Episode 5

In this episode, Marlon exposes the cycle of narcissistic abuse and self-betrayal, revealing how ignoring his intuition left him vulnerable to manipulation and isolation. He unpacks the narcissistic cycle—love bombing, devaluation, and discard—and the devastating impact of losing himself to people-pleasing. Through raw personal stories, he shares the moment he reclaimed his power by trusting his instincts, embracing discomfort, and choosing freedom over fear. This is a call to break the cycle, stand in your truth, and burn the boats for good.

Episode-5

Podcast: Rising From the Shadows

I've gone back and forth about recording and releasing this episode. I realized that a big part of me considering not doing this episode is that in some way I feel a lot of shame that I found myself in this cycle as an adult. I think in some way I can talk about my childhood trauma because I was a child and truly had no way of protecting myself.

But what I'm about to talk about today happened to me as a full adult who is fairly intelligent, introspective, and to some degree, self-confident. The other part I'm realizing is that I hold shame for potentially disrupting the wholly positive image that those closest to the person who did these things to me have--you know, potentially disrupting the image that they have. Which is, I admit, so sad that I feel that way, as if me telling the truth, um, of what happened to me is worse than the person who inflicted that harm. But that's how these situations work, right? When the person that's hurting you no longer has physical control over your life, they can still make sure that you continue to hurt yourself on their behalf.

I was listening to an interview with a creator, I think his name is Daniel, uh, Chadiakc, and he made a statement, he said, "Abusers will be like, how dare you ruin my reputation by telling people things I actually said and do." His point was that it's always about them. Regardless of what happened, um, and regardless of you just telling people the truth of what happened in the situation, it doesn't matter to them how they treated you. All that matters to them is how they look to other people. It's always and will always be about them.

As I've established in previous episodes, part of the self-abandonment and betrayal is to place the feelings and the needs of others above your own needs to your own detriment. So it makes sense that if you are to break that cycle, you must do the opposite.

I was having lunch, uh, with my family. A CPA friend of mine, he owns a firm--he's been in business for, you know, well over 50 years. We had lunch, and he was asking me how I was doing. So, I told him what I was going through. And then he proceeded to look me straight in the eye after I told him my story. He said that he had just had a conversation with one of his own clients who was experiencing the exact same thing that I was. And then he proceeded to say that if we were just to switch seats—who was sitting in either seat in his office or here at lunch—there would be nothing different about our stories.

I also had lunch with another friend, uh, that I met in Rotary Club. We were catching up, we hadn't seen each other in a while. And as we were catching up with each other's lives, it turns out that he is one of the few remaining friends that one of his friends has after their narcissist successfully isolated him from their social circle.

And he too told me that our stories were fairly identical. I spent time with another friend of mine, who shared the same stories of neglect, manipulation, and devaluation. I joined narcissistic survivor support groups, and everyone's stories more or less mirror each other.

Look, while a narcissist may be cunning and strategic, you will find—when you're able to detach from the emotions of What the hell is happening to me?—you'll find that they are extremely predictable and unimaginative.

In this episode, I'm going to be sharing the steps that every narcissist uses to control and manipulate their victims. But before I do that, I want to talk about who this episode is for and who it’s not for.

This episode is not for my listeners who, in the aftermath of me standing up for myself, have aligned themselves with the person that did harm to me and are very much lurking in the shadows—observing what I’m saying and reporting back to them. Any of you who have experienced the untethering stage of breaking from a narcissist will have undoubtedly experienced the exact same thing.

Their enablers will spy on you, report back to them, attempt to manipulate and harm you on their behalf, and work hard hand-in-hand with them to discredit you as you speak up for yourself and against the harm.

I do not believe that my words will in any way, shape, or form change their minds about the position they’ve taken. And honestly, you should not expect that your words will do any of the sort either.

The part that these enablers are playing is actually part of the narcissistic cycle, and it takes a great deal of self-reflection for third parties like them to realize that they’ve been manipulated by the narcissist.

And while I pity them, it is not my responsibility to try and free them from their delusion and the role that they’re playing. And so this episode is not for them.

Who this episode is for are those of you who are finding yourself in a cycle of emotional and psychological abuse, but you can’t quite put your finger on the pulse of what’s happening to you.

Or maybe you've just realized the cycle you're in, and you feel completely alone, thinking, Oh, this is only happening to me. How could this only happen to me? And you’re devastated, wondering how something so horrible is happening to someone like you.

This episode is for you.

On February 8th, 2024, I came to terms with the realization that I had been a victim of a covert form of narcissism.

Up until then, I had accepted that I had been subjected to emotional and psychological harm, but I hadn’t fully clocked the entire narcissistic cycle—because the individual in question was still hoping to rope me back in. They had written a long note to me in an attempt to get me back into the cycle.

But when it became clear to them that I was making a firm and decisive break, that’s when the last steps of the cycle kicked in—the ones that, never in a million years, would I have guessed would happen.

I want to spend a few moments clarifying what narcissism is in the cycle and what it is not. And some of the key differences between what we know as an overt narcissist and a covert narcissist.

I want to be clear: narcissism and the narcissistic cycle are not a single event. It is not just one thing that happens. It is a pattern of behavior. It’s a cycle of neglect. It’s a manipulation pattern used to control victims and make them question their reality.

And that is precisely why it’s so challenging to spot it—especially when we’re talking about covert narcissism.

When most people hear the word narcissist, they’re typically thinking of the overt narcissist, right? This is the Donald Trump type—the grandiose, malignant liar, openly manipulative. They’re flashy. They only talk about themselves. They make grand statements about being the best thing since sliced bread. And while they can still be charming, they’re easier to spot. Because they’re unashamed users of others.

But the covert narcissist is a whole other type.They can appear shy and introverted, but they in no way wield any less power over their victims.

For most people, it’s easy to identify obvious abuse—someone physically putting their hands on another, or even someone verbally belittling another, telling them they’re worthless, etc. We all, pretty much, agree—Oh, those are bad things, right?

But what if no hands were ever laid? Is it still abuse?

There are two things I want you to keep in mind as you reflect on your own situation.

The first thing—like I said before—narcissistic abuse is not just one thing. It is a cycle and a pattern of behaviors. Second—regardless of your hesitation to put a label on what’s happening to you—ultimately, we’ve got to remember this:

Actions speak a language.

So the person that’s harming you—what are their actions and behaviors saying? Not what they’re saying with their words. What are their actions communicating?

A relationship within a narcissistic cycle requires two things. It requires the narcissistic predator, and then it requires the codependent victim that has little to no boundaries. Why? Because the core traits of a narcissist is entitlement, lack of self awareness, having a victim mindset, Lack or perhaps having limited empathy.

Maybe they only have cognitive empathy. They can say like, well, this is how a person, this is how a normal person in this situation should behave. And so they do that, but they don't actually like feel it in their hearts. They also are people that are boundary pushers and they show a lack of reciprocity.

What you have to understand that this dynamic in this narcissistic narcissist/codependent dynamic this is not an equally giving dynamic. It is a taking dynamic. It's where the codependent gives, gives, gives to the narcissist, the narcissist takes, takes, takes, and does not reciprocate.

The official description of the phases in the cycle is idealization, devaluation, discard, In the next few moments, I want to walk you through the phases so you can identify in which ways you may have fallen prey to this sinister manipulation. And it starts with an approach.

Your introduction to a narcissist will often occur when you're in a vulnerable state or undergoing a vulnerable life transition or perhaps you're in a state of uncertainty.

The narcissist takes great care to collect information about any trauma or previous abuse you may have endured or hardships that you have gone through and they will listen to your vulnerability, seemingly as an active listener. But if you look back and reflect on the early stages of your dynamic with the narcissist, you will undoubtedly see with clarity that your honesty and vulnerability was one sided.

They themselves were not equally vulnerable, and they provided very little self disclosure. In that moment, you may not have noticed that dynamic because you may have felt a strong connection with them due to you, maybe, for the first time ever, or at least in a long time, someone is listening to you, someone's validating your experiences. So you determine, wow, this is a good person. But after this brief period of validation, the next stage in the cycle kicks in. And that's the love bombing.

During the love bombing stage, the narcissist will validate, that all the other people in your life that did you wrong, they were bad people, they will insist that they will never hurt you like them. They devote an above average amount of time, attention, and or gifts early on in the relationship in order to cement the image in your eyes That they are not like everyone else, and that their love can save you from the nightmare that you've experienced before.

It's important to note that not all love bombing looks like flying you to Paris after only knowing you for three days. It's also worth noting that, the way, at least in the western world--the way our genders are traditionally socialized plays a very important role in what is considered love bombing, right? So a male narcissist traditionally may be more prone to excessive gift giving and grandiose demonstrations of affection. While a female narcissist may rely more on emotional and sexual love bombing. There is certainly a spectrum of love bombing and no one fits perfectly in the cycle as described. Additionally, Depending on the information you may have shared with the narcissist regarding your past treatment by previous partners, the love bombing might only be slightly better treatment than what you're used to. But this slight improvement in situation usually appears starkly different in your mind, and notably more loving than you've ever experienced before.

In the beginning, The narcissist truly idealizes you and will put you on a pedestal. They're going to prop you up. They'll speak glowingly about yourself to you and to their family and friends. They view being with you as a positive reflection on themselves and what it can do for their image. They believe that the positive traits that you possess will fix or supplement their own deficiencies of character and so to them you become their prized possession--emphasis on the word possession. This is the idealization phase. But then you will find that you quickly enter the next phase of the cycle, the phase that I call the testing.

As I mentioned previously, narcissists are certainly cunning and manipulative, but when you clock the pattern, they become entirely predictable, and unimaginative. I am quite certain that what I mention next will be identical to what you've experienced with a narcissist.

Every narcissist will subtly prod at your weaknesses. They will test the strength of your self identity by casually and quite un-confrontationally, I might add, suggest changes to aspects of your life that you are perfectly content with. This may be your style of dressing, what you do in your daily routine or free time, your dreams or plans you have for your future. Your choice of friends and the list goes on. They don't just come out and say, you know, you got to change this. It's just suggestions. Very subliminal suggestions like, Oh, I could imagine seeing you doing this. I could imagine you this. Oh, you would be so great at this. You would look so great like that.

Very un-confrontational.

The success of this experiment lies in how you feel about yourself. If you feel defective or not good enough and unworthy, you will accept most, if not all, suggestions about how you can be better, despite how good you already feel about that particular thing. Basically, what makes you unique, uniquely you must be dismantled in order for them to gain control.

The other part of this phase is that they will test your inclination to prove yourself to them. This may look like. Downplaying your connection publicly while assuring you are private, in order for you to try harder to maintain the supposed connection. This may look like starting arguments with you and then packing up all of their stuff so that you run after them and reassure them and make them feel good, regardless of their behavior that sparked the disagreement.

You will notice that they will never take accountability for any part played. Unless It can be used to rope you back into the cycle. They will test you to evaluate your comfort with confrontation, and particularly public confrontation. This may look like public teasing and seemingly innocuous put downs in front of people that are either important to you or you wish to develop a relationship with. Or even people who have already been abusive towards you, that you haven't yet had the courage to remove from your circle. I'm talking about typically like family members, such as parents or siblings, etc.

If you keep quiet, this is a strong indicator to them. If you address the offense in private but not publicly, this is another indicator that, okay, they need to provide stronger positive reinforcement privately so they can continue the behavior publicly.

All throughout these tests, the narcissist is still consistently providing the victim with positive reinforcement, which convinces the victim that they really do care and are simply making mistakes. After all, What relationships don't have their ups and downs, right? But then comes the next phase where the narcissist will rely on your ethics and value system to ensure that you never leave them. I call this phase the entrapment.

The entrapment is where narcissists lean into major life transitions such as buying a house together, getting married, having a child. They use these transitions to cement their permanency in your life. Many victims experience an almost immediate shift in the relationship dynamic after major life milestones like the above; where the intermittent positive reinforcement is significantly reduced, because in a narcissist's mind, they have evaluated you for your self identity, and you have demonstrated that you have little to none. They have evaluated you for your loyalty to them, and you've demonstrated high levels of loyalty to the detriment of yourself. And they've evaluated you for your inclination to fight back and stand up for yourself. Which you've shown little inclination to do. So they've interpreted that to mean their level of effort, or the level of effort needed to maintain that relationship connection is no longer required. Because it is no longer required, they quickly implement the next stage of the process, which I call the devaluation.

The goal of the devaluation phase is to keep you confused and dependent. Every issue you bring up to them in hopes of resolution becomes an exercise in word salads, gaslighting, and manipulation, and reverse accusations until you're left wondering like, oh shit, maybe, maybe I'm the problem. Maybe I'm the one abusing them. I have pages in my journals, like tons and tons of pages, where I justify the poor treatment I was receiving as something I just had to put up with because of the misguided notion that I had the responsibility for managing the expression of their feelings. This goes hand in hand with passive aggressiveness.

During this devaluation stage, the narcissist will keep you guessing about your supposed offenses and may stonewall you until you pry the information out of them and then make penance, not for any particular action, but the emotional reaction that you somehow made them do. In the moment, you won't understand what's happening, but the narcissist will display their contempt for you. Not constantly, but in moments where their mask unknowingly to them slips. And in those moments, you can catch a glimpse, you can catch the glimpses of contempt. Contempt for the fact that you, that who you are as a person comes easily and naturally to you. It comes, naturally to you because you're not faking it.

The narcissist has to pretend their entire life. They have no core identity, besides the identities that surround them, and despite their best efforts, they can never be anything but the empty shell of a person that they are. When that contempt rises to a high enough level and they have concluded that who they thought you were, or more accurately what they thought being with you could do for them is not achievable, will have them initiating the next phase, which is the discard.

You have to understand this. There is always an expiration date with narcissistic relationships. Whether the narcissist has directly communicated the end of the relationship or not, it doesn't really matter. In one way or another, you will be either physically or emotionally discarded. In some dynamics, they actively do the discarding. In other dynamics, they covertly make the situation so unbearable that the victim leaves on their own, consequently protecting the narcissist's image even though they are the aggressor. Sometimes it's sudden, and other times, especially if the victim has a good reputation, there's a calculated process to cast the narcissist in a positive light while laying the groundwork for a smear campaign aimed at the victim.

The goal of the narcissist's smear campaign is reputation management for the narcissist and social isolation for the victim. The narcissist knows if they can isolate the victim from their social support, they will in most cases suffer a breakdown that the narcissist can then point as to proof of their mental instability or attempt to claim that they were the ones being abused by them.

Honestly, it works like magic.

Often the narcissist doesn't need to do any more work after that, as they now have people solidly in their camp that can spy on the victim and report back to the narcissist or harass the victim on the narcissist's behalf, most of the time, I should add, unknowing of the part they're playing in the narcissist's cycle of abuse.

This is most commonly referred to as flying monkeys. It's derived from the Wizard of Oz, when the Wicked Witch of the West sends the flying monkeys to go get, Dorothy's companions.

I don't know, or I didn't even know that behind the scenes in my situation that there was an effort to control my voice and the full telling of my story was underway.

Until a friend of mine informed me that she had been approached by the individual in question as they asked her for help in keeping me silent. I was shaken to my core. From that moment on, I realized that I had lost every social connection I had except for two close friends. None of my friends, or at least people I thought were my friends, reached out to me.

Not one.

These were people who, our kids were growing up together. We went to each other's celebrations. We trick or treated together. We watched fireworks on the Fourth of July. We went to the beach. We had numerous playdates in between. Not one of these individuals. In fact, the only people who ever reached out were family members of the narcissist who sent texts and emails and left notes on my desk in an attempt to have me change my mind about leaving.

To this day, I truly have no idea what half truths or lies were told that caused people who I believe to be intelligent and I consider fairly empathetic to just disappear without even the decency of a call or a text that said, hey, you know, "I'm hearing this stuff about you that sounds nothing like the Marlon I know, and I just wanted to give you the opportunity to hear your side of the story." I was confused. And I was heartbroken, but this led me to do a deep dive into the world of narcissism where I learned about the cycle I heard the stories of other victims. I shared my own story and Ultimately came to terms with the reality of my circumstances seeing with my own eyes the slipping of the mask of a person who professed care to now that of the unrecognizable character who mind you In a last ditch effort to rope me back in, had just a few months prior sent me a message admitting to many of their wrongdoings, and now they were claiming that we had different ideas of what happened.

I witnessed their ability to suddenly cry on demand when they had never displayed that level of emotion before, not even during major life events where it was typical to feel and express those kinds of emotions. The calculated pageantry of it all instilled a fear in me that I have never experienced before in my life.

If you've listened to any of my previous episodes, I detail some traumatic circumstances that repeatedly occurred in my life. I was repeatedly beaten bloody by my father, and then betrayed by people I went to asking for help. I was forced to go without food for several days. I was sexually molested by a family member. I was homeless, I was penniless, and more. And not one of those experiences compared to me coming to an understanding of exactly how the narcissists not only operates, but gets away with it, too. It was, in fact, the only life circumstance that made it necessary for me to begin taking medication for depression and anxiety.

The only thing.

Not the parental abuse, not the sexual trauma, not the food deprivation or the housing insecurity, not the eight years in the Marines. Nothing.

Just this.

The shockwave that ripped through my nervous system compelled me to look for answers. I had to understand what was happening to me and those around me.

So along with therapy, I got my hands on any information on NPD and how to protect yourself from the narcissist. After fully understanding the narcissistic cycle in the context of interpersonal relationships, I then turned my focus on how I could make sure that I never fell prey to a narcissist ever again.There was a ton of information on how to spot a covert narcissist or how to spark covert narcissistic traits in people. I mean, you can really go down a rabbit hole with this stuff, and I certainly did.

I learned that their traits were extreme sensitivity to criticism, passive aggressive behavior, playing the victim, frequent self deprecation while still having an inflated sense of self, importance, a lack of empathy, manipulation through subtle tactics, and a tendency to shift blame onto others to avoid responsibility. Essentially, they may appear shy or insecure on the surface while harboring a deep need for admiration and control. Often using indirect methods to achieve it. All of this tracked with my experience to the tee.

I thought that all of this knowledge would give me a sense of safety, and that I could protect myself in the future because of it. But it honestly gave me a higher sense of anxiety when I realized that there was no level too low for narcissists to stoop down to if it meant avoiding accountability and advancing their narcissistic aims.

But then it hit me.

I had the realization that none of this knowledge mattered at all when it came to keeping myself safe.

I realized that trying to keep myself safe by looking for external indicators that someone was not a safe person was still people pleasing. I was still giving away my power because, for all intents and purposes, I could potentially ignore how I felt about someone or a situation if they didn't fit neatly in the box of toxic person.

And then the truth dawned on me. The key element, the only important thing that mattered in protecting myself was to only care about and only listen to my body and intuition, regardless of how I look to other people, regardless of how they would feel about my decisions, regardless of disappointing or even angering them, as long as I honored what my intuition was telling me I would be safe. Why? Because I would no longer stay in situations or relationships that on the outside seemed good, when everything internally was just screaming for me to get out. I would no longer sit silently and take disrespect for fear of appearing emotional or crazy. I would no longer give people a pass to feel comfortable when they violated my peace to make me uncomfortable. I would no longer save people from the consequences of their own words and actions. That would no longer be my burden to carry.

Look, I empathize with the fact that you will probably, or you have already gone down a rabbit hole of researching everything that you can on this topic. I honestly believe it's a rite of passage when it comes to healing from narcissistic abuse.

What I do want to say to you is this, don't stay there too long, because true freedom comes from your comfort of being the villain in the eyes of others. When people's opinion of you, opinion whether you are a good person or not, whether you are acceptable to them or not, no longer matters. Then you can make decisions that are congruent with your values and intuition; and when you are living in congruence with that, you can no longer stand existing in spaces that are designed to strip you of your humanity.

I know this feels like, difficult decisions to make, or you might be feeling confused, I don't know what to do.

I believe that there's no such thing as confusion when it comes to decision making; There's only pain avoidance. There's no such thing as, I'm torn in between; there's only avoidance of discomfort. There's no such thing as, "what if I make the wrong choice?"; there's only fear of external perception. You have to be willing to accept the negative or undesirable consequences of your decisions, because that's where your freedom lies.

As I reflect on having to make the most difficult decision of my life in telling my wife that I wanted a divorce, I remember feeling confused at the time. But honestly, not for long, because clarity came to me when I realized I wasn't confused about wanting a divorce. All I was doing was avoiding the pain and discomfort that was bound to happen because of it. I was afraid of the stereotype of the black father abandoning the vulnerable white mother and the children. Even though I had always been an above and beyond involved and wonderful father to my children. And also, you cannot abandon an adult. You can abandon children, but you cannot abandon an adult, because adults take care of themselves. But, I was battling the guilt of my then wife having to figure out her financial life without me. Because as a financial advisor, I took on the bulk of her family's organizational and financial responsibility. I was afraid of the narrative that I had given up too easily on my marriage; despite me being in therapy for the better part of my adult life, and despite me pleading to my wife for years to attend therapy herself to make our relationship bette--- and she only did it when I decided to walk away. I was engulfed with guilt when my in laws, one by one, attempted to manipulate my decision to leave; because to them, the appearance of a unified family has always been more important than the pain that any individual person was feeling. I can remember the terror that gripped me when I realized that I successfully, that I was successfully isolated from my entire social network because of a calculated campaign to do just that.

I remember the feeling of being in danger when I saw that I was standing alone in truth against old friends, uh, old family members that I had, that had an enormous amount of legal and financial resources, and they employed them against me, um, while I had no family or friends behind me except for two close friends.

But here's the kicker. I knew that on the other side of that fear, of the danger, the uncertainty of outcome, lay my life at risk. So I looked those consequences right in the eye and welcomed them as a friend. All along, I would be encouraging myself. I would sing songs. I would encourage myself. One of them was, "Ooh, child, things are going to get easier." Another one was this gospel song, "No weapon formed against me shall prosper, It won't work."

So how can you get to a place where you willingly accept these negative consequences in exchange for your freedom? Well, first, you have to understand that taking back your power will infuriate people, people who have everything to gain by you being disempowered. You have to realize that consensus is not required to determine your reality. The truth of your lived experience does not require the co signature of anyone, let alone your abusers and their enablers. And finally, don't try to manage your emotions about the situation. Feel them, and let those emotions exist. But I want you to manage your actions. It's okay to be afraid, but you still need to move.

This is your superpower. People stay stuck in bad situations because they're avoiding the other set of bad that comes with their choices. But this is how you become truly empowered. Uninhibited by the emotions and the opinions and the judgments of others. You let them rage. You let them slander. You let people misunderstand you and you refuse to try and change their perception. Because when you accept the bad, when you face the negative consequences and you devour it like a delicacy, that is when you ignite your momentum.

Sometimes, you just have to look at your old life. And burn the boats and never look back. So if you find yourself like me in a state of tug of war between the disempowered version of you and the empowered one that just has to feel a little pain, I'm telling you today to burn the boats, burn the boats, burn the boats, because that's where your freedom lies.

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I'm Marlon. I'm a speaker and consultant, helping recovering people pleasers and codependents return to themselves so they can live thriving lives. If you're ready to take the next step to life on your terms, schedule a Momentum Call with me today. Let's work together to turn your breakthroughs into action. https://ignitingmomentum.co