Speaker 1 – Jennifer Elizabeth Masters / Host:
Welcome. Welcome. A huge welcome to you if you are joining me for the first time, the second time, or the third time. I am so glad you are here.

I am your host, Jennifer Elizabeth Masters, and this is SOS for the Soul Coming Home. I am a narcissistic recovery guide and an author, and I am taking you down this road of how to talk to a narcissist without losing your soul and without losing yourself.

One of the things I want to acknowledge right now is that not everyone listening wants to leave the narcissist in their life. I will tell you, I am a perfect example, because I have them all around me, my mother being one of them. I am going to get into that in just a moment.

You may not want to cancel all of the people in your life, because when you start counting them up, that may leave you kind of lonely. So what I want to say is this: this show is not about leaving and canceling all the people who are narcissistic in your life.

When I was taking my Kundalini Yoga teacher training, what my teacher taught us was that the Age of Aquarius is the age of the narcissist. When I started to look around, I counted seven people in my midst who were narcissistic. One of them I have had a relationship with for 71 years.

Some of you are married to them. Some of you work with them. Some of you were raised by them, like I was. Some of you love them deeply. I have to say, the narcissists in my life, I love deeply.

This is not about divorcing them. This is not about kicking them out of your life. I am going to share some things that are going to be vastly different from what you have heard before. Why? Because I have spent 71 years living it.

My mother is about to turn 104 years old on July 10, and today is June 3. Have we had challenges? Absolutely, we have. Have there been wounds? Of course. But I still love her.

This is what I want to tell you: life is about challenges. It is not about ease. It is about challenges. It is about navigating those challenges and shifting your perspective so that you can be happy no matter what is going on around you.

That is what I help you do. I help you shift your perspective. I help you love yourself fearlessly, because when you do, you are not so focused on what those other people are doing. You stop expecting them to give you what you will not even give yourself.

One of my favorite sayings is, “If you do not love yourself, how can you expect anyone else to?”

Guess where I am going to be on my mother’s birthday? I will be sitting beside her. I will be up in Canada telling her how wonderful she is and how proud I am of her and all she has done, because she has taught me a lot of things. She has taught me that longevity is a wonderful thing, that you can heal a lot of things, that you can learn a lot of things, and that you can shift if you wish to.

I am going to tell you this. There was only one time, a period of about 12 months, when I did not speak to either of my parents. I will give you a quick synopsis.

My then-husband, Bill Gates, and I had just arrived from Maryland, where we were living. We drove all the way up to Toronto with our two little boys. We had just walked in the door, and my little son David was two at the time. He was adorable. He would not harm a flea. He was a good little kid, two years old and beautiful as could be. When he was excited, he did this thing.

He was patting my mother on her backside. My mother was very prudish, and she turned around, grabbed his wrist, and spanked him. “Do not hit Grandma.”

So this is the worst the show is going to be. I know that is shocking, but I am going to tell you. I stood there speechless. We had just driven this whole distance, and I was thinking, “What are we going to do?”

I looked at my husband and said, “Come on. Let’s go to Dairy Queen.” So we left. We were not in the house five minutes after all that drive, all the way to Toronto, north of Toronto, to visit my parents. We went to Dairy Queen, and we sat and talked.

I said, “I cannot stay, because what we are doing is saying that what my mother just did is okay.” It was not okay. I was standing right there. If you do not like what my child is doing, it is not your responsibility to correct the child. You sure did not need to spank my little boy. All he did was love you in his way. He was so excited.

Looking back, I realized I did not know how to handle it. I did not know how to set a boundary without creating a war. I did not know how to separate my mother’s behavior from my love for her.

The difference is that love and acceptance are not the same as agreement. I am going to repeat that: love and acceptance are not the same as agreement. Acceptance does not mean we approve of someone’s behavior. It means we stop trying to turn them into something they are not.

Here is the truth. The only person we can fix is ourselves. The only person we can change or fix is ourselves. We cannot fix them. We cannot heal them. We cannot do their inner work for them.

What we can do—my guides are chiming in here—is ask, “What would Jesus do? What would Jesus do?” Jesus would love them. This is about acceptance.

In this show, we are going to be talking about what a narcissist is. But before that, I have some real, poignant help for you. Get your pen, get your journal, and get ready, because I have some “write-it-downers,” some things you can absolutely use starting today.

One of the reasons I am not pro-divorce is because I left my then-husband, who was a narcissist. Guess what? As an empath, it is like a moth to the flame. I am going to go into this in a little more detail in a few moments.

I thought, “Well, I will find somebody better, somebody who is not going to treat me that way.” I did not understand how to navigate that relationship. And guess what I did? I married two more narcissists, and I dated two more as well. So let’s see how many that is.

Sometimes we think, “If I just leave this marriage, if I just leave this relationship, I will find somebody who is not this way.” But maybe the lesson for you, and the lesson for me, is how to learn to accept the other person. Is this not what we want? We all want to be accepted. We want to be loved for who we are. We do not want somebody to come along and say, “I do not like your hair color. I think you are too fat. I think you should lose 40 pounds. And by the way, I do not like the way you talk.”

Nobody wants that. Acceptance feels so much better. That is why, when I go to visit my mother in July for her birthday, I will tell her how wonderful she is.

Today, we are not talking about leaving, canceling, or trying to change that person. It is about how to stay connected to yourself when someone you love has narcissistic traits.

Here is the truth, dear friends and listeners: we all have narcissistic traits. We all want to be significant. We all want to be loved. So how do you stop losing yourself while still loving someone who may never change? That is what we are talking about today. Are you excited? Because I sure am.

The other thing about divorce that I want to say is this: you can do the research. I am not going to give you the statistics, except to say that children of divorce are less likely to graduate high school, less likely to go to college, less likely to make a lot of money, and less likely to have successful marriages. They are more likely to get involved in drugs and alcohol, be arrested, get into trouble, and have miserable relationships, because what do they do? They model what we taught them.

So I am anti-divorce. What is it? Learn the lesson. I have learned lessons. If I could go back and redo my life, which we cannot do, what I can do is teach you what I have learned.

The real issue is not narcissism. It is acceptance. So much of our suffering comes from wanting people to be different than they are. It does not matter whether they are a narcissist or not. They could be something else that is obnoxious to you.

We want them to listen. We want them to understand. We want them to apologize. We want them to become the person we know they could be. Sometimes we spend years waiting, but the truth is we cannot change another human being. What we can do is accept them.

Acceptance does not mean you become a doormat. It does not mean you stop having boundaries. It just means you stop arguing with what is, and stop complaining about it. Maybe the reality is that you are supposed to learn how to navigate a difficult relationship, because who knows? Maybe in a past relationship, you were the difficult one.

Life gets easier when you stop fighting what is. Relationships get easier because, instead of spending all of our energy trying to change somebody else, we begin asking the question, “How do I stay true to myself while loving them exactly as they are?” This is where peace lives—not in changing them, but in freeing yourself from the need to. That is the shift.

Here is what happens when we do not have the tools. You can be exiled. You can be completely cut off from someone you love: a parent, a child, or a sibling. You could be completely cut off from your children or grandchildren because you might say the wrong thing to the wrong person and get triangulated. You get turned into the villain of the story by someone who got to the jury before you did.

Marriages and jobs are lost. Families fracture for years, sometimes permanently, all because of the way one conversation went down. Here is what breaks my heart about all of that: most of the people on the receiving end of that exile, divorce, or job loss never meant any harm. They were just being honest. They were just saying what they felt. They were just trying to have a real conversation.

But with a narcissist, how you say something matters just as much as what you say. Today we are going to talk about both. Stay with me until the end, because before we are done, I am going to give you the exact tools and the exact words you can use the next time you are standing right in front of a narcissist and do not know what to say. You might have to practice in front of the mirror.

Before I give you communication tools, I am going to give you 12 ways to make your life easier. We are only 16 minutes in, people. I am rewarding you for being here.

First, accept reality. Stop wishing they were different. Stop wishing life was different.

Number two, stop trying to fix them. Their healing is their responsibility.

Number three, lower your expectations, not your standards. Most of the suffering we have in this world and this life is because we expect too much. We should be happy with the little things. Be happy with the beauty that surrounds you, the fact that you are alive to live another day. Holy cow. That in itself is a wondrous thing. I am happy with my cat. I am happy with my dog. How about you? I am living in a beautiful place. The sun is shining. I live near the ocean. What could be better? Maybe seeing my grandkids more often. That would make it better.

Lower your expectations, not your standards.

Number four, pick your battles. Like I say, these are rules for life, not just for dealing with narcissists. Not every disagreement deserves your energy. I used to write blogs every single day, and there is one article you can look for by me called “Does It Need to Be Said?”

Here are some things that could help you. Orgasm for Life is a very sexy, hot book that will turn you on and give you lots of ways to love your partner better consciously and have a happier life. Sex is good. Sex is healing. Here is another one: Sacred Relationships. Your relationships are all sacred.

Pick your battles, people. Then there is the one about how I healed and how I saw the light after many years of narcissistic abuse. What we focus our attention on is what grows. Stop complaining. Stop bitching and moaning about how they are, and focus on the good, because everyone has good qualities.

Number five, do not take everything personally. Most of these patterns existed long before you arrived, unless you are the parent of a narcissist.

Number six, stop JADE-ing. J-A-D-E is an acronym. Do not justify, argue, defend, or explain.

Number seven, let them save face. Correct privately, not publicly. This is important for all relationships. Have some respect for your partners and your children.

Number eight, set boundaries without drama. Calm is power. Stay as unemotional as you can.

Number nine, build a life outside the relationship. This is true for everyone. One person cannot fulfill all your needs. If you have been watching and listening to my podcast previously, I have talked about this. Women have a tendency to expect way too much from their partners and lovers. Have some friends. Have some community.

Number ten, practice emotional detachment. Loving someone does not mean absorbing all their emotions.

Number eleven, stay grounded. I walk barefoot every single morning. I let my dog Acado out, and I walk barefoot. I do not care about the weather. I stand barefoot on the grass or the dirt for at least 10 minutes every day. Get out in nature. Journal. Breathe. Watch my Kundalini yoga videos for releasing anger and doing breath work. Do whatever brings you back to yourself. For me, it is walking in nature and going for a walk on the beach.

Number twelve—and this is mega, uber, uber, uber important—love yourself as much as you love them. I am going to say that again because this is paramount, people. Paramount. Most important. Love yourself as much as you love them. Do not give away the farm, for goodness’ sake. Love yourself. For many of us, that is the hardest one of all. It was for me. But this is the core of what I teach.

So, what is a narcissist? I had someone today at the E-Women’s Network group in Calabasas—beautiful women together sharing so much—and I shared what I do. A lady asked me, “So what are the characteristics of a narcissist?” When I told her, she said, “Oh, that is my daughter. I need you.”

The word “narcissist” has been thrown around a lot, and I want you to be careful because labels can become lazy. Not everyone who frustrates you, or is a pain in the ass, is a narcissist. Not everyone who is selfish is a narcissist. So let’s get clear on what we actually mean.

There is the clinical form of narcissistic personality disorder, NPD, and then there is the full spectrum of narcissistic behavior. You do not need a formal diagnosis to cause real damage to the people around you.

First, there is an inflated sense of self-importance. You might know somebody like this. Narcissists tend to believe they are special, more gifted, and more deserving than anyone else in the room. Rules? Those are for other people. Waiting in line, apologizing, admitting fault? No, no, no. Those are not their favorite hobbies.

Second, there is a constant need for admiration and validation. Compliments, people. Compliments. Tell them how wonderful they are, how great they smell, how fantastic they look, how great they feel. Compliments, praise, and recognition—they can never get enough. You know what? I like them too. How about you? But when narcissists do not get it, their mood shifts. They might get angry. They might crumple. They may get depressed. They may punish you or go into a full emotional weather event.

Narcissists can have terrible rage. My mother had terrible rage. The men I was married to had terrible rage.

Third, there is lack of empathy. If you are married to one or have one in your life, you may be an empath. Moth to a flame. This is the one that hurts most. You assume that if someone sees your pain, they will actually care. Not so. Narcissists struggle to truly step into another person’s emotional experience. They may see your tears, but they are not moved by them. No, they do not care. I know that sounds harsh, but it is true.

Fourth, they are extremely sensitive to criticism. Let me just say that I am not a narcissist, and if you have worked with me, you know that I am not. I was extremely sensitive to criticism. You may be also, because I had it all my life, and when our self-esteem is low, most of us are sensitive to criticism. But narcissists are extremely so.

This confuses people because narcissists can outwardly seem extremely confident and bigger than life. But underneath that swagger is a fragile ego. The ego is very fragile. The grandiosity is armor. It is a shield. Even gentle feedback can feel to them like a personal attack. You can say, “That hurt my feelings,” and suddenly they react like you set fire to their favorite sports car.

Fifth, they use relationships transactionally. People are often viewed through the lens of, “What can this person do for me?” Sometimes this looks obvious. Other times it looks charming. Initially, if you are dating a narcissist or have just met one, they can be incredibly charismatic. They can make you feel so special. A relationship with a narcissist can be like a roller coaster—high, low, high, low, in one day—until you stop feeding the role they assigned you in their story.

There are different types of narcissists: grandiose versus covert. Not all narcissists are the same. They do not look the same. Some are loud. Some are dominant. Some eat up all the oxygen in the room, creating a vacuum. That is the grandiose type, the one most people picture.

Covert narcissists are trickier. They are quieter, wounded-looking, highly sensitive, and often play the victim. That was my mom. Instead of controlling through force, they control through guilt, shame, or emotional withdrawal. Same wound, different costume.

Narcissists show up everywhere: the boss, the filmmaker, the one who takes credit for your work, the parent who made everything about their feelings, the partner who turns every disagreement into a character assassination, or the friend who somehow makes your birthday dinner about them. You know the type.

You tell them, “Oh my gosh, I had this terrible fall today. I fell down. I skinned my knees and my hands.” They will cut you off in the middle of your story: “Well, that is nothing, because you should see what happened to me.” Their problem will be far superior and bigger than yours. This is what they do.

Here is what I need you to understand. They are wearing a mask. The grandiosity is a mask: “I am the best at this. I am the best at that. I am the biggest. I am the best looking. I am the sexiest. I am too sexy for my cat.”

The one who is always right and never wrong, who never apologizes, is not confident. It is a costume. It is a mask. Underneath this is one of the most profoundly insecure human beings you will ever meet. The show, and it is a show, exists to protect them from ever having to face that insecurity.

They make you feel small so they never have to. They criticize you so they never have to be criticized. They make sure you are the one who is never enough, so they never have to face the possibility that they are not. They can dish it out, but they cannot take it. That, my friends, is one of the most important things you can learn today.

I am going to ask you something difficult. Breathe. I am going to ask you to have compassion for the narcissist in your life. I do. Not for the behavior. I am not excusing the behavior—never for the behavior—but for the wound, for the terrified child inside who never got what they needed and never learned another way.

Here is the picture I want you to hold. Picture a toddler, two or maybe three years old. They want something. You say no, and they lose it completely—screaming, throwing things, inconsolable, maybe throwing themselves down in the store at the checkout. Not because what they wanted was so important, but because at two, they have not learned how to survive disappointment. They have not learned that other people have needs too. They have not learned that the world does not revolve around them.

Take another deep breath. The big news is this: the toddler never grew up. I am not making fun. I am coming from complete compassion here. You are dealing with the little boy or little child who was hurt and never grew beyond that emotionally.

They may hold a job, own a company, raise children, sit in the pew, or be in the pulpit on Sunday morning. But inside—inside is where it counts—they are the same toddler raging because they did not get what they wanted, terrified of being seen as less than, and unable to tolerate disappointment, criticism, or anyone else being the center of attention. So they may talk over you. They may interrupt you.

Something happened to them early: a trauma, a wound, a loss, something that stopped their emotional development right there in its tracks. I know someone, an adult, who had something terribly traumatic happen before birth. They were not wanted. One of their parents wanted them to be exiled permanently—aborted—and that carried this person into adulthood.

We do not know where the trauma happened. We cannot assume. In most cases, but not all, narcissism begins with a wound, a profound early wound of the self. Maybe it was a parent who withheld love or approval no matter what the child did. Maybe it was a home where showing vulnerability was dangerous. Maybe the trauma was so overwhelming that the only way they could survive was to bury it completely, so deep that the conscious mind lost access to it.

Here is something that may surprise you. Many narcissists have no conscious memory of the events that shaped them. Absolutely none. I want you to hold that for a moment.

This is where the compassion comes in. The brain of a child who experiences something unsurvivable makes an automatic decision: “We cannot hold this and function.” So the trauma gets stored. It is packaged away in a little box and locked in the brain, the body, and the nervous system. Then automatic responses fire before the thinking brain gets involved.

Bessel van der Kolk wrote a definitive book on this, The Body Keeps the Score. What he found after decades of research is that trauma does not live in the story we tell about what happened. It lives in the body.

This is why you can sit across from a narcissist and ask them about their childhood, and they may say, “It was fine. Normal. Nothing happened. My parents loved me.” They may be telling you the truth as they know it, but their nervous system remembers. It shows up every single day as rage, control, or the desperate hunger for love and admiration, with no conscious story attached to explain it. They do not know.

So think about the spouse who criticizes everything you do but cannot take a single word of criticism themselves. Think about your boss who takes credit for your work and blames you for their failures. Think about your friend who makes every conversation about themselves, their children, or their grandchildren, who are so wonderful.

That is the way you may feel. But if you want a friend, can you cancel everybody in your life? Can you? Do you want to? I do not. I want those people in my world, in my life. Why? Because it is what makes life interesting. Do you want to be alone the rest of your life? Do you want to be all by yourself? There are a lot of narcissistic people around.

A lot of people see them as evil. What you are seeing in many of those people is a wounded child running around in an adult body, a survival strategy that worked once a long time ago and never got updated. There is a wound underneath the narcissism. That is why we have compassion—not for the behavior, never for the behavior, but for the child who had no choice, the inner child who has not been able to heal.

Now let’s talk about the empath and the narcissist, like a moth to a flame. Most people do not talk about it. If you are listening to the show right now, there is a very good chance you are an empath, like me. You feel things deeply. You give endlessly. You take on other people’s pain as if it were your own. You have always been the one who tries harder, loves more, and forgives faster.

That was one of the things my mother used to say about me: “Jennifer, you forgive so quickly.” I had to. I was living on a daily basis with a narcissist. If I wanted her love, I had to forgive her again and again.

You keep ending up with the same person, with a different face, a different soul, and you cannot figure out why. You are a magnet for narcissists, like a moth to the flame. We are drawn to one another with an intensity that feels like recognition: “I am home.”

In a way, it is, because very often the empath and the narcissist grew up in the same kind of home. The empath learned to survive by becoming exquisitely aware of everyone else’s needs, reading the room, managing the mood, and making themselves small so everyone else could feel big. Sound familiar?

The narcissist learned to survive by making everyone else aware of their needs, demanding the room, requiring the mood to center around them, and making everyone else small so they could feel big. Same wound, opposite adaptations.

That is why we recognize each other so instantly. It feels electric. That is why the empath looks at the narcissist’s intensity and mistakes it for depth: “Oh my gosh, this feels so deep.” The narcissist looks at the empath’s boundless giving, intuition, and shining light and thinks, “Finally, somebody who will never stop loving me.”

Here is what I need you to hear: the fact that you were drawn to this person does not mean there is something wrong with you. It means something happened to you early, and your nervous system learned a particular kind of love, one that requires you to work for it, earn it, and prove yourself worthy of it. That is conditional love. It is a pattern, and patterns, unlike people, can be changed.

This is the work of unbecoming. It is my new book that is coming soon, with a workbook and a set of cards to help you navigate your world: unbecoming the version of yourself that was trained to orbit someone else’s chaos, and remembering the version of you that was never meant to be a moth to anyone’s flame.

So what does a narcissist do? We are going to be talking about gaslighting, triangulation, the worst of all—the silent treatment—and flying monkeys. Think The Wizard of Oz. You might recognize yourself here.

Let’s talk about tactics, because the narcissist has a playbook. They do not know they are running it. It is not a conscious strategy, but it is consistent. Once you can name what is happening to you, it loses a tremendous amount of its power. Recognize that the narcissist really cannot help themselves.

Love bombing is the first tactic. When you start dating a narcissist, you may feel like this is the most love you have ever received from anyone: adoration, admiration, glorious love, lovemaking that will burn the house down. Then comes the gaslighting.

Gaslighting is insidious because it does not feel like abuse while it is happening. It feels like confusion. It feels like, “Maybe I am the problem. Maybe you are the problem.”

Gaslighting is when someone systematically makes you question your own reality, your memory, and your own perception of events. You say, “I remember that you did not close the window,” and they say, “No, I did not. It did not happen that way.” You say, “That happened to me,” and they say, “I never said that. I never did that. You are imagining things.” You say, “That hurt me,” and they say, “You are too sensitive. You are too much. You are overreacting. You are crazy.” That word could be a trigger for you.

It happens so consistently and relentlessly that over the years you start to believe them. You start to think, “Maybe I am too sensitive. Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I did imagine it. Maybe something is wrong with me.”

It is not an accident. That is the mechanism. If a narcissist can make you doubt your own reality, they are never accountable for theirs. You are not crazy. You never were. What you experienced was real. Write things down. Keep a record, not to use against them, but to keep yourself anchored in your truth. Do not keep score; that is not what I am talking about.

The other thing is this: they can dish it out, but they cannot take it. Think about every time you have given your best in a relationship, a job, or a family, and it was criticized—not occasionally, but consistently. The meal was never quite right. The work was never quite good enough. The effort never measured up.

And yet you offered one gentle word of feedback in return, and Mount Vesuvius erupted: rage, silence, punishment. That is the narcissist. They hold you to a standard they could never meet themselves. The criticism was never about the food, the work, or the effort. It was about keeping you small, making sure you never felt good enough, because the moment you feel good enough, you might stop trying so hard to please them.

It is not just what you do. They find the place where you are the most tender—your appearance, your belly after having babies, your parenting, your breasts, your intelligence, your past—and they go straight for those places again and again. The same wound, the same place, until you start to believe that the cruelest thing they say about you is the truest thing about you.

Breathe. Take a deep breath. It is not true. But when you have heard it long enough, you forget that.

The next weapon is the silent treatment, and I want to call it what it is: abuse, plain and simple. It is not someone who needs space. It is a calculated withdrawal of connection, pulling away the love, designed to punish you for stepping out of line.

Maybe you have experienced this: days of silence, a week, two weeks, the person who is supposed to love you walking past you as though you do not exist. Not because they need time to think, but because you said something they did not like, because you had a need of your own, or because, for one moment, you stopped performing or stopped giving.

If there are children in the home, those children become the go-betweens. That was me. My mother would not talk to my dad for weeks on end, and the children became messengers in a war they did not start and could not end. Those children grow up learning, “This is what love looks like. Contempt is normal. Silence is a weapon you reach for when someone disappoints you.” They carry that pattern into every relationship they have as adults because no one ever showed them another way.

When you grow up, you carry it with you until you do the work to set it down. That is what we do. The silent treatment says, “You do not exist to me until you comply.” It is dehumanizing.

Then there is triangulation, and this one catches people completely off guard. It could be that you said something to one person, the narcissist, and the next thing you know, your whole family is not speaking to you. It happens in families of divorce. It happens with parents and grandparents.

Instead of dealing with you directly, they go to someone else, talking behind your back with a different version of events—their version, where they are the victim and you, my friend, are the problem.

It looks like walking into a room and sensing something has shifted. People who were warm are suddenly cooler. “What happened here?” Someone who used to be on your side is now ignoring you, distant. You cannot name it, but you can feel it. This is triangulation at work. It could mean a year or two of silence from your own children, your own grandchildren, or your parents.

What does it sound like? It sounds like, “I have talked to your sister, and she agrees with me.” “Everyone thinks you are unreasonable.” Or your own children may get pulled in. They are building a jury, and they always make sure they speak to the jury first.

Then there are flying monkeys. In The Wizard of Oz, the flying monkeys are the witch’s army. In narcissistic dynamics, flying monkeys are the people the narcissist has recruited, consciously or not, to carry their message, reinforce their narrative, and apply pressure on their behalf, maybe even the silent treatment.

Here is what you need not to do: do not recruit them back. Do not tell your side of the story. Do not try to convince them they are wrong. You will never win. All you can say is, “I love you, and I am not going to discuss this with you,” and then do not. There is no amount of explaining that will shift it.

Now let’s talk about the children. Children are the pawns in this war, whether they are younger and still in the home or adults who grew up in it. The impact is profound and deserves to be named. Children of narcissistic parents learn very early that love is conditional, approval must be earned, and expressing a need or an emotion can be dangerous. Maybe that was you. It was certainly me. They become hypervigilant.

After divorce, there can be parental alienation, where the narcissistic parent looks calm, loving, and reasonable, while the targeted parent, who is innocent and fighting for the relationship with the children, appears emotional, reactive, and desperate. Then you cannot win. It happens again and again.

Can a narcissist change? I know this is sitting in the back of your mind. It is unlikely. I cannot say never, but it is unlikely. They may have a voluntary collapse of defenses. Conditions might change in a crisis, a loss so significant, or a health collapse. There could be a crack where the light gets in.

Here is the thing I want to tell you: love them. Love them.

I promised you real tools for how to talk to the narcissist, and these are not manipulation. They are wisdom.

One of the biggest mistakes people make is leading with themselves and their pain: “You hurt me. You never listen. You make me feel invisible.” Instead of saying, “You never make time for me,” try, “I feel so much better about us when we spend quality time together. Do you think we could make that happen?” Do you see the difference?

You are allowing them to feel good. You are not trying to destroy them, because narcissists hurt. You do not want to make them collapse. You are letting them be the hero in the conversation.

Address the behavior, not the person. Instead of “You are so selfish,” try, “When this happens, it is really hard for me.” One attacks identity. The other addresses behavior. Keep it private, calm, and behavior-focused, never character-focused.

Remember the acronym JADE: justify, argue, defend, or explain. Never do it. When someone twists your words, rewrites events, or blames you, it is human nature to want to explain. You want to make them see the truth. They cannot. Do not waste your breath. The moment you start overexplaining, you have lost.

Forget about winning. This is not about winning. If you try to win, you lose the relationship. Instead, try, “I hear that you see it that way.” This will be up on YouTube, and I hope you will like and subscribe. You will be able to stop the video, stop this, listen, and write it down.

You can also say, “That is not how I remember it, but I am not going to argue,” or, “I love you, and I do not agree.” You do not owe anyone a debate.

Set limits, but not ultimatums. “If you do not do this, I am leaving.” Do not do that. A limit is about your behavior, not controlling theirs. A limit sounds like, “I am not able to continue this conversation when voices are raised. I am going to step away, and we can come back to this when we are both calm.”

Limits are about your behavior. Ultimatums are about controlling somebody else’s. Stay in your own lane. Guard your own soul.

The most important tool is staying connected to who you are. Extended time with a narcissist can slowly erode your sense of self. They rewrite history. I know it took me a long time to come back to who I am and to completely love myself.

This is what I help you do: discover who you are. You are wonderful and amazing. Time in nature, silence, prayer, meditation, Kundalini yoga—stay connected to yourself. You need a voice that tells the truth to you, and that voice must become louder, even if it is internal, than theirs. It is hard work. It is holy, sacred work.

Before you go today, I want you to remember this. If you are in a relationship with a narcissist—a parent, sibling, partner, boss, husband, wife—and you are feeling emotionally drained, loving someone who cannot meet you fully can make you feel lost. It is emotionally painful.

But I want to say that staying is not weakness. Sometimes staying with wisdom and boundaries is the bravest thing you can do, and sometimes leaving is the bravest. I am not saying stay in a relationship that is abusive. I am not recommending that. If you are being hit or beaten, physically abused, or your life is threatened, I am not recommending that you stay.

You know what is right for your soul. My hope for you today is simple: that you remember who you are, and that no manipulation, criticism, or twisted conversation pulls you away from your personal truth. You are not crazy. You are not too much, and you never were.

If today’s show resonated, pay attention deeply to that, because your nervous system recognizes truth when it hears it. This is about you coming home to you.

If you are ready to go deeper, go to my website, JenniferElizabethMasters.com. Book a call with me. If you are really invested in healing yourself, there is a free session to see if we could work together. I would love to meet you there.

I am Jennifer Elizabeth Masters, sending you much love. Do that holy, sacred work, and come home to you.

Speaker 2 – Music / Closing Vocal Segment:
Coming home. Coming home to me. I do not have to disappear. I do not have to leave. I do not have to disappear. I do not have to disappear. I do not have to disappear.