Why Didn’t They Believe Me w/ Dr. Ingrid Clayton - Part 2

Dr. Ingrid Clayton's stepfather lacked empathy and would occasionally manipulate Ingrid with gifts. Brutal realizations come to light as her stepfather reveals his true feelings for her. Ingrid's toxic upbringing led her to having relationships with toxic men. Listen to part 2 of Ingrid's story and hear how she started taking steps on turning her life around, getting a PhD, writing a book, defending herself and saying no to every request from her parents. 

Host Information: 

Instagram: Dr Ramani's IG - @doctorramani

Facebook: Dr Ramani's FB - @doctorramani

Twitter: Dr Ramani's TW - @DoctorRamani 

YouTube: Dr. Ramani’s YT - DoctorRamani

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. 

#NavigatingNarcissism

I want to hear from you, too. Have a toxic topic you want me to explore? Email me at [e-mail] - I just might answer you questions on air. 

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.

Navigating Narcissism is produced by Red Table Talk Podcasts. EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Jada Pinkett-Smith, Fallon Jethroe, Ellen Rakieten, and Dr. Ramani Durvasula. Also, PRODUCER: Matthew Jones, ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Mara De La Rosa. EDITORS AND AUDIO MIXERS: Devin Donaghy and Calvin Bailiff.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. In this process of
coming to believe Me, I keep hearing from people that
they are believing themselves for the first time. And like
I said, I never wanted to write a book about
child trauma and narcissistic abuse. I wanted this to be
left in Colorado when I graduated high school, and now

(01:06):
it's become the biggest subject of my waking life. But
if it is helping other people to heal, I would
do it all again. There's no regret. Welcome back to
the second part of doctor Ingrid Clayton's story. Ingrid has
shared her story of complex trauma as a result of
narcissistic abuse. We have heard her story of being abused

(01:26):
by her stepfather, her mother's lack of support and denial,
and the fear and menace that characterized her childhood. As
Ingrid proceeds through adolescence, she faces the transitions when adolescence
need their parents support, such as going to college and
moving to a new city largely alone and with the

(01:46):
burden of self doubt and confusion continuing to weigh heavily.
We now hear how her story of narcissistic abuse as
a child impacts her as she goes into adulthood, of
becoming an alcohol all like entering a series of relationships
where the same invalidating patterns were repeated, and how she

(02:06):
navigated all of that to an unexpected ending. We're talking
about narcissistic abuse. You didn't have this framework, obviously, you
did not know that when you look back, because now
you're saying, I agree, this narcissistic abuse framework fits what
I went through. How do you capture Randy's behavior as narcissistic?

(02:28):
What elements of it jumped out to you? So I
think the compulsive lying and the different faces for different people,
that sort of I can be charming the way that
people did find him charming, and yet at home he
was this different person. The manipulation. I mean, as I
see now, while the trauma bonding certainly fit the love bombing,

(02:49):
I never would have known that that's what that was.
So here's the jewelry. Or I got us a membership
to the Aspen Club because I know you really want
to belong there. And even the word gas sliding romany.
I never had that in my personal lexicon. And yet
that is the crux of my story, that is the
trauma growing up in such pervasive intentional gas lighting. So

(03:15):
once I had those terms. But like I said, even
after I wrote a book with the subtitle Healing from
Narcissistic Abuse and Complex Trauma, so I believed it enough
to put it in the subtitle. I'm not kidding when
I say I sent it to you going she might
tell me that I'm out of my mind. I mean,
it was all there. There was no empathy. How could

(03:36):
you have it about me? That's right, That's why that
moment on the edge of his water bed where he's
telling me I cycle through these things where I love
you so much and then I basically have to hate
you because you don't love me back. I'm waiting for
it to be about me, and I'm going there's never
a time where something was so about me. But this

(03:56):
is not about me at all. It's about you. You see,
yourself is the victim, and I can see evidence of
that in so many of my experiences, and that that
lack of empathy is the court. Because some people say
this person is entitled, maybe they're narcissistic. Entitlement does not
a narcissist make, but obviously there was tons of entitlement
in your story. But that complete lack of empathy, that

(04:18):
lack of self reflective capacity, the the victimhood. And you
were a child right so to me, that even magnifies
that lack of empathy. The arrogance, the grandiosity, the manipulation
with money, the manipulation with gifts, the need to control,
the punishments, the egocentricity. Everything was about him, everything on

(04:40):
his terms, the validation seeking tell me I'm great. You
felt the compelled to tell me he's a good singer.
And I don't know if you're familiar with Pete Walker's work.
You know what's so compelling about his work is you're
talking about that fawning response of the children who really
get programmed to praise these parents in this endless way
because it's the only way to get safe and attachment

(05:01):
needs met. And so then when you extend that to adulthood,
now you're fawning over terrible people in adulthood. But it's
that same quest for safety. So, I mean, it was
all there. So it was thinking like it was all
this is kind of like a literal law in case
study on narcissism. So now you've moved to New York,
you have faced down that you're struggling with alcohol use

(05:25):
disorder addiction, You're going to twelve step and even the
feelings that process brought up. What about relationships? How did this,
this history and what happened to you affect adult romantic
relationships for you? And how did that play out for
you in young adulthood? Well, I mean, right out of
the gates, I ended up working at this law firm

(05:46):
and the World Trade Center as an administrative assistant, and
I ended up working for this man who was married
and likely an alcoholic. I've never thought about it that way.
But next thing, you know, he and I are going
to this bar across the street every day for these
liquid lunches. Like this was before before I got sober,

(06:06):
and fast forward to him taking me to these lavish parties,
you know, and I was I was twenty, I guess
because I moved to New KOs nineteen, so I was
twenty at this time. He's mid thirties and like I said,
wife and kids at home, and there was this part
of me that always thought, oh, he's married, he's safe.
I thought that someone's partnership or marital status was a boundary.

(06:29):
I misstook that as a solid boundary, and so I
entered in and yeah, maybe we were being a little flirtatious,
and you know, he was sort of mentoring me. I'm
this young Colorado girl living in the big city and
he lived there his whole life, and he's kind of
showing me the ins and outs. But I would always
know there was a little something, like I knew that
he was attracted to me, But like I said, I

(06:51):
perceived his marriage as like a clear boundary, and yet
men just like him would cross that boundary time and
time again, and it would baffle me. I was truly baffled,
and I talked about this so many times with different therapist.
I was like, do I have a sandwich board that
I'm walking around the city like looking for a corrective experience.

(07:13):
You know, I couldn't understand because the red flags weren't there.
It was this natural progression of a relationship that I
found myself in over and over. But you mentioned Pete
Walker's work. I'm so grateful to him because this piece
about fawning is the thing that finally allowed me to
make sense to myself as a lifetime fawner. So my
trauma responses are a flight and fawn. I'm a free right.

(07:40):
So in fawning, the way that we abandon ourselves in
order to try to please other people and take care
of other people, I'm gonna be who you need me
to be in the hope that you're going to take
care of me in return. Basically, what that says is
I need to be exploited in order to feel safe.

(08:02):
There is this dynamic that is set up. And so
this part of me that for decades rominy this, this
happened so many times I lost count this part of
me that finally understood I wasn't broken, I wasn't stupid,
I wasn't all of these things. My body was seeking
safety in the way that it literally learned how to

(08:25):
find safety, and I could go, I don't have to
be so ashamed. I make perfect sense. My body makes
perfect sense. And now that I know that it's about safety,
I can enlarge my toolbox of Okay, so what is
actual safety? Can I find some flexibility in terms of
looking at how to regulate my nervous system and all

(08:47):
of these other things? As a trauma therapist, that went,
oh my gosh, this makes so much sense. So it
was that boss, it was other mentors, it was professors.
This pattern that Ingrid is describing given her childhood experience,
isn't unusual. What's unfortunate is many survivors in these experiences

(09:10):
may view themselves as manipulative or somehow damaged. Instead of
getting to that place that Ingrid describes here of my
body making perfect sense trying to find safety. Sadly, for
most survivors, they don't make sense of it and merely
extend the negative self talk from childhood. So these were
the men that were sort of seeking me with this

(09:33):
promise of I'm going to be helpful. I'm going to
take care of you, and I was like, oh great,
I want to be taken care of until it would
go horribly wrong. And next to that is my dating career,
which that's where it was sort of if guys were unavailable,
active addicts. They all had one ft in the door
and would flat out tell me like, no, I don't
really want a relationship. And it ignited that thing in

(09:55):
me of I'll prove my worth. You just don't know
it yet, but we're it to be together. It was
like it lit a fire inside me to try and
improve myself. And of course we know what happens with that, right.
It never ever, ever ever worked out, So it was
deeply painful all the way up until my first marriage
was exactly that scenario. But I was older now and

(10:18):
I wanted a family, and I felt like, honestly, there
was this part of me that I was just willing
to almost do anything to get to the finish line
of marriage. Because if I'm coming from a place where
I fundamentally know that I was not chosen, I was
not chosen by my mom, I was discarded. There must
be something wrong with me. The key to my feeling

(10:40):
free in the world, to being free in my skin,
to being a whole person meant I needed to be chosen.
It was just a math problem in my body, and
it either needed to happen by my mom saying I
believe you, or by somebody else saying you are worthy
of committing myself too. I needed it, and the part

(11:03):
of me that knew that I needed it in sort
of an obsessive way. I was in grad school and
I'm writing these feminist papers and sort of deconstructing marriage.
I'm using all of my faculties to try and make
a conscious, healthy choice, But none of that information could
override my need for safety and connection in my body.

(11:26):
And the only way that I had ever learned how
to get it was through these very dysfunctional relationships with
the hope that it's going to get better. Right like,
if I get him sober, if I whatever, I'll be
their therapist, I'll be their mom, I'll be whoever they
need me to be in order to take care of
my partner. I'm going to raise them up and then
we're going to have a healthy relationship. Right what she

(11:50):
says here, I'll be their therapist, I'll be their mom.
I'll be whoever they need me to be. That belief
that we need to be a one stop shop for
the people in our lives. That is such a classical
element of the trauma bond. It's that fawning thing. I
was literally stuck in it for decades. It is I mean,

(12:13):
I think that people don't fully understand it. And even
what you brought up, this issue of being chosen, right,
it is a theme I hear over and over again,
and a lot of people will equate love bombing, which
is a lot of these folks were doing with you.
These men who were already in other relationships are just
not ever going to be available. It's love bombing feels

(12:33):
like being chosen, and I think you just really positioned
it so beautifully and saying that in that moment, I
needed my mother to choose me, to choose the truth,
and she chose not to, And so then it becomes
this quest for being chosen, because I think that's an
essential attachment. Need you know, I'm choosing to even look
at you, it's that, and then to regard you, to

(12:54):
recognize you, to give validity to your needs. It's all
of that, and that many many people I listened to
stories over and over again where people will say I
felt chosen and that just the profundity of that dynamic
is it's so much. And then, like you said, this
equation of you know, love and exploitation and safety, it's

(13:15):
just that's trauma bonding, everything getting so mixed up. These
ingredients that don't belong together get thrown together. And I
think that that that's a big one. So you got married.
How did that marriage work out? The first marriage? Not well?
Not well, yeah, because not only was it in that
trauma bonding cycle, but again, I'm a perfectionist who's working
real hard to make it look pretty on the outside

(13:35):
because I want to convince all of you that this
is a healthy relationship and I'm thriving. I survived all
of these things. Look how well I'm doing. And so
the secrecy that that creates for me anyway, created where
I'm sort of clocking what's happening with my husband, like, oh,

(13:56):
I know that he's lying to me, and I know
that he's drinking more than I'm comfortable with, but I
can't let anybody else know that because I'm waiting for
him to get better, and then we won't ever have
to address it anyway, and I really just want to
be in something normal. I didn't ever really realize why
I was so like compulsively documenting my life through photographs

(14:21):
but capturing this curated, beautiful moment because I needed to
believe that that beautiful moment was the most real thing,
even though I knew that it was covering up so
much other stuff that I just either couldn't see yet
or didn't want to see. So I had this life

(14:41):
that on one hand, I really thought, No, we're happy,
this is you know, this is what a marriage is,
and a marriage is compromise and not everyone's going to
be perfect, and we're gonna help each other through our struggles.
But he wouldn't work, and he wouldn't contribute to our bills,
and I'd come home and he'd be I didn't know
he was past out. He just said he was really tired.
And there are all these things that sort of started

(15:04):
to add up. And then of course the experience around
even our engagement that he proposed, you know, with kind
of like a dime store ring and then later said, oh,
that's I was gonna We're gonna go shopping for a
ring together of course, I want to get you something beautiful.
And so when we went shopping for the ring, we're
looking down and again curating, and I'm trying to curate

(15:25):
this perfect moment of like, how am I going to
dress this up? And we see is this the ring?
Is this the one? Oh? My goodness, it's so beautiful,
And in front of the sales person, he turns to
me and says, so, if you can put this on
your credit card, I'll go ahead and make the payments.
And I'm stuck in this moment because I need the
ring to dress up what I know is not a

(15:46):
healthy relationship. So what did I do. I handed over
my credit card and he never made a payment, he
never brought it up again. And this is just a
microcosm of that entire relationship. Many people in narcissistic relationships,
especially if they grew up in these kinds of relationships,
will share that they need the relationship to look good,

(16:10):
and maybe soothed by the idea that if I can
make this look good, then it is good. And sadly,
this superficial patina of if it looks good, it is
good is a game that the narcissistic people are able
to play so well. So this sequence of Ingrid doing

(16:30):
something that inherently felt so uncomfortable to make it look
good was a replication of her childhood, where her family
system was all about what looked good, but underneath it
was anything but. But again, I'm the one who's pushing
us towards that finish line as though it's going to

(16:51):
fix it. So it didn't fix it, And it was
within our first year I knew that it was wrong,
and I eventually got this feeling that I had to
go to our hall closet, and I did, and I
opened it up, and I saw a suitcase that was tucked,
you know, under boxes and boots like a closet, and
I pulled out the suitcase and it was just full

(17:12):
of empty vodka bottles. And it was like, okay, that's
what's that's what's going on, right. He's an active alcoholic
and he's hiding it from me. And now I'm a
therapist who works in addiction who married an active alcoholic
and didn't even know it, you know. So the shame
is just and we were separated before our second anniversary.

(17:35):
The only thing that held us together longer is that
his father, his father actually died of active alcoholism, and
I kind of thought, oh, maybe that's gonna and it didn't.
And so I had to face in my mid to
late thirties this real feeling that I had failed, that

(17:56):
the one thing that I was going to do was
to do it differently, to do it better. I was
going to overcome. I was going to prove my worth
and I had failed. So not only am I a
personal failure, but now I'm never going to be a
mom who wants a newly divorced late thirties like it
just I truly just thought it was impossible. And the

(18:17):
grief at that time in my life was so painful.
I literally couldn't go to friends baby showers because I
would go and I would leave and I would just
be racked with uncontrollable tears that would not stop for
hours and hours and hours. And I just felt like,
even if I could meet someone who was attracted to

(18:37):
me and I was attracted to them and we at
this age wanted to start a family, the chances of
me repeating this cycle again, I just truly didn't think
I had it in me to find an available, healthy
person to be one. So it was. It was devastating.
It was devastating that you know that presumption so many

(18:58):
survivors I don't have what it takes to get in
to a healthy relationship, and it gets confirmed because you know,
there is that sort of first passed through marriage that
so many survivors have, and that first passed in last
one year, two years, or thirty years. But it's all
these difficult, broken places all coming together. But I want
to get married. And one thing that wasn't lost. I mean,

(19:18):
I know we didn't talk about it, but as you
were talking about the engagement ring and you know him
and the credit card, I know that also there was
a very significant moment with Randy where he I think
it was buying you a ring that was in a
store and the idea of even a ring and what
that signified, and like Randy was trying to buy you
probably an inappropriately expensive piece of jewelry. That's and it

(19:41):
was interesting that it took on a different kind of
a meaning and yet it still became a damaged space.
That's when another relationship like these patterns really really die hard.
So you you get into a marriage with somebody who
is an alcoholic, you know you yourself were in in recovery,
And can I ask you that throughout this period, like
in your twenties, as you've met your first husband, as

(20:03):
you're going through your own professional growth and exploring, exploring you,
were you in therapy on and off my whole life,
I've been in therapy. Yeah, did any of those therapists
bring up the idea of narcissistic abuse or use the
narcissism frame with never? Ever? One time. I don't even
know how it came to me, but I heard about

(20:25):
a book on narcissism somewhere in my clinical travels, and
I bought the book and then I couldn't read it. Yeah,
I can see that. And then I bought the audio book,
thinking oh, maybe i'll listen to it. I never listened
to it. I'm curious about that, actually, that there was
this part of me that maybe knew, but it was

(20:46):
at least another decade until I started this writing and
could start to piece together the truth of it. It
was almost like I didn't I don't know if I
was afraid of maybe not fitting in that paradigm and
then and then what is it? I know, if you've
experienced that with other people where there's like a it's
almost like a hot coil, like I don't want to
touch it. I don't want to know. Yeah. The answers

(21:07):
to that, yes, yeah. How did the people you work
with therapeutically frame your experience? And they look at it
largely through the lens of family alcoholism and using the
alcoholism model. I think that that's true, that it was
seen as just the alcoholic family system. But honestly, I
don't recall any other specific terms or sort of psycho

(21:27):
education that was used. So they just would hear you,
and they would hear your struggles, and there was a
lot of compassion. Right. So, I've always been articulate, and
I've always known my story, and so I could go
in and say, here's my story and here's my experience.
And what I think happened is my ability to articulate

(21:47):
something was seen as oh, that's been a fully metabolized
experience in her body. It was seen as insight, which
was seen as sort of breaking through. And what I
was trying to say is, but these feelings are still
I am plagued by them today. They live in my
body right now. And so we would talk about that

(22:08):
manifestation and I said this in the book. It's as
though talking about it over and over and over in
this sort of surface level way was just weeding a
garden with kitchen scissors, chopping off these leaves over and
over and over, when the roots kept branching and getting
deeper underground, making me feel even more broken. I love

(22:31):
that idea of, you know, trying to trim it in
a very large guard I would say, a large field
or farm with garden shear. Is that we're not taught
this a therapists right now, psychologist, psychologe were not taught this.
And one of the hard pieces of understanding narcissistic abuse
in your relationships is there something that feels defeatist about it,
like this does not change. It's this radical acceptance, even

(22:55):
though I think that the messages in many ways are redemptive.
This isn't you, it's not your fault. And in fact,
the fact that it doesn't change in truth is so
freeing because and that's the reason I finally allowed myself
to use the term narcissistic abuse, because I didn't want
to just use emotional abuse or psychological abuse, because those

(23:15):
things in the hands of a narcissist are different. Because
of the lack of empathy. So even when I was
getting the pushback early on, is that well, you're using
this clinical term in a way that's you know, stigmatizing
and overly pathologizing a mental health disorder. I had to
come to a place within me where I said, you
know what, You're right. Perhaps I am, and I think

(23:38):
it's worth it because survivors have not been seen, and
I have tried to unpack and uncover this thing in
every other way possible and it didn't work. So quite frankly,
this is the last house on the block and it's
the one that's giving me back to me. And so
at this point I will do anything to save my

(23:59):
own life, that's as how I feel about it, and
to help other people put the pieces together in a
way that I was finally able to do. I just
I'm passionate about it now. But you've got to the
other reason people don't like this. They say, I feel
like I'm being judgmental, I'm being diagnostic. Will First of all,
it's not a diagnosis, and I don't even have to
go on that that rant again. But there's a uniqueness

(24:19):
to it, right, Narcissisms are making that other forms of
emotional abuse, maybe generated by people with addiction, may be
generated by people who might have post traumatic presentations, may
be generated by even people with other mental illnesses, and
maybe generated by people who have none of the above.
Narcissism is its own animal, by which I mean the

(24:40):
narcissistic abuser is capable of being the most charming, engaging, interesting, human,
being warm, seemingly compassionate to one person, and literally be
able to step in the threshold of their home, shut
the door, and start abusing everyone in that household, which
makes it impossible for people to get help. And I

(25:01):
tell people, do you see there's an intentionality They knew
not to scream at you in front of those other people,
and that ability to discern that. I said, If they're
screaming you and berating you in front of other people,
it's abuse, it's emotional abuse. If they're screaming and berating
you in private, it's abuse. So while people may be
willing to call it emotional abuse when they witness the screaming,

(25:24):
they are far less likely to if that screaming happens
only in private, and their interactions with the narcissistic person,
especially in public, are characterized by charm and charisma. People
want to see the agitated, angry spew anything. They want
behavior of a narcissistic person to look disregulated, as though

(25:44):
they can't help it or shut it off. Clearly they
can if they are picking and choosing when they do it.
So when they ask, am I own speaker before they
start screaming, then they know exactly what they're doing. You
know what I'm saying, that's a voice. It is a choice,
and I will say this until all my days. It

(26:06):
is a choice. That's what makes this it's very own,
unique space. And this isn't about pathologizing the perpetrator, as
it were. This is about understanding for the survivor. And
I tell you, if the survivors had much as much
advocacy behind them as the narcissistic find, wouldn't that be wonderful?
My session with Ingrid will continue after this break, all right,

(26:33):
So I want to ask you to less pieces. I
want to get to one is so your marriage ends
and you're sort of looking at this in this place
of Okay, maybe this isn't my story. Maybe this place
I came from means I don't get my love story.
I don't get to be a parent, and many survivors
get backed into that place. How did that all resolve

(26:57):
for you? Oh gosh, it just makes me want a SOB.
I was having lunch with friends one morning, and I'm
trying to convince them of my new idea, which is
I'm not meant to be a mom or to have
a partner. I'm just going to mother my clients. Because
despite all of my difficulties, I did figure out how
to be a good therapist, how to really hold space

(27:18):
for other people in a way that I saw was
making a difference. And so I thought, well, I guess
that's my calling. I'm going to do that. So maybe
I'll expand my practice or sub let other office space.
I'm like trying to make this is you know, if
this is my life, let me kind of make it
as big as I can make it. And I saw
this little girl in this restaurant and she was twirling
in front of the dessert case, watching herself and her reflection,

(27:41):
and literally out of the corner of my mouth, I
said to my friends, that's what I really want. And
I said what, And I go, no, no, no, no, no,
Remember how old I am, Like that ship is sailed
it's I didn't even want to open that door. It
felt too painful. And they looked at me and they said, Ingrid,
it's okay to want it. It's okay to still want it.
And of course, as I started sobbing, and I knew

(28:02):
I couldn't not wanted if I tried. There wasn't like
you can turn off that tap. And so I said, okay,
I'm not going to decide in advance that God's plans
for me are X, Y and Z. I'm going to
continue to be in my life and do whatever I
can to show up for myself as wholeheartedly and as
vulnerably as I can. And so you know, I went

(28:22):
to an energy healer and she was like, I'm going
to cut these cords. And I don't even understand any
of that, but I tell you there's probably not a
healing method that I haven't found some value in. So
I'm like, okay, let's do it. And another friend said,
right down, like write down these patterns and what's happened
every time, and what you're not going to settle for
and what it is that you really want. So I
did another round of sort of this internal work on

(28:45):
myself and there came a point where I knew that
I was done with fixing. I was done with fixing
as a strategy, and I wanted something real. And it
was after that point the or A next person that
I met on a date is my now husband. His
name is Yancey and we've been together over nine years now,

(29:06):
and meeting him was a brand new experience. It was
truly like nothing i'd ever experienced where we you know,
did the thing. It was online dating, and we met
in person, and I'm sitting across from him, going, this
feels so easy, Like it just feels it feels so easy.
I go, oh, maybe we're just meant to be friends,
because I had confused that chemistry, trauma bonding, ho ho ho,

(29:33):
it's on. I'm going to prove to you, and I'm
going to prove to you through my sexuality, through my intellect,
through anything that I think you might be interested in.
I'm gonna show you. Right that was nowhere to be
seen at this dinner, and so I was like, Oh,
maybe we're meant to be friends. But I was like,
but I can't wait to see him again, Like I
want to hang out with this person. He was so kind,

(29:55):
he was so genuine, and you know, basically that was it.
This idea of chemistry is actually somewhat dangerous for survivors
of narcissistic relationships, especially narcissistic families. Chemistry may speak to
that emotional draw to a person where the trauma bonded

(30:17):
patterns of having to win someone over prove ourselves to them,
a primal working through gets activated. In that way, Chemistry
may be a sort of psychodynamic familiarity, that toxic soothing
that comes from being with someone where old wounds are

(30:38):
being felt. Was like, after that first date, we just
couldn't sort of stop seeing each other and spending time.
It's the easiest, most loving relationship of my life. We
got married in August, we bought a house in September,
and we got pregnant in October. And I was trying
to get pregnant with my first husband, like we couldn't
get pregnant to save our lives, right, And I was
so sad about it then, sim so grateful about it

(31:01):
now and for it just to like work out that way,
I mean, it's almost too good to be true in
a way. It's not like we don't have our relationship
stuff everybody does, but I mean it when I say
it's a night and day different experience. So what shifted
for you? What shifted an ingrid to make a healthy

(31:21):
relationship were your identity reality? Your units are recognized and
loved and adored, and it's not a game. What shifted
in you to make that day to make the meeting
of a man like him? You know? I think what
made the difference before I met Yancy, quite honestly, is

(31:42):
that I asked my first husband for a divorce. Because
it was the first time in all of these other
relationships that I told you about, I never left them.
I hadn't broken up with a single person since my
first boyfriend in fifth grade. I get in and I stay,
and you might treat me like shit and you might

(32:02):
not really be available, but I'm hanging in there because
I'm going to give you your favorite phrase, the benefit
of the doubt, and you're eventually going to choose me back.
So it was in my marriage in my mid to
late thirties when I had to leave that I made
a choice. I will not wait for anyone else to
choose me over alcohol, whether or not he wanted to

(32:22):
get sober to choose me as a partner. You're going
to show up and give me the respect that I deserve.
I'm going to choose me by walking away. It wasn't
just this idea of self worth. I had to make
the biggest decision of my life at that point to
walk away where I was literally feeling like I was
saying to myself, Ingrid, when you leave right now, this
means you are not going to have the things that

(32:44):
you've always wanted. Most. So the sacrifice was huge, and
I made it anyway because I was worth it. Yeah,
I think that's just so beautifully put. At the moment,
I valued myself to learn to walk away, Ingrid, think
about what the stances relationships in our culture. Staying is
good relationships that last or long. You've been married sixty

(33:05):
five years, congratulations, kind of like longevity is somehow better
and that for you walking out and saying I need
me back would no matter though I'm leaving everything behind.
That is a huge moment because a lot of survivors
don't feel they have the right to do that for themselves. Again,
it's that moment of recognizing that I am a human

(33:27):
being on my own, not because I am attached to
something else. That's where I'm living out something else or
my needs or identity or or all derived from someone else.
But I am me and that's a big and it's
that dichotomy to where I had to face where I
literally felt like a failure. I had to face all
that shame because now I have to admit, oh, what happened.
Oh I am a clinician who specializes an addiction, who

(33:50):
married an active alcoholic and had no idea like I
don't want to hang that shingle. It's more defying. But
by allowing myself to face all of that truth, the
other thing that happens is the shame that I'm always
carrying around anyway, that in that secret sort of place
where shame can just grow and grow in the dark,
I had to shed light on all of it. And

(34:11):
now it doesn't really belong to me, this story of
saying I bought my own engagement ring. I was certain
I was going to take that one to my grave. Right,
That's not something that I ever imagined I would tell anyone.
Now I'm just sharing it on a podcast, and it's
such a freeing moment because that idea that we're going
to put ourselves in situations that are almost performative, because

(34:31):
if it looks good, then it is good, and we
can convince ourselves. My session with Ingrid will continue after
this break. So one of the things that happened alongside
the writing is that I realized I wanted to talk
to other people that were either a part of my
story or who could shed light on my story. And honestly,

(34:54):
I can't believe how shameless I became. I called social
Services and Aspen Colorado. I had someone go to the
warehouse to try to find the records from the early
nineties is written records. I called the counselor from my school,
and then family members. I started looping them in and
I do want to say Randy has three biological children,

(35:14):
and from day one they said, Ingrid, tell your story.
They gave me complete permission and support. And in talking
to my stepbrother John, I said, you know what, I
wonder if your mom would ever want to talk to me,
because she was the one who I knew married Randy
when she was really young, and so sure enough he
set it up for me to talk to Terry is
her name, And the first thing that Terry said to

(35:36):
me on that phone call and it just blew me away,
she said, ingrid I was a victim of his two
I was only fifteen, and she started to tell me
her story, not knowing that it was like putting tracing
paper over my own past. The grooming, the way he
picked her up from school and he took her to

(35:58):
get Mary in Mexico on her sixteenth birthday, the ring
that he bought for her. There were so many things,
the way he lied, the way he tricked her, and
hearing her story, there was no doubt in my mind
Randy was the problem. He was the perpetrator, he was
the narcissist. And if I believe Terry, it's like it

(36:22):
unlocked something in me that this is real. And I
had kind of a split experience where part of me
is feeling more validated and hopeful, almost exhilarated. It was
literally like her story was pumping life and color into
these atrophied parts of me, as though I could breathe,
I could catch my breath that this was real. I

(36:43):
didn't make it up. I'm not crazy. This happened. But
sitting right next to that, and this is so common
for trauma survivors. If this is real and that happened.
Then I really have to face all of that terror
and those feelings that I couldn't process as a child,
and I have to feel them now. And there were
parts of that part of the process where I would

(37:05):
turn to my husband and go, this is the worst
idea I've ever had. What am I doing to myself?
It felt so painful, and yet I would do it
all again. Terry gave me the greatest gift by sharing
her story, and not only that, she connected me with
a man who saw me in Vegas with Randy. And
she called him and said, do you remember when you

(37:28):
saw Randy in Vegas? And he said, yeah, I remember
when he was with a really young girl named Ingrid.
He introduced her to me as his girlfriend. So this
fantasy that I had my entire life of, I wish
someone saw me there. What did it look like to them?
Am I making this? It felt like he was parading
me around like a girlfriend. But I never heard him

(37:49):
say that. All these decades later, the stranger to me,
who I've yet to speak to personally, he would only
speak to Terry, but he told her verbatim that he
introduced me as a girlfriend. And it just that kind
of validation. Here's the thing I go. Not everybody's going
to have that. These feel to me like total miracle
things that dropped in my lab in this process that

(38:10):
not every trauma survivor is going to get. But there's
a reason that I knew that I needed to be validated,
and that is the piece that I go. If you
feel that it's true, it's true, it happened. You're not crazy.
And in this process of coming to believe me, I

(38:32):
keep hearing from people that they are believing themselves for
the first time. And like I said, I never wanted
to write a book about childhood trauma and narcissistic abuse.
I wanted this to be left in Colorado when I
graduated high school, and now it's become the biggest subject
of my waking life. But if it is helping other
people to heal, I would do it all again. There's

(38:53):
no regrets. Yeah, I know, I think that you nailed it. Though.
I think even when people when the stories weren't even
as harmful and abusive as yours, just to have someone
have peered into your childhood and said it broke my
heart to see whatever I saw happen to you. Even
when we hear that twenty years later, even though there's
a part of us I said, why didn't you say something?
Then they may not have, but it validates something inside

(39:15):
of you, like you said, now that feeling inside of you,
now you can trust it going forward. There is no
further gifts of thank you now going from there, though,
what about your mother? Now? You said that Randy has
passed away, and I'm sure that was a very complicated experience.
What is your relationship like with your mother? So we
have stayed in contact all these years. They were married

(39:37):
until the day that he died. And so that same
idea that I had as a kid, which is like
any moment now, any moment she's going to rally, she's
going to recognize she's gonna come to is what it
felt like. I've been carrying around that hope my whole life.
So in the hope that I carried around, I was
endowing my mom with a capacity that I don't now

(40:00):
that she's ever had. And yet it was enough to
keep the relationship intact. And so it's not a close relationship,
but we would, you know, talk every couple of weeks,
and it's very surface level. It's very much about the weather.
And I didn't at all see that that was harmful
to me in any way until I wrote my story.

(40:22):
And I'll tell you the first couple of years that
I wrote it, I'm like, this is like a love
letter to my mother, Like I'm gonna spell it all
out and I'm going to make it so clear, and
I'm gonna interview anyone from my past that's willing to
talk about what happened. It was like my last ditch
effort to say, here's what happened. I need you to

(40:43):
see me and Romney. There was not a tiny teeny
sell in my body that thought that that wasn't exactly
what was going to happen. I'm not kidding. I really
well into the writing, I talked to this other woman
who had done something similar with a podcast, and she
kind of planted the seed like and your mom might
still not believe you. And I was like, no, no, no,

(41:05):
no, no no, like that's not going to happen here. And
then I thought, oh God, what if that doesn't happen here?
And so for most of the writing, my journey was
about I'm going to get my mom to believe me.
But once I started understanding what really happened to me
and the damage that it's really done, and now what
do I need to do to actually take care of myself?

(41:28):
I thought, for the first time in my life, it
doesn't matter if my mom doesn't believe me. I'm not
going to wait for her anymore. I believe me. I
believe I'm worth doing whatever it takes to finally crawl
out from under this thing that I've been living under
my entire life. And if she still believes that I'm

(41:51):
manipulative and that I'm the liar, and that I'm the
ship stir and that I gave them all this hard
time and all of that stuff, I think it is
genuinely fair to say that anyone who knows me, who
really knows me in my life, would never in a
million years think those things of me. So just because
she's my mom doesn't mean she gets this free hall

(42:13):
pass to sort of think of me in this horrible light.
And I just go, well, she's my mom, and what
I always did was she was abused to I know
she was living in that fog. I know that she's
a victim, so free pass, free pass, free pass. Meanwhile,
I'm still relating to someone who sees me as the problem.

(42:36):
And when I stay in relation in that same way
what I'm telling myself as a part of me believes it,
that's that's my understanding now. And so I had to
come to a point, and it was in the very
very final stages of the writing where I realized I
can't have my mom in my life right now, because

(42:57):
it did it did come to light that even if
a part of her genuinely believes that she doesn't see
me that way and that she loves me, I think
she thinks she genuinely loves me, at the same time,
I'm still to blame for what happened. And so I
had to tell her that I cannot have you in
my life. I never ever, I cannot state it enough.

(43:19):
This was never going to be my story. And I
hear this a lot from other people, well, like, but
she's your mom and she's in her seventies, and it's
forgiveness isn't for them, it's for you, and all these
things about letting go. If I hadn't have tried all
of those things, because I did, maybe we could have

(43:39):
that conversation. But it came to a place where it
is my survival and my sanity to say I will
not put myself in harm's way. Even if it's not
their intention, it doesn't matter. So it's so painful. And
you know, just last week it was her birthday and
it's the first time I've ever reached out, and her

(44:01):
best friend reached out to say, I imagine this is
a hard day for you, and I'm thinking about you.
And then she said, I think your mom might be ready.
And I was like, don't you open that door. Don't
you open I just figured out how to close the
door on that hope, don't you open that door. But
she said, your mom's wondering if you'll send her the book.
And I thought, my mom's never going to read this book.

(44:21):
And I said, okay, I'll send it. But I'm forcing
myself to live in present tense, which is I haven't
heard from her. I haven't heard that she's read the book.
There's a lot in there that I know she's going
to have a hard time with. I know what it
took me, who was like so willing to do what
it takes to walk through this. For five years, I've

(44:43):
been on this journey of unpacking all of this, and again,
I wanted to do it she had, She's going to
have to admit essentially that her whole life was a lie,
and that this man that she was married to is
not the man that she's held him up to be.
She has a lot more to lose in that way.
So I don't know what's possible there. But I said

(45:03):
to my mom's friend, I said, if she really wants
to be accountable and get honest, that I'm willing to
entertain that. But I'm not holding my breath. Yeah, I mean,
I think that that's the tense balance, and I think
that that agony. It's not like people say, oh, I'm
going to cut the people off in my life that
don't that did this, or that were enabling it or
were unwilling to see it. It's one of the most

(45:25):
difficult things you could ever ever do, is it was
what you did, and you know only time will tell.
And I know you say, the most difficult thing in
the world could be her having to face up to
the fact that her life is a lie. I still
think that the that the giving back of life is
living in a truth, whether it's for one year of
our life, for fifty years of our life, for ten

(45:47):
minutes of our life that you finally live in truth,
because if she could read it and recognize it, and
it would be cataclysmic for her. I mean, but I
agree with you. To live in that hope would be
the most dangerous thing you could do. So you have
am and I would love for you to read it
for our listeners. So I do just want to give

(46:08):
a little context for this, because before I knew I
was writing a book, or started writing things that resembled
a book, I was driving in my car and heard
a tape of Harvey Weinstein's voice and it was a
flashback to my childhood like nothing else had flashed me back,
where I could hear the cruelty and the manipulation. And

(46:31):
so I'm driving along and suddenly these pieces of my story,
It's like they were falling from the sky in this
bullet point fashion. I'd never written in this style, and
this is just what I wrote. Is actually what came
to me in that moment. It didn't change anything. And
because I was driving, I had to grab my phone,
which I had also never done, and started dictating it.

(46:54):
It felt like this was important and I had to
capture it. And what I later came to understand This
is the story that I had to tell, and it
was the story I did not want to tell. I
said to you on our first call, who wants to
write a memoir about childhood trauma and narcissistic abuse? It's like,
not me. But I had to tell it. And this

(47:17):
to me was like the scaffolding, and it kept me
connected to the core of the truth that I needed
to share. So this is this is what came and
how it came. I didn't exist unless I was serving
a fantasy or a function for him. In my early teens,
he secretly professed his love to me, telling me how

(47:39):
haunted he was about his feelings. I told him I
was glad he was talking about it, but I probably
wasn't the appropriate person to tell. This made him angry,
and once again I was a ghost. When he felt smitten,
he showered me with attention and gifts, inappropriate gifts jewelry
that was to expects of club memberships we couldn't afford.

(48:03):
When he felt guilty, he was too ashamed to look
at me, and the smallest infraction would invite steep punishment.
He stole my journals, quoted me back to me, claiming omniscience,
ripping my vulnerability to shreds. When he came back to
my room one night, I saw the vacancy in his

(48:24):
eyes as he went in to kiss me and then
kiss me again. I yelled his name as I pushed
him off of me in the doorway. He visibly came
back into his body and turned to walk away. He
would time my showers five minutes or less, standing just
outside the door where my naked body bathed. Did he

(48:48):
do this to his son? I don't seem to recall.
He pulled me out of school and took me to
Las Vegas, Las Vegas without my mother's consent, behind her
back while he was with her dying father in Texas.
He lied to my brothers and said we were all
staying with friends that weekend. He was going out of

(49:08):
town on business. He told me to lie to my
brothers and to say the same. He told me to
pack my bag, but to leave it hidden. We would
get it later when no one was looking. He told
me on the plane, I could never tell anyone. He
told me on the plane he only got one hotel room.
This trip was costing him a fortune already. He took

(49:29):
me on a shopping spree told me I had to
dress older, said I had to hold his hand to
look older, so they wouldn't kick me out. I think
if any of us wrote those poems about our survivorship,
we would just you know, we would hit those notes.
And I think you, as a therapist, as I, we
have millions and millions, tens of millions of memories in

(49:49):
a lifetime. For me as a therapist, is what brought
this memory into this room? You know why this? And
so there's a reason for it. And so I think
as we sort of and here as a psychologist, you know,
I asked you this as a colleague, how does your
experience how do you bring that into the room? I
mean in the sense of how does it affect you

(50:11):
as you are guiding your clients through whatever they're going through.
Is it a blessing or curse? Is it a help
or hindrance? How do you connect those two for yourself? Well,
the clearer I become, I think it's only a help.
And I've always been a very relational therapist, So I've
never been this sort of blank slate just rejected all
onto me as a childhood trauma survivor, in fact, going

(50:34):
to see therapist like that was. It was some of
the most painful therapy I've ever had. So I've always
self disclosed when appropriate, I've always been very present in
a room, but particularly after this writing happened and I
started to realize, oh my gosh, this is what narcissistic
abuse in childhood can look like. This is how it

(50:54):
manifests as trauma response for so many decades. Not only
did I feel a calling in the writing, but I
eventually took to Instagram to start to share my own experience.
And I'm telling you, I was a bit terrified. I
was like, I'm about to tank my career because I'm
not just talking as a clinician. I'm really telling people

(51:15):
my lived experience. And it's not just in the past
all buttoned up and now romany I have it all
figured out and I'm going to tell you how to
do it. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, this
is what it looks like to be a trauma survivor
who has these degrees and lots of information and listen,
there's a lot of great about my life and I
still get triggered. I still have emotional flashbacks. This is

(51:36):
what that looks like. And I was so worried that,
like I said, it was just going to tank my career,
I was going to lose all credibility, and in fact
the opposite has happened. That I've connected with this unbelievable
community online of people that are so grateful that as
a clinician that they can project all this wellness onto

(51:58):
and I think a lot of coaches and therapist do
that right and we kind of come by honestly, it's
like it's a good marketing tool, like I'm going to
tell you how I'm going to help you. And yet
what I'm finding is the most helpful thing is when
I give a voice to how this thing has lived
in me. And that's why it's a memoir. It's not
another self help book or a nonfiction book that's talking

(52:18):
about the stuff clinically, it's about my story. I'm finding
that that is the connective tissue. It's the most helpful
thing because people can see themselves in my story, and
if they can see what they perceive as their brokenness
in my story, then maybe they can connect to the
healing too. And I think it's so beautifully said. I

(52:40):
really admire how beautifully you've brought that into the room,
because I think that that there's such a risk and
a danger for the therapist to be sort of perceived
as this person who lives sort of neatly and cleanly
and unproblematically, and that you know, any therapist is not
claiming to be a work in progress. Yeah not thanks.
You know you ain't gonna be on my refram a second,
tell you that right now. So I think that the

(53:02):
humility I mean, and that if all of our clients
project onto us, but if they can project onto us
and say you've been there and that and I can
see what's possible, then that's you know, and I think
I just think it's amazing. And what you bring to
your clients is amazing. And and again I'm just your
story is remarkable. So thank you so much and Grid
for being here with us and and sharing your story.

(53:23):
I'm no doubt how many people are going to be helped.
Everybody you need to read this book. You're a therapist,
if you're interested in trauma, if you've been through these experiences,
please read Ingrid's book Believing Me. It's really one of
the most profound memoirs on healing from narcissistic abuse I
have read so I think in reading this you will

(53:44):
be amazed at how much of your own healing will
be accelerated. Here are my takeaways from this conversation with Ingrid. First,
survivors of narcissistic abuse often feel that they have abandoned
their true self in their adult narcissistic relationships. It makes sense,

(54:04):
doesn't it, Because when those children showed their true selves
with a narcissistic or enabling parent, they were abandoned. Many
survivors feel a sense of shame for giving up on themselves.
Survivors need to remember that when they did show up
as their true selves as children, the narcissistic parents often

(54:27):
gave up on them. Understanding these cycles can be central
to healing. In this next takeaway, while information is a
key piece of understanding what happened to people in these relationships,
this episode reminds us that it's not all of the picture.

(54:47):
Ingrid wisely said, none of that information could override my
need for safety and connection in my body. Trauma is
held in our body, and our bodies feel relational truths
in a very specific way. Insights great, but we still

(55:09):
need to feel the feelings. It is for this reason
that trauma informed therapy is such an important tool for
healing from narcissistic abuse, and especially when it culminates in
complex trauma. In this next takeaway, if you are a
survivor of narcissistic abuse, trauma, or emotional abuse in childhood,

(55:33):
or all three, feeling chemistry in an adult romantic relationship
maybe a dangerous thing. Chemistry that unnamed sizzle you feel
in a new relationship or even in a volatile, ongoing
long term up and down relationship is often a signal
of old, toxic familiarity. Chemistry is romanticized and frankly fetishized.

(55:58):
When we talk about falling in of dating and fighting
for messy relationships, it's often a sign that a person
feels the activation of old familiar patterns and perhaps the
perception that this time it will be different. This time,
the person that you want to be able to fully
see you will finally see you. If you cannot articulate

(56:23):
in clear words beyond chemistry what it is you like
about someone, then it is quite likely that the trauma
bond is in the house. Respect, compassion, kindness, and mutual
growth may not have the Zaza zoo of chemistry, but
it's what makes a healthy relationship healthy If you aren't

(56:45):
feeling chemistry but you're enjoying someone's company, don't write it off,
lean into it for a minute and soak in that warm,
comforting but perhaps unexciting bath called safety. Ingrid story ended
with her getting something that many survivors, especially those who

(57:07):
experienced childhood abuse, do not get. Validation. She encountered someone
who bore witness and shared a similar story. To have
someone tell you years later that they had a similar
experience or they saw it can be like having steel
bands around your chest. Finally removed, you can breathe. I

(57:31):
truly believe that even in the absence of this people
can heal, but even hearing it happen for someone else
reminds us how important validation is to the process of
healing and growth after narcissistic abuse. A big thank you
to our executive producers Jada Pinkett Smith, Valen Jethrow, Ellen Rakaton,

(57:54):
and Dr Romeney de Vassila. And thank you to our
producer Matthew Jones, a So See It producer Mara Della Rosa,
and consultant Kelly Ebling. And finally, thank you to our
editors and sound engineers Devin Donnaghee and Calvin Bailiff.