I’ve been overwhelmed by what’s going on in our country right now and feeling helpless and speechless, while I sort out my own emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and call to action. One thing I know I can offer is psycho-education about narcissism and cult dynamics. Given what’s happening in my country right now, I’m preparing to lead the next LOVE SCHOOL on Monday, March 10, on how to protect yourself from narcissistic abuse and make sure you never join a cult (or you do, how to spot it early and get out soon). Through a compassionate IFS-informed lens, we’ll be examining the psychology of how narcissistic dynamics operate, since almost every narcissistic abuser reads the same playbook. I’ll be sharing the kind of practical stuff I taught my daughter before she flew out of the nest into adulthood, so she could practice good discernment and learn how to spot troublesome behaviors in new people she might meet out in the world and have good street smarts when it comes to protecting herself.
But if you live in the United States or are watching our country, you don’t need me to give you a primer in narcissistic abuse. All you have to do is watch how Trump and Vance treated Zelensky when he was at the White House. The Trump/ Vance Bully Show, humiliating Zelensky on national television, is exactly the kind of reality TV Donald Trump cut his teeth on. It’s also a case study in narcissistic abuse and cultic dynamics. I had trouble stomaching watching the whole show, but in spite of the nausea and heaviness in my chest, I feel like it’s important we not stick our heads in the sand. We need to keep our eyes and hearts open, even when it hurts. And we need to be aware that many MAGA-aligned human beings right now are realizing they were tricked. That’s a painful reality check that’s hard for anyone who got tricked to fully take in.
Even Trump/ Vance voters are figuring out that they got played, and the rest of us need to maintain our empathy and resist the hit of righteous “I told you so,” even though it’s understandable some of us might feel that way. To keep our empathy and not turn hardened hearts towards those who voted for Trump, we have to remember how cults and narcissists work, which is what this week’s LOVE SCHOOL will focus on. Because as much as we might get hurt by people who are seduced by narcissists, they are actually victims, even if they then victimize others.
The Narcissist Playbook: Love Bombing, Demeaning, Discarding
Here’s how it usually goes. First, the cult leader sells you the moon. This is the cult recruitment stage, or in romantic relationships, the rescuer fantasy hook. Love bombing, future faking, telling you everything you’ve ever wished to hear, validating your greatest fears and feeding your deepest longings. This is the spell-casting phase, where you feel euphoric because someone is promising that all your rescuer fantasies will actually come true. You bond with others at rallies and online, feeling high off the sense of belonging. In politics, it’s the phase leading up to election- because once you’ve gained power, all bets are off. Then the love bombing and fake promises stop. In romance, this is the honeymoon period, which often ends once the seduction is complete. This is when the demeaning behaviors typically begin, leaving you confused about why the love bombing stopped.
The demeaning phase confuses victims, because you got lifted up, and now that you’re hooked, the narcissist loses respect for you. You’re now weak in their eyes and no longer worthy of sucking up to. Trump voters are feeling this way now. Like wait, what happened? I thought you believed I was so special. So now, why are you firing me from my low paying government job or taking away my public assistance?
Once you’re hooked and the cult leader has drained you of your life blood, the discard comes soon afterwards. You got used, exploited, taken advantage of- so the cult leader can achieve their aims. But you don’t actually matter. You were a means to an end, and to narcissists and cult leaders, the ends always justifies the means.
You then begin to experience withdrawal from the bonding love bombing phase, always wondering when it’s going to come back. You long for what used to be and keep waiting for the initial good feelings to come back- the euphoria, the validation, the sense of belonging, the feeling of being “gotten,” the special feelings. But you wind up living on breadcrumbs of what originally lured you in, wondering what you did to lose all that love bombing intoxication.
Magical Thinking Prevents You From Seeing Reality Clearly
If reality begins to break through the wishful, magical thinking, the pain may feel unbearable. You may experience betrayal blindness, finding it too hard to actually believe that you got played. It may even be easier to live in a state of denial, to pretend you didn’t get exploited for a narcissist’s power hungry goals. It’s humiliating to realize you got tricked. It can be easier to pretend you didn’t, even when faced with all the evidence that you got played.
Sometimes the only way the denial wears off is when your own empathy kicks in. If you don’t feel empathy for yourself, you might feel empathy when you see innocent people worse off than you suffering at the hands of the cult leader. This is what often causes cult followers to leave the cult- seeing the cult leader abuse another cult follower and knowing in your gut “This is not right. Something is very wrong here. This person is not who I thought they were.” This is a painful moment, because you so deeply want to believe you were right in your discernment of this person you’re risking everything to follow and maybe even love.
Because narcissists often test the loyalty of their victims, they may have coerced them into giving up their families, turning on a spouse, berating friends who resist recruitment or otherwise alienating the people who actually care about them. This can be hard if someone in a cult starts to have doubts about their allegiance. If you’ve burned your bridges, it’s hard to leave even the most abusive leader.
Empathy Can Break Through Magical Thinking & Betrayal Blindness
But sometimes just one event becomes the straw that broke through the denial. The disgusting, stomach-turning public bullying of Zelensky, the economy-destroying tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, calling the Prime Minister of Canada “Governor,” changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, threatening to make Canada the 51st state, firing thousands of national park rangers and other low paid government employees with families to feed, withdrawing support form USAID- events like these might be just the kind of events that breaks Trump voters out of their blindness. If you watched Trump and Vance bully Zelenksy and make fun of his clothes and his brave heroism, anyone with even a shred of empathy would understandably feel sorry for the underdog getting ganged up on by two harassing bullies yelling “You don’t have the cards! You’re not grateful. You don’t have the cards!”
When you’ve been spellbound by a malignant narcissist and then reality starts to sink in, the cognitive dissonance kicks in. You can’t actually believe someone could be that ruthless, and yet you see it happening- right in front of you. You can’t reconcile two seemingly opposite stories without dissociating. You see innocent people getting ripped off, discarded, deprioritized, cast aside, abused, humiliated, manipulated, even killed by social murder, when life-saving resources are withheld, just so the cult leader can get a hit of power off playing others like puppets. If you have even a shred of decency, even the slightest bit of ethics and integrity, if you care at all about other people’s safety and human rights, you can’t stay loyal to the cult leader forever. Something will always happen that breaks through the indoctrination. To ignore reality beyond that point takes a great deal of psychic energy and can make people very, very sick. (This is what my new book Relationsick, co-written with Jeff Rediger is about. Stay tuned. It’ll be out in April 2026).
Anger Is A Sign Of Early Recovery
At some point, if you don’t just dissociate or numb out to avoid feeling the betrayal, the denial wears off- and if you’re on a recovery path, the anger kicks in. This is a good sign, because you can’t resist the narcissistic abuse and begin to deconstruct the indoctrination until you get angry at having been betrayed. Until you feel that life-affirming, boundary-protecting anger, it’s hard to leave the cult, hold the abuser accountable, recover or join the resistance. Getting pissed is more energizing than collapsing in resigned despair, but if you’ve been indoctrinated into being anger phobic or if you’re dissociated, even anger can be hard to feel.
Cult leaders count on dissociation, submission, dorsal vagal collapse, exhaustion, and keeping you too busy to resist the domination. The strategy is always based on wearing you down, exhausting you, undermining your critical thinking, overloading you with too much information, overwhelming your capacity to process what’s incoming, and isolating you from those who might put a crack in the indoctrination. Narcissistic cult leaders expect you to just submit, roll over, do what you’re told, and if you don’t, they use fear and intimidation, the way Trump and Vance ganged up and bullied Zelensky, to try to force him to submit to the domination, just so they can gloat and get a hit of grandiosity off the power move.
Going DEEP
But just like Zelensky was the only adult in the room, narcissists show their true colors if they can’t goad you into responding. According to narcissism expert Doctor Ramani, we have to go “DEEP.” DEEP stands for —
Don’t Defend.
Don’t Engage.
Don’t Explain.
Don’t Personalize.
Narcissists and cult leaders feed off other people’s despair and desperation. They get high off seeing other people suck up, grovel, beg for mercy, and give in to their entitled tantrums. But if you do what Zelensky did and just breathe, keep your cool, stand up for yourself and hang onto your self esteem, if you don’t play the game and feed their narcissism, they reveal themselves to be big babies. Then their followers can see that they’re not really the strongmen they claim to be. They’re the weakest bullies on the playground underneath all that bluster. Like NXIVM cult leader Keith Raniere who was found quivering in the closet when he was arrested, they’re really just scared little children play-acting the Wizard of Oz.
Let’s Help Americans Off Ramp From The Cult of MAGA
This is a fragile and crucial time in the US. We need to create off ramps for people who are having buyer’s remorse after having voted for Trump right now. Many of us knew this moment was coming, but let’s not gloat or humiliate people who got tricked by a narcissistic cult leader who never had their best interests at heart.
This is our country we’re talking about here. These are innocent people’s lives and livelihoods. There are more of us capable of resisting than there are of sycophants still drinking the Kool-Aid.
Just remember how embarrassing it can be to get tricked. Nobody likes to admit they got fooled. It feels awful to get conned and betrayed. Those who get conned by a cult leader need our empathy, not our gloating. Cult experts like Rachel Bernstein of the Indoctrination podcast say that the only way people ever leave cults is if those who care about them stay proximate, even if the cult has caused them to treat loved ones abusively. We can hold our boundaries and still have empathy for someone who got tricked into believing a narcissist was on their side. Creating a safe place for someone to admit “I made a mistake and I want to get out” is the only way cult members ever feel safe to off ramp from the cult and return to those who actually love them, rather than love bombing them the way the narcissist did.
So if you know anyone who voted for Trump who is experiencing pain, loss, regret, or remorse right now, let’s try to check our understandable tendency to say “I told you so.” Take the high road if you can and say something like “That must really suck to go through that loss or feel so betrayed.”
I’m in no way a MAGA apologist, trying to make excuses for people whose ideologies I vehemently disagree with. But I also know that extremists won’t ever turn on their own beliefs if there isn’t a safe space for empathy when they realize they’ve been tricked. The MAGA extremist next door is also someone’s grandmother, someone’s son, someone’s high school sweetheart.
These days, I can’t help thinking of one of my favorite musicals, The Sound of Music. That scene when Liesl gets betrayed by her Nazi boyfriend Rolf, who turns in her family when they’re trying to escape Nazi-occupied Austria. Our country is full of Liesls and Rolfs right now, and if the Rolfs have a change of heart, we need to allow them to be welcomed back out of the cult.
No Need To Bypass Our Legitimate Feelings
We can still be mad at MAGA folks. We can have all our own feelings. We can rant in our echo chambers and get empathy for our own feelings. That’s necessary, to have safe spaces for venting our own rage, fear, grief, disappointment, and horror. But if there’s no safe spaces for people to off ramp, cult members who got tricked by Trump won’t have anyplace to go. This country is still populated by actual human beings though. We have to at least try to remember our shared humanity, even though it can feel hard to believe we’re even the same species as those on the other side of the political divide.
That doesn’t mean the rest of the world shouldn’t have their understandable anti-American sentiment. I have my own anti-American sentiment right now, so I get it. I’m sorry, world. My country sucks right now.
Try Empathy Rather Than “I Told You So”
If anyone who voted for Trump expresses rage, shock, disbelief, horror, grief, or feelings of betrayal to you, try listening and empathizing. If we all did that with just one person, maybe we’d help off ramp those who are feeling the impact we knew was coming and tried to warn people about. The less cult followers we have in the US right now, the harder it will be to steer the entire country into fascism and authoritarian dictatorship.
Keep in mind that getting betrayed by a narcissist is one of the most tragic painful traumas one can experience, and our country is experiencing this en masse. Heartbreak and betrayal is one of the most painful kinds of traumas. When we risk letting our hearts open, we also risk getting our hearts broken. The vulnerability of the open heart, the tenderness of attachment and heart connection, makes us especially raw when someone else betrays our connection or abandons the connection or otherwise leaves the heart frayed.
The tragedy of relational trauma in early childhood, usually with our caregivers, is that we’re then set up to repeat the heartbreak of childhood in adult relationships, even with politicians, bosses, cult leaders, and others we give our power away to. If our caregivers were not safe to attach to, or if we had to earn approval as a cheap substitute for unconditional love because our parents saw us as a narcissistic extension of themselves, it’s very likely we’ll attract the very people most likely to break our hearts again- often in a similar way as our early caregivers did.
Many MAGA-voting Americans will be experiencing a reactivation of childhood trauma from narcissistic caregivers in the upcoming months. This may not go well, but if we meet one another as human beings in a trauma-informed way, maybe we can create safe off ramps, one vulnerable trauma survivor at a time.
If you’ve been a victim of narcissistic abuse, if you’ve been lured into a cult, if you’ve been tricked and then betrayed by someone who claimed to care about you and your needs, my heart goes out to you.
If you’d like to learn more, please join us for LOVE SCHOOL.
We’ll also be discussing how to make sure your kids have the warnings they need to stay safe in the world in Mothering As Medicine.
Register for Mothering As Medicine here.
