Welcome to understanding today's narcissists, where we will explore how you can better relate and manage the narcissist in your life.

I am your host, psychotherapist and author Christine Hammond.

Back in 1979, Lenore Walker concept called the cycle of abuse.

And if you can imagine for a second, a circle where at the top, we'll just use a clock,

for example, where number 12 is the first start of it. And then we have three, six, and nine,

and then back around to 12 again. The cycle of abuse that they talked about was tension building,

then acting out, reconciliation and honeymoon, calm, and then back again to tension building. So that's the

cycle of abuse that Lenore Walker came up with. When we're talking about narcissists, however,

the cycle of abuse is just slightly different. And so I want to talk about that because this is

the pattern that I have seen over and over again in counseling situations and with a lot of my clients who deal with narcissists.

And one of the big reasons why I want really this to become a clear understanding is because there is a switchback that occurs when a narcissist is in the middle of their abusive cycle.

And if you're not paying attention to it, you wind up getting hurt even more, not because

of the verbal assaults, but you wind up getting hurt more because you wind up taking

responsibility for things that weren't your responsibility.

And that's not a very healthy place to be.

At some point in time, even though a narcissist does do some kind of abusive behavior,

they have to be held accountable for their behavior.

But that's never going to happen as long as people constantly take responsibility,

even for little itty-bitty pieces and parts of what the narcissist is claiming.

So let me start again, and again,

imagine a clock, and so we're going to start at 12, at 12 o'clock. The very first thing that a narcissist

feels is threatened. And then after that at 3 o'clock, they will abuse others. At 6 o'clock,

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