Shadowing Practice: Signs Your Mother Is A Covert Narcissist & How To Recover - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

So if you grew up with a covert narcissist mom,

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So if you grew up with a covert narcissist mom,

I just want to say I think this is one of the most difficult situations.

It's one of the most difficult ways to grow up and I'm going to talk in this video about why,

what impact this had on you or if you're watching this for a loved one,

what impact this had on them because knowing this,

knowing the traits of a covert narcissist mom,

knowing what impact it had on you can really help you know where to focus to heal

and move forward in your life, which is super important.

So when you grow up with a covert narcissist mom,

she probably competed with you a lot,

minimized your needs, blamed you if ever anything went wrong,

and you probably felt guilty a lot.

But the impact really does go beyond that.

So I'm going to uncover the six traits of a covert narcissist's mom and what impact those had on you.

So I do have a video which outlines the difference between a covert narcissist and an overt,

but basically a covert narcissist is hidden, right?

It's like, it's not super obvious.

So if your mom was a covert narcissist,

this leaves you in a pretty isolating place because you might be aware of it,

but nobody else is, right?

So that covert nature makes it very,

very difficult to work with.

And it also leaves you question yourself even beyond how you might feel if you were with an overt narcissist.

Now, I've seen the phenomena of a covert narcissist mom manifest in many ways.

I worked with tons of people in my psychotherapy practice who grew up with a mom with these traits.

And what I began to

realize is that very often the covert narcissist mom chooses one child in particular to be her supply, right?

Like, so when you think about narcissism,

the narcissist always needs a supply of attention.

So the narcissist needs this admiration and they look for people who will supply it.

So the covert narcissist mom often chooses possibly the most empathetic of the children to be her main supply.

So the behavior with that child in particular is way more extreme than anything else that's manifested,

which is why other family members may not be aware of it.

And the other issue that I've seen is that the partner of the covert narcissist mom sometimes buys into the whole story.

So the father, for example,

might be like, your mom is the best mom in the world

and completely deny any of the subtle and damaging behaviors that the covert narcissist is doing.

And other times the partner of the covert narcissist is just so beaten down themselves,

there's no way they would ever stand up and confront the narcissist.

All of that really contributes to making this a incredibly toxic environment to grow up in.

All right, so one of the overwhelming

and most obvious traits of the covert narcissist mom is that they play the victim and the martyr ad nauseum.

I did this for you.

I sacrificed myself for you.

I'm the most wonderful mom because I've done nothing but care for you.

And meanwhile, they're sabotaging you in other ways,

but the storyline, the theme.

So one example is I had a client whose mom would periodically give her a gift,

wrapped even, of diet pills,

which is so insidiously damaging for so many reasons.

But if my client ever complained about it to anybody,

the people in her family anyway would be,

mom just cares for you.

She just wants you to look good so you can be happy

because they've bought into the entire narrative of the covert narcissist.

And as I talked about in one of my other videos on this,

covert narcissists tend to pay a lot of attention to appearance.

So giving you a gift,

a wrapped gift of diet pills.

Hmm.

I'm just being nice.

I'm just trying to help you.

I just want you to be happy.

I want, you know, people to fall in love with you.

I want you to be your best self.

I'm just being nice.

Why are you so angry at me for giving you a gift?

That's the covert narcissist mom.

Another client of mine, he was dragged to department store after department store after department store from about,

I don't know, the age of say six to 10.

Hours and hours of shopping,

a lot of which was shopping for him and buying him clothes,

which he didn't care about.

But how could you complain about that?

I just spent $400 on you.

So this sort of insidious way of doing things for you that really aren't for you in any way,

they're for the narcissist and even for this client who was dread shopping by his mom.

She wanted him to look good.

She wanted him to look a certain way because when you have a narcissistic parent,

They view you as an extension of them.

So how you dress is a reflection of them.

And since you're an extension of them,

they can control you so they can have you wear what they want you to wear.

So a bit of an aside there,

but it kind of all goes together here, right?

Treat number two, they never admit wrongdoing.

Now, this is common to all narcissists, right?

Narcissists do not take responsibility for any of the problems in a relationship.

Not their fault.

You're the problem.

So anytime there is conflict, you are blamed.

And if you grow up with a mom who is blaming you for any conflict,

even say blaming you for being upset for this underhanded gift that you didn't want,

you are ungrateful.

You are the one who's the problem.

And this whole messaging is so confusing to kids, right?

Because kids from the age of say three to nine tend to idolize their parents,

tend to believe everything their parents tell them so

if you have a parent who's saying i do everything for

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you all of this i'm doing is only for you why aren't you grateful for it you internalize

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that as you know there's something wrong with me

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that i'm not grateful for this and then as you get a little bit older

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and more into those more rebellious years you begin to rebel against it

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but that's not a great place to be either which we'll come to later all right Trait number three,

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the covert narcissist is preoccupied with the image they project into the world.

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They want to project into whatever social circles they're in,

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into any external environment, a perfect mom image.

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They are just the perfect mom.

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And if you don't support that, you're the ungrateful child.

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And most covert narcissist moms might have one child who's going along with everything,

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being good, doing everything the mom wants.

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So see, I'm a good mom because I have this good child who's doing everything I want.

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And that other one who's rebelling is a bad child.

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Not my fault, right?

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It's all tying together.

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But projecting the image of being the perfect mom,

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having the perfect family as much as possible,

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very preoccupied with the external image.

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So again, as a child,

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this is super confusing because particularly in those younger years,

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you believe what your parents say and you're watching your mom pretend

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or say things in public that contradict what she says in private.

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Just very confusing for a child.

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Number four, a covert narcissist mom can be vindictive and cruel if anybody goes against her.

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So you learn young not to, right? until maybe you hit those rebellious years.

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But even then, if you're rebelling against a covert narcissist mom,

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whoa, you are up against somebody who is very skilled at belittling others,

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making other people feel horrible,

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and meanwhile projecting this image of being so wonderful to everybody else so it really becomes isolating.

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For example, the client who I mentioned with regard to the diet pills felt incredibly isolated in her family

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because the mother would actually go to the father and be like,

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she's so hard for me to deal with.

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I just, I really try.

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I try everything.

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I try everything to relate to her and to help her.

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And she just pushes me away.

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And it's this whole story.

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And then if you in any way confront her and are like directly rebellious,

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the vindictiveness and backhandedness can get really, really damaging and intense.

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Part of this vindictiveness is that the covert narcissist also tends to hold resentments forever and will never drop a point.

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So another person that I worked with who had a covert narcissist mom who was very,

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very involved in her church and her religion,

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and she wanted all of her children to stay in that church and that religion and be dedicated.

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And this client of mine had chosen a different path.

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So every Christmas holiday, when that client would go home,

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their siblings would get tons of different gifts,

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tons of different types of gifts.

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They would get one gift,

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a Bible, year after year after year.

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The covert narcissist mom never varied.

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And in working with that client,

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it was like, okay, we have to understand this is coming from a narcissist.

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She almost can't think differently.

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So it is horrible.

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But learning that this is not really about you.

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It's really not about you.

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And no, your father is not going to jump in here and change the situation.

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Why?

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Because she'll be vindictive to him and he already knows that he can't stand up to her.

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Your siblings will support her.

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Everybody will support her.

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Given that scenario, what do you choose, right?

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There's really a need here.

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I'm getting into a little bit of like,

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what do you do about this, right?

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But there's really a need here to empower yourself,

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to make choices and make your decisions,

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understanding that that situation is unlikely to change and developing your self-esteem separate from that mom and separate from that family system.

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Number five, narcissists tend to be pathological liars.

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They can lie to you and in a way where they're completely convincing and you get very confused

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and covert narcissist moms are no different.

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Their lies tend to be things that make them look good and you look bad or somebody else look bad.

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Almost always.

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I mean, you can sort of go through it.

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When you become aware of how much your narcissistic parent lies,

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you will begin to see

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that all of those lies are about protecting my image of being wonderful and putting somebody else down.

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Because a narcissist can't feel good about themselves unless they're above like they can't you know feel okay

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if somebody else seems to have the upper hand

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so they always have to create a scenario

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and again as a child i mean this just sort of

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undermines your trust in the world it undermines your trust in other people

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because you realize like wow i can't really tell if somebody's lying

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or not and And then you're also always doubting yourself because you'll have a different recollection of events.

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And the narcissist will be totally convincing that what they remember is accurate.

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And you're just like, oof,

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I must be going nuts here.

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And if you're a child,

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you will believe what your parent says.

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That's just a really important thing to weave in here is that children,

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let's say we're talking ages three to nine, okay? they don't have the cognitive capacity to separate from the event

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and really observe what's happening.

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Children just naturally believe what a parent says.

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So if that parent is contradicting your reality,

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you go with what the parent says.

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You think you're wrong.

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So you do end up feeling like you're at fault in a situation if the narcissist parent is blaming you.

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Feeling guilty if the narcissistic parent is telling you you don't do enough for them feeling bad about yourself

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because your needs are not paid attention to.

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So really understanding that when these things were impacting you,

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you had a child's brain,

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which was perfect for a child, right?

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But it didn't have the full executive functioning that we develop later in life.

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In fact, it keeps developing until we're about 25 years old.

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So all of our cognitive reasoning capabilities kick in later,

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we are largely driven by emotion and sensory experience as children and our parents are the world.

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So that understanding that and having compassion for yourself is a key piece of this.

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Trait number six, the narcissistic parent will demand assurance and admiration from their children,

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in particular, this one that they've identified as their supply.

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And sometimes it's all the kids,

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but sometimes it's really targeted to just one or two of them.

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And often here, the manipulation is that if you don't make me feel good about myself,

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I get so depressed, I can't cope,

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I cry, I go to bed, I withdraw.

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Oh, poor me, you're not being nice to mom.

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And again, this theme could be echoed by other family members because particularly smart,

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covert narcissists can really figure out how to manipulate tons of people.

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So you grow up feeling that it's your job to take care of mom's feelings,

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your job to make mom feel good about herself.

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That's your job.

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Your needs don't matter.

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Your wants don't matter.

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And honestly, this is also a Sisyphean task because you can't actually make somebody else feel good about themselves.

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Self-esteem comes from inside and your covert narcissist mom did not have that.

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Even though you think of a narcissist as having a lot of self-esteem,

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that's actually not true.

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They don't, which is why they are so desperate to get it from others.

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And it truly is impossible to continually make somebody feel good about themselves,

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which means you also end up feeling I'm not good enough

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because you can never accomplish the task that is so clearly yours.

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It is so clearly your task to take care of mom and you're not doing it well.

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So these all come into being negative core beliefs that we grow up feeling I'm not good enough.

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My needs don't matter.

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I'm not as important as other people.

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It's more important to caretake for others.

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And so I do have a free PDF on identifying the negative core beliefs.

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I think it could be super helpful for you.

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Because if you grew up with a covert narcissist mom,

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you definitely developed negative beliefs about yourself that stick with you until you get to an age where you're like,

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okay, I'm going to put the work in here.

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I'm going to tackle this.

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So the PDF helps to identify what those are,

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helps you understand how to rewire it,

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gives you three techniques, change them into positive core beliefs.

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But let me go back for a second because this is also training to become a people pleaser.

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And you know, it's interesting because sometimes a covert narcissist mom will appear to be a people pleaser.

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She might even say she is a people pleaser.

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And And what she means by that is she will say things to other people

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that make them think well about her, right?

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So there is sort of a narcissistic people pleasing, right?

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It's like, I'm gonna say the right thing so this person likes me,

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but she does it in a way where it's really just totally about her.

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It's really not about pleasing the other person.

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And she's probably, meanwhile,

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training her children to be true people pleasers where their focus

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is on pleasing others taking care of others needs desires wants emotions

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and not their own all right

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so this is a difficult topic do let me know what you think let me comment below let me know

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if this was useful not useful what hits home what doesn't

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if you think i've missed something let me know i do try to read all my comments

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and i try to respond back but i also just want to reiterate

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that if you grew up with a covert narcissist mom,

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it is growing up in a traumatic environment.

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So many clients that I've had will say,

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well, I didn't really have trauma growing up.

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I wasn't hit.

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I wasn't physically abused.

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But emotionally, they were neglected and manipulated.

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And it was not recognized by other caregivers,

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other family members, or even by themselves.

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So it is actually growing up in an abusive environment

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and it does take work and healing to rewire the feelings that you have about yourself and others,

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but it can be done.

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You can do this.

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All right.

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I'll see you next week.

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Shadowing Practice: Signs Your Mother Is A Covert Narcissist & How To Recover - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Shadowing Practice: Signs Your Mother Is A Covert Narcissist & How To Recover - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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About This Lesson

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What is the Shadowing Technique?