250. Winning the Battle: Essential Tactics for Negotiating with Narcissistic Individuals feat. Rebecca Zung

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This is happiness solved with America's happiness. Coach Sandee Sgarlata.

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Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy you're here. I'm Sandee Sgarlata. I was born in Virginia Beach and raised in the Baltimore Annapolis area and had very humble and tragic beginnings. And as a result, my life was a hot mess.

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Thankfully, 33 years ago, I got my act together. And since that time, I have dedicated my life to serving others and raising awareness that no matter what you've been through, you can choose happiness and live the life of your dreams. Happiness Solved is dedicated to giving you content that is empowering, motivational, inspirational, and, of course, a dose of happiness. It's my way to give back to the world and share other people's stories. This thing called life can be challenging, and my guests share their amazing stories, wisdom, and life lessons that demonstrate anyone can choose happiness.

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You see, happiness is a choice, and the choice is yours. Today's episode is amazing and I am so grateful for you. Thank you for listening and don't forget to leave a review and follow me on social media at coach. Sandee Sgarlata. Enjoy the show.

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Rebecca Zung, such a pleasure to be seeing you again. I met you in Los Angeles. Didn't even realize you grew up in my backyard. I know. We were just talking.

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It's so funny because we couldn't even get going with recording because we were chatting so much. I grew up right over there where you are. It's my stomping grounds over there. I know. I love it.

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So, for the audience, Rebecca Zung, you are like one of the top 1% attorneys in the nation. That's incredible. And you're globally recognized narcissism negotiation expert and you've had over 40 million views on YouTube. I'm like starstruck right now. Right.

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It's all happened well, the YouTube thing happened so quickly. And I don't even practice law anymore now because really, this is all I do now, is speak on this, talk about that. I love to empower people through learning how to stand in their authentic power and learn how to create new beginnings, new futures, and become a voice for the voiceless. I mean, really, this is what I do now, full time. I love it.

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It's so interesting because and I think I took a picture of you. I interviewed a friend of yours a year ago. I had to go back and find go to my spreadsheet. When did I interview him? It was November 30, and he was talking about you on my podcast.

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I love Bret so much. He's actually on the board of my brand new foundation that I started with Lindsay Snyder Ellingson, who's the founder well, the owner of Inn Out. She's the daughter of founders, but yes, so he's one of my favorite people on the planet. Well, it was just so funny because I love how the universe just lines up because I met you in Los angeles. The name was familiar, but I couldn't understand why.

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Well, the day that you scheduled this interview, because we had been texting, I happened to be cleaning my office, and I found the piece of paper where I scribbled down because we were in the middle of a podcast interview and I scribbled it down. I'm like, oh, my gosh, and I forgot the paper just got in. And then I met you anyway. And I'm like, well, no accidents. No accidents.

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No accidents. But yeah, but he was like, you definitely need to talk to, um all right, so you've got a book coming out any day now. Yeah. And so just so everybody knows who we're talking about, we're talking about Bret Lockett, actually is a former football player who is now a coach. He's a business coach, and he's really brilliant.

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He's amazing. Yeah, he was really amazing. Yeah. So I just want to do a shout out to him because thank. Totally.

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He's such a great guy. I had such an amazing conversation, and now here I am, almost a year later, finally talking to you because he was like, you got to talk to Rebecca. All right, so let's switch gears because you've got a book coming out any day now, right? When is the launch? The launch is actually Saturday, so I don't know when this air, but the virtual launch is Saturday.

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So the virtual launch, Slaythebullylaunch.com, is the link for that. Slaythebully.com is the website for the book, depending on when this airs. But the name of the book is Slay the Bully how to Negotiate with a Narcissist and Win. So this is something that I'm probably more passionate about other than my children. I'm more passionate about this than anything I've ever been passionate about in my life.

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Truly, I love it. I think that this is really what I was born to do. I was bullied as a kid for being know, we were talking about McLean, Virginia. I was raised in, and there was still a lot of racism and things happening. I grew up in the you wouldn't have thought that, but there was and I remember kids holding their eyes back and slanting eyes and making fun of me for being Asian, and there were still a lot of scars for me with that.

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And I think that know, I grew up I became an attorney. I was a very strong advocate. I did build a huge practice. I practiced in Naples, Florida, which is a very affluent community. Because of that, I was privileged to represent some of the most powerful people in the country.

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I did attain every accolade an attorney can achieve. I'm AV rated by Martindale Hubble. I'm not only AV rated, but I have the extra judiciary rating, the highest ethical rating. I have US news, best lawyers in know all of the things that you can achieve right after that. So I say all of these things because I want people to know.

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It was after that that I decided to merge my practice and do entrepreneurial things. And it was only a few years ago that I was in a number of different entrepreneurial endeavors. And I say this because I want it to be sort of generalized. And it was in one of those things that I got into a situation with a woman who turned out to be a covert narcissist. And it was one of the most debilitating, traumatizing situations of my life.

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And here I had already achieved all of these things, right? And I don't see myself as a wallflower. I don't see myself as somebody who's powerless. I don't see myself as somebody who is a person who can be taken advantage of. And we're talking about 2019.

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We're not talking about when I was just fresh out of college or something. And I tell people this because I want them to know that they don't attach themselves to you because you have so little value. They attach themselves to you because you have so much. I tell people this because they are so stealth, they are so cunning. They are really good at what they do, especially covert narcissists.

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I didn't know the signs I do now. And it was so traumatizing to me. I found myself I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it. I woke up in the morning, I was thinking about it. I was losing my hair.

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I was physically ill, and I didn't know what to do. And so that is why I do what I do now. That is why I have this mission, because I was a lawyer for a long time and didn't know what a narcissist actually was. I thought I'd heard the word many times, but I did not know what a narcissist actually was until I decided to read all the hundreds of books behind me and really dive into it. And that was when I started applying what I was learning about narcissism to what I already knew about negotiation.

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And that's when I started seeing movement in my cases. And that's when I became an expert in how to negotiate with narcissists. It was like I had discovered penicillin. Wow. Now, for the audience, can you just go into just a high level overview of signs so that the audience can kind of get a better feel of what you're describing in terms of a narcissist?

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Yeah, sure. So a narcissist, contrary to what people may think, is not a person who thinks so highly of themselves. I know a lot of people think that. And it's not a person who's always bragging about themselves either. It's not a person who says, yeah, I'm so great.

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I'm the best. To me, I thought a narcissist know, forgive me for saying this, but like kind of the Donald Trump sort of a know, the person who was always sort of fills the room bragging about themselves. That's what I thought a narcissist was, frankly, before I really actually knew. A narcissist is really just a person who feels totally and completely empty inside. And so they have to get all of their value from external sources.

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They need an endless amount of what they call narcissistic supply.

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That emptiness is never going to get filled for them. It's like this black hole. And so they want to fill it from either external sources such as image people. So it's prestige, it's money, it's big houses, it's celebrity, it's what I call the window dressing, how they look to the world or which I call diamond level supply, or it's what I call coal level supply, which is kind of the dark underbelly, which is degrading people, controlling people, manipulating people, passive aggression, that sort of thing as well. Right?

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So it's both pushing people down by building themselves up, that sort of thing. So it's kind of two sided in a way, but they love all of it, and they need all of it, and they need an endless supply of it. So you might want to fill that void for them. I'll take care of you. Oh my God, it's terrible that your ex wife was an awful bitch and oh my God, and you had a horrible childhood.

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I'll handle you, I'll take care of you. And then you're left feeling totally and utterly depleted, and yet they're still starving, right? Because it's never enough. They never have enough. Never enough.

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It's never enough. So it's like a person who has a toothache all the time, and so they're in such pain, and that's why they have no empathy for you. It's scarcity mode to the utmost extreme. And it is a spectrum, by the way, because we all have some insecurities, obviously. So would this be considered like a psychological disorder?

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Because what you're describing, I was like, well, isn't that a sociopath or no. I mean, a sociopath I think is more along the lines of I want to destroy it's like an intent, whereas a narcissist, I think is more like inward. Okay, I just need to fill this void here. I think a sociopath is more like probably both inward and outward. But I'm not a psychologist, but I think it's more from what I understand, it's just more I just need to fill this void here.

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You have to understand that in order to get that leverage that you need to get when you're dealing with them in a negotiation setting, okay, it's a result of trauma. It's a result of trauma and dealing with them. It's something that happened to them in childhood. Right. Well, we all have that.

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I don't think anybody in today's world especially gets to adulthood without having some sort of trauma right. From your childhood. Unfortunately, it's going to happen at some point. Right. Just different degrees.

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Right. But for narcissists, what I uncover during my research is that there's actually arrested development in the limbic system, part of their brain. Okay? So what happened with a narcissist is that as a result of continuous trauma, what happens with all of us is that when we're exposed to stress situations, that our brains emit chemicals, hormones such as cortisol, adrenaline, that sort of thing, right. So if it happens regularly, continuously, as children, it causes arrested development in the limbic system, part of the brain, that emotional center, part of the brain.

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And that causes what they refer to as narcissistic injury. So what happens with narcissists is that when they're presented with situations that trigger them, they immediately go from one extreme to another. It's called splitting. So it's black to white. So it could be an eye roll, it could be a tone of voice.

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It could be nothing that seems rational to you or me, but it is to them. So it could be that the waitress didn't come right away. It could be that I don't know, that they thought that the server didn't add up the bill the right way or whatever it is, and all of a sudden they're this way. You know what I'm saying? And so now that limbic system takes over and they're not thinking rationally anymore.

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They're thinking from that part of their brain. And when that happens, they may not even remember how they were acting during that period of time that narcissistic injury takes over. And it could be narcissistic rage at that point. And when that happens, they'll take themselves down to take you down. Wow.

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Yeah. You cannot negotiate with that person in the same way that you can a regular, rational, reasonable person. You certainly can't communicate with them like you can as much as you might want to sit there and go, come on, let's talk this out. Let's think about this. What's going to be best for both of us that is in the ether.

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You cannot think about this like you can a reasonable person. So what do you do in that type of situation when you're faced with that? There's a number of things that you can do, but first of all, you have to start looking at it. I say step one, don't run. Step two, make a uturn.

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Step three, break free. All right? So first of all, you have to start looking at them almost as if they're a toddler having a tantrum on the floor. Right. You have to start observing the situation.

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I say observe, don't absorb. Right? So you start almost looking at it as if you are reporting the news. Like you are just you have to. Detach, like, detach from it completely.

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Detach boundaries. So draw that boundary, first of all. So you start looking at it and then go, oh, I can see that you're upset. I can see that you're angry. I always say, like, you just kind of have an invisible shield come down around you and their energy is no longer going to penetrate you.

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And you know, if you're a man, you just got like your Superman chest. The bullets just kind of just teflon off. And if you're a woman, it's like the Wonder Woman bracelets on and you just like that's it. You're no longer going to take it personally because it's sort of like the Four Agreements.

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In The Four Agreements, one of the agreements is that you just don't ever take anything personally. Right. So you do have to understand that the way people treat other people is a direct reflection of the way they feel about themselves and good or bad. And so you just start looking at it as if they are a child having a tantrum on the floor, because that's basically what's happening. Right?

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You can start to say things like, I can see that you are upset. I can see that you are angry. We can continue this when you have calmed down, or, this approach is not working for me. Just start you are no longer involved in this anymore. This is not about you at all.

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Obviously, this is an upsetting situation. Yes, I agree that it would be something that would upset you. This is about you. Or you can even say, Your triggers are not my responsibility. Right.

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You straight up say that. Yeah. Because really, whether you're dealing with a narcissist or not, at the end of the day, it's never about and I raised my son that way, and I really instilled that in him. Like, this isn't about you, it's about them. Yeah.

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You can straight up say things like that. And you can even start saying things like if they I had a client one time that the husband they had started going to marriage counseling and he was saying things. They were supposed to be getting back together and after about two months, they were going out to a party or something and he was saying things to her as they were walking out the door, like trying to make a comment almost like that she was looking sort of slutty or whatever. And you know how they do. And he said, oh, lipstick.

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And you just say things like, oh, thanks for the feedback. You can just walk out the door and we don't need to say a thing. Thanks for the feedback. Right, so I want to talk a little bit about your book because we're almost out of time here. Slay the bully.

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How did you come up with that? Because it's very catchy, number one. But are we talking about just bullying in general, or is it more geared to narcissism? Well, to me, narcissists are bullies, right? And so I think that it's about dealing with narcissists who are bullies and bullies who are narcissists.

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To me, they're kind of one and the same. And so whether you're dealing with it in the workplace, you're dealing with it as a family member, you're dealing with it in a relationship, a personal relationship, whatever it is. I think that it's negotiating. And to me, I think that S stands for strategy, l stands for leverage. A stands for anticipate what they're going to do and stay two steps ahead of them.

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And then Y stands for you, which is you being on the offensive instead of constantly on the defensive. And it also stands for your mindset 100%, being a winning mindset, believing that you can win and standing in your power and you knowing who you are, you knowing what your value is. To me, the Y is like my favorite one because it's the breaking free piece of it.

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Each letter has so much value and there's so much involved with it, really. I could teach on each one. I could spend a whole day. Of course, I could have like a. Four day conference on each one, really.

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But I think that I love the whole concept of it. It's so interesting to me that it kind of all worked out with Slay, which I was able to get the IP on the word. By the way, I actually own the word slay. Yeah.

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But it's really about not just slaying narcissists or slaying bullies in a negotiation or in a communication. It's really to me about standing in your authentic power. Yeah. I give a lot of technical advice about how to negotiate in general as well. Right.

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And also with Narcissists and also with high conflict personalities. Because I think that that's really important, how to create that leverage, how to use your documentation the proper way, especially if you are dealing with it in a divorce or you're dealing with it in a business partnership or you want to go for a raise or you're in a boss situation or a colleague situation or whatever. There's a lot of advice there. But if you just want to be able to communicate in a more powerful way right. Then there's a lot of advice in there.

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I mean, I give exact phrases to use, exact scripts to use because I want people to be able to have real tools. I have a whole chapter on just grab and go tools because I wanted it to have practical knowledge, things that you could actually use. Well. I mean, at the end of the day, communication is key in every relationship we have. Exactly.

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It all comes down to that. Is that communication? It absolutely all comes down to that. And if you can communicate with high conflict individuals, then you can communicate with anybody. Yeah, that's the bottom line.

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I'm going to tell you a quick thing. People will think what you tell them to think. And I learned this lesson in such a beautiful, powerful way. I was a lawyer for about eight years back in Naples, Florida, and then I had left to go be a wealth advisor for Morgan Stanley, a stockbroker, basically, at Morgan Stanley to be with this big wealth team for a couple of years. And then a friend of mine was leaving her little practice in Naples, Florida, her divorce practice.

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And she said, hey, listen, I'm moving out of town. If you want my practice, I'll give you my clients. And it was like an opportunity for me to start my own practice and have clients, to have a runway. And I thought, well, nobody's ever going to drop a practice in my lab, ever. So this was like a chance for me to start a practice and actually clients.

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And so I left Morgan Stanley at the time and got started, and I said to my business coach at the time, I said, oh, my God, the people of this town are going to think I'm such a flake that she was a lawyer. There's a wealth advisor back to being a lawyer. And I was just so nervous that people were going to think I was such a flake. And she said, People will think what you tell them to think. She said, you can tell them to think that you're a flake, or you can tell them to think that you are the only lawyer in town that has a wealth background.

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Exactly. So therefore, you are actually more qualified than any other family law attorney in town. Absolutely. She said, So which story would you like to tell? And I was like, oh, maybe I'll tell that story.

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I love it. Well, because she just helped you to shift your perception. Correct. But in any situation, you have the ability to do that. And you have the ability to have people see what you want them to see.

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When you enter a room, your aura enters, right. Who you are enters. And people feel that. People feel your energy. And so people will think what you tell them to think.

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You and you alone define your value, and in any situation, and narcissists feel that, too. They sense that. And that's what they kind of claw onto. They claw onto if you've got those little sort of breaks in your energy, and they prey upon that. And so if you know who you are, they shy away from that.

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Yes. And so they prey upon people who have vulnerabilities. And so if you know who you are authentically, and you stand in that power and you stand in that strength, they don't come near you. So I'm telling you, if you align with your soul and you stand in your strength and you know who you are authentically, nobody can touch you.

00:31:49
So beautifully said. And on that note, I think Roll will just wrap up this conversation because that was brilliant nugget to drop. I hope everybody took some notes and wrote those things down. If not, back it up and listen to it again, because that was golden. Rebecca all right, so slaythebully.com.

00:32:10
Correct? Slaythebully.com. Slaythebullylaunch.com, depending on when this is airing. But Slaythebully.com is the book for sure. Thank you.

00:32:21
Thank you, Rebecca. And best of luck. And thank you for what you're doing. And the light, that the way you're elevating the consciousness of the planet, because that's what I'm doing. That's what you're doing.

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And I love it. And we just need more people, more people to really just spread that awareness. Thank you so much. Thank you.

00:32:54
I certainly hope that you enjoyed today's interview. Thank you so much for joining me. And as always, I hope that you and your family are healthy and safe and that your lives are filled with peace, joy and happiness. Take care, everyone.