Narcissists Must Scramble Your Brain Here's Why

Those who have never loved a narcissist may never understand the emotional, mental and spiritual abuse that is the result of falling for someone who is empathy impaired, lives with a sense of entitlement, is self-grandiose, and exploits others.
However, if you have been involved with a narcissist, your mind may be scrambled as a result of gaslighting, accusations, projection, blameshifting, lying, compulsive behaviors, and triangulation.

Transcript

So,

Today we're going to be talking about why it is someone who is high on the narcissistic spectrum,

Someone who lacks empathy,

Someone who feels within their right to exploit other people,

Someone who feels entitled compared to other people.

Why people with these types of personality traits,

Why when you are in a relationship with them,

Their intention really is to scramble your brain.

We're talking about what is it that a narcissist or someone high on the narcissistic spectrum,

Why is it that this person would have a desire to scramble your reality?

Why is it that someone with this type of a personality would need to get you to disown yourself,

Disown what you think,

And disown your inner reality?

What's going on here?

I really want to talk to people who were or are,

Who were like me or who are like me,

Or at least who are dealing with some of the things that I had to deal with when I was going through my separation and my divorce.

The types of emotional states and mind states that friends don't understand,

That seem illogical to our friends,

Mental and emotional and spiritual states that people that we love just don't get people on the outside look at someone like you or someone like me,

At least the way I used to be,

And they think,

What's wrong with you?

What don't you see clearly?

Why don't you understand that this person doesn't see any good in you?

Why do you keep going back?

Why are you not gone already?

Why do you keep assuming blame for this?

What's going on?

It's so obvious to the outside world that you should have left this relationship a long time ago.

I want to talk to people who are looking back at their lives and thinking,

How could I have not known that I was dealing with this?

How could I have not known that this was narcissistic behavior?

How could I have not escaped?

How could I have just remained in this situation rationalizing,

Justifying,

Enabling,

Crawling on my hands and my knees to try to make it better?

How could I have not known that this was unhealthy?

What's wrong with me?

I should have known better.

I should have not missed the signs.

What's wrong with me?

I listen to men and women all day,

Every day,

Go through this,

And it is absolutely heartbreaking to hear the aching in someone's voice when they think that it's their fault that they have tolerated this type of narcissistic behavior for 10 years,

20 years,

30,

40 years,

When they think there's something wrong with them because they didn't know what they were dealing with,

When they know that the outside world's friends and family think that there's something defective about them because it just seems so clear to other people that we are in toxic relationships.

At a minimum,

It's clear that we're not happy.

At a minimum,

It is obvious that we are enabling,

That we are disowning our own reality for the sake of what seems to be obvious to other people is a toxic relationship.

I get it.

I've been there.

I've been in this whirlwind,

And it wasn't until I really began to develop language and I understood what I was dealing with and I got knowledgeable about relationship dynamics,

Specifically in my case,

What it meant to be the adult child of an alcoholic,

What it meant to be the child that had no identity,

To be the lost child in a family dynamic or the scapegoat child,

And even the golden child will experience these types of experiences,

These mindsets feeling lost and feeling like you have to give up an identity to be the picture of what a parent wants you to be,

To reach their expectations.

When you come from a toxic family,

A dysfunctional family,

And you don't know it,

You end up glorifying the people who are emotionally neglecting you.

You end up feeling disloyal when you say,

Wait a minute,

My dad was an alcoholic or my dad or my mom said this to me and behaved this way and that took its toll on me mentally and emotionally and spiritually and psychologically.

We are groomed by toxic families to not talk about our reality.

When you come from a toxic home,

You don't realize that your inner reality has to be ignored just for the sake of survival.

For instance,

If you have an alcoholic dad or an alcoholic mom,

Part of the very natural and innate survival strategy of our personality is to sugarcoat what's going on.

If dad is falling down off the sofa and embarrassing you in front of your friends,

Part of your survival strategy,

Very natural,

Would be,

Oh,

Dad's just being silly.

Oh,

Dad's just happy.

Oh,

Dad's just playing along.

Or dad's not really drunk.

This isn't a terrifying experience.

Look at mom,

She sees dad like this all the time.

I might be a little embarrassed,

But there's really nothing wrong with dad.

Denial and sugarcoating and making this very toxic experience okay is a way a child mitigates their fears of powerlessness.

It's a way that a child mitigates the fear of helplessness.

It's a way a child stabilizes themself in a very destabilized experience or an unstable experience,

An unpredictable household.

And so what happens is we start to mitigate ourselves.

We're adapting to what is an unpredictable and unhealthy circumstance.

And our adulthoods are our childhoods pushed out.

Our subconscious minds have programs.

We've had patterns.

We have thinking patterns.

And we don't realize that these thinking patterns that are subconscious,

That are really survival strategies and coping strategies that allowed us to mitigate the fears that we had as children,

Our feelings of powerlessness,

Feeling out of control.

Well,

If we controlled our emotions,

I.

E.

Stuffed our emotions and codependently focused on what was happening outside of us,

I.

E.

Also known as hypervigilance,

If I could focus on this outer being or this outer experience,

Then I can feel less powerless.

We develop fantasy thinking along the way.

If I can just figure out how to make mom happy,

Stay out of her way,

Stuff my feelings,

Don't have any needs,

Maybe she won't be so angry.

Maybe she won't reject me.

If I can be a good little girl,

Maybe mom will keep this boyfriend around and maybe I can call him daddy.

Maybe he won't leave.

And as you can see,

You can plug in this wounded inner child narrative into any experience that you've experienced and see the devastating consequences that unfold in us as adults when we go out into the world.

And we take this resonance or this experience,

This emotional quantum experience,

And we actually recreate it in our adult lives.

In my case,

I was emotionally neglected by my mom.

I was verbally accosted by my mom.

My mom was an antagonist and the more I wanted her,

The more she rejected me.

At least that was my experience.

My inner critic developed a narrative that was equal to the family norms,

Even though they were dysfunctional.

My inner critic sounded like,

Well,

You're a bad girl.

You should be quiet and then you won't take mom off so much.

The fantasy that came as a result of that was,

And maybe then she'll love me.

So when I went out into the world as a young 21 year old person and I met the person that I married,

That thinking pattern was ingrained in me and I carried it into my adulthood.

Unfortunately I married someone who,

In my opinion,

This is just my opinion,

I married someone who was energetically my mother's match.

So was it his fault that he was her match?

No,

It wasn't his fault that he was her match.

He resonated with my wounds as a child.

Repetition compulsion.

When I met him,

The fantasy for me continued.

If I could figure out how to be enough for him,

Then he will love me and I can make this work.

We could have the relationship that my parents never had.

He and I together can raise children that feel loved in a way that my sister and my brother never felt.

So there was this fantasy concept that took over and was running my life.

The problem is that the fantasy was running on the fumes of the dysfunctional thought processes that were created and embedded in my subconscious mind before the age of seven.

You'll hear me say often and often and often in my work that children are in a theta brainwave state up until the age of seven.

That's why you can be a 57 year old woman or a 47 year old woman or a 67 or a 62 year old man and wake up one day and say,

How did I get here?

Because it's not you,

Dear one,

It's your programming.

Whatever you experienced in childhood becomes your blueprint.

On a spiritual level,

It becomes what you resonate with.

On an energetic level,

On a quantum level,

You resonate with this dysfunction.

On a psychological level,

You are hoping that in taking care of this person,

You will finally have the fantasy that was created in you as a coping strategy when you were a child.

But here's the kicker,

You don't know it.

Carl Jung says,

Until you make that which is unconscious conscious,

It will dictate your life and you'll call it fate.

How many people do you know,

And maybe you're actually one of them,

I know I was,

How many people do you know that are walking around on planet earth that never think about the way that they think?

That don't have any idea what a success mindset is?

That have no idea what a limiting thought is or what a limiting belief is?

They have no idea that the reason that they married an alcoholic or narcissistic alcoholic with a porn addiction is the carbon copy of the father who raised them or the stepfather that raised them.

They have mirrored their mother's energy.

They have this enabling caretaking rescuing fixing,

Please love me,

Never leave me mindset below the veil of consciousness,

Which is a hand in a glove for a narcissistic alcoholic who's addicted to porn who has no time for you or who is constantly convincing you that you're the reason they have this addiction or you are the reason that they drink or you're the reason that they cheat.

So you watched your mother cater and cater and cater,

I'll just fix it,

I'll just fix it,

I'll just be better,

I'll just hang on.

Right?

You watched your mother do that and then you don't know that you're doing it too.

No one taught you to be objective about your mindset.

That's where I come in,

That's where my work comes in,

That's what I help people do.

This is very powerful work.

When you learn to observe the way that you think,

That's when transformations can happen.

That's when you can change your life.

That's when you can understand that a reason a narcissist needs to scramble your brain is so that you never awaken,

So that you never have that spiritually awakening aha moment or that oh crap,

How did I get here moment.

No,

A narcissist wants to convince you you're the narcissist.

A narcissist wants to convince your children that you are a narcissist.

The narcissist wants to turn every good deed that you ever done against you to make it look like the reason you did that good thing was for yourself.

I've had clients tell me that their wives or their husbands have turned things around them like helping the kids with their homework.

You didn't help the kids with the homework for the kid,

You helped the kid with their homework for you.

You could say,

I'm such a good mother because I helped them with their homework.

If that's not upsetting,

I don't know what is.

Especially if you're someone who is codependent or maybe you're not.

You're just a parent who's trying to do what you think you're supposed to do for your child and then you don't know you're dealing with a narcissist who is going to take every good deed that you have and twist it so that you could feel bad about it.

You start judging yourself.

Wait a minute,

Did I do that because I was a narcissist?

When I told my ex-husband I was unhappy,

His response was,

You just want to be single.

I thought,

Well,

I do want a divorce because I'm unhappy,

But you told me you don't want to stay in therapy.

You told me that what I want doesn't exist.

Don't I have a right to want a divorce?

The end result will be yes,

We're single.

He twisted this idea that I said I was unhappy to make it appear that I just wanted to be single very haphazardly.

I woke up one day with three kids and decided I don't want to be married anymore.

It was that simple.

But when he boiled it down to that concept,

I ended up doubting my reality.

I ended up doubting why it is I wanted a divorce.

Now let me help you understand how that was a mirror to my childhood being pushed out.

When I was in the third grade,

I went home and I told my mother,

I think I need glasses because I can't see the blackboard.

And she said,

You just want glasses.

And I thought to myself,

I do want glasses,

But it's because I can't see.

And she twisted my need for needing glasses as if it was to mean that I was being selfish because I said I needed glasses.

So here was a very innocuous,

Very innocent mom,

I can't see the blackboard.

Oh,

You just want glasses.

As if it was selfish of me to need or want glasses.

So when you're dealing with a parent who has high narcissistic traits,

When you have a need,

It'll be twisted.

You say,

I'm hungry.

What are you the only person in the house that gets hungry?

You're being conditioned to think that being hungry is selfish.

It's something that you should be ashamed of.

So what do you do?

Over time you learn not to ask.

Over time you think that the answer is to take care of everybody else and to be selfless.

So you're being conditioned,

Pavlovian conditioned conditioning,

You're being conditioned like a dog,

Like an animal to disown your needs so that you don't experience this negative outcome of being shamed.

You end up being a shell of a person,

Dear one,

That has all this brilliant potential within you and you can't achieve it because you are afraid of what people think about you.

You should be because your survival brain knows it's dangerous to say you have a need.

So your brain isn't doing anything wrong.

What's wrong or what you need help with is to become more cognitive and to become more conscious.

When you're healing trauma,

You need consciousness to help you transform trauma and that's what every narcissist is afraid of.

A narcissist is banking on you disowning your reality.

A narcissist is banking on exploiting your childhood wounds.

My ex used to say,

You're selfish.

Nobody likes you.

Your mother doesn't even like you.

You have a problem with everybody in your family.

That's why you have a problem with me.

You can't get along with me because you couldn't even get along with your mother.

So he took my very innocent wounds,

The wounds that I shared with him,

And he twisted them when I wanted to address something in our marriage.

And I didn't see that as mean.

I didn't see it as passive aggressive or just aggressive.

I didn't even see it as narcissistic.

I didn't see it as manipulative because I didn't have the knowledge about toxic relationship dynamics.

I didn't know first that I was codependent.

I didn't know that I was an ACOA.

I didn't understand that I had ACOA issues,

That I grew up with people who were essentially alcoholics who had the need to control,

Who had their own childhood wounds that were gone unhealed.

I didn't know that my mother was looking for my father's approval because her father was an alcoholic and she felt rejected by him and she wanted to be the perfect daughter and she resented me and my needs because she wasn't allowed to have needs as a child.

I didn't have this language.

I didn't have this ability to understand.

I didn't know how to connect the dots.

Damn,

I didn't even know there were dots.

I really thought that my marriage was all about what was happening in the now.

I had no idea that my childhood was being pushed out.

I had no idea that my wounds were why I was tolerating what should have never been tolerated.

I didn't know that I was adapting to very unhealthy relationship dynamics,

Just adapting,

Adapting.

Oh,

He doesn't like this about me?

Well,

Let me change that about me.

Oh,

He has this need?

Let me make sure I have that need.

Oh,

He's frustrated,

But my needs?

All right,

Let me just busy myself with having another baby.

Let me just become the head of security.

Let me just continue to be a selfless person in my world,

Take on all of these responsibilities and have no personal needs.

Let me not bother him.

Let me make sure that he doesn't have to mow the grass.

Let me make sure that he doesn't have to shovel.

Let me make sure I have no needs.

Maybe then I'll be good enough for him.

That was my childhood being pushed out.

That was me chasing my mother's approval and I didn't know it.

So a narcissist,

This is where we get into trouble until we awaken,

Until we develop the mindset and the consciousness,

Until we understand that it's not us,

It's our programming.

And mark my word,

Dear one,

A narcissist does not want you to awaken.

A narcissist does not want you to get in touch with your spirit self.

Your spirit self is tied to your emotional self.

A narcissist does not want you to get in touch with your feelings.

A narcissist wants you to be overwhelmed by your feelings.

The narcissist does not want your logical,

Rational mind to come back online.

They want you in the wounded space of the inner child.

They want to be the authority that is abandoning you.

They want you chasing after their approval.

They want you to be afraid of them abandoning you.

They do not want you to be galvanized.

They do not want you to be able to speak your truth,

To speak the truth.

You want to know what a narcissist is afraid of?

The narcissist is afraid of the narcissist.

What I mean by that is a narcissist is afraid of you holding up the logical,

Rational,

This is really who you are mirror.

They're afraid of you telling the truth.

So what do they have to do?

To make sure that you never have the ability to speak the truth,

They scramble your brain.

They turn your mother against you.

They create flying monkeys out of your children.

They create dependencies upon your children so your children easily reject you.

By the way,

Dear ones,

If you have adult children who are being turned on you,

Check to see if your children are now gaining anything from the narcissistic parent.

See if the narcissistic parent who is never involved in their life before suddenly offers them something because that's when it's going to be easier for your children to reject you,

When the narcissistic parent is offering them something.

We have to develop the wherewithal.

We have to develop the truth.

We have to understand there's going to be a period,

A meanwhile experience where things are rocky.

What I tell my private coaching clients is I want you to imagine there's two vortexes.

Vortex A is,

Let's say three.

Vortex A is your childhood.

Vortex B is the vortex that you've experienced or are now experiencing,

Which is your childhood pushed out.

You had an alcoholic narcissistic father who emotionally neglected you,

Left your family,

Or you have a narcissistic mother who was more involved with men than she was her own children and you felt ignored and abandoned.

You had siblings to take care of.

This is very ACOA issue.

In other words,

If you're an adult child and an alcoholic,

These are the types of things that you had to tolerate and you had to put up with as a child.

You had no childhood.

You weren't allowed to say,

I think,

I feel,

I need,

I want,

Not allowed.

You weren't allowed to have those experiences because your home was so unpredictable.

What your brain did was you sugarcoated the experience just to survive.

And unfortunately,

Unfortunately,

It depends on how you look at it.

I come along or someone like me comes along and we rip the bandaid off and we say,

Dear one,

You have to see things clearly.

Otherwise you're not going to understand why and how this person continues to take advantage of you because if you use the same set of thought processes that got you through your childhood in this relationship,

This narcissist is going to win.

Eventually you'll become so scrambled in your mind,

You won't have any cognitive abilities to say,

I think,

I feel,

I know,

I witnessed,

This is the truth.

You won't be able to do it.

I watched it happen in my own life.

My mother slowly began to cognitively decline.

She had dementia.

She had a stroke after a major,

Major blow out with my father.

I was on the phone with him when he was treating my mother like dog crap on his shoe.

I was on the phone with him.

Few hours later,

She had a major stroke.

Mom was never the same.

So I am the adult child of two adult children.

I am the daughter of a mother who went through this.

I can tell you this is serious.

A narcissist is 20 steps ahead of you.

They know how to scramble your brain.

They know how to make flying monkeys out of your mother,

Out of your father,

Out of your coworkers.

They have to because ultimately they're afraid because you,

Dear one,

You know the truth.

You were their partner.

You slept with them.

You listened to them every day at the breakfast table.

You were the one that they prevented from leaving the house because you were watching what was happening and you wanted to leave.

You were the one that they blocked the doorway from.

You were the one that they lied to.

You were the one that put up with them or learned that they signed your name to a lease that you didn't even know that they had.

You were the one that they lied to.

You were the one that they had the double life with.

You were the one that's tolerated all of this nonsense.

So you,

Dear one,

Are the gatekeeper.

You are the one that holds the keys to the false self.

You are the one that they are most afraid of.

So they will scramble your brain so that you never learn to speak your truth.

Now,

I also have clients and I always caution them,

Do not confront a narcissist until,

Maybe never,

But do not tell a narcissist you're waking up.

Because remember,

A narcissist can fight these spiritual and emotional wars like nobody can.

They are dragons.

They are fire breathing dragons.

They are willing to blow their flame on anything,

On anything,

On everything and anyone that stands in the way of their false mask.

The last thing that a narcissist wants is for you to find the ability to stand tall,

To stand erect and say,

I know,

I think and I feel and I've witnessed.

And no matter what you say and no matter what you tell our kids and no matter what you say to my mother and no matter what you say to those flying monkeys,

I know the truth.

You and the truth,

Who the narcissist really is,

Is their nemesis.

So that is why they must spiritually destroy you.

That is why they have to break you down.

That is why they have to make you sick.

That is why they want you begging for their approval.

That is why they'll blame you for everything that goes wrong in their life,

Everything that goes wrong in your family life,

So that you are so distraught under the weight of loss,

Under the weight of responsibility,

Under the weight of obligation,

Under the weight of feeling like,

Oh my God,

This is all my fault,

Under the weight of all of the wounds of the inner child.

You want to escape,

Start connecting the dots.

You want to understand what's really going on,

Let the narcissist feel whatever they want to feel.

Let them say whatever they want to say.

Stop trying to change.

Stop trying to change what they think.

Stop trying to change what they feel.

Just stop.

Just stop.

Accept how you feel.

Get away from them.

Go no contact.

Your healing starts when you stop engaging with someone who's taking out an egg beater and cutting off the top of your head and scrambling your brain.

That's when your healing stops.

It's not going to happen right away,

But at least then this nonsense stops.

One of the most powerful things that I did in my life was I went no contact.

I said,

Okay,

You think you feel okay,

Buh buh buh.

Feel it.

Have it.

Own it.

Tell anybody you want to tell.

Distort reality.

Make up stories.

Leave parts of the story out.

Bless you.

You can do whatever you want.

Detachment,

Emotional detachment,

Which is not what a narcissist wants.

That's why you'll end up with 20 or 30 text messages a day.

They will try to get you to admit that you're a terrible mother,

Admit that you're a terrible father.

Why?

So that they can lock you into that and you can never,

Ever,

Ever tell the truth.

If you dare to tell the truth,

They can say,

Yeah,

But she said this and yeah,

But he said that.

So be very careful.

Let them think whatever they want.

If your adult children are part of this,

Let them go.

It is what it is,

Dear one.

I'm trying to help you save you.

Let them go.

They're adults.

They're adults.

If they're so easily,

They so easily are swayed to reject you and to be influenced by this type of narcissism,

By the way,

If there are any adult children out there who are being conditioned to reject a parent,

I want you to know that's unhealthy.

Parents don't want you to turn against the other parent.

Healthy parents don't do that.

So if you have a parent that's trying to turn you against the other parent,

It's not healthy,

Right?

You're going to have to figure it out.

And if you are now in the graces of a narcissistic parent,

Like my children learned the hard way.

It took them seven years,

But just know that is not healthy for parents to turn you against the other parent.

That's all you got to know.

I mean,

This is your path.

I'm really speaking to people who are lost,

Who don't understand.

They can't understand the level of meanness,

The level of grandiosity,

The level of discard,

The level of disrespect,

The level of indifference that someone that they love,

That they had a family with,

Can take during a divorce proceeding.

I'm speaking to those people whose brains have been scrambled through cognitive dissonance,

Who have had all of the good that they've done turned against them.

I'm talking to people who don't understand how their childhoods have been pushed out in these narcissistic relationships.

And let's face it,

There are some people who end up in narcissistic relationships that had wonderful childhoods.

But over the years,

Through coercive control,

Through manipulation,

Through trauma bonding and betrayal bonds,

You end up not knowing what day of the week it is.

You end up wondering,

Is the sky really blue or is it really purple?

You don't even trust the way that you think anymore.

A narcissist wants that so that you can never get to the truth and hold onto it.

So dear one,

If this is you,

I really hope that this session has empowered you.

If anything,

I don't want you to feel alone.

I want you to know that this is true.

This is real.

You're not crazy.

This really happens.

The goal really is to get a handle on it,

To educate yourself so you understand what's happening.

Why?

So if you understand what's happening,

Then you can gain some control of what's happening in the 3D.

You can go no contact.

You can set boundaries.

You can emotionally detach.

You can gain the knowledge and the support that you need to help you see this through.

Namaste everybody.

Until next time,

I so hope that this has been helpful.

You dear one,

Are not alone.

And more importantly,

You are enough.

No matter what a narcissist says,

No matter what a narcissistic parent has said,

No matter what a narcissistic spouse or partner has ever said,

Dear one,

You have to know in your heart of hearts,

You are enough and you deserve to be loved.

Namaste.

Until next time.

Bye for now.

Reviews

This has been most helpful, I broke up with my fiancé 3 weeks ago as I could see these narcissistic red flags, and was feeling very guilty about small things he was blaming me for. And now he makes it even worse and I felt crazy and guilty for leaving him (a 2nd time) thank you this has really cleared my head and heart!!! ❤️🙏

You have been down this road…
Im still in the middle of the street.

This was so helpful because I related to most of what was said. Thank you.

I’m learning how to make my life better thank you 🙏

They also deprive you of sleep, comfort, peace to keep you in a chaos state where you are completely dependent on them.

wow. i think you summed up my entire existence in this half hour. thank you for shining some light for me. ✨🙏🏼✨

your talks have helped me look at every past relationship, friends and lovers and heal and have closure. thank you for dedicating your life to this 💚🌻💚 namaste

Thank you so much. The way you explained this very complicated matter is very helpful. Now that I have emotionally distanced myself from my narcissistic husband, I can see the inner workings of this dangerous and toxic personality. I will listen to this again, to help me stay strong

The discussion of why narcissists scramble your brain was one of the most helpful things I have heard in a long time. Thank you.

Empowering and scary at the same time!

Thank you so much!

It was fantastic. Right to the point. Thanks Lisa .🙏🏼🙏🏼💕💕❤️❤️👏🏼👏🏼

Thank you so much for this 🙏❤️

Incredibly helpful, thank you for sharing your wisdom, experiences and helping so many realize that we’re not alone. And that we can get through this. With love & gratitude 🙏🏻