We all know about the one pandemic, COVID-19, that's taking over the world right now, but
did you know that there's another more explosive, sneakier, more persuasive pandemic that's
taking over the world, and that both pandemics are on a collision track to make a big bang
in the divorce world?
Stay tuned to find out more.
Hi, I'm Rebecca Zung, top 1% divorce attorney and the bestselling author of the books Negotiate
Like You Matter and Breaking Free: A Step by Step Divorce Guide, and I help thousands
of people 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 on this channel and in these videos.
So make sure you hit that subscribe button, hit that notification bell so that you can
be notified every time I upload brand new content, which is pretty often these days.
So while the world grapples with the COVID-19 pandemic, there's another more insidious,
more secret pandemic that's going on, and you can't protect yourself from it from wearing
gloves or masks or staying in your house.
In fact, staying in your house may be the worst thing for it.
And that is the pandemic of narcissism.
It is taking over the world.
People who've been victimized by narcissists don't have a physical manifestation usually.
You don't normally have bruises.
I mean, there's certainly a physical manifestation in your brain and emotionally, and it can
cause all kinds of anxiety related disorders and things like that.
But it's not, you know, when somebody hits you and you feel that, and there's the bruise,
it's very obvious that you've been abused.
Narcissistic abuse is much sneakier, much more stealth and much more under the radar.
And so most people aren't attuned to what's going on when somebody is being abused by
a narcissist.
So what is a narcissist?
A narcissist is a person that has virtually no sense of inner value and no sense of empathy
for anyone else.
And so this is a person that needs an endless amount of what we call narcissistic supply.
And that can come in what I call positive forms, which aren't necessarily positive,
but they're not as outwardly abusive, which are, "Look at my big house.
Look at my big car.
Look at my big job.
Look at my big anything.
Look at the fact that I have this relationship with this person or that I'm friends with
this person or that I live in the right neighborhood, or I work at the right place."
All of those outward things that boost up their ego, or it could be compliments, money,
anything like that.
Supply can also come in the form of what I call negative things, which are where you're
trying to exert control over a person, meaning that you are degrading them, devaluing them,
maybe coercing them away from their family or their friends and isolating them, or gaslighting
them or lying or manipulating or engaging in violence or stalking, things like that,
threats of violence.
So, supply can come in either one of those forms, but it all goes back to the same place,
which is that this narcissist is just trying to grasp at everything they possibly can to
get as much value for themselves as they possibly can from the external.
They feel no sense of internal value.
And the statistics around narcissism are staggering.
And that's why I say that this is another pandemic.
And so I just want to give you some of the statistics around narcissism, according to
[Brie Bonshea 00:04:00], who is a licensed clinical social worker and who published this
article in Psych Central Magazine.
And what she says is that approximately one in 10 people walking around the earth lack
of conscience, or at best lack empathy, according to the DSM-5, which is the diagnostic tool
that they use to figure out if people have narcissism.
And the prevalence for these types of antisocial personalities is somewhere between three and
a half to 6%.
Now, obviously these people aren't seeking counseling or therapy or help because they
don't think they need it.
So it's kind of hard to say, but let's just say it's as high as 6%.
If there's approximately 326 million people in the United States and 6% of them have narcissistic
personality disorder, that equals 19,560,000 people, close to 20 million people.
And if each one of those people narcissistically abuses just five people in their lifetimes,
which is probably quite a low number, now you're looking at close to 100 million people.
And if you apply this same formula across the world's population, and let me tell you,
I have people who have purchased my program, Slay Your Negotiation with a Narcissist, from
literally all over the world.
I have people in India, Australia, Iran, UK, Ireland, all over the world.
Narcissism is certainly a pandemic of global proportions.
So let me just give you the rest of the numbers, which is if you take 3.3% of seven and a half
billion, that's about 250 million people with antisocial personality disorders.
If it's at 6%, is 450 million.
And if you layer in the other people who just lack empathy or lack of conscience, you're
now at close to 700 million.
And if each one of those people narcissistically abuses five people in their lifetimes, which
again, I think is a low number because it's pretty much everyone they come in contact
with, you're talking about over 3.4 billion people.
Clearly, this is another global pandemic.
And what's more, what's even worse is that the two pandemics are careening toward each
other and set to create a massive, huge, big bang.
And why do I say that?
Because everyone right now is sheltering in place and staying at home with these narcissists
and these people that they can't stand, and life is miserable.
And I know because I hear from you guys all day long, every day.
I get thousands and thousands of emails, direct messages, comments, literally every single
day.
And so I know what you're dealing with and you know what you're dealing with too, but
the statistics also are bearing it out.
According to a recent article by Bloomberg Magazine, one Shanghainese attorney said that
after the shelter in place was lifted in Shanghai, her client base rose by 25%.
Another statistic I heard said that the divorce rate in China went up 33% at the end of the
shelter in place the orders.
So, the divorce rate is poised to skyrocket right now.
Here at home, a lawyer from San Diego recently told a local CBS News outlet that his national
law firm had received about 1500 requests for divorce consultations for when the stay
at home place order runs out.
According to the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers President Susan Myers, all divorce
lawyer business is poised to go up.
I know in my own practice, we've been getting lots and lots of calls as well.
So, you know the old expression, familiarity breeds contempt.
Well, there probably already was contempt and the relationships are already tenuous
and they're already not great, and now you've been stuck with this person.
So what's happening is that you're going to be seeing the two pandemics, the COVID-19
and the narcissism pandemic careen toward each other, create a massive, big bang, which
means that the divorce rate is about ready to go skyrocketing.
So what can you do about it?
One of the things that you should remember is that when somebody is getting ready to
go through a divorce that happens to also be a narcissist, they are still going to be
their narcissist narci selves, but they become narcissists on steroids.
So all the bad things that you didn't like about them, all their most awful qualities,
they become the worst possible qualities that you can imagine, because with a narcissist,
if you're not for them, you are against them in their world.
I mean, you can't just nicely walk away from each other and say, "Well, what does the law
provide?
Let's just sign.
Let's still be friends."
It doesn't work that way with narcissists.
You're either for them or you are against them.
And when you no longer have value to a narcissist, then you just no longer have value in the
world to breathe at all, period.
And they're going to come after you.
They're going to come after you like nobody's business.
The way narcissists act in divorce is, I've seen it firsthand as a divorce lawyer.
It's ignoring court orders.
It's lying.
It's obstructing, not providing documents.
It's using the court system as a sword.
It's using the children.
It's using whatever they need to.
It's taking anything that you say or do and using it against you.
It's lining up their flying monkeys and getting all these people to be on their side, try
to make you feel like there's no way that you could possibly ever win.
And just traumatize you.
I mean, you thought it was traumatizing before.
It's traumatizing during the divorce as well, but that doesn't mean that you should stay
with the person at all.
That's definitely not what I'm saying at all.
But you do want to prepare yourself so that you are ready and not behind the eight ball
when it comes time to get that divorce.
And if you are so ready to be out of this shelter in place thing and ready to move on
with your life, give me an I'm ready in the comments.
So every single person who comes through my office says that they don't want to fight.
Even narcissists say that by the way, because they just figure they're going to be able
to get what they want.
But nobody wants to spend a lot of money with the divorce lawyer.
But the problem is that if you are a reasonable person or you're an empath, or you've been
traumatized by this narcissist for so long that you just feel like, oh, I just want to
get this over with as fast as possible.
But the thing is, if you want a result that is what we call "fair" under the law, meaning,
okay, if the law provides that you're going to get alimony or the law provides a 50-50
parenting plan, or the law provides that you split the assets 50-50, then you have to create
a super strong strategy and have invincible leverage, which is part of my Slay Program,
by the way, which is Slay Your Negotiation with a Narcissist.
And you can check that out at slayyournegotiation.com.
If you want to know more about the sneaky things that people do in divorce, you should
definitely check out the videos that I did with Kim [Sayeed 00:11:58] on sneaky things
people do in divorce parts one and two, and I'll drop a link to those videos below.
In addition to creating a strategy and having leverage, you need to create a plan for how
you're going to prepare for this divorce.
What the plan is going to look like is having specifics around where are you going to be
living?
Where are you going to get money from?
What kind of parenting plan do you want to have?
Because if you try to leave a narcissist without a plan, you're going to end up having to go
back.
And once you do that, the narcissist will punish you and will hold it against you forever
and make it so much worse for you.
So what kinds of things do you need to be thinking about?
You need to be thinking about having a stash of cash.
If you can, you should have at least a few months worth to live on, especially now with
it takes so long to get hearings on temporary support, and right now most of the courts
are closed.
So you do want to have a stash of cash.
You're going to want to think about a parenting plan if you have children.
You're going to want to think about whether or not you're going to stay in the house,
or is the other person going to leave, or you're going to ... What are your living arrangements
going to be?
Where are you going to go?
And should you even leave the house?
That's another whole conversation.
You should also be thinking about changing your passwords on all of your devices, including
anything with cloud devices, anywhere where you have a login, anywhere that they could
potentially read your emails, look at your bank accounts, look at your social media,
any of that.
You're going to want to make sure you change those passwords and do it often for the first
couple of months.
And make sure that there's no cloud devices left behind, because if they have access to
that, they could potentially be reading your emails.
You're also going to want to be thinking about what lawyer you may want to hire and get that
person on board.
Inside of my program, Slay Your Negotiation with a Narcissist, I do have a list of questions
that you can use to vet attorneys to make sure that they're versed in narcissism and
I also show you how to find lawyers in your area.
And the last thing that you want to be making sure that you're doing is gathering your financial
information, especially if you are not the one that normally has access to it.
So, copies of bank statements, credit card statements, tax returns, any estate planning
documents that may be in place, a prenuptial agreement, if there was one, try to get a
copy of that.
That will just help you down the road so that you feel like you're ahead of this game and
not behind.
You just want to make sure you're setting yourself up to be in a position to be on the
offensive and not constantly feeling like you're on the defensive when you're dealing
with that narcissist.
If you are getting ready to negotiate with a narcissist, make sure that you grab my crush
my negotiation prep worksheet.
It's totally free, and you can grab that at the link below, or just go to winmynegotiation.com.
If you are dealing with a narcissist and you want additional support and help from other
people who are also living and dealing with narcissists, please join my free Facebook
group.
It's totally private.
It's called narcissist negotiators with Rebecca Zung, and I will put a link to that below
as well.
And if you liked this video, give it a like, give it a share, drop me a comment.
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I'm so glad you were here.
And remember, today is a great day to start negotiating your best life.
I will see you in the next video.