If you’re experiencing narcissistic abuse, know that you’re not alone. Here are 5 ways to spot narcissistic abuse – Rachel shares her story.

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Transcript: 5 Ways To Spot Narcissistic Abuse

Introduction To Rachel & Megan Wilford

Anne: I have Rachel and Megan Wilford on today’s episode. They are cousins, and they also recently started podcasting and their podcast is called the Traumedy Show. Which is of course, a mix of trauma and comedy. Welcome Rachel and Megan.

Rachel: Thank you so much for having us. We’re so excited to be here with you.

Megan: Thank you.

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Narcissistic Abuse: Discovering A Secret Life

Anne: When I first found out that my husband was using pornography, and that he had this secret life that I didn’t know about, we just had a baby. I think if I not had children, then my life would have taken kind of a different turn at that point.

But because I had a child. Also because he was saying, I’m going to go to a pornography addiction recovery. I thought okay, I’ll try and work this out because we’ve got a kid.

Comedy As A Coping Mechanism For Narcissistic Abuse

Anne: Anyway, instead of, starting podcasting about that at that time, I actually started a comedy blog called Coming To Grips.

I got a lot of followers, which was fun, but I never wrote about what was actually happening. So I was processing my pain through the lens of comedy. I think a lot of comedians do that. I’ve since pulled it from the internet. When my book comes out, I will be simultaneously publishing my comedy blog. So people can kind read them side by side, to be like, okay, this is what was really happening. And then this is how she was kind of . . .

Megan: Processing it.

Anne: This is the public face that I was showing online. I was telling people in person, but I wasn’t really publishing online about it.

The Traumedy Show Came Out Of Narcissistic Abuse

Rachel: I love what you just shared about using comedy to process what you were going through. Because that’s what we do too. I think we would say that we come from a family of traumedians. We have a big family and we all lean into dark humor and laugh a lot. We’re a bunch of jokesters.

When my life started blowing up, I definitely was leaning into comedy about it pretty quickly. The day that I left my ex-fiance, I started dreaming about what I could do with my whole story. Coming up with one liners about it. I was thinking about like a standup comedy set, just dreaming big.

Then I ended up getting into another relationship in the winter. About six months after, that also imploded in a similar way. And for about a week after that relationship ended, I was in this really crazy creative processing mode. Where I was writing all the time and I was so mad and all these words were coming to me.

Then all of a sudden I lost it. Like it was like a cord was cut and I started asking God, okay, where can I channel this now? So I started creating our podcast all day long, came up with the artwork, came up with the name.

I invited Megan over and sat her down and pitched it to her and she was down for it. That’s how the podcast came to be.

Anne: Let’s start with that.

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Five Ways To Spot Narcissistic Abuse

Anne: This episode is called Five Ways to Spot Narcissistic Abuse. So as Rachel tells her story, I’m going to flag the things that indicated, hey, this is a situation that is emotionally dangerous, that is psychologically dangerous. So I’ll be pointing those out as she shares her story.

Can you start at the beginning? How did your relationship start? Did you recognize any red flags at first?

Rachel: I would say that there were red flags from the beginning, but I started dating him really young. I was 17 and he was 20 and he was from my same hometown. We had never met before, but he friended me on Facebook. It was back in the day when everybody was just kind of friending everybody on Facebook.

But we quickly started talking and quickly started dating. I’m 29 now. I was with him for about 10 and a half years. Just as a spoiler alert, there’s two engagements in this story too, with him. Yeah, wait.

Anne: Can’t wait.

Rachel: Good. So, I would say pretty early on I started spotting lying and hiding things.

1st Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: Making You Think Something Is An Accident

Rachel: He pretty quickly he put me and his ex in a group chat accidentally a couple of months into our relationship.

Anne: “Accidentally?” Do you think it was on purpose now?

Rachel: No. He had a lot of technological blunders over the course of our relationship. That kind of led to me finding things out and the demise of the whole thing.

Anne: Maybe that’s going to be number one red flag. I’m going to say here that they do things on purpose sometimes. And they make you think it’s an accident. That’s Not your case, Rachel. Sorry, I’m not trying to be like, no, you don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s not what I’m trying to say. In your specific case it was an accident .

Anne: But in general, they’re strangely the stupidest smart people or like the smart stupid people. Victims have a really hard time because they’re like, for how smart he is, why is he doing this? I want to just maybe throw out the idea that one of the things you can look for is that dissonance.

When you’re like, wait, if they’re so smart, why are they doing this thing? In so many cases, it’s actually on purpose to throw people off, to get people confused.

Teaming Up With The Other Woman

Rachel: This girl on our podcast, I call her Natasha and there’s more to the story with her. But since our podcast came out, she actually came on and I interviewed her. She reached out to me and she and I are now friends 11 years later. It’s pretty awesome. There’s a lot of teaming up with the other woman that happened since our podcast.

Yeah. So he puts Natasha and I in a group chat and so she and I have each other’s numbers. He sends a picture of him snowboarding and then a couple of months later, both to me and her.

Anne: So is he intending to send it to both of you? Who is the intended

Rachel: He was intending to send it to both of us, he didn’t have an iPhone. He had like a Windows phone. He didn’t realize that if you sent it in the same thread, it would go in a group chat at the time. A couple months later, it’s my 18th birthday and he cheats on me with her.

He drives down to San Diego to pick her up from the airport. The next day on my 18th birthday, I get a text from her. Since she now has my number that he came down, picked her up and made a move on her. And they kissed, all this stuff.

2nd Sign Of Narcissistic Abuse: I’m Going To Give Him Another Chance

Rachel: I end up breaking up with him at that time. Then I ended up getting back together with him a week later. I wish that I never had. Staying broken up when you are a victim of narcissistic abuse would have been better.

Anne: This is a crossroads for you. What did he say to groom you to get back together with him?

Rachel: Good question.

Anne: Maybe this is another red flag. So number one, they do things on purpose when you think they do them accidentally. Number two, There’s a point at which you notice, hey, something really bad happened. But also I’m going to give him a second chance.

So many women have this story where they found out he was having an affair. Or they found out he was stealing money from them. Or they found out he’d hidden a camera in their bedroom or something like that.

Rachel: Yeah, he definitely was kind of promising me that it was nothing. She just was somebody that needed help. It was nothing. T