The Strength Paradox - Why the Same Power That Keeps You In Gets You Out

We've been taught that endurance equals strength. That staying means we're strong enough to handle it. But what if the very strength that kept you surviving in a narcissistic relationship is the same strength that will set you free?

In this powerful episode, Marcia challenges everything you thought you knew about strength in toxic relationships. She reveals the critical difference between survival mode strength - the over-functioning, tolerance, and walking on eggshells we mistake for resilience - and true strength that chooses self-preservation over performance.

Drawing from her own 30-year marriage to an overt narcissist, Marcia exposes how we get validation for "handling" difficult partners, how we confuse tolerance with resilience, and why waiting to "feel strong enough" keeps us stuck for decades. She shares the truth about rock bottom, the terrifying moment when the veil of denial lifts and you finally see what you can no longer unsee.

This isn't about how to leave - it's about understanding that you already have the strength. You've been using it to survive. Now it's time to redirect that same power toward healing. Because the strength doesn't come before the doing. The strength comes IN the doing.

If you've been waiting to feel strong enough, this episode will show you why that's the very thing keeping you trapped - and how to take that first scary step forward without a backup plan.

Transcript

THE STRENGTH PARADOX: WHY WE STAY AND WHY WE LEAVE

Being strong is why we stayed, but it's also why we leave. And the thing about it is, we don't always find the strength when we need it.

Endurance isn't the only kind of strength. Sometimes strength is in walking away. And I wanna emphasize that a lot of times we wait until we feel strong.

THE TRAP OF WAITING TO FEEL STRONG ENOUGH

But again, we hold on to hope. We're hoping they'll change. Well, we're hoping we didn't make a mistake. That's a big part of the challenge is accepting that part of the reason why we're even in this relationship is because we saw something in them and we wanted this relationship. And so it leaves us blaming ourselves. It leaves us feeling guilty for our choices. So the strength comes in the doing. That's one of my favorite, favorite quotes. I can't remember where I got it from. I can't remember where I heard it from, but the strength comes in the doing because if we keep waiting until we feel strong enough, that's how we end up in the marriage, in the relationship, myself personally for 30 years. I kept waiting for the right time. So staying quiet doesn't make us strong, but speaking up does. Our voice is our power. But listen, this is not easy. We lost our voice. We lost ourself in this relationship.

And so we don't just wake up one morning and say, you know what? I don't have to do this. I'm gonna, it just doesn't work that way. And I'm so thankful. I say this a lot because I really mean it. I'm so thankful that I know this and that I'm speaking from experience and it helps me not just as a therapist, but as a person to not be one of those people who say, well, why didn't she just leave? Why don't you just leave? If you're not happy, just leave. I did an interview with my younger brother and he said that he said, I just figured if you were unhappy, you would leave. And so staying actually is a false sense of strength. I did feel strong for staying. I did feel strong because I could handle this. I could handle him.

THE FALSE STRENGTH OF STAYING AND TOLERATING

I could handle his behaviors. There's so many of them. I tried to pick one. I couldn't. I could handle this, right? I just, that was my strength and other people recognize it too. I can't tell you how many people came to me and said, girl, you are a strong woman to stay with him. And in my case, my narcissist was an overt narcissist. So I wasn't the only one who saw his arrogance, his need for attention, his inflated ego. I wasn't the only one to see it. He flaunted it. He was proud of it. So that was my experience with an overt narcissist, but a covert narcissist is going to present much more subtly. And so you will be perceived as lucky to be with this person. Whereas myself in a relationship, in a marriage with an overt narcissist, they pitied me, they were like, you poor thing, how do you put up with him? But yet there was still strength in that because I could handle him. I can handle this. I could tell him, honey, stop, just honey. And you know, that was my thing. I would always say honey, honey, honey, kick him under the table. Cause he's being loud and boisterous and he's being aggressive and even disrespectful to other people in his own joking way. Everything was a joke. So I could handle this, and people looked at me as, wow, you are just to be able to put up with all of him, all of his personality. He was so big in his personality that everyone could see that it took a strong person to be able to put up with him. I got validation from that kind of attention. So these are things that I'm learning or had learned about myself when I was moving toward recognizing that the strength that I think I have, I'm using it in the wrong way. In fact, I'm using it for his benefit and not mine. I thought holding it all together made me special, made me look strong and look like I had something special because I could handle this personality and the other people that he was just putting down and just asserting himself over, I was the one who was special because I was his wife. It says a lot about what I was getting out of the relationship. And listen guys, this is something that it takes a lot of courage to dig deep and ask yourself, how are you benefiting or how had you been benefiting in this relationship?

THE 50-50 RULE: CHOOSING YOURSELF

It takes two to be in the relationship and I say this all the time. It's the 50-50 rule. 50 percent is about them, but the other 50 percent is about you. So the moment I walked away that's when I realized that was me choosing me. That was me not wanting to any longer lose my identity in him. I finally chose myself. And that process is not an easy process. And that's why we find the strength in the doing. Waiting to feel strong, we wait a long time for that because it's scary, it's hard, it's uncomfortable, it's unfamiliar. This is not something that we can see as a good thing because we're used to avoiding conflict, their moods. We're used to keeping the peace.

WHAT SURVIVAL MODE STRENGTH LOOKS LIKE

Let's talk about what survival mode strength looks like.

The version of me that stayed, not recognizing that this was me living and functioning in survival mode. The version of me that stayed, I was over-functioning for everyone else. I was performing for everyone else to be the good wife, to be the good mother, to be the career mom who could do it all, wife, children, the home, the career, the finances, I handled it all. I could do it all, I was so strong. I look back and realize I was over-functioning. Walking on eggshells, that is the version of us that stays in survival mode. We're walking on eggshells.

CONFUSING TOLERANCE WITH RESILIENCE

We are smiling when we're not happy or stuffing our feelings, suppressing our feelings. We confuse tolerance with resilience. And I love that so much. If anybody knows and can recognize when you are tolerating their behavior, because I can honestly say that that's how I live my life is tolerating, tolerating, but it gets confused with resilience. Absolutely. I thought I was strong for being able to tolerate. The fear of the unknown is what keeps us there.

WALKING INTO THE UNKNOWN

The only way to leave a narcissist is to walk right into the unknown. It's like walking through a door where on the other side for all you know it's a cliff and you could fall right off. It's like walking through a door and you close the door behind you and there's complete darkness. You don't know where you've landed. That's what it feels like, but that's exactly what we get to the point where we're willing to do just that. We actually have to realize or see or feel for ourselves that we don't have a choice.

ROCK BOTTOM: WHEN YOUR EYES OPEN

We have to realize or get to a place in the relationship where we can't take it anymore and we don't have a choice. That is the brink that I was pushed to. And I call it a rock bottom. We all have a rock bottom and we will stay until we hit rock bottom guaranteed, guaranteed.

My rock bottom was when his disrespectful behavior was so blatant and hurtful and painful. Not that there hadn't been disrespectful behavior before, but this time, this time was different. And I say different only because what made it different is my eyes. It opened my eyes and that's what a rock bottom does. It opens your eyes. And when I say open your eyes, I mean, huh, I can't fix this. Huh, I can't fix him. I can't change him. This really happened after all the time that we've been together. He is willing to treat me in this way. I don't feel safe. I don't feel loved. I don't feel protected.

FROM SURVIVAL MODE TO SELF-PRESERVATION MODE

That was my out. And that's the point that I needed to get to, to step out of survival mode and into self-preservation mode.

Setting boundaries was terrifying. Terrifying meaning how is he gonna react? What am I gonna have to deal with? How am I gonna manage his response, his reaction? What am I gonna have to do? What am I gonna say? Setting boundaries with someone who is used to controlling you is scary. It's difficult. We avoid a fight. We avoid their anger. We avoid their rejection. We avoid the abandonment that comes by the way of the silent treatment for some. For me, it was the opposite. We weren't allowed to, he did the opposite of the silent treatment. It was, we don't stay mad, we don't go to bed mad. And after any argument, he would say, give me a kiss. And that was his way of I'm in control, give me a kiss. So you're not allowed to be mad, get over it. Just a complete denial of my feelings. So the version of you that leaves is the one who has stopped explaining yourself. So think about this. These are things that you're doing before you actually physically leave.

LEAVING IS NOT JUST PHYSICAL

I want to make sure that I'm making clear that leaving is not just the physical act of leaving. I'm talking about the emotional protection. I'm talking about the mental protection, the psychological protection. That's when you start to leave. I'll never forget that when I started leaving, meaning no longer being manipulated by him, he said to me, I don't like the new Marcia. And I thought, wow, wow, because I'm actually getting better in terms of stronger emotionally, feeling better about myself, feeling like that scary door that who knows what's on the other side of it is not so scary right now. Like I still don't know what's on the other side of it, but I am willing to find out. And that's when he said, I don't like the new Marcia. And I'll never forget that because what he really meant was is I don't like that I can't control you the way I, the way I know I'm used to and you're not acting in the way that I've trained you. He actually said that at one point, I trained you better than this. Gosh, there's some things that were said that when we are surviving, something that we are conditioned to not react to, but in our healthier selves, you look back and you just say, wow, wow.

CONDITIONING AND CONTROL

He said, I trained you better than that. And that's when I was leaving because he always said we don't do divorce. So these are things that we're conditioned over time to accept and being strong literally means surviving. We are surviving, we're in survival mode.

YOUR REASONS ARE VALID BUT CAN BE CHALLENGED

I just want to let you know that you're not alone. If you are still in the relationship and you have reasons as to why you're staying, those reasons are valid and they're not to be judged, but they can be challenged.

When we stay for the kids, when we stay for finances, when we stay because we've never been alone before. I literally left and was so uncomfortable with being alone that after three months, I let him come move in with me.

MANIPULATION IS ABUSE

This is a very difficult path. This healing journey is difficult because manipulation is abuse. And even that is a journey to get to that word. I would never have said that word before the last five years of my marriage. I would have never said that I was being abused. And now, now what I know and what I teach, it's abuse at the highest level. But again, in survival mode, we can only accept what our brain will allow us to accept in order to maintain our environment. We are trying to maintain our environment for the children, for finances, for comfort. I mean, I literally, at our 29th anniversary, which I call it our fake anniversary, because by that time it was over, at our 29th anniversary, I said to myself in a moment, I said, you know what, what's another 30 years? If I can do this for 30 years, I know him so well. What's another 30 years? I can handle it. I'm strong.

THE POWER OF CONTROL

I was so strong that I was willing in that moment to surrender the rest of my life to serving someone who didn't respect me in return. And that is the power and control that they have over you in this relationship, but it doesn't mean we're weak. It means we're empathetic, we care. And I would never tell you not to care. Well, sorry, I actually have a reel that's called, I Don't Care. That is an emotional detachment tactic to begin to say, I don't care. And what you're saying I don't care about, I know I've gone off on a tangent, bear with me. What you're saying I don't care about is this is how you detach emotionally, which keeps you from being manipulated. But that's another topic. So we care about them, we love them. And I always say it in my support groups, we're not here to bash the narcissist. I still love him to this day, I will admit, but I love myself more. That's the key. So how do you recognize you've hit rock bottom? When you can't ignore or unsee what you've seen. Because that's how we've survived.

WHEN YOU CAN'T UNSEE WHAT YOU'VE SEEN

Denial. I always say denial was my very best friend but that's how we survive. We survive in denial, justifying, rationalizing, overlooking, forgiving and there comes a time maybe even a day maybe even a moment where you say I can't do that right now. Like my brain won't let me, my heart won't let me do that right now. The veil of denial has been removed and you literally, it feels like life or death. I'm gonna put it that dramatically. It feels like life or death when you hit rock bottom. And so it might be an experience that you've experienced a million times before, but this time, this time my eyes are so open that I can't close them. I can't close them.

FINDING STRENGTH IN THE DOING

That's when you know, that's when you find the strength. And that doesn't mean it's not scary anymore. I think it'll always be scary. Every step I took was scary. And I even took 10 steps back at one point. But baby steps. Even the 10 steps back is progress because you made the two steps forward. This journey, ups and downs, ups and downs, and we have to give ourselves compassion. We have to give ourselves grace because it is not easy, but it is doable. And that's why I will do what I'm doing today, every day for the rest of my life.

IT WILL BE IN YOUR TIME

Because if I can do it, so can you. But guess what? I understand that it's gonna be in your time. Not mine, not your family, not your friends, not anyone who says you should leave. It's going to be in your time. And no one else is gonna get it. No one else is gonna understand it but you. It makes it a lonely journey.

THE IMPORTANCE OF SUPPORT

But I'm so thankful that my family never judged me. I'm really, they just left me alone. They were like, okay, if that's what she wants to do. And as soon as I left, they were right there for me. And I'm so thankful for my support system. And that is what we all need is a support system. So I created the passage to peace, a healing community that is here for you at any stage in your healing journey. If you go to my website, thepassagetopeace.com, you can take a free quiz that will tell you what healing stage you're in. I created the five stages of peace and each letter in the word peace stands for a stage. I would love to share that with you. It's a free masterclass. This is just my mission because I know it can be done, but it's gonna be done in your time. Make sure that your support system allows you to be where you are and when you're ready and even if you fall back five steps, they're there for you. That's the support you need and that's the support I wanna give you. So if you're in that place right now questioning whether it's strong to leave, whether you feel it or not, I want you to know it's not weakness to stop surviving. It's strength to start healing.

YOU'VE BEEN STRONG LONG ENOUGH

You've been strong long enough. I want you to know that you've been surviving and it's not weakness to stop surviving. You will find the strength in the doing. Take one scary step forward at a time. No backup plan. No backup plan. Once your eyes are opened, you will see that there is only one way to go and that is forward.

Your journey is my journey. So thank you so much. Take care and be blessed.