Why You Won't Be Happy When Leaving A Narcissist

Leaving a narcissist is never easy, and many people are surprised by the emotional challenges they face even after ending the relationship. In this podcast episode with Lisa A. Romano, we uncover why breaking free from a narcissist often doesn't bring the immediate relief or happiness you might expect.

Join us as we explore:

The psychological impact of leaving a narcissist
Why you might struggle to feel good after ending the relationship
Strategies for emotional healing and recovery
Discover the reasons behind the lingering emotional pain and learn effective ways to navigate the path to healing. If you're dealing with the aftermath of a narcissistic relationship or seeking to understand the emotional complexities, this podcast offers valuable insights. Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more content on mental health and recovery!

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.

So today we're going to be discussing why it never feels good when you leave a narcissist.

Thanks for joining me.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano,

And I am someone on a mission to help awaken people to their personal power.

Because when you have been raised by a narcissistic mother or a narcissistic father or in a codependent family or a narcissistic family,

Inevitably you grew up feeling like you're not good enough.

You grew up feeling like you were invisible.

You walk around on eggshells.

You learn to edit yourself.

You develop people pleasing.

You develop fawning.

Sometimes you're parentified where suddenly you're your mother's therapist or you're your father's therapist.

You're taking on responsibilities that you should never have taken on.

This really brainwashes you at the subconscious level,

Dear one.

I really want you to hear this,

That most people live below the veil of consciousness,

Acting out patterns.

They're reactive.

They're reacting to their emotions and then they have an emotion and they have a thought and then this affects their behavior and everything just gets worse.

And I'm on a mission to help people awaken so that they understand what's really going on.

And from a higher state of consciousness,

They can gain control over what's happening within their mind,

Within the subconscious mind.

And then they can develop the awareness and the life skills to make different decisions.

So this session is all about helping you understand why you are not going to feel good if you decide to leave a narcissist.

Men and women are shocked.

I'm done with the financial abuse.

I'm done with the gaslighting.

I'm done with feeling like my partner is my adversary.

I feel like every conversation is just one that diminishes me,

Demeans me,

Devalues me.

I'm tired of being called crazy.

I'm tired of being told that I'm not a good enough mom.

I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm tired of working so hard towards a relationship that my partner has no interest in participating in.

I'm tired of the stonewalling.

I'm just done.

Like this is not working and you really have tried.

You know that you've tried.

You know that you've even tried to conform.

I know that was my story.

I really thought I was the problem.

That was the message I received as a little girl.

So when I went to my ex and I wanted things to change and he said,

There's nothing wrong.

You're just crazy.

You're impossible to please.

I really thought that that was true.

And so I tried to edit myself.

I tried to be who I thought he wanted me to be.

I tried so hard.

And then inevitably after 12 years of marriage,

I realized,

Yes,

Some of it was me,

But a lot of it was the fact that I was living with someone who thought he was better than me.

That was coercive,

Using coercive control to control me.

That was stonewalling me.

That was gaslighting me.

I didn't know any of those terms back then,

Back in the late nineties.

I didn't know those terms.

I didn't even know I was codependent.

When I started to come through the fog and I went into codependency recovery,

I did all my inner child work.

It was such a tough journey,

But thank God I'm here today.

And I teach these life skills to people just like you,

People like myself.

I now know what I was dealing with and it was very unhealthy.

And I can tell you that I'm at a point in my life where it all makes sense.

And I know that if you can awaken to what's wrong,

Then you can fix this.

So I want you to know that,

I keep saying I want you to know,

But I really do want you to know that it's never going to feel good when you end a relationship with a narcissist.

It might feel like your heart has been ripped out.

You might be full of so much self doubt.

You might be full of so much cognitive dissonance.

You might be so full of terror when you're packing your suitcase or when the for sale sign goes on the lawn,

Because you know that everything is about to change.

So let me help you understand the chemical,

Biological,

Physiological,

Neurological reasons for why this is true and why you should not freak out that you're not doing an Irish jig because you decided to leave a narcissist.

What was really helpful for me when I began to heal was understanding how the brain actually works.

And it's sort of like we know more about our cell phones and we know more about how to record our television shows off of these amazing televisions than we do about how our human brain works.

The more you understand how your brain works,

Then the less anxiety you're going to have because from a higher state of consciousness,

You're going to understand,

Oh,

I'm supposed to be feeling this way.

This is normal.

What most people do because they're below the veil of consciousness and they don't know it,

They have a frightening emotion and they sense it,

And then their psychological self,

Their psyche goes right into thinking about this feeling,

Which only makes them feel more anxious,

Which only triggers your limbic system,

Which only triggers your nervous system.

So now you're feeling all sorts of tension.

And because this is normal and you're not aware that this is normal or you're not understanding what's happening,

What most people do is they layer.

I call it layer.

They layer their emotions.

And so I feel a negative emotion.

I freak out that I have a negative emotion.

For instance,

Let's say I'm leaving a narcissist.

I'm starting over.

I have no idea where my life is going to go.

I just know I can't stay here anymore.

I just got to a point where I just knew I couldn't stay.

There's no way I could stay in this relationship anymore.

And staying was scarier than leaving and jumping off a cliff into an abyss.

That's pretty terrifying.

But if you've been in love with a narcissist or married to a narcissist and it's that bad,

You know you're willing to take that risk.

Now,

When that happens,

We have to acknowledge that our brain has no idea what's going to happen next.

So it is normal for the brain to be concerned that we don't know what the path is.

That's why psychologically we stick with the familiar.

The brain would rather stay in a difficult situation that it's already mapped out,

That it understands,

That it feels it has some control over in anticipation of.

So in other words,

If you're living with someone who's really toxic,

Let's say for 12 years like I was,

Or you were in a toxic relationship,

You know who your husband is going to be when he walks in the door.

Or you know,

Or you can figure out,

You can anticipate due to the past,

Who your wife is going to be when she comes home from work or when you come home from work.

So there's this sense of familiarity and with the familiar comes a sense of control.

Even though you know something negative might be happening,

Because it's familiar,

You would prefer that or your brain would prefer that,

Your ego would prefer that than the unfamiliar.

How many of us have stayed in toxic relationships because we knew if we called 911 and we knew if we went to court,

We knew if we asked for a divorce that it might get worse.

I know that that was my situation for years.

I was so afraid of making those steps because I didn't know who he was going to be once I let him know,

You don't have control over me anymore.

So how many of us stay in this controlling,

Toxic,

Codependent,

Narcissistic dance?

Because on some level,

We know that the minute we step out of that controlling dance,

That things might get worse.

So we settle for this horribly coercive,

Controlling relationship because on some level,

We fear the unknown more.

And so of course,

When you decide,

I'm over this,

I have to move out of this,

The panic is going to fly up.

And what most people do is they have that fearful emotion and then they think there's something wrong with the fact that they're feeling afraid.

Now that just mounts and adds and piles on to the original normal,

Valid anxiety.

So how can this benefit you?

How can this wisdom,

How can this intelligence,

How can this knowledge,

How can my experience have been someone who has lived through this and conquered it and I'm living the life that I'm living now,

Even with an amazing husband today,

Ladies,

Men do not give up.

Healthy people exist,

But we have to get as healthy as possible first,

Right?

So how can this help you?

It can help you because when you're anticipating leaving a toxic relationship and the anxiety comes up from a higher state of consciousness now,

You have a breakthrough.

Now from above the veil of consciousness,

Not operating from below the veil of consciousness,

Being afraid of the unknown,

Staying in the familiar because you're afraid of the unknown.

No,

You don't stay there.

You walk up the subconscious mind and you say to yourself,

This anxiety is normal.

Immediately your nervous system will start to calm down.

It's okay.

Give yourself permission.

It's okay that I'm anxious.

I'm about to start something completely new.

I'm on the precipice of a new life.

I have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow.

Of course,

Some part of me preferred the familiar in an unhealthy way because I didn't know what might happen next once I knew this person was going to lose control over me.

We have to understand that we are courageous.

When we step through that fire,

We are acting on such bravery.

We are acting on vulnerability.

We're saying,

I have no idea what is going to happen next,

But I cannot stay.

And I'm willing to take that risk.

I'm willing to move forward.

I'm willing to get an apartment on my own,

Or I'm willing to go find out about the shelter that I have to live in for a week or a month.

I'm willing to do whatever I have to,

To get to the next step so that I can break free of this toxic relationship.

So it's never going to feel comfortable when you leave a narcissist.

You're never going to do a happy dance.

I've never met anybody who did a happy dance when they were initially breaking up with a narcissist or leaving a narcissist.

It's always been a period of trepidation,

A period of cognitive dissonance,

A period of great fear,

A period of great apprehension,

Not knowing what was going to happen next.

But yet people do it anyway.

We have to accept and respect the fact that the people that are breaking through these relationships are doing something completely transformational.

They are looking at all of their fear and they're facing it and they're going for it.

And we know we're not crazy.

We know that some people don't make it out.

We know,

Just read the newspapers,

We know that there are women and men that suffer the consequences of people who are so controlling,

They can't imagine you leaving them because in their head,

You're property.

And then their mind goes to,

Oh no,

She's going to sleep with someone else besides me one day,

Or oh no,

He's going to be loved by another woman one day who might appreciate him.

Oh no.

And these sick ideas fuel their anger because they are narcissistic.

And the idea that you are an autonomous human being and you are daring to step out of and off of the stage that they're offering you,

One that does not fulfill you,

One that holds you back,

One that has been meant to crush you and keep you small,

One that has set you up to be someone else's whipping boy,

How dare you want to escape that drama?

And so we know that leaving certain people is a really scary thing,

Even financially,

Where some people are set out to destroy you.

My ex actually admitted seven years later,

I thought that if I destroyed you,

You'd come back to me.

Hmm.

Pray tell.

Really?

The idea that that made sense to him,

My mouth dropped open.

You said that out loud.

And what really freaked me out was that that made sense to him in his head,

That if I destroy her,

Then she won't be able to make it on her own and she'll have to come back to me.

The idea that that made sense to someone in his mind,

That freaks me out.

And having worked through it,

It still freaks me out.

You can hear that like my flow of consciousness is like interrupted because it just doesn't make sense.

That's the other thing that if you're a victim of this and people ask you why you're leaving this person,

You might find that you don't have the words because your mind has been turned into mashed potatoes.

Your mind and your thoughts are like been scrambled like an egg.

And so it's difficult for you to formulate the words and to string them together to make someone understand your cognitive dissonance.

You have to remember that you have been conditioned emotionally,

Verbally,

And psychologically to think that your thoughts are invalid,

To think that your needs are wrong,

To think that you're too much,

To think that you're a drama queen,

To think that there's just something up with you.

You just don't get it.

And you oftentimes don't realize that you have been conditioned to walk around and dance around on hot coals,

Trying to appear like you don't have all this anxiety because you don't want to be ridiculed by someone who is narcissistic or a spouse that's toxic.

And so it's going to take some time for you to process that and gain a better footing of yourself.

And that's part of one of the major things that I love about life coaching in this niche is to help someone who has been through this gain their footing,

Teach them about the dynamics of narcissism and codependency,

Teach them about how their mind has been arrested by cognitive dissonance,

And empower them to live above the veil of consciousness so that they can observe their situation from a higher state of consciousness,

From an empowered state,

Understanding that their emotions are normal,

That their fear is normal and it's valid,

And then encouraging them with the life skills and the mental toughness skills that allows them to walk towards their dream reality anyway.

So dear one,

If you're leaving a narcissist,

Please don't beat yourself up if you're scared.

It's absolutely normal,

But I encourage you to do it anyway.

Do it safely.

Make sure you have a support team.

Make sure that you have the people in your life that you can rely on in case things get nitty gritty.

It's always important to set your ducks up in a row.

Make sure that you have money.

Make sure that you have your driver's license,

Your passport,

Your driver's license,

Your medical cards,

Your health insurance,

Whatever it is that you need.

Make sure that you have all your documents.

And if you have the time to put a little financial nest together,

Do that.

If you have the time to secure an apartment first,

Do that.

So you want to make sure that if you're going to leave a narcissist,

You whack a mole.

What I mean by that is that you make a conscious list of all the experiences that you have to walk through in the future that might be anxiety provoking.

And one by one,

You knock them off the list.

And shutty shutty.

You don't have to tell anybody,

Especially the narcissist that you're leaving,

What you're doing or what you're planning.

You don't have to tell anybody.

When I knew I was going to leave my ex-husband,

I did not tell him that in the middle of the night I was working towards getting three certifications.

One is a fitness trainer for the youth.

One is a fitness trainer for older adults,

Senior citizens,

And one as a sports nutritionist.

I told no one.

In the middle of the night when everybody was sleeping,

Lisa was getting certified.

I was setting myself up for my future reality.

I knew I was going to have to rely on myself.

I knew I was going to have to take care of my kids,

But I never told anyone.

I never told him when I found a house.

I never told him when I put a binder down on the house.

I never told him when I was making the plans with the mover.

I never said anything.

And so he was completely shocked when he realized that I had a job,

That I had a house,

That I had movers set up,

And then I had a real estate attorney ready to bring this to the table so we could rock and roll and get this done.

So I hope this has encouraged you.

Dear one,

It's okay to be afraid.

Embrace it.

It means you're courageous and it means that your future life is right outside the other door.

Now,

Will that be an easy transition?

No,

My transition wasn't easy,

But I'm telling you,

If you never give up,

I promise you,

Your life is going to unfold like this beautiful rose with a new petal each and every day.

And even though you might get knocked down,

Which I did,

You may even attract another narcissist or two or three or four,

Like I did.

If your intention is to heal and to recover,

Especially this subconscious programming that may or may not have caused you to attract this person in the first place or keep you stuck,

If that's your intention,

I promise you,

Give yourself five years,

10 years,

15,

20 years.

It's 20 years that I'm on this journey,

At least.

No,

It's 25 years that I'm on this journey,

At least consciously.

I promise you that your future life is going to be so amazing and it's going to be full of so many miracles that when you look back on your life,

You'll be full of absolute gratitude and awe of the strength of your spirit.

And I hope this has been helpful.

And I'm so grateful that you allow me into your heart and you allow me into your mind as you approach these new changes and these periods of transformation in your life.

Namaste.

Until next time.

Bye for now.

Reviews

Very honest and open about her experience and she assists with you realizing you aren’t crazy - getting out is difficult but you can do it. Thank you

Thank you, dear Lisa! 💞🙏😊

very encouraging 🥳👍🙏🥳👍🙏🥳👍🙏🥳👍🙏🥳👍

I listened again and again. Feeling more positive today. Thankyou🙏