Narcissists: You're NOT Their Slave

Have you ever felt like someone's psychological slave, as if every thought you have, you must worry what someone in your life is going to think or feel? If you have ever loved a narcissist, you may have slowly lost yourself overtime and not even realized it until you felt like you were going crazy or like you were losing your mind. A narcissist lives in a very unique fantasy world, in their mind, and you are merely an actor in their play. You do not exist as an autonomous 3D human being, with your own unique beliefs, needs, expectations, emotions or opinions, at least not in their heads you don't. No, you play a role in their life and whether you realize it or not, in their eyes, you are their psychological slave and you are to bend when they blow.

Transcript

Welcome to Breakdown to Breakthrough,

The podcast that empowers you to transform your life by awakening to your true,

Authentic self.

I'm Lisa A.

Romano,

Your host.

As an award-winning author and certified life coach,

I've dedicated my life to helping others understand the incredible power of an organized mind.

I believe that true empowerment begins with awakening to our false self.

My mission is to support you on your journey toward mental and emotional regeneration through conscious and deliberate awakening.

In this podcast,

I'll share insights,

Tools,

And transformative stories that illuminate the path to healing and self-discovery.

Namaste,

Everybody.

Lisa A.

Romano,

The Breakthrough Life Coach,

And today I wanted to talk about how a narcissist will use their perception of you,

Against you,

As a weapon.

One of the things that we as codependent people,

And also empathic people,

People who love people who have high narcissistic traits,

One of the things that gets our foot tangled up in the chain of a narcissistic relationship is our spouses' or our loved one's perception of us.

In other words,

When we love someone who's like,

You are crazy,

You're a flake,

You are selfish,

You only think about yourself,

I knew you were going to leave me,

I knew you weren't someone I could trust,

I knew you were going to do this.

All these negative perceptions that someone who is highly narcissistic will accuse someone that they love or they care about of,

Especially during conflict.

We have to be careful about getting caught up in our head about this person's perception of us,

Because we are generally hurt.

If you are someone who's relatively healthy,

You will be upset that someone you love thinks that you're selfish,

Or thinks that you're paranoid,

Or thinks that you're a greedy person,

Or thinks that you're a cheater,

Or thinks that you're just someone who cuts and runs when the going gets tough.

We have to remember that our narcissist is someone who is always going to keep the focus on themselves,

So they can cause chaos in their life and your life,

And if you respond to it,

They're the victim.

You're not allowed to have a response to them.

You're not allowed to react to them minimizing you,

Or them devaluing you,

Or them being super critical of you,

Or nitpicking you.

You're not allowed to have a response to that.

And so,

When there is a conflict,

And you confront this highly narcissistic person about this conflict,

They're going to have an issue,

And don't be surprised if they start to name call,

Or if they start to put you down.

You want to understand that a narcissist may not think that you're selfish.

They might not think that you're a flake.

They might not think that you're the worst person in the world,

But they want you to think that they think that.

Why?

Because you,

As their partner,

Who cares about them,

Especially if you're codependent .

.

.

I'm just .

.

.

Listen up,

Codependent men and women out there.

Especially if you're a codependent man,

And especially if you're a codependent female,

In which you have abandonment issues,

And insecure attachment issues.

When your partner says,

I think that you're X,

Y,

And Z,

That will mess you up.

Your abandonment trauma will get triggered,

The inner child will get triggered,

And you're going to want to fix it,

And you step onto this ferris wheel of trying to fix something that you cannot fix.

Now,

A narcissist will weaponize their perception against you,

Because in doing so,

You worry about what they think about you,

And you worry so much that you're trying to fix what they think about you.

What you want to try to remember is that when a narcissist throws a label at you,

You have to be careful about what's happening in your mind.

It's really how do you hold onto what's happening between your ears,

So that you don't go down the rabbit hole.

Remember,

A narcissist is always pulling rabbits out of their hat.

They're always flying detours up,

And they want your mind to go down this rabbit hole.

They want your mind to go down that detour.

They don't want you to stay focused on what it is that you're complaining about,

And what it is that you want clarity on.

This is part of all the strategy steps on how to talk to a narcissist,

And how to deal with a narcissist.

You can't fix a hole in the wall you don't see.

You don't know,

Dear one,

That you're doing something wrong,

And that's keeping you stuck as it relates to what the narcissist thinks about you,

Unless you hear someone say it.

So that's the whole purpose of this session,

Is to help you recognize that a narcissist will weaponize their perception of you.

So a narcissist throws out an insult towards you.

You as an empathetic person,

You don't want that person to think this of you.

You want them to think well of you.

You want them to know that you care about them.

You want them to know that you have good feelings for them.

It hurts you to think that your partner thinks this about you.

It hurts you to think that they think this.

You want them to believe that you think they're awesome,

That you love them,

That you're altruistic towards them.

You're empathetic towards them.

So it actually hurts you that your partner thinks ill of you.

So now what happens is,

Especially if you're codependent,

Especially if you're codependent,

What you're going to do,

Dear one,

Is you're going to try to fix what this narcissist thinks about you.

So let's say the narcissist says that you take off when the going gets rough.

You want a divorce or you're thinking about getting a divorce and you're done with what's happening and you come to this narcissistic person and you say things just aren't working out.

So let's say you confront this narcissistic person about some addiction that they have.

It could be weed.

It could be alcohol.

It could be porn.

It could be anything.

It could be gambling.

And you've had enough.

You've said,

Listen,

We've talked about this.

Nothing's getting better.

I don't like what's happening in front of the children.

We're not getting better and I think it's time for us to separate.

We've tried therapy.

That didn't work.

You refuse to change.

And the narcissist is really upset with you and the narcissist starts accusing you of being a narcissist or they accuse you of being selfish or they accuse you of not having compassion for them.

For not understanding why they are this way and why they have these problems.

You see people who are constantly saying,

But this is why I am this way are not looking for a solution.

So you as an independent person really need to understand that,

That you're dealing with someone who is justifying and rationalizing why they're abusive.

They're justifying and rationalizing why they can't get well.

That doesn't work.

It doesn't work with addiction recovery.

It doesn't work with codependency.

It doesn't work with relationship addiction.

It doesn't work with narcissism.

It doesn't work.

What works is,

Oh,

This is happening.

This is how I am affecting other people.

I don't want to affect other people.

I want to change.

I want to turn my life around.

What can I do to change it?

And it all starts up here.

Your attitude is going to affect your behavior.

It's in your behavior affects the choices that you make.

If someone has a victim mentality,

Which all narcissists have a victim mentality,

If they have a victim mentality and they are in destructive patterns,

Their mind works to justify their destructive patterns.

I'm going to tell you why I have a right to treat you this way.

I'm going to tell you why I can't fix my life.

I'm going to tell you why I can't stop drinking.

You don't know how hard my life is.

Okay.

If you just take a giant step back,

That person is telling you where their life is going to be in 20 years because they have no intentions of fixing it.

And life is just too short.

And when my ex-husband told me I'm not changing,

He literally came home from therapy and said,

Our therapist said that I don't have to change.

That's when I knew it was like,

I flashed back.

I will actually flash forward 20 years and thought,

Oh no,

I'm not doing another 20 years of this.

Life's too short.

I mean,

I was literally crying this morning.

I had tears coming down my eyes because I just connected with the fragility of life.

My best friend died at 37.

My daughter's best friend died at 27.

My ex-sister-in-law died at 28.

Like life is for real and so is death.

And this idea that this person wasn't going to change,

I was like,

That's a prison sentence.

I'm out of here.

And what I had to do was I had to accept his faulty perception of me.

I got called every name in the book.

The reasons for our marital problem were half,

They were half truths.

They were exaggerated.

They were made up a lot of the things that were going around.

Nothing was the truth.

He knew exactly why we ended up where we ended up.

But his perception of me being a quitter,

His perception of me as being over emotional,

His perception of me as being unfair,

Irrational,

Selfish,

Really got me for a while.

And I stepped onto that Ferris wheel of trying to prove to him that I wasn't who he thought he was.

And what was really going on was I was trying to get the connection back to my mom.

My ex-husband was the energetic mirror for my mother.

And I,

As a little girl,

Did everything.

I was obsessed with trying to prove to my mother that I wasn't the person that she told me I was.

I loved her.

I loved her and I craved her like we need air and crave air.

And no matter what I tried to do with my mom,

There was this pushback and this push,

You're not good enough,

You're not good enough.

It took me decades to realize that my mother had all of this childhood trauma.

She had her own abandonment wounds and she had her own codependency issues and she was obsessed with pleasing my father.

And I was just an annoying little baby that got in the way of her being able to please my father because she needed so much energy to take care of me and she resented me.

She was a teenager when she had me.

But when you're a little one,

You don't know that your mom is 19 years old and the adult child of an alcoholic and married to a narcissist.

You don't know that.

You just crave this being.

She's your goddess.

She's your everything.

And when it rejects you,

You learn to believe that it's your fault because all children are egocentric.

And because we're biologically wired to gain that attachment to this person,

Every cell in our being has us trying to get an attachment.

So her perception of me was getting in the way,

At least my little ego mind,

A three-year-old,

Four-year-old,

Five-year-old,

Six-year-old,

Seven-year-old ego mind.

I thought,

Oh,

Well,

Her perception of me is the problem.

If I can eradicate her perception of me,

Then we'll be good.

Then I can attach securely to my mom.

I'll feel safe in the world.

I won't be living through Amy the amygdala and Harry the hippocampus.

I won't be codependent.

I won't seek approval.

I won't be afraid of disapproval.

I'll be able to say no with authority.

I'll have a stainless steel spine.

I'll be one of those confident women that I've always admired that could speak their truth that were OK with a man or without a man,

That weren't begging for approval of a man.

I'll be one of those women.

I thought that was fabulous.

But as a child,

I thought that her perception of me was the problem.

So as a codependent wife to this husband of mine,

This nice narcissist,

I used to call him the Boy Scout narcissist because people loved him.

And I thought it was me because everybody loved him.

And again,

It took me over 12 years to realize,

Wait a minute,

He treats other people different than he treats me and the kids.

And I am the only person on planet Earth that has this one-to-one experience of him.

And so it took a long time for me to value my experience of him.

But it was through codependence recovery,

Which is why I talk about codependence recovery so much,

Because it truly is the doorway to self-improvement,

Autonomy,

Individuation,

Which is what I love Carl Jung speaks about all the time,

Becoming your own self,

Like loving yourself.

I didn't know that I didn't have a self,

And I was giving him all of my power to say whether or not I had any validity to a self,

Whether or not I was worthy of love.

And when I started to work this all through with codependency recovery and inner child healing,

Understanding the subconscious mind,

It was just like layers and layers and scales came off my eyes.

And I could see clearly for the first time in my life,

I could see that I was caught on this codependent Ferris wheel seeking his approval and trying to change his perception of me.

I had a cognitive delusion,

If you will,

A fallacy,

A distortion that had me believing that what was wrong was his perception of me.

And if I could change his perception of me,

Then I could attach,

And then he would love me,

And then the clouds would part,

And I could sing hallelujah,

And I'd finally feel enough.

And it really was through codependency recovery where I had to come face to face with the reality that I was attaching my self-worth outside of me,

That for my entire life I had given my sense of self over to other people,

Even my son's kindergarten teacher,

I hope she likes me.

She asked for 30 cupcakes,

No,

I have to make 200.

It all came from mom and dad,

You're not good enough,

What you are is not enough,

You have to keep doing and overdoing,

Overdoing,

Overdoing to prove myself.

And it was through codependency recovery and through the hardships of that relationship and losing everything,

Losing my family,

Losing the house,

Losing the security,

Losing the business,

Like walking out into the world with my three children without a job,

Without a family,

Without money.

I mean,

He took the car out of our driveway.

We didn't even have a car.

My ex-husband took our car.

And I still can't wrap my mind around how he did that to our children.

And I was entitled to that car.

That was marital property.

And I didn't fight him on it.

I was just so depleted and so wrapped up in,

Well,

If I fought for the car,

He's going to call me selfish.

My mom's going to call me selfish,

So I'll just let go of the car.

I abandoned myself.

I should have fought for that car.

I had a right to that car.

It was a van anyway,

But anyway,

I digress.

But I should have fought for these things.

But still,

Even through the divorce,

I was still wrapped up in other people's perception of me.

Now,

I know narcissists use that term to kind of like push off responsibility.

But I think that someone who has been narcissistically abused,

Who has been gaslit,

In my case,

It was gaslighting by my parents.

It was being treated like I didn't have a soul,

That I didn't have any value.

You could say whatever you want and treat me any way you want and triangulate me against my family and talk poorly about me to friends and family.

There's no love for you for me.

I think that for someone who has grown up in that experience,

That's your inner child's experience,

I think learning to say,

I am really sorry you feel this way about me,

Is very cathartic.

It helps me put sort of like their emotions in a Tupperware container,

If you will.

I can put their perception of me in that container or in that mason jar and put it on a shelf and separate it from how I feel about me.

I at the same time can acknowledge that they feel that way about me and I can say how sad it is,

Mom,

Or how sad it is,

Ex-husband,

That you perceive me that way.

I wish you didn't,

But I accept that you do.

I give you permission to feel that way about me.

That's what that video was all about.

It's giving people permission to have a faulty perception of you.

This way,

It releases you from trying to change it.

If you're codependent,

You're in a toxic relationship with a narcissist,

Do not be surprised if they're using their perception of you as a weapon.

Your job is to not take the bait.

Your job is to understand that if they can hurt you with their perception of you,

Their agenda is to get you to try to fix that perception of you.

But here's the thing,

They hold all the cards.

Their perception of you is something that they change and they control.

You can spend the rest of your life trying to prove to a narcissistic husband or narcissistic wife that you're not what they think you are.

That's the whole game,

Because as long as you're busy trying to prove to them that you're not the person that they told you that they think you are,

You're stuck.

You can't say enough is enough.

You can't find your voice.

You can't heal the codependent in you and stop being affected by their mood.

You can't find the courage to say namaste and walk away.

You can't find the courage to shati shati and say,

Okay,

Okay,

No problem.

That's what you think and that's what you feel.

Like I said,

I have to accept it.

I give you permission to feel whatever you feel.

It's totally fine.

You never get the courage to separate yourself from this dynamic so that you can find your own way.

I hit rock bottom when everybody walked away.

It was the most painful,

Painful time in my life,

But facing all of that drama,

Facing all of my wounds,

Taking responsibility for healing myself has landed me in this seat,

In this kitchen,

Talking to you today.

This work has empowered hundreds of thousands of people,

If not millions of people.

Like what?

What?

Me,

Single mom from Queens,

New York,

Like what?

I'm one person and I took all of the tragedy that happened to me,

Which turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me because it stripped me of everything that was false.

That relationship was false.

The belief systems that caused me to marry him were false.

The identity that I had in that relationship,

The codependent,

Was a false identity.

This is who I really am.

And so everything that happened,

Happened for a greater purpose,

But it's up to us to turn lemons into lemonade.

Nobody turns our lemons into lemonade.

It's up to us to turn lemons into lemonade.

And I believe that because we are God's highest form of creation,

I believe that because we are extensions of the one,

I believe that there's nothing that we can't overcome if we adopt the right mindset.

I'm not saying it happens overnight.

This happens,

It's a progressive journey,

But you have to make a decision to be that person that will overcome.

That has to be first.

You have to adopt a warrior mindset.

I will overcome.

I will get to the other side of this.

I will turn lemons into lemonade.

I will shed this identity.

I will shed this relationship.

I will be an autonomous 3D human being.

I will be that woman or that man with the stainless steel spine.

I will never be manipulated again.

I will always step into relationships,

My authentic self.

I will be codependent no more.

I will not be codependent.

I am that non-codependent person.

I say what I mean.

I mean what I say,

But I don't say it mean.

I'm not responsible for how other people perceive my intention.

As long as I come at it with a good intention and good energy and this idea of wanting to keep everything copacetic and whole,

I can't be responsible for how someone who is highly narcissistic perceives that,

And I'm not going to play that game.

If you make that decision,

All will be well.

Just give yourself some time.

It's taken me almost 30 years to get here,

But I remember as a single mom,

I remember where I was in my little house in Queens when I first got separated and I started really diving into this work.

I asked myself,

Well,

15 years is coming,

Hopefully.

We could croak at any time.

We should all be big girls and boys and accept that and take our life more seriously and take the time that we offer other people more seriously because time is all we have.

Time is all we have.

Time is life.

I thought to myself,

Well,

15 years is coming.

What if I spent every day for the next 15 years reshaping my belief systems,

Hacking the subconscious mind,

Cultivating that true self?

What would happen if I worked on codependency recovery?

What would happen if I took responsibility for the law of vibration?

What would happen if I lived codependent and well?

Where would I be?

Here I am.

Here I am.

And I'm not some superhuman.

I just followed a formula and it worked.

And I offer it every day here in different platforms.

And so if you're hearing this and it resonates with you,

I'm so grateful.

And I really just hope that it inspires you to think in a new way and to not allow a narcissist perception of you to be weaponized against you.

Your goal,

Dear one,

Is to give them permission to think whatever they think about you.

Do not take the bait.

Namaste,

Dear ones.

Until next time.

Reviews

Thank you. I’ve learned a lot and I am most grateful.🦋🙏

Just what I needed to hear after an outreach from a narcissist. Getting my mind and heart right. Thank you! 🙏

Great talk and so eye opening! Sent you a private message here on Insight Timer, would love to hear back if you have time, no rush! Thank you 😊 🙏🏼