Hello.
Hello, and welcome to my live stream.
This is my Thursday live stream.
And for this Thursday, and for the last several Thursdays,
I've been talking a little bit about the narcissism 101
definitions so that you can understand the vocabulary, so that you understand the type
of personality you're dealing with.
And that way, when you go to negotiate with that narcissist and try to get out of
that relationship with the narcissist, you will have an understanding of who it is that
you're dealing with.
So, I'm not a psychologist, but I've certainly dealt with these personalities for many, many
years.
And I've done a lot, a lot of teaching myself
and learning about these different personalities so that I could
understand what the hell was going on myself, while I was representing these people in their
divorces.
And also, now that I'm helping to coach people, I do strategy calls, and I coach people from
literally all over the world on how to deal with narcissists
in their lives.
Many times the people that I'm talking to aren't even divorcing the narcissist necessarily,
they may just be dealing with one, or maybe they're trying
to get out of a business relationship with a narcissist or
something like that.
So, narcissists are everywhere.
I always say there's a pandemic of narcissism.
I believe that there is.
I think that there are narcissists everywhere.
We're pretty much surrounded by them.
So anyway, thank you so much for joining me on this Thursday live stream.
I'm Rebecca Zung, if we haven't met before.
Thanks for joining me here on my channel.
If you haven't subscribed, now is a perfect time to do that.
Just hit that subscribe button, hit that notification bell, and that way when I go
live, you will be notified.
On Tuesdays, I do my, Ask the Attorney Anything sessions, and on Thursdays
I've been doing this narcissism 101 series, and then the other days of the week, I upload
brand new content for you.
So, I am so committed and so passionate about helping all of you get out of these relationships
with these narcissists, in a way that allows you
to feel unscathed and whole, hopefully.
Right?
So, I see that I have people here from, I have somebody from
Cape town, South Africa.
I think it's Ranchi.
I don't know if I'm saying that correctly.
And then I have Sharon from Charlotte, North Carolina, and Ashna from
Louisiana.
Hi, Craig?
Hi, Jennifer?
Hi, Emily?
It is so great to see all of you here.
So, let's talk about trauma bonding today.
And trauma bonding is an interesting thing.
It's like, how can you feel bonded to a person who has abused you?
And that's basically what trauma bonding is.
And I've seen it so often in my practice.
I recently had a meeting with a client who I had helped him with his divorce, and now
he has a girlfriend who is very, very abusive to him.
His now ex-wife is actually trying to get the children back from him or
reduce his time sharing because of how toxic his girlfriend is.
And here he is facing the prospect of potentially losing his children or at least
having his time sharing be very much reduced, and yet he still
cannot give up this girlfriend.
I mean, he's just so trauma bonded to her.
And how can you be trauma bonded to a person who has been abusive to
you?
Well, the first time that I saw an explanation about
that was in this book, which I've done a whole video about, The Covert Passive Aggressive
Narcissist and this book.
So, if you haven't checked that out, go check out that video that I've done and I'll drop
a link to that below.
But in this book, Debbie Mirza talks about the concept of intermittent reinforcement.
And that's what happens when you're dealing with narcissists.
You get this intermittent reinforcement.
And I talked about that in the three separate videos that
I did on the different stages of a narcissistic relationship,
which is, love bombing, devaluing, and discarding.
And so, you start off with love bombing, and you're
getting this love bomb, love bomb, love bomb, and then they start devaluing, but then they
go back to discarding.
Or, love bombing, devaluing, love bombing, devaluing, and sometimes it's love bombing
during the discard phase too.
So, it's like love bombing at the beginning and then discarding at the end
and in between it's a toxic stew of disaster, a vortex of craziness.
But what happens is, according to a psychologist named Robert Sapolsky, he talks about how
these monkeys were tested and they were only given
treats intermittently.
And if they got a treat every single time, the dopamine levels in their brain didn't
do anything, nothing happened.
But if they got a treat intermittently, in a variable way, where they
didn't know when they were going to get the treat, then
the dopamine levels rose in their brains to the level of cocaine.
So, in other words, they get this pleasure release just because of the anticipation that
they might get the treat.
And so, what's happening in our brains when we become trauma bonded to this
person, you actually become addicted according to
these professionals, to the need for their love bomb.
You want to believe that and you become codependent on them in that sense.
And so, that's what trauma bonding is.
And that's what makes it so difficult to get out of the relationship
and become like, okay, I teach you how to develop a strategy and create leverage.
And I just did a video on leverage if you haven't checked it out,
go check that out.
But if you haven't been used to being on the offensive, it's so foreign to you to even
think about, geez, I can think about something for myself.
And part of the reason why it's so hard, is because
of this trauma bonding and this effect on your brain.
Your brain literally becomes like scrambled eggs
or something because you're so bonded to this person.
So, I just want to take a second and read a couple
of your comments.
I see Leah from Missouri and I see, Oh, Mike is watching me from a hot tub in Merritt Island,
Florida.
How awesome is that?
Isabella from Poland, Ashna says, "I really feel for people who have no
knowledge of this and are judged by their loved ones."
And that is so true.
I'm glad you brought that up.
Because a lot of people just say, "Why don't you leave?
Why don't you just get out?"
And I know sometimes from my own perspective, as a divorce
lawyer, I'm looking at people going, why in the heck
would you be staying?
And it wasn't until I understood this concept of trauma bonding, that it made it so
much more clear to me why people don't leave.
Why they feel almost addicted to staying.
And I actually even spoke with a client this morning who was all ready to leave because
she had found out that, it looked like her husband had been
cheating and had been withholding a lot of information
from her, which is a lot of typical narcissistic behavior.
And he found out that she knew some things, and
that she was potentially going to leave.
And she said, "Oh, my God he's been so wonderful this whole
weekend, and this week.
He's back to the man that I married, he's sending me flowers."
This guy is love bombing her big time, to get her back under
his web of control.
And even as she's telling me this, that maybe she might want to do a postnuptial agreement
instead of a divorce and things like that.
She's also also saying to me, "Gosh, his words don't
match his actions.
And she's still saying, he basically, this guy is still exhibiting all these narcissistic
traits, but the love bombing is drawing her back in.
He's using all the right words that he knows that he needs to use in
order to get her back into his web of control.
So, it's very difficult sometimes to think about, gosh, I can
leave this person and I can be okay.
They want you to think that you're not going to be okay without this
person.
I mean, they've spent a lot of time working your brain to make you dependent on them and
think that you're nothing without them.
And think that the world is going to be against you.
Think that everybody else thinks that they're wonderful
and you're the one that's crazy.
They do this number on you.
It's almost like de-programming your brain from being in a cult in a lot of ways.
So, I see somebody here from Sydney, Australia, and I see Terry saying, "They destroy your
every out."
Well, they do try to, but there's always a way out.
I actually was just coaching a guy this past week who
is dealing with a narcissistic business partner.
And he was like, "I just don't see a way out."
And I told him, "There's always a way out.
There's definitely always a way out."
It's just feeling that strength and understanding what's going on with your brain.
Because once you understand that and you go, okay, it's
really hard for me to leave because I'm dealing with trauma bonding here.
This is what's happened to my brain.
And once you start having that realization, and you can see it, and you can name it, then
it makes it so much easier for you to recognize
the signs when they're happening, and start to pull away
from it and not have it be controlling you as much as it had been in the past.
So, "Oh, what was that other option other than divorce?"
So, you can always do a postnuptial agreement.
What I was referring to in my particular client's case, is that she had a prenuptial agreement.
And we were talking about the possibility while he's in the love bomb phase of taking
advantage of that, ethically manipulating the manipulator, and
seeing if he would be willing to renegotiate the prenup into
a postnuptial agreement that would afford her a little bit more financial stability
if she ever did decide to leave him.
So that's what I was talking about.
So, Karen Smith says "Hovering progress, trauma bond
broken."
That's so good to know.
So, once you start to recognize it, Oh, they're hovering.
Oh, I see what's going on here.
Oh, I'm feeling pulled back in because of my trauma bonding,
it's so much easier to start stepping back and seeing it as almost like an outsider would
rather than the emotional aspect of it.
Anyway, so that is trauma bonding.
I'm so excited that all of you were here with me today on my live
stream.
And I love seeing where you guys are all calling in from or viewing me from all over the world.
I think it's really incredible.
If you haven't subscribed to my channel, please take the time to do that now.
Just hit subscribe, hit the notification bell.
If you're getting ready to negotiate with a narcissist, grab my
free crush my negotiation worksheet.
You can just get it at winmynegotiation.com.
I made it super easy for everybody to remember where to go get
it.
And if you like this video, give it a like, give it a share,
drop me a comment.
Let me know you were here.
Let me know where you're from.
Me and everyone on my team, we love to see all of your comments.
And so grateful for you and so grateful for this community.
And so grateful that the opportunity to be able to help you escape this relationship
with the narcissist.
I've been there too.
I've had two covert narcissists that I had to wrench out of my
life.
It was not easy and it was pretty awful.
And that's why I have such a passion for helping you guys do
the same thing.
So, I'm Rebecca Zung.
Thanks so much for tuning into this live stream.
I will have a new video out for you tomorrow.
So, you're going to want to make sure you check that out.
And then I will be back live again on Tuesday with my, Ask the Attorney
Anything session.
So, I'll see you there next time.
Until then, remember, today's a great day to start
negotiating your best life.