5 Qualities A Narcissist Will Seek To Destroy In You

When you meet a narcissist, you won't automatically know you're dealing with someone who exists inside a movie they play inside their head. You won't know that they can't perceive you as a 3D person, who is beautifully imperfect. Instead, you will be idealized so that the narcissist feels great about being with you. You will be love-bombed as a consequence of their fantasy and need to feel uplifted by their choice in you. YOU Dear One, do not actually exist to them. Once the narcissist grows bored of you, in time, their appetite for power, control, and domination will begin to surface. When this happens, they will look to destroy beautiful human qualities in you. In this episode, Lisa A. Romano, codependency and narcissistic abuse recovery coach, helps you understand how to hold onto your sanity and your personal power as the mask begins to crumble.

Transcript

So today,

We're going to be talking about five qualities a narcissistic person wishes to seek to destroy in you.

So when we talk about narcissism,

We're not talking about someone who's having a bad day.

One of the things that I try to remind my children of and the people that I coach and members of my own family and community is we should try to shy away from judging someone on their worst day because we all have bad days.

And when we're talking about narcissism,

We're not talking about someone who's just having a bad day.

We're talking about someone who has a pervasive pattern of exploiting people's emotions,

Their finances,

Their sense of reality.

We're talking about someone who is a pattern of entitlement.

So they are entitled to abuse you.

They are entitled to lie to you.

They are entitled to step on other people to get what they want.

We are talking about someone who has a pattern of lacking empathy.

So this person is empathy impaired.

So you tell your friend that your dog got hit by a car and all she cares about is why you were late,

Why you couldn't pick her up on time.

There seems to be a lack of understanding of what you have experienced emotionally.

They may know that they should have empathy for you,

But they can't cultivate the feeling of empathy for you.

They can't really relate to what you're experiencing on an emotional level.

This makes trying to have an authentic relationship or any type of relationship with someone who has these patterns impossible.

Start relationships with this type of a person and if you step back and you take a macro look at this person's life,

You'll see it's not just you.

This person will have a string of relationships that tend to be very frustrating.

They go in one way.

People who they have been intimate with will tell you that they felt exploited,

That they felt unheard,

That they felt like their partner was indifferent.

You will hear people talk about gaslighting.

You will hear people talk about triangulation.

You will hear people from their family talk about projection and blame.

There's this sense of frustration when you're dealing with someone who has a pattern of narcissism.

So let's all keep in mind that we're all human.

We all tend to believe what we believe and the greatest philosophers of all time have been trying to get people to question what they think and to question what they believe.

When we're dealing with someone who has high narcissistic traits,

This is someone who rejects self-inquiry,

At least in an authentic way.

This is someone who cannot stand self-scrutiny.

This is someone who will resent anyone suggesting that they are wrong,

That they are imperfect,

And or that they are flawed.

The idea of being seen as vulnerable is akin to an ego death and in order for a narcissist to survive,

A narcissist must stay tethered to the ego.

And so let's talk about some of the qualities someone who has narcissism will want to destroy in someone that they happen upon.

Now why is a session like this critical or important for people who are trying to figure this out?

And let's face it,

If you've happened upon videos on narcissism or podcasts about narcissism or literature about the subject,

Most likely that is because you have gotten to the point where you don't know where else to go with your frustration.

You are beside yourself trying to figure out a nonsensical rollercoaster type of a relationship in which your partner or your mother or father,

Sister,

Brother,

Whomever consistently blames whatever happens in the relationship,

Who this person also may say that they're sorry,

But nothing ever changes.

It is like groundhog's day every day.

There is a whole lot of talking and not a whole lot of changing and you're just exhausted,

Right?

If you understand what a narcissist is after and what it is in you they need to destroy in order to create you into becoming a source of narcissistic supply,

It is far easier for you then to take a giant step back and say,

Now I understand what's going on.

And in the understanding and the labeling of the relationship dynamic,

You can find yourself freeing yourself from the dynamic.

You can choose to no longer play the game.

So the first thing that a narcissist will try to destroy in you is your sense of self.

The journey we're all on is to know the self.

Again,

This is something that the greatest philosophers of time,

Of all time,

Have tried to help their students and society at large understand that the path to true contentment is to know the self,

Is to love the self,

To know who you really are,

Who am I,

What do I think,

What do I feel,

And what do I need?

But when you are dealing with a narcissist,

This is the last thing a narcissist wants for you is for you to know who you are.

It's for you to know what you think.

It's for you to know what you feel.

The narcissist must destroy and or come in between your perception of self.

They have to wiggle their self in between you and yourself or your conception of self or perception of self.

In that space,

They don't want you looking within anymore.

They want you focusing on them externally.

They don't want your eye,

Your inner eye,

To be asking who am I,

What do I want,

What do I think,

What do I feel,

How do I feel about this person,

Is this right for me,

Is this right for them?

The ability to see yourself as an autonomous 3D being is not what a narcissist wants.

The second thing a narcissist will seek to destroy is your sense of reality.

We have to keep in mind that a narcissist is self-focused.

They're like ticks,

And they have to adhere themselves to a host in order to survive.

And what does a tick do?

A tick burrows its head into the skin of the host.

In so doing,

Begins to suck the blood of the host.

When you're dealing with someone who has high narcissism,

You're dealing with someone who cannot exist without attaching themselves to someone else and without extracting blood or energy from their host.

Seriously,

Think about it.

Then you recognize that the sense of reality of the host has to be distorted.

And if you can imagine someone not knowing that they have a tick on their back,

Or imagine someone who doesn't know that there's a tick on the back of their leg,

What happens?

In essence,

Reality is there's a tick on your leg,

Dear one,

But in the world of the tick,

The tick does not want you to know that they've attached themselves to the back of your leg.

So your sense of reality has to be distorted.

Narcissists distort your reality through things like gaslighting you.

They tell you that they have not said things that they've said.

They get you to question what you think and what you feel.

You really want to do that?

Are you sure you want to handle that,

Lisa?

Well,

The last time you screwed that up,

Are you sure people aren't going to make fun of you?

Are you sure that's really what you want to do?

Are you sure you put the package there?

Are you sure you didn't throw out my tools?

Are you sure?

Are you sure?

Are you sure?

Getting you to question your reality.

When a narcissist is able to get you to question your reality,

You don't trust your internal processes and you become more and more dependent upon the narcissist.

Another quality that a narcissist will look to destroy is your sense of reason.

Logic and reason is essential to good decision making.

If we are only emotional,

We are reactive.

If we are only emotional and we don't have the ability to use logic and reason to make decisions,

Then we will rely on emotional information or emotional stimuli to determine the path that we take in life.

Our decisions cannot be purely based on emotion.

We need logic and reason.

We need to understand what's right for us.

We need to understand what's wrong for us.

We need to have some type of a moral compass and we have to figure out where do we fit in.

Without the ability to reason,

How can you decide whether or not someone is good for you or not good for you?

Without the ability to reason,

How can you be objective about the way you're being treated?

Without the ability to reason,

How do you know if you're in a relationship that drains you or empowers you?

How do you know?

And so that's the last thing a narcissist wants you to be able to do is to use logic and reason when making decisions in your life.

What a narcissist wants you to do is to feel so insecure and so fractured and so lacking in confidence of your decision making that you make them the center of your world.

Why?

Because this gives them complete control over you.

Another quality a narcissist will seek to destroy in you is your sense of independence.

This is something that actually threatens a narcissist,

The ability for you to have your own friends,

The ability for you to think what you think,

The ability for you to make your own money,

The ability for you to say yes,

The ability for you to say no.

Independence is the way we get through life by learning to be autonomous,

By learning to think what we think and feel what we feel,

To make decisions about our career,

To make decisions about where we want to spend the holidays,

To make decisions about,

Using logic and reason,

About how we are going to spend our money,

Making decisions about the children,

What school would they go to.

The ability to make these major life decisions is very much going to hinge on your ability to maintain a sense of autonomy and independence.

A narcissist will want to destroy your ability to be independent.

They will find as many ways as possible to infiltrate your autonomy.

This may mean they isolate you.

They may want to move you across the country.

They may want you to rely completely upon them financially.

They may insist that your friends are untrustworthy.

They may lie about your friends and suggest that your friends are hitting on them,

Therefore they're really not your friends.

In essence,

What's happening in these situations is that the narcissist is doing what they can to become your everything.

They are cutting you off slowly from the people that you love.

They are infiltrating the way you feel about other people.

They're making it almost impossible for you to remain independent.

They rely on things like trauma bonding to secure you as a source of narcissistic supply,

While at the same time diminishing your ability to remain independent.

They take you on wild emotional rollercoaster rides.

You will have high highs,

But you will also have very low lows.

Every time you experience a high,

You will become more in fear of the next low.

This is the way a narcissist will condition you into obedience and submission.

The last quality a narcissist will seek to destroy in you is your ability to love.

Once you stop loving yourself,

The narcissist pretty much has reign over you.

Once you have lost the ability to forgive the self and have compassion for the self and you are indebted to the narcissist,

Then the narcissist is pretty much won.

Your ability to love is the exact opposite energy or resonance of a narcissist.

Narcissists don't love in the way that healthy people love.

They just can't.

Because in order to have an authentic relationship with someone,

You have to feel seen.

You have to be seen.

You have to feel heard.

You have to be heard and vice versa.

You have to have the ability to have empathy for your partner.

Whole object constancy means that you have the ability to see this person as a unified being capable of making mistakes.

But you also recognize that patterns are very telling and that if you are in love with someone or love someone who is a pattern of minimizing you,

This is probably not going to change without tremendous self recovery work and self inquiry work,

Which a narcissist is not willing to do.

When we think about love,

We understand that love is a vibration that is encompassing.

When you are able to love and you love yourself,

A narcissist is not able to control you.

When you're able to love other people,

The narcissist is not able to control you.

A narcissist wants you to live in fear.

Fear is the opposite vibration of love.

A narcissist wants you to be afraid of what they think.

A narcissist wants you to be afraid of what your family thinks.

A narcissist will plant seeds into your mind and have you believing that your parents or your loved ones or your friends are saying things about you that they are actually not saying.

But the vibration is fear.

When you refuse to step into fear,

You are far less controllable.

When you choose to stay in the vibration of love for yourself and for other people,

Then a narcissist is not able to control you.

You absolutely break any type of connection or resonance that you've had with a narcissist if you refuse to go into fear.

Narcissists use fear as a tactic to emotionally abuse you and to really get you to fall into line and submission is acquired through fear.

A narcissist makes you afraid of losing their praise or losing their validation,

Or they make you afraid and cause you to fear a negative outcome.

So you're walking around on eggshells when you love a narcissist or you work with a narcissist.

You're afraid of their vindictiveness.

Narcissists are also usually very highly paranoid.

So they're expecting the worst from you.

So you live in fear of a narcissist accusing you of something that you're not guilty of.

And so when you're in fear,

You're not in the vibration of love.

So the quality that a narcissist will hope to destroy in you is your ability to stay in the spirit of love or stay in the energy of love.

Their aim will always be,

How do I shift this person into the energy of fear?

You see it in the kitchen,

You see it in the boardroom,

And you see it in society at large.

You see it in politics,

You see it in governments.

If you can make someone afraid of you,

Then you have a far greater chance of manipulating them and controlling them.

And that is why a narcissist will seek to destroy the sense of love within you and your ability to love rather than to live in fear.

I hope this session has been beneficial.

I hope that it has been empowering,

And I hope that it alleviates some of the questions you may have had as to why a narcissist wants so desperately to destroy such amazing,

Beautiful qualities in you as a human being.

Remember,

You have a right to love yourself.

You have a right to know yourself.

And the more you know yourself,

The more protected you are against narcissists.

Namaste,

Everybody.

Until next time.

Bye for now.

Reviews

Lisa, I want to thank you for so many of your talk recently that have made me think and ask a lot of questions not just of myself though of what is going on in the family dynamic… So I have a question for you today you talked about a narcissist, not showing empathy … I guess my question becomes do they become really good at faking empathy when it serves them well and they can perhaps derive something from it whether it be immediate or potentially in the future? I’m really struggling here. As I find out my sister is not who she is and I’ve been lied to so many times your last words really struck accord with me… I am enough… I deserve a good life, and I am a good human being!

I enjoyed this and very helpful to get a great perspective on how they work.

in the person.

Thanks for explanations that are easy to understand. I have listened to all your talks on Insight Timer, and it would be great when you use terms like trauma, bonding or triangulating… You could quickly explain what they mean. I think I know what they mean, but that would be helpful.

Top notch

So helpful. Thank you.

Thank you Lisa. I love how you break it down and give truth a voice to codepency and narcissistic abuse. Sorting this out with the simple truth in the process to love vs fear thinking. Shifting out of the dark energy from the past and creating more love, more peace and more joy. You teach the beauty of self love and I am grateful for your words of wisdom. I pray to do the same.