The Hidden Narcissist: Breaking Free | Dr. Valerie Sussman | Ep 068

➡️  "They're everywhere - the wolves in sheep's clothing." 

Dr. Valerie Sussman spent 20 years married to a covert narcissist before breaking free and becoming an expert on narcissistic abuse. In this powerful episode, she reveals the hidden signs of narcissistic personality disorder and the destructive four-stage cycle that keeps victims trapped: love bombing, devaluing, discarding, and hoovering.

After leaving her pediatric practice and toxic marriage at age 50, Dr. Sussman transformed her pain into purpose. Now she's helping others spot the red flags she missed - because the most dangerous narcissists aren't the obvious ones. They're the covert operators hiding behind a mask of charm.

➡️ Learn how to:
✓ Spot the early warning signs of a covert narcissist
✓ Understand the addictive cycle of narcissistic abuse
✓ Break free from the "hopium" that keeps you trapped
✓ Protect yourself and your children from narcissistic manipulation
✓ Heal through creative expression and reclaim your identity

Whether you're questioning your own relationship or supporting someone who might be involved with a narcissist, this episode provides crucial insights that could save years of heartache.

➡️  Chapters:
00:00 - Introduction: The Hidden Danger of Covert Narcissists
04:09 - Dr. Sussman's 20-Year Journey with a Covert Narcissist
05:48 - Why We Don't See the Signs Early On
09:08 - Understanding True Narcissism vs Common Misconceptions
16:23 - The Four Stages of Narcissistic Abuse
21:12 - Protecting Young People from Toxic Relationships
25:25 - Healing Through Art: Finding Yourself Again
27:46 - The Gray Rock Method: Setting Boundaries
29:30 - Final Thoughts: The Wolves in Sheep's Clothing

⭐️ Watch/Subscribe to Gurus and Game Changers on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@UCsRyuQWlLAYzM4IyJlF2IWQ 

📲 Connect with Dr. Valerie Sussman:
Unraveling Narcissistic Abuse and Reclaiming Your Joy
Join me, Valerie Sussman, survivor, thriver, physician, artist and writer as I guide you through the alphabet soup of narcissistic abuse. 

Website: https://www.valeriesussman.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valeriesussman_creative/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/valeriesussmancreative/
Substack: https://valeriesussman.substack.com/

#NarcissisticAbuse #RelationshipAdvice #MentalHealth #ToxicRelationships #Healing #Psychology #EmotionalAbuse

Transcript

00:01 - Mark (Host)
Stacey, how many narcissists do you think you've come across in your life? 

00:05 - Stacey (Host)
That's a dangerous question because I don't want people thinking that. 

00:10 - Mark (Host)
Well, there's my friend, so-and-so yeah, no. 

00:12 - Stacey (Host)
I definitely have rubbed elbows with a few. Let's just put it that way. You still have some in your life. Now, let's keep it vague. Not that I know of no my former business partner, but maybe you are, and I just don't know of no my former business partner, but maybe you are and I just don't know you. Maybe, no, I don't think I am, no, I don't think so I have a former business partner who everything that today's guest described nailed him to a T. Are you kidding? 

00:32
From the charisma to being well liked by people who don't know him. The hardware guy yeah. 

00:37 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, to the control All of that, sorry. 

00:40 - Stacey (Host)
I'm sorry you dealt with that, it was a lot. 

00:42 - Mark (Host)
It was a lot to deal with and it wasn't until narcissism, as she said, became part of the zeitgeist, like a phrase that's out there all the time, that I really had a chance to sit back and reflect. This goes back many years that I had a chance to reflect and say, my gosh, that dude was a narcissist. 

00:57 - Stacey (Host)
Right, and Valerie Sussman would say a lot of people don't actually realize that they're with a narcissist during the time that they're with the narcissist. 

01:05 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and you don't recognize them, right. 

01:08 - Stacey (Host)
Well, they're awesome. A lot of it is awesome. 

01:11 - Mark (Host)
Love bonding charisma. 

01:14 - Stacey (Host)
They normally have incredible personalities. And then you see this other side like a Dr Jekyll, mr Hyde type thing. 

01:21 - Mark (Host)
It keeps popping out. 

01:22 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
Yeah. 

01:23 - Mark (Host)
Right, and it's all about control. And to her point, it's this underlying sense of insecurity. Which boy does that ring true for? 

01:29 - Stacey (Host)
my former partner. 

01:30 - Mark (Host)
There's a whole lot here. So she was married to somebody for many years who was a narcissist, who abused her emotionally. I mean she's better now. 

01:39 - Stacey (Host)
She believes he had narcissistic personality disorder, which is different than just narcissism. 

01:43 - Mark (Host)
It's had narcissistic personality disorder, which is different than just narcissism Like the full end of the spectrum. 

01:46 - Stacey (Host)
But he was covert. 

01:48 - Mark (Host)
Right, and as most of them are, she said they're everywhere. 

01:51 - Stacey (Host)
Yeah, that's disconcerting. 

01:53 - Mark (Host)
Everywhere, they're everywhere. 

01:54 - Stacey (Host)
Everywhere, but there's a spectrum too, right, so there could be some people that are on the low end of the spectrum and then there could be tens out there that you've met and know and maybe love. Maybe it's kind of crazy, but Valerie has moved over to the other side of that now. She's super happy. She survived. She was a pediatrician and then switched over to now being an expert in narcissism, and she gives a lot of really amazing advice for those who are in narcissistic relationships and those who have dealt with narcissists. 

02:24 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, how to spot them, how to manage them, how to prevent your kids or give your kids a heads up, no matter their age, to prevent that from happening in their lives. There's a lot here. I love this episode. 

02:34 - Stacey (Host)
Yeah, it's good stuff, it's really good, so please enjoy. Valerie Sussman. Hi, I'm Stacey. 

02:41 - Mark (Host)
And I am Mark, and this is the Gurus and Game Changers podcast. Everybody welcome to the show. So if I ask you to think of a narcissist, you're probably going to come up with that. Look at me influencer, celebrity kind of vibe, right? Or maybe, if it's more close to home, it's somebody who makes everything about them. 

03:03
Toxic Right yeah, those people right, we know right, we know them. They're annoying, yes, but they're not necessarily dangerous. The narcissists we're going to talk about today with our expert, dr valerie sussman, are dangerous because these are the covert ones and, in her estimation, they're everywhere. These are the people you work with, these are the people you're friends with, this is the person maybe you're even sleeping beside and the abuse they give you is more chronic. But there's a way to spot it. If you could spot them, there's a way to manage it and neutralize them and move on if they're hurting you and you can heal. So let's have that conversation with somebody who's a foremost expert on narcissism the bad kind, oh is there a good? 

03:43 - Stacey (Host)
there's, yeah, the worst kind. Oh, is there a good kind? There's, yeah, the worst kind. None of it is None of it is really good, dr Valerie Sussman. 

03:49 - Mark (Host)
Valerie, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. 

03:52 - Stacey (Host)
Thank you, hi, valerie. So good to have you here. Just to kind of reel it back to the past, you had a dramatic life change at 50, right. You left your marriage and your pediatric practice. What finally made you realize? 

04:09 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
something had to change. Why did that happen? I was in a narcissistic marriage for 20 years, unbeknownst to me, because I was married to a covert narcissist, and they are the wolves in sheep's clothing After you know. 20 years of emotional abuse, emotional turmoil, a roller coaster relationship. My ex moved out four times and came back, which is, believe it or not, not uncommon in these kinds of relationships. The fourth time I thought to myself it had been going on for six years. At that point, the in and out part and I had three sons. I had watched my ex's father do this to his wife. I was raising three sons at the time and I thought, oh my gosh, I am teaching and showing my sons that this is OK and they will take it to the next generation and put their future wives through what I have gone through. That was really the clincher, oh. 

05:06 - Stacey (Host)
I'm glad you did that for them, and then you became an expert on narcissism, right. 

05:12 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
There's a common thing that happens with survivors of narcissistic abuse, and it's sort of a joke that we essentially get honorary PhDs in narcissism because we're so desperate for answers and so desperate to figure out what happened, why it happened, why me? What did I do wrong? Was it me? What do I need to learn from this? And we do, we become experts, and I think that, combined with my background in medicine, kind of took me down that path. 

05:41 - Stacey (Host)
What were some of the first signs that made you realize that you were dealing with someone with a narcissistic personality disorder? 

05:48 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
Here's the thing Like a lot of people, I did not realize it while I was in the relationship, and this is really scarily common. 

05:56
So you would think that you'd start seeing the signs and reading the clues and figuring it out. I didn't figure it out, like a lot of survivors, until afterwards, when you start sort of doing the postmortem, so to speak. And sadly, we had gone to two different over in the course of 20 years, two different marriage counselors. Neither one picked up on the fact that my ex was a narcissist and that what I was going through was narcissistic abuse. They can be that good, especially in couples counseling, and I think what happened for me abuse they can be that good, especially in couples counseling, and I think what happened for me crazily enough, at that time I didn't even realize there was such a thing called emotional abuse, but I call it the Google test. If you're online asking Google, what does it mean when my partner does this, or is it normal for my partner to do this, or why is he or she doing this? That's kind of a red flag. What are the signs, though? 

06:42 - Mark (Host)
for the person who's trying to determine if he or she doing this, that's kind of a red flag. What are the signs, though, for the person who's trying to determine if he or she is in that same relationship? 

06:49 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
I would say the number one sign for anybody is the sense that something's not right. It's a sense of unease where the pieces aren't fitting together. You're missing something. You just don't know what it is. And I think that's the first sign for everybody, because most of us don't realize our partner is a narcissist. Nobody, most people don't intentionally marry a narcissist, unless you're after money, fame or something else. But for me it was a sense that something's not right, something's not adding up. 

07:15
You know, and like most narcissistic relationships, mine started out with love bombing. It's the honeymoon period, idealization stage, when, gosh, you know you're, you're walking on sunshine, everything's wonderful and you can do no wrong and this person loves and adores you and it's mutual and you feel like you've hit the jackpot. And then at some point, pedestals pulled out from under you, the rug is pulled out from under you and you're saying what is going on? And again it's that sense of something's not right. And in my situation, my ex started criticizing me, nitpicking stupid things why do you always wear sweatpants around the house? Why aren't you wearing makeup when you drive the kids to school? Silly sorts of things. 

07:57
So, the nitpicking, the criticizing, the indifference, the neglect. That was the first sign for me. 

08:05 - Mark (Host)
Is that a sign of narcissism or just? 

08:08 - Stacey (Host)
Being a dick, I was trying to think of a better way to say it but that's the best way to say it. 

08:14 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
It is a sign of narcissism. And in a normal relationship you go from. You know we all have a honeymoon blissful period in the beginning and then it eases into something deeper and more meaningful and you get to know each other and it becomes more intimate. You share vulnerabilities and those sorts of things. It doesn't devolve into a sense of what is wrong with me, do I? I actually said to my ex at one point do you not like me anymore? That's not and that is narcissists. Do that. And in a healthy relationship, yeah, we have times when we're just, oh God, my partner's driving me crazy and you know I wish he or she would do this or not do that. But it's not a barrage of criticism and a sense of you're not saying does this person really love me? 

09:03 - Stacey (Host)
Right, you're questioning it. Can you tell us your definition of narcissism, if you don't mind? 

09:08 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
And, as Mark alluded to earlier, it's not as simple as people think. It's not always the show-offy braggarts, the politicians, the movie stars, the celebrities. So the way I think about narcissism is I think about a narcissist as a self-absorbed, self-important person who has a constellation of personality traits and engages in certain manipulative behaviors with the intent of proving to themselves and to the world that they are special. We think of narcissists as these, you know, grandiose, flamboyant people who seem on top of the world and they are the best at what they do, but underneath that is a real shame and a sense of inadequacy, a very, very fragile ego. And so what they do is they engage in a certain tactics to make sure that they are getting what's called narcissistic supply. 

10:05
And what narcissistic supply is? It's their drug of choice. They need it. It's the attention, the admiration, the praise, the prestige, the recognition on the one hand, but the other piece and this goes back to what Mark, what you were saying in the beginning there are the textbook definitions of abuse, essentially those desires. What they do is is they find people who will support their, you know, inflated ego and build them up and let them hide behind that facade of amazingness. 

10:42 - Stacey (Host)
But some are covert, some you don't know like are. Some are more noticeable than others. 

10:46 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
Nobody really knows the true prevalence of narcissism because so many fly under the radar. So the covert narcissist and my ex was one they're the good guys, the nice gals, the helpful neighbor, the wonderful doctor, the rabbi, the priest, whomever. They're not the ones who are out there saying, look at me, look at me, or you know, abusing their power overtly. Anyway, they seem nice in the beginning and they're the snakes in the grass, they're the wolves in sheep's clothing and they can sell you. And they do. They're good at it. 

11:20 - Stacey (Host)
So what would you tell someone who realizes they're in a narcissistic relationship? 

11:25 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
If they know that their partner is a narcissist. 

11:27
And I would say this you may or may not know your partner is a narcissist, because let me just backtrack a second and I'm a doctor, so I'm all about diagnoses and all this. However, when it comes to narcissism, that's not necessarily the case. And the reason is because to get a formal diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder, which is the psychiatric manual, the DSM-5, you actually have to be diagnosed by a mental health professional. And you can probably guess how many narcissists actually go to a mental health professional saying I need help, there's something wrong with me. They don't think anything's wrong with them. And even in the scope of a relationship if you're in couples counseling say, like in my case very often the therapist doesn't pick up on the fact that one partner is a narcissist. So having that formal label doesn't matter. And I think what I would tell somebody who is pretty sure their partner is a narcissist because if they're saying that it's not just the run of the mill, oh, you're being a narcissist, stop being a narcissist, which we hear all the time they've probably done some reading and done some research and are going oh my god, yes, but check, check, checks the box, yep. So I think you have to be realistic. If you're in that relationship, I think you have to really look at the relationship itself and ask yourself what am I getting out of this relationship? What is keeping me here, realizing that narcissists have a very limited capacity for change? Yeah, can they move the needle a little bit? And let you know the extreme ones? Probably not. But if they're in that middle spectrum, can the needle move a little bit with some intervention? And if they're wanting to, yeah, maybe, but more often than not they get worse as they get older and as relationships. You know, abuse does tend to escalate in most relationships, as we know. So I think you really need to be realistic about what you're dealing with and what the hopes are for the relationship. 

13:22
The thing that keeps a lot of people in narcissistic relationships is something they call hopium, and that's a term, and my book is all about the terms and terminology of narcissism, and hopium is essentially just what it sounds like. It's. It's, you know, it's great, it's addictive hope and it's what we cling to and it's what keeps us hooked into these relationships. And if you are banking and I was banking on my partner's potential and if you're banking on your partner getting better, or you can love them enough to change them or you know, once they see the light, they're going to get it. Or if I say it enough times or in enough different ways, it's going to click. It doesn't. So if you are hooked on hopium, as I say, you need to be really realistic about what the possibilities are for this relationship and what is the likelihood that it's actually going to deteriorate and not improve. 

14:19 - Stacey (Host)
I think I've heard some experts say some people stay in narcissistic relationships because they've done so much work. Sometimes these people can be very passionate and fun and, you know, charismatic, and then they work on the bad parts, thinking okay, the next person that walks into this person's life is going to get all my hard work. I've worked so hard on it, right? So I think some people just try and stick around to try and see if that person will absolutely change, which won't happen, right? 

14:51 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
Stacey, you nailed it, because one of the things that two things that resonate with what you just said for me, the sunk cost fallacy, right. Well, I've put all this energy into this relationship, whether it's a narcissistic relationship or not. You know, I've put all this time and energy in. I'm not going to walk away from this investment now. So there's that piece which you kind of alluded to. There is definitely the piece of this person's going to move on and the next person is going to get the good. You know, dr Jekyll not the Mr Hyde that I got. We're going to get Dr Jekyll In the course of a narcissistic relationship. 

15:30
They're experts at blame shifting. They do not do accountability, so you end up taking. You know they project everything onto you. So you think you know it's me, I'm the. You know Taylor Swift, it's me, I'm the pro hi, it's me, I'm the problem. Right, you make the assumption that they're going to leave this relationship and now that you're not in the relationship, they're, all that wonderful potential that you saw in the beginning is going to be materialized and that person's, they're going to get the good stuff. 

15:59 - Stacey (Host)
Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying. 

16:01 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, so let me take you back to something you said earlier. You talked about love bombing being stage one, so so, so to speak. So there's a cycle here, right, and I know you have other things like moving the goalposts and some other things. Is it linear, or are there just components like gaslighting, and I don't know what hoovering is? I'd love you to explain that. 

16:23 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
Okay, well, you just gave me a perfect segue, because hoovering is the fourth step in a narcissistic relationship. Typically, the cycle is linear. You know, I think you can think of it in the same way as grief, in a sense that it's linear, but it's also cyclical and can bounce around. Sure, the typical narcissistic relationship starts with love bombing, which, like we talked about, and that is where you know you're. You're in heaven, everything's wonderful. 

16:51 - Stacey (Host)
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17:12 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
The second stage is devaluing, and that is where the nitpicking, the finding fault, the criticizing, the neglect that comes in. In stage two, Narcissists will, even in the devaluing stage, they will do what they call intermittent reinforcement, which is they will sprinkle in love bombing and times of attention and affection breadcrumbing, they call it. So you sort of think, okay, if I hang in here, even though he's not treating me really well right now, this is just a phase and I know we're going to get back to what it really was and is and could be, and that's the love bombing, which is all a fantasy and it's all an illusion. Then the third stage is what they call the discard. This is where the narcissist either I mean, it's just what it sounds like they either leave you for another, they may neglect you, they may completely ignore you and all of their focus goes into something or somebody else. 

18:15
And then the fourth step, which doesn't happen all the time, but in most it does, and that's hoovering. And that is where it is based on the Hoover vacuum. Now it is Dyson, I guess, but but back in the the days it was super. And that's where they suck you back in. And how do they suck you back in. Yeah, Love bombing. 

18:35 - Mark (Host)
Love bombing, I knew it. So one big cycle, yeah, that's crazy. So can you, if you recognize that, I mean probably some, let's say, women recognize that, or men recognize that their spouses are doing that, but it's that love bombing, right, it gets you back in. Every time I didn't mean oh, you're beautiful, you're, you're so sorry fast. I was being thoughtless nature is we. 

19:01 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
We believe what we want to believe and we all tell ourselves stories. And if you believe your partner is the person they initially presented themselves to be, that's the story we want to believe, we want to buy into that. We all want love and the person they present themselves to be in the beginning is so amazing. Yeah, that we want that. And you know, I remember before I realized my ex was a narcissist and I was seeing a therapist on my own and I remember her and she had not met him. So I don't fault her for not recognizing the narcissism piece. But at one point she said you know, valerie, you can't build a relationship on potential. And that really struck a chord for me, because that's what we do in narcissistic relationships. 

19:52 - Stacey (Host)
I'm sure there's someone listening right now who is a narcissist but has no idea Can we give them any like hints as to whether or not self-help, whether or not or maybe one of us are do we know? 

20:06 - Mark (Host)
I don't think so let's figure it out. 

20:09 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
If you're not. Here's the thing. Narcissism exists on a spectrum. Do we all have narcissistic traits? Absolutely. Do we all at times act narcissistically? Of course we do. You know, when times are going tough, when times are going really well, it's my wedding, I'm the star of the show, I'm sick, you should take care of me. Whatever, we all act narcissistically. And it's a spectrum. And on one end of the spectrum you've got the over givers and the people who are so willing to be subservient and subjugated. On one end, the extreme codependence, let's say. And then on the other end you've got the malignant narcissist boarding on sociopathy. Who don't? It's all about them all the time. And then most of us fall, don't? 

21:00 - Mark (Host)
it's all about them all the time, and then most of us fall somewhere in the middle. What's your words for the younger set, let's say teenager early twenties? They're finding their partner. How do they stay out of these toxic relationships? 

21:12 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
In the ideal world they would stay out of them, but you and I know that that's may or may not happen, because when we're young we're figuring it all out and we don't have experience. Number one is to go slowly in relationships. Narcissists are known to pressure their partners whatever way, whether you know, obviously sexually pressure to give up activities you enjoy or to not spend time with certain friends or to dress a certain way. So I think going slowly is always a good thing. And then I think again. I think so much of it with these relationships, with any toxic relationship, whether it's a narcissist or not. 

21:56
It comes down to how is this relationship making me feel A relationship should be a port in the storm, right? If you're in a relationship that feels like a storm, something's off. Now that partner may not be a narcissist, but something's off If you are finding yourself. You know making yourself small or giving up things you love and I'm speaking for young people, because this is common especially with young people you know making yourself small or giving up things you love and I'm speaking for young people, because this is common especially with young people you know you're giving up things that you enjoy, or friendships, or changing things about yourself that weren't a problem for you previously. You feel like you're walking on eggshells and this is true of narcissistic relationships in general like you're having to placate your partner or like nothing you do is good enough. In any relationship, and in young relationships, you will see all of those things Love bombing. 

22:47 - Stacey (Host)
Everybody, I think, enjoys that. It's almost a narcissist anesthetic, right they? They get you in that gooey place. And is there? Are there ways to understand when it's happening? Is there some sort of a flag that you can say oh, this is love bombing, I know it. 

23:08 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
Yes and no because, as you said, most of us love that feeling. Yeah, it's nice. Who doesn't want to be adored, attended to and have somebody who's you know really attuned to you and whatnot? So I think that the differential with love bombing in a healthy, normal honeymoon idealization period which we all do have is the speed. It goes really fast. They want to hook you and hook you early. That feeling of pressure feels too good to be true. But then there's also a God. This is moving awfully quickly and maybe a sense of whoa whoa, maybe too much, too soon, which is sort of the hallmark of love bombing and you may not realize it while you're in the love bombing period. Honeymoon periods or idealization periods in a healthy relationship do ease into greater depth. If you then go find yourself in the devaluation period, then you can kind of look back and go oh, that was love bombing. But it's hard to recognize initially what's the concept around moving the goalposts. 

24:16
Moving the goalposts is one of the tricks and tactics narcissists use to keep you hooked on hope. It's part of what they call future faking, which is another term. And it's well, if things are going well, I will marry you, we'll move in together, these sort of dangling carrots, so to speak. If you perform well enough, you will get this reward and you're never going to meet that goal because the goalposts keep moving, so you're constantly off balance. It's a control. You are constantly striving to perform and do more and do better. You are constantly striving to perform and do more and do better, and it's one of the ways the narcissist just dangles the carrots and says, keep trying, keep trying. 

25:04 - Stacey (Host)
So you've actually healed yourself from this relationship. One of the ways you did that is through art. You have some of your projects behind you. I can see them right now, so tell me about that. How did that help you? 

25:25 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
What happens in a narcissistic relationship is we subjugate our feelings and everything becomes about the narcissist and we lose touch with who we are. Honestly, I don't know what I feel, I don't know who I am, I don't know what matters to me. All of those things get lost in a narcissistic relationship. One of the great things lost in a narcissistic relationship, one of the great things about art I actually fell into it organically. I was not saying I'm going to heal through art. I knew nothing about art therapy. That was not part of my medical training at all. 

25:47
I used to do a lot of scrapbooking and I started saying I'm going to make myself like a little scrapbook. That's about me. It was a three-dimensional scrapbook. It was a three-dimensional scrapbook. It was actually a little curio box, which was really fun, and each of the sections it was something on what do I value, what's important to me, what have I accomplished, what would I like to accomplish, those sorts of things. It was my way of finding my way back to myself, which is really, really, really important if you've been in a narcissistic relationship. Well, these pieces are all for my book, which is decoding narcissism, which is essentially an A to Z guide to everything. Narcissism, including all those terms that I've been throwing out. I don't. You can see it yes so every post. 

26:30
Yeah, yeah, okay, you got the goal post. So this is the groundhog, because being in I was talking about the repeating cycle, so being in a narcissistic relationship is like living groundhog day and you can see the gas lights on top amazing. 

26:43 - Mark (Host)
It's like everything captured in one here it's. 

26:46 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
It's all symbolic. The gray rock is for symbolizes, the term gray rock, which is one of the um techniques that's recommended if you have to deal with the narcissist um, you go gray rock, and what that means is you because narcissists want to get a rise out of you. They want to get a reaction, they want to trigger you, they want to show they still have that power over you. And you go gray rock. What? What? Going gray rock is just like it sounds. You don't engage. It's just the facts, ma'am, if you have to communicate, say you work with somebody or you're co-parenting, you may not be able to go no contact. You go grayrock and you just become really boring and uninteresting and they decide they're going to get their narcissistic supply elsewhere. So that's what all that part is. 

27:34 - Mark (Host)
That was just one letter. 

27:36 - Stacey (Host)
I love that. I actually have heard that term before. Can't wait to see that that term before. And I think what do you tell the people that just don't want a gray rock? Because I imagine that's frustrating when all of a sudden you have to be unresponsive and they're being abusive. 

27:51 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
It's really, really hard. No-transcript again. 

28:25 - Stacey (Host)
It's so hard being your higher self, isn't it? I know that for a fact. Oh my gosh Well this is wonderful. What's next for you, Valerie? What's on your docket? More books. 

28:38 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
This is wonderful what's next for you, valerie? What's what's on your docket? More books, more books, yeah, yeah, curious minds and creative minds never sleep. This book I'm hoping to put out later this year. I'm working on an, I'm working on two more books on this topic and then I'm going to move on. I'm working on a book now that has to do with recognizing the red flags in a narcissistic relationship, so that's a more traditional type book, but it also has my crazy art in it, maybe a memoir type, like a visual memoir, also with my art. I'm gearing more towards the art than writing. I volunteer as a mentor to ex-foster youth, so that's my community work that I do. 

29:16 - Stacey (Host)
Wonderful. 

29:17 - Mark (Host)
One quick final question Does your former husband recognize? And accept or own the as in your words that you suffered the ravages of narcissistic abuse. No. 

29:30 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
No, narcissists are perennial victims. I've not talked to him about it. I have no idea if he knows what I'm doing, I don't care. Interesting. This is not a revenge project. It's not a vengeance project. I hope he doesn't hear about it. Would he own that? No, absolutely not. In his world, everybody thinks he's great. 

29:51 - Stacey (Host)
Well, this has been amazing. I've learned so much yeah this is great. 

29:55 - Mark (Host)
Thank you so much for coming on the show. We do appreciate it. Thank you, it's been very insightful. 

29:59 - Valerie Sussman (Guest)
I hope it helps some people who are wanting more information or questioning or, um, I think it's a very complicated topic and very complex, and I think it. I think the topic of covert narcissism is coming more to the forefront and I think I think it's something people need to be aware of, because they really are the snakes in the grass and they are all around us and they fool us. 

30:23 - Mark (Host)
Yeah, it's an important conversation because it's something that we all hear a lot about and know very little about. 

30:30 - Stacey (Host)
It's been awesome. You have a wonderful day and we will talk to you soon. 

30:35 - Mark (Host)
And thank you guys for watching as always. 

30:41 - Stacey (Host)
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