Narcissists love pretending to be offended. It puts them at the centre of attention, they can pretend cry, get sympathy, bully others. But this is not enough for them. This is why they get offended "in absentia", they pretend to be offended "on behalf of people who are not present" - and who often do not actually exist. This is an effective strategy to bully others, but there is one key tell that lets us know whether we are being provided good faith feedback, or are being told rubbish by a toxic person who is faking offense.

Narcissists will accuse people of doing EXACTLY what they are doing. If you see a problem and want to make an accurate diagnostic, they will accuse you of complaining. This happened to me, recently.

In this episode, I share how I handled the situation, the logic and techniques I used, so you might be able to use them too, if it is safe for you to use them. And, in all cases, this will make it harder for you to be gaslit into believing that you're complaining when you're actually trying to solve situations.

After a toxic relationship, it can be common to obsess over what happened - and even date more people who present the same symptoms of personality disorder. Why?

This episode explores some potential reasons -and what to do to avoid this.

Knowing red flags is helpful in avoiding narcissists BUT if we conflate them with red lights, it can PREVENT us from actually moving forward. It is vital to know the difference between red flags we learn to recognise and actual red lights.

In the episode, we review what red flags are, why they are NOT red flights. And we look at what red herrings are, and why confused thinking makes us more vulnerable to narcissists.

There are 6 levels of lying, from the least bad to the absolute worst. Once we recognise them, we are less easy to manipulate and be gaslit. The levels are:

1. Being wrong (technically not lying)

2. Hyperbole

3. Spinning

4. Lying

And the two narcissist / cult levels are:

5. Brain washing (selling a world narrative that is false / unverifiable)

6. Gaslighting (telling you that "you are not seeing what you think you are seeing".

Laura was a guest in a guesthouse. But she acted as though we were her guests: she bossed people around, and was obnoxious. But one lie she told uncovered the truth, and she turned on me. This is the sad story of Laura, little dog Simba, and some reflexions on how to spot and deal with toxic people and narcissists.

She had had a bad breakup after 20 years with someone, 15 of which he had been obnoxious and presented symptoms of having a personality disorder. And she could not wrap her head around this. But I figured out how to reframe the situation for her to get it. She laughed, snapped out of the hypnosis, and FINALLY turned the page. This is the story.

Narcissists rely on lies that are propped up by other lies. Why? It makes it easier for them to manipulate us. It is hard to believe one person can lie so much. But also, by relying on a "mesh network", it means that even if one lie is exposed, the network of lies still resists. And we are more likely to just shrug off anomaly after anomaly.

Until we realise what is happening, the whole network crashes and we experience a "narrative collapse", where our whole world view seems crazy.

Learn to recognise this, and make yourself less vulnerable to their manipulation.

Narcissists and cults, whether spiritual or political, brainwash people in order to control them. Fortunately, there are certain tells that we have been brainwashed. And once we are aware of these, it becomes less hard to deprogram ourselves and start to think clearly again. This applies to narcissists in romantic relationships, at work, in NGOs, political movements, and in "spiritual groups".

Narcissists lie, a lot. And for the lies to work, they rely (pun?) on us "reading between the lines". While this is a good idea with healthy people, it is a terrible idea with liars. So instead, when someone says something weird, you can ask this question: what do you mean?