Do you think that the narcissist that you were finally trying to get rid of is actually
trying to get you back, or is suddenly being nice again? You might be a victim of what
we call hoovering, and by the end of this video, you're going to understand what hoovering
is. And you're going to have five ways to spot if somebody is actually trying to hoover
you. Hi, I'm Rebecca Zung, top 1% attorney and
the best-selling author of the books Negotiate Like You Matter and Breaking Free, a Step-by-Step
Divorce Guide, and I've helped thousands and maybe even millions at this point of people,
to help them out of relationships of narcissism and drama and toxicity, and given them the
tools and the step-by-step guidance on how to step into new lives away from these people,
new breath of fresh air, and I do the same thing for you right here on these videos.
So make sure that you've subscribed and you hit that notification bell, and that way you'll
get notified when I upload new videos, and when I go live, and I do events, and all that
good stuff. Now let's talk about what's going on with
narcissistic hoovering and those five signs of hoovering. So what is hoovering anyway?
So hoovering is it's either you've already gone into the discard phase of the narcissistic
relationship, which is kind of the end of a narcissistic relationship, or sometimes
the discard can be starting long before you're actually discarded, or you've discarded them.
But you're into this phase of the relationship and yet here they come back again, it may
be it's been a year since you've heard from this person and out of the blue you get a
text from this person. And it may look like an attempt at reconciliation, or it may look
like an attempt at actually valuing you again, or maybe they're finally seeing you for who
you are, maybe they're finally appreciating all of the things that you did for them. But
it's really what it is is a manipulation tactic. It's a way to get supply from you again, it's
a very toxic way of getting you back under their web of control.
So the first one is that they reach out because they are in a time of crisis. Oh my gosh,
my father-in-law is sick, or my best friend is in the hospital, or I just had a health
scare, something like that where now all of the sudden they're in crisis and so you have
to come back and you have to feel sorry for them. For some reason there's something going
on with them that has put them into victim mode again.
Maybe it's a financial crisis and you were the only one who can help them, you're the
only one who they can talk to, who that they can go to, and this is after they've treated
you terribly, were horrible to you, weren't there for you ever, and now all of the sudden
you're the only one who can help them, and they're in massive crisis mode, meltdown mode,
and you've got to go running and be there for them. And you're supposed to just set
aside any bad blood that ever took place, or you're supposed to just forgive anything
that they may have done to you because my gosh, don't you have a heart, they're in crisis.
Don't think about any of that right now, just be there for them. I mean don't you have a
heart? You have to come back and be there for me. So that's just one of the signs that
maybe you are being hoovered. Another sign that you're being hoovered is
that they're declaring their undying love for you, or they're apologizing emphatically.
So this is where you've said okay, enough already, that's it, I'm done. Maybe they've
broken it off with you and you were okay with it. But regardless, they start seeing that
their supply source is actually walking out the door. So now all of the sudden oh my gosh,
I love you so much, I can't live without you, I am so sorry, I will do whatever I need to,
I will change for you, and this is where you might start seeing the narcissist faux-pology,
which is they say sorry just because they need to. And if you want to know more about
the narcissist faux-pology, you can check out more about that in my video called Do
Narcissus Ever Say Sorry, and of course they do say sorry, sometimes.
And you see this more from the covert narcissist, not as much the malignant narcissists or the
other types of narcissist, but covert narcissists are the more smart, cunning ones, they're
much better at covering up their narcissism. They're much better at looking like they are
so perfect to the world except to the person that they have targeted and who have been
their victims. I know because the couple of narcissists that I had to deal with in my
own life were both covert narcissists and if you want to know more about covert narcissists
check out my video on the Covert Passive Aggressive Narcissist, they are insidious and very stealth,
very under the radar, and so these are the ones that you're going to see coming back
and saying oh my gosh, I am so sorry, I never should have acted that way, you had every
reason to be upset and on and on and on. But then of course once they apologize and
they get you back into their web of control and you're back where they want you to be,
then whatever it is that they promised, whatever it is that they said they weren't going to
do, or were going to do, that just flies right out the window and you're supposed to forget
about that. And then when you bring it up, now, you're just being difficult, you are
being disrespectful, you're just bringing up the past, you're just trying to bring up
stuff and be overly toxic toward them, when all you were doing was saying, hey, how come
you didn't fulfill your promise to begin with? I mean, it's so messed up with that. But that's
another sign which is of hoovering, which is that you start seeing them running back
to you, declaring undying love, and maybe even apologizing.
So the third thing that you'll see is these random texts, these random gifts, and these
can happen. I was talking about this a little bit in the introduction to this video, but
these can happen even long after you've no longer been in contact with them. Suddenly
out of the blue you get a text message like oh, watching our favorite movie thinking of
you, or something like that, or I just had our favorite dinner, wish you were here, you
would have loved it. Or maybe out of the blue you'll get a birthday gift, something just
shows up at your door and suddenly your heart stops. You think oh my God.
I know I was hearing a lot of stories about this at the beginning of COVID where people
who thought that they had finally gotten the narcissist out of their lives, now suddenly
a basket shows up at their house, thinking of you, here's masks and hand sanitizer, something
like that. And this is the kind of thing that narcissists are so good at because if you
go to tell somebody in the outside world hey, this person just left a basket at my door
and they're like oh, what was it? Was it a dead rabbit? Oh no, it was hand sanitizer
and face masks. And you think well what's wrong with that, that sounds pretty nice?
But you know, as the person who has dealt with narcissism, and I know this is something
that I had to deal with, that's not what it's supposed to be meaning, it's supposed to be
like a warning sign almost to you, or it's a way to suck you back in into their web of
control and becoming that source of supply to them again. And so like this chill goes
through your body and you think oh my God, I definitely do not want to hear from this
person ever again. I definitely don't want this stuff from you. Please just go away,
please just get out, get away from me. Or sometimes it's cruel in a way because it took
you so long to get over this person, and it took you so long to finally not be thinking
about them anymore and then boom, there they are, showing up again., Showing up in your
text messages or showing up through an email or something like that, and that is another
form of hoovering. And if you have seen this or if you've been a victim of hoovering, give
me an OMG yes in the comments. And the next way that you knew that you're
being a victim of hoovering or that you've been a victim of hoovering, is that you start
seeing them showing up in random places. So all of a sudden there they are at the grocery
store that you always shop at, or you start seeing them at the gym that you go to, or
at the yoga studio that you go to, and it's so random, but not random. Like oh, there
you are, I didn't know that you shopped over here you live on the other side of town.
I remember that that actually happened to my husband by his ex-girlfriend 20 something
years ago, back when we were first starting to date and his ex-girlfriend would just be
showing up at the most crazy random places where he would be studying for the bar and
she would show up at this library that he randomly decided to go to that wasn't even
near either of their houses. Like oh hi, just happened to be here, something like that.
And again that chill goes through your body like oh my God, there they are again.
Or the other way that they start randomly showing up is that start becoming friends
with your friends, or friends with your acquaintances. This is something that one of the narcissists
in my life also did, this was an extended family member, so when my husband and I decided
that we no longer wanted to have contact with this person or tried to minimize the contact
and have very strict boundaries, now this person was starting to suck up to other people
in our lives and suddenly become friends with people in our world so that this person would
be able to kind of spy on us and also sort of try to show us how wonderful this person,
was or that we are so wrong because look and see the rest of the world sees how wonderful
this person is. So that's another way of demonstrating hoovering.
And the last sign of hoovering is probably the scariest sign, and this is where you're
going to see a lot more about...You'll see this much more from malignant narcissist.
The malignant narcissist and some of the more pathologically, mentally ill narcissists,
will start stalking you. And I mean yes, showing up randomly at the grocery store and saying
hello is one thing, but really stalking you and really doing things that they know where
they're not going to get caught, but you know that it's from them. So things start showing
up in your mail, maybe you're getting phone calls or emails from random numbers, random
places. I've seen clients where their exes knew a lot about cyber information and they
were able to create random emails that came from random IP addresses, and they would leave
these messages but it was really, really hard to trace, these emails are really hard to
trace, these texts. Things like that where you just start to be really scared for your
life and concerned for what this person may or may not do to you.
And in addition to the stalking what you might also see is a gaslighting move which is really
kind of a sick, sick thing, which is like oh this discard never happened, we didn't
agree to break up, we didn't agree to no longer be in each other's lives. One of the more
bizarre things that I've seen with narcissists is that you've had this horrible breakup and
then they come back and they start making comments on your social media or other people's
social media where something's been posted about you. And they say oh this is so great,
and you're so wonderful, and they just act like that thing that happened between you
or the long history of things that happened to you never happened. So it's kind of a gaslighting
of the discard phase. So those are all the different signs of hoovering.
It can be really confusing, especially if you're working so hard to get over that trauma
bonding. And if you want to know more about trauma bonding check out my video on trauma
bonding. But you've tried so hard to get this person out of your brainwaves and out of your
neuronal patterns and trying to move on, and you've gotten so far down the path and you're
finally making progress, and you're finally getting to a point where you're getting on
with your life, and then here they come again, and they do that because there's still some
supply to potentially be sucked out of you, so they come back. And remember, even seeing
you squirm, seeing you upset, seeing you angry, emotional, they get supply from that too.
So regardless of even if it's not just thinking that they're wonderful, they do get supply
from seeing you upset, so if there's any amount of supply to be had still, here, they come
hoovering back into your life again. If you are getting ready to negotiate with
a narcissist make sure to grab my free Crush My Negotiation Prep Worksheet, you can just
get that at winmynegotiation.com, and we'll also make sure to drop a link to that below.
If you liked this video, giving me a like, give it a share, especially if you think it
would be helpful for somebody, if somebody's dealing with hoovering, and drop me a comment.
Again, as I said, if you have seen this before give me an OMG yes, and if you've seen other
types of hoovering drop a comment about that below as well. And make sure that you have
subscribed if you haven't already, subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell.
If you do want more support, if you're feeling very isolated, if you're feeling very alone,
come join me in my free private Facebook group, it's called Narcissist Negotiators with Rebecca
Zung, and we will drop a link to that below as well.
I'm so glad that you stopped by my channel. If you're dealing with a narcissist, as you
know, I send you light and love and blessings. It sucks on every level and that's why I am
committed to giving you the best information, not just here's what a narcissist is, but
here's step-by-step guidance on how to get out of this relationship in a way that allows
you to feel whole, that allows you to feel complete, that allows you to go on with your
life. So glad that you're here, I'm Rebecca Zung.
Remember, today's a great day to start negotiating your best life. I'll see you in the next video.