Are you ready to move on from that narcissist in your life and you just do not know how?
By the end of this interview that I have with Joanna Kleinman, you will know how.
This is part one of a two part episode where I talk with a incredible person.
She's a psychologist, she's a life coach, she's the creator of the whole entire program
and world movement called Dethroning Your Inner Critic.
Joanna Kleinman joins me on today's episode of Negotiate Your Best Life.
This is part one, so you're going to want to make sure that you subscribe and hit that
notification bell so that when I upload part two, you will know what's going on.
And you want to make sure you watch all the way to the end for that same exact reason.
So without further ado, let's dive in to part one.
Hi, and welcome to today's episode of Negotiate Your Best Life.
I'm so excited to be here with Joanna Kleinman, who is an amazing, amazing person, and also
doing incredible work in the world.
She is a therapist and a counselor, but she's also the founder of a whole program and movement
really on Dethroning Your Inner Critic.
And she's got a podcast, and she's writing a book, and she's doing all kinds of amazing
things with it.
And she's going to talk with us today about moving on, and how to get over a narcissist
or any kind of a toxic relationship.
And, sometimes it's one of the hardest things to do.
But anyway, welcome Joanna.
Thank you, Rebecca.
It is an honor and a privilege to be here.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
And I just want to mention that you and I met through our dear friend, Tammi Leader
Fuller, who founded Campowerment, which is an incredible, incredible source that was
originally for women, but now it's for all sorts of people, and they're doing a whole
online platform.
So I encourage people to check out Campowerment.
And you and I were roommates when we were experts together.
So it's just kind of a funny thing to meet someone and then just all of a sudden be roommates,
which I guess kids do all the time, but you don't normally do that as grownups, but it
worked out great.
It did, it did.
We spent four days together, and when you live with somebody for four days, you really
get to know them and a lot about their life.
And it was wonderful.
It really was, it was like I gained a best friend in the first four days, right?
So it was pretty awesome.
Yes, it was.
It was great.
So I'm really excited to have you here, because a lot of the people in my community are dealing
toxic relationships and trying to get over them.
And I would love for you to weigh in and help us with how to move on.
How to get past that.
Absolutely.
And so what are the things that you would suggest for people to do?
Yeah.
So here's the thing about relationships in general, right?
We get almost attached to how other people treat us, right?
We want to be loved.
We want to be respected.
We want to be in a relationship with somebody, whether it's a friend, or whether it's a romantic
relationship, right?
We want to feel good in that relationship.
And so what happens for many people is that they're looking for that other person to in
some way make them feel important, valued, loved, right?
Now here's the problem.
When you're dealing with a narcissist, you're dealing with a fundamentally broken human,
and you are attached to how they're treating you, right?
You're demanding, you need to treat me with the love and the respect that I deserve.
Okay.
Except the issue is that other human, because of their own inner issues that they have way
before they met you, they're not capable.
And what happens in toxic relationships is that this is all very unconscious, but people
personalize that.
So their emotions get so triggered by this person and their behavior, and then they go
to try to fix or control or change the narcissist, if you would just behave in this way so that
I can feel loved and I can feel valued.
And that's where people can feel so emotionally damaged, because they're expecting this other
person to make them feel in a way that that other person is just not capable of making
them feel.
Yeah, I totally agree.
And that's super incredible insight.
I was wondering if you could also expound on the fact that narcissists have this pattern
that they have in relationships, which is love bomb, devalue, discard.
And they go back and forth between these various, I tell people all the time, it's not linear.
It's not love bomb, stop, devalue, stop, discard, stop.
They'll be love bombing, then devalue, love bomb, devalue.
And can you talk about from a psychological perspective, what's happening with somebody's
brain when that's happening?
Yeah.
So the narcissistic personality is really created by worthlessness, but the narcissist
doesn't know that, okay.
So, what happens in a person's life when they are very young, okay, something happens where
they feel a fundamental sense of worthlessness.
They don't even have to remember what it was, but this worthlessness gets created.
And then this person will try to overcompensate for that worthlessness by trying to control
a lot of areas of his or her life, okay.
So that's what's going on psychologically, okay, is that the narcissist is very focused
externally on control and on power, and so there is pretty much no willingness or availability
to take ownership for themselves about how they are thinking in a way that's creating,
right?
The toxic parts of the relationships.
In other words, they're going to blame everything and everyone but themselves, for the reason
why the relationship looks the way that it does, and that's just their pattern, right?
And they're not capable of inwardly taking responsibility and ownership for that.
Yeah.
I mean, I think it's because, and you can tell me from the psychological perspective,
but I think it's because if they somehow...
It's a survival protection for them.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
If they take responsibility, then somehow they're exposed as being worthless.
That's right.
So, what's so interesting is that if you look at our physical brains, okay, and the hard
wiring of our brains going back millions of years ago, right?
Our brains were developed to keep us safe, okay, right?
And millions of years ago, that meant you weren't going to be eaten for dinner, okay.
But nowadays, what that means is you're hard-wired to try to protect the inward thing that causes
you the most pain.
So if you think about the narcissist and their fundamental sense of worthlessness, their
lives are wrapped around making sure that that feeling of worthlessness will never be
touched by anyone or anything.
So that's the survival mechanism, is let me control you, so that you never have access
to touch on that pain.
Yeah.
That's good stuff.
Good stuff.
So now, okay.
Now these people have gotten into a relationship with these people, and I personally have had
to deal with them.
I mean, I always say not husbands, because my poor husband, I don't want people to think
it's him, but other people in my life who were close enough to me to wreak havoc.
And actually you were kind enough to give me lots of great advice about one of them
when we were roommates together.
Who's now thank God, no longer a part of my life, but it can have...
I tell people this and I'm open about it because I want them to know that, yes, I'm a successful
attorney, and I've done all these things in my life, but it can happen to anybody.
And if you're an empathic person and you want to be kind and you want to be generous, and
you think that you can help these people and you end up doing these things, or it's a people
pleaser problem, or whatever it is, but you end up getting sucked into that vortex of
toxicity.
And so how do you move on?
How do you get over this person?
How do you get them out of your thoughts and out of your life?
Yeah, it's a great question.
So the bottom line is when you individually from within feel calm and at peace and good
about yourself, you're able to recognize that you don't need this person, or any person
really, you don't need anyone to make you feel good enough, loved enough, important
enough.
So what's really crucial is that if you are somebody that needs to break away from a toxic
relationship, that you're doing your own inner work, okay.
Because, here's the thing.
Many, many people don't recognize that they have this automatic mind that talks to them
all day long, from the moment they get up to the moment they go to bed, and they listen
to this mind, right?
They identify with the thoughts in our minds.
And by the way, we have 50,000 to 80,000 thoughts a day in our minds, okay.
And most people don't understand that our minds just go.
We don't tell our minds where to go, that just goes, right?
So, it's just like our bodies breathe for us, our minds just go.
And when you identify with all of the thoughts in your mind, your mind is whipping you all
over the place, right?
Why did he treat me that way?
What's wrong with him?
What's wrong with me that there's something wrong with him, right?
All of these places where, right, when you're in that toxic relationship, you feel badly
about yourself.
So the healing is really about taking your relationship with yourself, right?
To actually a completely relocated mind, okay.
Where you're no longer listening to the automatic thoughts of your old mind, that truth be told
have been playing on a loop for forever, right?
So what's interesting is that when you think about the feelings that come up within this
toxic relationship, you might notice that on some level you've had these feelings before
they might not have been as intense, okay, But they've shown up in other areas of your
life and they've shown up in other times.
So a toxic relationship is really a mirror, right?
For you to look at where are the places where I lost myself?
Where are the places where I, like you said, Rebecca, right?
I've been a people pleaser.
I've been an over-functioner.
I knew somewhere in my gut that this behavior was unacceptable, but I made excuses for it.
I justified it, right?
I had this inner feeling that I ignored, right?
So when we can tag- I can definitely say that was true for me.
That's right.
From the beginning, from the beginning.
And You know what?
And I wonder if you hear this in the people that you work with, because that's what I
hear.
I mean, we're talking thousands of people.
I knew from the beginning.
I knew from the beginning, and I just, I thought that he could change, or she could be different,
or whatever it is, right?
That inner knowing is inner wisdom.
And when we're operating from that old automatic mind, we're not tapped into inner wisdom.
We'd rather stick with, right, what we already have.
We're very reluctant to let go, because in the letting go of the relationship, right?
That's scary.
Oh my God, we're alone, right?
We don't have this person.
What if I never get into a relationship again?
What if I can't live my life without my partner.
Right?
So it's fear that keeps you stuck and attached to holding onto something that you know deep
down is toxic, but you'd rather hold onto it, then deal with all of the feelings of
fear associated with letting it go.
And so the healing for people is to be able to deal with that fear, but also know, right?
That when you learn how to think in a way where you can feel good, you can design a
different life moving forward, where you are no longer people pleasing, and you're no longer
accepting things that are unacceptable, and you are no longer ignoring that inner sense
of wisdom and truth.
Thanks for watching part one of this episode on how to move on from a narcissist or a narcissistic
relationship with Joanna Kleinman.
Make sure that you subscribe, hit that notification bell, and if you like this video, give it
a like, give it a share, drop me a comment.
And if you are getting ready to negotiate with the narcissist, grab my free Crush My
Negotiation prep Worksheet.
You can get it at winmynegotiation.com, or I'll drop the link below.
If you want more support with dealing with Narcissists, just go ahead and join my private
Facebook group.
It's totally free, it's called Narcissist Negotiators with Rebecca Zung, and I'll make
sure that there's a link in the description below for that, too.
Thanks so much for stopping by, and make sure to tune in for part two of this episode.