Nate Christensen, APCC, makes his record fourth appearance on The Virtual Couch to talk more about our minds and the stories they tell us to try and make sense of the world. Nate and Tony discuss several fundamental discoveries from Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius’ book The Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Science of Happiness, Love and Neuroscience https://www.amazon.com/Buddhas-Brain-Practical-Neuroscience-Happiness/dp/1572246952/ as well as Daniel Kahneman’s book Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement https://www.amazon.com/Noise-Human-Judgment-Daniel-Kahneman/dp/0316451401/

Take advantage today of the Relationship Mastery Pack that Tony mentioned on the episode https://www.epicmarriageclub.com/a/2147499720/h3Cn8yaE Get thousands of dollars in relationship tools for one special Black Friday price featuring Tony's brand new parenting course: 3 Keys to Positive Parenting - Bring the Positivity without Messing Up Your Kids Even if You're Not Sure Where to Start! Go to https://www.epicmarriageclub.com/a/2147499720/h3Cn8yaE to sign up for thousands of dollars worth of relationship tools for less than the cost of one therapy session.

With the continuing "sheltering" rules spreading across the country, PLEASE do not think you can't continue or begin therapy now. http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch can put you quickly in touch with licensed mental health professionals who can meet through text, email, or videoconference often as soon as 24-48 hours. And if you use the link http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch, you will receive 10% off your first month of services. Please make your mental health a priority, http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch offers affordable counseling, and they even have sliding scale options if your budget is tight.

You can learn more about Tony's pornography recovery program, The Path Back, by visiting http://pathbackrecovery.com And visit http://tonyoverbay.com and sign up to receive updates on upcoming programs and podcasts.

Tony mentioned a product that he used to take out all of the "uh's" and "um's" that, in his words, "must be created by wizards and magic!" because it's that good! To learn more about Descript, click here https://descript.com?lmref=v95myQ

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[00:00:02] Hey. Come on. Take a seat.

[00:00:21] Hey, everybody, welcome to episode two hundred and ninety six. The Virtual Couch, I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified mindful habit coach and all those wonderful things. And with me in studio today is your friend and mine. Nate Christianson. Nate, welcome back to the virtual couch.

[00:00:36] Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to be here again.

[00:00:38] Is this your fourth? I think it is you. Now you win. Really? You win the virtual couch. Wow. Dr. Jennifer Fitness, Vice three I think one of my daughters is three, and I think you were the first four time guest. Yeah. So I got you, this fidget spinner. Thank you. Congratulations, my

[00:00:53] Daughter.

[00:00:53] Thanks you as well. Yeah, and that one, actually two out of the three spinners light up with an LED. Really? Yeah. Yeah, one of them doesn't. So I am so excited to have Nate on here. But before we get to that, I am going to do a tiny bit of business. This is Thanksgiving week and there is. I'm involved in a Black Friday sale, which is something I've never done before. I talked about it on last week's podcast, but I had Nate Bagley on world renowned relationship expert and Nate has a bundle of courses and I was counting them showing off to Nate this morning. I think there were 16 courses that people can get, and the 16 courses are everything from overcoming perfectionism and breaking generational cycles and self-guided couples healing trust. All of these wonderful things, and I am unveiling a brand new parenting course and it is called and I really tho...

Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's Eve...holidays take on an entirely different meaning in a narcissistic family system. Trauma expert Shannon Thomas said it best "In healthy families, you're just yourself – your name, your talents, your strengths, and weaknesses. You're the person. But in a narcissistic family, things are different. Everybody has to find somewhere to be and a job to do within the family… they either support the narcissistic parent, or they are the focus of the narcissistic parent's rage." 

Tony discusses the dynamics of the narcissistic family giving particular attention to the scapegoat. Tony extensively references Alexander Burgemeester's article "Toxic Narcissistic Family Dynamics Explained" from his excellent website https://thenarcissisticlife.com/narcissistic-family-dynamics/, and he provides a beautiful description of the true power of the scapegoat from the website https://anchoredabode.com/2019/09/03/scapegoat-definition-narcissism/ 

And you can find out more about Tony's new parenting course in the Relationship Mastery Pack https://www.epicmarriageclub.com/a/2147499720/h3Cn8yaE Get thousands of dollars in relationship tools for one special Black Friday price featuring Tony's brand new parenting course: 3 Keys to Positive Parenting - Bring the Positivity without Messing Up Your Kids Even if You're Not Sure Where to Start! Go to https://www.epicmarriageclub.com/a/2147499720/h3Cn8yaE to sign up for thousands of dollars worth of relationship tools for less than the cost of one therapy session.

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[00:00:00] Hey, everybody. Quick note before we get started today, if you listen to last week's episode on waking up the narcissism, you heard that it was a surprise bonus episode from the virtual couch. That was because I had some audio difficulties. Well, those audio difficulties continued to a point, so I just wanted to give you a little heads up that this one may not exactly flow as best as I would like. But boy, we cover a lot of ground, a lot of information today. And I also realize there might be a couple of the audio files that are holdovers from last week from my previous attempts at recording. So you might even hear that the sound quality might differ just a tiny bit. We're going to try to take care of that in post-production. But you know what? Enjoy the ride on today's episode because again, a lot of ground, this one's a little bit longer, but we cover a lot of topics that they may not even be in order. And that might just be a fun little puzzle that you can put together over your Thanksgiving break.

[00:00:48] So let's get to the show.

[00:00:55] Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 11, waking up the narcissism, I'm your host, Tony Overbay in the licensed marriage and family therapist and host of the Virtual Couch podcast. And I want to jump right in. I want to thank you for your concern, your kindness, because in the beginning of last week's episode, apparently you could feel that the air had been let out of my balloon. I had this incident with a file that I had recorded, and now it will simply go down as the lost files. It was about 30 minutes of material about the narcissistic family system and the company that I use to record the podcast. I was going back and forth with tech support, and I'm following up because I again kind people asking How is how am I doing with this lost file? And it was this really fascinating. I almost felt like I was being gaslit by a large company, and that's fine. I know that they didn't mean to. I know that they had absolutely good intentions, but this file, I kept downloading the file that showed a large file size. I would plug it into anything I could that would produce sound and there was no sound. So at one point they came back and said, We've had some glitches, we've had some problems. We'd like to offer you a free month of our services and you have a backup of this file in this sup...

Tony shares why opposites don't attract in the long run and why ultimately we like people who are more similar to us. PLUS Nate Bagley, relationship researcher and host of the Growth Marriage podcast, comes on to talk about his incredible Relationship Mastery Pack https://www.epicmarriageclub.com/a/2147499720/h3Cn8yaE Get thousands of dollars in relationship tools for one special Black Friday price featuring Tony's brand new parenting course: 3 Keys to Positive Parenting - Bring the Positivity without Messing Up Your Kids Even if You're Not Sure Where to Start! Go to https://www.epicmarriageclub.com/a/2147499720/h3Cn8yaE to sign up for thousands of dollars worth of relationship tools for less than the cost of one therapy session.

In today's episode, Tony refers to the article "Do Opposites Really Attract?" by Clifford Lazarus Ph.D. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/think-well/201907/do-opposites-really-attract and "Why Do We Like People Who Are Similar to Us?" by Gwendolyn Seidman Ph.D. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/close-encounters/201812/why-do-we-people-who-are-similar-us

With the continuing "sheltering" rules spreading across the country, PLEASE do not think you can't continue or begin therapy now. http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch can put you quickly in touch with licensed mental health professionals who can meet through text, email, or videoconference often as soon as 24-48 hours. And if you use the link http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch, you will receive 10% off your first month of services. Please make your mental health a priority, http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch offers affordable counseling, and they even have sliding scale options if your budget is tight.

You can learn more about Tony's pornography recovery program, The Path Back, by visiting http://pathbackrecovery.com And visit http://tonyoverbay.com and sign up to receive updates on upcoming programs and podcasts.

Tony mentioned a product that he used to take out all of the "uh's" and "um's" that, in his words, "must be created by wizards and magic!" because it's that good! To learn more about Descript, click here https://descript.com?lmref=v95myQ

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[00:00:01] Here is a law that you may not be aware of in the state of California, only the person who is on the registration of a car can have a new key made for said car if you have lost all of your keys. So it was with that new information that I found myself barreling down Interstate five this past Friday night on my way to Southern California to spend some time with one of my daughters. And it was on this trip that my daughter and I, while sharing some wonderful fruit and waffles at a quaint Long Beach breakfast restaurant, were waiting for the locksmith to arrive. And while we were waiting for the locksmith to arrive, we were contemplating life and friendships and how complicated the wonderful and frustrating that relationships could be in general. What I'm going to go into detail today is on why relationships can be so complicated and what is it that we don't know that would surely help us with determining not only our potential love relationships, but our our friendships in general. We're going to talk about that and so much more coming up on today's episode of the virtual couch.

[00:01:02] The. Come on in. Take a seat.

[00:01:19] Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 295 of the virtual couch. I will be up front with you before we get to the heart of today's episode. I am going to digress. I'm going to bring on a friend of mine and I would say friend of the podcast. He is a marriage researcher. His name is Nate Bagley. Because Nate reached out to me with a pretty incredible deal a couple of weeks ago, and it is. It is something that I can't pass up of making you aware of. So without any further ado, let me interrupt this episode with a quick interview of Nate Bagley and we're recording. There's no countdown.

A growing body of research now shows how long-term narcissistic abuse affects the hippocampus and the amygdala of the brain, areas that regulate memory and control emotion. And while someone may not be your classic, malicious or malignant narcissist (there are several sub-types of narcissism), even someone with narcissistic tendencies, traits, or "dustings" can do emotional and physical damage to those they interact with. Tony also gives his five tips for surviving narcissistic abuse. Tony refers to the article "Neuroscience: The shocking impact narcissistic abuse has on the brain," by Lachlan Brown from https://hackspirit.com/3859-2/

With the continuing "sheltering" rules spreading across the country, PLEASE do not think you can't continue or begin therapy now. http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch can put you quickly in touch with licensed mental health professionals who can meet through text, email, or videoconference often as soon as 24-48 hours. And if you use the link http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch, you will receive 10% off your first month of services. Please make your mental health a priority, http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch offers affordable counseling, and they even have sliding scale options if your budget is tight.

You can learn more about Tony's pornography recovery program, The Path Back, by visiting http://pathbackrecovery.com And visit http://tonyoverbay.com and sign up to receive updates on upcoming programs and podcasts.

Tony mentioned a product that he used to take out all of the "uh's" and "um's" that, in his words, "must be created by wizards and magic!" because it's that good! To learn more about Descript, click here https://descript.com?lmref=v95myQ

#therapy #virtualcouch #wakinguptonarcissism #tonyoverbay #tonyoverbayquote #quote #podcast #podcasting #acceptancecommitmenttherapy #motivation #coach #addictionrecovery #narcissism #happiness #behappy #mentalhealth #wellness #recovery #selfcare #anxiety #relax #mindfulness #happy #depression #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters #psychology #MadeWithDescript #DescriptPro

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[00:00:11] Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 10 of

[00:00:13] Waking Up the Narcissism, I'm your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and host of the Virtual Couch podcast, where I will throw a plug in will know today, this week, this week. Earlier this week, I did an episode on Seeking External Validation, which referred to my Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde episode of Waking Up to Narcissism last week, and I really do feel like they they're starting to just vibe together at times. So if you haven't listened to the virtual couch, please go take a look at that.

[00:00:40] And here is where

[00:00:41] I will be is authentic and raw and vulnerable as I can. I am sitting here recording this intro, and I'm going to share an older episode of the virtual couch on complex post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD and the effect that narcissistic abuse can have on the short term memory and the amygdala. Now, why might you ask I again, in the vein of full authenticity I have over the last two or three days at different times, been recording an episode on narcissistic family systems and scapegoat children and the golden child and putting all these pieces together. And I have part of one of the files. It's about twenty five minutes long that has no audio. So I have spent a couple of hours this morning, nice and early trying to figure out my issues, and then I submitted the file to the company that my record with. And it looks like there just might have been a glitch and the audio didn't record.

[00:01:37] So I have sat here for

[00:01:39] About five minutes just staring at my computer screen, but the show must go on. I want this consistency, so we're going to do this bonus episode, but I will if I have to rerecord the stuff about narcissistic family systems and scapegoat child an...

Tony explores why where the need for external validation comes from. Why do we care what others think? And why the need for external validation is the opposite thing to do for self-confidence and to feel connected to others.

With the continuing "sheltering" rules spreading across the country, PLEASE do not think you can't continue or begin therapy now. http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch can put you quickly in touch with licensed mental health professionals who can meet through text, email, or videoconference often as soon as 24-48 hours. And if you use the link http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch, you will receive 10% off your first month of services. Please make your mental health a priority, http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch offers affordable counseling, and they even have sliding scale options if your budget is tight.

You can learn more about Tony's pornography recovery program, The Path Back, by visiting http://pathbackrecovery.com And visit http://tonyoverbay.com and sign up to receive updates on upcoming programs and podcasts.

Tony mentioned a product that he used to take out all of the "uh's" and "um's" that, in his words, "must be created by wizards and magic!" because it's that good! To learn more about Descript, click here https://descript.com?lmref=v95myQ

#communication #compassion #therapy #virtualcouch #wakinguptonarcissism #tonyoverbay #tonyoverbayquote #quote #podcast #podcasting #acceptancecommitmenttherapy #motivation #coach #addictionrecovery #narcissism #happiness #behappy #mentalhealth #wellness #anxiety #relax #mindfulness #happy #depression #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters #psychology #MadeWithDescript #DescriptPro

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[00:00:15] Come on in, take a seat.

[00:00:22] Hey, everybody, welcome to episode two hundred and ninety four. The virtual couch. I'm your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, and I'm ready. I'm ready to get started. Let's dove right in today. It is story time. A couple of weeks ago, I had finished up a pretty heavy day at work. And honestly, don't get me wrong, I love everything about my job. I really do. But I guess it's what I hear from Dennis, from time to time that I've worked with. People don't go to the dentist because everything is going great. Even if you are just going for cleaning. There's this underlying fear of what if I have a cavity or what if they say I'm not flossing enough or my gums bleed, or they know that I don't floss on a regular basis? Am I supposed to swallow the water along with the cleaning stuff? And does this, Dr. Retford actually want me to answer him about who my favorite Marvel character is and why? Why is he asking me this while he's two knuckles deep into the left side of my mouth? But my point is people come to therapy to talk about problems. And again, I love it, but it's kind of just what it is. But by the time I leave my office, at times there can feel a little bit of emotional exhaustion. So on this particular time, I left and I just wanted to get home and I wanted to go on a run and my wife was busy.

[00:01:29] A lot of times she'll either run with me or she will jump on the bike and ride alongside with me almost looks like a scene from Rocky, and she's I'm running, she's writing, and we just process the day. I want to hear all about what she's been up to, and she'll ask me questions about what's going on with me. But on this particular time, she was busy. So I'm going to go on a run and I love to listen to audio books and the height of my ultrarunning career. I would just get up earlier and earlier, just especially when I was into a good book. I remember the book Unbreakable, which was about the Oh my gosh, I'm Louie Zamperini, and he was a World War Two, I believe veteran shot down in the middle of the ocean. I remember being so into that book that I just wanted to get up earlier and earlier,

People in relationships with narcissists often find themselves in a constant state of “reading the room” or “walking on eggshells” in hopes of navigating the large number of hidden, emotional landmines. But one wrong step and a landmine explodes, leaving a trail of destruction to the self-esteem of the narcissist’s victims. Today Tony sheds light on the reasons behind the black or white, all or nothing thinking, a concept called “object constancy.” Tony refers to the article “The truth about narcissistic personality disorder” by Elinor Greenberg, Ph.D. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-narcissism/201708/the-truth-about-narcissistic-personality-disorder You can read more about the wonderful work that Elinor has done by visiting her website here www.elinorgreenberg.com

Please find out more about Tony's Magnetic Marriage program by contacting him throughhttp://tonyoverbay.com or by visiting http://tonyoverbay.com/magnetic.

With the continuing "sheltering" rules spreading across the country, PLEASE do not think you can't continue or begin therapy now. http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch can put you quickly in touch with licensed mental health professionals who can meet through text, email, or videoconference often as soon as 24-48 hours. And if you use the link http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch, you will receive 10% off your first month of services. Please make your mental health a priority, http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch offers affordable counseling, and they even have sliding scale options if your budget is tight.

You can learn more about Tony's pornography recovery program, The Path Back, by visitinghttp://pathbackrecovery.com And visithttp://tonyoverbay.com and sign up to receive updates on upcoming programs and podcasts.

Tony mentioned a product that he used to take out all of the "uh's" and "um's" that, in his words, "must be created by wizards and magic!" because it's that good! To learn more about Descript, click herehttps://descript.com?lmref=v95myQ

#communication #compassion #therapy #virtualcouch #wakinguptonarcissism #tonyoverbay #tonyoverbayquote #quote #podcast #podcasting #acceptancecommitmenttherapy #motivation #coach #addictionrecovery #narcissism #happiness #behappy #mentalhealth #wellness #anxiety #relax #mindfulness #happy #depression #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters #psychology #MadeWithDescript #DescriptPro

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[00:00:12] Hey, everybody, welcome to episode nine of Waking Up to narcissism, I'm your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist, host of the Virtual Couch podcast, and welcome to people that are watching on YouTube. You can go find the virtual couch channel on YouTube if you would like, and I realize I'm wearing a loud shirt when it comes to the camera, so hopefully the focus won't go in and out too much. But I want to continue to just thank you. I cannot thank you enough for the feedback and I'm reading them. I apologize that I can't get back to everybody at this point, but they're there because of the feedback, because of the numbers of downloads and the support of the show. There's there's some cool changes that are coming and that'll be. We'll talk more about that in the next two or three weeks, but you can go to Tony over the contact form there and please continue to send me examples. Those are going to be used in different ways in the future. And also your questions. There are I have guests lined up. I've got so much, but the feedback has just been again overwhelming to the point where I just want to get some of this content out and we'll settle in. We'll find our stride. There's some amazing guests to have on people that are in it, in the trenches, and I think that'll be pretty powerful too, because a lot of the feedback that I'm receiving is from people that just feel heard.

[00:01:26] They feel heard, they feel seen,

Each of us is a unique mixture of life experiences, and we bring all of those experiences into our conversations with others. In today's episode, Tony explores the role of context in conversations. Tony shares an example of how one word can dramatically change the meaning of an entire paragraph from the book "On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You Are Not," by Dr. Robert Burton https://www.amazon.com/Being-Certain-Believing-Right-Youre/dp/031254152X/ and he shares cultural differences from the article "15 Fascinating Cultural Difference Around the World," from https://www.cheftariq.com/lifestyle/cultural-differences-around-the-world/

Tony also uses his 4 Pillars of a Connected Conversation to show the importance of curiosity and context in conversations.

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Go to http://tonyoverbay.com/magnetic right now to sign up for Tony's free marriage workshop held Wednesday, November 3rd at 6 PM PT!

#conversation #context #communication #compassion #therapy #virtualcouch #wakinguptonarcissism #tonyoverbay #tonyoverbayquote #quote #podcast #podcasting #acceptancecommitmenttherapy #motivation #coach #addictionrecovery #narcissism #happiness #behappy #mentalhealth #wellness #anxiety #relax #mindfulness #happy #depression #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters #psychology #MadeWithDescript #DescriptPro

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[00:00:01] Hey, everybody, welcome to episode two hundred and ninety three of the virtual couch, I'm your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified my blabber coach, writer, speaker, husband, father for ultramarathon runner and creator of the path back in online pornography recovery program that is helping people reclaim their lives from turning to pornography as a coping mechanism. Go to Pathbackrecovery.com if you want to learn more about that. There's some group calls that keep gaining steam and the program itself. We've got a nice group of people and people are just changing their lives. They're becoming the people that they always want to be. So that's pathbackrecovery.com and a huge thing. And I will go so big on this because I got this episode out on a Monday morning instead of the usual Tuesday morning. Because on Wednesday of this week, Wednesday, the I am stalling as I look at a calendar Wednesday, the third at six p.m. Pacific time. My my good friend Preston Pug Maya and I, Preston is the one who helped me create the magnetic marriage course. We are going to do a marriage magnetic marriage workshop again. That's at 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time. So go to Tony over magnetic and you will find out more information on how you sign up to attend this free event. And it is a free marriage workshop and we are going to cover so many things about how to make your marriage more magnetic. And there's a little video on there on that that page that you'll get to that.

[00:01:24] I highly encourage you to just take a quick look at because the more that we talk about the magnetic marriage course, the more people that have gone through the course. I am telling you you don't have the tools by nature, and that is meant by no no disrespect. There's nothing wrong with you, but you really don't have the tools. We don't come from the factory with these tools of to be heard is to be healed and these four pillars of a connected conversation that we teach in the program. And there is just so much more. And so people typically have to get to a pretty bad spot before they go looking for tools on how to repair their marriage. And I am telling you, these are the tools that if you can embrace them now that I believe you can really help prevent a lot of the where people start to feel disconnected or they that wedge grows between them, go to Tony over magnetic and you can watch a little video and you can sign up to participate or to watch the marriage workshop, which is this Wednesday at six p.m.

Tony Overbay LMFT shares an example of gaslighting that led to setting a healthy boundary. Tony then tackles the topic of boundaries. What are healthy boundaries, and why are they so difficult to enforce? Tony refers to Kier Brady LMFT's article "5 Type of Boundaries For Your Relationship," http://www.keirbradycounseling.com/relationship-boundaries/ as well as Dr. Robert Glover's information on boundaries from his book "No More Mr. Nice Guy."

Please find out more about Tony's Magnetic Marriage program by contacting him through http://tonyoverbay.com or by visiting http://tonyoverbay.com/magnetic.

With the continuing "sheltering" rules spreading across the country, PLEASE do not think you can't continue or begin therapy now. http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch can put you quickly in touch with licensed mental health professionals who can meet through text, email, or videoconference often as soon as 24-48 hours. And if you use the link http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch, you will receive 10% off your first month of services. Please make your mental health a priority, http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch offers affordable counseling, and they even have sliding scale options if your budget is tight.

You can learn more about Tony's pornography recovery program, The Path Back, by visiting http://pathbackrecovery.com And visit http://tonyoverbay.com and sign up to receive updates on upcoming programs and podcasts.

Tony mentioned a product that he used to take out all of the "uh's" and "um's" that, in his words, "must be created by wizards and magic!" because it's that good! To learn more about Descript, click here https://descript.com?lmref=v95myQ

#narcissism #boundaries #communication #compassion #therapy #virtualcouch #wakinguptonarcissism #tonyoverbay #tonyoverbayquote #quote #podcast #podcasting #acceptancecommitmenttherapy #motivation #coach #addictionrecovery #narcissism #happiness #behappy #mentalhealth #wellness #anxiety #relax #mindfulness #happy #depression #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters #psychology #MadeWithDescript #DescriptPro

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[00:00:12] Hey, everybody, welcome to

[00:00:13] Waking up to narcissism episode eight. I am your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and a certified mindful habit coach and a writer and a speaker and a husband and a father of four. And that is the you can tell I was doing that a little bit choppy. That's the way I start my virtual couch podcast. Just it's deeply rooted neural pathways that are going to that when I'm in front of this microphone. But welcome aboard. If you're new, I'm so grateful you're here. This podcast is just continuing to grow at an astronomical rate, and I'm not saying that to say How cool am I or is that? But it just shows the need. And so I see you, I hear you. I'm getting the emails on a daily basis, and I just want you to know I'm reading them all. It's it's hard to get back to people, but I am reading them and I have a sincere desire to just respond to everybody because people are sharing so many amazing things of feeling hurt or feeling understood for the first time. And there are so many questions coming in that working with some of the folks behind the scenes to see what the best way is to try to maybe put a second episode out and hopefully be a bonus episode, a Patreon episode or something to do some more of the questions and answers. Get more guests on because I don't know if I shared this early on, but I've started a nonprofit and that's attached to this women's group for that that I am a part of, or that I started this private women's group for women who have been through or in currently in relationships or even have narcissistic family members, bosses, that sort of thing and are just trying to learn how to maneuver and raise their emotional baseline, stay more present and the connection that these women have have.

Tony introduces his latest podcast, "Waking Up to Narcissism." In this crossover episode, Tony shares that narcissistic tendencies or traits can come in many different forms and levels of severity. At the same time, as a mental health condition, there is currently only one diagnosis. Tony tackles the question of whether or not we use the label of narcissism too broadly, and if we spoke more about what narcissistic traits and tendencies looked like in our everyday lives, would more people be able to take ownership of their narcissistic tendencies, or behaviors?

Tony refers to the article "5 Types of Narcissism and How to Recognize Each," by Courtney Telloian (medically reviewed by Jeffrey Ditzell, DO) from PsychCentral https://psychcentral.com/health/types-of-narcissism.

If you have questions or comments, or suggestions for a topic of a future episode or if you want to share your story or examples of gaslighting in your relationships, please send through the contact form at http://tonyoverbay.com

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Visit http://tonyoverbay.com/magnetic to learn more about Tony's Magnetic Marriage program, or visit http://tonyoverbay.com to take Tony's free parenting course, or to learn more about his best-selling book; or only recovery program "The Path Back." And please subscribe to "Waking Up to Narcissism," Tony's brand new podcast, which is part of The Virtual Couch podcast network.

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[00:00:01] Hey, everybody, welcome to episode seven of the Waking Up the Narcissist podcast, I'm your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and host of another podcast called The Virtual Couch. And as a matter of fact, I think I am doing. I'm going to do a and this episode is going to be on the virtual couch almost as a come on over to the Waking Up the Narcissism podcast. Because when I cover narcissism on the virtual couch, the download numbers are they're big there. I talk about parenting, I talk about marriage, or if I talk about narcissism, it seems like the numbers are a few thousand downloads more than most. So if you are listening to this on the virtual couch and you've maybe heard me talk a little bit about this other podcast, it's called Waking Up the Narcissism and come on over. We're on episode seven and the numbers are already pretty phenomenal. So I know that there's a need here that people are emailing and emailing like crazy and saying that they feel heard. They feel understood. And so I welcome you over to this other podcast. I'm also using a new recording software. I'm going to give that a shot and it is. It's a program that will allow me to do some live streaming because the amount of questions and that I get on the waking up the Narcissism podcast is pretty phenomenal, and I thought I got a lot of questions on the Virtual Couch podcast, but I'm getting questions daily emailed about narcissism.

[00:01:16] So we're going to we're going to do more of the Q&A answers over here on the Waking Up the Narcissism podcast, and so I'd like to be able to do some live streaming. So if you are a YouTube person at all, you can go to the Virtual Couch YouTube channel and this episode will hopefully be up there by the time you go. But I want to get into a few things. I had a bunch of things, a bunch of emails that I was going to read, but I just want to jump right in today because I'm going to cover an article that is going to talk about narcissism on a spectrum now, narcissism in and of itself. The word carries so much weight, it carries so much emotion. So I do know that when let's just say that people are emailing me and they are saying, finally, I feel heard, I feel understood. The gaslighting makes so much sense when I lay out these five tips in interacting with the narcissist in your life. Whether it's your spouse, whether it's your employer, whether it's an adult child or anyone,

Are compliments ever a bad thing? And how important is the delivery of a compliment? Are people genuinely going over your compliments with a spell checker and thesaurus taking offense to the improper use of has, have, or had? Today Tony tackles the topic of compliments and why it would do us all good to embrace both the giving and the receiving of compliments. Tony references the article "You Probably Don't Compliment Other People Often Enough" by Art Markman Ph.D.https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ulterior-motives/202110/you-probably-don-t-compliment-other-people-often-enough as well as "Scientific explanation to why people perform better after receiving a compliment," from https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121109111517.htm

Please find out more about Tony's Magnetic Marriage program by contacting him through http://tonyoverbay.com or by visiting http://tonyoverbay.com/magnetic.

. With the continuing "sheltering" rules spreading across the country, PLEASE do not think you can't continue or begin therapy now. http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch can put you quickly in touch with licensed mental health professionals who can meet through text, email, or videoconference often as soon as 24-48 hours. And if you use the link http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch, you will receive 10% off your first month of services. Please make your mental health a priority, http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch offers affordable counseling, and they even have sliding scale options if your budget is tight.

You can learn more about Tony's pornography recovery program, The Path Back, by visiting http://pathbackrecovery.com And visit http://tonyoverbay.com and sign up to receive updates on upcoming programs and podcasts.

Tony mentioned a product that he used to take out all of the "uh's" and "um's" that, in his words, "must be created by wizards and magic!" because it's that good! To learn more about Descript, click here https://descript.com?lmref=v95myQ

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[00:00:15] Come on in, take a seat.

[00:00:22] Hey, everybody, welcome to episode two hundred and ninety one of the virtual couch. I'm your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and all those wonderful things. And today we are going to talk about compliments, and I am going to give you very solid takeaways. Today, I learned quite a bit about compliments and why we give them and do we give them enough and what the best type of compliment is. So stick with me on this, but let me share what I think was a pretty funny time sink this morning while preparing to record this episode. I got into my office incredibly early. I'm very excited. I love podcast recording day and I am. I'm talking, I'm ready to hit the record button and I find myself wanting to talk about a particular compliment that my wife and I reference often. And we've been married thirty one years now, and it's something to the effect of if you say, Hey, what do you like about me or do you know what I like about you? And one of us just says the other person, Oh, because you like animals and old people and we laugh and we don't explore it much deeper because we've been saying it for so long. So I decided that I would find that quote and I would work that into the episode because that would be kind of fun and nostalgic. But 30 minutes later, I have absolutely nothing.

[00:01:30] I googled it in so many different ways. I googled the actor who I thought said it. I thought it was John Cusack, and I looked for the movie and then all of his movies. And then I quoted specific things and sayings and old people and animals and what I like about you and I just got nowhere. But it led to so many different and I'm just being right off the cuff here in my mind, I thought it led to so many different rabbit trails, which again, now being completely honest. Then I had to Google, is it a rabbit trail or is it a rabbit hole?