Narcissists And Projective Identification

Narcissists often project their own flaws onto their targets, and if the target isn't careful, they can also get the target to identify with those flaws. Life Coach and bestselling author Lisa A. Romano, interviews, Douglas, a prominent psychotherapist to learn more.

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.

Thank you everybody for joining me here today.

With me today I have Douglas,

Who is a licensed professional counselor,

The psychotherapist,

Licensed in the state of Pennsylvania,

Who earned his master's degree in counseling in 2011,

And he earned his license at the counselor in 2015.

He's been treating clients in private practice since 2016 after an apprenticeship working in three community mental health units.

He specializes in treating codependency and victims of narcissistic abuse.

He was born and raised in a very emotionally disturbed family.

He suffered two suicides of family members,

His mother,

Who suffered from borderline personality disorder,

And his middle brother,

An alcoholic.

Both grandfathers were alcoholics.

Douglas made his family business his profession.

He identifies as a recovering passive codependent beginning on January 7th,

2018.

And like all of us,

Douglas is choosing to recover one day at a time.

He attended the noted Swarthmore College.

Hope I said that right,

Douglas?

Okay,

Cool.

Where he was a solid student graduating in 1989.

He was married for 29 years as two beautiful daughters.

He was divorced in 2020 after separation beginning in 2018.

Thank you,

Douglas,

For being here.

Welcome.

So today we're going to be talking about something that's really,

I think,

Happens a lot in codependent narcissistic relationships.

And I haven't heard anyone discuss it.

And it's the projective identification that takes place.

So Douglas,

Would you mind explaining to people in the audience who are listening,

What is projective identification?

Okay,

Yes.

So projective identification is something that's quite different from projection,

But it's based in projection.

So I think many educated folks and people who've done recovery work understand that projection is the process by which a person assigns a painful,

Negative or shadow trait onto another person or the target.

All people can project in certain circumstances,

You know,

The classic hungry,

Angry,

Lonely,

Tired from 12-step.

You know,

In a situation,

Any of us might project onto another person.

Now with projection,

The important perception is if the person who's doing the projection feels as if they've landed the projection on the target.

So to a certain extent,

The target is passive or can be passive.

Projective identification is based in this process.

However,

It is much more active and dangerous for the target because with projective identification,

Yes,

The person,

Whoever that is,

I'm going to guess that many people can use projective identification.

However,

It's a characteristic of certain manipulative types,

And we'll talk more about that in a moment.

But with projective identification,

It's much more active on the part of the projector.

And that it occurs when a person identifies a target and then says words or takes actions or does a variety of,

You know,

Mixture of manipulation that creates a strong and painful emotion in the target,

Which is typically anger and fear,

Some combination of both.

And the person who's using projective identification will typically begin by irritating or annoying the person,

Perhaps raising an uncomfortable topic.

And then the manipulator will continue this process until the target feels overwhelmed and highly reactive.

And then at some point,

If the projective identification is successful,

The target will act out in a way that the manipulator wants,

Exhibiting anger or fear or some other emotion or behavior that the manipulator began with as a goal.

Wow.

Wow.

So is it,

Would this be an example?

Mary drinks too much and she says to her friend,

Sam,

You're making a fool out of yourself because you drink too much.

And Mary then believes perhaps that maybe she is making a fool out of herself and she thinks she might be drinking too much,

Even though she wasn't.

It might be a simple explanation,

But is that what we're talking about?

Yeah.

And so that it would particularly,

This would be particularly the case.

I think that's a good,

Solid example.

And it's particularly the case if the target,

And the target in this case is Mary,

Is that correct?

Sam.

So Mary is drinking too much.

Mary is drinking too much.

Right.

Sam is the target.

And particularly if Mary's comments get Sam very uncomfortable and he or she,

Because Sam could be both or either,

Begins to drink more heavily and then ends up making a fool of himself later in the evening.

Got it.

Interesting.

Wow.

Douglas,

This is very problematic.

Yes.

This is very bad.

Wow.

And so do you have any other examples that might be useful?

Well,

The one that I looked up,

There's one from film,

Which has the advantage of,

It's a very well-known movie,

Which is Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,

The third film.

And if you go to the scene that begins at minute 152,

You will see Aunt Marge enter the Dursleys' house.

And she proceeds to ramp Harry Potter up for roughly two and a half minutes.

And then at minute 4,

10,

Aunt Marge succeeds in getting Harry to act out in this very notable way.

And you can see Aunt Marge get the narc smirk or the narcissistic elation on her face.

It's very brief.

You have to pay attention.

If your attention wanders for a moment,

You'll miss it.

But it's right there.

She smiles when Harry Potter acts out.

Of course,

This being a movie about magic,

Aunt Marge gets her comeuppance.

But in real life,

What typically happens is that Harry Potter,

The equivalent of Harry Potter,

Would suffer some very negative consequence from,

In this case,

His adoptive family.

So,

Why do you think someone like this,

Like Aunt Marge,

Would.

.

.

What's the benefit to abuse someone in this way?

The benefit,

In my opinion,

Rests in the dark triad of narcissism.

So to review,

I'm sure your listeners will know this one,

The dark triad of narcissism is Machiavellianism,

Enjoying manipulating people,

Sadism,

Enjoying hurting people,

And psychopathy,

Which is an impairment in conscience.

So that a truly malignant narcissist,

Like Aunt Marge is portrayed to be,

In my opinion,

From the movie,

They get their own intrinsic reward out of ramping up a target,

In this case,

Harry Potter.

And so they simply enjoy doing it.

And in the situation of a corporation or an organization,

It could be private,

For-profit,

Whatever,

Often people who are very effective at manipulating people will use these techniques like protective medication to discredit maybe possible opponents or people questioning them,

Like in a board of directors or in a management meeting or whatever.

Right.

Wow.

So what type of people do you think are most susceptible to this type of abuse?

Well,

Again,

As listeners of your podcast will know,

People who have been raised in dysfunctional families,

Emotionally neglectful or abusive families.

So people who have disturbances of their self-identity and their feelings,

Their boundaries,

People who don't know what they feel.

So one of the primary determinants or primary characteristics of codependency is that it's people who don't know what they feel.

So when a person with an agenda of projective identification finds a target who does not respond in an effective manner,

They know they've got a live one and they will proceed to ramp up.

And if the target doesn't understand what's happening,

They will typically experience intense feelings of confusion and then anger.

And the next thing you know,

They'll typically feel ashamed because of how they've acted out in some way.

Right.

And of course,

The confusion,

The anger,

The narcissist wins and then gets to say,

See,

I told you this person had this issue and yet it's been completely projected upon the target,

As you say.

Yes.

Projective identification is the core means by which the term reactive abuse is achieved.

So out there in I've seen a variety of videos on YouTube about reactive abuse,

And that's a useful term because it's very obvious.

Projective identification is an older psychoanalytic term invented by the great Melanie Klein.

Otto Kernberg is also associated with this term.

And it's by the means of projective identification that a manipulator accomplishes reactive abuse in the target.

Right.

And like we all know,

If you've been a target of a smear campaign,

If you've been a target of someone's narcissistic abuse and you end up reacting lots of times,

You are then trained and conditioned to believe that you had no right to react,

That it's all in your head.

Correct.

And this is why it's so important.

So if one is a target of projective identification,

Being passive is not an option because if you're passive,

Then the manipulator wins.

And so while as a passive codependent,

So this is my issue,

Right?

So as a passive codependent,

As various manipulative people in my life,

And there's been many of them,

Has tried to ramp me up.

I've often under responded.

But in that situation,

The manipulator will feel quite understandably that they won.

They got you to knuckle under,

They got you to pretend there was nothing wrong.

And so while maybe their maximal goal was to get the target to act crazy or,

For me and historically,

For me to act crazy,

That they don't get that maximal goal because of the under response,

But they can rest assured knowing that they have achieved further domination over the target.

Right.

And so that really is the goal.

The goal is to gain control over the target by almost any means necessary,

Whether it's like you're saying,

Whether it's through a reactive response or whether it's through and a minimal response.

The goal,

As far as the narcissist is concerned,

I think is that mission accomplished,

They are compliant and I've riled them up and I win.

I'm the dominant winner here.

Right.

And relatedly,

You said by any means necessary,

Which goes back to the dark triad trait of psychopathy.

Right.

So people who have a conscience would not do this.

Again,

Let's assume that someone who's not a full on narcissistic personality disorder person might engage in projective identification.

Maybe it's a hard fight between a husband and a wife.

Maybe it's two friends going after each other.

A person who would engage in projective identification without sufficient awareness probably would think it over and maybe the next day,

Maybe the next hour or at some point,

But apologize and say,

Wow,

I was really out of line.

You're not going to get that for someone who suffers from the trait of psychopathy.

I think that's such an important point to make Douglas,

Because we can all step into ego defense mechanisms.

We all can be reactive.

And I think a lot of people want to know like,

Well,

Where is the line?

Am I a narcissist?

Because I listen to videos and podcasts and I'm guilty of some of these things.

And I think that you raise a very important point is that after you've simmered down and you've calmed down and you've reflected and checked yourself,

You find yourself feeling uncomfortable with the idea that something that you said was set out of anger and it hurt another human being and you want to make it right.

When it comes to narcissists and we're talking about the dark triad in this situation,

That does not happen.

Yes.

And if you wait for the person to do so,

You will wait a long time.

And this is where in your,

All of your work,

I believe that you're on a skillful path because you emphasize the self responsibility and self love so that it is,

In my opinion,

Any of us who want to recover from this type of childhood,

From this type of treatment,

We must wake up to the necessity to be aware when this is happening.

Because if we don't,

Then we are typically either being passive and we're receiving it or being active and we're fighting it.

And that's one of the different,

Or I should say fighting the person,

Fighting the situation.

When in fact,

What we need to do to be effective in dealing with this is to set the boundary and to enact effective relationship with this person.

So if it's a coworker,

Take a step back,

Engage in gray rock as necessary.

You can't expect someone who has this pattern and to determine the pattern,

It requires wise discernment.

You can't expect somebody who engages in this type of ego defense mechanism and indeed offensive mechanism to engage in conscience when their consciousness is impaired.

Right.

And I think,

You know,

I think it's so important to have these types of conversations,

As you know.

I speak about self-love and I speak about accountability,

But I think a big part of the problem when it comes to codependency and being a victim of narcissistic abuse very often is that we don't know what's wrong.

Right?

So if you grow up in a home that's dysfunctional,

It becomes your norm.

You are operating in survival mode.

Being projected upon is the norm.

And you think that being compliant and being passive and acquiescing and putting someone else first,

Which is what you did in your marriage,

Right?

You put this other person first,

You made sure that she had everything that she needed.

You thought you were doing the right thing.

And so I think having conversations like this is giving people the tools they need to develop that discernment.

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

So,

Oh,

Now I know that this is codependency.

That's how I'm showing up and oh,

I'm attracting people who are highly narcissistic.

Okay,

I can see that now.

That's great.

I'm curious to see that.

Oh,

This is a problem with being too passive and not understanding the mechanisms of narcissism.

Okay,

I can see that piece of it.

Oh,

I need to self-love and set boundaries.

So I do think that this is a journey and we need to keep offering people tools and the language they need to identify what's wrong.

Would you agree?

Oh,

Yes.

Yes.

And self-responsibility is the way out of this,

No matter how much that any of us were abused or neglected in our childhoods.

If we don't wake up,

If we don't take responsibility,

Then we will tend to either attract these people into our life,

Or you can also look at it as we let these people into our life.

And because we lack boundaries and self-awareness,

We don't even know that we're being abused until sometime often years down the line.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's your personal experience with narcissism or psychopathy?

Well,

In my family of origin,

It's interesting if I'm understanding my mother correctly,

And that's a whole process.

Whoever said that hindsight is 20-20 does not understand human consciousness.

So in the process of looking back at my poor mother,

I can't quite tell from this distance whether she was a malignant narcissist or not.

I'm still out to the jury without one.

And to a certain extent,

It doesn't matter in that I can tell you that she was very disturbed.

And it came from her own horrific abuse.

And so I want to offer her compassion and abstention.

She's been dead for 32 years now,

So it's a long time.

And that in my family of origin,

Because love and abuse was mixed together,

I then over the course of my life,

You know,

It's so many different people.

I've experienced narcissism abuse from so many different people over the course of my life because again,

Of poor boundaries,

Of lack of awareness,

Of not knowing what I was feeling.

So I've experienced it in a lot of contexts.

Right.

That's amazing.

And look what you've done.

You've taken everything that you've experienced and applied it to your life and you're helping people become more aware and offering them the tools that they need to stay conscious and to continue raising their consciousness around this issue.

And I think that's a beautiful thing.

So what was your breakthrough moment?

My breakthrough moment was realizing that I was not the primary problem in my life.

On the one hand,

The realization was I was responsible,

Yes.

And that the people that I had allowed into my life,

That I had found attractive and interesting,

That I really had made a series of poor judgments and that I wasn't the problem,

Which is the way I always operated,

Rather that I actually had a lot of really great traits that I usually minimized.

You know,

Part of codependency is a reluctance to acknowledge recognition,

To accept gifts,

To take credit.

And I had those,

All of those characteristics very strongly.

And so when I woke up and realized that I was not the problem,

That I was a person,

I have excessive conscience.

I take too much responsibility.

And as I began to,

Over the course of many years,

So my awakening,

There was lots of predecessors,

But the big awakening was that led me to go to the first CODA meeting there on January 7th of 2018.

So was it a specific moment?

Did something happen in your marriage?

What was it that forced you to say,

There's a problem here and I need to address it?

It was a series of escalating things.

So I can point to some moments,

But more than that,

It was by the end of 2016,

Realizing that I felt really terrible in my marriage and that I finally realized I was not the primary problem because I had been operating under the assumption for probably 10 solid years at that point.

And so the marriage was dysfunctional and it forces you to a space where you have to look at yourself and basically take care of yourself.

Right.

And to anyone listening to this podcast who may be in a similar situation,

One thing I'd like to say,

And Lisa says this all the time,

Is be very kind to yourself.

On the one hand,

You need to wake up and make a decision.

On the other hand,

However long you've been in a marriage,

And I was in one for 29 years,

I'm that it's not too late to wake up,

Make a decision,

Make a commitment and take a different path no matter how old you are,

No matter what you're committed to,

You can escape and I'm living proof.

Yeah,

That's just amazing.

It's just amazing.

And I love your story because the childhood was very dysfunctional growing up the way that you grew up with mom.

It took her life,

Your brother as well,

Right?

He was an alcoholic,

Your brother?

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean,

That's a lot of trauma.

And then to be married for 29 years and for it to end in a divorce and for you to take everything that you've learned and recognize,

Wow,

I'm a passive codependent.

And I think it's also important for people to know,

Douglas,

That this happens to everybody and anybody.

In other words,

You can be highly functioning.

You can have a wonderful career,

A wonderful job,

And yet still struggle with being a victim of narcissistic abuse and learning about it,

Labeling it,

Putting a name to it,

And then identifying whether or not you struggle with,

Like in your case,

Passive codependency.

All of this helps you have those breakthrough moments.

All of this can end up being the rocket fuel you need to actually change your life.

And so it's one of the reasons I asked you to come on the podcast is because I believe that your story is so inspiring.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Yeah.

And it's really,

Everything you said is true.

And I could go at length about my biography.

The main point is I've had a very amazing life in terms of the polarities experiences that I've had.

I've had some wonderful opportunities at some of the best formal education that one can have.

Swarthmore is very famous that way.

Travel,

Eating great food,

Et cetera.

Lots of interesting,

Very intelligent,

Highly educated friends.

And yet underneath that all was the corrosive passive codependency that I kept on kind of being aware of over the years,

But I couldn't put the puzzle together until I did.

Right.

I think,

I don't know,

Maybe you relate to this.

The puzzle came together for me when I realized,

Like I always say,

It wasn't me,

It was my programming that,

Wow,

I was conditioned to think in a subconscious way.

And this subconscious thinking was dictating my decisions,

The way that I was thinking,

The people that I attracted,

The things that I said and the things that I did.

And understanding like what you're saying,

It wasn't really me per se.

And in addition,

Dealing with people who are addicted,

People who do have serious personality disorders,

All of that allows you to take a step back and almost like not take things so personally anymore.

It's like,

Oh,

Okay,

There's something else happening here.

I'm definitely part of the puzzle,

But this is psychopathy,

This is narcissism,

This is BPD,

And this is codependency.

Did you feel like being able to identify these types of issues in your life allowed you to have that breakthrough?

Yes.

Yeah.

And it was,

While the big breakthrough occurred in early 2018,

There were many predecessors and,

Yes,

And it was my programming.

And speaking as a current licensed psychotherapist,

Cognitive behavioral therapy,

Which can be super useful,

And I use it as a therapist,

Unfortunately doesn't look at some of the deeper structures of character.

And so when you say it's not you,

It's your programming,

A slogan I've heard several thousand times from you,

Lisa,

That that speaks to the depth of the human character,

Because that we're acting all these ways that we feel as if we're being assertive.

We feel as if we're solving problems.

We feel as if we're not a doormat.

And then when you wake up,

You realize,

Oh,

Wait,

There was a deeper level.

And so this is where,

In my opinion,

Historically,

Freud and Jung,

Who started as great allies and ended as great enemies,

They both understood this.

Despite their differences,

They both understood this much,

That it was not us,

It was our programming.

And I can tell you that in my private practice,

I now have about 20,

25 sessions per week consistently.

I keep on hearing from a variety of clients that I have for about the past two to three years now,

Why has no other therapist ever talked to me about this?

Amazing.

Yeah.

And I say,

Because if you look at things from a CBT perspective,

Then you may miss what's going on.

And I also want to say,

Good CBT practitioners are good CBT practitioners.

They understand this one way or the other,

Despite the model and whatever limitations the model might be.

And Freud and Jung are often considered anachronisms,

Old fashioned,

Oh,

They're no longer relevant.

And I'm here to say that from my perspective,

Oh no,

That psychotherapy,

I think,

Has gone backwards in many ways in regards to what Freud and Jung understood.

That's amazing.

That's just,

I mean,

Again,

You took your life,

You decided to just investigate what you needed to investigate so you can heal your life.

And you're taking that into the lives of your clients,

Which is just amazing,

Douglas.

It's a lot to be proud of.

And I hear you,

Because I went to at least five different therapists and none of them talked about this subconscious piece.

I was diagnosed with codependency and depression,

But this idea of it being a program,

It being a conditioned response,

This idea that I was not as conscious as I thought I was,

And basically asleep at the wheel,

But I only thought that I was at the wheel,

Was never addressed.

And so I think it's important,

Although my hope is that we move in this direction in the mental health field so that people understand this idea of subconscious programs and impulses to do certain things that you think you're aware of that you're actually not.

And so that's my hope.

Yeah.

Well,

And that requires,

Speaking as a recovering codependent myself,

That requires an amazing level of humility,

Particularly my mental horsepower,

My intellect has never been questioned.

But my emotional life,

My emotional awareness,

Oh wow.

A term that I haven't heard you use that might be useful is alexithymia,

Which in the Greek means without words for feelings,

Which is just the fancy technical word for we don't know what we're feeling.

So people who are experiencing alexithymia don't know what their emotions are.

They can't identify what they're feeling,

Which of course you talk about all the time in terms of codependency.

And that I definitely identify as a recovering alexithymic,

You know,

Within the context of my overall recovery of codependency.

Yeah.

And that's a big one,

Right?

Like we learned,

You have to get in touch with your feelings.

You have to bring your awareness back into your body.

Identify what I speak about in the one,

Two,

Three process,

Accept how you feel,

Feel what you feel and decide what you're going to do about it,

Which means my awareness has to be in my body.

I have to be aware of what I feel.

How do I know that I'm angry?

What did my body just do to show me that I'm angry?

How do I know that I'm frightened or I'm frustrated or I feel guilty or ashamed?

How do I know that?

And really bringing your awareness into the body so that you develop this connection again and you develop this union between yourself and your emotional body so that you can begin making decisions that are in your best interests.

And it's a process,

Right?

Because in all of that,

You have to learn how to do that and then you have to learn how to set boundaries and say no.

So this is absolutely a process.

This is not something that's fixed in a half hour podcast,

But it's certainly information that someone can use and create sort of like a bullseye around.

Like that's my bullseye.

I'm going to learn how to feel my feelings.

Yes.

And I teach your one,

Two,

Three process regularly and I refer so many clients to a variety of videos.

I have sort of a 10 or 20 core ones and the one,

Two,

Three process is one of them.

And I want to take a moment and say the great Dr.

Marcia Linehan,

Who herself has recovered from borderline personality disorder,

She has an extensive interview in the New York Times from 2011 where she talks about her recovery and then she wrote a memoir recently called A Life Worth Living.

So I want to point out that folks who suffer borderline who are not malignant and according to Randy Crager who wrote Stop,

Walk,

And Eggshells,

70% of people who suffer from borderline personality disorder are not malignant.

Those people,

Those folks who suffer from BPD without the narcissism,

Malignant narcissism can recover.

It's very difficult.

It's probably the equivalent of recovering from being an alcoholic or any other substance addiction and it's possible.

And the great Dr.

Marcia Linehan was the person who in her textbook for dialectical behavioral therapy began to teach me when I worked at the Western Psychiatric Hospital here in Pittsburgh,

All emotions began in the body.

So what do you teach,

Lisa,

Is right in line with what Dr.

Linehan teaches.

So when we pay attention to our body,

If we develop wise discernment,

We can feel the emotions developing in the body before they manifest in the mind.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And you know what's amazing,

Douglas?

It's that you as a codependent,

You're other focused,

Right?

You're other focused and then all of a sudden when you're in codependent recovery,

You suddenly become inner focused and you learn eventually that all you really had to do was be yourself.

Connect to yourself and find ways to bring that out into the 3D world.

It blows your mind when you grow up feeling like you're not good enough and you have to walk around on eggshells and take care of everybody else and then realize that,

No,

My feelings did matter.

My emotions did matter and it was good to express them and to be myself.

It blows your mind as a recovering codependent.

Yeah,

It does.

And having two daughters,

I watched a lot of Barbie movies when they were young and the message of those Barbie movies over and over again is be yourself.

And it feels,

That message feels so trite.

It feels such a cliche and yet it's absolutely true.

And this is where unfortunately a lot of the spiritual traditions,

I'm thinking particularly of Christianity here,

But I think it could be any of them,

They so much emphasize helping the other,

Rescuing the people in dire straits,

The poor,

Etc.

And that when one does so in a compulsive and unskillful and reflective way,

That often is codependency.

And indeed,

Knowing some folks over my life who aspire to be great humanitarians,

Often you could see the shadow side of those folks pop out because they didn't have sufficient levels of self-awareness and self-development.

The great Chogyam Trungpa used to call this spiritual bypassing.

The irony being that Chogyam Trungpa himself was,

I believe,

A psychopath.

That's another story.

Right.

Yeah.

The next podcast,

The next podcast.

So as we wrap this up,

What do you know now that you did not know then that you think our audience might really appreciate?

At root,

What I know now is that I am worthy as I am.

I know that I'm a work in progress.

So for 50 years,

You know,

Throughout my younger childhood,

I've been well into my adulthood,

Well into middle age,

I believed that somehow I was defective.

And the problem is that on a conscious level,

I could have offered you or anyone a variety of rationalizations or I'm making progress or I'm healing or I'm doing okay despite this and that.

But subconsciously,

As we've talked about subconsciously,

My level of self-hatred was far deeper than I was aware.

And I could eat.

I've told you 20 years ago that I dealt with issues of self-hatred.

Indeed,

In 2001,

I read a book,

Which I'd recommend to anyone.

I've recommended to many clients called Compassion and Self-Hate by the great Dr.

Theodore Rubin.

That's a great book.

And I read it and I'm like,

Wow,

I can really identify how that was a problem.

But the insight is not the work.

And so having read that book,

There was a way in which I couldn't or did not know how to integrate that awareness,

That insight.

And so I went on for 17 more years after reading that book,

Still engaging in a variety of subconscious,

Self-minimization,

Self-hatred,

Self-criticism in ways that were way more vicious than I was consciously aware of.

Yeah,

It's incredible.

So yeah,

I mean,

That's why in my meditations in the 12-week class that you know about,

It's you are enough.

Who knew?

Who knew you were enough?

And once you know that you're enough,

You become less of a target of narcissistic abuse because you're not other focused.

You're not seeking their approval and in fear of a negative outcome,

Which is basically the equation that keeps victims of narcissistic abuse in the narcissistic abuse cycle.

You're seeking approval,

Seeking their validation,

And at the same time you've been conditioned to fear a negative outcome for disagreeing with them or not acquiescing.

When you know that you are enough,

You realize that you don't need their validation and you don't need to be afraid of a negative outcome.

So you literally break through and set yourself free.

Well,

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Sure.

Sure.

Yeah.

And wrapping it up,

And when you have that feeling of being enough,

When you can trust your instincts,

When you trust that you're enough,

You also can resist projective identification.

So as a person would start as a manipulator or a person acting out and not their best self was starting to act out towards us as a target,

We would say no in one form or another.

No,

That's not okay.

No,

I can see you're worked up right now.

I'm going to leave and leave you to cool down.

Take some action,

Be it verbal or physical,

Remove yourself from the situation,

Set a boundary.

Because if we believe we are the problem in a relationship,

Particularly a two person significant relationship,

Then we're very likely to accept the projective identification as true when it's literally a shadow coming from the other person.

Amazing.

So what I'm taking away from what you're saying is that when you're dealing with someone who is using projective identification,

You cannot be passive and you can't be reactive,

But you do need to take an action.

Yes.

The middle path.

Absolutely.

The Buddha taught 2,

600 years ago,

The middle path.

That's it.

So active codependence would tend to get into a fight in a situation or projective identification,

Which does prevent from just being a passive victim,

But will typically keep the active codependent trapped.

The passive codependent will give a knuckle under try to people please,

But it will never work.

So yes,

The middle path is the way out of saying no,

Of offering feedback,

Of saying,

Hey,

Can we talk about this later?

Whatever.

There's many techniques you might use,

But if you have the vulnerability,

You will tend to knuckle under.

You will tend to get wrapped up in yet another dramatic fight with your friend,

Partner,

Family member.

Amazing.

This has been so informative and I think you left us with a lot of great tools and tips,

Even down to say this,

Say,

No,

You're worked up.

We need to just,

We need to have another conversation at another time.

That alone is really a golden nugget.

And thank you so much for giving us your time,

Donating your time to this amazing community of people who are trying to heal from codependency and narcissistic abuse.

Thank you,

Douglas.

You're welcome Lisa.

Reviews

Badly needed this information and support right now. 5 stars!!

Excellent thread to weave into my own narrative about where I am today
Thanks 🙏 for sharing this with me

Powerful & insightful. Thank you.

I needed this today. This and your talk about narcissists taking advantage of our need to be needed kept me from breaking almost 3 months of no-contact with a malignant narcissist <3

If you are questioning 🤨 why people or you dismiss feelings, check this out !

Good stuff right here. Recently I asked my present therapist why the other 3-4 I saw the last 20 years off and on never addressed the real problem of being raised by a narc mom and enabling alcoholic dad could be the reason I was severely codependent! It wasn’t until I discovered Lisa and other’s podcast on this subject that I was able to recognize my life for what it was and ask the right questions when I sought out another therapist. Finally I have one that is helping! 💜