Many of the expat destinations that attract us to a better life are lavish, luxurious, futuristic cities, twinkling their delights at us. They’re also interesting and challenging cultural melting pots, full of people with different backgrounds, different values and different goals, all living under the same sun. This diversity is what makes these destinations so much fun when things are going great and paradoxically what can make them so challenging when things fall apart. If you’ve fallen into the trap of marrying a narcissist, divorcing may be your only option.

With family and friends left behind and no one to help moderate their “out-their” behaviors, a person with Toxic Narcissistic tendencies can find themselves in deep waters before they even have time to blink. These expat havens can inadvertently help feed a Narcissist’s need to feel important and admired and with this need met, a toxic Narcissist’s sense of entitlement can grow stronger each day until eventually they believe that they are truly invincible. Couple this with the fact that they may believe that they are above everyone and can do no wrong and you have a recipe for disaster.

Further along the line if they are caught in behaviors inappropriate to their marriage, a toxic narcissistic doesn’t like to admit fault. When something doesn’t go their way, it’s because someone else messed up. There is often no way to rationalize with their behavior, even if they are the ones in the wrong, degrading their spouse and using their spouse’s weaknesses to add more power to their goals.

So why is it more challenging divorcing a Narcissist, whilst living abroad as an expat, than in our home countries? Living in a space where the laws can be misinterpreted, a toxic narcissist will use this to add to their spouse’s fear. This is made easier by the fact that the spouse will probably find themselves isolated, away from their trusted friends and family, not knowing where or whom to turn to for help, especially if they have allowed their spouse to convince them that everyone likes and admires the toxic narcissist over and above themselves.

If you are divorcing a spouse with a toxic narcissistic personality you can protect yourself by learning the telltale signs.

As a Relationship, Marriage and divorce Coach here are my 7 top tips for avoiding the toxic Narcissistic sting When Divorcing

1) Avoid being derailed

No matter how wronged you may feel, you will no doubt be reasonable and want to address and resolve issues justly. This may seem quite straight forward to you, after all you have been sharing your life with this person for a good number of years. You would hope that you can now uncouple in an amicable way. The problem is that Narcissists don’t want you to hold them accountable for anything so they will re-route discussions to benefit them. This type of diversion has no limits in terms of time or subject content, and often begins with a sentence like “What about the time when…”

Don’t be derailed. Continue stating the facts without giving in to their distractions. Redirect their redirections by saying, “That’s not what I am talking about here.” If they’re not interested, disengage.

2) Avoid revealing any of your vulnerabilities

If your biggest fear is that you could lose your children because you live abroad, or that you could lose your house because you are no longer in your home country, or that you could be declared unstable because of that time you took anti-depressants years ago and never told anyone, the Narcissist will load this up like bullets into a gun to fire at you.

For support share your fears with your Divorce Coach but avoid sharing it with your estranged partner.

3) Avoid nonsensical conversations

If you think you’re going to have a thoughtful discussion with a toxic Narcissist, think again. Narcissists like to use circular conversations, arguments, projections and gas lighting to disorient you and get you off track. They do this in order to discredit, confuse and frustrate you, distract you from the main problem and make you feel guilty for having thoughts and feelings that might differ from theirs In their eyes, you are the problem.

Spend even ten minutes arguing with a toxic narcissist and you’ll find yourself wondering how the argument even began at all. You simply disagreed with them about their absurd claim and now your entire childhood, family, friends, career and lifestyle choices have come under attack. Remember: toxic people don’t argue with you, they essentially argue with themselves and you become privy to their draining monologues.

Each time you attempt to provide a point that counters theirs, you feed them supply. Don’t feed the narcissist supply. Cut the interaction short as soon as you anticipate it escalating and use your energy on some self-care instead.

4) Believe in your true worth

Narcissists like to continuously move the goal posts. So even after you’ve provided all the evidence in the world to validate your argument or taken an action to meet their request, they set up another expectation of you or demand more proof. The goal posts will perpetually change and may not even be related to each other or the divorce. The sole purpose of changing the goal post is to make you beg for validation. By raising the expectations higher each time or switching them completely, toxic narcissistic people can instill in you a pervasive sense of unworthiness and pull you into obsessing over any of your own flaws or weaknesses instead.

Don’t get sucked in. Validate yourself. Know that you are enough and you don’t have to be made to feel constantly deficient or unworthy. If you find this a difficult task to do by yourself, find a Divorce Coach experienced in dealing with the fall out of Narcissistic behaviors and work on building your strengths.

5) Establish firm boundaries

Narcissists weave tall tales to re-frame what you’re actually saying as a way to make your opinions look absurd. Let’s say you bring up the fact that you’re unhappy with the way your spouse is speaking to you. In response, he or she may put words in your mouth, saying, “Oh, so now you’re perfect?” when you’ve done nothing but express your feelings. This enables them to invalidate your right to have thoughts and emotions about their inappropriate behavior and instills in you a sense of guilt when you attempt to establish boundaries.

Simply stating, “I never said that,” and walking away can help to set a firm boundary in this type of interaction.

6) Stay mindful of who you are and your own worth

Toxic narcissists often presume to know what you’re thinking and feeling. They jump to conclusions based on their own triggers rather than stepping back to evaluate the situation mindfully. They act accordingly based on their own delusions and fallacies and make no apologies for the harm they cause as a result. They can put words in your mouth or depict you as having an intention or viewpoint you didn’t possess. They can also accuse you of thinking of them as toxic as this serves as a form of preemptive defense.

Stay mindful of your reactions and stick to the facts. This is especially important for high-conflict divorcing with toxic narcissists who may use your reactions against you. Finding a Divorce Coach who is well versed in these behaviors is vital.

7) When all else fails

and when they can’t think of a better way to manipulate your opinion or manage your emotions, narcissists will turn to name-calling. Name-calling is a quick and easy way to put you down, degrade you and insult while invalidating your right to be a separate person with your own perspective. Name-calling can also be used to criticize your beliefs, opinions and insights. Your opinion becomes “silly” or “idiotic”. They target you as a person and seek to undermine your credibility and intelligence in any way they possibly can.

End any interaction that consists of name calling. Don’t internalize it – this is not a reflection of you.

If you are considering divorcing or for more help in this area call or contact me through my website or on my number. With the right support you can overcome your worries, your fears, and your anxieties to go forward into a life filled with clarity and purpose once again.

Who Needs Life Coaching?

Have you ever felt slightly unbalanced when returning to Dubai from a holiday abroad, especially if that holiday was with extended family or friends? Life coaching may be just what you need to get back on solid ground. Don’t worry, you’re not alone.

Our time away can shake us up and cause those questions, that are often left in the depth of our minds, to suddenly spring to the front of our thoughts; questions such as:

 Is this really the life I want?
 Should I be living in Dubai?
 Is this the job for me?
 Am I moving forwards with my life?
 Is this the right relationship?
 Am I really this stuck and doing nothing about it?
 Why am I still feeling sad/bitter/angry about past events?
 Why does everyone seem to have a passion but me?”

It’s completely normal to feel slightly unhinged, like a snow globe that has been shaken up, after a time away from your expat life and host country.

This is especially true if, when you decided to become an expat, you were trying to leave your old life behind, but you did this without figuring out your inner thoughts, first. The trick would have been to also declutter your thoughts, to the point where you could let them go and then you could fly off with a brand new perspective on life, and a brand new beginning.

This isn’t the only reason though for experiencing that shaken up feeling, there are plenty of other reasons, some of which are:
 if we are returning to a situation where we’ve tried to adopt values that are not true to our own.
 when we are trying to be someone who does not share our core values.
 when we have chosen friends who are not in line with our idea of life.

The problem is that, often alone, we don’t know how to reach an answer to those very hard questions that pop into our heads. So, we decide to confide in our loved ones and trusted friends; after all we don’t want to be revealing our inner most thoughts to just anyone. Unfortunately, they no more have the answer than we do, so they brush our worries aside, saying “don’t worry it will pass” or “don’t think about that, you’re doing fine,” or worse still they project their lives, fears and worries onto ours.

Not knowing the answers to these questions and not knowing where to go to find them, we first berate ourselves for being so stupid, then we try hard to push all these thoughts back down by jumping into our daily routines, escaping into a “busy” life of work, brunches, shopping, golf, or whatever else this wonderful city has to offer. In this busy place we know there will be no more time to think about the hard stuff and we convince ourselves that life if just fine, even if there is still that tiny niggle in the back of our minds.

There is another way

Uncluttering your past, finding the values of your present and mapping out a life you want for the future is not only possible but achievable in the here and now with life coaching. And once you’ve done the work with a professional life coach, you will never look back.

But why do we need a life coach? We are all experienced in life, after all.

We are all able to drive a car, but would you fix your own car if you don’t understand the complex mechanical and electrical components of a car, how they work together and make your car run smoothly and reliably? Would you ask your friends or relatives to do it for you if they had no experience? Probably not. We all use the taps in our homes, but would you expect your relatives or friends to correctly fix a leaking tap, when in reality they have no idea how to go about this? Probably not. We all go on holiday too, but we don’t ask our relatives to fly us there unless they are experienced in aviation and have a spare plane lying around. So why is it that we expect our friends or family (or even ourselves) to fix our life problems, when neither you or they likely have formal training, or the tools required to use in this area? When we need a job to be done properly we seek a professional and this is equally as important when we are seeking to follow a life with meaning, purpose and flow.

This is What you can Expect in a Life Coaching Program

1. Goal setting – your steps to success (be it career or relationships)
2. Understanding and eliminating fears
3. Uncluttering your past – learning how to reverse negative thought patterns and eliminate limiting beliefs in order to have the space and clarity in your mind to move forwards
4. Taking responsibility for your success
5. Learning the power of gratitude and how to harness it
6. Discovering your true values and applying them to your life
7. Building resilience, assertiveness and communication skills so that you can follow the life that you want.

To book a 1-2-1 or find out more about group life coaching courses, call or whats app on 050 5186821 or contact us through our website.

Together we can build the life you want….
Because life doesn’t have to happen to you, it can happen by you….

Self Development is a Choice

When helping people through their self development; if I had a dirham for every time I’ve heard…“the fact is, I’m over (insert age) and I have to figure out how to start again…” I would be very rich indeed. For one reason or another, people feel like they don’t have a choice when, in reality, that’s all they really have.

So I want to share three things that I choose to do, during my own self development, that really helps to jump-start me and move me beyond my situational “funk”.

Before I share, I want to say that the amount of worry, stress, and fear I’ve seen in people is what makes me want to help them through the process of grieving what has passed, clearing the fear of what may be, and moving-on to create a new vision and see a new future; one that they can focus on and get excited about.

All my life I’ve been interested in trying to help people, in self development and high performance, and in learning ways to create one’s own destiny. However, it wasn’t until I turned 38 that I began to gain clarity in those areas as it relates to my own “vision” and “purpose” and that was because I was forced – through circumstances out of my control – into looking at my life as it stood. It then wasn’t until I was 42 and forced into another circumstance out of my control – forced to become a single mummy – that I really took a grip of my new direction and allowed it to manifest. So sometimes, and definitely in my case, that push into having to start a new life is a blessing in disguise. Age really doesn’t make the slightest difference in this: I’ve seen and helped 30 year olds, 40 year olds, 50 year olds and 60 year olds start anew – its attitude that counts.

Today I look at my “start-over” with incredible gratitude and am quite thankful for this unanticipated and “forced” opportunity.

So here are three things that I personally did that really helped to jump start me to move beyond my situational “funk” – maybe they will be helpful to you as well.

Choose to Accomplish One thing

I decided to accomplish one thing (in a reasonably short amount of time) that felt utterly impossible. For me, this was jumping into this Life Coaching career full time, leaving my old, comfortable, fairly well paid, but staid career behind, knowing that only 8% of people survive full time in this career but still believing that this risk would pay off and bring me far greater purpose in life as well as help me support myself and my two kids. And all this I was jumping into with no savings of my own, no money behind me and no financial support network to assist me.
Obviously, your choice doesn’t have to be as drastic as throwing in your career for a new one. There are many more challenges out there that you can start with – swim the Channel, jump out of a plane, climb a mountain, win a pageant, to name but a few that my clients have already accomplished – it just has to be one goal that seems impossible to you at the moment.

Choose Your Top 20 Values

I made sure I knew what my top 20 life values were and I started looking for people who appeared to live life as an example of the life I wanted to live and who shared these values. Most people I see can tell me five values at the most but past that have no idea what other values they are living or indeed want to live by. All my clients say this is the most ground-breaking work they do with me. As the saying goes you are the sum of the five people who surround you. I made sure the people around me – colleagues, associates, friends, relatives – shared my passion for life and my integrity to live it. This meant a small clear out of people in my life but that left space in my life for the new people to come in.

Choose To Be Scared

Finally, I allowed myself to be vulnerable and scared and move past the fear. There would have been many possible “what if” moments had I allowed them to take hold, but I I didn’t. I had

None of these steps are easy to achieve in your own. A non-biased, non-judgmental, trained professional is often the best investment you can make to help you make that step into your new life. If you’re struggling with emotions, fears or anxieties of what you’re leaving behind to where you’re moving into please get in touch, I’m here to help. Now is the time to lean into your authentic self … and now is the time to be you, fearlessly. One Life Coaching can help get you to where you want to be.

Divorce rates are high wherever you look, and the UAE is no exception. Being in an expat marriage can be very rewarding but it can also have its own issues, challenges and pressures that we don’t always stop to think about.

When we leave our home countries to follow wonderful career opportunities – or to support our partner in their new role – we are leaving our comfort zones behind. This results in all members of the family needing quite high levels of support all at once. Sometimes this is just not sustainable and cracks begin to show. To avoid the cracks appearing we might take up behaviors that we wouldn’t normally take part in back home in our own countries, especially if there is no trusted support network for us to fall back onto or to help moderate our more “out there” behaviors. In the short term, these behaviors might make us feel good and forget the pressures we have at home or in our marriage. In the long term and left unchecked, they might just erode what was once thought of as a wonderful union between two people.

Take the example of David and his family who recently moved to Dubai. David, the main breadwinner, is starting a new job. He has huge levels of pressure to navigate at work, from long working hours to cultural differences. To cope, David needs to come home to a supportive family environment and a supportive wife. Had he started his new job whilst back home, living in the same house and his wife still doing her same job, he would have had this. Regardless, he still expects this to a certain level – she should understand. Emma, his wife, who gave up a successful career in marketing to come over with him, is feeling frustrated, as she has no idea how to go about setting up the electricity for her new house, let alone how to put her life back on track and get on with her career. She has tried to make friends to grow her network but finds coffee mornings unsupportive. She feels like she has to pretend all is fine, rather than being able to talk about her current frustrations safely and with no judgement. She has tried video calling the family back home but they don’t have a real grasp of where she is living and she feels like she just ends up sounding ungrateful for living in this city full of bright lights and glamour. She needs David to leave his work at work so that she can lean on him when he gets back. Had she just lost her job at home and David remained in the same job and carried on their lives in their same home, she would have had this support.

Michael and Chloe, their two children aged 8 and 13, have just started new schools. They are trying to make friends and fit in. They find this challenging as everything is so different from teacher expectations to their local accents. They need mum and dad to be okay with each other so that they can receive their undivided attention. They never wanted to leave their schools. Had they been forced to move to another school in the same area at least they would have had their friends around them, their routines, their toys, even their beds. This is all new and it doesn’t seem very fair.

To escape this new pressure from his family, David stops at the bar on the  way home, coming back later and later, saying he has to work. This further frustrates Emma and leaves her feeling even more lonely than she already feels.  To counter act this, Emma encourages David to go to brunches on the weekend so that she can dress up, look and feel good for a while, eat, drink and forget her week. The two children are left with the newly found nanny, not quite knowing why mum and dad are suddenly out all the time. Amongst everyone resentments build up.

Understanding the pitfalls that are out there, finding ways to avoid them, jump over them, or even climb out of them, can lead to a happier, more peaceful expat marriage.

Here are 7 ways we recommend to future proof your marriage

 

• Share your vision and your goals before you set off to a new country

…Or before you get married in an expat environment. If they don’t fully match set a new vision and new goals for what you both want as a couple. We sometimes forget to communicate what exactly it is that we want to achieve by moving abroad or, worse still, we presume the other person wants the same as us. Its only later, when we have moved, that we find that we were on different pages all along. This can set the rift in motion. To stay on track, have short-term as well as long term goals. This is especially important in Dubai where our heads might be turned by the glitz and glamour of such a successful city. A joint vision and shared goals will bind us, enabling us to work together as a couple and feel like “Team Success” regardless of what anyone else is doing. It takes away the pressure of having to “compete with the Jones’s”

• Share the planning and the setting up of the family home

Do some, if not all, of the DIY yourselves so that you are working on projects together and investing in the family space. Get the kids involved as much as possible. Back home we build extensions together, put up wall paper, paint the spare room together. These are all bonding exercises to enable us to invest emotionally in our relationship as well as in our environment. As David was working so hard and arrived home exhausted, Emma made all the decisions about how the house would look. Come weekends David felt like he had to socialize with his work colleagues in order to fit in; this left no time for home. Emma was free all day so it made sense for her to do it all. Practically, yes it did make sense, but it resulted in David never being invested emotionally in the family home and as a result happy to stay away for longer and longer. This in turn made Emma more resentful, feeling forced to turn into some type of interior decorator rather than having the time to put her marketing career back on track.

• Share the adversity of home life

Ask your nanny or housemaid to clock-off as soon as you are both there. For cultures that grew up with nannies or housemaids this isn’t always an issue bur for those that haven’t the fact that someone else is doing all that work may feel liberating. What we forget is that with liberty comes responsibility to take ownership of our marriage and our family. The little things, like washing the dishes together, sharing children’s bedtime, collapsing on the sofa exhausted at the end of the evening when you’ve worked as a team is what may well help keep us together. By all means use your nanny to help you but don’t allow her to take over your roles.

• Share your positives

When you walk through the door after work, school, or play, spend the first ten minutes talking only about the positives of that day. That will set the mood for the rest of the afternoon/evening and will leave your partner and your kids with a good impression of you as someone who is positive and smiley, not someone who only ever wants to complain. After you’ve shared your positives you will have a supportive space to share your frustrations without the other person taking it personally.

• Share the negatives

…and the frustrations with someone else who is non-judgmental and supportive. Find a trusted mentor, although, granted this can be difficult if you’ve only recently stepped off the plane! Alternatively, employ a life coach who will help you through the first few months so that you do not need to feel as responsible for each other in those difficult early stages. Had Emma employed a life coach straight away she would have been planning her own career, every day following small steps that would have eventually led to large strides. She would have had someone safe and non-judgmental to unload her frustrations on and this would have left her stronger emotionally to support David, Michael and Chloe. Had David employed a coach he would have had similar results, recognizing Emma’s needs and feeling equipped with the necessary skills to support Emma and the kids when he arrived home.

• Have one activity just for you to unwind and recharge your batteries

Make the time you spend in this activity all about you but make sure you also set a time limit to do this. Say one or two hours a week. Rather than becoming a guilty pleasure, that you enjoy more and more because it is prohibited, it becomes an honest part of respecting who you are by yourself and by your spouse.

• Share the fun

Plan family weekend activities and short breaks where possible. Staycations are great for this. It’s all too easy to get caught up in the moment and forget just who you are and what you stand for. Join meet-ups that match with your family pleasures such as camping, climbing, water sports etc. and practice these as a family. Share adversity and share fun!