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Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Lessons from My Narcissistic Father.
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00:00:09,120 --> 00:00:13,260
Today we are going to talk about why explaining doesn't work.
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Now, if you grew up with a narcissistic parent or a parent who had narcissistic traits, you probably spend a lot of time trying to explain yourself, your feelings, your actions, your thoughts to them, and it was to no avail at all.
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They didn't listen, they didn't hear you.
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They gaslight you.
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A lot of things happen, but listening was not one of those things.
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So today we're gonna answer the question about why explaining doesn't work, and I'm gonna give you seven practical steps that you could take to take care of yourself now that you're an adult, and build some boundaries of limits for yourself and move your life forward.
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00:00:50,055 --> 00:00:54,975
If you're listening to this podcast right now, you'll only be hearing the first part of the episode.
9
00:00:55,560 --> 00:00:58,350
Please go to patreon.com/the
10
00:00:58,350 --> 00:01:03,900
Serenity Center and there you'll be able to subscribe to the podcast.
11
00:01:04,920 --> 00:01:09,570
I want this podcast to be supported by those who listen regularly and gain from the content.
12
00:01:10,170 --> 00:01:13,020
And I do not wanna waste your time with advertising or ads.
13
00:01:13,590 --> 00:01:14,490
Thank you very much.
14
00:01:14,490 --> 00:01:16,230
I look forward to your support.
15
00:01:18,960 --> 00:01:19,770
Now, let's get started.
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The short answer to why explaining does not work.
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It is because explaining assumes the other person is listening in good faith.
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And with a narcissistic parent or one who has those traits, that is not the case.
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They are not listening in good faith.
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Now, what's the longer answer? The longer answer, but real answer is explaining doesn't work because it threatens their self-image.
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A narcissistic parent needs to see themselves as right, good and in control.
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So when you begin to explain your feelings or your boundaries, what they hear isn't, my child is sharing.
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They hear, I'm being criticized.
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Their nervous system flips into defense mode.
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They don't want understanding, they want dominance.
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Healthy conversations usually aim for mutual understanding.
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But with a narcissistic parent, the goal is often to win, to invalidate or to reassert some kind of authority.
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So your calm explanation just becomes material they can twist, minimize, or weaponize against you.
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So let me give you an example out of my life.
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If you've listened to the podcast enough, you know that I had this fateful lunch with my father who kept asking me over and over again to have this lunch with him.
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And when I got there.
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I think that's what he really wanted.
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He didn't really come to have some understanding.
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He came to that lunch wanting to have to win, to assert his authority to have some kind of dominance again, because when I explained to him why I had boundaries and limits with him, and you can go back and listen to lessons from my narcissistic father, a reintroduction.
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When I explained to him what I was thinking, how I was feeling, what was happening, what my limits and boundaries were, he said very clearly to me, I'm your father.
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How can you have boundaries with your father? Which is him reasserting his authority.
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Him invalidating my experience.
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He just wanted to win, and he walked away from that conversation mad and angry.
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Matter of fact, at times, even with my calm explanations, he twisted things.
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He minimized things like I told your mother.
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On the courthouse steps.
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I wanted to stay married, which was a minimization of what was really going on.
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He weaponized things.
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He wanted to say that, Hey, everybody in his family says I'm an asshole.
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So he weaponized that against me.
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Before the lunch, he sent me an email saying I was a therapist and that how in the world can I not have a conversation with him? I was supposed to know how to manage emotions and then I wouldn't have a conversation with him.
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He weaponized that against me.
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So that's one example of how I grew up with some of that, or I encountered that again as an adult.
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Another reason why explaining doesn't work is usually a narcissistic parent, a woman with those traits, they lack the emotional accountability.
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Explaining, requires you or somebody to tolerate discomfort, to reflect, maybe admits some fault.
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And narcissistic appearance.
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Avoid shame at all costs.
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If accountability shows up, they're gonna deflect it with something like a denial like that never happened.
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A minimization, you're too sensitive.
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A reversal, actually you hurt me.
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Or outright rage, they decide what the conclusion is.
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You may be arguing logic, but they're protecting a narrative where they are the victim or they or the hero.
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And no mind of clarity can change the story that they are emotionally invested in.
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So let me give you that example again.
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With that launch with my father, he had already decided the conclusion.
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I was arguing logic.
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I was telling him what was going on, and instead, what he was doing was minimizing things.
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That's not what happened.
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He denied it.
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That's not how that went.
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I told your mother I wanted to stay married.
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When I told him about not showing up to any of my football games in high school and that he had promised me he would stop refereeing, so he would come to every game, and that didn't happen.
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Then he said he was gonna watch film, and then that didn't happen.
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He minimized that.
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I couldn't stop refereeing because of this.
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I didn't really say that.
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What I meant was.
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And then when I confirmed him, Hey, when I said I was going to go to college, I would be 18.
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You would take the child support and send it to me, and I never got any money from you.
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He minimized that, came up with excuses about that.
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He just said, that's not what happened.
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So again, another example of my life about how that happened.
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Another reason why explaining never works is explaining, gives them more leverage.
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Giving them details, gives them openings.
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The more you explain, the more they can poke holes into things misquote you later, or use your vulnerability against you.
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That's why it feels so crazy making.
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You're showing up in an honest way and the conversation keeps going in circles or blowing up, not because you're bad at explaining, but because explaining was never the point.
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So I want you to recognize this.
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Okay.
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I walked away from that conversation at lunch with my father in my thirties, feeling crazy, and then immediately going to my therapist two days later and saying, Hey, I think my dad is narcissistic or has some narcissistic traits.
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'cause this was my experience of him.
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It wasn't that I was bad explaining or telling him how I felt or what was going on.
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I had been through years and years of therapy.
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What was going on is that I was showing up honestly.
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I was giving him feedback about how his behavior impacted me, hurt me, and he couldn't take it.
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All he saw was criticism.
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All he could do was poke holes in what I was saying, giving me excuses about things.
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He probably back and misquoted me to his wife.
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I'm sure he used that vulnerability or tried later about, I'm a therapist.
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How could I set limits and boundaries with him? So it gave him leverage around things he minimized, things, he denied things, like all these things I felt were weaponized against me.
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So trying to go to lunch and explaining things to him.
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This is why I resisted that idea to begin with, why he sent me an email saying you're just not gonna have lunch with me.
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This was the exact reason why.
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Part of me looking back now says maybe I should have never went to lunch with him, but I did because I wanted to try one more time to explain to him.
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What I was thinking, what I was feeling, why I was having limits and boundaries and what he could do differently so that could change, and all the ways I tried before to make this change.
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And guess what? It never worked because he didn't show up in an honest way wanting to really listen, wanting to really, here he came with an agenda.
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He wanted me to make sure I respected him because he was my dad and couldn't understand anything I was telling him.
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So this is why I had those boundaries and limits.
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So let's talk about what can work better so quickly.
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I would tell you what can work better, even though it can be unfair, and really counting if it's exhausting, Short, boring responses with no emotion at all, no detail.
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Set your boundaries without justification.
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I'm not discussing this, which is eventually what I went to.
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I'm no longer discussing this until you change your behavior and I had to accept that closure is not gonna come from them or from him like I had to at some point accept that I've lost my father in the ways that I hope I would see him and know him and the ways I hoped he would be a father.
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I had to accept that I had to grieve the loss.
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So loss some of my therapy was spent grieving the loss of my father, not because he had passed on and he was gone, but because him emotionally and him being there present with me, that was gone as far as giving short, boring responses.
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You've heard that term maybe called gray rocking somebody, and when you gray rock somebody, it's what you do.
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What does a gray rock do? A gray rock does nothing.
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It has no emotion.
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It gives you no detail.
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It doesn't speak at all.
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So at times, one of the quickest and easiest things you can do is Gray Rock your narcissistic parent or the parent that has those traits.
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Just give some short, boring responses.
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Don't respond at all to text or phone calls.
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Give no detail about what's going on in your life.
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Give your boundaries and limits without discussing any justification.
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Just, I'm not doing this right now.
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I'm not discussing this anymore.
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And then again, accept that you're not gonna get closure with them.
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There is no forgiveness so quickly.
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I would say to you there's a difference between acceptance and forgiveness.
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Forgiveness requires somebody to do a couple things.
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Number one, forgiveness requires someone to be willing to listen to how they hurt you.
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All the specifics of how they hurt you more than just, oh, I lied to you, or I cheated on you, or, yeah, I yelled at you.
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No, they need to listen to the specifics of that.
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Oh, it hurt me.
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It made me feel bad about myself.
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It made me have to explain things to people.
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It made me codependent, it made me scared, it made me worried, it made me all these things.
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And typically somebody with narcissistic traits, or that is a narcissistic person sees that only as criticism, so they are not going to engage in that with you.
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If somebody can, the second step is number one, they're able to listen to specifically how they've hurt you, and number two, they make sure they're diligent about never doing that again.
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So they walk away from that conversation.
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They work really hard to never hurt you in those ways again.
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And if those two things can happen, then you can offer forgiveness.
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That is something that is interactive and it means somebody comes to the table in an honest way looking to really hear you and change their behavior.
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But many times with our narcissistic parents, that is not gonna happen.
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So what we have to practice is more acceptance.
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Hey, they are never really gonna listen to how they've hurt me, and they're never gonna be diligent about changing their behavior.
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So I have to accept that's not gonna happen with them, and this is what we have to do and this is the work that needs to be done.
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And you probably need to be in therapy to do some of that work of acceptance and come to some closure around your growing up with your narcissistic parent as you're an adult.
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So now hopefully you're asking, how do I manage the relationship with my narcissistic parent as an adult? What can I do now? And this is a really important question.
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Asking.
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It means you are shifting from survival mode into self-protection mode, and that's a huge thing.
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You're no longer surviving.
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Protecting yourself as an adult with a narcissistic parent isn't about fixing the relationship.
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It's about changing your role in it.
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So let's talk about those seven things that can actually help you in real life terms change your role in your relationship with your narcissistic parent.
00:00:02,880 --> 00:00:08,340
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Lessons from My Narcissistic Father.
2
00:00:09,120 --> 00:00:13,260
Today we are going to talk about why explaining doesn't work.
3
00:00:14,010 --> 00:00:26,940
Now, if you grew up with a narcissistic parent or a parent who had narcissistic traits, you probably spend a lot of time trying to explain yourself, your feelings, your actions, your thoughts to them, and it was to no avail at all.
4
00:00:27,315 --> 00:00:29,085
They didn't listen, they didn't hear you.
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00:00:29,205 --> 00:00:30,165
They gaslight you.
6
00:00:30,975 --> 00:00:33,795
A lot of things happen, but listening was not one of those things.
7
00:00:34,185 --> 00:00:48,105
So today we're gonna answer the question about why explaining doesn't work, and I'm gonna give you seven practical steps that you could take to take care of yourself now that you're an adult, and build some boundaries of limits for yourself and move your life forward.
8
00:00:50,055 --> 00:00:54,975
If you're listening to this podcast right now, you'll only be hearing the first part of the episode.
9
00:00:55,560 --> 00:00:58,350
Please go to patreon.com/the
10
00:00:58,350 --> 00:01:03,900
Serenity Center and there you'll be able to subscribe to the podcast.
11
00:01:04,920 --> 00:01:09,570
I want this podcast to be supported by those who listen regularly and gain from the content.
12
00:01:10,170 --> 00:01:13,020
And I do not wanna waste your time with advertising or ads.
13
00:01:13,590 --> 00:01:14,490
Thank you very much.
14
00:01:14,490 --> 00:01:16,230
I look forward to your support.
15
00:01:18,960 --> 00:01:19,770
Now, let's get started.
16
00:01:20,850 --> 00:01:23,020
The short answer to why explaining does not work.
17
00:01:24,360 --> 00:01:28,425
It is because explaining assumes the other person is listening in good faith.
18
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And with a narcissistic parent or one who has those traits, that is not the case.
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They are not listening in good faith.
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Now, what's the longer answer? The longer answer, but real answer is explaining doesn't work because it threatens their self-image.
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A narcissistic parent needs to see themselves as right, good and in control.
22
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So when you begin to explain your feelings or your boundaries, what they hear isn't, my child is sharing.
23
00:01:56,965 --> 00:01:58,885
They hear, I'm being criticized.
24
00:01:59,275 --> 00:02:01,435
Their nervous system flips into defense mode.
25
00:02:03,115 --> 00:02:06,355
They don't want understanding, they want dominance.
26
00:02:08,005 --> 00:02:10,915
Healthy conversations usually aim for mutual understanding.
27
00:02:11,245 --> 00:02:17,755
But with a narcissistic parent, the goal is often to win, to invalidate or to reassert some kind of authority.
28
00:02:18,880 --> 00:02:27,040
So your calm explanation just becomes material they can twist, minimize, or weaponize against you.
29
00:02:28,330 --> 00:02:29,950
So let me give you an example out of my life.
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If you've listened to the podcast enough, you know that I had this fateful lunch with my father who kept asking me over and over again to have this lunch with him.
31
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And when I got there.
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I think that's what he really wanted.
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He didn't really come to have some understanding.
34
00:02:45,295 --> 00:03:04,135
He came to that lunch wanting to have to win, to assert his authority to have some kind of dominance again, because when I explained to him why I had boundaries and limits with him, and you can go back and listen to lessons from my narcissistic father, a reintroduction.
35
00:03:06,325 --> 00:03:13,675
When I explained to him what I was thinking, how I was feeling, what was happening, what my limits and boundaries were, he said very clearly to me, I'm your father.
36
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How can you have boundaries with your father? Which is him reasserting his authority.
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Him invalidating my experience.
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He just wanted to win, and he walked away from that conversation mad and angry.
39
00:03:26,755 --> 00:03:30,805
Matter of fact, at times, even with my calm explanations, he twisted things.
40
00:03:30,805 --> 00:03:33,485
He minimized things like I told your mother.
41
00:03:34,205 --> 00:03:35,135
On the courthouse steps.
42
00:03:35,135 --> 00:03:38,975
I wanted to stay married, which was a minimization of what was really going on.
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He weaponized things.
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He wanted to say that, Hey, everybody in his family says I'm an asshole.
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So he weaponized that against me.
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Before the lunch, he sent me an email saying I was a therapist and that how in the world can I not have a conversation with him? I was supposed to know how to manage emotions and then I wouldn't have a conversation with him.
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He weaponized that against me.
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So that's one example of how I grew up with some of that, or I encountered that again as an adult.
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Another reason why explaining doesn't work is usually a narcissistic parent, a woman with those traits, they lack the emotional accountability.
50
00:04:16,425 --> 00:04:22,590
Explaining, requires you or somebody to tolerate discomfort, to reflect, maybe admits some fault.
51
00:04:23,490 --> 00:04:24,660
And narcissistic appearance.
52
00:04:24,660 --> 00:04:26,280
Avoid shame at all costs.
53
00:04:26,760 --> 00:04:32,760
If accountability shows up, they're gonna deflect it with something like a denial like that never happened.
54
00:04:33,480 --> 00:04:35,730
A minimization, you're too sensitive.
55
00:04:36,300 --> 00:04:38,910
A reversal, actually you hurt me.
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00:04:39,240 --> 00:04:43,740
Or outright rage, they decide what the conclusion is.
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You may be arguing logic, but they're protecting a narrative where they are the victim or they or the hero.
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And no mind of clarity can change the story that they are emotionally invested in.
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So let me give you that example again.
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With that launch with my father, he had already decided the conclusion.
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I was arguing logic.
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I was telling him what was going on, and instead, what he was doing was minimizing things.
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That's not what happened.
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He denied it.
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That's not how that went.
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I told your mother I wanted to stay married.
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When I told him about not showing up to any of my football games in high school and that he had promised me he would stop refereeing, so he would come to every game, and that didn't happen.
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Then he said he was gonna watch film, and then that didn't happen.
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He minimized that.
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I couldn't stop refereeing because of this.
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I didn't really say that.
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What I meant was.
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And then when I confirmed him, Hey, when I said I was going to go to college, I would be 18.
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You would take the child support and send it to me, and I never got any money from you.
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He minimized that, came up with excuses about that.
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He just said, that's not what happened.
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So again, another example of my life about how that happened.
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Another reason why explaining never works is explaining, gives them more leverage.
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Giving them details, gives them openings.
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The more you explain, the more they can poke holes into things misquote you later, or use your vulnerability against you.
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That's why it feels so crazy making.
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You're showing up in an honest way and the conversation keeps going in circles or blowing up, not because you're bad at explaining, but because explaining was never the point.
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So I want you to recognize this.
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Okay.
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I walked away from that conversation at lunch with my father in my thirties, feeling crazy, and then immediately going to my therapist two days later and saying, Hey, I think my dad is narcissistic or has some narcissistic traits.
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'cause this was my experience of him.
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It wasn't that I was bad explaining or telling him how I felt or what was going on.
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I had been through years and years of therapy.
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What was going on is that I was showing up honestly.
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I was giving him feedback about how his behavior impacted me, hurt me, and he couldn't take it.
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All he saw was criticism.
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All he could do was poke holes in what I was saying, giving me excuses about things.
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He probably back and misquoted me to his wife.
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I'm sure he used that vulnerability or tried later about, I'm a therapist.
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How could I set limits and boundaries with him? So it gave him leverage around things he minimized, things, he denied things, like all these things I felt were weaponized against me.
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So trying to go to lunch and explaining things to him.
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This is why I resisted that idea to begin with, why he sent me an email saying you're just not gonna have lunch with me.
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This was the exact reason why.
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Part of me looking back now says maybe I should have never went to lunch with him, but I did because I wanted to try one more time to explain to him.
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What I was thinking, what I was feeling, why I was having limits and boundaries and what he could do differently so that could change, and all the ways I tried before to make this change.
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And guess what? It never worked because he didn't show up in an honest way wanting to really listen, wanting to really, here he came with an agenda.
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He wanted me to make sure I respected him because he was my dad and couldn't understand anything I was telling him.
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So this is why I had those boundaries and limits.
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So let's talk about what can work better so quickly.
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I would tell you what can work better, even though it can be unfair, and really counting if it's exhausting, Short, boring responses with no emotion at all, no detail.
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Set your boundaries without justification.
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I'm not discussing this, which is eventually what I went to.
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I'm no longer discussing this until you change your behavior and I had to accept that closure is not gonna come from them or from him like I had to at some point accept that I've lost my father in the ways that I hope I would see him and know him and the ways I hoped he would be a father.
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I had to accept that I had to grieve the loss.
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So loss some of my therapy was spent grieving the loss of my father, not because he had passed on and he was gone, but because him emotionally and him being there present with me, that was gone as far as giving short, boring responses.
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You've heard that term maybe called gray rocking somebody, and when you gray rock somebody, it's what you do.
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What does a gray rock do? A gray rock does nothing.
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It has no emotion.
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It gives you no detail.
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It doesn't speak at all.
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So at times, one of the quickest and easiest things you can do is Gray Rock your narcissistic parent or the parent that has those traits.
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Just give some short, boring responses.
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Don't respond at all to text or phone calls.
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Give no detail about what's going on in your life.
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Give your boundaries and limits without discussing any justification.
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Just, I'm not doing this right now.
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I'm not discussing this anymore.
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And then again, accept that you're not gonna get closure with them.
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There is no forgiveness so quickly.
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I would say to you there's a difference between acceptance and forgiveness.
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Forgiveness requires somebody to do a couple things.
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Number one, forgiveness requires someone to be willing to listen to how they hurt you.
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All the specifics of how they hurt you more than just, oh, I lied to you, or I cheated on you, or, yeah, I yelled at you.
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No, they need to listen to the specifics of that.
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Oh, it hurt me.
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It made me feel bad about myself.
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It made me have to explain things to people.
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It made me codependent, it made me scared, it made me worried, it made me all these things.
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And typically somebody with narcissistic traits, or that is a narcissistic person sees that only as criticism, so they are not going to engage in that with you.
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If somebody can, the second step is number one, they're able to listen to specifically how they've hurt you, and number two, they make sure they're diligent about never doing that again.
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So they walk away from that conversation.
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They work really hard to never hurt you in those ways again.
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And if those two things can happen, then you can offer forgiveness.
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That is something that is interactive and it means somebody comes to the table in an honest way looking to really hear you and change their behavior.
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But many times with our narcissistic parents, that is not gonna happen.
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So what we have to practice is more acceptance.
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Hey, they are never really gonna listen to how they've hurt me, and they're never gonna be diligent about changing their behavior.
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So I have to accept that's not gonna happen with them, and this is what we have to do and this is the work that needs to be done.
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And you probably need to be in therapy to do some of that work of acceptance and come to some closure around your growing up with your narcissistic parent as you're an adult.
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So now hopefully you're asking, how do I manage the relationship with my narcissistic parent as an adult? What can I do now? And this is a really important question.
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Asking.
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It means you are shifting from survival mode into self-protection mode, and that's a huge thing.
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You're no longer surviving.
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Protecting yourself as an adult with a narcissistic parent isn't about fixing the relationship.
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It's about changing your role in it.
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So let's talk about those seven things that can actually help you in real life terms change your role in your relationship with your narcissistic parent.
