The Covert Narcissism Podcast

What if the episode you already listened to still has more to teach you the second time around?

In this throwback episode of the Covert Narcissism Podcast, Renee revisits one of the most-requested episodes in the show's history — the original breakdown of the six types of narcissism: grandiose, vulnerable, malignant, communal, somatic, and cerebral. Instead of just replaying it, she reads back her own words from a year and a ...

Covert narcissism doesn't just create crisis moments — it leaves your nervous system stuck in a chronic state of hypervigilance long after the argument ends. You can get good at managing the spike, catching yourself mid-reaction, and still lie awake at night with your jaw clenched and your shoulders up around your ears for no reason at all.

In this episode on narcissistic abuse recovery, Renee explains allostatic load —...

Ever ignored a gut feeling on a date because you wanted to "give him a chance"? In this episode, I'm sharing a conversation from Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse — host Dr. Kerry McAvoy sits down with Dr. Jennie Young, a PhD linguist and creator of the viral Burned Haystack Dating Method, to break down how the words men use in dating profiles and early text messages expose who they really are before you've ever met in pe...

If you've ever felt your chest tighten before your phone even finishes ringing, or braced for a reaction before you've said a single word — you already know what fight or flight feels like in a covert narcissistic relationship. It's rarely one dramatic moment. It's the accumulation: a grocery store phone call, an ordinary dinner plan, a night class — small moments that train your nervous system to expect danger from eve...

In Part 2 of this CNG Community Chat, Renee Swanson continues the conversation with three parents navigating parental alienation and covert narcissistic abuse — this time focused on how to protect the relationship with the children they still have access to, and how to hold onto hope with the ones they don't.

The conversation opens with a powerful explanation of why alienation happens the way it does: narcissists often break ...

This isn't my story anymore. It's ours.

In this solo episode, I'm finally announcing something I've been sitting on for a long time: my book, This Is Not Okay: Escaping the Invisible Grip of Covert Narcissistic Abuse, is coming this fall.

I walk you through the five stages this book moves through — the same stages so many of us move through on the way to healing from covert narcissistic abuse: recognizing, understanding, seei...

In this CNG Community Chat, host Renee Swanson sits down with three parents who are living through one of the most painful experiences a parent can face: watching a child be turned against them. This conversation covers parental alienation, covert narcissism, high-conflict divorce, and co-parenting with a narcissistic ex — and the very real toll it takes on the parent-child relationship.

Each parent shares the moment they fir...

Have you ever discovered narcissism in your relationship, started reading everything you could find, and then panicked — wondering if you were the one who created the pattern you were seeing? In this episode of the Covert Narcissism Podcast, Renee Swanson opens up about a fear she's never shared before: the worry that dwelling on covert narcissism had somehow manifested it in her marriage. She walks through the exact passages...

Narcissistic abuse and predatory behavior often hide in plain sight — and this episode pulls back the curtain on exactly how. In this special crossover conversation, I'm sharing an episode from Dr. Kerry McAvoy's podcast, Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse, featuring her conversation with Don Hennessy.

Don Hennessy is an Irish psychotherapist who has spent decades working directly with abusive men and their partners, givin...

Narcissistic entitlement rarely looks like arrogance from the outside. Often it looks like two people with "different expectations" — normal disagreements, normal marriage friction. In this episode of the Covert Narcissism Podcast, Renee Swanson breaks down why that framing is misleading: in a relationship with a covert narcissist, one partner's expectations are about the relationship, and the other partner's expectations are...

Part two of this CNG Community Chat picks up where we left off, as four moms go deeper into what it's like to parent through covert narcissistic abuse. They talk honestly about whether they see these patterns showing up again in their kids' own relationships and friendships, and close with the one piece of advice each of them wishes she'd been given back when she was standing right where you might be standing now.

If this resonates...

Covert narcissism doesn't always look like rage — sometimes it looks like a warm smile and a locked tower door. In this episode, we break down two Disney stories that map almost perfectly onto real narcissistic abuse patterns: Beauty and the Beast, and Tangled.

The Beast shows the overt side — imprisonment, an explosive temper, a rescue that resets everything, and the exact mechanics of trauma bonding when the source of...

In this two-part CNG Community Chat, four moms sit down to talk about one of the hardest parts of covert narcissistic abuse recovery: watching your children start to see it for themselves. In part one, they share the specific moments — some sudden, some slow-dawning — when their kids realized what was really happening at home, and what daily life looks like now as their relationships with the other parent shift. If you'...

When one parent shows up as the "nice, generous" one — buying gifts instead of ever offering real repair, gaslighting instead of listening — kids learn to distrust the very signals that are supposed to keep them safe. In this episode, Renee walks through practical, age-specific tools to help kids and teens of a covert narcissist reconnect with their own nervous system: how to recognize an emotional signal before it beco...

In part two of this community chat, the conversation goes even deeper. We pick back up right where we left off — with Denise sharing what it actually took to go no contact after twenty-seven years of covert narcissistic abuse, including the post-separation hoovering, manipulation, and false self-awareness that so often follows a breakup or divorce with a covert narcissist. She also opens up about hitting a devastating low poi...

If you've ever felt like something was missing in a relationship with a covert narcissist — a flatness, a lack of depth, a sense that you're never quite reaching the real person — this episode is for you.

In this episode, Renee breaks down the mask covert narcissists wear using a new framework: not a costume hiding a "true self," but a crown covering an exposed nerve that never developed protection. This reframe explain...

Some of the hardest questions in a narcissistic relationship don't have easy answers — and "do I stay, or do I go" is one of them. In this episode, I'm joined by three women from our CNG community for a raw, honest community chat about life inside a covert narcissistic relationship, and the impossible in-between of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what to do about it.

These ladies each share their own version of the...

When you finally speak your truth to a covert narcissist, you expect relief. What you don't expect is what comes next.

In this episode — the follow-up to Covert Narcissist Relationships: When You Can't Live the Lie Anymore — Renee Swanson walks through what actually happens in the after...

Do you owe your toxic aging parent everything... or nothing? Clinical psychologist Dr. Lisa Stinson, author of The Obligation Myth: Rethinking What You Owe Your Difficult Aging Parent, joins the show to unpack what happens when a critical, dismissive, or covertly narcissistic parent starts needing care — and why "I do everything" or "I do nothing" was never the real choice.

We dig into the specific family roles that get assig...