Being Too Nice Is Why Toxic People Think They Can Abuse You

Many of us have been programmed to deny the self for the sake of others' happiness, leading to codependency, selflessness, hopelessness, a lack of self-love and things like depression. The more selfless we are, the more toxic people think they can abuse us. In this episode, Life Coach Lisa A. Romano helps you understand why you need to stop being so nice.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Bestselling 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 talking about why being selfless will actually make your life a whole lot worse.

This idea of being selfless has pretty much been a part of many of our cultures since the beginning of time.

Many of us since we're especially women have been infused with the idea that the less we take care of the self,

The more selfless we are,

The better we are.

And that can create tremendous dissonance in the mind of someone who is trying to get happy,

Trying to become happy,

Trying to figure out where is the line?

How do I balance the need to feel seen?

How do I balance my inner needs that I have to express myself with the needs of the family that I'm raising,

Or with my spouse,

Or with people from church,

Or at the synagogue,

Or in my religion?

How do I balance what I feel on the inside with the pressures and the responsibilities and the obligations I feel on the outside?

These are serious considerations.

And when you're raised to believe that you are not good enough,

It's really difficult to live your life through the heart space.

Because what happens in the heart space is contraction.

Now if we could all live with open hearts,

That would be amazing.

And while I realize that this sounds very hippie dippie,

It's true.

If we didn't have to walk around feeling hypervigilant,

If we weren't raised by narcissistic mothers or narcissistic fathers,

If our parents didn't have alcohol addictions or some other type of a chemical addiction or a gambling addiction,

If they weren't sex addicts and so on.

If we had parents that were attuned to their own heart space,

Who had healed from their own childhood trauma,

Then it would have been so much easier for us as children to have infused this idea within our subconscious mind that we were enough.

Why is it so important to understand the consequences of feeling not good enough?

Feeling not good enough causes a plethora of issues.

When you don't feel good enough,

You become codependent or you can become even narcissistic.

You can develop depression.

You can develop anxiety.

All sorts of mental health issues can arise from not feeling good enough.

When you don't feel good enough,

You're not striving to be your best.

You don't even feel like you deserve to strive.

You don't know how to strive because you're stuck trying to survive.

And what a lot of people do when they're stuck trying to survive is they get into behaviors that are counterproductive to striving,

Like they get into addictions.

They play video games as a distraction all day long.

They're on the internet all day long.

And so if you look at it that way,

We're talking about stuck energy.

We're talking about energy that should be spiraling up is staying stagnant.

And what happens with energy or think about water.

Water is energy.

What happens with water that stands still?

It rots.

So what happens in us when the energy that we are becomes stagnant?

It rots.

How do we feel this?

How does that get interpreted in our body?

We feel anxious.

We get sick.

We have IBS.

We have infertility issues.

We feel hypervigilant.

We might be super reactive.

We don't trust people.

We can isolate.

All of these behaviors cause us to constrict and causes our world to become smaller and smaller.

And yet we were designed to socialize.

We were designed to feel connected to one another.

We were designed to feel connected to earth and to the sky.

People say we're star seeds,

And I get that.

But when you think about a star,

When the star explodes and all the elements in the star fall to the ground,

It is from the ground that we come.

And so while all of these amazing particles that were in the star fall to the ground,

That's an amazing thing.

So many people say,

Oh,

I'm a star seed or you're a star seed.

I get that.

But let's not forget that these stars bursted and all of the elements that were in the stars fell to the earth.

We are children of the earth.

We come from the earth.

So we are connected to the earth,

And yet so many of us feel separated from nature.

We feel separated from the stars.

We feel separate from the heavens.

And is it any wonder so many of our religions teach us that the God that we should praise or look up to or pray to is outside of us rather than within us.

And yet,

If there is such a thing as God,

Many people believe in a God.

If there is such a thing as God,

Doesn't it make sense that God is within us and not outside of us?

To me,

That speaks to separation.

Right?

So how do I love myself?

How do I get back to loving myself if when throughout history I've been taught that I'm not good enough,

That I have to do something in order to prove that I am worthy and therefore I come into the world feeling unworthy.

And I get it.

I get what religions are trying to teach.

They're trying to teach.

These are the rules that we need to be good human beings and even find our way back to the God within,

Even find our way back to the love that we are.

And to do that,

We have to face certain challenges.

And to do that,

Some of us do better with a set of rules.

Right?

So the goal really is to be able to return back to the self.

So when I am selfless,

I am not returning to the self.

I didn't start off with the self.

I'm starting off way at the end of left outside left field,

Trying to get myself back to the pitcher's mound,

If you will.

And it's really difficult to do that when I have been taught from the beginning that I'm not good enough.

How does a child learn that they're not good enough?

You don't have to call a child ugly to have a child grow up and feel like they're ugly.

Just never tell them that they're beautiful.

You don't have to tell a child that they're not unique,

They're not special,

They're not worthy.

Just never tell a child that you love them.

So it is the omission.

It is the lack of tenderness,

The lack of saying beautiful things to a child.

Right?

It's this omission factor.

Never telling a child I love you,

Never telling a child that you matter to me.

Just never tell a child that they are special,

That they're important.

Never treat a child like who they are on the inside matters.

And this little child all by him or herself will conclude that there's something wrong with them.

If you want a child to feel like they're not good enough,

You don't have to beat that child.

Just ignore the child.

Just act like the child has no feelings.

Act like you don't care.

Ignore them when they cry.

Make fun of them when they cry.

Banish them to their room.

Don't include them in things.

Talk down to them.

Have little respect for who they are as little people.

Get drunk in front of them.

Get high in front of them.

Right?

Do silly things in front of them.

Curse in front of them.

Have little respect for the way their minds are perceiving the outside world.

Right?

Don't coddle them.

Don't nurture them.

And the child will grow up feeling unsafe.

And this child will develop very poor beliefs about themselves and even about the world.

And this lack of security,

This lack of protection that the child feels will cause them to develop a self that is undeveloped.

Which sounds kind of hokey pokey,

But when you are not treated with respect as a child,

The perception that you have,

The cognitive perception that you have of the self is corrupted.

You are not afforded the opportunity to develop a healthy sense of self.

If you were born into families where even God is used against you,

You know,

I hear this a lot inside my coaching programs where people come through the class and they're like,

Well,

I was told that God disapproved of me.

Then I was told that I was not good enough for God.

I was,

God was used against me as a weapon.

Right?

So,

To use God against a child as a manipulative tool,

In my opinion,

Is cruel because to a child,

Where is God?

Right?

What is God?

It's such a big concept to use and parents will use this against their child to control a child's behavior and not really take into account how this is making a child feel very,

Very unsafe inside their own mind.

How then does a child go within and pray and hope and believe that they're good enough?

How does a child develop a healthy sense of self if they have been conditioned to believe that the self that they are,

Even God disapproves of?

So we really have to wrap our minds around this idea that if and when God or our version of God or our family's version of God was ever used against us,

The devastating effects that has in our soul and how that can contribute to us being selfless.

When you don't feel like yourself is worthy of God or of love of your friends,

Your family,

Your mom and your dad,

You're not able to develop a healthy sense of self.

So loving the self is a completely foreign idea to you.

And you can be someone like me that grew up thinking,

Well,

I tell people what I think for the most part,

I must have self-esteem.

No,

That's not the truth.

Esteem means that I love myself.

Esteem means that I honor what I think and what I feel.

Having character along life's path means that I've developed the confidence to believe that I can face life's challenges and follow them through until the end.

It means that I know that I'm not always going to win,

That sometimes I will fail.

And I truly believe that winning teaches people nothing,

Failing teaches people everything.

If you want to learn something,

Then failing is going to teach you how to get up,

How to brush yourself off and how to move forward.

How do we develop a sense of healthy self if we've been knocked down time and time again and every time we get going,

The chair gets kicked out from underneath us?

And how do we move forward if we don't even realize that perhaps the impressions in our subconscious mind or the neurological patterns that are now being played out in the 3D world through habitual behaviors is the culprit?

Because what happened to me happened to me,

But now it's in me.

And now within my own mind,

I have to figure out how to resolve this cognitive dissonance.

How do I make sense out of being selfless,

Put it in its proper context and understand that being selfless just leads to more problems in life when at the same time I have been systematically conditioned and programmed or indoctrinated or domesticated to believe that being selfless is the answer.

It's morally correct to be selfless,

To not have a self.

And I think it's really important that anybody out there who is struggling with feeling like you have a lack of self-worth,

If you are the person in your family that is the peacekeeper,

If you are the person in your family that is the caretaker,

If you are the rescuer,

If you are the enabler,

If you are someone who is secretly resentful,

Secretly frustrated,

You cry yourself to sleep,

You wake up exhausted because you really don't know how to change the surround,

I need you to know that you're not alone.

And I need you to know that there are so many thousands if not millions of people who have been indoctrinated to believe that the answer to life is to be selfless.

And I can tell you that that is not the case.

I've coached far too many men and women who believed that if they were selfless,

They were good.

And if they were selfless,

Other people would treat them a certain way.

If they were selfless and put everybody else's needs first,

Certainly God would shine promise upon them.

And certainly things would happen well in their life if they were able to be selfless in situation.

People who enter into situations without a self or selfless tend to find themselves in toxic situations.

Now we have to understand that being selfless is the precursor to a toxic relationship.

Because when you're selfless,

You don't know how to take care of yourself.

You don't feel worthy.

And you generally manifest people who you think you need to take care of,

Who generally develop the opinion that you have no needs.

So why should they care about you?

You don't speak up.

So they don't even know who you are.

And so they just do all the talking.

They do all the wanting.

They do all the needing.

And you do all the fixing.

And this dynamic is exhausting.

You're burning the candle on both ends.

You're getting sick,

You're getting depressed,

You're getting anxious.

You just don't know there's another way.

For me,

When I began to understand codependency,

It was like suddenly there was a door that was cut out of this whirling tornado that I was in and I could not get out of it.

I didn't know I was in a tornado.

I knew nothing about codependency.

I knew nothing about rescuing and fixing and catering and caretaking and playing the martyr.

I knew none of it.

What is this about?

What is this weird vortex that I'm in?

I couldn't figure it out because I was in the middle of it.

Imagine I've used this analogy before.

Imagine you are a chicken and a tornado is coming and you're trying to run out the tornado,

But you can't and you get caught up in the vortex of the tornado.

While in that tornado,

You have no idea perhaps it's even a tornado,

You have no idea how wide it is,

How high it is,

Or how far you've traveled in it because you're in the middle of this vortex.

That's what it can be like when we're in the middle of this selflessness mindset.

We're caught up in this tornado.

Our relationships are very dysfunctional.

They're unfulfilling and we're exhausted all the time.

We're in the middle of it,

But we don't know what it is.

We just keep doing what we've always done because we don't know that it is something and whatever it is,

We have no idea what it is.

We don't even know how to get out.

When I went into therapy,

When my life was absolutely falling apart and my ex-husband said,

Well,

If you feel crazy,

You go into therapy.

That was his answer to,

I think we need therapy.

I said,

At a loss here,

Something's wrong.

I just don't feel right.

I'm terribly unhappy.

His answer always was,

Well,

I'm happy.

If you're unhappy,

You should go see a shrink.

You should go.

Of course,

It was very passive aggressive.

It was meant to demean me and to demoralize me and to make me feel like there was something wrong with me because I was saying I'm not happy,

But I went anyway.

When I was diagnosed with codependency and then thereafter,

When I learned about it,

It was like,

Oh,

This makes sense to me.

I don't have a healthy sense of self.

If you were to ask me,

Who,

Lisa,

Who were you?

I would just look at myself and think,

I'm Michelle.

I don't know who I am.

I do things.

I'm the head of security at the kids' school.

I bake cupcakes for my son's kindergarten class.

I am a dance mom.

My kids are in karate.

You know,

I own a business.

I'm a wife.

I was these labels,

But who I was energetically,

Vibrationally,

Spiritually,

Not a clue,

Not a clue.

And that was terrifying.

So I think it's important that if you're struggling with being selfless and if you're struggling with who am I,

You are absolutely not alone.

This is the path all human beings are on.

We all come here to figure out who am I.

And what we eventually realize is that I am.

And I know that sounds hippy dippy and hokey pokey,

But if you stay on this path long enough,

You come out the other side.

In the beginning,

It's really,

Really dark.

And I think it has to be.

I think it has to be so dark because it's in those dark,

Dark moments where we're facing our dragons.

You know,

And we will be called to do certain things.

If you are selfless,

Then you haven't yet learned to do a few things.

And one of the first things that you're going to have to learn to do is learn how to handle strong emotions.

One of the reasons that people are selfless is because they don't know how to handle the strong emotion.

And so I don't feel good enough.

And so I'll just revert to taking care of someone and maybe in the taking care of someone,

I might feel good enough.

So it's a clever psychological distraction technique,

But spiritually it's going to keep you stuck and you're not going to evolve your soul.

You're not going to evolve emotionally.

You're not going to evolve psychologically or cognitively or even financially.

You're going to stay stuck.

So you have to learn how to deal with strong emotions.

In my 12-week breakthrough coaching program,

I teach this by explaining to the members of the class how to stay in your body when strong emotions come up.

This is crucial,

Not only for me and members of my class,

But for everyone.

We have to learn how to handle the energy in our bodies.

And we do that by processing emotions.

So one of the things that you can do to help you learn how to handle strong emotion is by seeing emotions as energy,

Because that's what they are.

And seeing your body sort of like a machine that has to learn how to handle this energy and see your mind as sort of an engineer or a mechanic that is learning to simply observe.

That's all you have to do.

All you have to do is observe the energy in your body.

For instance,

Last week I had a trigger and I was sitting at my desk right here and I was doing some work and I felt a trauma trigger happen.

Now when I have a trauma trigger,

My head gets very hot.

It's the amygdala,

Sounds the alarm,

My blood pressure increases.

Sometimes I go deaf,

Which is a little scary.

And I've had such bad triggers that I felt like I've almost wanted to collapse.

And so this is a CPTSD response.

It's very common for those of us who have grown up feeling like we could never escape the trauma of our childhoods.

And I'm not talking about the type of trauma that ends up on front page news.

I'm talking about childhood emotional neglect.

I'm talking about never feeling connected to.

I'm talking about feeling minimized and criticized and bullied by members of your family.

And the type of trauma that creates.

And so that will play out in abandonment trauma,

Attachment trauma,

Low self-esteem,

Low self-value,

A lack of self-worth,

A loss of selfhood.

And it will exhibit itself in relationship behaviors.

The way I showed up in relationships was a mirror to how insecure I felt on the inside.

And so I had this trauma trigger and what I was able to do was in the moment,

I was able to recognize that these emotions were just energy.

And so as I felt them,

I closed my eyes and I stepped out of my own body,

If you will.

I tapped into consciousness and I observed how the trauma response was affecting my physiology and how my energy was moving.

And in my mind's eye,

I just kept hearing myself,

It's okay.

Just let it come up.

Just let it come up.

Just let it come up and let it come up.

And it was almost as if I could feel my crown chakra open and all of this stagnant energy moved.

And what's beautiful about that is that I can almost guarantee you the next time something similar happens,

I will have less of an emotional response because there's less negative energy shoved into my root chakra or my lower chakras around this particular type of an issue.

We all have issues.

We've all been wounded and it's our job to overcome them.

So if we experienced some type of abuse as a child by a brother or by a sister,

That energy is still locked within the lower chakras.

And this energy will make us sick because if you think about Kundalini energy,

Right,

Think about it,

It moves up,

It moves up and it moves up and it moves up.

And our job is to move this energy,

Right?

But when you feel selfless,

You're not able to connect to this energy.

And so what you do is you distract yourself from this energy.

So you never really learn how to handle these strong emotions.

Now why would it be important for us to learn how to handle strong emotions as spiritually evolving human beings?

It's very crucial that we all learn to handle strong emotions.

Our spiritual evolution depends on it.

Once we are able to handle consciously strong emotions without using distracting techniques,

Without going down the rabbit hole,

Without staying involved with narcissistic others,

Without staying reliant on our codependent behaviors to keep us safe,

Once we're able to handle these strong emotions that so many of us avoid,

We're one step closer to being able to connect to the love that we are.

So the false images of self,

The negative opinions of self,

They're preventing our spiritual growth.

They're preventing our ability to step into the love and the divinity that we are.

So we are all creative beings and we all come here to create.

And if you think about it,

It makes no sense to me,

But for a short time I worked at a psychiatric hospital when I was in nursing school.

And my heart broke for these people who were just sitting there almost in catatonic states,

Some of them.

And I thought to myself as I learned more about spirituality and codependency and narcissism and psychology and child development,

How essential it is for energy to move in the body and in the mind.

If I am selfless,

Right,

And I'm taking care of you,

The energy in my mind is not moving in the direction that it should.

The energy in my mind is supposed to be tethered to the I am that I am.

And I'm supposed to be using this creative energy within me to create from within.

But if I'm selfless,

I'm focusing on you.

I'm focusing on your needs.

I'm focusing on your desires.

So I'm not tapped into the self.

Now that doesn't mean that you can't be someone who has done this type of recovery work and you have figured out that you were once selfless and now you're moving through your life tethered to yourself,

Wanting to inspire others.

You have become your own anchor.

That's entirely fine.

But I'm talking about people who want to help other people as a distraction,

Who have yet to figure out how to be their own anchor,

How to love the self.

Now in order to love the self,

You're going to be challenged.

So the first challenge is definitely going to be,

Can you handle strong emotions?

The next challenge is going to be,

Can you get to a place where you believe that you are an extension of love,

That you are love,

That you are enough?

This is like finding the fountain of youth within you.

Can you tap into this miraculous heart space?

In my 12-week breakthrough coaching program,

I talk about the first step is the awakening phase.

Let's figure out what went wrong.

Why are you selfless?

The second phase is teaching people how to reconnect to the love that they are.

It's very important because if you want to inspire other people,

Heck,

If you just want to live a happy life,

You have to start coming from the love that you are from within.

If you keep coming from a poverty mindset or a scarcity mindset,

You're never going to be able to manifest abundance.

And that's not because there's some conspiracy against you.

It's just because you're not aligning with the love that you are.

Why aren't you aligning with the love that you are?

In lots of the cases,

It's because you don't have a healthy sense of self.

Keep going.

Why don't you have a healthy sense of self?

If you don't have a healthy sense of self,

Chances are it's because somewhere in your childhood,

Most likely before the age of seven,

You got the message in big ways and in small ways you absorbed the message that you at a soul level or an emotional level,

A vibrational level were not enough.

And deeper,

You assumed it was your fault because you didn't get the love that you received.

You're broken.

There's something wrong with you.

You don't know what it is,

But good things happen to other people.

They don't happen to you.

This becomes a mindset.

This becomes negative self-talk.

This becomes a resonance.

And when this becomes a resonance,

It's very,

Very sad because in this state,

There's no way that we can manifest what we want.

In fact,

We're going to manifest exactly what we don't want.

Is that anyone's fault?

No,

I don't think it's anyone's fault.

I think this is the way it works.

I think the world is holographic.

I think this is the way the universe maintains some type of order.

And even if it looks like it's chaos,

It's order.

In other words,

If my mother's an alcoholic and my father's an alcoholic,

My grandparents are alcoholics,

That might seem like a very chaotic pattern in a family.

But think about it.

I become an alcoholic.

My children become alcoholics.

There's this weird order in this whole process,

Right?

But the amazing thing is that through self-awareness,

Through personal development work,

Through figuring out what's wrong,

You get to step out of that order and you get to break through,

Break free,

Break the cycle,

Develop a healthy sense of self,

Find your way back to love,

And eventually find your voice in this world.

The next step that you'll have to go through to resolve all of this is once it's in your heart and you know that you're enough,

You have to learn to speak it.

You have to learn to act on it.

Think about it.

We've all heard about the Bible.

Many of us have read the Bible.

In the beginning,

There was the Word.

But think about what has to happen before you're able to create something.

You have to believe in yourself.

You have to love yourself.

You have to believe in that potential.

You have to go through the dark night of the soul,

Face the demons,

Face the dragons,

And learn to believe,

Wait a minute,

I am enough,

Right?

And then once you get to a point where you're like,

Whoa,

Wait a minute,

I have all of these dark thoughts in my head and I have these dark thoughts in my head because of X,

Y,

And Z,

But I really am love.

I've come from love.

I am an extension of a creative force and my energy just hasn't been going in the right direction.

Well,

What if my energy started moving in the right direction?

What if I started believing in myself?

Just incremental shifts a little bit every day.

What if instead of thinking I can't,

I thought maybe,

Well,

Maybe today I can.

Maybe instead of saying,

No,

Meditation doesn't work for me,

I try to meditate every day,

Every day.

What if instead of saying,

No,

I don't journal,

No,

I don't read,

I started to read.

What if instead of surfing the internet for five hours a day,

I read a book for an hour a day?

What would change?

How would my energy in my body change if I started doing things that represented this energy moving up and up and up and up?

What then?

I didn't realize how deep of a tornado I was in until I got kicked out of it or I kicked myself out of it.

I got kicked out of it because I started changing my resonance.

I started accepting how I really felt.

I went into the dark night of the soul.

I was that woman crying,

I mean,

Ugly crying with the half a gallon of vanilla ice cream next to me and a bottle of peanut butter in my bed,

Eating myself to sleep because I was so distraught.

I remember waking up on Father's Day,

The first day that I was in our new house,

And I knew my kids weren't going to wake up on Father's Day without their dad there.

I remember weeping from my intestines.

It was such a deep cry.

What was I doing?

Believing in myself and believing in the idea that I had to change my family dynamics because it was so obvious to me the holographic pattern that is the nature of the universe was playing itself out in my life and the life of my children,

And I had to stay on this pattern.

What's really interesting was that the minute I started taking care of myself,

I was called selfish.

Now that I was actually saying,

This is what I think and this is what I feel,

I was speaking the word within my heart.

I had found as many of the answers that I was seeking,

Even though I really didn't know,

I didn't have all the pieces of the puzzle yet,

I knew that I couldn't stay where I was,

And I knew that acting selfless just made my life worse.

It just taught people to take advantage of me.

It just made me feel more depressed,

More angry,

More frustrated,

More alone,

More isolated,

And more like,

What am I doing wrong?

More broken.

In my life,

I just got to a point where I literally had nothing else to give and my body started to break down and I was so afraid that I was going to die,

That I had to speak it.

I had to say,

I'm unhappy.

As silly as it sounds,

I didn't feel like I had the right to say,

I'm unhappy.

I pretended to be happy.

I smiled on cue.

When people left my house,

I shut the door,

I cleaned up,

And I pretended to be happy.

When they were around,

I pretended to be happy.

When I shut the door,

I could feel this emptiness and this sadness,

Almost like I was out of character,

Like,

Oh,

I wish they knew how unhappy I was.

But I didn't feel like I had the right to be unhappy.

I felt like it was my job to just pretend and to act selfless,

Even though inside I was getting more and more frustrated and the more frustrated I became,

When it started to surface,

My ex-husband and I started to have some serious problems.

As I was unable to control my selflessness anymore,

It was almost like this eruption was happening inside of me.

My spirit was saying,

No,

This cannot go on much longer.

It's not happening.

I just started to become more verbal about it and vocal and that's when our relationship got really,

Really,

Really messy.

So speaking up on the behalf of your inner self is probably the most courageous thing that you can do,

Especially when you've created a life unconsciously that represents the selflessness.

You're supposed to be the quicker picker-upper.

You're supposed to be the Uber driver.

You're the nurse in the family.

You're the babysitter in the family.

You're the one that takes care of yourself financially so we come to you when we need money.

You're the sober one so we send the people in our family that are struggling with alcoholism to you.

So you're the responsible one.

You're the person that's trying to keep your life together because you can't ask for help.

You know that you can't ask for help.

You've never been able to rely on anyone so you don't ask for help.

You're the helper and now it's biting you in the butt.

And now people don't leave you alone.

And now all you want is someone to say,

I see you.

Now you're in a dangerous situation if you're not recovered because now you are a gaping hole for a narcissist because a narcissist in that situation will exploit the person who has lived their life selflessly and is done.

So you are leaking all this energy.

This is a wound that you have and if you're not careful,

I actually had a narcissist say to me,

I believe this was a psychopath,

He said to me,

I could smell it in the air with women.

Almost like he was bragging that if he was in a room full of women,

He'd be able to smell the one that was needy.

He could smell the one that wanted validation.

He could smell the one that had attachment trauma and abandonment trauma and whose husband ignored her or abused her or cheated on her.

And he would become what that woman wanted him to be so that he could hedge his bets and in time get this woman to trust him.

And she feels like,

Wow,

I'm seeing I've met the man of my dreams.

And just when he thought she was hooked really good,

Right,

Then he would throw out a discard,

He would throw out an insult and shock her or threaten her with abandonment and threaten not to come see her or not fool around with her.

All of these threats,

Right?

Trauma bonding.

This is what happens.

So when you are selfless,

This is going to make your life worse.

And so whether it comes from your culture,

Whether it comes from a religion,

Whether it comes from your family,

Whether it's what you saw your mother do or your father do,

It's really important that you recognize that being selfless will only make your life worse because the goal is not to be selfless.

The goal is to develop a healthy sense of self to be able to handle strong emotions,

These dark emotions so you can process them so that they don't they don't keep you stuck,

Right?

These are the patterns that were created and are stuck in the lower chakras,

Generational karma,

Right?

If you can learn to process these strong emotions,

You will heal generations of trauma,

Maybe even generations of the past.

They say there's no such thing as time,

There's no such thing as space,

Everything's happening now.

And so if you believe that,

That's a pretty big concept to wrap your mind around.

But that implies that if I heal myself,

I heal perhaps possibly my grandmother's trauma or my mother's trauma or whatever if I heal myself.

I am their DNA.

Everything is energy.

So if I'm able to transmute an energy that my mother or father or my grandmother or great grandmother or hell,

Go back 12 generations,

18 generations,

A thousand generations,

Right?

I came from somewhere.

So if I'm able to transmute these strong emotions,

Right,

And able to change these emotions and am I changing this energy in different planes or different dimensions?

That's a possibility,

Right?

And so I have to learn to honor these emotions,

Handle these emotions,

Strong emotion.

I have to return to love and then I have to learn to speak the who that I am.

That's the whole reason that you're born.

The whole experiment,

In my opinion,

Is can you return to the love that you are and not be a narcissist?

Can you return to the love that you are and become non-resistant to what's happening around you and continue to stay in the vibration of love?

Can you open up love within yourself and become a beacon of light and a beacon of love for others?

Can you do that?

Can you help people transition and cross the bridge from living in the darkness to living in the light?

Can you do that?

You can only do that if you've been able to transmute dark energies and strong emotions within you.

You can only do that if you can see the purpose in life,

Which is if you've been around a narcissist and you've been wounded by a narcissist,

The last thing that you want to do is engage with the narcissist.

The last thing that you want to do is allow the narcissist to take residence in your mind.

The last thing that you want to do is stalk their Facebook or stalk their Instagram.

The last thing that you want to do is drive past their house,

See what they're doing,

Who are they dating?

What are they saying?

The last thing that you want to do is pick up the phone when they call you or to go back at a text message.

The last thing that you want to do is become a booty call for a narcissist who will bring you back in.

You want to stick with these strong emotions that caused you to possibly be selfless in this relationship.

You want to learn to handle those strong emotions so that you can return to the love that you were,

Have this amazing bright light happen,

Explosion in your heart space,

Transmute this energy and then speak,

This is who I am.

When we do this,

We transcend generations of dark energy.

Let's face it,

Narcissism is a dark energy.

If we all return to self love,

What would happen to narcissism?

Would narcissists exist if those of us who were able to transmute these dark energies within and were able to handle strong emotions and we were no longer seeking the validation of other people?

We were no longer acquiescing,

Failing to set boundaries.

We were no longer codependent.

We were staying in our own lane.

We were spiritually evolving.

We were stepping into the abundance,

The natural abundance that we are.

What would happen if nations of people just love themselves and stepped into this is who I am?

That would be an amazing thing because at the end of the day,

My I am is your I am.

We are reflections of one another.

We all come from the same place.

We all come from love.

Even though we experience this lack of love and mentally and emotionally,

Spiritually and vibrationally,

Being separate from love will cause us to have all of these issues like depression and anxiety,

Codependency,

Narcissism and alike.

The answer is to return to love.

Love is always going to be the answer.

Love is the hub of the universe.

It is the creative force that we need on earth.

And so I think it's time that we all step into this amazing feminine regardless of whether or not you're born male or female.

Step into your divine feminine creative energy and return to love.

And so being selfless is only going to make your life worse.

Stepping into the self,

Loving the self.

If you do it the right way,

If you do it the spiritual way,

A holistic way,

You end up feeling love for everything and everyone.

You're able to let go.

You're able to stay in your own lane.

You're able to let other people have their experiences.

And you know that your path is their path.

And the quicker you get there,

The better for you.

And however long it takes your sister who's a narcissist,

Your mother,

However long it takes for them to have this experience,

It's how long it takes.

But you do nothing for them as long as you stay engaged in their dark world.

You do much more for them when you enter into the light of your own soul and expand that light.

And that is the journey for all of us.

It's to learn to let go,

Stay in our own lane,

Learn how to handle strong emotions,

Step into the love that we are,

And then speak the truth of who I am.

Reviews

What an eye opening talk. Thank you. I have low self worth and I believe my mom has some narcissistic traits and I never felt authentic love from her just control. But I still love her and I always feel guilty and shame for speaking it

Very helpful. I plan on listening to it again and again.

Great insights. Exactly what I needed 🙏

The best so far in insight timer !!! Top top excellent absolutely inspiring ! This is the best I’ve heard so far thank you 💗

I can unfortunately relate to quite a few of the darker things you discussed in this talk. However, I really appreciate your insights and guidance because I recognize the effectiveness of this information. Thank you for sharing this with us, Lisa! 🙏🏻

This talk amalgamated a lot of information in my mind. Thank you 🙏

This is timeless and timely understanding. I am grateful to see the flow of truth so clearly conveyed.

Wow! Thank you for your work and sharing it. A lot of it resonated deeply.

Wow. How much would I love to have you guide me through all of this in person. It sounds so simple ~ to come out of being selfless ... at 66, and still raising grandchildren that take my love and kindness (selflessness) as being a weakness and even disrespecting me. I would give anything to be able to reach my mother, grandmother and ultimately, over time, my sister and my grandchildren. Oh boy, do I have some work to do.

Lisa’s talks are so eye opening. Sometimes it hard to hear because It’s so true in my life. Thank you for being bold and talking to this subject. You made me realize what I need to do.

This was really helpful on my healing journey and letting go of the past to create healthier relationships and affirm my wholeness 🙏🏽Based on writers like Yung Pueblo, therapists, and other spiritual teachers, I’ve understood that setting up healthy boundaries is a characteristic of self love, and that we must communicate them to our partners to have our needs met while working on ourselves to grow. Are healthy boundaries part of every relationship since we all carry wounds/traumas from childhood? If you place healthy boundaries of your partner and they don’t respect them, is that a sign of lack of self love from either of us? I’m trying to understand if there has to be a balance of healthy boundaries and a respect for them from your partner. My childhood wounds tend to open up when someone doesn’t “see” me and I wonder if I’m choosing the right partner as a result of someone not allowing me to feel safe or does this safety rely completely on me? Thank you for your wisdom ✨💙🙏🏽

Always enlightening Lisa. Thank you for all your work. 🙏🏼✨💖

What a great listen this was! Took away alot and will definitely keep coming back to this. 🤍

This is *incredibly* helpful. Thank you so much. Words cannot describe. This helps me feel way more at peace

Listening to your talks is like looking in a mirror. 65 years of survivorship and distractions; it's a deep and dark hole to climb out of.

This talk really resonated with me. How can I live for decades mainly denying “self,” pleasing others to the degree that not to do so creates panic and fear, self loathing, relying on others to justify myself? I’m so grateful for your presence here to be another catalyst to my own self awareness and growth. I believe that I will get to true love for myself and be my authentic self with guidance like this. I let go of any time-line for completion as it not beneficial, all will occur in its own perfect time. Thank you for being here.😄🙏🏻

Hits hope pretty hard
Thank you for sharing

So insightful! Amazing! Thank you! 🙏☀️

Answers to life questions, for anyone who experienced abuse as a child

Thank you for this amazing talk. You break down the reasons why I was set up to become the perfect candidate for a Narcissist to abuse. I feel so empowered with this information knowing that it is up to me to change it. Talks like this, meditation, chants and understanding my programming are the key to my freedom. I cannot thank you enough, Lisa. All of you talks are helpful, but I found this one particularly powerful. I am going to start to concentrate on real easing the negative energy that has been trapped for so many years as I devoted myself to saving a covert narcissist.