Holding Your Own with Challenging Personalities – take away’s from our series on staying (or becoming) secure in relationship with those with challenging personalities – DEDICATED TO OUR PATRONS!!

You can find more of our current Patrons here (we have almost 200)!  We thank Platinum and Gold Neuronerds on our website.  

We don’t usually include our actual transcript but what the heck, we are gonna try it this time and see if it’s useful to anybody.   Unedited transcript of the show

Insecurity begets defensiveness – so anything we can do to lower our defenses, realize we most likely aren’t ACTUALLY under attack, and work towards safety inside ourselves and cultivating safety in our close others.

Much of the episode is devoted to this topic, these show notes will focus on resources in general.  We mention being raised by difficult parents but that’s a big topic for another time so we put in some resources for ya down below.

For EVERYBODY – we can all improve our listening skills:

CAVA — Clarify, ask question, validate where you feel it true and if appropriate, apologize

LUV –  Listen, Understand and Validate where you can authentically

RAIN Tara Brach

Review, Reflect, Rewire

Self compassion and Kristen Neff – see previous episode here.

Ann and Sue give several personal examples of what this looks like and support you in knowing your own truth, claiming it and living your best life possible.

Voicing the Victims of Narcissistic Partners: A Qualitative Analysis of Responses to Narcissistic Injury and Self-Esteem Regulation

Hatfield, E., Bensman, L., Thornton, P. D., & Rapson, R. (2014). New perspectives on emotional contagion: A review of classic and recent research on facial mimicry and contagion. Interpersonal: An International Journal of Personal Relations, 8, 159-179.

Covert narcissism scale  Don’t believe online tests in general, but for fun you can see how you score on covert narcisissm.

Psychcentral has personality quizzes – some are validated scales adapted for the internet some are more for fun, but none provide actual diagnosis for sure.  However, you may be interested in exploring these, if so enjoy!

Get Me Out of Here by Rachel Reiland  This is an excellent book although it’s older, a first-hand account of the healing trajectory written by woman who identifies as borderline.  Fascinating and hopeful… recommended read esp for those doing deep work in therapy

The Borderline Personality Disorder Workbook – self-help workbook by Daniel J Fox PhD

Loving Someone with Borderline Personality Disorder: How to Keep Out-of-Control Emotions from Destroying Your Relationship Shari Y Manning PhD

“How to make the narcissist in your life a little nicer” The Atlantic

“How to manage a narcissist” Harvard Business Review – Focuses on workplace highly applicable to all

The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Being Raised by Difficult Parents:

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents Linday Gibson PhD

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“How being raised by a narcissist damages your life and self-esteem ” Forbes Magazine,  Kathy Caprino

Resources from malignant narcisissism episode:

Friends – we know most of you aren’t in this situation but if you are we want to be a resource.  We can’t say if you should or shouldn’t leave – that’s a highly personal and seriously safety-dependent question.  However we can say that we believe you, you aren’t alone, and there is support once you get ready for that.

United States:  Click the image to the left for help!

Not in the US, no problem:  International lines for domestic violence help click here 

Many areas have local resources so look for those as well.

Attachment Disturbances in Adults Comprehensive Treatment & Repair(2016) Dan Brown and David Elliott (This is Sue’s favorite textbook on attachment currently)

OK friends if you have found the bottom of these show notes then you are our people.  Find us on Facebook @austinshrinks and from there, join our free private discussion community.

If that is not enough, consider purchasing our signature (4 hour!!) course and use “ourclan” to get a discount on enrollment.  It’s Not Me It’s My Amygdala Advanced Course Connecting the Science of the Mind to the Amygdala 

Finally, we invite you to join our patron Neuronerd community for some occasional bling and behind the scenes stuff, as well as helping to keep us Ad-Free!!!

We are at almost 200 active and engaged patrons – help us get over the hump to 200, will ya?

Without this super smart and active community we could not produce the way we do, could not get the science out to the world who would otherwise not even know it’s out there and most importantly to some — we would have to be running ads. (shriek!)  I am so bugged by the aggressive advertising on You Tube and many podcasts… we understand you gotta do it to sustain production but if we can sustain another way, then we are all for it!   We have a few straggler platforms where you may run into an ad, but once we get our patron community more robust we will be able to eliminate them all.