Why Narcissists Must Use Love Bombing To Lure You In

Narcissists manipulate language for the purpose of manipulating your emotions. They rely on love bombing as a way to gain your trust and to create a fantasy construct you will ultimately fear losing. In this episode, I break down what every narcissistic abuse survivor needs to know about how the narcissist is able to get your brain to work against you.

Transcript

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.

Today we're going to be talking about why narcissists must love bomb you and the purpose of love bombing and what you need to know about love bombing if you are waking up to the reality that you have been in or are in a narcissistic relationship.

So love bombing is about creating an entirely new paradigm that will replace the current paradigm or construct that you live in.

What I mean by that is that we are people who are living our lives,

Doing what we do.

We have our children.

Let's say you have manifested a relationship and you have children,

You're a single mom,

You're a single dad,

And you're going along a merry way and you manifest somebody who you think is awesome.

And they're acting as if and speaking as if they see you,

They validate you,

They hear you,

You feel amazing,

You feel on top of the world,

You feel more alive than you can ever imagine.

Oxytocin is flowing,

Dopamine is flowing,

The sex is awesome,

Like you just feel amazing.

You cannot believe that you have manifested this person into your life that is so into you on every level.

And it can feel intoxicating.

In the love bombing phase of the narcissistic relationship,

This is very important because what it's doing,

It's making you malleable.

It is helping to permeate your boundaries.

It's creating a dependency on this person that you're not even aware of.

Now over time,

What will happen is you will begin to feel devalued.

And if you can pull back and look at a relationship,

A narcissistic relationship for what it is,

It follows a very easy pattern really.

What you'll notice is that you'll see the love bombing and you'll see that eventually you become devalued.

That all of a sudden they start making fun of the way you look or they start making fun of the way you talk or the way that you walk or they suggest that you're being silly or they suggest that you don't know what you're talking about.

They bring up your past and they use it against you.

And suddenly it's like,

Whoa,

Wait a minute,

It's a big contrast to the love bombing phase.

But we keep coming back.

We stay in these relationships because what's happened is the narcissist has created a dependency upon them.

And now we have this chemical need to be in a relationship with the narcissist.

We fear losing this bond with this narcissist.

And so now we're trauma bonded.

And maybe over time,

This is very common,

The narcissist has threatened divorce or the narcissist threatens to break up with you or to leave because you're just so ridiculous.

And what ends up happening is you're triggered.

Your abandonment issues are triggered and your brain is like,

Whoa,

No,

I can't lose this remembering how intoxicating it was when you first met them.

And so this fantasy construct has been created.

And what ends up happening,

It's sort of like heroin.

Like I've coached and trained people who have been heroin addicted.

And each one of them has said to me that that first hit was like nothing I could ever imagine.

And what ended up happening was that I ended up chasing that hit every time I shot myself up with heroin again.

And I would ask,

Well,

Was the first,

Was the,

Were the hits that you took after the first,

Were they ever as good as the first?

And they always said no.

And so what the narcissist does is they create this hit,

They create this euphoric fantasy paradigm.

And that is what keeps you stuck.

And as the narcissist begins to,

The mass begins to slip,

You're still in that fantasy construct.

He loves me,

He adores me,

He'd do anything for me.

He tells me that I'm the most important person in his life.

He told me that we needed each other.

He told me it was me and him against the world.

We believe this.

And females do the same thing.

And so it's difficult for the brain to like look at that because the brain is wired to avoid pain.

And so we have this fantasy construct that we're chasing.

And so that is why a narcissist must love bomb you because they have to create this fantasy construct that you become stuck in.

And the fantasy construct,

Inside the fantasy construct,

Once the narcissist has gained your trust and you feel indebted to this narcissist,

Then whatever threatens the narcissist from being able to maintain power and control over you,

They begin to methodically excise you from.

If you had a best friend,

Soon you're not talking to her.

If you had a good relationship with your mom,

No more,

You're not talking to her either.

If you had a great relationship with your brothers or your sister,

Suddenly you're not talking to them either.

You're not going to see their kids on their birthdays.

It's always an excuse.

Suddenly everything that you loved is being removed from your life.

If you had a great job,

You'll give that up too.

If you had a nice relationship with your manager,

That's going to leave too.

If you ate well,

Soon you're going to be eating like crap.

Like everything.

.

.

If you had a life coach,

They're going to convince you to drop the life coach.

If you were in therapy,

They're going to convince you to stop going to therapy.

Whatever it is that you relied on for a sense of self,

Whatever it is that you enjoyed,

The narcissist must remove you from so that they can control you,

So that they have absolute control over what you think and what you feel and what you want.

The one tool that they use that starts this entire experience is love bombing.

It's important that those of us who are realizing like,

Whoa,

I have been narcissistically abused,

I have been pathologically lied to,

It's important that we understand what we're dealing with.

It's important that we understand why a narcissist must love bomb us and keep this fantasy going or at least create the fantasy in the beginning of the relationship.

Once you understand the purpose of creating this fantasy paradigm,

Then it becomes easier for you to confront it because now it's like,

Now I have something that I can work with.

I can see it.

I've labeled it.

Now it brings order to chaos.

So now what we have to do,

And this is very difficult,

But it is the way.

What we have to do now is we have to find ways to root ourselves in reality.

So one of the best ways that we can do that is simply get out a notebook and draw a line down the middle of it.

On the left side of the page,

Think about the fantasy construct,

The construct the narcissist went out of their way to construct to make you believe in.

Think about the way you felt inside that fantasy construct.

Lay it out there.

I felt loved.

I felt seen.

I felt heard.

I felt like I've never felt before.

I felt alive.

I felt hopeful.

I was giddy with excitement.

I was excited.

I was joyful.

I was blissful.

I felt content.

I felt sexually alive.

I felt spiritually alive.

That's all part of the fantasy construct.

On the other side of the paper,

You create and talk about your reality construct.

How do you really feel?

What's really going on?

What really are the consequences of this narcissistic relationship?

All of my work,

And I hope for those of you who have been following my work,

I hope that you hear this message come through over and over and over again.

And the message is,

We have to accept how we really feel.

In the case of being love-bombed,

What's happened is the narcissist has used our pain versus pleasure,

The innate default of every brain out there,

The desire to seek pleasure over pain.

They've used that against us.

So our mind has been manipulated against us.

So the narcissist goes and creates this fantasy construct.

We associate great pleasure with it.

When you associate pleasure with something,

You also associate pain with the losing of that something.

So your brain,

Outside your conscious awareness of it,

Of your mind,

Outside your conscious awareness of it,

You are unaware that below the veil of consciousness,

This narcissist has gotten so far deep into your psyche that you naturally fear what you really feel.

The narcissist wants you to be so addicted to the first phase of the relationship,

Which is the love-bombing phase of the relationship,

That you fear getting in touch with reality.

And so what we can do is we can help ourselves understand that what's getting us into trouble and what got us addicted to this narcissist in the first place was a fantasy.

And what can help us move forward in our life is to start paying attention to how we really feel.

So that means I have to look in the closet.

That means it's sort of like those of us who have gained weight over the years and we don't get on the scale.

It means we get on the scale and we look at the damn numbers,

Right?

For those of us who,

I know I've had clients who say,

I don't look at myself naked in the mirror.

Look in the mirror.

Look at what's going on.

Look at what's really happening in your life.

Look at your bank account.

Look at your relationships with your friends.

Where are they?

Look at your relationships with your family that you once loved.

Where are they?

Look at the consequences of this relationship.

What's going on inside of you?

Do you have depression?

Do you have anxiety?

Do you have self-doubt?

Is that the way you were before you met this narcissist?

If not,

You need to look at that.

The best thing that you can do is stay rooted in the reality of how you really feel.

If the narcissist is lying to you and you think that the narcissist is lying to you,

How does that make you feel?

If you've caught the narcissist lying to you,

How does that make you feel?

Compare that to how you wanted to feel or compare that to how you felt when you first met the narcissist.

When you're in a healthy relationship,

You should pretty much feel the same way you did when you first met this person.

If anything,

Maybe even feel better.

Certainly you shouldn't feel worse.

If you feel worse after six months,

Eight months,

Nine months,

Nine years after when you first met this person,

It's time for you to start living in reality and paying attention to how you really feel.

The purpose of love bombing,

Anyone,

Is to create this mental fantasy construct that becomes like a hit of heroin,

Becomes so full of pleasure for us that the idea of losing it becomes something that we unconsciously,

Psychologically avoid.

If I am terrified to lose this relationship because the narcissist has spent six months grooming me to believe that he was a real person,

Then I do not know that below the veil of consciousness,

My mind is now set up with an equation that has me pushing away my reality.

It's going to be very,

Very difficult to confront how you really feel,

But I can tell you as someone who has done this,

As someone who has recognized that I was holding onto the fantasy,

That I was afraid to let go of the fantasy,

And that is what kept me stuck.

As I became more aware of reality and I did what I could to root myself in reality and to reestablish the friendships and the relationships that I lost prior to meeting the narcissist,

As I regained my sense of self and essentially remembered who I was,

That is when the fog began to lift.

The last thing a narcissist wants you to do is stay in reality.

The narcissist wants you to stay in the construct of the fantasy and to be afraid of losing that fantasy.

Dear one,

I believe that you can do this.

If you're a victim of narcissistic abuse,

My heart goes out to you.

I have suffered from this type of psychological abuse and I can tell you that it is absolutely gut wrenching and mind bending to face the reality that somebody went out of their way to groom you,

To love bomb you,

And to manipulate you,

And to use your mind against you.

But if you stay on the path to recovery and if you label what's happening to you,

If you develop tools that allow you to hold onto healing,

Then I can tell you that you can move through this process a lot quicker than you could imagine.

Reviews

I can’t thank you enough for your deeply insighful and clear message to stay on my path, walking away from Narcissists and stay free.
I left my toxic relationship with my NPD ex, and wrapping my head around this painful, abusive relationship, a skillfull crafted and painful illusion and am so grateful for your offerings here.🤍

Thank you! You helped me to define exactly what just happened to me over the last year! WOW moment—

very insightful. You might define the term love bombing at the beginning or throughout mention it, so we know we’re all on the same page.

Spot on

This is like water in the middle of the desert. Thank you. 🙏🏼

Another good one... Thank you! Very eye opening!

I really enjoyed this meditation. I have so many questions. I’ve been through so much in my life.. I’ve gone through mental and physical abuse and I sometimes find it very hard to think for myself.

Namaste 🙏🏻