Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.
My name is Lisa A.
Romano.
I am a life coach,
Best-selling author,
YouTube vlogger,
Meditation teacher,
And expert in
the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.
I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.
My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather
than living a reactive life.
May your heart feel blessed,
Your mind feel expanded,
And your spirit find hope as you
spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.
So today we're going to be discussing why narcissists are so mean and see if we can
unravel what that means.
When we're thinking about relationships,
We have to understand a couple of basic ideas
in that if you're in a healthy relationship,
Your partner has goodwill for you.
Your partner sees you as someone who is flawed and that's okay.
In other words,
We all have our deal breakers.
I have mine.
I know what I will tolerate and what I will not tolerate in a relationship.
I also know what I deserve and what I don't deserve in a relationship.
So after almost 57 years of life on this planet,
I finally figured out and started to figure
out about 40 to 45 years old what was healthy and what was unhealthy and really got clear
about my value and my worth as a human being.
But I also understood that I was not perfect.
In fact,
I was very flawed and part of my self-actualization process,
And I think it's
the same for all of us,
Is learning to accept that we're not perfect.
The ability to recognize yourself as flawed and imperfect is really a gift.
As long as you're not going down a rabbit hole because you're not perfect.
Like you really understand that this is a process of evolution and you're unfolding
and your younger self just didn't know certain things and that with age comes experience
and thus wisdom.
So the person that is speaking to you today and what is falling from my lips today would
not have been able to fall from my lips when I was 27 or even 37.
I was starting to get a clue around then,
But really it's the life experience that
has taught me the most and being reflective and recognizing my own flaws like I said earlier
and recognizing that human beings in fact are flawed and that's okay.
And then deciding from a position of self-love and self-respect what I will and will not
tolerate in a relationship with other people,
Knowing that other people are flawed just
like I am having boundaries.
Now when dealing with a narcissist,
We are understanding that narcissists don't have
that ability to do that.
They are black and white thinkers.
So in the beginning of a relationship,
You will be idealized.
Why?
Because the more the narcissist believes you're awesome,
The better the narcissist feels about
themselves.
So it's not about you.
Over time,
The narcissist will discover that you have flaws just like everyone else and
they will cease to see value in you.
You will become the enemy.
You will become a threat simply because they have run out of steam.
They see you and they understand,
Beginning to understand that you are just like everybody
else and now they have no value for you.
There's no value in you.
No,
No reason to keep you around.
We have to also recognize that narcissists are super,
Super,
Super sensitive and I don't
mean sensitive to the needs of other people,
Sensitive in the sense that it makes them
more empathic human beings and capable of understanding how other people feel.
I'm talking about sensitive to the point where they're,
They are hypervigilant and tuned
up for criticism.
And so it's really easy to offend someone who has high narcissistic traits,
Someone
who is easygoing and you bump into them and they're okay.
Someone who is easygoing,
You poke fun at them a little bit and they roll with it.
They laugh with it.
They don't take it too personally.
Not so when we're dealing with someone who has high narcissistic traits.
So it's important that we remember that a narcissist by nature is ultra,
Ultra sensitive.
They're scanning the room looking for the person who might be sliding them.
So that's important to remember.
They also live in fear.
So they are in protective mode most of the time.
So it's almost like they are expecting someone to hurt them.
So imagine if you're dealing with someone who is super,
Super sensitive,
Super,
Super
defensive in protection mode and who needs to see themselves as better than other people.
Imagine falling short in some capacity with this person.
This person is going to have an extreme reaction to you.
You see,
They're going to believe that any slight by you was meant to intentionally harm
them because they can't see you as a whole person who is flawed,
Who is going to have
a good day and then a bad day.
You are there to serve the needs of a narcissist.
So when you fall short and on any level to them,
There's going to be an extreme reaction
and they will be mean and they will be vindictive.
So we're talking about someone who is highly sensitive,
Highly insecure,
And is in need
of your affirmation,
Your validation,
Your constant positive mirroring.
Now when you don't do that,
When you can't maintain that level of affirmation and positive
reinforcement because you have a life and you don't feel well,
Or you've got bills to
manage or kids to take care of,
The narcissist feels this as a slight,
She's not paying attention
to me.
They will now seek a source of narcissistic supply elsewhere.
They also have to blame you for why they're doing this.
They take your inability to shine affirmation their way as an attack,
And that also lends
to why they are so mean.
Narcissists lack empathy.
There's a sense of entitlement and they are generally exploitative.
This is why they're so mean.
You are created on God's earth to manage them,
To give them what they need.
And when you don't,
You have no value to them.
And so they discard you,
They devalue you,
They demoralize you.
Why?
This feeds into their need to feel dominant and they need to punish you because of the
way they're feeling.
What's really,
Really frustrating for some,
A victim of narcissism,
Someone who is dealing
with this personality is that you put so much effort into the relationship.
And then all of a sudden you get a text and an email or phone call,
Or you are confronted
by someone's idea that you are nothing,
That there's something that you said,
There's something
that you did or you didn't do.
And now you are garbage.
They're not able,
They don't have object,
Whole object constancy,
Which basically means
that I can experience you as someone who's flawed and you can disappoint me in this moment,
But I'm able to see that we have this history together and I don't forget the good.
But when you slide a narcissist or at least disappoint a narcissist,
They feel,
It feels
like an attack.
They go into this,
They have an inability to experience whole object constancy.
And now it's black and white thinking at you.
They've been triggered and now they must devalue you.
So when we're dealing with someone who feels attacked on the daily,
They fear being attacked.
We have to recognize that in their mind,
Anything that that is perceived as a slight is going
to be perceived as an attack.
They go into full on victim mode.
Dealing with someone who positions themselves as a victim day in and day out is exhausting.
You can't win that battle.
Intentions are difficult enough to navigate,
But when you're dealing with someone who is
always the victim,
That means you are always the one in the wrong,
Always,
And you will
spend your life defending yourself.
And if you stay with this person long enough,
You can feel like you're losing your mind
because you're being attacked over and over and over and your intentions are being attacked.
You're being told why you do what you do and it's a complete fabrication.
Another reason that narcissists are so mean is because in some cases,
Hurting you gives
them a sense of power and that's really something to be aware of.
There are some people who genuinely enjoy hurting other people's feelings,
Watching
them squirm.
And this is really so hard as a human being to be in a circle of friends or be a family
member and you know that there's that one uncle or that there's that one sibling who
you know that this person is just going to attack the person who they see as weak or
they're going to attack what this person has said,
Pull it apart,
Be confrontational and
embarrass them,
Especially if the person that they're attacking is someone that other people
are praising because attacking them makes them feel better.
That's another reason why narcissists are so mean.
So if you're dealing with a narcissist at work,
It's important to remember that narcissists
don't have empathy for your feelings.
They don't care and they can sometimes feel better about themselves when they're hurting
you.
They're hyper,
Hypersensitive,
So they see themselves as a victim.
They are in defense mode all the time.
They're very defensive creatures and so they will react very poorly when they feel attacked
themselves.
And because they're so super sensitive,
Anything,
Just almost anything can set them off and
anything can be perceived as a threat.
You put a coffee mug on the coffee table and they see that as a threat.
You did that on purpose.
You moved the hairbrush from one bathroom to the next bathroom.
You just forgot to put it back.
You did that on purpose.
They feel attacked.
You forgot to mail the mortgage out.
You just left it on the kitchen counter.
You did that to hurt their credit.
And so narcissists are super,
Super hypersensitive.
Their world is very,
Very fragile.
They rely on dominance and control and power to feel emotionally regulated.
They are very controlling creatures,
Very distrustful creatures,
And they lack empathy.
They also lack whole object constancy.
So that means that any little bump in the road,
You go from being a knight in shining
armor to absolute zero,
Nothing.
They go from saying they have trust in you on Monday and by Friday they have no trust
in you.
And this is a theme in your relationship.
It's up and down.
They love you one minute and then they distrust you the next minute.
You are the apple of their eye one minute and they're cheating on you the next minute.
So these are some of the reasons that narcissists are so mean.
And these are some of the traits that we need to be aware of in relationships.
And we need to identify these traits in our relationships so that we can move out of them
quicker when necessary and not waste so much time in toxic,
Up and down,
One way relationships
in which we are dealing with someone who positions themselves as victim,
As a victim,
And who
so easily perceives the slightest conversation or the slightest act as an attack.
Namaste everybody.
Until next time.
I so hope this has been helpful.
Bye for now.
