On this episode of Narcissist Apocalypse, we talk with a survivor named Callie, and Callie was in a toxic friendship with a victim-playing narcissist in her Ph.D. program. It's a story of people-pleasing, mirroring, ghosting, breadcrumming and betrayal.

Welcome to Narcissist Apocalypse, everyone with me today. I have Callie. How are you?

I am great. How are you? I'm doing well. Thank you for asking. And I want to thank you for being here with us today.

You're going to share your story. This is a toxic friendship story, but it is also one that has to do with your school program. It was your PhD program for you. And an ultimate betrayal happened there that you didn't see coming,

especially when you don't know that these things or these types of people exist

and they show you a facade of who they are,

that you have no idea what's hiding behind that facade.

So I really want to thank you for being here with us today, Callie. And now,

without further ado, Callie, the floor is now yours. Yeah. So I grew up in the rural Midwest, had a very large extended family.

There were about eight of us.

I was the oldest child.

And so that, you know, especially in a large Midwestern family, the role of responsibility and people

pleasing often falls to the eldest child, and especially if the eldest child is assigned

female at birth. And so I had a lot of the, you know, responsibility of taking care of the family members, making sure that the house ran smoothly,

dishes were done, things of that nature. And it was really a fast track to learning that

the way you gain people's respect and acknowledgement, and in some ways, even even their love was by doing things for them

by you know I knew I would always get a compliment and you're a good you know you're a good

girl from my dad when I did the dishes and so it you know that's the type of lesson that builds up. And if you, you know, want love and

acknowledgement, do things for people. So you had this people pleasing mentality going on.

And you eventually leave the home. And so before you enter your PhD program, there's many years in between.

So tell us what your life was like in between.

So it was a little, it was a very interesting period of time. I didn't go to college right out of high school because

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