What's up ladies, I'm Lisa Billu and you are listening to Women of Impact and this episode is one that you guys have been asking for and so I finally freaking delivered. You know how we've been told to watch for the stranger danger and if you've been listening to this podcast for a while now you know that I've done a lot of content on that. But what if the real storm is actually coming from inside your girl circle? The girlfriend, the homie who's always had your back until suddenly all of your secrets aren't so secret anymore. Or the mum who says that she loves you but then leaves you feeling invisible and puts you down every moment that she can all the way to the women that we trust implicitly and then really use that to take us to a whole new

dark level and yes I'm talking about Gellane Maxwell. So whether you've dealt with a mean girl or it's your parent or it's a psychopath, these women have sadly been hiding behind girl code for years. We want to trust our girlfriend so badly only to them wake up to the wreckage later. Guys I speak from experience I've been wounded by so cool friends and so today I am rolling up my freaking sleeves with the clinical psychologist and narcissism expert Peter Salerno who specializes in this so that we can finally talk about the ladies in our lives whether it's family or friendships who are just, backstabbing us, and sabotaging our lives. Maybe you know someone, or maybe sometimes, there's someone around you in your girl group that it just doesn't feel right. Or today is about to rip off the freaking bandaid and we go straight into how to spot the woman in your circle who's aptly weaponizing your secrets and why you actually feel crazy for suspecting it. And ladies, let me tell ya, you're not alone. Then we go into the real difference between passive aggression and covert attacks. Ladies, I'm telling you, this guarantee that you've experienced one of these moments at some point in your girl group. And we go deep into why those joking little digs hit so freaking hard and you look around and no one actually sees it. Then we talk about why even the freaking strongest most loyal women like us get picked off one by one plus the power moves that you need to take yourself with back so that you never get manipulated by someone in your girl group ever again. Now if you've ever walked away from a girl's knife or a branch just feeling smaller, second guessing yourself, feeling worse about yourself or just flat out wondering, is it just me? Then buckle the hell up because we're dropping the actual tactical playbook right here on Women of Impact. Let's freaking go. Whether it's a psychopath like Galein Maxx, well, a covert, non-sacistic mother, or a manipulative friend that is deliberately sabotaging you, why do we end up trusting other women so deeply that we miss the signs? Sometimes from a cultural perspective, a lot of these traits that we see in narcissism and psychopathy, They're typically, it's like we default or we attribute them to like masculine traits. And if you're not aware of that in a particular circle, you won't notice or even suspect that somebody might make up or that fuel the engine of narcissism can be present in any social system. And the ones who have it, oftentimes they do an incredible job of concealing the intentionality behind that trait, you know, the motivations for it and things like that. So if a friend or if somebody in your circle is superficially like just exceeding your expectations or even just maintaining your expectations.

You're just not going to think to even consider that they might be up to no good. But what's interesting is when it comes to a man, I think sometimes you were like, this is a bit too good. Let me see. Let me spot the signs. Let me see if there's red flag. But when it's a friend, you go, oh my god, she's a great friend. She had my back. So this is going to be really important.

We see some women able to adopt a superficially agreeable temperament in certain social contexts so that this grandiosity is flying very low beneath the radar. It's not overt, it's not obvious. And so there are people who use gender stereotypes and gender expectations to exploit others within those circles. It's like they're blending in so well to it that you wouldn't even expect that they would be doing anything other than collaborating, cooperating. And so if you don't see anything overtly taking place, like overt insults or overt betrayals, often think that it might be maybe exclusive to just men's circles where there's aggressive sort of stature or posturing, but all of those types of things like aggression and everything, they can be very covert. And so it's very easy to imagine that somebody is just not capable of it. Okay, so I'd love to go a little deep in-out because I have never done an episode

on the female narcissist or this female psychopath or any female having a personality disorder and my community have asked me over and over again to really go into friendships. And so I'd really love to dive into the friendship things specifically on the signs that maybe we see, but we can't articulate. So I've got number one where they may weaponize your secrets. So she uses what she tells you against you later. So something that's really important to understand from the get-go when we're talking about narcissistic people is they don't believe in equality. Okay, so any friendship that's established with a narcissist, it's not being established on the basis of mutual reciprocity or mutual equality. So right there, anything that you give them or anything they give you is in fact a weapon. There's these goals that the person has, the narcissistic female in this case. She has a goal for the friendship. Okay, the goal is not to collaborate, it's not to problem solve,

it's not to even connect or attach in a meaningful way. If it's truly narcissism, then what they're gonna do is they're gonna arrange this relationship where there's one person who has subjective freedom, that's the narcissist, and then the other person's going to have to be an object. They're gonna be subjugated, they're gonna under the control of the narcissistic person. So when it comes to telling secrets or revealing secrets or keeping secrets, that's one of the most vulnerable things you can do to another human being. So narcissistic people will often reveal secrets to you right off the get-go to disarm you. You feel important now. This person has confided in me, they trust me. It's a fainting confiding. All. Okay. So you'll relax into safety so they can more easily exploit you. They're trying to pull information from you immediately because as soon as they have information that matters to you, that makes you feel vulnerable, that could potentially be used as a threat against you, they have an advantage. You know, secrets are being exchanged, things like that, vulnerability. But in reality, the operating system is motivated for a completely different purpose. And it's important for people to know that those individuals exist. And oftentimes, in the beginning, they don't take up much space in your life. So you're kind of inviting the men even more and more and more, not realizing how further down and deep into the pit of potential So destruction, you're kind of inviting the men even more and more and more and more not realizing how further down um and deep into the pit of of potential destruction you're you're you're going. That's part of my problem when it comes to this because I think if you're a female and a girl wants you to go out and you start sharing stories. Like it's a very different emotional feel when you're with your girlfriend she's invited you out, you're having a couple of drinks, you're sharing these back and forth stories or maybe heartbreak or something traumatic that happened.

There's something about I wouldn't think twice about that, but if I was on a date, and a guy who gave me a drink and he's like, starts asking me about my past, I'm going to be a little hesitant. So even when it comes to this one thing about weaponizing secrets, if a woman's sharing

Naturally is a woman you want to reciprocate so they don't feel alone. Right. How do you make sure that you don't share with a one person? interestingly though with narcissistic people there's something so Captivating and charismatic about them that you you actually feel like compelled to share So when you're feeling that a little too strongly in the beginning, like I wasn't planning on airing everything, and now all of a sudden, in therapy we call that transference and counter-transference. It's these emotions that you start to transfer onto the other person. They might remind you of somebody that's safe or familiar, and sometimes they play with that. They mimic and mirror you so that you trust them quickly. I think that one of the most important things you have to look out for is a narcissist will exploit that agreeableness and that collaboration and they'll weaponize it. So unfortunately, I'm the bearer of bad news when I say this. You have to develop a degree of skepticism with new people. It's not cynicism or pessimism, but it's actually an optimistic, healthy sense of skepticism. I think people very too often don't want to view relationships as like interview processes or they don't want to view friendships as something where they have to make an assessment, but that's really the best way to protect yourself. I mean, you can be open enough with somebody and authentic enough without giving them ammunition that they can use against you. And so one of the things that I think needs to be introduced is the possibility that, yeah, some of these individuals, even though there's, like you said, there's girl code and you don't typically assume someone's going to be having malicious intentions when they first meet you and when they first start sharing. You have to wonder if maybe they do. Just keep it in the back of your mind. It doesn't need to rule you or govern all your behavior, but the possibility that someone might be intentionally deceiving you from the beginning needs to be adopted. Hang tight because after this we're discussing the odds of passive- jokes. We all know them. Oh, you're wearing that dress again! And would it means when a girlfriend just says, oh no, I'm just being playful and how that leaves you feeling. Stay tuned for this because you'll never frickin' brush them off the same way again. Now let's get back to the good stuff. Okay, another one that I think a lot of us women get trapped in in Sonora's office when it's stuck punt. The passive aggressive jokes. So she says something her for then tells you that you're actually too sensitive. So talk to me about that and underlying resentment jealousy, things like that. So talk to me about that underlying resentment, jealousy, things like that. So there's a distinction between passive aggression and something called covert aggression. I think that's most of the time what people are dealing with. Oh, what's the difference? A covert aggressor is packing all of the energy of like a physical blow into a or an emotional state, and you're feeling it.

Oh, can you give me an example?

Well, you could be preparing to go out

with your girlfriends, let's say,

and everybody's having a really great time

and everyone feels really good.

And then all of a sudden, somebody says something

like hinting at, maybe you've worn that too many times

in a small period of time.

And now you're completely, you've lost your confidence, you've lost your footing, you feel like you're second-guessing yourself. That's a covert aggression tactic. There's nothing passive about it. It's actually intended to completely derail you and get you wondering and second-guessing yourself. And the motivation behind that you said it earlier is envy. Narcissistic people are extremely envious of others, even when they don't have any reason to be. They have this mentality where they have to spoil it for somebody else. They can't just let the other person have it. So a lot of what's driving this is envy. If you look too good or feel too good, they don't share in that joy. Mm-hmm. What's interesting as you were talking about that, I was just thinking about the difference of a female saying to you, oh, you call your handkerchief. Where it's like, they're not complimenting, they're not insulting, but in their tone and everything in their body language is like your hair looks shitty. Yes Yes. And they do on purpose, they feel shitting.

Exactly.

When a guy does that, you start to feel insecure. He doesn't find me attractive anymore. When a woman in your friend group does that, I'm speaking in real time now, so I don't think through this. It's almost like you get embarrassed that it's not just this one friend that made this comment. If you're embarrassed, everyone saw it. how you seek everyone thinks that.

That's the power of a narcissistic friend,

because what they're doing is,

if they say something, they've already maneuvered and arranged it with the rest of the people that you're going to believe them and not you. So no one's even going to question their comments or their observation. It's just going to be taken as like a gospel truth. Oh yes. So there is truth to that that the other people in the fan club or the harem might be starting to change their perception of you if this particular friend says something like that. So that's not in your head. Why, it's all over. I mean, they really are doing that. They're starting to mold and morph into seeing you and perceiving you the way that person wants them to, right? And that becomes, I think, one of the hard-distance things for a lot of women in girl groups, it's the poison ivy, right?

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