Why Covert Narcissists Are So Hard To Leave

Have you ever felt emotionally exhausted, confused, and trapped in a relationship that looks “fine” from the outside, but deeply painful behind closed doors?
Do you constantly question your own feelings because everyone else seems to think your partner is kind, caring, or trying their best?
If so, you are not crazy. And you are not imagining things.
In this powerful live workshop episode, Lisa A. Romano breaks down the hidden dynamics of covert vulnerable narcissism and why these relationships are often far more psychologically confusing than overt narcissistic relationships. Through deep psychological insight, nervous system awareness, and trauma-informed healing, Lisa explains why codependent people struggle to trust themselves, leave unhealthy relationships, and stop being pulled back into emotional manipulation cycles.
This is not about weakness. It is about subconscious conditioning.

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. So today I want to encourage those of you who believe that you are living with, Or loving, Or married to, Or even the sibling of, Or the child of a covert vulnerable narcissist. Because living with and loving someone who is a covert, Vulnerable narcissist, I feel in my humble opinion, Is much harder to deal with mentally, Emotionally, Physically, Financially. Relationship wise than it is to deal with someone who is a covert narcissist and here's why. When you're dealing with a covert narcissist, Psychologically, It is so much easier for you to point at behavior to words and to actions that indicate, Yeah, This person is completely grandiose. This person is so self-absorbed. They are so selfish. They only think about themselves. And what's really helpful is that generally other people can pick up on it too. If you're dealing with an overt narcissist, Oftentimes they are not upset that they're narcissistic. They are not upset that they're self-righteous. They just think that they're right. They really don't care what other people think about them. Now, When you're dealing with a vulnerable narcissist, That is much harder to spot. And so if you are the wife of a vulnerable narcissist, Then you might feel so trapped by your perception of them because you know no one else can see it but you. If you have a covert vulnerable narcissist as a wife or a husband, You might even have seen and noticed their disregard for your children or your family. But here's the thing, This is what covert vulnerable narcissists do. They can turn that off sort of like of a stove flame. They can turn it on and turn it off depending on who's observing them. Depending on a witness from outside the home. Now, If you don't understand covert narcissism, Which I certainly did, Did not, You don't make the connection that there is a change in their behavior when someone else is observing their behavior. You don't see that. In the beginning. You always think it's you in the beginning. You're too much. You're too picky. You're being a pain in the neck. You look at yourself and think, Everybody loves him or everybody loves her. I'm just too much. You immediately blame yourself. But what ends up happening is oftentimes you filled with so much anger and so much rage and so much confusion. Because this person is a vulnerable narcissist. So they're not raging at you a lot of the time. On the surface, They're figuring out, Well, How do I please her or how do I please him? And you don't realize that they're not trying to please you because they have empathy for how their behavior has affected you. They on the surface want to please you so that you have less to complain about, Not because they care that their actions affected you, And they want to take accountability for their actions so that you feel seen, Loved, And heard by them. That's not what's going on. When a covert, Vulnerable narcissist suddenly learns how to load the dishwasher, It is for him or it is for her. It is not for you. It is not for the relationship. Because as you gain in self-awareness, As you stop living below the veil, As you begin to question, How did I grow up? Why don't I set boundaries? Why couldn't I honor myself? I felt like something was wrong in this relationship. Why did I self-abandon? You're learning to live above the veil. You're not in the dynamic so much trying to please this other person. You're really trying to understand it now, Which is terrific. You're breaking through the veil. You're beginning to have an awakening. Now, As you begin to awaken, Especially if you came from a codependent home or an alcoholic home or a home of neglect. Emotional oppression which taught you that you can't trust your feelings. Or you can't trust your perceptions and you've got to make other people happy. Even at the expense of self. Because you didn't have anybody in your family teach you how to stand up for yourself and say, This doesn't work for me anymore and I have to love myself. You don't have that data, Right? Your subconscious mind is. Void of that data. That's not your fault. Your brain and mind can only play with the tools that are in the shed. So if you had a passive mother who did not push up against a narcissistic father, For example, It's not your fault that you stay in a relationship that is unfulfilling or toxic or narcissistic. It's not your fault. You just don't have that data. But look at you attracting this information. That's amazing. So that's already indicative of some type of a change that's happening to you on the heart level and on the level of the mind. Because you've attracted this information. Lions and tigers and bears before I digress too far. When you're dealing with the covert vulnerable narcissist, It takes you a little bit of time to flesh this out. It takes time for you to to understand why it was that you couldn't trust your feelings and Why it was that rather than set a boundary and trust your feelings you? You thought it was you. You thought that you were too needy. You were to this, Whatever. Then it takes time for you to flesh out. Why you're still angry and they're trying to change or at least you think they're trying to change and they're telling you i'm in therapy like that's not enough for you and i stopped drinking and that's not enough for you so the a covert narcissist is going to make everything about where they pushed the chess piece on the chessboard without any true understanding of the indescribable invisible something that makes you a partner to someone else at the level of the heart. So a vulnerable narcissist is going to operate from the mental field, Not their heart field. You're trying to operate from the heart field. You can't do that with a covert narcissist. They can't access those emotions. They don't want to. They have empathy for themselves. And they do not want to have empathy for you because that levels the playing field, Which makes you equal to them. Which means there's a possibility that they're wrong. And you're right. And that's just not gonna work. And if you think about it, It feels overwhelming. It feels intense at the same time, Very subtle, Which is why we call it covert. And that's why when I coach someone privately or within the group, I'm always trying to get them to come back to the self so they can trust themselves and what they're picking up on. And when you understand the past is why. You are where you are. It starts to click. You start to elevate above the veil, And then you can start to see these patterns. Now, When you start to hold a covert, Vulnerable narcissist responsible because you've had it, Like you've had it, The kids can't see what's going on. Your mother and father can't see what's going on. Everyone's just like, You're the crazy one. Look how hard he or she is trying to please you. That makes you more angry because you feel like everything is a game. You feel like you're living deceit. You feel like you know what the vulnerable narcissist is doing and they know that you know, And they're just playing the game at the level of the mind and the level of superficiality, The material world. Like, So you said that there was something wrong with my tone. So now I speak to you like this, And you're still not happy. They speak to you at the level of, Well, You said that I needed to go into therapy and now I'm in therapy and you're still not happy. They speak to you at the level of, You said that I needed to bring you home flowers. And so they bring you home flowers, But they're half dead and they slam them on the table and they die the next day. I brought you home flowers and you're still not happy. You see, That's the game that a covert narcissist plays. And it will mess you up for a while, Dear one, Until you really flesh this out and you see it clearly from a higher state of consciousness. Once you see the game, You can't unsee it. What I want everybody to be prepared for if you're trying to leave a covert narcissistic relationship I want to warn you that there's going to be a time when They start possibly start doing everything that you ask them to do in therapy everything that you've complained about it's almost like they've kept a ledger in their mind and Now they know that you've had it you see them or you're starting to see them clearly so the mask is starting to fall for you anyway and they have to crazy glue the mask back on as soon as possible. So that they can feel in control over your perception of them and they want to cripple you. And any decision making process that you come to or just rationalization or justification for divorcing them. So the way that they do that in their head is they take out that list that they've been ignoring of all of your complaints and they start checking them off. So if you complain that you never helped me with the kids, Check. You complain that they never loaded the dishwasher, Check. You complain that they didn't come to your mother's house every Sunday or ever, They start coming, Check. They don't engage in the conversation at the dinner table. They make everybody feel freaking uncomfortable, But check, They're there. So as you start to see the games that they play, You can become empowered as as long as you stay above the veil now I drew a diagram because I teach the above the veil method And so all of my coaching and all of my all of my work is designed not to keep you operating from the trauma And the wounds and the energy of that which is attracted this crap into your life in the first place I'm trying to elevate your consciousness So that you can observe it from a higher state what I call above the veil. So I drew a diagram to help you understand this concept because the brain loves diagrams and it loves metaphors. It might be rendering backwards on video and for those who are listening via audio I'll just explain what the diagram is. So there are two vortexes that I've drawn in black ink. The first vortex is called below the veil. I label it below the veil. The second vortex looks like a tornado. It is labeled above the veil. What I want everybody to Understand is that a narcissist lives and dies in the first tornado They live and die below the veil below the veil of what below the veil of consciousness What exactly does that freaking mean? It means that they live and operate from their subconscious mind and from their ego or their false self and they have no intentions of Hopping out of that vortex and into living above the veil because above the veil the space between the two veil the two tornadoes the two vortexes in that space is where they feel like a lobster that has shed their shell. That is when they feel the most vulnerable, Can't do it. That's where they have to be humble, Can't do it. That's where they have to say, I'm sorry, Please forgive me. I love you. Thank you. They can't do it. That's where they have to feel like other people have a right to hold them accountable and can leave them in this space. Their shell or their mask has fallen. They're not this grandiose person. They think they are there. They are actually the narcissist that they have been. They have been manipulative. They have been calculating. They have been triangulating. They have been projecting, And they have been hurting the people that love them the most, And they can't do it. So they'd rather stay in the first vortex below the veil. So the first vortex represents your heart frequency. This is what you want to understand. The reason we attract narcissists in the first place is because we've been exposed to narcissism as children. We've been exposed to this idea that we are put on Earth to please narcissists who are impossible to change. About that as your energy signature. So you attract a narcissist from that energy also. So when I attracted any man in my life, I was in the first vortex. I was in the below the veil vortex. I just didn't know it. So all of my work exists outside the vortex, Me elevating my consciousness so I can get a handle on what's happening to me on a subconscious level. So in the first vortex, Below the veil vortex, Are all your subconscious fears. You want to remember that your brain and your nervous system are designed to predict and to keep you safe. They don't care if you're happy. And so if you have been conditioned to think that making other people happy keeps you safe, And which it does, I mean, If you're living with a psychopathic mom. Psychopathic father then you know that keeping your mouth shut is the way to stay safe. But your nervous system only knows that and so you don't have the wiring because you're still operating from below the veil. So you show up this way in all of your relationships and yes even with narcissists. And also it is where your base operating system, The way that you view the world, It was created through non-critical thinking. You were a child in a theta brainwave state when you were making all of these assumptions about the world and about yourself, About unworthiness, About how to stay safe. And how to make sure that you stay attached to people who were unhealthy for you. You didn't have any other choice as a child. The problem is you still operate in this vortex, Which is. . . Symbolizes or signifies living below the veil, And you dear one have to get here. You have to live above the veil. Now, When you are operating from above the veil of consciousness, You observe and you do not react. What do you observe? You observe the narcissist. You observe yourself. You observe your patterns. You witness your frequency. You don't step into that frequency. So this is you learning how to stabilize your nervous system, Which is very, Very important, And you develop critical thinking when you are living above the veil of consciousness. I want to say all of this because it's important that you understand why you ended up with the covert narcissist, What the dynamics are, Why it's so hard for you to trust yourself because you're never taught to trust yourself. And to also recognize that even when you start to recognize covert narcissism and you start to get in touch with that anger, Even when you start to express your anger, You have to understand the narcissist is playing a very superficial mental game. So even if they start to change, It's not because they're changing because on a heart level, They know that they hurt you. They're changing because they're trying to disarm your right to hold them accountable and leave them. The triangulation is gonna start early. So if they start to feel like uh-oh the gigs up like, You know Susie gets that I'm a narcissist and she's starting to talk and she's getting stronger You have to be prepared mentally almost like a Navy SEAL for this type of mental Olympics and mental battle that you're gonna get into this ninja type emotional skills that you're going to need because what's going to happen is the vulnerable narcissist is going to start talking to your children about you. They're going to start really being good to your children. They're going to start caring about your neighbors. They're just going to tune up the, I would say, The fake empathy for other people. To make you look bad. You have to give them permission to do that. Give them permission to be this way. Because what keeps you stuck is you're in resistance to why they are this way. And as a codependent, You don't realize that you have lived your life looking for permission to feel what you feel. Not your fault. That's just a subconscious pattern that's coming from below the veil thinking. As you elevate consciousness, You can say to yourself over and over, I don't need anybody's permission. I know the game. I can trust how I feel. I see what's happening. A narcissist can only be narcissistic. This is just another form of narcissistic supply. So the stronger you get and the more able you are to see the narcissist for who they are, I just want you to understand that if the narcissist can't control you, With loading the dishwasher and trying to make you doubt your reality. And if they can't control you by being nicer to everyone else and making you think that you're crazy for being upset with them, If they can't control you, Then they're going to seek more sources of narcissistic supply. And you have to accept that. You have to know it's coming. So you have to understand how this person operates you because once you see it you see the pattern It's almost laughable. Like I knew this was gonna happen. I knew this was gonna happen The other thing that you want to be careful of is that do not go into conversations with vulnerable narcissists This is difficult, But it is the way do not go into into conversations with vulnerable narcissists Thinking that you can convince them that they're narcissists or thinking that you can convince them that their narcissism is hurting you. It's not going to work. And they're gonna use all of your words against you. The entire goal, I think, And I've seen so many people, I've coached over 5, 000 people now in my coaching courses. Hundreds if not thousands of people privately it's we all have to go through the same type of a process where first I awaken I understand what I'm dealing with then I make connections to my past then I observe the very predictable patterns in this narcissistic person and then I Heal the faulty beliefs that I have in me. I regulate my nervous system I continue to work on living above the veil and and codependency meaning that learning to let go of what other people think learning to give permission to people who feel feel what they feel, Giving people to the permission to judge me. I mean it just rolls off my tongue but it's it's not an easy thing to do and frameworks and methods do help if this interests you. And so I wanted to just share this session with you because so many of the people that I coach who are codependent have manifested vulnerable narcissists into their lives. And they're really struggling with coming to terms with ending those relationships. Because of the codependency stuff. And because what will happen is when Read a book or you watch it watch a video or you take a course or a program you are now living above the veil But when you have a conversation with the narcissist the narcissist pulls you below the veil again And if you're not careful dear one your mind will start operating from that default setting from those belief patterns and you will become the person that is reacting to a situation that they cannot control and you might try to control it and that's when you're stuck because a narcissist wants to drag you into the ring time and time again. So do not argue, Do not defend, Do not try to change them, Accept them for who they are truly, Doesn't mean you like them and then focus on yourself. What is your truth and do all that you can to line up with that. Until next time, Bye for now.

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