Tag Archives: red flags of narcissism

narcissists, psychology, royals, videos, YouTube

The Body Language Guy takes on Meghan Markle…

Some time ago, I ran across some entertaining videos by a heavily accented man named Jesus Enrique Rosas, otherwise known as “The Body Language Guy”. Rosas regularly makes videos about celebrities and analyzes their body language. I get a kick out of him, because he’s got great energy and charisma. I must admit that his accent is also interesting. I probably listen to him longer than I might someone with a less exotic (to me, anyway) accent.

I don’t know much about Rosas. I have no idea what his qualifications are. But I have noticed that he has an awful lot to say about Meghan Markle, and most of it isn’t very complimentary. He’s also kind of witty, which I definitely appreciate. It’s not hard to make me laugh, but if you manage to do so with style, you get extra points from me!

The below video was the first one I saw Rosas make about Meghan Markle. He thinks he has her pegged as a narcissist. Behold…

Is he onto something? This is a fascinating video.

Certainly, Rosas isn’t the only one who’s noticed that something seems a little off kilter about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry. He’s focused on their body language, but I focus more on what she says and does. I watched the Apple+ series Meghan and Harry did with Oprah Winfrey. I thought it was very interesting. But I was mainly more interested in hearing from Harry, than Meghan. He comes off as very generous. Meghan comes off as less so… at least to me, anyway. I think I’m pretty sensitive to narcissistic types, mainly because I’ve unfortunately had a lot of exposure to them.

Harry has always struck me as a sensitive, kind, and decent person. I know he was legitimately devastated by his mother’s death in 1997, when he was just 12 years old. I also think he’s a protective person. Meghan, by contrast, is very much a go-getter. I remember reading about how she wrote to an advertiser about sexist language used in promoting their products.

Meghan probably doesn’t need Harry’s protection, but if she is a narcissist, she might exploit those tendencies to keep him doing her bidding. Also, check out today’s featured photo. Some years ago, I used to follow Dr. Tara Palmatier’s blog, Shrink4Men. “Dr. T”, as she went by, frequently mentioned how high conflict, narcissistic typed women were hung up on being “princesses”. She refers to it as a “princess mentality”. The quote above came from Markle’s now defunct blog. She obviously watched William and Kate get married on television… and yet she says she never Googled Harry? Seriously?

But it seems that being in the British family was more than Meghan bargained for. I won’t dispute that the British tabloids can be brutal. They certainly can! And I won’t dispute that racism is a real problem, even in 2021. It certainly is! But I don’t believe that Meghan was treated as egregiously badly as she claims.

In fact… thinking about Harry’s and Meghan’s great exodus from England last year, it reminds me of how Bill’s ex wife pressured Bill into getting out of the Army. The Army provided Bill with an identity, and she had to live by the Army’s influence. She didn’t like that, so she pressured Bill into quitting. That action deprived Bill of his livelihood. She also separated him from people outside of their sphere who might influence Bill, or threaten her power over him.

I see a similar dynamic between Harry and Meghan. Obviously, staying in England would mean the Queen, Prince Charles, and Prince William would have MUCH more influence over Harry than they would in the United States. So Meghan says the British press was too “hard” on her. Harry, being sensitive to mental health issues because of his mother’s difficulties, is quick to acquiesce. Before you know it, the couple has left royal life. But… they still complain about being “cut off” from the British family’s riches. Apparently, Meghan didn’t realize that being married to a high ranking British royal entailed doing some work. And she was quite firm about doing things her own way, British tradition and expectations be damned!

A video Rosas made in August about Meghan Markle… He pays very close attention to what Meghan says, how she dresses, and her behavior.

In the above video, Rosas says he’s “not a Meghan hater”. But minutes before he says that, Rosas calls her a narcissist. Later, he says she’s fake. Aside from that, he admits that Meghan has good public speaking skills. But then he reiterates that she’s a fake narcissist and a snob. He ends the above video with the hilarious quip, “At least Harry found his balls and he’s allowed to play with them.” Bwahahaahaha.

Interesting… and I have my own opinions about Meghan Markle. I probably agree more with Rosas than disagree with him. I have noticed some discrepancies in some of the things Meghan has said, as opposed to her actions. I also notice that Meghan seems to have isolated Harry from the life he’s always known. I don’t know if Harry is truly happy in California. I have no idea how he and Meghan get along. But I do recognize that Harry and William, who were always very close, are not very close anymore. And this is perhaps evidenced by the somewhat chilly birthday greetings sent out to Harry via the Cambridges’ social media.

Yesterday, I happened to catch The Body Language Guy’s video about the recent Time Magazine cover of Meghan and Harry. I was oblivious to the cover until I saw the below video. Then, I noticed that a lot of people were talking about it, both on YouTube and Facebook.

I have to admit, Rosas brings up some very interesting points.

In the above video, Rosas points out how Harry is fading into Meghan’s shadow. She is presented as equal to or even larger than he is. She stands with her legs apart, wearing white, as he wears black and seems to “hide” behind her. She looks powerful, but he looks a bit cowardly. And we all know that Harry, who served the British military in Afghanistan, is no coward by any stretch of the imagination. At one point, Rosas says Meghan is “emasculating” Harry.

Honestly, if I had seen that cover without having watched Rosas’ video, I probably would not have noticed all of the weird stuff he points out. It would not have occurred to me to linger on the photograph, mainly because I’m not that interested in Harry and Meghan. I wouldn’t say I actively think about them much… I probably think a lot more about William and Kate, and especially their adorable children.

I’ve always liked Harry, though. He strikes me as a very kind, funny, and empathic person. And unfortunately, having married a man like that, I know he is fresh meat to narcissists. I don’t know if Meghan is a narcissist, but I do think she tells untruths. Like, for instance, I don’t believe that she didn’t know anything about Harry when she was growing up. Harry is the son of the most photographed woman in the world, the late Princess Diana. In the 1980s and 90s, Diana was everywhere. And, as Meghan is a modern woman living in the Internet age, as well as an actress, I don’t believe for a second she never Googled Harry.

When Meghan says “I never Googled Harry”, I’m reminded of a similar whopper Bill’s narcissistic ex wife told him. She said that she was accepted to several top flight universities, to include the United States Military Academy (AKA West Point) and Rice University in Texas. But… take a look at Ex, and you’ll quickly notice that she’s never been particularly physically fit or academically gifted. Then you realize that she wouldn’t last five minutes at West Point. It just doesn’t pass the smell test. Likewise, Ex dropped out of high school and got a GED. Bill went to high school with Ex and doesn’t remember her to be an academic superstar. Those types of students– the ones who go to colleges like Rice– don’t usually drop out, especially in the 1980s, before homeschooling was as popular as it is now.

Then I look at other things about Meghan that seem a bit “off”. Like, for instance, the stories about how she treated palace staffers… The awful drama involving Meghan’s father and half siblings from his side of her family, just before she married Harry… The way she and her first husband, actor Trevor Engelson, abruptly split up after just two years. I remember reading about how William was concerned about the speed at which Harry committed to Meghan. William took forever to marry Kate, and their marriage seems pretty solid. But Harry started dating Meghan in 2017, and was married to her in 2018. By 2020, he’d pretty much decided to quit being royal, and he and William, who once enjoyed a close relationship, now seemingly have very strained relations.

Another feature of narcissism is a lovebombing rush, and very quickly “hooking” the victim into permanent commitments like marriage and conception. My husband, for instance, was confronted by his ex wife when she traveled all the way to Germany from Texas with her eldest son in tow. She showed up on his doorstep and gave him a sob story. They very quickly married and, within two months of their wedding, she was pregnant with Bill’s older daughter. I noticed the same pattern when she married #3. Married within two months of Bill telling her he was going to propose to me. Pregnant within four. And… Meghan did have baby Archie less than a year after marrying Harry, although I might cut her some slack on that, since she’s an older woman.

Remember, though…. Meghan Markle is an actress. Maybe she’s not the best actress there ever was, but she was trained to convincingly portray someone she’s not. And so, it’s possible that her relationship with Harry is the biggest acting job she’s ever taken on. Or maybe not… but I can understand why people are concerned. At any rate, regardless of whether or not Harry and Meghan are really happy (and if she truly is a narcissist, I would guess not), I do hope that someday, Harry and William can repair their relationship. I think their difficulties are the saddest part of this situation.

Interestingly enough, I don’t see any videos about Donald Trump by the Body Language Guy. If he really knows anything about narcissists, he should be covering the orange turd. But then, maybe Rosas is a Trump fan. Or maybe politics bores him.

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condescending twatbags, mental health, music, narcissists, psychology

Say goodbye, not goodnight…

Beth Nielsen Chapman has a really moving song in her catalog called “Say Goodnight, Not Goodbye”. I happened to hear it the other day. I have a bunch of playlists I made when iTunes was more functional and I was bored and feeling compulsive. One of the lists is called “comforting”, and it’s a collection of really poignant and beautiful songs that are easy to focus on as I write. A lot of Beth Nielsen Chapman’s songs are on that list. I think she’s a wonderful songwriter. I like to listen to her songs, but I also like singing them. “Say Goodnight, Not Goodbye”, is one I would love to do someday. But I suspect that will have to wait until I get good enough at playing guitar to manage it.

I wish I’d stuck with piano lessons.

I see from the comments on this video that this song appeared on Dawson’s Creek. I remember watching the first season of that show, but I got out of the habit because it was airing at around the time I was in graduate school and I didn’t have time to watch a lot of TV. I also seem to remember that show was on the WB network, and the cable provider in Columbia, South Carolina stopped carrying the WB at some point while I was living there.

This poignant song is about loss, but ultimately, there’s a promise that the separation isn’t forever. Someday, there will be a reconciliation. Maybe after death. It’s comforting to believe that after the pain of separation, there will be a reunion of some sort, whether it’s on Earth or in Heaven or wherever else we go after our time down here is finished. I know Beth Nielsen Chapman has experienced a lot of pain and loss in her life, to include the loss of her first husband, Ernest Chapman, to cancer (ETA in 2023: she also recently lost her second husband, also to cancer). She’s managed to parlay those losses into the most beautiful music. Even now, having just listened to that song, I feel a bit verklempt.

You might have noticed that I changed the order of the words to Beth Nielsen Chapman’s song as my post title today. That wasn’t an error. Sometimes, it’s really best to just walk away forever. Most people are worthy of a reunion, if both parties are willing. But some people really aren’t. And sometimes they reveal themselves in really petty ways that are laughable. You realize that someone who is well into middle age or older has, emotionally speaking, never grown up beyond the age of twelve or so.

The older I get, the more I realize that some people are just not worth the effort. And I don’t have to go away mad… but I do have to go away. It hurts a bit– kind of like getting a vaccination, which is painful and inconvenient for a short time, but spares the worse pain that could come if one contracts the actual disease. Everybody has their own ideas of what’s beyond the pale in another person’s behavior. For me, it’s when a person is blatantly disrespectful to me or flies off the handle. I’ll forgive that reaction in people I know well. I don’t forgive it nearly as easily in people I don’t know well.

A few months ago, I had a casual acquaintance on YouTube. We had an okay rapport on the surface. It was friendly and complimentary, as we’re both music buffs and have similar tastes. We even had some successful collaborations. One day, I made an offhand and somewhat off topic comment on a music video he’d posted. He took huge offense to my comment. He proceeded to tell me off in a really over-the-top, insulting, embarrassing way. Then, he said he only wanted me to comment on the music and nothing else.

It wasn’t as if I knew that he had this policy regarding comments on his videos. He hadn’t specifically told me that he’d only wanted certain types of comments, nor was there any kind of notice on his channel that he didn’t like comments that weren’t simple praise for him. I had made the comment completely innocently and was truly shocked and offended by his reaction to it, which was to lecture and shame me about the genius of Paul Simon, and then demand that I ONLY comment on the music. I think it’s lame to get mad and tell people what their reactions must be or dictate what they can or can’t say.

Basically, he was saying that he didn’t want to hear from me unless it was to tell him what a great musician he is. That told me that he wasn’t interested in being friends or getting to know me. He just wanted adoring fans to up his subscribers and hit count. I thought it was overly controlling and ridiculous, but it’s his page; so I just left him to it. And since I was also a bit stung, I deleted my comment and quit interacting with him. I don’t think he realized or cared that what he said was humiliating, or that I was actually pretty hurt. And usually, when people are hurt, they tend to slink away and lick their wounds for awhile.

Time went on, and I quit thinking about the incident and kind of forgot about him. Then last night, I was sitting alone at my dining table, looking through some old postings. I remembered that this person had commented on a lot of them. Do you know that this guy went through and completely scrubbed every single comment? He didn’t block me, which I found interesting… but he did remove all of his comments, which seems like an awful lot of effort, especially since I didn’t even notice until months later. I was amazed… and then I was amused. Because obviously, my decision not to interact with him anymore had really upset him. Then after thinking about it for a moment, I also wasn’t surprised. I had a gut feeling that he would notice my absence and respond in such a way.

I started thinking about what this meant. I’ve spent many years of my life trying to appease people who think they have the right to say and do whatever they want, but they don’t want to grant the other person the same right. It’s happened to me over and over again. I’ve wasted a lot of time and effort on trying to smooth things over when I overstep some imaginary boundary that I never even knew existed. I now realize that people who are that high-maintenance are probably not worth the effort, even if they do play a mean guitar. Life is much too short to walk on eggshells. There are other mean guitar players out there who won’t act like that. In fact, with every passing day, I get better at playing guitar myself. Someday, I hope to get to a point at which I won’t need to collaborate with anyone, if I don’t want to.

Please note– I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have boundaries. There’s nothing wrong with being assertive and telling someone when they’ve upset you or done something offensive. That’s how people get to know each other and determine what behaviors are acceptable. I’m writing about the practice of exploding at people over innocuous things, and then resenting them when they inevitably get offended by that over-the-top reaction. This would not have happened had he simply asked me what I thought of his music rather than belligerently shaming, belittling, lecturing, and demanding a specific response or deference to him. Especially when he never granted me the same courtesy. Let’s not have a double standard; one standard will do just fine.

There were other things I had noticed when we were still on “speaking terms”. Like, he’d often offer me unsolicited advice on how to run my channel. He’d tell me that I shouldn’t post more than one video a day, assuming that my goal is to get popular (it’s not). I often post videos that I make for my blog, so they go up when I need them for a post. Sometimes, I go weeks without posting anything. Sometimes, I’ll post more than one video a day. I also post them when I’m inspired. Would I like it if a lot of people liked my videos? I guess… although I have learned that being popular isn’t always a great thing. The more popular you are, the more shit you tend to get from trolls, creeps, stalkers, and negative people. In any case, I never asked for tips on how to run my channel. I suspect his goals are different than mine are, and that should be okay.

I also noticed that I would post every one of our collaborations on my page and promote his channel, but he only posted one of our collaborations on his page and didn’t promote mine. It got a lot of positive feedback, so I’m left thinking that maybe he didn’t want to share the limelight. It was a little Ike Turner-esque. And it’s not that he didn’t like our collaborations and was being polite by praising me but not sharing them. If that were the case, why would he keep doing them with me? He’d always leave me compliments on our collaborations on my page, but then he didn’t share the collaborations on his. So now I’m thinking he’s probably insecure and a bit jealous of any attention someone else gets, no matter how small. I’m sure it’s not just me, either. He probably does it to other people, too.

I notice a number of red flags…

In any case, as I’m writing this, I’m reminded of the many videos I’ve watched by Les Carter, a therapist who specializes in dealing with narcissists. I don’t know if my former YouTube acquaintance is a narcissist because I don’t know him personally. However, I do think some of his behavior is a bit narcissistic and transactional. He wanted me to be loyal and deferential to him, but wasn’t going to reciprocate. I’ve had my fill of dealing with those types of people. It never ends well. I suppose I could try to “make up” with him by leaving praise on his videos. Maybe he would respond in kind on the few I’ve recently done. But I think it would only be a matter of time before I upset him again and the same thing will happen. I don’t have time for it, and frankly I deserve better.

Anyway, I made another video yesterday. I think it’s okay. I’ll keep working on learning how to play my guitar.

I did this in one take. I kind of wish it had taken more time.

So… I’m saying goodbye, not goodnight. May we both have better and more satisfying interactions with others. There are plenty of wonderful, mature people in the world who aren’t simply about having transactional relationships. I’m going to focus on finding and interacting with those people.

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