Welcome to unapologetic parenting. The podcast dedicated to candidly and unapologetically discussing high conflict co parenting blended families in the family court system. We take on the topics most people don't want to talk about, and offer solutions and support to help you be a better parent, better spouse and your blended family and happier human being. Now, without further ado, let's get right to it.

Welcome to unapologetic parenting. In today's episode, we are talking about not wasting our lives on people who believe their own delusions and lies. When we deal with narcissistic exes. When we deal with narcissistic co parents, one of the things we often see is that they just they believe their delusions, they come up with false allegations, they come up with alternative realities. They just make stuff up. And they seem to believe it. And so the question then becomes, do they really believe their delusions? Do they really believe their lies? Or are they just pretending? And my first response would to that would be? Yes, they, they pretend they lie. They believe their lies. They're deluded. They believe their delusions and they pretend to believe their delusions. And then my second response, of course, is, who cares? Who cares what their motive is, whether they're doing it intentionally, or it's part of their disorder, the fact remains, the behavior is the same. And that is how they act. That is what they do. And the question then becomes, what do we do with that? And my first bit of advice, and probably my last bit of advice as well is Don't waste your life, arguing with somebody who believes their own delusions and lies. Don't waste your life, on that, arguing with such a person will get you nowhere, except feeling discouraged. feeling crazy yourself. Make you feel like you're just chasing your tail and constantly having to what defend yourself against ghosts, defend yourself against things that don't exist. One of the hardest things to do is disprove non reality. And especially when the other person isn't interested in the facts they aren't interested in what evidence you come forward with. They don't care how good your arguments are. They don't care how much proof you can put forward, they are going to believe what they will believe. Regardless of what you say, they are not interested in being bothered by the facts. They are only interested in their own version of reality, no matter how delusional no matter how false that may be. So a lot of us have experienced this directly.

We have tried numerous times to argue facts and reasonability only to find that the narcissistic parent just digs themselves deeper and deeper into delusional accusations and denials. A lot of times, it seems like the more we argue back, and the more we argue facts, and the more we try to, you know, contextualize reality around their delusions, it just seems to give them more things to screw with. It seems to give them more things to twist. And then they try to poke holes in our reality, to somehow give credibility to their delusions. Oh, well, you said this, and this and this? Well, look, there are these chunks of time that aren't accounted for, oh, it could have happened here, it could have happened there. And they'll they'll just take advantage of it. And they will just twist it around and try to use it to validate their delusions. So why did they do this? Well, all the usual suspects, attention, control, manipulation, avoidance of accountability, the list goes on. These are all the reasons why they do such things. And they'll throw out you know, false allegations, they'll fall out or throw out, you know, just blanket statements of things that never even existed in order to mislead the court in order to mislead others in order to manipulate others into giving them what they want in order to tear you down or harass you or just make you feel crazy. These are all the reasons why they do that. So then the big question is, what do we do? When we know that that is how they behave when we know that that is the pattern that we can expect from them? That's what we have seen for for some of us years and years and years. What do we do? Well, we decide to not waste our breath trying to reason with the unreasonable. We decided to not waste our time and energy trying to change them. We're not going to waste our lives trying to

persuade them, or convince them that their delusion is actual delusion? Do we really expect that there's anything we can say to them that they will automatically just come back with? Oh, you know, you're right. I made that up. Those were false allegations. You're right. I'm imagining things. You're right, that was never said, no, they never do that. All that they want us to do is to continue pouring our time and energy out on them. Because that's part of their game. It's just another way for us to continue thinking about them, talking about them, pouring out our life, because of them, once we see how the game is played, and once we realize that there is no way for us to do anything, but essentially lose, because they're just going to continue being delusional, they're going to continue lying. And when we realize that they're just going to continue using our own words and facts and arguments against us to further their delusions, that's when we realize that we can step back and be free from it, we can step back and say, You know what, we're just not going to play that game. We're just not going to argue they can come forward with their accusation or this or that. And we'll make note of it instead of the side but re engaging them arguing with them. Giving them any sort of feeding response does nothing except to waste our life and waste our time. So once you see the game, give yourself permission to step away from it. Once you see and realize that that is the game that is being played and it's not a game that you can really win. The way that you can take your control back and take your power back is to simply say, I am not going to play that game at all.