Do you want to know how to co-parent with that narcissist in your life and actually
preserve your sanity?
By the end of this video, I'm going to give you real tips on how to actually do just that.
Hi, I'm Rebecca Zung, top 1% divorce attorney and the bestselling author of the books Negotiate
Like You M.A.T.T.E.R. and Breaking Free: A Step-by-Step Divorce Guide, and I've helped
thousands of people just like you go from lives of drama, trauma, and chaos to step
into lives of freedom, possibility, and purpose.
And I do the same thing right here with you in these videos.
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Now, are you dealing with a co-parent in a custody situation, and you're just about ready
to lose your mind because that co-parent is a narcissist or maybe that person has a high
conflict personality, and you just maybe want to pull your hair out or bang your head against
the wall?
That might actually feel better than dealing with a co-parenting situation with a narcissist,
right?
Well, there's good reason for that.
So let me give you some statistics.
Statistics show that 40 million Americans are currently co-parenting with another person
right now, not necessarily with the narcissist, but 40 million Americans are co-parenting
children who are under the age of 18 right now, just in the United States.
According to an article written by Bree Bonchay, licensed clinical social worker, in the magazine,
Psych Central, approximately 6% of any population has narcissistic personality disorder, and
another 3.3% has no conscience, a lack of empathy.
So combined that's 9.3%.
If you take 9.3% of 40 million Americans, you're now at roughly 3.7 million Americans
are co-parenting with either somebody who has narcissistic personality disorder or potentially
has no conscience, no empathy, something like that.
So if you take those statistics and you apply them to the world's population, obviously
it's going to be a lot more than that even.
So, billions of people are probably co-parenting with a high conflict or toxic personality,
and it just makes it so difficult, so difficult because obviously your children are the things
that mean the most to you.
I mean, there's nothing more close to your heart than your children.
And so when you're dealing with your children, the thing that means the most you, and then
you have to co-parent with a toxic personality on top of it, it's almost like more than you
can handle.
But there are ways to handle it.
There are ways to make it more manageable and actually be able to preserve your sanity.
So when you're dealing with co-parenting with a narcissist, I always think it's kind of
a weird misnomer because anything co means that you're cooperating and that you're working
together.
Anything co working together with the narcissist is absolutely not possible.
I mean, it's a complete misnomer because it's just not possible to cooperate or co-parent
when it comes to dealing with a high conflict personality on the other side.
They don't want to cooperate with you.
In fact, they get off on the fact that they can make you miserable and anything that means
the most to you, that's going to be the one thing that the narcissist is going to hone
in on and make sure that you don't get, because they know that they can get a rise out of
you.
And so they know that your children are going to be the thing that means the most to you.
So that's a perfect and right place for you to have an Achilles heel.
Remember narcissists have no inner sense of value.
They have no inner sense of self.
So they need to get all of their feeling of value from the external, from the outside
and what we call that sucking a value that what it is that they need, we call that narcissistic
supply.
Narcissistic supply can be anything that feeds their ego.
So it can be things like what you would think of like having lots of money or a big, important
job, or having a prestigious position somewhere, or being friends with the right people or
living in the right neighborhood, all of those external things.
The other way, though, that narcissists get supply is by getting people to squirm by getting
a reaction out of them, by controlling them, by devaluing, debasing, and degrading people.
They get supply out of that too.
So if they know that you love your children, which they know you do, that's a perfect thing
for them to get supply from because they know they can get an emotional reaction out of
you.
So it's this sick way of actually feeding their need for supply.
They need supply like people need air.
It's oxygen to them.
It's breathing.
It's survival because they don't feel like they exist unless they are getting this supply.
They smell where they can get supply like sharks smell blood in the water.
It's like right there.
So they know that your children are going to be your Achilles heel.
So boom, there goes the shark coming after the blood in the water, coming right after
you to try to make your life miserable using your children all along the way.
So how does one co-parent with a narcissist?
Well, the first thing that you need to do is realize that they're not going to change.
They're not going to change at all.
And so no amount of, "Hey, you're hurting the children," or, "Don't you see what your
behavior is causing," or trying to reason with them or show them that, "Hey, you said
something the other day and now you're contradicting what you're saying."
You're wasting your time, wasting your breath, wasting your energy.
And more importantly, that kind of thing just starts to suck at your soul because you're
putting something into a black hole that you're never going to get any satisfaction from.
So don't bother trying to get them to see reason.
You're never going to be able to overlay reason onto a narcissist, it just ain't ever going
to fit.
So the first thing you can do for yourself, your sanity and your children is to realize
that they're not going to change.
When they do the things that they're going to do, don't be surprised.
Don't go, "Oh my God, I can't believe she did that.
Oh my goodness.
I can't believe he did that."
Don't bother with that.
Just go, "Yeah.
I can believe it.
That's what they do.
That's what narcissists do."
It's like watching a two-year-old have a tantrum on the floor.
You're not going to be shocked when a two-year-old has a tantrum.
Two-year-olds have tantrums.
Narcissists act like narcissists.
They will be their narky selves no matter what.
So understanding that and accepting that is like the first thing that you can do.
So anything that you can do for co-parenting with the narcissist is going to be on your
end, things that you can do to make your life more miserable, and hold them at bay and box
them up.
Okay.
So, that's number one.
So the next thing that you can do is have a really super specific parenting plan.
And when I say specific, I mean, specific.
A lot of people think, oh, you know, we're getting along now or it's okay.
Or I don't want to make waves.
And we're just going to agree that the kids can go back and forth whenever they want to,
or we're basically going to do 50, 50, but we're not going to figure out exactly what
that means.
That's a huge mistake.
That's leaves you open for all kinds of litigation and all kinds of headache down the road.
The more detailed, the more specific you can be, the better it will be for you in the long
run.
The more specific you can be, the better it will be for you in the long run.
You will save yourself a lot of headache.
And what I mean by specific is have details in there exactly about what are you doing
during the week?
Where will the children be?
Are you picking them up from one particular place?
Where is it going to be?
What time?
Who's driving there to pick them up?
One of the other things I recommend when it comes to parenting plans is maybe consider
parallel parenting.
That means that you have as little interaction with the other side as possible, meaning that
you're going to have everything all set up so that the exchanges maybe take place at
school.
You drop off on a Monday at 7:00 AM, and the other one picks up on Monday 3:00 PM.
And you never have to interact with that other person.
The minimal amount of interaction possible is best.
When you're looking at the parenting plan also remember details around holidays, Monday
holidays, how are you going to handle schedule changes?
Make sure that's written in there, special days that are important to you, birthdays.
If trick-or-treating is really important, make sure that there's something in there
about that.
Vacations, as specific as you possibly can.
And even times like if there's like the holiday vacation in December, if you're going to split
it, say, the first seven days until 3:00 PM goes with mom and then dad gets 3:00 PM on
December 26th through January 2nd or something to that effect.
More detail equals less headache down the road, and the less interaction with each other,
the better.
The next thing you can do is have super strict boundaries.
One way that you can do this is limit the way that you communicate with each other.
So I would suggest you have just one way of communicating with each other and it should
not be text, and it should not be in person.
It should not be over the phone.
It really should be email or a court approved app, a co-parenting app of some sort.
The reason why I say that is because these kinds of communication are easily transferable
into trial exhibits down the road if you end up needing a trial exhibit down the road.
So because they have date stamps, they have timestamps, the full conversation is there.
You can use text messages, but it ends up being screenshots and you can't always see
what time they were sent or when they were sent.
And sometimes people cut and paste them.
Court approved apps are great because the whole conversation is there.
Everything is there.
What you will want to do though, is make sure that you agree to using this app or the email
or whatever form you use in writing signed by both of you.
And then also turned into a court order.
Same thing with the parenting plan, by the way, because once it's rendered into a court
order, either an order or a final judgment, then you will have some teeth.
You will be giving the judge some teeth to enforce it down the road when that narcissist
doesn't comply and fails to do what they're supposed to do according to the parenting
plan, which they undoubtedly will do.
They undoubtedly will violate the parenting plan or the order for the app or email or
whatever it is because they are narcissists and they can't help themselves.
If this is sounding really familiar to you so far, give me a right on in the comments.
The next thing you will want to do is document, document, document.
I say this, I've said this over and over and over again.
I cannot say this enough, if you are using a court approved app, sometimes those apps
have private places to put note sections if you want to just keep notes in there, or you
can use the notes section of your smartphone.
I just would be careful about that.
Make sure that your cloud devices are all synced up and you know where the passwords
are and you know where they're being shown so that nobody can be reading what you're
writing.
But you do want to keep notes on every little thing, including the most mundane details,
what time did the other parent pick up the children?
Were they late?
Did they ask to change the schedule?
Did they not show up?
Did they show up impaired?
Did they show up bringing a girlfriend?
Do they always have their parents watching the kids when they're there?
All these mundane little details, because one detail alone may not seem to be anything,
but over time, these mundane details end up showing patterns and those patterns can end
up becoming really strong leverage down the road for your court case and potentially turn
into really great trial exhibits.
The next thing you can do is keep your emotions in check.
This is part of my M.A.T.T.E.R method, by the way, which is the E in matter is stands
for keep your emotions in check.
This is because one of the ways that narcissists get supply remember is to rile you up, get
you excited, get you angry, make you upset because then they get supply from that.
They get off on that literally.
And so they'll try to figure out ways to get under your skin.
They're going to be sending you written correspondence that says, you're a deadbeat dad, or you're
a neglectful mom, or you're an alcoholic or whatever it is that they know is going to
upset you because they want to goad you into writing something back that's going to be
just as emotional or just as awful or even worse.
And so remember, by the way, side note, every single text writing, anything you put your
hand to, any social media post becomes a potential trial exhibit.
So if you don't want to see it again, don't send it.
Don't write it.
Don't post it.
Okay.
And this goes hand in hand with keeping your emotions in check.
Don't try to justify.
Don't overshare.
Don't defend yourself.
Just say I disagree with your characterization and you can pick up Johnny at 3:00 PM on Wednesday.
Just the facts.
Stick to the facts.
Don't take the bait because that's exactly what they want you to do.
Overall, just remember what I said at the beginning of this video, narcissists cannot
change.
They won't change.
They're like wild animals.
They're never going to be tamed, but you can build a fence around them so that you feel
like they're more contained.
And by doing that, it'll make it a little bit easier for you to co-parent with this
narcissist.
It'll never be a breeze, but it'll be a little bit easier, which will help preserve your
sanity and also the quality of your life and your children's lives as well.
If you want more tips and tricks on how to manage a narcissist, make sure to check out
my video on managing a narcissist and I will drop a link to that below.
If you are getting ready to negotiate with a narcissist, then you're definitely going
to want to grab my free Crush My Negotiation Prep Worksheet.
It's 15 pages.
It's basically an e-booklet, and it's totally free.
Grab that below, or you can just go to winmynegotiation.com.
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And remember that today is a great day to start negotiating your best life.
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