Hi, you all, Rebecca Zung here, 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 this video is part one of my interview with Tracy Malone, who is the founder of the
Narcissist Abuse Support Group, which now has chapters all over the world, thousands
and thousands of members, and she herself has escaped a narcissistic relationship, and
this is Escaping Hell, How to Get Out of, and Survive, and Thrive a Narcissistic Abusive
Relationship.
If you haven't already, make sure you subscribe to my channel, and hit that little notification
bell so that you can be notified when I upload part two.
And you'll want to watch all the way to the end so that when you get to watching part
two you will be all caught up.
Without further ado, let's dive in to part one with Tracy Malone.
Welcome to today's podcast / interview / YouTube interview.
I am thrilled and honored to have Tracy Malone here with me today.
Tracy is the founder of the Narcissist Abuse Support Group, which is huge.
I don't even know if you expected it to be as huge as it was when you first started it,
but it's incredible what she's done, and how many people she's helped in the work that
she's doing.
And I'm going to let you tell a little bit more about yourself and your background.
Sure.
Thank you.
I am Tracy Malone.
I am the founder of narcissistabusesupport.com, which is a website.
And those little white pins back there are the top 100 countries that we service.
So, we are all over the globe, and I have support groups both here in Colorado as well
as a Facebook group with over 10,000 members.
And I'm a coach for victims of narcissistic abuse.
Yeah.
And an awesome one.
Fantastic.
We're going to go back and have you tell us about your journey and history with narcissists,
and how you ended up coming to have this passion.
Because this is a passion project for you.
It's started as a passion project.
It's become not, but you actually had a very thriving and successful marketing company,
but your passion has come full circle into being a career for you.
Tell us about why you have such passion for this.
Sure.
I knew nothing about narcissists, and I had gone through a horrific divorce.
This is now seven years ago, and I didn't understand it.
I didn't understand why they were telling...
I say, "they," so my husband and his family are the "they."
It was me against a family, and they were telling lies, and they were making these false
allegations that they stole this.
There was never any proof.
There was never any evidence, but they would just pound me, pound me.
We had seven trials, and after [inaudible 00:03:22] one after, it was just why I didn't
do that.
Why can't he produce a single piece of paper?
He was in contempt six times for not producing anything.
They lied, he quit his job.
Everything was just like...
It was total chaos, and I battled for my life.
I was not in a healthy emotional state at that point.
My son had just gone to college, and I was alone, and I had just sold the marital house,
and my world seemed to be falling apart.
But I still didn't know what a narcissist was.
After the divorce, I started dating a man that mutual friends introduced us to.
So I thought he was safe and not thinking not safe, but just thinking, "Okay, somebody
knew him."
That's a badge of honor, if you would.
And after dating him for two and a half years, I found out he was cheating, and walked away
and said, "Thanks, have a nice day."
And then a few months later after he kept coming back, and I didn't know the word hoovering.
He kept coming back, "Let me explain why I cheated with someone."
I finally, after a church forgiveness day, I said, "Okay, you know what?
I'm just going to let him go.
I'm going to go tell him I forgive him, and have a nice day."
And I went over to forgive him, and he called the police, and had me put in jail.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
So I was in [crosstalk 00:04:46] 24 hours, but my friend said, "He's gaslighting you.
Look it up."
So I started that rabbit hole, I became an investigator to learn everything I possibly
could.
It led to obviously narcissistic abuse, which then explained my divorce, and I was like,
"Oh my God, I was such prime bait for this guy because I had just come out of that."
He'd actually seen what I had endured, all of the crap I had thought he was being so
supportive about was really him knowing what he could get away with later.
And so, that was a pretty devastating blow to me because I had two choices.
In Colorado, if anyone have ever been in an intimate relationship and anyone calls the
police, if you're fighting, your neighbor calls, someone has to go to jail.
And so, I now had a police record, and they add "domestic violence" to it.
I'm sitting there crying, trying to forgive him.
Where's the domestic violence here?
I'm confused.
So, it becomes part of the charges.
And he kept on lying.
He created false documentation, a false recording that was edited, and he recorded.
He walked into his garage with a recording device.
Who does that?
But then, he edited it.
And despite my efforts to have it analyzed, because I'm like, "Where's the part I talk
about this, and that, and this?"
And none of it was there.
And the police said, "We'll go ask him."
And they marched to his house and come back to me, "Nope, he didn't edit it.
We're taking it as evidence."
I'm like, "That's falsifying evidence."
So I had to plea because I didn't have the $30,000 they wanted to defend myself in a
criminal trial.
So, I now have a criminal record and I had to do community service.
I had to go to domestic violence classes and...
Oh my God, I didn't know any of this.
This is crazy.
This was crazy.
And it was restraining orders.
I was afraid to leave my house for six months.
So I started reading.
I started learning about narcissistic abuse.
When was this?
Five years ago?
This is four years.
[inaudible 00:07:06] pass the four-year anniversary.
And, I just became detective to try and understand what happened.
I did contact his ex-wife and found out, "Oh, this is a tricky pulls all the time."
But I started my website...
I think I started YouTube first.
As I was learning things, I was educating people, and I started making YouTubes, and
then I created my website, never thinking that...
If my story, I kept saying, would help one person, it would be worth it.
And the coming out talking about the divorce story has brought people from Ireland to call
me, and a 65-year old woman saying, "I was arrested too [inaudible 00:07:51] my husband."
And I run local support groups.
Every month, there's no less than five people who have been arrested by their narcissist.
So, it's a very common trick, and we really need to be aware of it.
It makes them the ultimate victim.
I'm the perpetrator.
He was the victim.
So I learned, and learned, and studied.
I went through therapy.
I've been through thousands of courses and every kind of self-development thing you could
possibly imagine I have taken on so that I can now help people.
And somewhere along the line I started my Facebook group, and I think I have nine admins
now from all over the world that help me run it.
So, that's me.
Wow.
I had no idea that you had dealt with that.
That's just crazy.
Talk about your head space while you were dealing with the narcissist because I want,
for those of you who are out there listening who are feeling guilty, feeling like it's
your fault, feeling like there's something wrong with you or something, I want you to
describe what your head space was during that time, and how you were able to turn that around.
Well, it took a lot of work.
It took, it took so much work to get through it just at that time because there was that
whole element of them turning people against you and losing the resources and the people
that you had as friends.
So, this isolation factor, I latched on to a whole new group of friends during the divorce
that went along with me for years and years.
But, I was seeing a therapist after the arrest, that therapist, and I'd seen him through the
divorce, then through the new boyfriend thing, and after the arrest, I said to the therapist,
"I think he's a narcissist.
I think this guy, my husband was a narcissist too."
I said, "What do you know about them?"
And he said, "They like to look in the mirror."
So, while I was getting really...
I was able to talk to someone and have a dialogue, I wasn't really getting professional help
that could say, "That's gaslighting, that's this.
Oh, this is a pattern repeated."
If this therapist knew me from my divorce and all the crap I put up with there, he could
have seen some of the similarities with the boyfriend for all those years.
Two and a half years of, "Oh my God, why is he doing this?"
It's ghosting.
All of these things and I wished that I had gotten better help.
I did see a lot of other professionals after that guy, and I was in total PTSD.
I was put on antidepressants.
I was put on antianxieties.
I couldn't sleep.
I walked around my house like a zombie, especially because now I'm in a new house, and I'm all
alone, and I had to start a business now.
I had not been working full-time when I was married, so I had to build everything back
up, and having $100,000 divorce when we were fighting over 50 was ridiculous to me.
I was going to get 25.
Why are you doing this to me?
Just give it to me and go away.
But it was evil, and it was malicious, and it was intentional.
And so I just didn't understand it, and I was so confused, and so hurt.
But I kept turning for help.
I just kept looking and opening up my heart to people, and getting the right advice, and
reading the right books.
I think Psychopath Free, I've read it six times.
I was like, "That's my life."
What's the book?
Say it again.
Psychopath Free.
I'll put a link to it below just so that people can get it if they want it.
How were you able to escape and finally keep going?
What finally triggered in your head that this is not okay, and I'm just going to keep walking?
I'm going to keep walking away no matter how hard it is.
Survival.
You don't have a choice.
Your choice is to lay and have the covers over your head or fight.
And we were forced to fight.
And then the stories and the rumors of what he's telling people was that I was this litigious
person bringing all these things up when we were just in defense mode the whole time because
we never knew what was going to be thrown at the wall.
Just finding peace, learning how to ground myself.
One of the most validating things that happened was after the arrest and still not really
educated on any of this.
I had been working with the domestic violence center in Colorado.
I'm on a survivor caucus now for four years, and those people are now my friends.
And I said, "This is what happened.
What do I do?"
And they led me to a local domestic violence shelter place that gave me counseling.
And that was the most validating counseling.
Finally, someone got it.
Finally, someone said, "That's abuse."
He's using tears as a trick to manipulate you.
That's abuse.
And I was like, "Oh, I just thought he was sensitive."
"Oh, no."
So really understanding it, and finding that vocabulary, finding the words for a lying
monkey, finding the words for schmear campaigns, and the [inaudible 00:13:36], finding out
that I wasn't alone was what saved me.
And that's why I started the support group.
When did you start that support group?
Four years ago.
The same time as when you started your YouTube channel.
I'm that girl.
I actually have a support group on LinkedIn.
I don't think anyone's ever...
I have 350 members, but I don't think anyone ever thought about doing that.
I was like, "Support group for professionals with narcissistic abuse."
And I've always been that girl.
And so, I just bring people together.
That's what I do.
Because you're an empath, probably.
Oh yeah.
It's frighteningly scary that I'm an empath, that I can feel things, and I didn't realize
what that was my whole life until I did so much deep work.
Yeah.
Let me ask you this because, and this isn't a question that we talked about, but I'm curious
to know your answer.
I have recently realized that I also was a victim of narcissists, not in marriages, but
in two covert narcissists in other areas of my life.
And I talked about this in a video that I recently did on covert narcissism.
I actually was pretty honest about it and said, "Yeah, I have all these accolades as
an attorney.
I consider myself to be a pretty strong person.
And yet, it was able to happen because it was not part of my business life."
I mean one of them was in my business world but not as a client.
And because you think you can either help that person or you being kind, or you're being
generous, or you're being...
And you kind of think, well maybe the person is just really insecure.
And so, as the empath, you try to do all these things to try to make them feel better.
Like, "Oh, I can erase your insecurity and that sort of thing."
Thanks for watching.
There's part one of my interview with Tracy Malone, Escaping Hell, How to Get Out of,
and Survive, and Thrive a Relationship with a Narcissist.
Make sure, if you haven't already, make sure you subscribe, hit that little notification
bell, and then you'll be notified immediately when I upload all my new videos and when I
upload part two of this interview.
So, thanks so much for joining me today.
Remember that today is a great day to start negotiating your best life.