parenting as often lived in the extremes, it's either great joy or chaotic, overwhelmed. In one moment you're nailing it and the next you're losing your cool. I want to help you find your way to the messy middle to a place of balance. You see balances the verb, not a state of being. It is a thing you do not a thing, you are, it is an action, a process, a series of micro corrections that you make each and every day to keep yourself feeling centered. We are never truly balanced. We are engaged in the process of balancing Hello, I'm dr laura fry in and this is the balanced parent podcast where overwhelmed, stressed out and disconnected parents go to find tools, mindset shifts and practices to help them stop yelling at the people they love and start connecting on a deeper level. All delivered with heaping doses of grace and compassion, join me in conversations that will help you get clear on your goals and values and start showing up in your parenting, your relationships, your life with openhearted authenticity and balance. Let's go! Hello everybody welcome back to another episode of the balance parent podcast. I'm so excited to have a guest on with us today. We're going to be talking about narcissism and how to survive narcissism, how to recover from narcissism and I have a great expert who's going to help us learn all about this. So please, I'm so honored to introduce to you tripped up Batkovic and she is an emotional resilience coach and she dedicates her life to helping people recover from narcissistic abuse trip to thank you so much for being here and sharing your wealth of knowledge with us. Why don't you tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you do As you have introduced me. I'm an emotional resilience coach. I wasn't this from the beginning of my career, I used to be an executive coach and a leadership development expert for Corporates for 21 years of my life, But I was married to a malignant narcissist and I had an overt narcissist for a mother in law. So after 16 years of abuse with the Narcissist, I finally divorced the man in 2008 and started my recovery journey and realized that what I was doing in terms of executive coaching was not being true to myself. I was not happy. My recovery journey took more than eight years and I don't think people need to waste any more time in their lives actually trying to overcome abuse. And so which is why I became an emotional resilience coach so that I can help people save as much time as they can because most people waste a lot of time trying to get out of the narcissistic relationship, then I may as well help them along and speed up the rest of the process so that they can actually have a life because there is that possibility of life and a happy one. That's so beautifully stated and I love how open you are to the winding path that your life has led you on and that you're offering support, so people don't have to wind quite so long before they find their true authentic selves. You mentioned a couple of things that I just wanted to get a little bit of clarity beyond just some definitions. You said the word malignant narcissist and over narcissist and I really don't know that I knew that there were different types of narcissists. Can you explain a little bit more about what narcissism is and the different types for sure. So, you know, I mean we normally consider narcissism to be associated with people who are coming across as arrogant, right? But the disorder is more than just somebody seemingly narcissist in their approach. The disorder stems from a very deep seated sense insecurity, basically, very very deep seated insecurity and the difference between a narcissist personality disorder and just somebody who's arrogant is the person lacks the empathy connection. So an arrogant individual still has empathy. So you know that's the narcissistic trait that we all might have in ourselves, but we don't miss the empathy connection. Whereas a person who's actually got the disorder misses the empathy connection. They can't care about anybody else, They can't love anybody else wounded, secure there so wounded, It's really sad. But unfortunately that's the reality and you can't reach out to them, you can't turn them around so I can give you an example what I say, that my ex mother in law was an over narcissist. Her husband was dying of cancer, it just gone through surgery and we still hadn't even gotten the verdict of whether he was going to live or die. She started seeking counseling to live life like a widow and the man was still alive when he was actually dying, she refused to go to his bedside to be with him and her words were I cannot deal with this. So that should tell you that's a narcissist. She is undeniably in so many other aspects. That's the lack of empathy that I'm talking about that a narcissist actually has now there are different types of narcissists even, I didn't know that there were different types of narcissist, so I thought that was just you know the good old grand years, you know talk up a big person who is constantly talking themselves up and is dressed to the nines is a social climber, wants to connect with the who's who and always is the best of the greatest and the newest and the most up to date. That's an overt narcissist. You also have a malignant narcissist where the way they, in which they project their insecurities is through physical abuse through power dominance. So it's not arrogance but along with that arrogance is a lot of physical abuse. So my husband was a malignant or is a malignant narcissist and I did go through a lot of physical abuse. I went through a lot of sexual abuse at the hands of him as a narcissist, as a malignant narcissist. And then you also have a third type which is a covert narcissist and a covert narcissist are possibly the most difficult to spot. So they've been victimized at some point and their insecurities are also extremely deep seated where they need validation, but they're the sweetest and the nicest people because they see themselves as being that small and their constant victims, right? So when somebody comes from that kind of a mentality grandiosity whilst they want it, but they can't get themselves to being there. So they play constantly play the victim card. Right? So and those ones actually are the most malicious narcissists because they indulge in gaslighting. Yeah, gas lighting was the first thing that there's no way for them to accept a reality in which they have harmed someone or hurt someone. And so they deny it to the end. With covert narcissist gaslighting is just abnormal levels because it's not just denying that they've hurt somebody, you cannot have a normal conversation with them without them putting you down. And when you try and tell them that you're putting this person down there like no not or they'll switch, you can hold them accountable, so it's like they'll take you down rabbit holes, like you're going my crazy and that's the worst part of a covert narcissist because you start questioning your own sanity, you totally do Yeah, okay. And so thank you for sharing all of those things with me. So a lot of the parents that come to me asking about narcissism in my community feel that they grew up with a narcissistic parent and so one they're attempting to recover from having had a narcissistic parent and two, they are attempting to parents their kids while holding boundaries with that narcissistic parent. I was hoping maybe you could just help us a little bit with some of these things like maybe the recovery process and then also the boundary holding process if you do end up wanting to keep those folks in your life in which I can imagine is a question that everybody has to grapple with and figure out. Okay, do answer your two questions. Let's talk about the recovery process. First I went through alternative healing processes. So be it Ricky something known as the landmark forum, be a theater, healing, Access consciousness, meditation, mindfulness on one end on the other end. I did short accreditations and I also did a PhD enrolment to True Fielding Graduate University, being a leadership coach and an expert in that direction. I wanted to understand human behaviors more to see as to how we could help change behaviors, right? And how we could help people because you find narcissists and workplaces as well. Of course. Both those directions led me to was the same thing and that is if you want to recover from narcissistic abuse, you really need to dig deep into finding your true identity and finding your true identity at the end of this experience. So you might have been somebody but the experience does change you. So who are you today? It is so critical to identify that as your starting point second to identify what are your values again? You might have had values previously, your values evolved. Like with your experiences, your priorities have changed, Your values would have changed as well. So what are your values today identifying them is so critical because normally we would find that we live in cognitive dissonance, that is our values are not clear to us and we take actions which don't align with our values. You know that little voice that talks to the back of your head or sitting on your shoulder which we keep saying next time, next time, don't worry about it. This once. That leads to a lot of cognitive dissonance which in turn gives you your bodily and your mental stress. So identifying your values and learning to live by your values which would mean that you would learn to have to say no to people as well. Yeah. And situations, oh my gosh! So what you're saying is exactly what I teach in terms of conscious parenting, that when we are moving into parenting our kids as they are not how we think they're supposed to be or how we think parenting is supposed to look that we have to get really clear on who we are, really clear on what we believe, what our values are and then start parenting an alignment and in service of those values and it's so comforting to know that a similar process is available to healing and I think it's so important to that part of you maybe were someone before and now you're someone else. And I think it almost brings tears to my eyes to think about the kids who grow up in these scenarios, who never have an opportunity to know who they are, who they could have been. You know, I've got two boys like that, so yes, I do know that. How are you helping now, if you don't mind me asking? I know maybe it's too personal at all. I just I want to finish, there are two more steps to the process of recovery. Sorry I took us. No, not at all. So, you know, one is identifying your values, but we find it really hard to live by our values because through the experience, unfortunately, whether it's parents or partners as narcissists, we develop extremely rigid, but firm limiting beliefs of how things should be could be never will happen can't happen. And so it's really important for people if they want to move on to be able to start identifying those limiting beliefs and start changing them around right? What is a limiting belief? Just like an example, a quick example of one? Sure, So I'm indian by origin, right? And as a woman or as a girl child growing up in the country, I was always told that your brother will come first right? Or a girl supposed to do well, but you know your brother is more important, so you kind of imbibe that secondary sense. And it's a limiting belief that I'm always supposed to be second right now. So it's limiting beliefs comes from cultures, they come from experience, they come from constant gaslighting, You're never good enough, you're not whole, you're a woman, you're supposed to be in the kitchen, like I was never good at Math, but you know what? I was always good at math. I actually topped my university in my financial viability project, but I've led my entire life believing and saying, you know, two plus two makes five for me, you know, it's funny trips that I had that same limiting belief around math and when I was a professor, I was sought after for my expertise and advanced modeling in statistics, but that limiting belief and you know, I have this distinct memory of being a freshman in college, sitting down and writing out filling out a notebook. My ability to do calculus does not define my worth as a person and I filled an entire notebook of it instead of studying for calculus lee and we accumulate so many of them and we tend to identify with it and it becomes a part of our identity going forward, you know? So identifying those limiting beliefs is crucial to be able to move on, especially when you've been through an emotionally abusive relationship, as I said, be it from a parent, being from a partner, it doesn't matter last. But most important is all of this, defining your identity, identifying your values and identifying your limiting beliefs really lead to the critical establishment of personal boundaries. Yes, the critical establishment of personal boundaries. Beautiful. Nobody has the permission to cross your personal boundaries and you give no one commission to cross your personal boundaries. It doesn't matter who they are and what's happening. I think boundaries could be dying, but you don't allow them. And what we've done in abusive relationships is we've allowed the narcissist in our life, for the abuser in our life to walk all over our values, our identity, our boundaries, everything. The sad thing is we give them that permission unwittingly, but we did. And maybe even if we're talking about a parent child relationship, because we had to, you know, when you're young Children have to they have to in order to survive. They do. That is true. I mean, but there's this piece of it and I think that that's for lots of my clients who are working on recovering. They hold a lot of disgust or annoyance or frustration with their younger selves for not having set boundaries, but it's not their fault. No, it's not their fault. No, that's like this layer of compassion, I think has to just be put over all of this of self compassion in all of these stages, wherever this happened, you know, there has to be this layer of self compassion in order for the vulnerability needs to take place in order to change. We have to be vulnerable and in order for vulnerability to happen, we have to feel safe and self compassion. I would say that different personalities or different types of people would respond to the situation differently. Some would be extremely hard on themselves. For example, I was extremely hard on myself. I'm a doer for me, a vulnerability signified weakness in those times. Now it's paramount for me to be vulnerable to be me. You know, I don't have that wall, you know, people would call it strength, but it was really my wall Yeah, that I wouldn't reach out to anyone and I wouldn't allow anybody to reach into me, not even my kids, right? And much as I wanted to protect them from it when they were growing up, I obviously couldn't and didn't because all they saw was a mum who was this super strong leadership success, executive coach, all of that, but didn't see somebody who was compassionate, it was kind he was loving who wanted nothing more but the best of her Children, they didn't see any of that, Not not a defect. Gosh, the bravery that you just put that out there with the kind of the matter of factness of it was very inspiring. I think so many of us are so afraid to verbalize and acknowledge our own shortcomings, our own moments where we've caused pain that was incredibly vulnerable. Thank you for sharing that with us. You're most welcome. I have learned to be vulnerable. You know, I didn't understand even after my journey which started in 2000 and eight, I didn't understand the meaning of the word vulnerability. What does it mean to ask for help? It was like, oh I need help but you know it's okay if you don't have time then that's fine. Well am I really asking for help? Am I really allowing myself to be vulnerable? It wasn't till about four years ago that I actually learned to be one step at a time, bring my guard down. I divorced the man in 2000 and eight. As I said, it was until I left, we were in Dubai in the E and it wasn't till I left in 2000 and 17 that I could actually start really peeling the onion and you know, bringing my guard down and being vulnerable and sitting both my boys down and saying I'm sorry I screwed up. What was that like to sit in that place with you? It wasn't received Well, initially, in fact, sometimes even now they were like, you know, so I have a seven year old daughter with my second husband and they keep looking at me and going and they'll tell her, you don't know it's coming, wait, it's coming. They still haven't gotten over. And my younger son said the middle one actually suffered longer because he was with the father until two years ago, he chose to go there because the thing that Narcissist parent does is if you say North, they will say South, if you say east, they will say West. So whilst I was still in Dubai, even though I was divorced and had full custody of my boys. Co parenting with the Narcissist is the hardest thing. And out of experience, I will tell you, I tried to tell my sons as to how that experience was a wrong experience. And the only thing it did for me was alienate my boys from me because their father is still their father and they are too young to comprehend it. So the only way to actually be there for your Children is to teach them the values just be themselves and help set their own boundaries for them and teach them to be true to their boundaries. But you can only do that if you're doing it for yourself. Because they learned by observing you, not by you talking to them. Yes. They learn through modeling right? And showing up for ourselves the way we want them to show up for themselves. Absolutely. So, till they didn't see me showing up for myself in, you know, by the time I put my journeys together, by the time I distilled all my experiences and learn through they didn't believe things that I was doing, they always thought that it was short lived, right? So all that I was going to go back to being what they had seen of me through their growing years. Now, they see consistency in my behavior. They don't see me losing my temper, they see me standing my ground, they don't see me being pushed around, I won't do it with them. You know, I wouldn't allow them to push me around either. They knew how to press my buttons too. They learned it from their father. So when I stopped that first, there was resentment. Because what I can't get through the mom now, you know, I'm like, okay, you'll get over it because I'm not being nasty. I know that for sending you in the right direction. I know that. So if you're going to point a finger at me for a while, I'm okay with it. Yeah. We can be confident leaders in our houses and our kids don't have to always like our boundaries. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. And so I mean, I think that that's a good transition to, so that when we are working on saying no setting those good personal boundaries with perhaps our parents now as adult Children, you know, that's one thing, right? They probably won't like our boundaries, they probably will push back against them if we're setting boundaries with our parents who maybe have some narcissistic traits. Are there other ways that we can advice or, you know, that you can give to folks who are in this situation who are in the process of recovering themselves and are also attempting to keep some relationship with the grandparents of their Children. Okay, so a couple of things, So it depends on where you are in your recovery, right? So if you are fairly well established now in your renewed identity and you're confident and comfortable with your boundaries and you know what they are, right? Where you know that you can't get pushed around or you recognize your triggers quite easily. And you can say, okay, I'm making an active choice, but when I say I'm making an active choice, when you allow somebody to push your boundaries, I'll give you a small example. Just day before yesterday, my father is not a narcissist, but you know, it's not just narcissist who push boundaries. Everybody does, right? So he wanted me to fix a fan knock. Okay? And I was putting it in, but without my glasses, and he was busy taking his meds, and I was putting it in and I was like, oh, so, and he just flew off the handle and I'm like, I'm sorry, but that's not needed. Leave it. So I said, no, no, I will do this. You focus on your meds. I got this. I went, I ignored what he said. But when I got my glasses fixed the fair knob and we were all good and dandy. And then he just looked at me, you know, above his glasses. And I went, I said, you know, that was quite unnecessary. And I don't think I deserve to be spoken like that. Well, you should have put on your glasses first. I said, really? He's still gonna push through. I still don't think I should have been spoken to like that. I just maintained an even tone. I let him know that he had crossed a boundary with me. There was no need for anybody to speak to me in that tone. I will not take it from anyone. So holding people accountable for when they are pushing your boundaries is really important. The holding people accountable for when they're pushing your boundaries doesn't mean that you have to raise rent and become a terror yourself. You can hold your own by just this. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I have an example with my dad to, what is it about dads and daughters? Anyway, he was over visiting the other day and my mom does these draws coloring sheets for my kids sometimes. And he asked if we needed some and I said, no, we still have some. And he's like, well I have some at our house, you know that she sent to give to you. And I said, well we don't really need them. Why don't you just leave them there? Because they have a second home near us because they live far away. And I was like, it's nice to have them there for when the girls go to visit you there. And he was like, okay. And then he came over the next day and what did he have with them? He had the coloring sheets, you know, and I don't have to get mad. He's losing his hearing. You know, there's moments of forgetfulness for him, you know, as he's aging, but I just said, you know, dad remember I said, I don't need any of those. You can take those back with you. And like when he was leaving, he was going to leave them because he pushes he was going to leave them. And I said, you forgot these, why don't you take these back to the condo with you? And he took them like it doesn't always have to be like, you know, I feel like sometimes there's loose boundaries and then there's really, really firm harsh boundaries and some people need those super firm harsh boundaries. But there's a middle ground too with folks who don't always need quite so much harshness to, you know? Yeah, my husband now, his father passed two years ago, but I wouldn't be sure whether he was a narcissist or not because I didn't know him well enough, but he would definitely look for a fight that was his personality. And I remember this one time that I was visiting and so we all got up to the cottage and dad was there as well and he was just egging for a fight. So I just looked at him at one point and I said why don't you tell me what you want if I can give it to you? I will if I can't I will say as much there's no need for you to bicker and carry on trying to get a fight out of me because that's not happening right? And the minute I actually said that to him, he kept quiet, he went to his room, he woke up at somewhere at about midnight. He fired my oldest son for watching tv downstairs in the basement. But he realized what he had done and I had a girlfriend visiting with us at the same time who was up in the morning really early. So he got up and he says you know, I shouldn't have done that last night but I'm going to go and he was gone before I could wake up because he knew that I would hold him accountable for every behavior that he has. And so when it comes to narcissists holding them accountable is really important. You don't have to fight to hold them accountable, but you don't have to give in either piece that out for us because I think that that's something that is a balance a line that probably takes finesse to figure out. Yeah, it does. It takes a little bit of practice as well. So when a narcissist starts pushing your boundaries because we're not especially impaired, you don't want to disappoint them, you don't want to say no or you think, okay, you know, we have so many reasons for allowing people to push our boundaries. So let's keep those reasons aside. Okay, that's a rabbit hole in itself. But let's say a narcissist is crossing your boundaries, emotional boundaries where they picked up an item of yours. Okay, So they're crossing a physical boundary. You don't like your laptop being touched, right? Oh, come on. It's just a laptop. A common when I hear from parents is that mother in laws will go into kitchens and rearrange cupboards. That's a common, yeah. Yeah. I was just helping you. Right, Because the response that you would get thank you. But no, thank you. This is my home and I would like to run it the way I run it. I don't come to your home mom and change your cupboards around, do I? They will. So and you know what they'll solve once. They'll solve twice. They'll solve 10 times. But eventually they will get to a point where they will realize because you consistently hold them accountable when they are pushing your boundaries consistently. You cannot given once and not given the next time and not given once and you can't be erratic about it because they will abuse the eroticism that you would put in front of them, they will abuse that. And I love what you're saying to about the bill sock. They might have feelings about it. They might have reactions about it. They might say like, fine, I guess I'm not welcome in your home. I'll never come over again and they may storm out and leave. And I think like it's so important to understand that when we're setting a boundary, the boundary is about what's on our property, what's ours to control and their reaction is not ours to control, right? Absolutely. If we were trying to say like, here's my boundary and you have to take it this certain way, you have to be happy about it. That's us crossing their boundary a little bit. And apparently, yeah, one of the things I'll just say when they say, oh, you don't care, understand. And the other, it's equally important to correct that and say, I do care, But you're crossing a boundary for me. I don't twist this and make it about that. I don't care, I do care. I just don't want you to reset my kitchen cupboards. Yeah. You know, you're making me think of this quote about how boundaries people who need boundaries set with them often think that boundaries are an attempt to stop having a relationship and really what, you know, or or an attempt to keep, like, well defined the parameters so that you can keep having a relationship. You know, this is me setting this boundary allows me to keep having this relationship, you know? Absolutely. You know, in fact, as I said, it's not about narcissists or any, you know, in every relationship, you need to have healthy boundaries. So you have unhealthy boundaries. And there are two types. I pulled them as rigid and porous, unhealthy boundaries. Yeah, I love those names are bad. You know, you can't be rigid about that, This is how life should be, because there are no shades in life. This is how my boundaries are. That's a healthy boundaries. But trying to impose your boundaries on somebody else, makes it a rigid boundary and unhealthy. And then having people walk all over your boundaries is what I call porous boundaries. When you give away too much information of yourself, for example, right? I think it's such a good conversation and these boundaries apply to every relationship that we want to have be healthy, Every single one, you know, with our parents, With our Children. To Children need to have a set boundaries with them so that they learn how to set healthy boundaries for themselves. Like everybody who listens regularly knows that my daughter is like to pretend to be dragons. I do not like dragons to roar in my face, That's not okay with me. That's a boundary. I don't care if you roll over there, but you may not roar in my face. And I consistently hold that boundary. And in the process, I teach them how to lovingly and compassionately hold a firm boundary so that their bodies feel safe. That's a gift to them totally. And I do that with my seven year old when she wants my time when it's my meantime. And I tell her, sorry, Elena, my money, it's time for herself for the next 20 minutes. Yeah, it's a beautiful absolutely. So as long as you can come back and you know, you don't forget after 20 minutes after you've taken your me time to go back to her because it reminds them that they're still important. But if you use your boundary and then forget about the commitment that you made to your child, then they don't understand that as a boundary. Rather think that that's an excuse you use and you don't care. So there's a very fine line between that as well, how you state those boundaries, right, and how you commit to showing up. So I'm going to show up for myself and then I'm going to show up for you. Once kids are writing, having them write you a note while you're having your like, we call it my quiet moment. It's a boundary that I hold to because if I don't have a little bit of quiet time where no one's talking to me, I don't do as well. But they write me notes now about things that they want to do or want to tell me, you know, after my quiet moment is over and yeah, I mean that commitment that, you know, I'm going to hold this boundary and then we're going to reconnect, you know, is so, so important. Okay, so I feel like you gave us a beautiful, like, primer on boundary setting and I'm so glad that you did, I'm so grateful for you sharing your knowledge, your experiences, what they've taught you and how we can all apply this to our lives to have healthier relationships, that's what we're all about here. Thank you so much. Is there anything else that's on your heart that you want to share with us before we say goodbye. Happiness is when you first learn to love yourself, the best relationship you can have is the one where you love yourself and you know that you are whole and complete in which you have a way you are just as you are, and you always have been, yep, you were born complete. Yes. You know, we say that a lot here about our own kids that they're born hole and lovable and worthy just as they are, and the same is true for us, just like it is for our kids, beautifully said, oh my gosh, thank you so much for coming into our lives and sharing with us. Thank you Laura. Okay, so thanks for listening today. Um remember to subscribe to the podcast and if it was helpful, leave me a review that really helps others find the podcast and join us in this really important work of creating a parenthood that we don't have to escape from and creating a childhood for our kids that they don't have to recover from. And if you're listening, grab ish green shot and tag me on instagram so that I can give you a shout out um and definitely go follow me on instagram, I'm at laura fry in PhD. Um that's where you can get behind the scenes, Look at what balanced, conscious parenting looks like an action with my family and plus I share a lot of other really great resources there too. All right. That's it for me today. I hope that you keep taking really good care of your kids and your family and each other and most importantly of yourself. And just remember balance is a verb and you're already doing it. You've got this. Sure. Yeah.