to make you think that you’re crazy.

[00:26:53] Well, covert narcissists are incredibly convincing. They’re incredibly convincing. [00:27:00] I think they’re the most dangerous type of narcissist. Okay. I think they’re the most dangerous because they are so convincing. They’re the ones out there looking like the most normal other types of narcissists, grandiose narcissists are out there telling everybody how amazing they are, how great they are, how wonderful they are.

[00:27:24] They’re the ones out there that go in restaurants or start, go into a room and say, I did this and I did that, and look at my accomplishments and look how amazing I am. Covert narcissists don’t do that. Covert narcissists say, oh, I don’t want attention. I hate attention. Even though they do want attention, even though they do want the world to think that they’re wonderful and all of that, and so they do have.

[00:27:52] This deep need wanting, you know, the world to think that they’re amazing. And the reason [00:28:00] why they are incredibly convincing in a lot of ways is that they also believe their own made up reality of themselves. They’ve also almost kind of convinced themselves that they are honest and trustworthy and loyal and considerate, and they genuinely believe a lot of that, even as they’re gaslighting people, as they’re taking advantage of people and as they’re doing these things victimizing people.

[00:28:35] And that’s part of the reason why they’re so insidious and very, very stealth. And they present very well and they put, put themselves in positions where they are often clergy or doctors or lawyers, or they’re the first ones to show up at when somebody is sick or the first ones to [00:29:00] take care. You know?

[00:29:01] But only if it’s opportunistic, only if there’s going to be an audience, only if it’s the right type of audience. Only if the scenario presents itself to be the right one. They have to appear. In the right way. And they’re monsters at orchestrating situations a lot of times where they can pit people against each other, where they can dig deep wells, where it looks like they are the good person and the other person is bad, or they set themselves up so that they’re calm and the other person is crazy.
[00:29:46] So they, you know, here they are the rational one, and the other person is, is out of control, sobbing or screaming, and they’re just, I don’t know what happened there. [00:30:00] Officer, you know, while the onlookers are, oh my goodness. I, I look at that. You know, so, you know, they can be the ones who are, I, I tried for years to get the person help, or I tried for years to, to do all that I could.

[00:30:18] And they, they come off as the likable one. They come off as the calm one. They come off as the charming one in marriage counseling or, you know, to the therapists as the, the much more rational and calm one. And they can get everyone to believe that that’s what’s going on. They’re masters at smear campaigns and at planting seeds, starting the planting of seeds.

[00:30:51] Oh, I’m so concerned about, you know, how much they had to drink that night. I, I just, you know, I’m just really [00:31:00] concerned about that situation. You know, I just, I just wanna make sure that everybody’s okay. Ugh. My heart, you know, it’s, it’s like that and, and just lining up the flying monkeys and just starting to, to groom.

[00:31:18] Starting to groom. And so those are the kinds of things that they’ll do. And they just, they start to, to weave. They start to weave and lead people down these paths, and, and people are just unaware of what they’re doing. They’re just unaware. Of what’s happening because they’re so good at doing these things and just remaining calm, remaining calm.

[00:31:47] And so they’re real secret weapon, and that’s what I’m leading to here, is that they are absolute masters of [00:32:00] plausible deniability, plausible deniability. And what I mean by that is sabotaging and undermining in very, very sa. Subtle insidious ways, but then being able to just look very, very innocent and saying, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

[00:32:22] I have no idea. And, you know, so for example, something could be like, I only said something about, I knew somebody said something about their child’s, uh, birthday or something and realizing that it was before a date that was, uh, something that was going to be inflammatory to something else. And then they real, they’re putting dates together that are, you know, is going [00:33:00] to upset something to somebody else.

[00:33:02] And then the other person realizes that that’s upsetting to this other person. And then they know that it’s going to be upsetting to this other person. But then they, they, they go, Oh, I didn’t realize that I said that date and that that was gonna be upsetting to you. And then the other person, you know, goes, oh, I didn’t know, I didn’t realize, you know, and they just, they, they just play it off as is, as if they didn’t realize that that date was gonna be upsetting.

[00:33:34] I had no idea. I didn’t realize, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize, you know, that sort of thing. You know, they’ll make a dish and give it to the other person and the dish has something in it that the person is allergic to, like cashews. And then the other person gets an allergic reaction from it. And then they say, I didn’t realize it had cashews [00:34:00] in it.

[00:34:00] I, oh, I’m so sorry. Oh my gosh. I, that’s terrible. I, I, I, oh gosh. I didn’t realize that. They did realize that. But you know, they play it off like they didn’t know plausible deniability. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize that when I was gonna do something on your computer that, that was gonna delete that off of your computer and off your calendar.

[00:34:25] So I’m so stupid. You know, that sort of thing. And, and they do know that when they were gonna do that, that I was gonna delete it off your calendar. Plausible deniability. Plausible deniability, undermining you, but acting like I didn’t know that that was gonna happen to avoid taking responsibility to avoid.
[00:34:48] But everybody else, when you tell that story, everybody else goes, well, I’m sure that that was inadvertent. Because they’re so [00:35:00] nice, because they’re such a good person. I’m sure that that couldn’t have been on purpose. Oh, you’re making too much of it. You know that, that sort of thing. You know, when you try to tell other people, I think you’re just making too much.

[00:35:14] And then when they’re telling other people, they go, you know, I was just trying to be helpful. I was just trying to be nice. Gosh, you know? They do, they really think that I would try to make them sick on purpose. That’s just so crazy. You know, that sort of thing. And sometimes I do believe they really believe there is stuff like, they really think that I would be that horrible of a person and they start to even believe their own lies sometimes.

[00:35:48] It actually is like that crazy making. And so I, I believe that the worst secret weapon that they have is this plausible [00:36:00] deniability where they actually start to make you think that you’re absolutely crazy. And the world cannot see it. The world cannot see it at all. And you are just, over time it’s like death by a thousand cuts.

[00:36:19] And it’s, it’s like not so bad that you just feel like you can, you can go to the world and go, look, this person’s beating me, or this person’s cheating on me. Or this person is that bad. You know, it’s these little tiny things over the years that just add up, add up, add up, where you’re just sucks at your soul over time and you just, it drains the life out of you over time.

[00:36:51] And so that’s why I think it’s just so insidious and so horrible. And they, they have this way also of sort of this [00:37:00] double language and this double, you know, like saying things, these like kind of things that almost look like compliments, but they’re not actually compliments. And it’s, it’s very, very insidious the way covert narcissists work on you and work on your brain.

[00:37:18] And they’re, they’re extremely, extremely toxic and extremely, extremely poisonous. They’ve got this, this rage that’s just right there, right there, and it’s just almost ready to come flying out. And so the hidden habits. Of a covert narcissist are that number one, their public persona is very different than their private persona.

[00:37:47] They look very different on the surface than who they actually are. It’s very shocking when you start to realize, because you just [00:38:00] start to have this sense, but you kind of feel like you’re going crazy when you start to suspect things because you know, everybody else thinks that they’re wonderful and, and they still seem so wonderful when you’re dealing with them.

[00:38:17] But things aren’t adding up. It, you know, it’s just sort of like, they’re passive aggressive, they agree to do things. Absolutely. Oh yeah, I of course, I’ll do that for you. And then, then they don’t and, and you’re asking them about it again. Oh, of course, I’ll get to that. Yes. And then they don’t, you, you’re so like, what’s going on?

[00:38:41] You know, and money issues, you know, they, they didn’t put the money in the right place, and why didn’t they? Or they say they’re gonna get something from the store and then they don’t. And you, you know, and you would just wonder like, what is going on? You know, like, oh, could you get the [00:39:00] tickets and I’ll pay, I’ll make sure to pay you back.

[00:39:02] And then they, then they don’t, or they, they say they’re gonna call when they’re, they’re supposed to, but then they don’t. And Oh, yeah, I just, you know, I didn’t get to that. But, you know, they still seem like they’re so nice. So you, you just think like, maybe it’s inadvertent, or maybe I’m reading too much into this, or, you know, it’s, it’s very, very subtle, but then it just keeps happening.

[00:39:27] And things are not the way they seem. But, you know, their public persona is very, very different because they’re just very passive aggressive. So that’s number one. Number two is they express rage and then, They deny their anger. It’s just like this, this surface thing that’s happening. And then, oh, I’m not angry.

[00:39:54] You know? I mean, it’s just like they, they seem like they’re angry, but then they, oh, I’m not [00:40:00] angry. And so you just constantly think like, you are the one that’s going crazy all the time because it’s just right underneath the surface, this constant sort of competition and smiling. But it’s just this plausible deniability is happening all the time where everything they say, or everything they do doesn’t really quite come back to them, you know?

[00:40:34] So the things that they will say and the things that they will do don’t quite come back to them. You know, they might pit people against each other or they might say things such as, you know, oh, I can see that you’ve lost weight, but oh, too bad about the stretch marks. Or they withhold information. Oh, I meant to tell you that.

[00:40:59] Oh, it just [00:41:00] slipped my mind. Little things like that. But you, when you go to tell somebody about it, they go, well, I’m sure that it was inadvertent, you know? But it just stacks up, stacks up, stacks up. That sort of thing. So number three is they’ll express criticism and make it sound like concern. You know, Tim, he was drinking a lot last night and I, um, just so worried, I’m so worried about him.

[00:41:28] I just, I’m so concerned about his drinking. You know, you know, they might say it in a context of a custody situation where it’s long before the divorce has even started, but then, you know, six months later when the divorce actually happens, then they can say, oh, I, I did mention to you about the drinking and you know, I’m just concerned.

[00:41:58] I’m really just [00:42:00] concerned for the children. You know, I’m sure that you’ll testify on our behalf cuz you know, for the children, you know, because Tim is, is an alcoholic, you know, and Tim probably isn’t an alcoholic. Tim probably just drinks like a normal person. But they say things in these ways that make it sound like they’re just concerned, you know?

[00:42:24] So they express criticism, but they make it sound like concern. You know, those are the kinds of things that they’ll do.

[00:42:43] The next thing that they will do is they will often play the victim when they’re attacked. If you will say anything at all to them, like, how come the money is missing from this particular [00:43:00] account? Or, why haven’t you done what you said you’re gonna do yet? Or something like that. Then all of a sudden it’s like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe you’re questioning me.

[00:43:14] Or my sister died and I can’t believe that you would question my integrity, or Why would you bring that up now? And you know, they play the victim, they start crying or something. They, they totally shift it so that they’re the victim when they’re attacked. All of that, like they’re always the victim.

[00:43:37] Covert narcissists are excellent at being the victim and getting everybody else to think that they’re the victim. I mean, that is the one thing about covert narcissists they’re very, very good at. And that’s being the victim. And then number five, of course, because they are narcissists, they have a lack of empathy [00:44:00] because narcissists are narcissists.

[00:44:02] So of course they don’t have empathy, just like all narcissists don’t. And they use their guilt and shame. To control others. The coverts are usually always playing the victim, so they try to make other people feel guilty. You know, I can’t believe you would do this to me. You know? Must be nice for you to have what you have.

[00:44:29] I never had it like that. I never got anybody to do things, you know, or, oh, that’s really great for you. Uh, you know, congratulations, you know that you get to do that. I’ll just sit over here. You know, nobody ever appreciates me. Uh, nobody ever, you know, acknowledges all the things that I do for everybody, you know, and, you know, so they, they do things like that.

[00:44:58] That’s the [00:45:00] kinds of things that a, a, a covert narcissist will say. So they’ll do things for people, but then they expect like a lot in return, and they have a lack of empathy for others and for what others are doing for them. So those are the kinds of hidden habits that you guys, uh, might see in covert narcissist.

[00:45:25] Really, really difficult to be in a relationship with a covert nurse that says they will drive you into the ground. You, they will suck the life out of you. They will suck yours. Soul Dry. I have been there. I have so been there, and it is absolutely painful, ruthless, and you will be up at night. And feeling so drained.

[00:45:55] There’s no doubt about it. All right, so let’s talk about the [00:46:00] coverts. You know, they’re the ones that seem so nice to the rest of the world. I think they’re the most dangerous ones because it’s like these little teeny things. They’re really under the radar that everybody else thinks. They are wonderful.

[00:46:15] They’re very good at having. This plausible deniability. They’re very good at saying things and doing things in a way that can be shifted or taken in a way that, oh, I, that’s not what I meant. I mean, it’s, it’s almost extremely hard to describe to other people. I mean, even recently, I was at an event, I was the keynote speaker for the event, and somebody was asking me about, oh, you had to deal with a covert narcissist.

[00:46:55] Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. I said, yeah. And I said, I had to deal [00:47:00] with one in business. Oh, really? What were some of the things that you had to deal with? And I said, oh, you know, I really have a hard time describing it because when I have to just describe it, it never sounds all that bad because it’s the things that they do are small and they mess with your mind.

[00:47:23] And it’s over time and it’s very abusive over time. And it’s death by a a thousand cuts and it’s psychological.

[00:47:46] So here are a few. It’s only because. I care about you so much that I say this insert [00:48:00] very underhanded, put down statement about you. So here’s an example, only because I care about you so much that I’m concerned about how much weight you’re putting on or how much you are drinking or how much alcohol you’re consuming or something like that, or how much of a slut you’re going to look like with that red lipstick on something like that.

[00:48:32] It’s psychological. A lot of times. Many times they say the statement to a third party and sometimes they do this. In advance of the discard to start seed planting so that when the discard actually happens, they’ve planted the seed so that they can show that third party that they were right. And so [00:49:00] concerned about Suzy really drinking too much.

[00:49:05] She really had a lot to drink last night. I’m so concerned about her, so that when the discard happens and the custody battle happens, there’s an alcoholic. You see how that happens, but it’s all under the guise of concern, and that’s how the coverts come across through their, their very deep sense of care and concern.

[00:49:29] The other thing that they’ll do, the other thing that they say is they’ll say something that is very innocuous. That is, ends up being a massive firestorm. I was in the presence of a covert narcissist who was with her stepdaughter, [00:50:00] and she happened to say something about how she was with the, the husband, the father of the child, the stepdaughter was in her twenties, and she said, oh, I’ve been with your dad for 20 years, whatever it was, and the stepchild got very, very upset because she realized that that meant that she had been with the father before the mother and father had broken up and was crying and upset.

[00:50:40] And the covert narcissist was, oh, that was just a mistake. It wasn’t my intention. I just said the year’s wrong. It wasn’t my intention to upset her. O obviously, I just said the year’s wrong. I meant [00:51:00] these years primarily. It wasn’t my intention to upset her. I meant this number of years, obviously, and. She obviously knew the number of years, but she had that plausible deniability.

[00:51:18] It wasn’t my intention to, so that’s another thing that they say. It wasn’t my intention to, they know exactly what they’re doing, but they say things like that and that’s why it’s, they’re so difficult to pin down because many times they seem so nice and so kind. And these are the people that are out there that they’re humanitarians, they’re doing things for the world.

[00:51:48] They’re oftentimes clergy or doctors or, and people think, well, obviously it must have been a mistake. It was [00:52:00] inadvertent, but you know that it’s not, you know, that it was absolutely. Not a mistake. Another thing that they do is they’ll say, oh, I must have misunderstood. I said this wrongly, or I must have misunderstood.

[00:52:15] It’s all gaslighting. It’s meant to make you crazy, but it’s not lots and lots of passive aggressive behavior. It’s all very, very passive aggressive. Or they might say something like, oh, it must be so nice. It must be so nice to have it like this. Something like that. And I do have much more on this in my video called the Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist, which you are certainly welcome to check out because I had to deal with two of these in my life, one of which I’ve been able to cut out completely, thank God.

[00:52:55] The other one is a family member, so we’ve put up very, very [00:53:00] steel boundaries as much as we can. The other thing that they do is they’ll do passive aggressive things like it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s okay. Something like that. Another thing that they’ll do is they’ll make a comment and then they’ll say, oh, I was just joking.

[00:53:19] Or they’ll ad ha to the, to the end of the statement, and you know that they weren’t necessarily joking.

[00:53:44] Another one that I’ve seen personally is they’re extremely jealous. So if something good happens to you, they just can barely bring themselves to be happy for you. So they might [00:54:00] say, well, congratulations. So good for you. And then when you say, aren’t you happy for me, they’ll say, Yeah, I said, congratulations, and you say, well, you don’t seem very happy.

[00:54:18] And you say your tone didn’t seem very happy. And then they act like you’re the one who’s crazy. You’re reading things into it, you are reading tone. They turn it and shift it onto you, like you are the one who’s absolutely insane. I said, I was really happy for you. I, I couldn’t have said it even better. I, I warmly congratulated you.

[00:54:45] You know? So then you just don’t even bother. And then you start, maybe you are crazy. Maybe you then, maybe you start to feel guilty. There’s all of that as well. But you know, deep down inside that they really didn’t seem all that happy for you. Or maybe [00:55:00] they do seem jealous. Something like that. The other thing that they are very, very good at is they’re extremely skillful at saying kind of two things at once.

[00:55:12] At, at being able to kind of give a compliment and a put down all at once. It’s kinda crazy how good they are at sort of saying something like, your home, your brand new home is so beautiful. Oh, it’s too bad. It’s. On the water where you’re going to have so many issues with mosquitoes or, wow, you’ve lost so much weight.

[00:55:43] It’s too bad you’re gonna have so much issue with, uh, sagging skin though. Right? What, what a bummer about that. You know, something like that. Or, or coated language. It’s so great about your promotion, but what a bummer about [00:56:00] the, uh, amount of driving you’re gonna have to do. Huh? I mean, just, I don’t know.

[00:56:04] They, they’re, they’re very, very good. I’m not even as good at, at even coming up with the examples as they are at, at it because they’re so, so good at being able to kind of give you a compliment and also a put down at the same time, and having that plausible deniability. And, and saying things in a way that their target knows was a put down.

[00:56:37] At the same time, they’ll say something y you know, where they can actually say something to you and, oh, what was the name of that again? And that they know was, why wouldn’t you remember that kind of a thing? Which, you know, was meant to be a put down to you, or they’ll bring a gift to you and you [00:57:00] know that that was meant to be a message to you and to the rest of the world.

[00:57:06] Oh, that was nice. They brought a gift. And to you, you know that that’s a message. Those are the kinds of things that Hobert narcissists do and say they are the worst. As many of you know, they’re the ones that I disdain and detest the most in a lot of ways, but it also means that there are definitely ways that you can handle them.

[00:57:31] I’ve given you lots and lots of ways that you can actually. Work with them in a very powerful way as far as negotiating with them as well. Definitely handle them. You can definitely negotiate with them in a powerful way. Are you dealing with a covert narcissist? Covert narcissists are the absolute worst.

[00:57:53] I have dealt with them myself in my personal life, and that is why I am on this mission, on this [00:58:00] crusade to help you guys break free from them too, because I know they, they get stuck in your head. They literally know how to get stuck in the recesses of your head. You become obsessed, seriously, like you wake up in the middle of the night, you’re thinking about it.

[00:58:19] You wake up in the morning, you’re thinking about it. You’re brushing your teeth, you’re thinking about it. You seriously cannot. Get away from these. It is seriously like death by a thousand cuts because they are so subtle. I’ve recently heard this term micro manipulation, and I love this term because this is what they do.

[00:58:40] I mean, it is so subtle that when you go to try to tell somebody about it, people think, well, it doesn’t sound that bad. And there’s this term called plausible deniability, and that is what they do. I mean, it’s so subtle that it’s really, really hard to describe what it [00:59:00] is that they’re doing. It doesn’t, it just doesn’t seem that bad because these micro manipulations are so tiny.

[00:59:08] They’re literally messing with your mind a little at a time. You know, there’s this old term Chinese water torture, which, you know, I kind of don’t love that term because I’m half Chinese and you know, it’s not the greatest, but it’s that little like drip, drip, drip on your forehead where it’s just a little at a time.

[00:59:26] It’s the whole death by a thousand cuts thing. And so this is how covert narcissists literally make you crazy. And drive you absolutely insane. So these micro manipulations are what they do to absolutely drive you crazy. It is a subtle form of emotional abuse that they use in their closest relationships to gain a sense of control and [01:00:00] especially regain a sense of control if they think they’re losing it.

[01:00:04] It, so one of the things that they will do, for example, is, you know, they’ll s send like a dm. It has like this shock value, like, oh. I had a biopsy today and I don’t know what the outcome is going to be. And then they’ll like unsend it, oh, that wasn’t meant for you. Something like that. And you’ll be like, what, what, what was that?

[01:00:30] And you know, this massive drama bomb. And you’ll go, what was that? And then they’ll say, oh, sorry, that wasn’t meant for you. That was for somebody else. It was so that you will go, what, what was that? What was that? Play on your sympathy so that you’ll come back and, and wanna know what, what that was and get, you know, to get your attention.

[01:00:52] And then they’ll be super secretive about it. Oh, that wasn’t meant for you. Sorry, I know you don’t care anymore. To try to [01:01:00] reawaken your empathy to see if you still care. Try to get you to worry, you know, something to that effect. So that may be one of the things that they might do. Another thing that they might do is try to get you to participate in activities that they know that you don’t necessarily enjoy.

[01:01:22] This is if you’re still in a relationship with them. So they will do that, but you know, they’ll make you do that. But they know that you will go along and you won’t say anything. Because they know that you’re the type of person that will go along to get along and they might say, oh, it’s just for a minute and it won’t take that long and you’ll be fine with it.

[01:01:50] And then after a while it ends up being like your whole day or something like that and an hour turns into three [01:02:00] hours and then it turns into the whole day or something and you just end up being, you know, annoyed or whatever. And, but you just ended up kind of getting roped into the whole thing and what can you really end up doing about it?

[01:02:13] But they end up just sort of roping you into that whole thing. So then it makes them sort of feel like, well, they got their way, but what can you really do? Well? They say, oh, it, uh, it wasn’t supposed to be that, or whatever. And you end up being the bad person if you say anything about it. So that’s another example.

[01:02:38] Another example would be where they say something to you or do something for you that is supposed to be nice for you, that ends up not being so nice. One of the things that somebody close to me, for [01:03:00] example, you know, was a family member that my husband and I had in our, in our family, and they would do something nice for you and then as they’re doing something nice for you, they would be saying something like, oh, you’re going to get so spoiled because I’m doing this nice thing for you.

[01:03:21] And so, you know, you kind of get the sense like there’s like this, these strings attached to them doing something nice for you. You know? So there’s like this sort of manipulation around it, these strings attached to it. Or they might give like a backhanded compliment, like you’re losing so much weight. I mean, you have a ways to go, but you really look so much better than you used to.

[01:03:48] To, you know, something like that. Another thing that they might do is sort of badmouth people around you. Like, your friends are so [01:04:00] great, but don’t really love this person. You know, why? Why do you hang around people that are so not worthy of you? Something like that. You know, you, you really could ha hang around better people, make it seem like your friends aren’t the greatest, or something like that.

[01:04:21] And it’s talking negatively about people in your life all the time and trying to just isolate you from your friends, that sort of thing. Another thing that they will do is kind of subtly never accept your opinions on something. You know, they’ll always. Sort of put you down, well, you know, that sounds like a good idea, but why would we do that?

[01:04:52] Or How about if we do it this way instead? And, and you just sort of start to realize that any time [01:05:00] you have given your idea or your opinion on something, they never take your idea or opinion on something. They just always sort of put it down, or they’ll always sort of discount it. And you’re always realizing that they always go with their idea or their opinion.

[01:05:18] And it’s just these little kinds of things. It’s a micro manipulation, just these little tiny things. They’re just tiny things. Like if you cleaned a room, for example, they say, yeah, you did a good job with it, but as they’re kind of going behind you and continuing to fix it up, or to continuing to clean it to let you know you didn’t really quite do a great job.

[01:05:44] That sort of thing. So those are the kinds of things that you see. I mean, if you wanna know more about covert narcissism and relationships, I have a whole video on that. After a while, it just erodes away at your [01:06:00] self-esteem at who you are, and you just lose the sense of yourself. Now, if you were dealing with a covert narcissist or any kind of narcissist, whether they’re overt or grandiose or malignant, or.

[01:06:14] Covert is what we’re gonna be talking about today, or a combination of any of the kinds of narcissists. Then you’re dealing with a hellish personality, a heinous personality. But there are some things about covert narcissists that can make them even more insidious than the other types of narcissists.

[01:06:54] You know that I have a personal experience with dealing with covert narcissists, [01:07:00] uh, not as husbands, but as, um, people who were close to me, who I became the target of these heinous creatures. So this is the kind of narcissist that I personally disdain the most. So in some ways, this is like my p s a, my, my public service announcement to warn you, to warn you against these personality type or this personality type and what to look for in this personality type.

[01:07:30] So one of the things that you should know about covert narcissists is that they are a hundred percent narcissists. So they have what Dr. Craig Malkin calls the Triple E, which is that they exploit, they feel entitled, and they lack empathy. So they still are all a hundred percent narcissist. Like all narcissists are.

[01:07:57] And the other little kind of dangerous [01:08:00] thing about covert narcissists is that they can sometimes be grandiose narcissists that act covert, which is kind of confusing too. You know, sometimes these different types of narcissists actually vacillate back and forth between the, the various signs of the types of narcissists they are.

[01:08:19] But what I’m gonna be talking about today is actually more of your pure covert narcissist, which is the kind that I’ve actually had to deal with and why I think that they’re so dangerous. Because, you know, if I could be fold, then anybody can be fold. And I really just had to literally work these people out of my life in, um, the, the last year.

[01:08:43] So, and, and it was not easy. And they still try to pop back up and pop back in because that’s what narcissists do. They never really let go. They never really, um, move on completely. You know, sometimes it can be [01:09:00] years before they pop back up again, but they, you can kind of minimize it and protect yourself in a lot of ways.

[01:09:14] So the thing about covert narcissists is that they don’t look on the surface. Like regular narcissists. Regular narcissists, what I call the garden variety. Narcissist is more of your grandiose varietal, the kind that goes around telling everybody how great they are all the time. Covert narcissists don’t do that, and that’s one of the things that I think is so dangerous about them, is that on the surface they appear very nice.

[01:09:47] They appear like good people, lots of people love them. They can be politicians, they can be clergy, they can be lawyers, doctors, they’re often in positions [01:10:00] of respect because of course, they’re narcissists. They, they want, they, they feed on that respect. Remember that the narcissist actually has no inner sense of internal value.

[01:10:11] They get all of their sense of value from the external. They need endless amounts of what we call supply, which is anything that feeds their ego, anything that feeds their external value or their feeling of external value. So, Supply can be in the form of money, compliments, prestige, anything that they think is going to give them more value.

[01:10:36] So here’s the problem with a covert narcissist. And one of the things that is so dangerous about them is there, you’re not gonna hear them say, I’m the greatest. Look at my ratings. Look how fantastic I am. I’m so smart. I’m the number one this, I’m the number one that, you know, without anything to back it up.

[01:10:58] They just go around [01:11:00] saying all of those things, um, because they, they, they feed on that they need to have it. Okay? So what a covert narcissist is more likely to do is put themselves in position where they’re going to get all of that, but they’re not actually going to have to say it at, you know, overtly.

[01:11:23] And so we’re told that. You know, narcissists are brash, braggadocio, loud, assertive. Well, the thing is that covert narcissists don’t come in that format. They’re usually much nicer. They start off by, you know, giving you lots of things that their version of love bombing is often being the perfect person for you.

[01:11:52] And, you know, they can put you in positions that you wanna be in or give you speaking engagements that you think that you want [01:12:00] or introduce you to the person that you wanna be introduced to, or they’re the perfect cook, or the perfect mother, or, you know, whatever it is that you want. This person just seems so nice and so wonderful, and yes, uh, malignant narcissist can do that too, but, The difference with, uh, covert narcissists is that they don’t come off that way.

[01:12:31] You know, where they’re loud and braggadocious and flashy, um, they come off as really nice, sometimes even quiet, sometimes passive, sometimes demure. So that’s one of the things that I think is super dangerous about covert narcissists. One of the other things that I think is really dangerous about covert narcissists is that they come off looking very successful, often on the [01:13:00] surface.

[01:13:00] And, um, you know, grandiose and, and malignant narcissist can do this too, but grand, grandiose narcissists come off as super ambitious, super successful. Whereas the covert narcissist is often, you know, they, they, they, they make it look like they’ve had that sort of success. But if you look just beneath the surface, they haven’t actually gotten that success.

[01:13:27] And so they have a lot of bitterness and resentment about the fact that, you know, everybody else has more success than they do, and you know that they’re, they’re failures or other people’s faults because, you know, I. Something happened with their business or this person sabotaged them in some way, um, or maybe, um, they were just getting going and they had to close their business or they had to move or they, [01:14:00] something happened.

[01:14:01] And so they have all of these sort of failed ambitions and feeling of emptiness and, and they often feel, um, have a tremendous sense of depression and emptiness. And sometimes they’ll even tell you that they have bouts of depression, but they don’t tell you it’s because of their failures In business, they’ll tell you it’s, you know, just that they have these afflictions.

[01:14:27] Because one of the other thing about things about covert narcissists is, you know, they often, um, are very good at playing the victim. All narcissists do that. But the way covert narcissists do it is that they’re kind of sad and. Um, you know, people aren’t treating them well and they just didn’t get a good lot in life.

[01:14:51] And, um, you know, the world is unfair, uh, to them. And, and so, you [01:15:00] know, they end up feeling depressed and empty and, and, you know, they often have sicknesses, um, so that they can, you know, get sympathy from people around them. Um, garner lots of pity from people. Oh, so and so’s always getting a bad deal. You know, there’s a lot of payoff sometimes for, for being a victim and, um, you know, a a, a covert narcissist thrives on that payoff from being the victim.

[01:15:30] So the other thing about covert narcissist that I think is super dangerous is that they’re super passive aggressive. And this is the one thing that really was like very confusing for me in the. Two passive aggressive narcissists that I had to deal with. The covert ones, um, is that they would do these little things that on the surface would seem so nice, you know, oh, here, I did this for you, and, you know, but while they’re, they’re doing [01:16:00] this thing for you, they’re crossing a boundary.

[01:16:02] Um, or they don’t do something that they say they’re going to do. And then when you ask them about it, it’s, oh, I forgot. Or, oh, I, I misunderstood you. Or, oh, we had a conversation about that, remember? And we decided to do this. And it’s absolutely not something that we decided to do, but it’s, it’s them trying to make an excuse for behavior that they know has been hurtful to you.

[01:16:33] And so they try to get you to say that, you know, basically you went along with that. Um, and, and when you try and it’s such, it’s little things. It’s that little drip, drip, drip on your forehead. Little things. Um, And Debbie Mezas book, the Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist. She gives an example of a husband who would go into Starbucks to get coffee, and the wife would [01:17:00] stay in the car and the husband would say, what is what, what do you want?

[01:17:02] Anything? And she’d say, yeah, I’ll have, you know, a vanilla latte or whatever. And he’d get back in the car and start to drive away. And she’d say, what happened to my latte? And he’d say, oh, I forgot to get it for you. But then he wouldn’t go back into the, the place to get it. So, you know, it, it, and it was like a little thing if you tell somebody, oh, I didn’t get the latte that I wanted.

[01:17:26] Then you come off sounding petty. Um, and you, you start to think, well, do I blow up a whole marriage over that? I mean, that seems so ridiculous. But what they’re really trying to do is send you this message, send you this message that they think so little of you, or that you’re not worthy in some way.

[01:17:46] Because that’s how narcissists get supply. They get supply by, by building themselves up and cutting you down. And so they do these little tiny things that in the [01:18:00] surface, if you tell somebody about it, it just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal. They’re very, very passive aggressive and it can leave you feeling confused.
[01:18:10] And, and after a while, abused and actually traumatized because of the way they act.

[01:18:24] Is that they’re a hundred percent narcissist, but they are really, really good at being manipulative, very good at hiding their manipulation. Very good at disguising it as something else at disguising it as the, you know, I just, you know, did this little thing for you and, and, and, and you know that the hair on the back of your neck is standing up.

[01:18:53] Like that’s not something nice. You know, one of the things that. I’ve [01:19:00] heard during this, um, I’m taping this while we’re still in this global pa pandemic, is, you know, that the covert narcissist in people’s lives are leaving food by the door and, and. You know, you know that that’s like a message of I know where you live, or I still have control over you, or I know what you want.

[01:19:26] Um, but the rest of the world is like, oh, the person left to a care package. How is that bad? Why is that? Well, you, we all know that the person is so nice. We all know that the person is such a good person, so what’s your problem? And so while they’re lining up their flying monkeys and they’re telling everybody, you know, how wonderful they are or how wronged they’ve been by you, because you know, oftentimes you actually look like the stronger person because they’ve [01:20:00] pushed, put themselves in this light of being the nice, caring kind person.

[01:20:06] So you obviously must be the one that is wronging them in some way and you almost feel paralyzed to like, how do you even, um, right that wrong of what people are thinking about you. And the way I’ve just come to deal with it is, number one, I have major boundaries. I do not look at what these other people are doing.

[01:20:34] I don’t look at their social media. I’ve blocked them on my social media so that they can’t see what I’m doing and, you know, continue to, you know, have access to what I’m doing. I don’t want them to think that I’m interested in what they’re doing at all because I’m not. I just want to look forward, not back.

[01:20:54] I don’t want their energy and my space. I don’t want to even be thinking about [01:21:00] them. When I go to think, when, when, when one of them pops into my mind, I pivot immediately because the, the way I look at it is if I’m thinking about them, then I am not in creation mode. I’m not helping people. I’m not doing things like making these videos and helping you guys so that you can look forward also and concentrate on your now and the rest of your life and creating an in incredible future.

[01:21:27] And so I just learned how to pivot and create major boundaries because I don’t want these people in my space and you shouldn’t have them in there either. So if you have to continue to co-parent with them or you have to continue to live with them in some way, then you know, figure out a way to protect yourself so that when they do these things, you are no longer going to be sucked into it, you know?

[01:21:56] And certainly do not let them [01:22:00] see you be upset by their behavior, because then they know that they have you then, then they know that they still have this little. Modicum of control over you. So here comes more. Here comes more. So you know, the less you can interact, the, the more you can show that you aren’t interested and you direct your energies elsewhere, then that vibrational energy of connection that you still have with that person will eventually peter off and hopefully, eventually die.

[01:22:38] So if you are dealing with a covert, passive aggressive narcissist in your life, they can be the most dangerous kind of narcissist because they’re the most sneaky, the most insidious, the most stealth, and in some ways the most toxic because of how good they are about hiding their narcissism and [01:23:00] being under the radar.

[01:23:01] And so if that is you, I’m sending you blessings. I’m sending you light from one survivor thriver to another, you can do this.[01:24:00] [01:25:00] [01:26:00]

[01:27:00] [01:28:00] [01:29:00] [01:30:00] [01:31:00] [01:32:00] [01:33:00] [01:34:00] [01:35:00] [01:36:00] [01:37:00]

[01:37:04] The reason I am on this mission is because I haven’t had to deal with covert narcissists, the subject of today’s video. I’ve had to deal with them in a business setting, one of ’em in a business setting, in one in my extended family. I had never even heard the term covert narcissist before until somebody pointed it out to me.

[01:37:27] And I remember when we were having this conversation, the, the person who pointed it out to us pointed it out to my husband and me first, and they were like, oh, that that person, that family member that you’re dealing with is a covert narcissist. And I remember I was like, covert narcissist. I never even heard that term before, but I remember thinking, oh, I don’t think she’s a narcissist.

[01:37:54] I mean, a narcissist to me was like a boastful, [01:38:00] bragging, you know, super egotistical. Usually a male, like to me it was always a male. I mean, it had never occurred to me, number one, that a narcissist could be a female. And by the way, the person who was calling this person a narcissist, happened to be a psychologist.

[01:38:17] I was like, I don’t think she’s a narcissist. Pretty sure she’s just like, really insecure. And he was like, okay. You know what I. Let it be a hypothesis. And if I’m wrong, I guess you’ll know it. And if I’m right, you’ll know it too. The facts and circumstances will bear it out. And of course he was a hundred percent right.

[01:38:42] But as time went on and I started to read and learn mu much more about it, I started to really figure it out. And so, you know, there’s so much that goes into a covert narcissist. But you know, my hypothesis is that I think women do tend to be more [01:39:00] the covert kind, because women wanna be more under the radar.

[01:39:03] You know, they tend to wanna be, you know, they wanna look nice. They wanna look kind. I mean, but I don’t know. I think that there are a lot of male covert narcissists too. You know, they’re the ones that nobody suspects, like the world thinks that they’re so fantastic, they’re so charismatic, they’re the world thinks they’re wonderful.

[01:39:24] So anyway, here’s some strange behaviors of covert narciss success. I mean, number one is that they’re super passive aggressive. Their words do not match their actions. So they’re like super kind and, and absolutely. I will do that for you. Absolutely. I will get right back to you on that. And then you don’t hear from them or you know, I will, I definitely wanna make sure that you were taken care of.

[01:39:56] And then they don’t. And so you’re left like [01:40:00] so confused all the time and, and, and you know, do I force them on that? Do I ask them about that and do this make me a bad person because they’re so nice. And then here you are the one like, am I being passive aggressive? Am I being the one that’s problem? It seems very strange because they seem so nice.

[01:40:23] So it’s kind of a strange behavior because they seem so nice, but it’s actually not strange if you get to know who they are. As a covert narcissist. That’s number one. Number two is they value the opinions of strangers over family. I mean, and this is something that my husband and I have seen with the covert narcissist, uh, that we’ve had to deal with in our family situation.

[01:40:53] You know, this particular person who shall not be named definitely values the opinions of [01:41:00] strangers over family. It can be painful, uh, unless you realize and just accept that that’s who they are, that they are narcissists, and that’s what narcissists do. They are seeking that external praise. They’re seeking that narcissistic supply, and that’s the very strange thing about narcissists.

[01:41:22] They, they kind of take for granted the opinions or the supply that they’re getting within their inner circle. They don’t, they don’t really care about the supply that they already have. That’s just sort of a given. They want the supply that they’re getting externally. For some reason, that means more to them than the supply or the validation that they can get from the people who actually love them, from the people who actually care about them or [01:42:00] actually value them.
[01:42:02] Um, they prefer to get it from other people that they don’t even know. But that’s how it is. It doesn’t really make any sense, but that is very strange. Um, and so that’s number two, number three, and I will never really get over number three, to be honest with you. Um, both of the covert narcissists that I had to deal with did this, uh, with me and I found it very odd, very weird, very super creepy.

[01:42:35] And that is that they stare at you. I actually did a whole video on this just because I really couldn’t stand it. My whole video was called Why the Narcissist is Always Watching You. You know, both of the narcissists I, I had to deal with, I, I would find like, would be staring at me watching me. They do, they stalk your social media.

[01:42:57] They check out what you’re doing, you [01:43:00] know, I would find that they would like, copy me, watch what I was wearing. Copy that. And, and you know, some people would be like, who don’t understand narcissism? They’d be like, oh, but that’s so flattering. That’s so, you know, that’s so nice that they would like, want to be like you or something.

[01:43:18] But no, like those of you who understand narcissism, like you know that it’s not. Flattering. It’s like the creepy kind. Actually, recently I had dinner with another couple who happened to let me know that one of the narcissists that I had to deal with that I’ve completely cut out of my life, not the family member one, but the other one let me know that there was like some like buddy who was in touch with somebody else that, you know, sort of like, like this fringe sort of, uh, in touch that like there’s that like narcissist that’s still like trying to poke their head through to try to get through the boundaries that I’ve created.

[01:43:59] I [01:44:00] mean, very sad, but you know, from my own growth perspective, I was like, you know what, I don’t, I don’t really feel any emotion about it. So it was actually good. It was like a little test for me because when I heard about it I was like, that is so, so pathetic. I actually found myself feeling like nothing.

[01:44:21] So I was, I was glad about that. So, That’s number three. Number four is, they’re super weird about gift giving. You know, they kind of like, don’t really wanna give gifts. They like, oh, here you go. And there’s like, ties against it. Cause I don’t really like to give gifts. Um, I do have a video on that too, by the way, if you want.

[01:44:43] Check it out. But, you know, narcissists there, they, there’s always like strings. They don’t like to give gifts really. There’s always, uh, something involved with the gifts. So that’s number four. Number five is they’re chameleons. You know, like they’re [01:45:00] kind of one way with one group and one way with another group.

[01:45:03] And one way with this person and another way with another person is, you know, they, whatever color they are with this person, they might be a different color within a different person because, you know, they’re, they don’t have a sense of self, right? Because they’re a nurse. Is this, so that’s number five, number six.

[01:45:21] This is actually another little sore spot for me because this was something I had to deal with in my business setting kind of situation. Anyway, they definitely take credit for your ideas. Yep. Been there, done that. Got the t-shirt, did not like that. But they do that. They definitely like to take credit for your ideas because they don’t have any cri uh, ideas of their own.

[01:45:44] Yes. Because you know, they are energy vampires. That’s part of what they do. They suck the energy out of you.[01:46:00]

[01:46:03] All right. And number seven. Number seven. This is another little catchy little tune that the coverts like to play. This is another little strange behavior of theirs, which is they act like they’re strong. I’m so strong, I’m so good. But then they also like to play the victim. Very strange, very weird. They wanna play like they’re strong.

[01:46:34] They’re so good. But then they also, oh, they played me. I can’t believe they did that to me. I’m so weak. The whole passive aggressive thing, part of the whole covert thing. I’m so nice, but I’m also, you know, Like, again, knives under me, you know? So warm over here, but there’s ice in my blood. Yes, indeed. So anyway, those are the seven [01:47:00] top strange behaviors of covert narcissist, the one that I personally detest the most because I’ve had to deal with them.

[01:47:08] Now let’s talk about this covert, passive aggressive narcissist. I never even heard of such a thing until I actually became the, I would say victim target survivor. I prefer survivor actually. But you know, initially you are their target and then you kind of become their victim. Uh, and then hopefully you can escape and become a survivor and live to talk about it.

[01:47:38] And you know, for me, having been a seasoned attorney, I’m a very successful attorney. I’ve been recognized by any, you know, uh, valid, credible source that, that recognizes accomplishments of attorneys. I’ve been a divorce attorney for 20 [01:48:00] years or more, and. You know, very, uh, what I would say confident, tough.

[01:48:06] So you, I wouldn’t have expected to have become the target victim survivor of a covert narcissist, but I actually have two, two of them that I had to get rid of fairly recently in my life. And so it’s, it’s, I’ve, while I have programs on how to negotiate with a narcissist, I’ve had to make sure that I incorporate in there how to deal with a covert passive aggressive narcissist, because these are the most stealth ones.

[01:48:43] These are the most toxic in a lot of ways because they don’t look like narcissists. So there’s really three types of narcissists. The first one would be your grandiose narcissist. That’s your run of the mill narcissist. The [01:49:00] one that we’re used to seeing the kind that, you know, most people think of when they think of narcissists.

[01:49:06] The one that goes around telling everybody how great they are, um, has no problem boasting about their accomplishments or thinking that they’re the best one. And everybody’s, they, they tell everybody and everybody knows that that’s what they think. And, and, and that’s kind of your, your run of the mill, normal narcissist.

[01:49:28] And then there is what we call the malignant narcissist, which is kind of like the grandiose narcissist, but like on steroids. It’s kind of like the Darth Vader of narcissists. Um, you know, those are the ones that have a propensity for stalking or, or violence or threats of violence, things like that to intimidate people into doing what they want.

[01:49:51] I mean, all narcissists have zero sense of self. They’re like the, um, the Easter chocolate [01:50:00] buttony that has like, is totally hollow inside. That’s what’s going on with the narcissist. They have no inner sense of self. They have no inner, um, self-esteem or self-worth. They actually are the most insecure of all people in the world.

[01:50:16] And so, Those of us who are empaths, they are attracted to narcissists and narcissists are attracted to them. It’s this crazy sort of symbiotic very, um, lethal attraction that both have for each other because empaths naturally want to help people and they, they see that narcissists have that, um, inner sense of, of, of insecurity.

[01:50:45] That deep sense of insecurity. And, um, and narcissists naturally want to be with people that have qualities that they wish that they had or that they want other [01:51:00] people to think that they have or that they admire in some way. Something like that. And so they do gravitate toward each other. And with covert passive aggressive narcissists, it’s even worse because covert, passive aggressive narcissists are actually, um, the ones that will straight out tell you that they have difficulty with depression or, or, or, You know, or feeling good about themselves, they’ll straight up say that, um, they often appear to be victims of things.

[01:51:33] They, they want to appear to be victims. Um, a lot of times they have a lot of illnesses or they’re sick, so the people feel sorry for them. You know, the world just doesn’t, isn’t fair, doesn’t give them what they want or whatever. But they also appear to be very charming, very nice, like the nicest people in the world.

[01:51:54] Um, a really huge eye-opening book for me was this book right here [01:52:00] by Debbie Meza. It’s called The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist. And, um, if you haven’t had a chance to read it, I would definitely make sure to grab it. I will put a link to the book below here in, um, my notes on the video. Uh, definitely check it out.

[01:52:16] It was very eye-opening for me, and, and when I was reading it, I was like, oh my God, these people that have been in my life, it could be a book written about them. Like, like they are it. Exactly. So, I, I wanna read for you, um, because I don’t have the list memorized, so I just wanna read for you some of the characteristics that they, um, that Debbie Marza says that.

[01:52:43] Covert, passive aggressive narcissists have, they do not have a strong sense of self. They have silent rage, lying, hoovering, constant criticism, jealousy. They pro, they project their own issues onto you. Their words don’t match their [01:53:00] actions. They are emotionally disconnected. They have flying monkeys, which are, it’s like a triangulation move to try to get people in your world to line up against them or with them against you.

[01:53:14] And they get them to believe all their lies about how horrible you are. Or they might just get them on their side to think that they’re a wonderful person. So therefore, if you cross this person, then there definitely must be something wrong with you because they’re so nice. Um, they take credit for your ideas.

[01:53:36] They withhold praise and recognition. They sabotage birthdays, holidays, vacations, and meaningful dates. They belittle you, teach you lessons. They’re self-focused, emotionally immature, always strings attached. Use people. So, They’re dizzying conversationalists. So, you know, easy to get sucked in. They create drama.

[01:53:59] They don’t make [01:54:00] love. They take it, they’re not protective. They create stories in their head. They have no desire to actually know you. They have no interest in making this a great relationship. They use control and manipulation. So, um, those are definitely all characteristics that I saw in the two pass, covert, passive aggressive narcissists that I had to deal with in my life.

[01:54:23] I’m sure that I have others, but those are the two that actually became fixated with me. And, um, doing things, you know, to, um, hurt me. And, and what’s interesting is that they have this kind of weird fixation. Like they absolutely, um, idolize you in a lot of ways, but then they also are trying to hurt you and do passive aggressive things to you.

[01:54:51] It’s a very strange world of insanity that, you know, you just gotta get yourself out of as fast as possible if [01:55:00] you can. And if you can’t, you definitely wanna create boundaries that are really, really strict because you know, these people are actually narcissists. All narcissists don’t respect boundaries.

[01:55:12] You’re supposed to respect theirs. They don’t have to respect yours. That’s how that goes. There are three phases to a relationship with a covert, passive aggressive narcissist or any narcissist. And that is the love bombing phase where they start off with how great you are. You’re so beautiful, everything is amazing.

[01:55:34] They line themselves up to look like they’re so perfect for you. They, they want you to think that they’re incredible in the beginning. That everything about them is just perfect. Where you’re thinking, wow, is this person even real? This is amazing. Um, and then the next phase is where they start to devalue you.

[01:55:54] And with a passive aggressive narcissist, this is where you start to see these little things. [01:56:00] And they’re just small enough. They’re so good at doing these little things that you know are not right and you know are meant to do something to you. But the rest of the world, if you tell them about it, they would go.

[01:56:16] Well, that doesn’t seem so bad. I don’t know, maybe it was a mistake. Oh, that seems inadvertent. Um, because they’re so nice. So it, it has to be an error. Um, or they gaslight you. But it’s in very, very subtle ways where they’ll say, you know, they’ll do something completely contrary to what you agreed on or to what you would think that they should do or whatever.

[01:56:43] And when you call them out on it, they go, oh, we had that conversation. You agreed to that, and you know, you never had that conversation. Or you, or they say something like, um, oh, uh, we, um, I thought you said that [01:57:00] that was okay, or something like that. And, and you know, that, that just never happened. And so they try to make you think that you’re crazy, but when you tell other people about it, they go, oh, that must have been inadvertent.

[01:57:13] You know, one of the things that, um, I’ve seen with covert passive aggressive narcissists is like, with, with money, you know, where money will end up being deposited into the wrong account. And they go, oh, I didn’t realize I did that. I’ll correct it. And then they never do, you know, and so then you end up having to go back to ask them about it.

[01:57:34] But then when you tell people about it, they go, well, it seems inadvertent. Um, because the person is so nice and they’re such a good person, they, they would never do anything like take money, um, you know, things like that. And, um, you know, so it goes on and on. And so during the devalue phase, you’re, you’re getting this little drip, drip, drip on your head of, of, of things that are starting [01:58:00] to make you think you’re crazy because the whole rest of the world does think that this person is so nice.

[01:58:05] Um, you know, one of the examples that Debbie Meza gives in her book is about. Um, a husband who, um, would go into a, a Starbucks or something and get himself a coffee and he would ask the wife if she wanted anything and she would always say yes. And she would tell him what he wanted, what she wanted, and he would always come back out and say, oh, I forgot to get yours when she would bring it up.

[01:58:29] And then he wouldn’t even go back in to get it. Like he would just drive away. Um, you know, little things like that that are just like, Well, do you really break up a relationship over that? Um, well, it doesn’t seem like so bad. Maybe I’m just being selfish. You know, things like that. And especially if you’re an empath, which they, remember I said they gravitate toward, you’re, you’re gonna want to be as giving as possible.

[01:58:57] And so, and [01:59:00] narcissists just wanna take as much as possible. So, and remember to a narcissist, your only value is whatever value you bring to them because they need an endless amount of what we call narcissist supply and supply is. Whatever thing of value you can bring to them. It might be compliments, it might be making them look good, it might be helping them, um, you know, with all of their problems.

[01:59:28] It may be, uh, financial gain, it may be that just being associated with you gives them a higher boost in status or, or whatever. So, you know, but if you take away that value from the narcissist, then um, your value is gone as well. And in fact, when you try to end a relationship with a narcissist who, I mean, whether it’s a romantic relationship, a business relationship, or you know, friend, [02:00:00] neighbor, employer, or whatever, they are gonna want to get you first.

[02:00:06] Especially because you may know things about them that actually would make them vulnerable. So they’re going to make a lot of noise and go absolutely berserk. So you gotta be ready for that. Um, because they’re gonna wanna make everybody else think that you are the bad one for leaving. Even if they leave, you be, to be honest, they don’t wanna be seen as, oh, I left them because, um, I’m a bad person or I wanted to be with somebody else.

[02:00:38] They’ve gotta make it about you. And so you’ve gotta steal yourself. You’ve gotta be ready that whatever you say, do whatever is going to be manipulated. They’re gonna lie, cheat. Uh, in my program on how to negotiate with a narcissist, I actually have a list of 30 things that they will do, and I [02:01:00] actually break them out by the type of narcissist and the types of behavior they do in a breakup.

[02:01:05] But, um, just know that you’re gonna be in for it. But remember, remember that this is actually the most fragile personality. They’re like the, the bully on the playground that when you fight back, they run away. So you just gotta find that point and create enough strategy and leverage to get them to the point where they will be willing to back down and run away and just find somebody else because it’s not worth.

[02:01:37] They’re troubled to be in your space anymore, and you’re not giving them any value. So plus, if you’re gonna make them look bad, then you know it’s time to move on as far as they’re concerned. So covert narcissists are so different than the grandiose narcissists. And covert can be malignant as well, by the way.

[02:01:58] But covert [02:02:00] narcissists tend to be under the radar to the rest of the world. They look amazing, they look perfect, they’re wonderful, they’re kind, they’re generous. They’re so easy to get along with. They only show their their ugly, horrible, heinous face to their victims. And so here you are with somebody who, when you first meet them, is generous and kind and says all the right things and everybody loves them.

[02:02:32] And oftentimes they’re in positions of. You know, where, where people love them, like clergy or doctors or psychologists, people who, um, seem to be very caring, who seem to be just the most amazing people that you could have ever met. And so they, they come on with love bombing, just like all narcissists do.

[02:02:57] And if you wanna know more about love bombing, check out [02:03:00] my video on love bombing. But basically it’s that, that time where they are grooming you to become their target, they’re testing you out to see if you’re the right one for them to see if, um, if you’re gonna be good. And they, so they present themselves to you as wonderful.

[02:03:18] And it, you know, if it’s a romantic situation, they’re the perfect spouse. If it’s a business situation. They’re the perfect business partner. So they get themselves ensconced into the relationship with you. And then once they’re firmly in place, then they start with devaluing and they start saying little things.

[02:03:43] So the first way that covert narcissists attack their victims is through passive aggression. And what that is, is they see, seem like they’re being very nice, but then all the, they’re also saying something that’s not [02:04:00] so nice. So they’ll say something like, oh, um, you are doing so well with your weight loss.

[02:04:08] I mean, you still have a ways to go, but you know, um, you are not looking as big as you normally do. Uh, something like that. So it’s sort of like a compliment, but also, A devalue, it’s also a put down. So you’ll see these little kinds of things, you know, like, oh, I see that you took care of, you know, the bank statements or, or balancing the checkbook or whatever it is.

[02:04:37] I just went ahead and fixed this mistake that you had, but good for you for doing that. That’s really great. But you know, I just went ahead and fixed your mistake. Um, you know, little things like that that are just kinda like this dig that are so like passive aggressive that you’re, you’re not really sure what’s going on.

[02:04:55] Another way that they can be passive aggressive is to say [02:05:00] that they’re going to do something and then not do it. And now you’re left in this position of trying to get, go after them and go, Hey, you know, how come you didn’t do the thing that you said that you were going to do? And they say, oh yeah, yeah, I’m gonna do that.

[02:05:15] And then they never do it. And it’s sort of like, almost like a little rebellion against you. Like, I’m not gonna do what you want me to do, kind of a thing. So passive aggression is something you see a lot in covert narcissists because it’s something that they can kind of do under the radar and people don’t necessarily see it.

[02:05:36] It’s not overt, it’s not in your face. It also gives them the ability of plausible deniability where they can kind of go, well, I wasn’t singing anything bad. I was complimenting them. What are you talking about? Um, and so they don’t seem like they’re the bad ones. They’re so. So excellent at passive aggression and it’s, it’s just eats away at you.

[02:05:57] It’s like little by little you just get like [02:06:00] little chunks taken out of you until you’re just kind of like nothing left of you or, or they just like suck a little blood at a time or death by a thousand cuts. Um, I’ve heard all of those expressions before and be because the two narcissists that I had to deal with were both coverts.

[02:06:17] I understand it completely and um, it is no fun to deal with that. So passive aggression is the first one. And by the way, if you want to know more about the covert passive aggressive narcissist, I do have a video on that. But I also highly recommend the book by Debbie Marza called The Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist.
[02:06:38] And we’ll drop a link to that below as well.

[02:06:49] So the second thing that covert narcissists use to attack their victims is, oh, they’re good old fashioned favorites. [02:07:00] Gaslighting all narcissists, love gaslighting. And gaslighting is basically a way to try to make you think that you’re crazy. And so they say things like, oh, we talked about that when you know you didn’t talk about that or you said you were gonna do that, and you know that you didn’t.

[02:07:18] Or if you, even if you see something that’s evidenced right in front of your face, like a text message that looks like they’re being inappropriate with somebody else, they say, oh, you’re just reading things into it. You’re just imagining stuff. And, um, I’m just friends with this person, or I work with this person.

[02:07:37] And why do you always have to be that way? So, you know, gaslighting is a way to get control over their victims and start making victims almost question their own reality question, their own thinking question their own, um, self in a lot of ways. I mean, you just get to this point where you don’t even know what’s real anymore [02:08:00] because they’re just constantly gaslighting you into making you think that you’re the one that’s crazy.

[02:08:07] Another way that covert narcissists attack their victims is by isolating you. So making you put all your attention and focus on them being jealous if you are talking to anybody else. Making sure that. Everything that you do is about them, and even if you’re trying to tell them something about you or how you’re feeling, they’ll interrupt you.

[02:08:32] They’ll start saying how they’re the victim that you know, whatever it is that you had a problem with. It gets and ends up getting shoved aside because they have to talk about their problem and, and what it is. And I can’t believe you’re attacking me, and especially because I’m depressed or I’m sick, or this is all going on and you know that this is going on with me.

[02:08:55] And, and so it’s all, you know, shoved aside and, and, and [02:09:00] isolating you from your friends and your family and, um, you know, why you have to be talking to this person at this time and this should be our time together and who’s calling you at this hour and, and why are you leaving to go, um, talk to somebody else or be with, uh, someone else, you know?

[02:09:17] And so you just end up with, you know, no family or friends because you’ve gotta put a hundred percent into this person. Another thing that covert narcissists do is stonewall. So they’ll just not get back to you. They’ll just basically kind of like ghost you and, um, and, and stop talking to you. And if you wanna know more about ghosting, you should check out my video on ghosting.

[02:09:42] But you know, they just go dark. It’s sort of a form of passive aggression in a way actually, where they just, um, you’re, you’re trying to reach them and they don’t respond to you. And then when you tr finally do get ahold of them, they’re like, oh, I was busy. I was working, I was this, that was that. And you [02:10:00] know that they could have at least sent you a text back to say, Hey, I’m busy.

[02:10:04] I’ll talk to you later, or something like that. But they just, they want you to be worried. They want, they want, they love creating drama. They love creating, like where you’re scared about something, where you’re intimidated. Um, so that, that’s definitely another way that covert narcissists attack their victims.

[02:10:23] But another of their main little ways is triangulation. So this is not a direct attack on you. So coverts kind of tend to hang back. They don’t wanna do the direct attack thing. They’re sneakier, they kind of go around, they figure out ways to sort of attack you in very subtle ways. It’s so much worse in some ways than somebody who comes right at you.

[02:10:46] So one of the things that they do is they triangulate. So they get all of their flying monkeys all lined up and believing that there’s something wrong with you. And they do it and they couch it in ways, [02:11:00] like, um, oh, I’m just so concerned about how much she’s drinking. You know, something like that. Like there’s, they care so much and I can’t believe that they’re doing that.

[02:11:13] Um, or oh, it’s just, it makes me so sad that, um, she’s, you know, talking to these other people or she’s doing these things to me so that they become like the victim, like that, that the other person is doing things to this person. Um, and so that’s another thing that they do and, and they get all of their flying monkeys lined up to thinking that you are bad in some way.

[02:11:41] And the best flying monkeys, the ones that they love the most, are the ones that they think you. Want to have a relationship with, or you want to, you know them to respect you or love you or like you or whatever. And so those are the ones, especially if they can spot [02:12:00] weakness, if they, they’re very, very ma good at manipulating their master master manipulators.

[02:12:06] So they’ll, they’ll look for people who are going to be open to having this conversation with them and open to maybe, um, hearing what they have to say. I know one of the covert narcissists that I had to deal with actually got my own cousin to come and talk to me about what a victim this other person was.

[02:12:28] And I, I just couldn’t believe that this was actually happening. But that’s how good they are. And, and, and I was since able to get my cousin to understand what was really going on, and I. You know, that’s not happening anymore, but that’s something that covert narcissists do is triangulate and line up their flying monkeys.

[02:12:47] And it is certainly something that they do during the discard phase of the relationship. And, um, when you are ending a relationship and you’re having to fi figure out how [02:13:00] to end it, whether it’s negotiating a divorce, negotiating a business settlement, um, any kind of negotiation, this is the kind of thing that they are going to be doing as covert narcissists, they’re gonna attack you even more.

[02:13:16] It’s everything that they were doing during the relationship will be magnified and on steroids over and over and over again. All right, let’s talk about this covert narcissist. This is the one that I really can’t stand the most just between you and me, because I had to deal with two of them who actually targeted me.

[02:13:35] It was horrible. I mean, horrible. I, I can’t even describe. How much it really sucked, frankly. Uh, and they weren’t even people that I was romantically in involved with. I mean, one of ’em was in my business, uh, life, and one of them, it was a family member, and it was just horrible. So this is the problem with these [02:14:00] guys, okay?

[02:14:01] They seem really nice to the rest of the world. These people are wonderful. They’re amazing. They, people say they’re so genuine, they’re so kind, you know, they might even think that they’re humble. Uh, these are the people that aren’t like out there being brash and bragging and like what you think of with the normal garden variety narcissists, right?

[02:14:27] These are the people that are actually quite the opposite. Sometimes they can seem humble. Sometimes they present themselves as victims. I mean, they might even be sickly or something like that. They’re sometimes they even tell you straight out that they’re depressed. Um, they can sometimes claim to be very spiritual.

[02:14:48] Uh, they sometimes say, you know, that life hasn’t given them a, you know, a fair deal, a fair shake, or whatever. But when you’re around them, Even though the rest of the [02:15:00] world thinks that they’re wonderful, there’s just always something that’s off. You can just tell that there’s just something underneath the surface that’s just not right and you just kind of have a pit in your stomach and these little things are happening.

[02:15:17] There’s these little red flags and, and they’re not huge things. It’s not like you, you get with like super toxic people. I mean these are like little things that, you know, they don’t seem that horrible. But then it becomes sort of what I call death by a thousand cuts. They, and they, and when they engage in behaviors against you, a lot of times they, there’s what we call plausible deniability, whereas basically like if they get caught doing something, there’s a way to explain it away.

[02:15:50] And that explanation steams plausible, uh, it doesn’t seem right, but then you end up kind of like buying it sometimes because you’re [02:16:00] not, you’re not really sure what to say. Or people in your world might say, oh, I don’t think that they meant it that way. I mean, there’s so nice, it must have been inadvertent.

[02:16:15] Uh, and, you know, they would never do anything that bad. I mean, they’re certainly not malicious. Uh, and so when I was dealing with the two that I had to deal with, there were so many signs, um, and um, I had to deal with them in these relationships. And by the way, if you wanna know more about specifically covert narcissism in relationships, definitely check out my video on that topic.

[02:16:41] But anyway, there’s so many traits really in a lot of ways, but. In my experience, the ones that I had to deal with, here are my top 10, the ones that really stood out to me the most. Number one is a very fragile sense of self. I mean, these are the people. They’re, they, they [02:17:00] just feel hollow inside when you’re around them.

[02:17:02] They don’t, that seems like there’s a vacancy. There’s something that’s not quite right, not quite there. Uh, or they’re sort of like chameleons. Whoever they’re around, that’s who they, they kind of take on that personality of that person. So that’s number one. Number two is they’re extremely jealous and you’ll find that, you know, that they’ll be jealous of other people.

[02:17:25] Who is that person to have what they have or, uh, they covet what other people have. They, they’re often very, uh, competitive. Um, that was my, um, Um, experience with the, the two narcissists I had to deal with. I, I felt like they were constantly trying to one up me or somehow show that they were better than me in some way, or I, I just felt like there was this constant competition, which when I’m with my real friends and my real people and the [02:18:00] other people in my life, I never have that feeling like we’re just supporting each other.

[02:18:03] It’s good we’re having a conversation, but there’s this undertone of something going on with the covert narcissist. Number three is this underhanded criticism, and it’s so, they’re really good at it, to be honest with you. I don’t, I’m not good at this kinda stuff, but they’re really good at it. So they’re sort of like this, they have this way of sort of like working their, their, their statement in with their criticism.

[02:18:35] So it’s like, oh, I saw that you handled this, uh, that was great that you handled that, but I noticed that you forgot to do this. I, I took care of it for you. You know, like little like, cut. There, you know, and you’re sort of like, what, what? Where did that come from? Right? So underhanded criticism is number three.[02:19:00]
[02:19:00] Number four is triangulation. Those flying monkeys, covert narcissists, love, love them. Some fly monkeys. Yeah, they love the flying monkeys. They love to get other people involved. Make to, to make sure that you know, that the world thinks that they’re wonderful. And so if you think there’s anything wrong with them, then it’s definitely your problem.

[02:19:30] Or they’re either against you for them, it’s, they want you to feel isolated. It’s a bullying tactic. It’s a weakening talk tactic. They’re trying to destabilize you. They’re trying to show you that you know that they’ve gotten more power than you. And remember that narcissists never attached themselves to people who don’t have value.

[02:19:53] No, no, no, no. There’s no narcissistic supply. If you don’t have value, they attach themselves to you because you have so [02:20:00] much value. That’s the the crazy head game of this whole thing. Okay? So triangulation is definitely one of the things that I saw regularly. Uh, number five is, Oh, I like, I can barely even say this cuz this is so painful, uh, which is take credit for your ideas.

[02:20:20] They love to take credit for your ideas. They love to watch you do everything. You know, you end up doing everything. Then they take credit for the ideas, but they’ll step up if people are watching. So if they, they lay back and let you do everything un unless any somebody’s watching, then they’ll step up and make sure it looks like they’re doing something.

[02:20:44] Uh, and and one of the things in this kind of taking credit thing that is, is sort of part, uh, kind of related is that they’re, they constantly are staring at you and studying you because they’re, they’re trying to figure out how to sort of almost like be you. [02:21:00] There’s this weird adulation thing going on with them as well while they’re devaluing you.

[02:21:05] And, and if you wanna know more about why narcissists stare at you, definitely check out my video on that is so creepy and weird. Um, the next thing is that they withhold, they’ll withhold information. They’ll withhold compliments. They’ll withhold praise, they’ll withhold anything that could potentially.

[02:21:26] Give you something that they’re now not gonna have or they, they, they can’t really share. I mean, their, their scarcity mentality at its like most extreme. So even if they give you the information to, to have something else that they have, like, you know, the same bedsheets that they have or something, and, and now you’re, you’re gonna be on equal footing.

[02:21:52] They cannot do that. So they, they withhold information, they withhold praise. They don’t, they can’t have you be [02:22:00] equal to or potentially better than them. So they withhold. Next thing is creating drama. Ugh. I mean, they create drama in so many different ways by roping people in. Like, you know, we talked about the flying monkeys.

[02:22:16] Uh, they also like to drop little bits of gossip to people, uh, which will maybe pit people against each other or pit people against you, something like that. And, and sometimes the really good, the really good ones are really good at packaging up these little bits of gossip to make it look like care or concern.

[02:22:41] So concerned about her, you know, she had really too much to drink at the party last night. I wonder what’s going on with that? You know, something like that. Or they present as the victim, you know, I just don’t know why she won’t talk to me anymore. [02:23:00] I, I was so good to her. I, you know, I, or I, I can’t believe that this is happening after I did so much for them.

[02:23:11] You know, something like that. They’re presenting as the victim to try to get flying monkeys to think that, you know, you did something to them in some way. Okay. And the next one is, Ugh, this is one of their faves. They love covert narcs, love to be passive aggressive. One of their absolute go-to bag of trick.

[02:23:35] In their bag of tricks. They will do things that they said, said that they didn’t. They will don’t, they will not do things that they say they’re going to do. And then you have to like, kind of like follow up with them and find out what’s going on with that. And, and then, you know, they might even try to gaslight you.

[02:23:53] Well, we never had that conversation or you never said that. You know? Um, and, and then if you try to call them [02:24:00] out or you actually do catch them, then they suddenly become the victim. Oh, my life is a mess. And, oh, I can’t believe you’re saying this to me and I’ve been so wonderful. You know, or, or something like that.

[02:24:12] So that’s another way of being passive aggressive. Another way is, you know, what we talked about earlier, that underhanded criticism that those backhanded compliments, um, or a refusal to communicate at all. That’s another way of being passive aggressive.

[02:24:37] All right, so the next one is not being protective. Uh, they definitely do not have your back if something happens to you. Sometimes they might even take the other person’s side and you’re kind of wondering why they’re taking the other person’s side and they’ll say, oh no, I’m not taking their side and, you know, whatever.

[02:24:56] But you just feel like they don’t have your back. [02:25:00] And the last one is hoovering. And this is definitely something that I experienced with the two covert rcs I had to deal with as well. Um, you, you feel like they’re withdrawing from you. Um, they’re, they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. And so once you start to go, you know what?

[02:25:18] I’m outta here. I’m tired of being treated this way. I’m try tired of doing everything. I’m try, I’m tired of all these red flags. I’m tired of the death by a thousand cuts. I’m outta here. They start to feel you walking or leaving or pulling back in some way. Then all of a sudden they’ll rush in and do the things that they were supposed to do in the first place, which actually makes it worse because now you’re like, oh, so you did know what you were supposed to be doing, but you just didn’t.

[02:25:49] Um, but they’ll, they’re very careful then to only do, do just as much as they need to, or Hoover or love or, you know, whatever they need to do to get you [02:26:00] off of your, you know, idea that you’re gonna, that their supply is gonna walk out the door and then they’ll go back to their, their ways, you know, so they just do the bare minimum, but they do Hoover to come back and try to get you to, you know, forget about whatever it is that you were gonna do, leave or call them out or whatever.

[02:26:22] So, but again, It’s, it’s, it’s like just the bare minimum, just enough to get you back where they want you to be. Okay, so let’s talk covert narcissist. What’s the difference between them and a regular narcissist? So they’re every bit a hundred percent narcissist. They’re the same fragile little ego inside, the same super insecure person that’s deep inside there, but they look a little bit different because they’re not in your face the way regular overt narcissists are.

[02:26:55] They, they come across as a little bit more passive, a little bit more quiet, so that on the [02:27:00] surface you don’t actually even notice that they’re narcissists at all in the beginning. You know, as a, a typical narcissist, you think is the person who is telling everybody how great they are all the time. The covert narcissist does not do that.

[02:27:15] However, because they don’t do that and because you can’t see it right off the, the bat on the surface, they’re actually way more insidious and way more toxic than overt narcissists are. Okay, so another trait of a covert narcissist is that they come across as shy and actually even reserved. They actually probably are, uh, prone to, uh, bouts of depression.

[02:27:43] They may even tell you that they have bouts of depression. So, um, you know, on the surface they’re gonna seem to be like, maybe they’re just nice people. Maybe they might just be more fragile, something like that. Because being a victim is, [02:28:00] uh, very much part of the covert narcissist plan to get people into their lair.
[02:28:07] Okay. The third thing that you’ll see with covert narcissists is they, they seem to be helpful in the beginning. So they’ll, they’ll actually lure you in with things that they know that you want so that they can appear to be super helpful, but they really just wanna use you. So as, once you’re into their layer, then they start with the passive aggressive, they start to drip on you.

[02:28:34] Like the Chinese water torture chart, I’m half Chinese. I could say that, uh, in, in your, on your forehead kind of a thing. Like, and, and, and you start to think in my crazy, you know, because the rest of the world sees this person as being so nice, but you kind of know that something is not right. They’re doing all these little things behind your back and they, they’re very, very good at.

[02:28:59] [02:29:00] Disguising it in such a way that if you tell somebody about it, that you, the person’s gonna go, well, that doesn’t sound so bad, but you know that it’s like this drip, drip, drip thing that they’re doing to try to make you crazy. They lure you in with, I’m gonna help you with this. And then they start with passive aggressive little things to try to make you crazy.

[02:29:26] Okay. And the next, uh, trait of a covert narcissist is that they often like to play the victim, or maybe they’re very sickly or they often have health issues or something like that because they constantly need to be the center of attention. So they come up with ways that they can constantly be the center of attention.
[02:29:48] And then the last thing is that they will not have any sense of empathy for another person. They’ll, they can feign empathy, but, and, and they, they know when they have to [02:30:00] apologize, just to apologize for the surface. But they really don’t actually have any empathy for the other person because they actually are narcissists and narcissists don’t feel anything for anybody but themselves.

[02:30:22] Okay, so this is all well and good, but if you have a covert narcissist in your life, what can you do about it? So the first thing that you can do about it is not to react, especially if you know that this covert narcissist is trying to get under your skin or trying to manipulate you in some way, or they’re saying something to try to get a rise out of you.

[02:30:46] You just say, good for you, or, that’s great. Don’t react because that’s exactly what they want you to do. The second thing that you could do is if the timing seems [02:31:00] right, call them out on their behavior, but do it in a very subtle way. You sort of play their game. Oh, I’m surprised to see that you’re here today.

[02:31:07] You said you were sick yesterday. Something like that. But you say it without emotion, you don’t say it with smugness, you just say it so that they subtly know that you’re calling them out on, on their behavior, but you are not, uh, bothered by it. You’re not, they’re not getting a rise out of you. You’re just noticing it.

[02:31:27] So the third thing that you can do is do not, and I repeat, do not let them know that they are getting to you. You do not show any emotion. You do not show that anything that they’re doing has manipulated you in any way, because that is exactly what they want. And if they get that, then they’re gonna do more of it.

[02:31:48] So this is a, a subtle way to start shutting down this behavior. It’s kind of like a behavior modification program for narcissist. You don’t give them what they want, so don’t [02:32:00] react. Because if you do, then. That’s what they want. Okay. The fourth thing that you can do is kind of similar to the others, but this is specific to gaslighting because this is something that narcissists will do often, and especially covert narcissists too.

[02:32:18] They’re gonna try to gaslight you, so you’re, they try to make you think that you’re crazy. So you’re a ago there was, uh, a movie, I think it was actually called Gaslight or something, and this, uh, husband was actually abusing the wife through trying to make her seem like she was crazy. And he would blow out these gaslights and then she would say, wasn’t that just lit?

[02:32:40] And he would say, no, it wasn’t. And that’s what gaslighting is. You know, it is just like the subtle little thing to try to make you think that you’re crazy. So basically it’s like, um, we talked about that. I, you said that it was okay, um, or, um, oh, we had a conversation. Um, I’m sorry. There was a [02:33:00] misunderstanding on your part and you know that there was no misunderstanding or maybe that there was no conversation ever at all.

[02:33:06] So don’t let them gaslight you that way. Just say, no. There was never that conversation. No, we didn’t have that conversation. And no, there was no misunderstanding. This is what we talked about, something like that. Remain firm. Don’t allow them to manipulate you into thinking that you’re crazy. Okay, number five is, uh, keep your barriers really strong.

[02:33:27] One of the things that narcissists do, because, you know, they’ve got this mantra that I will not be ignored, is they don’t respect boundaries. So, you know, they’ll come right into your room, they’ll read your mail, they will, uh, you know, go places that they’re not supposed to be or whatever, and, and they act like, oh, here I am bringing you something nice.

[02:33:49] I’m doing something nice for you. So you know, I’m not respecting your boundaries, but you’re gonna forgive me because I’m being nice about it. Something like that. Don’t allow them to [02:34:00] not respect your boundaries. Have super strong barriers, super strong barriers, as the only way you’re gonna be able to manage their behavior and also keep your own sanity.

[02:34:12] And the other thing that you can do is to slowly close down the barriers of communication. And what I mean by this is if you have a narcissist in your life and or, or covert narcissist, if the most thing that you can do for yourself is get them outta your life. Okay? Um, and you know, I’ve recently had to do that with people in my, um, business arena.

[02:34:38] And because, you know, I’ve had some covert narcissists in my life, in, in the business arena, and I’ve had to deal with that. And it was extremely difficult. And it’s painful because, you know, it’s sort of a betrayal in a lot of ways, right? But, you know, you just have to understand and have compassion for the fact that they’re broken people and that they’re, they have deep, deep insecurities and problems, but that doesn’t mean they have to [02:35:00] be in your space.

[02:35:00] So if I were you, I would try to like slowly, uh, shut down those barriers of communication and slowly start to wean them out of your space if you can. They are, unfortunately, so easy for me to come up with great examples. It’s like, I can come up with these, like, you know, so easily because the, you know, the examples are like, they’re, oh, hypothetical, of course.

[02:35:27] So anyway, I’m giving you five ways to expose a covert narcissist. So number one, number one is they are, Inherently lazy. So they want to feed off of you. Yes. Again, very hypothetical. So the number one idea is to give them deadlines. Give them deadlines, and then hold them to them because they are inherently lazy.

[02:35:55] They will not want to do that. [02:36:00] And I actually, I’ve coached a couple of people who’ve had covert narcissist business partners, and it’s really interesting how they all have the same playbook. You know, they kind of think that they’re just gonna like, attach themselves to people who actually work hard and have talent.

[02:36:19] And they think, oh, well th these, this person will make me look good and this person will actually do all the work. And, and I’ll just, um, let them do it all. They initially do stuff, they initially make it look like there’s a flurry of activity going on, but then, you know, they kind of just hang back and they don’t really do that much.

[02:36:41] So the way to expose them is just, you know, that you start, you start to have to give them deadlines. You start to have to like, Kind of make them do stuff and, and you actually have to hold them to it and say, Hey, where’s your, Hmm. You know, whatever it is that you gave them deadlines on. It’s a little bit, um, [02:37:00] tiresome, frankly, uh, after a while.

[02:37:03] Uh, so I, I don’t recommend if you kind of know that you are dealing with a covert narcissist, uh, I wouldn’t recommend getting into either a relationship or a business partnership with this person. I would recommend staying the hell away from them. But if you end up stuck with them and you’re trying to get out of it, which I do recommend that you do, part of the way that you can start to expose them is give them deadlines.

[02:37:28] So that’s number one. Number two, they also don’t generally have their own ideas. So, um, you can try to make them come up with their own ideas and then also give them a deadline for that if you really wanna expose them. I know it sounds mean, but you know, we’re talk, we’re talking about exposing them here.

[02:37:52] So, uh, another way that you can expose them with the, making them come up with their own ideas is [02:38:00] have them do it in a group setting. So have them come up with their own ideas and then make them present their own ideas in a group setting. See what they come up with on their own. That’s number two. Number three is, If you suspect that you were dealing with the potential overt narcissist, I would definitely trust your gut.

[02:38:25] Mm-hmm. You know, I’m not bitter, it’s just that I tend to be overly generous. And I just actually had a whole conversation with the woman who was my, has been my, my business coach and one of my dearest friends for a really long time. And, you know, she actually said, you tend to be overly generous to false and then, you know, tend to be taken advantage of.

[02:38:51] So I’m working on that and just finding the people and attracting people into my life that are worth being generous [02:39:00] to. They exist in the world and I am attracting them into my life now. So anyway, when you suspect you were dealing with a covert narcissist or any potential narcissist, this is number three, by the way, please trust your gut.

[02:39:16] Do not give them access to things. Do not give them access to your passwords. Do not give them your logins. This is number three and much more on this, much more on this in my video. And, uh, it’s called the, this is the only way to get a narcissist to respect you. It’s a really good video. Definitely check that out.

[02:39:39] Number four. Number four is, Well, they are hypocrites. So they will say one thing, they will do something else. They, their, their words will not match their behavior. That will happen a lot. So you can definitely call them out on that, such as, you know, they’ll say [02:40:00] that they were a victim of someone and then they’ll, you know, they’ll say they don’t like that person.

[02:40:04] And then the next thing you know, they’ll be hanging out with that person. So you can say, oh, I thought you didn’t like that person. I thought you didn’t wanna spend time with them. Ask them why they wanna spend time with them if they don’t like them, you know, something like that. Or they’ll, they might say that they were sick and then all of a sudden they are wanting to go to an event that, you know, is like really prestigious because it’ll really look good if they end up going to it.

[02:40:29] You know, that sort of thing. Like, you can definitely call them out on their behavior because they’re very much hip hypocrites. So, um, it’ll be very easy to find opportunities to do that, for sure.

[02:40:49] And the last one, the last one is, oh, definitely I got caught with this. You don’t wanna do the same. [02:41:00] Make sure you follow up every single convo with a confirmatory email or text, because guess what? They will definitely gaslight you. You know how those covert narcs are? They love them some gaslighting.

[02:41:16] It’s definitely one of their favorite little things. And so they will try to manipulate your conversations. I have talked about that. I don’t remember. Oh yes, you agreed to that. And you know, you can agree to that, but they’ll say that, that you did. And they try to make you think you’re crazy. It’s a way to weaken you.

[02:41:39] It’s a way to destabilize you. They do that and you know, I just had a conversation with um, somebody yesterday who was like, been gaslit so often, very intelligent woman, and she was like, she didn’t even remember for sure. She had signed like a huge check a few years ago, like hundreds of thousands of [02:42:00] dollars, who’s like gonna go hire a handwriting expert, see if she had actually signed a check.

[02:42:05] And I was like, you’re not gonna hire a handwriting expert. You’re gonna say, I did not sign that check. I don’t remember signing it, therefore I did not sign it. So, but they translate you so much, like you start to question your own mind, right? So make sure you follow up every single conversation, like in real time right away with a text or an email.

[02:42:28] Hello. We just met and we had this conversation and this is what we talked about. Just confirming. Thank you. Have a nice day. That will help you and it will help them and hopefully be continuing to move closely in the world. So anyway, those are five ways to expose a covert narcissist. Thanks for listening to this episode of Negotiate Your Best Life.

[02:42:57] Remember that I have [02:43:00] brand new episodes just like this on my YouTube channel every single day. So if you want to be empowered every single day, head over to my YouTube channel, and also you can follow me on Instagram at Rebecca Zung or my TikTok at Rebecca Zung as well. And remember that you can pre-order my book right now, it’s slay the bully.com, and get early access to the manuscript, as well as tons of other bonuses.

[02:43:29] And make sure to register for my brand new webinar, my new masterclass at Break Free From Hell, and it’s breaking free from hell. Take back your power emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I can’t wait to support you in your journey to taking back your power and otherwise, I will see you right back here for the next episode of Negotiate Your Best Life.

[02:43:59] [02:44:00] I am so excited to supporting you, and remember that today’s a great day to start negotiating your best life.