Why Didn’t They Believe Me w/ Dr. Ingrid Clayton - Part 1

Dr. Ingrid Clayton grew up in an alcoholic household, and when her mother's second husband, her step dad, came into the picture, consistent emotional abuse ensued. This resulted in childhood trauma which affected her life long term. Part 1 of 2 of Ingrid's story is filled with examples of trauma bonding, grooming and gas lighting she received from her stepfather. As Ingrid tried to navigate life as a teenager, she sought out for her mother's help who seemed so disconnected--another sign of a narcissistic family system. Ingrid's upbringing led her down a dark path with alcohol abuse and AA. Listen to this episode and find out what Ingrid realized about her stepfather and mother, and the actions she took to start turning her life around for the better.

Host Information: 

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Guest Information: 

Website: ingridclayton.com

Book: Believing Me

Instagram: Dr. Ingrid Clayton’s IG - @ingridclaytonphd

Facebook: Dr. Ingrid Clayton’s FB - Ingrid Clayton, PhD

Guest Bio:

Ingrid Clayton, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and author. Her recent memoir is Believing Me: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse and Complex Trauma. She is a contributor to Psychology Today where her article, “What is Self-Gaslighting?” is considered an Essential Read. Ingrid has been interviewed for countless publications and podcasts including Women’s Health Magazine and The Healing Trauma Podcast. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This podcast should not be used as a substitute for
medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek
independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a health
care professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue,
or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This

(00:23):
episode discusses abuse as well as descriptions of childhood abuse,
which may be triggering to some people. Please use discretion
when listening. The views and opinions expressed are solely those
of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions,

(00:45):
I Heart Media, or their employees. Gas Lighting doesn't just
make you question the event itself, It makes you question
every current and when I think about that, when when
you sort of go wow, how we minimize eyes this
psychological and emotional abuse as though it's not that damaging.
It's like he went into my psyche and extracted pieces

(01:09):
of me that I to this day feel like I
will never get back. Growing up with a toxic, narcissistic,
lee abusive parent is like living with unexploded bombs. You
never know what will set them off. And children in
these homes tiptoe through their childhoods. This has made even
worse when none of the adults in the homes step

(01:32):
in and protect the children, and instead double down and
continue to gaslight children who are already confused, scared, and
blaming themselves. Today, we are going to hear from Dr
Ingrid Clayton, a psychologist who as a survivor of complex
post traumatic stress originating from narcissistic abuse. Hers is a

(01:54):
story of childhood narcissistic abuse, familiar gas lighting, the impacts
on her adult life and relationships, and how these stories
can end up. Ingrid has written a powerful memoir entitled
Believing Me, Healing from Narcissistic Abuse and Complex Trauma, and
her book is a reminder that sometimes one person's story

(02:17):
can remind us that one is often the story of many.
In this first episode, we will be hearing about Ingrid's
abusive childhood and how the toxic dynamics in her childhood
home magnified the challenges of her transitions in late adolescence
into adulthood. What a pleasure we have, Doctor Ingrid Clayton here,

(02:39):
who I mean? Your book? I have to say, You've
written a memoir called Believing Me Ingrid, you know a
lot of people come to me with books. Can you
read my book? From my book? That could be a
full time job for me. It doesn't be. So when
you asked, it was I'm like, this is somebody who
lives in my town who is a fellow professional. I
get the cup of you, sit on the couch, and

(03:00):
I start reading. Three hours later had not left to
my position. I am not fussy about much. I am
fussy about books and writing, and I mean, it was unbelievable.
Everyone needs to go out and read this book. And
if you've had any form of trauma, especially childhood relational
trauma in your life, you have to read this book
because the amount of empathy in those pages was overwhelming.

(03:22):
But as a clinician, the clarity of your story, it
was like, what she's just because I'd like, Okay, is
this person Nope, there it is, There's that, there's that,
there's that, and I just was thinking, this is amazing.
So here we get ever, all of you get the
pleasure I got. First of all, you got to read
her book, and we'll be information here on the show
notes on how to get that book. But you know, Ingrid,

(03:44):
I'd like to just just start with your story, and let's
start at the top. Can you tell us about yourself
and where you're from and unspooled some of that story
for us. Yes, well, thank you so much for having me.
It's a little surreal to be honest, to be here
with you. I followed your work and the gifts that
you give to so many survivors. You are really, to me,
the expert in the field, and I was taking a
gamble sending you my story. There's this part of me, actually,

(04:08):
the little girl part of me, that I'm very proud
of her for going to the expert in the field
in narcissistic abuse, because even though I wrote it with
such honesty and vulnerability, there's a part of me that goes,
was it narcissistic abuse? Am I still making it up? Right?
I still suffer from that self gas lighting after having

(04:30):
grown up in gas lighting. And it wouldn't have surprised
me if you had written back and said, well Ingrid,
let's talk about what you've written here, and in fact
you had the opposite take. And so what you so
freely offer so many people in all of the venues
in terms of validation, you have given to me personally,
and it's a gift I can quite frankly never repay.

(04:50):
So thank you for having me here. I appreciate it. Again.
I can't stress enough. I almost think every clinician should
read this book. Even more important than Christians could read
this book and say this is what this looks like.
That's right, and that's really why I wrote it. So
I always knew that I grew up in a dysfunctional home.
I knew I grew up in an alcoholic home. I

(05:12):
had that language. I went on to become an alcoholic myself.
I got sober, eventually went back to school, got three
degrees in psychology, became a private practice clinician. And yet
I didn't know that my experience was really a classic
telling of narcissistic abuse. I never had that language. Not

(05:34):
only that, but I became a trauma therapist specializing in
trauma because of this gas lighting that I just spoke
to and the minimization that comes with that, Well, this
wasn't real trauma. I also couldn't see myself as a
trauma survivor. And without that language, I stayed stuck, almost

(05:54):
like I was on this hamster wheel for decades, doing
the same thing is engaging in the same dysfunctional relationships
and yet trying so hard, asking asking the questions, going
to talk therapy, many therapists over the years. I didn't
forget my story. I knew what happened. I shared it.
No one ever gave me the language of narcissism, no

(06:17):
one ever gave me the language of trauma. And because
it's my story, my lived experience, it was very hard
for me to apply those terms. Until my stepfather died.
He is the narcissist, and just him not being on
this earth anymore, something was freer in me than it

(06:38):
had ever been my whole life. I felt safer in
the world literally, And then I was called to write
my story in a way that I didn't even know
what I was writing for many years, and I could
look back at my own story in black and white
from a clinician's lens and go, this is complex trauma.

(06:59):
This is the traumatic experiences. These are my trauma responses
unhealed that I've lived with for so long. And then
this is what healing looks like. And I finally made
sense to myself, I think for the first time ever.
And so if I'm walking around with these degrees in
this clinical information and years of training and trauma, and

(07:19):
I couldn't see that I had complex PTSD, unresolved, complex
trauma that originated from narcissistic abuse. How many people are
walking around not knowing and similarly going to three twelve
step programs, showing up to personal therapy, going on the retreats,
trying to be spiritual. I did all the things, you know,

(07:41):
I did all the things, and none of them gave
me this lens and this language to help me finally
feel like I'm not broken. I love how you position
that that I have complex trauma that originated from narcissistic abuse.
That's actually more elegantly put than I've heard anyone ever
say it before. That's what's getting sort of miss is

(08:03):
that that becomes the origination point, that the narcissistic dynamics
are what drives the complex trauma, and it is the
the upside down is the confusion and not only can't
you not escape physically, you can't escape mentally, and that
it's not viewed as trauma like it's and it's often
viewed as well, this is just how relationships are and
families are complicated, and that's what a lot of people

(08:25):
face and so once you give language to it, you
can start again lifting that self blame seeing it more clearly.
It's not an instant heal, but it allows you to
lift your head long enough to do the work. So
can you, then, for listeners, lay out the story like
just sort of. I know it's a complicated story, and
obviously the details really do need to read the book,
but you know, starting with how your mother and father

(08:48):
your early childhood, and your mother and father divorced and
that led to your mom remarrying and then your stepdad,
if you could just lay out that story for us,
what those experiences were like and as you also highlighted
that you grew up in an alcoholic household and how
all that played a role in this. So I was
about twelve, maybe eleven, I guess, when my parents divorced,
and pretty immediately after they split, my mom was living

(09:11):
with Randy, who is my stepdad, and he had been
in my life my whole life because he was my
dad's best friend. I mean, that's how they knew each other,
so I had some familiarity with him. But the way
that I experienced it is that almost when he moved
in even though my mom was there and she was
still present, it was as though I saw her step

(09:33):
into his shadow, where she didn't say something unless he
had already endorsed it or said it before. It was
almost like I could see her body moving only when
she had permission by him to move it. I literally
lost my mom to this man, even when she was
standing three ft in front of me. And so that

(09:54):
was so painful and so confusing. And then couple that
with their alcoholism, daily drinkers, and just the instability and
confusion around that. I knew that something was off. I
knew that something was wrong. I thought, really it was
related to the drugs and alcohol, and so I became
this detective. I would look, you know, where are things hidden?

(10:16):
And what else do I not know? And I was
constantly trying to figure things out. Now I know it's
hyper vigilance, and so I was trying to seek safety
through a sense of knowing what was going on. There
was not enough information to gather. I could feel that
there were lies and secrets and sort of smoke screens.
I felt like, I know my stepdad has a colored past,

(10:39):
but I'd only get little bits and pieces dropped in
and one of the stories I share in the book
is that this this man called our house one night
my parents were at the bar, and I answered the
phone and I hear, is Ben Webber there, like like
a kid making like a crank phone call. And I
was like, well, no, you must have the wrong member.

(11:01):
Is Ben Webber there? It was so creepy, and I
was like, you have the wrong number. And then he
went into a normal voice and he said, how about Randy?
Is he there? And I was like, whoa, what is
going on? So the next morning I say to my stepdad,
this creepy guy called he then he asked for you,
and he said to ask you who Ben Webber is,
And as though we were talking about just the most

(11:23):
normal thing, he said, oh, well, when I took John
to Florida, which is his youngest son, and by took
him to Florida means he abducted his own son when
he was four years old and lived under this assumed
name of Ben Webber for almost three years. So he
tells me this story as though he's telling me, would

(11:43):
you like some orange juice? And I'm looking to my
mom like this sounds horrible, Like he stole John away
and they lived in another state, and he had an
assumed name. The way he said it was, that's when
I was on the lamb. I was like on the lamb,
like sounds like some big venture. So there were all
of these this combination of all of these things. I

(12:05):
didn't know what was up what was down. I knew
my home situation was different than other people. And then
I started to feel what I now have the language for.
I did not have the language for then, which was
this grooming behavior of just flirtatiousness and really, I I

(12:25):
see you, and you're such a talented singer and really
propping me up in these ways that were really important
to me and that really mattered. And then he would
just rip it all away and start giving me the
silent treatment for no reason. And I didn't even have
the language of the silent treatment. I was just like why,

(12:47):
It's like I don't exist in my own home. I
literally felt like a ghost. It was so lonely. And
we lived in the mountains in the middle kind of
of nowhere in Colorado, so it's like you're out in
the middle of nowhere, you don't even exist in your
own home. And the cycle started to play out where
largely it's like he detests me. I get in trouble

(13:09):
for just the tiniest things, and then the punishments were
really steep. It's like you're grounded for months at a time,
You're under his thumb all the time, and then out
of the blue, there's I'd like to take you to lunch,
taking me to this wonderful lunch in town, just he
and I picking me up on a school day. Let's
go buy some jewelry across the street. These gifts would

(13:31):
start to come, and I remember feeling I can see
myself in that restaurant. It's as though I go from
this black and white version of myself into color, like
I actually exist for the first time. And I know
in my then sixteen year old, fifteen year old brain

(13:51):
that he's manipulating me. I know that he's still an asshole.
I know this isn't going to last, and I don't care.
I don't care. I will do whatever it takes to
stay in his good graces for as long as I
possibly can, because the alternative is so much worse. Of course,

(14:13):
Ingrid highlights such a key dynamic here, this idea of
I will do what I need to do to keep
a good moment, going to avoid a bad moment, to
be on their good side. This is such a complex dynamic.
Partly it's done to avoid the rages and the passive
aggression and the cruelty, but partly it's done to stay

(14:35):
in something that feels good for a minute. Regardless of
the kind of relationship it is. This shape shifting or
even giving in in any way can be to avoid
the bad stuff and to extend what feels like a
good moment, and all of that makes these relationships horribly confusing.
It contributes not only to the anxiety and unpredictability, but

(14:56):
also to a sense of shame in some survivors that
they did go along with what the narcissistic person wanted.
But survivors are often unable to see this as a
survival mechanism in that what I learned to tolerate the
imprinting of trauma bonding, that was just this lived experience

(15:18):
of I know how to navigate this kind of chaos
was woven into the fabric of my being in such
a way that it didn't matter how far away I
moved or how much you know, quote unquote worked I
had done on myself. I couldn't override my own body.
I couldn't override my own conditioning. I kept repeating this

(15:41):
trauma reenactment over and over with primarily these romantic partners,
unavailable men, actively addicted men, married men, these really toxic
dynamics that I didn't see coming. And yet I'd go,
why am I in this relationship again? Why can't I
have a healthy relationship? I'm working so hard on myself,

(16:02):
and this is the thing. I literally said, the therapists,
what is going on? And maybe we would talk about
my story, but it never made the change in me
that needed to happen. And I'm heartbroken about that. So
when you say this is for clinicians, I go, yes,
I want every therapist, every coach I wanted in grad schools.

(16:22):
No one was talking to me in grad school about
narcissistic abuse, about gas lighting, about trauma bonding. These are
terms that I learned on Instagram. I mean, what a
shame that is? What's so powerful? You use this term
grooming right, It's something that's come up over and over
again as we've talked to people. And what was so
troubling in your story was it was what we can

(16:43):
only call intra familial grooming like it was. It was
interesting because your family life was, like you said, it
was dysfunctional, It was lacking, You were lonely, you were isolated.
Those are prime conditions for someone outside of a family
to groom somewhere, right, So somebody would sense this person
is a little isolated. They'd see a young person, oh,

(17:05):
you know, compliment them on the thing that made what
a groomer's emulate. They learn what matters, and then they
take advantage of that situation. In your case, your groomer
was not only creating the emptiness and the fear and
the desolation, but then was becoming the sort of the
validation and the admiration that the groomer does. I mean

(17:27):
to me, there is no more toxic dynamic, which is
why the intra familial grooming, the intra familial abuse is
so much more toxic because it's the same person engaging
in both patterns, and which I think makes the trauma
bond that's all the more profound. And I want to
go back and ask you a question that I'm curious about.

(17:48):
You were eleven twelve when your parents divorced, and you
said that when your mother got into this second marriage.
It was as though she didn't even see you anymore.
She was only oriented towards your stepfather. Was that her
behavior she was married to your father as well? Was
she similar did she behave similarly in her original marriage
with your biological farm? There was a difference, But it's
hard for me to say because I was even so

(18:09):
much younger than my memories of childhood. You know, I'm
very aware that there was bongs and weed all over
the house, and lots of drinking and the rock and
roll and parties across the street at the neighbors where
my parents and all their friends are naked and skinny,
tipping and right. So there was that sort of an atmosphere.
But I feel like the way I've seen it is

(18:32):
almost like my mom and my dad are kind of
the same person in their codependent tendencies, you know, both
active alcoholics, both kind of wanting to be taken care of,
and I think that's in part why they didn't last.
You know, that is that's actually really interesting. You know,
I rarely get to talk to somebody who's married to

(18:52):
two parents who had co dependent characteristics. It's usually the
codependent parent and the abusive parents. But to have both
is that see a pretty interesting, unique and honestly troubling
combination because honestly, nobody's minding the store. Then you know
they're so mired in their own stuff. And so your
mother breaks out of this and actually finds the new

(19:13):
relationships she's in, which it sounds like it happened pretty quickly,
and they're likely was some sense of betrayal that your
father experienced because this is his best friend. You may
only bring this up because that's the backdrop to this, right,
betrayals starting to almost get normalized in a strange way
that that's just sort of part of a relational story.
It takes me to my next question. As you're getting older,

(19:34):
your stepfather is issuing these draconian, severe punishments, grounded for
months and all of that. Where is your mother and
all of this? Because you're her biological child, that's right,
and you would think that there'd be some primacy in that,
and yet he is coming in and taking in this
rather severe role. Where issue and all this is she

(19:55):
just signing off on this? Is she's saying nothing? Like
what was her functioning? She said nothing. She's largely not
there for these conversations. If she's there, she's so far
in the background. I mean, we just know that she
doesn't have a voice. So at a certain point I
stopped looking over to her to get eye contact and go,
are you tracking this? Because I know it's pointless it yeah,

(20:17):
right there, though I'm looking at her to get eye
contact to see if she's tracking it. That loss of
a mirror, that idea that there's somebody else there, because
we know, we know that when people are experiencing narcissistic
abuse and invalidation and these patterns in the family, sometimes
it just takes one pair of eyes on you, even
if they're not empowered enough to intervene, but that mirror

(20:39):
that you're valid I see you, I see what's happening.
Is actually can be really restorative for people. You didn't
have that, and I don't think that's an uncommon experience
for survivors. Well, I had it maybe once every I
don't know how many years. I would see a glimpse

(21:00):
she would say we got to get out of here,
and I'd say, yes, let's do this, we can do this,
and it would last, you know, for forty five minutes,
and then the next day it's like, no, that was
a ridiculous idea. So I had these glimpses that she
was in there, which I think, in a way is
what endeared me. It was like the tiniest bit of connection.

(21:20):
It was enough for me to feel connected to her
that I knew that she was under a spell, and
I just kept waiting, like when is she When is
she going to come out of this? What's troubling is
that you now know you're calling it a spell. Right.
She didn't do the work, she didn't go into therapy.

(21:41):
But she's also a parent, and I guess I have
to own my own stuff here, and that I get
really angry because I feel like once parenthood enters a
person's life, there is a level of responsibility. It's like
you need to figure your stuff out because this is
how the intergenerational cycles persist. My session with Ingrid will
continue after this break. So time is going on. He's

(22:07):
going back and forth. He's you're a great singer, you're
a special person. Let's go to lunch and then loneliness, desolation, rage, punishments,
back and forth. You nailed it, Ingrid. That's the trauma bond,
that's where it begins. But it seems like things then
started to escalate, And in your book you talk about
a trip. Could you share that, because I think that
was a real turning point in the story. Yeah. So

(22:31):
my mom, who rarely traveled alone and really had a
life outside of their relationship her father, my grandfather, became
really ill and she had to leave and go and
be with them to help out. So for the first time,
maybe ever, we were really in the house without her.
And this is pre cell phones and constant contact with folks.

(22:52):
She was gone, she was out of the house. So
one night, my stepdad comes back to my room like
a Wednesday, random wednes Day, and he's standing in my
doorframe and he says, hey, how do you like to
go to Vegas? I don't even know what he's talking about,
Like he knows I want to be a musician. Sure,
maybe I want to go to New York l A, Okay, Vegas,
And so I just said, yeah, I'd like to go

(23:15):
there some day and he goes, no, this weekend. You
want to go to Vegas this weekend? And I was like,
what are you talking about? It goes well. Obviously as
a singer, you want to witness that sort of professionalism
and he was also a musician, pianist, singer, so he
really used that as a way to connect with me.
And I was like, what are you talking about. He goes, listen,

(23:35):
a friend of mine gave me free tickets. It's no
big deal, you know. If you don't want to go,
I'll take John. And John is his biological son, the
golden child, the one that always gets everything when my
brother Josh and I seem to get the breadcrumbs. So
I'm like, well, I don't want him to take John.
You know I want to go. But he said, but
you can't. You can't tell anyone about it. You know,

(23:57):
the boys will be jealous. I can only take one
of you. But again, if don't want to go, So
I was like, oh, I mean, I could just feel
the bind. Keeping secrets is such a classical part of
all kinds of abusive family systems. It is one of
the many mechanisms by which a bond with an abuser evolves.

(24:17):
Here he is asking Ingrid to keep a secret from
her brother's and asking her to keep secrets becomes one
more way to not only groom her but also control her.
And yet again, like I said, sitting at that table,
at the restaurant. When you go from being I stout
to not literally existing in your own home to now

(24:39):
somebody wants to take you on a trip, there's no
not going. There's no not going. And so I said okay,
and he's like, great, pack your bags, leave them hidden all,
come back and get the luggage tomorrow after I've dropped
you all at school. So he leaves and I am
just pins and needles. I'm like, what is and bring

(25:00):
to Vegas? You know. I'm like, I know nothing about this,
but there is this excitement. There is this like I
wonder what could happen in Vegas? You know? And I pack,
I try to go to bed. I can't sleep. This
adrenaline is coursing through me. There's fear. So I pick
up the phone. And again this is pre cell phones, right,

(25:20):
So you have one landline for a house, and I
knew that there were times that he would be listening
on the other end when I was on the phone.
So I'm terrified that he's going to know that I'm
on the phone. He's going to pick it up and
hear it. But I call his eldest son, who doesn't
live with us but lives nearby, and I say, Sean,
dad wants to take me to Vegas this weekend and

(25:42):
not tell anyone about it. And he's like, that's son
of a bitch, like he knew who his dad was.
And so we were talking about the reality. We weren't
sugarcoating it, but at the same time we're both caught
in that maybe maybe it is just a fun trip
and maybe he doesn't want the boys to be jealous.
And it's almost like when you're so used to just

(26:04):
living for these moments, you go, I'm just gonna take
it and hope that I get through unscathed. And so
we just sort of joined in, not thinking except he said,
I'm gonna get you the phone number of some people
in Vegas, some friends of his, so that I had
someone locally to call. And he said, I don't care
if it's the middle of the night. If you call me,

(26:25):
I will get in the car from Colorado and I
will drive to come and get you. So I was like, okay,
all right, you know I'm gonna do this thing, and
so are we really going to do this? I don't know.
And we were sitting on the plane when he said, listen,
this trip is costing me a fortune. So I only
got us one hotel room, and I can feel, even
in this moment, the seatbelt just strapping me in, you know,

(26:48):
And I was like, okay. And so suddenly I'm thinking
about Ben Weber and taking John away for almost three years.
And this other story that I know about him where
his second wife, because my mom was his third. I
knew that she was really young, and I think she
was about my age and he was older when they
got married. And I'm going Vegas and marriage and on

(27:12):
the lamb and all these things, and I'm going, this
trip cost you a fortune. You told me you've got
free tickets, right, So his lies are already not matching up,
and so he takes me on this weekend where the
whole time I'm just I'm doing exactly what Sean and
I said I would do, which is I'm going to
show up and I'm just gonna try to make the
best of it that I can. He said, I have

(27:33):
to take you shopping. You gotta dress more sophisticated in Vegas,
so he's kind of dressing me up. He said, you
have to hold my hand everywhere you go because miners
aren't allowed in casinos, and you could get kicked out,
and I could get arrested or get in trouble. And
I'm going, I don't know what the rules are. I
know he's lying, but I don't know what the truth is,

(27:54):
and there's no way for me to find out. So
here I am holding his hand in these casinos, dress
singing clothes that they made me feel older, they made
me feel more sophisticated. And we were there all weekend. See,
the part of me that knew that he was manipulating,
and the part of me that knew that he was
grandiose and that he needed all the praise. I was

(28:15):
going to play into that. And I said, this trip
is amazing that you're giving me, like this could change
my life. You're gonna expose me to all these things,
so I don't understand why I can't tell anyone about it.
So I was trying to get him to go, yes,
of course, I want to share how amazing this is.
And he said, all right, listen, I'll tell the family,

(28:35):
but you have to let me do it my way.
So it gave me just enough, right, and then we
went on this trip, and there's all kinds of details
surrounding this in the story itself, but eventually we came home.
No one ever knew. I'm holding it as the secret.
Did it even really happen? Did he really parade me
around what felt like a girlfriend? He never called me

(28:57):
a girlfriend. Maybe he didn't. He didn't try to sleep
with me. He got us a suite with a huge
bed with mirrors on the ceiling. The stage was set,
The stage was set, and I could feel it. But essentially,
he didn't physically assault me that weekend, And in my
mind it went if he didn't physically assault me, was

(29:19):
it really that bad? I mean, he took me to Vegas?
What's the big deal? And so here's where these you know,
mixed messages and experiences are sort of lodged in my
brain where I don't again, don't know what end is up.
I don't know what's mostly true. I know what I felt,
I know the terror in my body. I know I
didn't feel safe. My intuition is that he didn't want

(29:40):
to assault me. He wanted me to want him, and
if he gave me enough and set the stage in
this way, I just might And that was never in
a million years going to happen. And so when it didn't,
it would flip again where I don't exist, You're dead
to me. He couldn't tolerate that I didn't see him

(30:02):
that way and give him all the praise and the
glory and the love that he wanted me to. You know,
it's so interesting because there's an infantile quality to grandiosity, right,
and what grandiosity does, and we see this narcissistic dynamic.
It literally glosses away any form of reason, even if
resistance from and I can't imagine distancing from this is

(30:23):
a child. This is exploitative, this is abusive, This is
a violation of trust, even though that this is this
is my wife's daughter. The wrongs were so piled up
like we can't even list them all. But the grandiosity, again,
in the infantile nature of it is I have a
little fantasy here, and I want to hear that my

(30:45):
my little fantasy can come true. Infantilizes is the word
that keeps coming to my mind, and grandiosity, by its
nature is right. It's the child putting a Superman cape on.
You know, it's charming when a person is five. It
ceases to be charming a little bit after that. And
so that's the struggle here and the absolute terror that
it had put you in. And you use the word

(31:06):
bread crumb and talk about breadcrumbing, is that in trying
to sort of get a special experience out of your
your young life. You're an adolescent at that point, but
trying to get a special experience. And this is so
classical in these families. You have to endure so much
discomfort just to pull a tiny bit of what we
even think could be joy. And it wasn't even joyful

(31:28):
that you were in this absolutely tense, clenched experience. But
it as though at least this is the only way
I could see something new or something different, or get
exposed to music. This part of your book was so
affecting for me when I read the part in Vegas,
because I felt myself clenching up. I'm like, this son
of a bitch is going to harm her, you know,
and I'm you know, i mean the rage that's boiling

(31:49):
up in me. So I'm feeling that tension as a reader.
And what then when I put that part of the
book down, I thought what this sixteen year old girl
felt being broad into the setting, thinking there is only
one thing that's going to happen here, and I don't
even know what to do about it. The terror, and
that this is what these are, childhoods of terror. You know,

(32:12):
you know, we did not physically assault you. You were
being assaulted. Every sense in your body was being assaulted.
The fear your brain doesn't know from fear from real right,
your brain was reacting as though the real, terrible thing
was happening. That's right, over and over in any minute,
any minute. And that's what I carried with me for
so long, next to a story that was saying, but

(32:36):
it wasn't that bad. And so when you think about
complex trauma and the fragmentation that we live in, this
compartmentalization that we live in, this disconnect from self is
so profound, and yet you can see how that was
created by design in all of those moments, correct, and
the justification like, well, maybe that wasn't what happened, right,

(32:58):
That justification is the core element of the trauma bonding
experience that I'm going to find things, well, I wasn't assaulted,
this happened, or maybe it wasn't this, and none and
enough even when there's inconsistencies, and it goes back to
that cognitive dissonance. None of the pieces fit, so we're
going to tell ourselves a story to make it fit. Now,
after Las Vegas, dynamics changed in your relationship, you come back.

(33:22):
Nobody knows except Sean in essence, you know, And I
did tell my best friend, but that was that that
There were the two people that knew. But above all else,
your mother didn't know as far as I knew. I mean,
Randy said he was going to tell her, but she
never brought it up to me, and we never talked
about it. So I assumed that things changed, okay, and
the dynamics and the relationship changed, And so what would

(33:45):
you say, just even briefly, where was the shift after Vegas?
So it largely went back to the silent treatment, and
I didn't exist except one time when I was walking
through his room, he said, hey, can we talk? And
he sat me down on his bed in their bedroom.
My mom wasn't there. I don't know where she was,
and he admitted to me, actually, he said, listen, I

(34:07):
have so much love for you, and I know it's
not the love that I should have for a step daughter.
And when I am feeling that love and I want
to give you the world. You know, it's when I
treat you whatever. Like he was basically laying out, I
know exactly what I'm doing and when I'm doing it,
and then the guilt gets too big and I have

(34:30):
to shut it down and I basically have to give
you the sound treatment. And I'm sitting there. It's such
a weird experience because I'm like, he knows that this
is what he's doing. It didn't occur to me that
he could say it so succinctly that he had that
much consciousness around it. And in the consciousness there's a
little bit of hope. I'm like, is he telling me

(34:52):
that he's gonna, like go and get some help and
and figure this out? And he doesn't, in fact do
that what he's using this information to do. Initially it
felt like a confession. My body knows it's coercion. I
want you to see how much I suffer in my
love for you. And I said to him, I am

(35:14):
glad that you're talking about it. I'm probably not the
most appropriate person to tell It's remarkable to me that
you had the presence of mind to respond. It is
remarkable to me, to be honest, because what I was
feeling was just rage. I'm just great. And then when
I said that, it's like everything he just told me
played out on his face. He went from loving me

(35:35):
to hating me too. You don't exist, and he just
stormed out of the room and walked away. And Ingrid also,
he's talking about these emotional states he's having about you,
as though any of this is appropriate, any of this
should be shared anywhere. But therapy is a not just
point a delusional radiosity and you know, disconnection and all

(35:57):
of that. My session with Ingrid will continue after this break.
So at some point you're going through adolescence, you graduate
from high school, Okay, as it comes to the point
where you're getting close to graduating high school, which for
many people would mean sort of a logical time you
could leave the home. Were there any instances where physically

(36:20):
he was coercive or attempted to harm you? Or was
it this ongoing silent treatment sharing inappropriate feelings cycle. I
was close to graduating, so I felt like there was
light at the end of this tunnel and was kind
of hanging in there for just a little bit longer.
And there was one night where I'm back in my
bedroom and he comes back to my room again, similar

(36:42):
to Vegas standing in the doorway, but I'm sort of
meeting him there, and there's this look that I will
just never forget where he is there, but he's not
really there. There's this darkness in his eyes, as though
there's just a vacancy. It was a very scary look
on his face. And with that he leaned in and

(37:04):
he kissed me, a very forceful, not a fatherly kiss
at all, and I was just honestly stunned. I think
I was frozen. And he pulled back and he looked
at me, and then he went in to do it again.
And when he came in again, I pushed him off
of me. I just yelled his name. I said what
are you doing? And without like any real reaction, I

(37:25):
sort of saw him as though he came back into
his body in a way, and he said I'm sorry,
and he turned around and he walked away. And we
never talked about it again. But I did eventually tell
the story about Vegas and his confession and this kiss
to the counselor at school, and she finally said, Ingrid,

(37:45):
this is a problem and we have to call social services.
And honestly, it felt like she knew that I she
knew the whole story. She knew I didn't have bruises,
she knew that he didn't physically assault me in that
hotel room, and yet she still said it was reportable.
And I was like, Oh, that's that's hopeful. That's interesting.

(38:06):
It seemed like she not only wanted to advocate for me,
but she was thinking as a mom herself, and she's like,
I want to advocate for your mom, and maybe we
bring your mom in first before Randy comes into the
equation with social services. And to be honest, this is
what led to what feels to me even more traumatic

(38:26):
than Vegas, because it led to a series of events
where I heard my mom say, I believe that you
believe those things happened, but I don't believe that they did.
You're right, I mean that that moment when where there
should be that moment of recognition, it's the loss of
recognition that is at the core of what this trauma is. Right.

(38:48):
To not have that recognition happen in real time right there,
when there's even another person bearing witness in the room,
it is like an eradication of your very existence. Yeah,
that's right, And it changed me forever. Can you tell
what was that change for you? I think I had
some hopefulness even through childhood, right these moments we're going

(39:11):
to leave or you know, I would see her actually
inhabiting her own body in a way that felt hopeful
to me. But when I laid everything out in front
of a school counselor to social workers, my brothers were there,
and I genuinely thought, Okay, here's the moment where she's
going to rally, and the hopelessness in that is so deep.

(39:36):
And yet I think, like most children, the loss of
connection to a caregiver or parents is so severe because
we're wired for survival through our relationships with these people
that I literally couldn't tolerate that she discarded me, She

(39:56):
abandoned me in that moment. So a part of me
clocked it, knowing that that's what happened, and another part
of me said, I will live the rest of my
life trying to prove her wrong, and I will do
it through a whole host of trauma responses, through perfectionism,
through achievement. You know, all of this betterment that I did.

(40:18):
It was in part genuine interest, but in part it's
like I am going to evolve to such a place
that it's so obvious that I am not the manipulative
liar that you're making me out to be, and eventually
still waiting waiting for her to come out of this
fog and this shell and back into herself to say,

(40:39):
of course, I would never abandon my daughter. That you
brought up a couple of things here. One is that
this issue of hope, hope is an extraordinarily dangerous thing
in a narcissistic relationship because what it does is it
keeps people on the chain a little bit further. You know,
we talked about future faking. You know, it's almost self
future figure, right, Okay, this is it the social work,

(41:00):
or is everyone's in the room, this will be the moment? Right?
And what gets harder is each one of these hopes
gets dashed. It's actually multiplies the level of devastation. The
other thing you said, and I'm so glad you said,
because I don't think we talked about this enough is
in many survivors of the complex trauma, the narcissistic abuse
you endured, they double down on perfectionism. I'm going to

(41:23):
be more, I'm going to achieve this. I'm going to
do everything, and we will see people the perfectionism will
get to the point of obsession. Sometimes we'll see disordered
eating or even Frank diagnosed eating disorders. I'm gonna have
the perfect body. I'm going to you know, I'm gonna
some people will start taking drugs so they can succeed
at school. They'll take, you know, stimulants like I'm going
to stay up all night. I don't know that perfectionism

(41:44):
is ever a good thing, but it's destructive perfectionism as
this is not who I am. So I'm going to
have to show the world in this externalized kind of
achievement orientation rather than an internalized simply I'm not this person.
And I hope that for a lot of people listening
to this that they may say, you know, I was
not sitting there as the quote unquote like sort of

(42:06):
damaged person who didn't get out of bed. I was
doing and doing and doing all the time. And that
to understand that where that emanates from, because in a
way it's that incredible things are achieved from doing that,
but it's such a profound loss instead of doing it
because you know you're good and this is what I
want to do, and this is what I'm going to
go achieve this. It's it's this act of defiance that

(42:27):
harms you. That's the problem with the sort of perfectionistic
trauma research, and it just reinforces the wound because none
of the Listen, if these things solved the problem that
I was trying to solve, I would be like fantastic.
But the problem with it is that they didn't. And
so now if I have three degrees in psychology and
IDA did all the things that I was seeking out

(42:50):
to solve this problem and I still have it, then Rominy,
the depth of my brokenness must be so deep. And
these things satiated me for maybe thirty seconds, that's how
long they felt good. I was instantly surveying the land
of what's the next thing that I gotta do because
this one didn't fix it. And so it's the flight response. Right.

(43:13):
We think of the flight trauma response as just the
animal who flees in danger, but it also looks like
staying in perpetual motion. Right. It's the obsessive compulsive, it's
the perfectionist, it's and I live in that space. I
lived in that space. I am grateful for some of
the things that came out of it, but for the
part of me that was doing it because she genuinely

(43:36):
thought she was broken and stupid and unlovable. I mean,
the devastation of that. I can't really even speak to it.
I can't articulate that internal lived experience. It's it's brutal.
It's brutal. I mean, I'm a fellow traveler with you
on that. So even as you're saying this, I'm filling

(43:56):
this in a very heart, you know, deep way in
the sense if I look at the manic quality of
my life and to this day, you know, when people
say you're doing a good job, I'm like, I sort
of smile politely and it's onto the next thing, because
it's all an offset to the internal damage I experienced
within myself. You know, Romany is a flawed person, so
she does good things. It's almost like putting perfume on

(44:18):
myself instead of taking a shower. You know, the stink
of my badness is going to come out. But I'm
doing these good things, but it's never enough. You're never
going to get away from that. So I think you're
articulating something that's a real universal experience for all of us.
We are sort of hyperachieving survivors. So thank you for
so eloquently bringing voice to that. So now you're graduate

(44:38):
high school, what happens? You just get to move out?
What what? Because now you're eighteen, right the game change.
I'm still seventeen. I graduated seventeen, but I did sort
of figure out how to apply for school, mostly because
my friends were doing it. You know, it wasn't like
there were these like there wasn't regular parenting where you go,
you know, how can we help you grow and and

(44:59):
achieve as a person. So I'm like fumbling along trying
to cobble this thing together. And I apply to school
State School. I got in by the skin of my teeth,
and I'm packing up my bathroom, ready to pack up
my car and leave, and Randy comes back. And I
literally genuinely thought in that moment, like, oh, maybe he's
going to try to leave on good terms, right, maybe
there's a pep talk coming. And he said, if you're

(45:21):
going to go to college and spread the lies that
you've been spreading around here all these years, you should
go and tell him you're an orphan, because that would
be closer to the truth. And so I literally said
thanks for the pep talk, and he walked away and
that was it. And then I put stuff in my car.
My mom comes out to see me off. She's experiencing
the empty nest sadness. Oh my goodness, my daughter's leaving

(45:44):
and she's crying, and did you say goodbye to Randy,
you know? And I'm like, yeah, we said goodbye, you know.
And I got in the car and I drove away,
And there was this real feeling that I had, not
only then, but many other times in my life where
it's like, there's going to be a clean slate, there's
gonna be I get to start over, I get to

(46:05):
show up, maybe be in a normal environment. I'm going
to rebuild myself essentially from the ground up. As Ingrid
leaves for college. There are two things that arise in
this sequence. First, there is that infernal hope that characterizes
these traumatizing, narcissistic family systems, the hope that her stepfather

(46:28):
was genuinely going to come and say goodbye and wish
her well. Then her mother having the superficial sort of
empty nest reaction, the same mother who denied her experience
of abuse in front of a social worker It was
an absolute disconnect, as though her mother was playing the
role of mother in a play or something like that,

(46:51):
but she really wasn't invested in what motherhood meant. In
narcissistic family systems, the children exist to serve rental needs,
be what the parents want, or literally simply serve as
props in the parents picture. And what I ultimately experienced
over and over and over again is that cliche thing

(47:13):
that I brought myself with me. I brought my conditioning
with me. I brought my low self worth, my inability
to trust myself. This is the thing I say that
I didn't quite understand for a long time that gas
lighting doesn't just make you question the event itself, it
makes you question every correct And when I think about that,

(47:34):
when you sort of go, wow, how we minimize this
psychological and emotional abuse as though it's not that damaging.
It's like he went into my psyche and extracted pieces
of me that I to this day feel like I
will never get back. And so that's who I brought
with me to college, trying to show up in these

(47:54):
dorms with other kids and these fresh faces, and I'm
going to get a pretty duvet it's a nice idea,
but all the while I don't want to get out
of bed in the morning. My alcoholism is taking off
full speed. I do not have the skills to cope,
not just with these external expectations of what I didn't

(48:15):
learn how to study. I didn't know how to right.
So I'm just literally cobbling it together. And only stayed
for a year because I didn't have more money to
keep going to school. I wasn't going to take out loans.
I wasn't really there to learn. I was there just
I was trying to be a normal girl in the world.
And so then if I feel like I couldn't cut
it there, what am I going to do now? You know?

(48:37):
So just a series of events that eventually I moved
to New York when I was nineteen, because now I'm
gonna take back that other thing that I thought he
stole from me, which was a connection to my love
of music and to my voice as a singer, and
I'm going to go and do that. I always find
it fascinating when survivors of narcissistic abuse want to pursue

(49:00):
their artistry music, dance, acting, visual art writing. These types
of family systems steal a person's voice, and being an
artist of any kind is such a pure expression of
taking back that voice again and having it be seen, read,

(49:21):
or heard by the world. I always say, instead of
moving to New York to be a rock star, I
got sober instead, Like that's basically what happened. I just
fell on my face, But that brought me to this
really loving community of people that I eventually sort of
stumbled into that started to give me that experience of
being seen and even being seen in my time of

(49:45):
need and brokenness in a way that I was like,
what is happening? And I couldn't really tolerate it, to
be honest, and so my body knew it was there,
knew that it needed it, like life or death needed it.
But I ended up going to a different meeting every
single day, different twelve step meeting, different twelve step meetings
every day because I didn't want you to recognize me

(50:08):
and try to have a conversation. It felt too threatening.
But I needed to go and I needed to show up.
So I'm just like in that directory every day, like
the options are getting thin, right, It's like I'm going
to different meeting every day for ninety days. I went
to a different meeting until I finally found one that
I was like, I feel safe enough. I think I
can come back. And I kept coming back and stay

(50:30):
there my whole first year, and it was foundational. Like
I said, it got me sober, but it really gave
me this sense of a family that I was always
seeking in a way that was profound. I'm so grateful
for that. What it is, too, is that I didn't
want to be seen. I'd keep going to different meetings.
It's that how intimacy gets to be such a co
opted space when we were experienced narcissistic abuse, especially early

(50:54):
in life, and in your case, it was even more
so because intimacy became a sullied space. Right. Intimacy then
was any sort of embedded, as it were, into an
inappropriate sharing of emotion and feeling. You didn't see a
normalized intimacy either between your own biological parents or your
mother and your stepfather, and any sort of sharing of

(51:14):
it was in this again, in this inappropriate way. So
how could intimacy in any form be safe for you?
So the going to the ninety different meetings actually really
speaks to you, know that again, what is what is
a trauma survivors, you know, sort of quest it's safety,
Where am I safe? The other thing, and maybe you
can speak to this. I'm very surprised at how people

(51:36):
are responding to this element of what I wrote in
the book because I thought it was personal to me.
I thought a lot of this was just personal to me.
So I'm very surprised at how common of a story
this is. But one of the reasons I didn't go
back to the same meeting twice for so long is
I knew that I couldn't stop drinking. And okay, maybe
we have that shared experience, but I really believed, and
this is the word that I used to myself, that

(51:59):
I was evil And I thought, I need you so
desperately to save my life. But if you really know me,
you're gonna know that I'm evil. And so I really
thought about it when I was writing the book. I
was like, angered, are you really going to use that word? Like,
isn't it being a little dramatic? And I was like,
that is what I felt, and that's what I'm going

(52:21):
to write. And how many people have reached out and
said I thought I was the only one that felt
that way, that I was evil, because everything that was
evil about my stepdad, it's like he implanted it in me.
And then my mom said, yes, that's where the evil lives.
It lives in you. And it wasn't the whole of me.

(52:43):
It's never been the whole of me. But a part
of me said, maybe they're right again that sentiment, and
I was so glad you had written it that way,
because there's not a survivor I've ever worked with clinically
who hasn't uttered that sentence. One must be, you know,
Dr Ron, Me, isn't me? I feel like maybe I'm
the evil one. And I mean, like you, just bright

(53:05):
light walking through the world, and I'm thinking evil. And
yet then the fact that they uttered it like that,
that's even like you said, it's not the all of them.
And I certainly weren't walking around the world in the
sense that they're evil, but that there was even a
part of them. And like you said, it's almost like
this parasite that gets implanted in you. That's such a
great word. As a result of these kinds of experiences,

(53:28):
here are my takeaways from part one of ingrid story. First,
achievement and perfectionism are not uncommon fallouts of childhood narcissistic
abuse and are often missed because who is going to
pathologize a high achieving child or adolescent. It's not unusual

(53:50):
for survivors to put their head down or disprove the
family rhetoric that the targeted child is a liar or
too sensitive or manipulative. In grid story, she highlights her
focus on achieving and being perfect, a story that is
echoed in many survivors. However, there is no such thing

(54:10):
as good perfectionism, and these patterns can culminate in compulsive behaviors,
obsessive thoughts, rigidity, or even disregulation. For this next takeaway,
being from a narcissistic family system often means living with
not being seen or not being chosen, and what we

(54:32):
witness an ingrid story is that this got distorted to
another level. She was often not seen or chosen, but
when she was finally seen or chosen, it was a distorted,
abusive experience. Survivors of narcissistic abuse are often pendulum ng
between wanting to be seen and wanting to avoid being seen,

(54:55):
which can be exhausting and confusing, and because both expi
variances were often unhealthy for most survivors, it can feel
as though there is no safe way to show up
in the world. For this next takeaway, Ingrid said something
in the episode that is very reminiscent of what many
survivors of emotional abuse or other forms of abuse experience

(55:19):
when there are no visible bruises left behind. Ingrid was
clearly abused above and beyond the emotional narcissistic abuse. She
was coerced to share a bed and was forcibly kissed
while she was a miner. But Ingrid shares that she
grappled with what so many survivors struggled with. Was it

(55:41):
abuse if there are no bruises. If the bruises of
emotional abuse showed up on a person's face or body,
they would be rushed to the hospital immediately, no questions asked.
We must, at all levels create this awareness, with educators,
how health care providers, therapists, clergy, social service agencies, domestic

(56:05):
abuse programs, policymakers and law enforcement all needing to understand
that abuse is not something that can be detected just
by looking at someone. Ingrid story is so rich and
complex that we are sharing it across two episodes, and
our next episode will explore how these patterns of narcissistic

(56:28):
abuse affected Ingrid as an adult. Just because she moved
out of the family home doesn't mean that these patterns
stopped affecting her. In our next episode, you will hear
how these patterns shape adult behaviors, relationships and hopes, and
how these cycles can sometimes feel impossible to break. Ingrid

(56:49):
story is less about whether you can ever come home again,
but rather about whether you can ever completely leave home.
A big thank you to our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith,
Valen Jethro, Ellen, Rakitin, and Dr rominey der Vassila. And
thank you to our producer Matthew Jones, associate producer Mara

(57:12):
Della Rosa, and consultant Kelly Ebling. And finally, thank you
to our editors and sound engineers Devin Donnahee and Calvin Bailiff.