Stop Absorbing Other People’s Chaos

The Jefferson Fisher Podcast

In this episode, Jefferson Fisher provides actionable communication strategies for navigating high-conflict relationships and setting health

Key takeaways

• To avoid being 'sucked into' chaos, visualize the situation from a distance and affirm the other person's feelings without attempting to solve their problems.
• When dealing with covert narcissism, focus on setting firm boundaries against verbal abuse rather than searching for a specific magic phrase.

Main topics

• Setting boundaries with chaotic individuals
• Communicating with covert narcissists

Notable quotes

You will never regret saying the kind thing.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a practical guide for maintaining emotional inte

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:00) I had a question about how to communicate and set boundaries with people who are very chaotic. Due to having very high empathy, it's easy for me to get sucked into the chaos. And I also just want to understand how I can do better communicating with them when they're telling me about all these bad choices, decisions, just more information on that. Thank you. Speaker 2 (0:21) Awesome question. Speaker 2 (0:24) Two things I love that you said. One, you feel that chaotic storm. Second of all, you get sucked in. Those words are clues to me, includes anybody listening, that it's like quicksand. It's like a vortex that all of a sudden you see it, and before you know it, you're caught in its orbit, and you're getting sucked into. the black hole, right? Whenever you are around somebody who's chaotic, here's what I want you to do. Number one, I want you to visualize it from afar. It's going to be probably very close to you. Maybe that conversation's happening right in front of you, but I need you to visualize it as if you're seeing the storm from afar. You're not part of it. You're observing it. You're not absorbed in it. You're seeing it. So you have to distinguish, separate yourself from what's happening to them versus where you stand, where you are. So do not make that part of you. Number two, what I want you to see is that you can still be part of their life without feeling like you are now, like you said, frazzled. You're now getting all kind of sucked into it. So what I'm saying is you can still show love. You can still say all these things. things that you want to say, but I'm going to tweak them in a way that's not going to get you to feel, and that's the key word, feel their feelings for them. It is not your responsibility to resolve their feelings. Number three, what you're hearing when somebody is venting, when somebody is complaining, I need you to simply affirm the feeling that they have and put down the feeling of having to be their solution. You are not their solution to every problem. You are not the person who has every right answer. I know you want to be. And if you're somebody who happens to be maybe more people-pleasing, maybe you're somebody who has a very caretaker mentality, it's not your responsibility to go start fixing it for them. So how do we stop that? Use words of affirmation. That means when somebody is telling you about that chaotic energy, that complaint, that problem, I want you to say things like, That must be hard. I imagine that would. You know, if I were in your shoes, I'd feel that same way. I would imagine it feels that way. Of course you'd feel that way. Yeah, I can see that's really difficult. I hear that. Use sense language. In other words, say, I hear that. I feel that. I see that. What you're doing is affirming the feeling and still keeping that storm separate from you of saying, hey, these are yours. I am affirming and acknowledging that you are feeling them. That does not mean when somebody gives a complaint, you go, well, what if you did this? Or you know what you should do? Or you know what, I'll go out of your way to start fixing and solving all the things for them. Did they ask you to do that? Or are you just taking it on as a caretaker mentality to say, I'm going to start doing all these things for you, and you go out of your way, and what are they doing? They're just continuing to... add more chaos and add more people into their storm and into their vortex. Okay, so one, we're going to recognize the distinguish, the difference, the separation between you and their storm. Number two, we're going to understand that we can use words of affirmation that are going to resolve that feeling inside of you. And then three, what I want you to do is be able to say, hey, I'm not going to feel your feelings for you. It's not my job to make a solution. I can still be there and have empathy and love on you, but it's not my job to feel your feelings for you or fix them. Speaker 3 (4:04) The topic I would love to request is how to communicate with a covert narcissist. Specifically, I'm in a relationship and I have been for 10 years and I have realized that my partner has these tendencies and patterns of a covert narcissist. I no longer know how to continue in a relationship and not go through these consistent cycles and patterns. I've tried the gray rock method. I definitely have tried that. And I have tried just to not engage completely and walk away. However, it seems to escalate no matter what I do. Any advice on this topic and how to communicate? without losing yourself would be wonderful. Thank you so much. I appreciate you and your show. Speaker 2 (5:02) The overt narcissism aspect is that you can tell when somebody is trying to have a lot of praise, a lot of ego, they are very charming, and lack of empathy, right? You can spot that. What you're saying is this seems to be somebody who's more covert narcissism, meaning everything's under the radar. It's not easily noticeable. They don't have all the charm and the praise that you'd see from other types. I want to be really careful of this and just strip it down and say, okay, let's just talk about somebody who's difficult to communicate with. You've already tried the wet blanket. stuff of using very neutral words. It sounds like you've also tried Gray Rock Method. These are all methods that work for some, don't work for others. There's a part of me that goes, okay, well, has there been any therapeutic involvement? Has there been counseling? Have we tried testing for different diagnoses? A lot of different things, I would say, clinically. that are options out there for you. And I don't know whether you've tried that or not. What I would encourage is that if there are just communication attacks on you, if he is using language that is attacking, then you set boundaries and you use boundaries that say, I do not allow people to communicate with me like that. I do not allow disrespect. I do not permit somebody to be verbally abusive to me. That is not something that is... That is allowed, right? If you are able to put these boundaries in place and your consequence is, if this continues, I'm out of the relationship, then it is time for you to be out of that relationship. This type of displaying personality, what you call covert narcissism, is not something that's going to change. It's something that's been ingrained. It's been something that's been learned. It's been something that has been part of the script of... in the story of their life. So if you're having communication attacks, put boundaries. If you find that short neutral phrases tend to work sometimes, use those. But what I'm telling you is there's not some kind of catch-all. There's no words I could give you that's going to say, hey, all of a sudden this is going to have somebody who's displaying covert narcissism. Narcissism. And all of a sudden, it's going to suddenly go away. What I'm telling you is go back to the fundamentals and the basics. And are you staying true to your boundaries? Do you have boundaries? Are you using them more than just going gray rock? Or what somebody might say is, I'm just, I'm keeping my distance from them. That's no way to have a relationship. There has to be a conversation about this to where you're not just. running yourself ragged about it. Are you keeping up with your boundaries would be the question that I have to challenge you with. Otherwise, get therapeutic involvement and be okay with the consequence of needing to walk away. Before we keep going, I want to take a moment to tell you about gusto. When you run a small business, you wear a lot of hats. You are not only trying to serve the business, make money, figure out how you're going to hire, fire, what your business even is. There's also this thing called payroll. And payroll can be extremely... daunting and intimidating because there's a lot of things you don't know if you're