Narcissistic abuse FOG. What is it?

[Music] hi everyone this is Athena from Courage coaching thank you so much for stopping by today if you are new to my channel then please click on the Subscribe button in order to receive notifications for any new videos that I upload and if you are in need of onetoone coaching then I do have some availability at the moment so feel free to email me at courage is all you need gmail.com now in today's video I wanted to talk about a very important acronym known as fog which stands for fear obligation and guilt now the acronym fog was coined by Susan forward and Donna Frasier in their book emotional blackmail and it essentially describes the feelings that a person often has when they are in a close relationship with somebody who has a personality disorder in this case specifically NPD now when we break down these different emotions we will understand what happens when we are in a relationship with somebody who has a personality disorder and it's very important to remember that when we are involved in an intimate relationship with somebody who has MPD we are usually trauma bonded to this individual and fog fear obligation and guilt are those three emotional that keep us trauma bonded now if we explore fear well basically fear triggers a physical response in our body when we are confronted with something that we find scary or dangerous and it produces adrenaline in our body and our body goes into fight or flight mode so obviously when you are around a toxic person or you're in a relationship with a toxic person you do feel like you are in danger because you're constantly dealing with impossible sit situations with constant gaslighting with constant control with constant blaming and many more toxic behaviors now let's move on to obligation when we feel obligation this comes from an innate sense of community responsibility we are basically born with an instinctive sense of obligation to those around us and historically humans who actually isolated themselves from a community were in much greater danger of dying and historically humans who were very much isolated from the rest of the community didn't have a very good chance of surviving so having obligations towards others is just a part of life but when you are involved with a toxic individual this feeling of obligation is exploited and lastly we have the emotion of guilt which comes from uh the same root essentially as obligation most of us feel guilty when we have done something that disappoints or hurts others and our societies have evolved in such a way that it's not socially acceptable to deliberately hurt another person and generally those who do do something bad to hurt another are ostracized in society so feeling guilty is a very difficult emotion our instinctive gut reaction of guilt is activated when we refuse to help somebody and if you are involved with a narcissist in your family or you are married to one and you try and set a boundary with this person you will naturally feel really guilty but they will exploit that feeling and they will guilt trip you further and the more you say no and the more you set boundaries the more they will guilt trip you or manipulate you or give you the silent treatment until you give in and do as they please so in a relationship with a toxic person guilt is used as a weapon and toxic individuals will enjoy guilt tripping you in order to get what they need now generally when you have these feelings of fog you will feel a sense of hopelessness of helplessness and you will also feel an intense sense of dread because you will will be made to do and say things that you are not comfortable with and that are not part of your true nature of who you really are if you have been living in an environment with someone who is personality disordered who has MPD or BPD you will feel trauma bondage you will feel like there's no Escape because of the way that they have groomed you because of the way that they constantly guilt trip you because of the way that they constantly make you feel like a awful person for even daring to consider that you want to leave this relationship for even daring to consider setting boundaries in many ways you feel like a caged animal that just can't escape this relationship and you end up with something known as learned helplessness now what are some examples of what you may experience with a person that has MPD one example is in a marriage where a man tells his wife if you leave me I will kill myself so when your partner makes threats that they will end their life if you tell them that you're going to leave them well that is one way of guilt tripping you or making you feel obligated into staying into this relationship because you don't want to be responsible for them ending their life but this is just another manipulation this is another tactic to get you to stay to get you to remain trauma bonded another example could be a mother saying to Rich child well if you don't come to my birthday party then you obviously don't care about me so the natural result of this is that the child will feel guilty and then will end up going to the mother's birthday dinner even if they didn't want to now what are a couple of things you mustn't do when you are involved with a toxic individual firstly don't forget that it's a lot harder to really see what is going on when you are with this person because you are stuck in this fog so everything you see isn't everything that is actually there you have a distorted way of looking at things because of the way that you have been groomed and manipulated secondly don't rely purely on your gut feelings when you are involved with such an individual because in many ways you'll have a very negative outlook because of all the things that have been said to you and they will have broken you down and made you feel worthless so the best thing you can do is to find support outside of this relationship talk to other people tell them what you're experiencing and you will see that there is actually a different point of view that your feelings of despair of hopelessness are actually valid that you have been involved in a very very dysfunctional relationship and that you slowly need the support to get out of this relationship and start reclaiming your life again and being authentically yourself thirdly it's really important to not allow that person to isolate you so even when they try to control you you must find ways to speak to others you must continue doing the things that give you Joy that give you happiness continue to look after yourself as much as possible and just remember that this fog doesn't last forever and you can break away from it by leaving this toxic relationship you are none of the things that your abuser has told you that you are you are much much better now if you found this video useful then please give it a thumbs up and if you want to share your experience in the comments then please do so thank you very much for listening and for watching today and I will see you very very soon in my next video take care everyone bye-bye [Music]