Welcome to Narcissist Apocalypse, everyone. I am Brandon Chadwick and today we will be doing a

debrief on the re-release of Jess's story with key takeaways and the fear, obligation, guilt, and shame

of Jess's story. And for those of you who have not listened to the full episode

yet, Jess grew up with substance abuse in her family. There was financial insecurity. There was

childhood sexual trauma. There was the witnessing of violence. There was bullying. There was body shame.

And before the relationship with the abuse of conman, who the main part of this

story was about, Jess had already gone through a painful marriage where substance abuse

became pretty destructive. The household was unsafe. She left. She did therapy. She worked on

herself. She thought she understood the patterns patterns better she thought she was ready to choose

differently and then she meets her abuser and he was the opposite of everything that she just escaped

and he seemed really good with her child and he seemed to want the same kind of life as her, and he told her that he did not

understand why men would cheat. And he started really positioning himself as someone who was

above the very things he was secretly doing. And this relationship moved quickly. He moved in.

She became pregnant, and for a while he gave her the picture that this is the family life that he wanted, that she wanted.

Then things really started to change.

He becomes distant.

He started to staying out later and later.

He started giving explanations that did not make any sense.

He created rules around what Jess could ask.

He framed her questions as control.

He compared her to his ex.

And then the evidence really started to pile up.

...