Welcome to Narcissist Apocalypse, everyone. I am Brandon Chadwick, and today we are going to be doing a debrief on Portia's story and a content warning for this story for this debrief as it includes discussion of covert incest, sexualized boundary violations,

and physical abuse. And if you have not listened to Portia's full episode yet, I do recommend

going back and doing that first. But if you don't do that, here is a summary of Portia's story.

So Portia was the youngest of three. Her older

sibling carried more of the scapegoat role, and her middle sibling earned their father's

approval through sports. And then there was Portia, who often flew completely under the radar.

So when she went to her friend's house, which was a lot,

she described being there more than at her own home. She talked about her parents not really

tracking where she was. She talked about being left places, having to call from a pay phone

to remind someone to come and get her. And Portia hid in her books. She practiced her

instruments and she joined activities, but she made herself small and she kept herself busy.

And from the outside, it probably looked like a pretty self-sufficient kid, but she was not

self-sufficient. She was just a child who had learned

that needing people tended not to lead anywhere good at all. And while this was happening,

there was body shaming, physical abuse, academic pressure, emotional enmeshment with her mother,

and sexualized comments and banry violations from her father

that left Portia feeling watched, exposed, and very uncomfortable, deeply uncomfortable.

So when we talk about the lost child, we are not talking about a kid who just happened to be introverted.

We are talking about a child here, Portia,

who learned that disappearing was one of her better options.

So now we are going to discuss the big key themes and takeaways from Porsche's story.

And the first one is when neglect gets called independence. And one of the things that really

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