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How to Tell if You're Being Abused + Narcissistic Abuse with Dr. Ruth Ann Harpur
283 Plays1 year ago
Sometimes abuse can be very subtle and it can be difficult to discern between normal relationship conflict and emotional abuse.
Today I’m sharing my interview with Dr. Ruth Ann Harpur. She’s a psychologist specializing in treating people who have undergone interpersonal trauma. And that includes people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and their victims. She’ll tell us what to really look at when it comes to figuring out if you’re in an abusive relationship. She’ll also tell us some simple exercises we can do to heal from abuse.
Dr. Ruth Ann Harpur:
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Transcript
Encouragement to Evaluate and Improve Life
00:00:11
Speaker
On this show, I encourage you, the listener, to examine your life and if you have chronic health conditions, ask yourself if you need a life detox. That is to remove yourself from abusive situations for the sake of your health and happiness. But sometimes abuse can be very subtle and it can be difficult to discern between normal relationship conflict and emotional abuse.
Introduction to Dr. Ruth Ann Harper
00:00:36
Speaker
Today I'm sharing my interview with Dr. Ruth Ann Harper. She's a psychologist specializing in treating people who have undergone interpersonal trauma. And that includes people with narcissistic personality disorder and their victims.
00:00:52
Speaker
She'll tell us what to really look at when it comes to figuring out if you're in an abusive relationship. She'll also tell us some simple, almost silly exercises we can do to heal. My name is Stephanie Greenwood and this is The Life Detox.
Understanding Narcissistic Personality Disorder
00:01:13
Speaker
According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, narcissistic personality disorder is characterized by a grandiose sense of self-importance. The person is preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, or perfect love. They require excessive admiration and have a sense of entitlement and unreasonable expectations. They may be exploitative and lack empathy.
00:01:39
Speaker
People with NPD can be abusive due to this dysfunction. More people are becoming aware of NPD and the term narcissistic abuse as it's become popularized through social media.
Myth of Narcissus and Echo
00:01:53
Speaker
Dr. Harper explained to me the origin story of the term narcissist in Greek mythology. And it has some deep implications. So narcissus is born of a rape.
00:02:09
Speaker
his mother's raped by a river god and his mother has this very attractive baby and she seeks help from a prophet and she asks him will her child have a long life and she's told your child will have a long life if only he doesn't know himself or see himself so Narcissus grows up not really knowing himself she doesn't allow him to see his reflection and so he doesn't have a sense of who he is and
00:02:35
Speaker
And he's wildly attractive. He's very appealing. And many, many people fall in love with him, desperately in love with him, obsessively so. And he rejects them all. Until one day, he stumbles across a lake. And in the lake, he sees his own reflection for the first time. And he falls in love with the reflection. But of course, he hasn't fallen in love with himself. He's got this image of himself.
00:03:04
Speaker
And he is in love with the image. And of course, every time he reaches down and tries to grasp his ideal love, the image just distorts and his face is in the water and he can't breathe. So he pulls back. So he's constantly looking at this fantasy image of this perfect relationship that he can never have. It's endlessly frustrating for him. And the original myth was never the myth of Narcissus. It was the myth of Echo and Narcissus.
00:03:33
Speaker
Now, Echo is a completely different story. Echo is a gardener. She's ordinary. She's human. And she's full of life and energy. And she's fun. And her and her friends like to party with the gods. And Zeus, who was the patriarch, comes to Earth. And he's having a great time with Echo and her friends.
Recognizing Emotional Abuse
00:04:00
Speaker
And his wife gets suspicious.
00:04:03
Speaker
So his wife is Hera and she comes to Earth to see what Zeus is up to. And on the way, Echo sees her coming and she distracts her. She distracts her by chatting to her and talking at her. And Hera realizes what's going on and curses Echo that she can no longer speak her own voice and no longer speak her own mind. She can only repeat the last words that she's heard spoken.
00:04:32
Speaker
And Echo comes across Narcissus and falls in love with him. And all she can do, because she has no voice of her own, all she can do is repeat back to Narcissus what he says. And there's a kind of iconic image where Narcissus is gazing at his reflection in the lake, and Echo is gazing at Narcissus, gazing at his reflection.
00:04:57
Speaker
And what I'll often say to people is, you know, at one point you gazed at Narcissus in longing. And now you're gazing at him in loathing. But if you really want to live, he is not the center of the story. You are. This is your story. So you need to get up and you need to start moving around.
00:05:25
Speaker
and you need to start to get to know you and to get to know your own voice again. Otherwise, it all ends just like the myth. Narcissus falls into the lake and drowns, emerging as a narcissus plant, which is the daffodil and echo. It runs off to a cave in shame, and that's where we hear her today. That's who calls back to you when you're in the cave. So what I'll say is, do you want to rewrite the ending of that story for you?
00:05:55
Speaker
I asked Dr. Harper to explain the term narcissistic abuse. You know, there is no agreed on definition. So that's something to say to start with. There's no definition of what makes abuse narcissistic abuse as opposed to emotional abuse. And it's controversial as a term because some people would argue
00:06:20
Speaker
that it puts too much emphasis on the pathology of the abuser. And that's not actually what matters. What matters is the nature of the abuse and the effect that it has on the victim. So some people have argued that it almost lets narcissists off the hook. So if you're someone with narcissistic personality disorder, then, oh, you can't help but be abusive, but that's not true, actually.
00:06:46
Speaker
So it's a term of some controversy. I can tell you how I would see it is I would see it as abusive behavior that's driven by narcissism or driven by pathological narcissism. But whether or not.
00:07:01
Speaker
a victim or anyone else could identify this is definitely driven by someone's narcissism as opposed to something else. I'm not so sure. And I have a degree of concern or mixed feelings about armchair diagnosis because
00:07:22
Speaker
you can end up in this situation where people like, I've got to figure out, is my partner a narcissist or not? And if he is, then I should leave. And well, no, the quality of your relationship and the way that this person treats you should determine whether or not you choose to stay in this relationship, not whether or not he meets diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder.
Personal Experience with Abusive Relationships
00:07:44
Speaker
On the other hand, what I also know is that many people who are on the receiving end of
00:07:50
Speaker
emotional abuse, particularly over a long period of time, they tend to be very self-blaming. And so sometimes recognizing that my partner is showing these patterns in their behavior, these abusive patterns in their behavior that are recognizable and that makes sense, can be a way of shifting blame rightly onto the person who's doing the abusing. You know when you're being abused,
00:08:20
Speaker
Well, you may not know when you're being abused, but you have it in you to recognize that that is possible. Yeah. Um, whether that abuse is driven by narcissism or something else is still abuse. You know, should you stay if the abuses, you know, if the person is struggling with substance abuse,
00:08:43
Speaker
They've got a problem with alcoholism, for example. That may not be driven by narcissism, but the impact on someone's behavior can be that they become violent or aggressive or verbally aggressive, physically violent. Doesn't mean you should stay just because they don't have narcissistic personality disorder.
00:09:06
Speaker
I know exactly what she was talking about. When I was trying to get out of my abusive relationship, I constantly watched YouTube videos and read articles online to remind myself that his behavior was not acceptable, that it was indeed abusive and I wasn't imagining it.
00:09:22
Speaker
After so many years of being told that I was being too sensitive, that it was my fault, that I had a bad memory or that I was only focusing on the negative, it was so hard to trust myself. So having that framework gave me something to hold onto to justify my decision to get out. Sometimes it's so hard for victims to see when they're being abused, especially if it's not physical. I asked Dr. Harper, how can you tell if you're being abused?
00:09:53
Speaker
There are times when people would say, well, it's obvious, right? And it may be obvious if it's physical abuse, but with emotional abuse, you know, I think there's a whole, all of us from time to time engage in hurtful behaviors. We are a bit neglectful of our partners. We get caught up in a project and we are a bit withdrawn or not so available to them. All of us might have times where we have a bad mood,
00:10:19
Speaker
where we're a little overly critical, where we get defensive, where we fail to acknowledge our own mistakes. And that is part and parcel of being human. But for emotional abuse, that is much more intense, and it's much more pervasive, and it's much more persistent, and there isn't a repair.
00:10:44
Speaker
there isn't an acknowledgement of, you know, what I have been a bit distant recently, or I have been caught up in my work and neglecting you, or I was a bit defensive about that, or, hey, I did screw up there. And so it's kind of, I think what's really difficult is sometimes if you were to, you know, have a chat with your friends about the things they don't like about their partners, you're probably gonna, you know, if they're in a particularly bad mood with their partner, you're gonna hear all kinds of terrible things.
00:11:12
Speaker
But that doesn't characterize the whole of the relationship.
00:11:16
Speaker
And it doesn't characterize the whole of the person. So if you say, my partner's really defensive about this thing, well, probably your friend's going to go, oh, yeah, mine too. Mine too. That's just what people are like. But that doesn't necessarily capture just how extreme that behavior might be if you're in an abusive relationship or how persistent or how inflexible it would be.
00:11:43
Speaker
So I think, you know, those are, you know, something to kind of think about is I've heard emotional abuses being described as like death by a thousand paper cuts. You know, one stinks, ouch, but we all experience those things from time to time.
00:12:01
Speaker
But many of those things over a very, very long period of time is much more damaging and much more insidious. And I'd also say, you know, focus on the effects on you in this relationship. Who are you becoming? Are you becoming invisible? Are you becoming really compliant? Do you have less of a sense of yourself?
00:12:20
Speaker
Do you have a lesser connection with your values, with the life goals that are of importance to you? Are you neglecting aspects of yourself for the sake of the other person in the relationship? And are you, you know, something to think about as well as are you lying? Are you covering up their behavior? Is there a big discrepancy between what you say about them to other people and how things really are at home?
00:12:50
Speaker
is there a discrepancy between how someone is when they're out and how they are at home? And there can always be, because we're all on our best behavior when we're out, and we're all at our worst behavior at home. But when that discrepancy is huge, and when you think, gosh, if other people saw what was going on at home, other people could see what was going on at home, they'd be appalled.
00:13:13
Speaker
I often think sometimes a really good question to ask yourself is if my best friend was in this situation, what would I say? Or if my best friend saw this, what would they say? You know, would they say, ah, yeah, he was a bit rude to you there, but you know what? He's a good guy. He's a good guy. Cut him some slack. Or would they say, whoa, girlfriend, get the hell out. That is not right. That is cruel.
00:13:42
Speaker
you know, would they be devastated for you? Would they be really angry for you? Do you feel like you can actually talk to somebody about what's actually going on in your relationship? Or would you feel like it's a betrayal? Cause that's what I felt like I couldn't talk about what was really going on in the relationship. Because then what if I told somebody and they said, get out, if I stayed,
00:14:10
Speaker
then they'd be judging me and then they might be mad at me if I stayed and they knew exactly what was going on.
00:14:16
Speaker
Or they might be pushing me to get out, and then he would be like, oh, it's them. They're pulling you away from me. And so it was just way easier for me to stay quiet and not talk to any of my friends about what was really going on. He would have seen that as betrayal, I think. And that's really important as well, because what you're characterizing there, just in that description you gave, is like, how little emphasis there is on you.
00:14:42
Speaker
You know, the emphasis in what you just said was like, well, he would see it as a betrayal. And they would think I was an idiot for staying. They would judge me for staying. So, you know, in none of that conversation do I hear your voice of, I feel really hurt by this. I feel like my relationship is emotionally damaging me. I feel invisible. I feel like I don't have a voice anymore.
00:15:11
Speaker
So certainly if you feel invisible and you don't have a voice anymore, there's a sign to pay attention to. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back, Dr. Ruth Ann Harper is going to give us some simple, almost silly exercises and tips for healing after narcissistic or emotional abuse. Stay tuned.
00:15:35
Speaker
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00:15:55
Speaker
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Self-Care Post-Abuse
00:16:20
Speaker
It's such a good question and I think it also
00:16:24
Speaker
you know, one is just really recognizing the impact this has on you. And, you know, it's devastating to be in a relationship with someone
00:16:36
Speaker
who is so emotionally neglectful, defensive, makes you question yourself, leaves you totally out of touch with yourself and kind of depends on how you are and where you're at. And I don't think recovery is, you know, it's not quick and it tends to progress over time and it's not linear either. But I start really basic. I start with, are you eating and are you sleeping? Are you taking care of those fundamental basic needs?
00:17:05
Speaker
And that can start even while you're still in the relationship. You know, do prioritize your own rest and make sure you're eating. I'm not talking eating super foods or following any kind of spectacular perfect diet. I'm just talking about eat proper meals, eat in a way that is nourishing for you. And that's a really good place to start.
00:17:31
Speaker
Because that's the kind of building block of just beginning to let your body feel taken care of. And it may only be a little bit, but it's a start. And then I'd be thinking about making space to be around friends or family who treat you in a way that is respectful.
00:17:59
Speaker
and where you feel like you can be yourself a little bit, even if you don't tell them exactly what's going on, if you're not ready to. But you give yourself space in those relationships to let yourself relax a little bit. Let yourself laugh and joke, let yourself enjoy things. And it may not be perfect, and you may still have the shadow of the abuse hanging over you, but just that little bit of space can start to give you access to parts of yourself that you may have lost.
00:18:27
Speaker
or started to lose. Often I tell a story. It's a friend of mine. And she has a very good friend who was in. So her friend was in an extremely abusive marriage for decades. And she was a work friend. And when she finally left, and she waited till the children were grown up before she felt like she could leave, before she felt it would be safe to leave because she was worried about the effect the abuse would have on the children.
00:18:58
Speaker
But she said, every so often, we would go out as colleagues. And my husband was OK with that because it was a work social. And I would dress up. It was like the one time I get to dress up. And I'd go out, and I'd eat proper food. Because her husband was very controlling of what she had. I'd eat proper food, and I'd dance, and I'd play. And it was such a contrast to home. You know, home was just
00:19:27
Speaker
did some incredibly terrible abuse. And she still found that little wedge of space that was for her. And she's like that those few nights a year were what stained her for decades. I would not suggest staying for decades. There may be ways of just carving out those moments or those evenings or even those 1015 minute periods where you get to be you
00:19:57
Speaker
just for a period of time. Make space for that if you can.
00:20:03
Speaker
Then I also like to think about, you know, people have painful, painful emotions. You have probably a lot of anger, huge amounts of regret. There's a grief involved in these relationships, you know. One of the diagnostic criteria of narcissistic personality disorder is a fantasy of ideal love.
Confronting Painful Emotions
00:20:23
Speaker
It's having fantasies of unlimited power and great success. And one of the fantasies is ideal love. And very often,
00:20:32
Speaker
you'll have bought into a certain image of what your relationship is. And one of the challenges of leaving is acknowledging that that image is fake. It's not real. It is the image in the pool. It's the image in the lake. If you try to hold that image, you will drown. And recognizing that and being prepared to walk away from that fantasy, such a loss. And the more you're in it, the harder it is, because the more you've invested in it. So it's a bit like,
00:21:00
Speaker
in a slot machine and you're like, well, I'll just put a bit more and a bit more and a bit more and I'll surely at some point I'm going to hit the jackpot, keep going, keep going. So it gets harder to walk away and accept, I have lost, I have lost huge amounts. And some of it is even my own doing. Self-blaming is not accusatory. If you can see those very painful emotions,
00:21:27
Speaker
as being your friends. Make them your friendly voices. So it's not, you're such an idiot for doing this, or it's all your fault anyway. You've got no one but yourself to blame. It becomes a, whoa. There's so much loss here. There's so much betrayal of yourself. There's so much grief.
00:21:51
Speaker
There's so much anger, all of which is valid, and actually allows you to connect with the things that you've lost. And it allows you to connect with your own values again.
00:22:04
Speaker
It's a very painful journey, but it's also an incredibly freeing one. And if you can accept those difficult and painful emotions without fighting them, and from a place of compassion, really recognizing this is painful, and I really want to alleviate my suffering. There's a lot of possibility for growth and healing and actually,
00:22:28
Speaker
really reconnecting with the things that are important to you. And that can set the tone for your future. And I'm also thinking we should talk about how do you get to know yourself
Exploring New Experiences for Self-Discovery
00:22:38
Speaker
again. It can seem like such an enormous mission. You can start with really simple things and just pay attention to pleasure. So my mentor is Wendy Beharie. She wrote the book Disarming the Narcissist. She told me this amazing exercise that she uses and I've now started to use.
00:22:58
Speaker
where she'll send people to, like, an ice cream shop or a gelato bar. And they've got to try all the flavors and try them all out and pay attention to which ones did I expect I'd love and I wasn't that fussed on. Which ones did I not think would be really delicious? And actually, I really loved them. Which ones surprised me? Which ones made me feel
00:23:28
Speaker
like just real pleasure of which ones were like
00:23:33
Speaker
sharp and exciting and refreshing or which ones felt really comforting to eat. And it's just giving you a chance to explore it. And of course, it's not really about the ice cream. It's actually about learning to pay attention to yourself and your own sensations and your own experiences. And that might be a challenge if you are a people pleaser, because if you're in an ice cream shop, there might be someone standing behind you waiting on you and to take up that time and that space to say, I'm worth
00:24:03
Speaker
taking these 15 different flavors and taking 15 little spoons and taking up the time of the cashier who's helping you. And that might be a real challenge to be like, oh no, everybody hates me. I'm taking up all this time and I shouldn't be doing this. And so that's a wonderful exercise to allow yourself to take up that space.
00:24:26
Speaker
Well, and then I up the game and this is when people I work with really hate me. No, I don't want to do this exercise. It sounds terrible, but you know, I suggest that you go into like.
00:24:38
Speaker
a restaurant or a coffee shop and you ask for something with two or three modifications. They're like, oh, no, no, no, I'd never do that. I don't want to poop out. I'm like, yes, exactly. So what that kind of gives you the chance to do is in a safe place because this is low risk. This is just a waiter or a waitress or a barista. You don't even have to see this person again. You're going to inconvenience them enough to ask for what you want.
00:25:07
Speaker
and do it multiple times because what happens is you then get to experience multiple people's reaction to your request.
00:25:16
Speaker
You'll get to experience the waiter who says, oh, I like that modification. Ooh, yum. Good choice. You'll also get the one who's like, yeah, no problem. I'll just do it. And then you'll get the one who's a bit like, fine. Anything else? It's a little dismissive or shows some irritation. And you get to learn that you survive.
00:25:43
Speaker
All of those things. And you also get to learn that other people's reaction to your requests has very little to do with you.
00:25:53
Speaker
It's got to do with them. It's got to do with what mood they're in today, what other things have been going on, what their underlying personality is. And of course, you never know that when you're in a kind of restaurant or a coffee shop situation, but you will certainly get to see that there are many reactions to similar requests. And then you can start to expand it out, you know, expand it out into the workplace.
00:26:15
Speaker
And you can test out if you give someone a little critical feedback or you ask them to correct something, what is their response? Is it the response that you feared? Most of the time, probably not. But if it is.
00:26:30
Speaker
Well, that's kind of interesting too. And that may tell you something about that. I'm going to wrap up this episode, but I do have a lot more that I recorded with Dr. Harper that I'll be sharing as a second episode at a later date. If you're interested in working with Dr. Ruth Ann Harper, I highly recommend her speaking with her. She spent so much time with me, even when we weren't recording. I just felt like I had made a new friend.
00:26:55
Speaker
She works with anyone around the world and you can find her at RuthAnnHarper.co.uk. I'll link to it in the show notes. She's also on YouTube and Instagram and has some really unique videos to definitely check out. Those links are also in the show notes. Identifying and healing from emotional abuse is never easy, but do know that it is worth it. I'm Stephanie Greenwood and this is The Life Detox.
00:27:30
Speaker
The Life Detox is produced by me, Stephanie Greenwood, and brought to you by Bubble and Be Organic. The views and opinions expressed are the speakers' own and do not necessarily represent those of myself or my company. Material and information presented here is for general information purposes only and is not medical advice. Being a guest on this show does not imply endorsement of Greenplay LLC or any of its projects. Stay well, friends.
00:27:59
Speaker
Next week on The Life Detox, we're talking with Carolyn Cece Stevenson about eating the right foods for our hormones. We'll talk PCOS, hypothyroidism, and she'll tell us the one mistake that most of us are making with our diets that keep our hormones out of whack. I hope you'll join us.