Why Narcissist Turns Others Against You

Narcissists must turn others against you to help secure their false mask. In order to be able to remain emotionally regulated, a narcissist must set the stage for their victimhood and lack of personal accountability. Lisa A. Romano, Life Coach and Author, helps break it down for targets of narcissistic abuse.

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.

Today we're going to be talking about why a narcissist has such a strong need to turn people against you.

So when we're talking about people with narcissistic traits or people who are on the spectrum of narcissism,

People who feel entitled to exploit the emotions of other people,

People who lack empathy for others,

Healthy people are able to understand that everyone is a mix of good and bad.

But when we're dealing with people who have high narcissistic traits,

They have a difficult time with whole object relations.

What I mean by that is that the healthier you are,

The more able you are to understand yourself as imperfect and the more able you are to understand others as imperfect.

And so you're not collecting people like trophies.

You're not idealizing them and then discarding them quickly the minute you have a disagreement.

You are not replacing them for people who seem better than they are.

You don't grow bored easily of people who you have in your life for the sake of narcissistic supply and needing to find a reason to discard someone in order to pull another person in.

Someone with high narcissistic traits will idealize their target.

They will love bomb them.

Even in friendships,

You'll find someone who you first meet who might have high narcissistic traits,

Who's very complimentary.

So they're love bombing you.

They're pulling you in.

They're not authentic.

They really don't see innate value in you.

You are their shiny little pet for the moment and it makes them feel good to see you as amazing and to idealize you and to put all of their beliefs in this idea that they are so smart for having you in their life.

The problem with that is that it's not realistic.

And when you're dealing with someone who has a problem with seeing things clearly,

Then it's very easy to disappoint this person because they're waiting for you to disappoint them.

They're waiting for an excuse to discard you.

They're waiting for an excuse to lash out at you,

To rage at you and to use projection to justify all of these conflicts that they hold about themselves that they've been yet to be able to integrate.

And you will be at the receiving end of this narcissistic rage and you'll be accused of things that you absolutely are not guilty of.

And if the narcissist has done a really good job at withholding validation,

Withholding love,

Abandoning you,

Blaming you and convincing you that you just don't try hard enough to please them,

Then you might actually feel really upset with yourself when the narcissist is angry at you.

And this happens across the board with toxic people,

Manipulative people.

And it's something that if you're in the middle of this relationship,

It can be very difficult to wrap your mind around when the narcissist begins to smear your name or the narcissist begins to triangulate you with members of your family or with coworkers.

And so I wanted to try to help people explain why someone who is domineering,

Who is controlling,

Who is arrogant,

Self-righteous,

Passive aggressive,

All of these really not so nice qualities,

Why someone like that in a relationship would feel the need to turn your children against you or feel the need to turn your mom against you or feel the need to turn your boss against you.

So why don't we break it down?

So when you're dealing with someone with high narcissistic traits,

It's important to recognize that they live in a false reality.

So they think they're far more intelligent than they actually are.

They think that they're far more beautiful than they actually are.

And in lots of cases,

They actually think they're a lot more spiritual and empathetic than they actually are.

You'll see this mask slip the minute you disappoint them,

The minute they feel slighted by you.

And in their head,

They're just waiting for you to disappoint them so they can justify raging at you.

And what this does is this allows them to feel vindicated.

This allows them to feel justified in their persecution of you and in their hierarchy where they're supposed to be on the pedestal and you're supposed to be beneath them,

Acquiescing,

Praising them,

Admiring them,

Telling them how wonderful they are,

How beautiful they are,

How smart they are and how less than everyone is than them.

That's your job in the life of a narcissist.

When it comes to why a narcissist has to turn other people against you,

It's important to recognize that this is a fantasy.

That in most of the cases,

Although studies are proving that narcissists can be created through overpraising a child,

Children can develop narcissism early in childhood and actually become narcissistic later on as adults when their parents infuse them with this idea that they are actually entitled,

When their parents are entitled,

When their parents infuse the child with this idea that they're better than other people or they're just so incredible and they deserve preferential treatment.

I actually know someone in my family whose dad is very much like this,

Who was praised by the mom.

The mom was a narcissist and she overpraised the son and really inflated his ego,

Told him he was a great football player,

He was not.

In the process of creating this very almost emotionally incestuous relationship with her son,

She was ignoring her husband and really attaching to her son in an unhealthy way.

The son and the mother ended up enmeshing and it became very difficult for people outside the family who could see what was going on to actually get through to this man and help him understand like,

This is no bueno,

This is very,

Very unhealthy.

He ended up having many troubled relationships with women because these women would not validate him as much as his narcissistic mother.

The narcissistic mother's payoff was the son who she praised,

Put on a pedestal and told him no other woman is going to love you like I do and anyone who doesn't praise you like I do isn't worth anything to you.

This became a problem in relationships with women because women wanted to come into the relationship equal and expected him to be an equal in the relationship and he was like,

No,

His programming was no,

You're beneath me,

Even mommy says so.

He ended up having a number of divorces and had very difficult relationships with his children.

When it comes to loving someone like this and being in a relationship with someone like this,

We have to understand that they can be created through a sense of entitlement and over praise that's unjustified.

You can also become narcissistic because you've been so severely abandoned in childhood and you've suffered extreme abuse as a child and you've just decided that the world is an unsafe place.

To protect yourself,

You develop these high levels of narcissism.

You're not able to really integrate the wounds of the past.

You have this shell and you live through this veneer and it protects your very fragile ego.

Daring to get close to these wounds is not something that you're willing to do when you're a narcissist.

You're not aware of them.

You don't want to touch them.

What you do is you live behind this false mass,

You live within this false reality and you end up really hurting the people that are in your life.

Sometimes you know what you're doing and sometimes you don't.

Most of the times you really end up not really caring.

Even if you know,

Wow,

I hurt someone,

You end up feeling more sorry for yourself than you do with other people.

So you're never really able to make any headway and really apologize.

Really what happens with people with high narcissism or high narcissistic traits is they're emotionally abusive and they tell their victims,

You should apologize to me.

Knowing how wounded you are as the target and how afraid you are of the consequences of upsetting someone like this,

You might actually end up apologizing.

So we have people who are very wounded,

People who are very below the veil of consciousness.

We don't always recognize that when we're in relationships with these people,

Where this narcissism is coming from.

I've coached people who have said that they have very high empathy and they end up feeling sorry for someone because they understand the backstory.

So they know why they're narcissistic and they end up being in abusive relationships much,

Much longer than they should.

When it comes to understanding why this type of a personality would need to turn people against you,

It's important to recognize that when it comes to things like triangulation,

What's actually happening is you are being pulled into this triangle situation and you don't even know it in most of the cases.

When someone brings another person into this relationship,

What they're trying to do is exercise dominance and control over the relationship.

They want to hedge their bets.

They want to set the stage.

In case you go and you start complaining about them,

They've already poisoned the lake.

So if my best friend's a narcissist,

I'm hanging out with her and we meet another friend and she's really in our,

And my best friend's a narcissist,

Let's say the narcissist will go behind my back and start saying negative things about me.

It's remaining control over the relationship because we have to recognize that narcissists need to feel in control.

They need to control what you think.

They need to control what other people think.

They need to control what you think about them and they also need to control about control what other people think about you with them.

So it's all about staying ahead of the game and trying to figure out how can I stay in dominance and control over this relationship in the event that things don't work out.

So they are putting themselves out there long before the relationship even ends.

Now when a narcissist,

You have to also understand that a narcissist will generally see themselves as a victim,

Which is really mind bending when you're dealing with someone with narcissistic rage who is obviously vindictive,

Who obviously cannot see people as good and bad and is angry because they've idealized you and you happen to be human and they're angry at you and they take all of their anger out on you.

So you become the mother that abused them.

You become the father that abandoned them.

You become the person that wounded them most.

But because they haven't been able to integrate,

Really fully integrate the wounds of the past and the shame that comes along with so many of the emotional wounds in the past,

You deal with narcissistic projection.

You deal with anger.

You deal with rage,

Right?

They're taking everything that they feel that they haven't been able to integrate and you become their target and they're convinced because they live below the veil of consciousness that they're justified in what they're saying about you.

And you could stand there as the target and be completely confused by the whole situation and the narcissist that you're dealing with is 100% convinced that you are the reason that they are so angry and you are the reason you did this to them.

And they will not be able to see that this anger is within them.

It's sort of like you have someone who has a broken toe and you bump into their toe and they want to push you down,

Maybe even shove you off a cliff,

Right?

And they're so angry in the moment because their pain,

The pain in their foot is so intense and you just happen to be standing there and you just bumped into them.

So you become the target of the pain and the rage and they're unable in that reactive moment to recognize,

Wait a minute,

The pain is within me,

Right?

The pain is within me.

I have this pain already.

This person may have triggered me or reminded me of the pain,

But the pain is within me.

And that's why healing is so important.

And that's why unfortunately studies prove that most narcissists don't do very well in therapy because they think they know better than the therapist.

They think they're smarter than the therapist and they think that they're right.

And so they posture themselves as victims.

And so when we're talking about why a narcissist has to turn people against you is we have to keep in mind that that's the way they need to see themselves.

So if they are the victim,

Then when they verbally abuse you,

When they triangulate you,

When they smear your name,

When they turn people against you,

It's justified because they're a victim.

It's important that when you're trying to understand this idea that you understand that the narcissist is going to weave into their story as often as they can.

This idea that they're a victim,

They're a victim of something.

They're a victim of their mother.

They're a victim of their father.

They're a victim of a court system.

They're a victim of someone at work.

They're a victim of whatever,

Right?

Whatever's going on in their life,

It's not their fault.

It's not their fault that they can't hold down a job.

It's not their fault that they can't find a job.

It's not their fault that they can't get along with people.

It's not their fault,

Whatever.

Whatever's going on.

It's not their fault.

And so when,

Like I said,

They're trying to get out ahead,

They're trying to hedge their bets.

If they want to keep this I'm the victim mentality intact or this victim facade intact,

Then behind your back,

They have to pull in a third party and set the stage for them so that they can continue to be the victim.

And so in preparation for you,

You possibly going to complain about them,

They've already set the stage that they're the victim of you.

So what are the kinds of things that they'll say?

They'll start to say things like,

She's really struggling with her family history and I'm really doing my best to support her.

But every once in a while I really see the effects of her childhood.

Well,

What do you mean,

Says the third party?

Well,

She cries a lot or she threatens to hurt herself once in a while and I do my best to support her,

Right?

So the narcissist is setting the stage that they're a victim of you.

This could all be made up by the way.

I personally had someone in my life call my mom and tell her that I threatened to hurt myself and that was an absolute lie.

But you see in that moment he was posturing himself as a victim.

I wasn't telling my family what was going on.

I wasn't posturing myself as a victim.

If anything,

I hurt myself even more by not telling them what was going on in my life.

I was trying to act like everything was okay.

When it wasn't okay,

I was raised to think that my needs were not important.

I was raised to think I had no right to complain.

I was raised to think that I was being a drama queen if I dared talk about the emotional pain I was in.

So I just stuffed it,

Stuffed it,

Stuffed it,

Stuffed it,

Ended up with asthma and migraine,

Headaches,

Stomach issues,

You name it.

And it was a very bad situation because my body just could not hold this pain anymore.

I just energetically,

Physically,

Mentally and emotionally,

There was just a tipping point where I just couldn't take it anymore.

And that's when I finally said,

We need to do something.

We need to go into therapy or we need to end this marriage because I can't live like we have cancer and you're ignoring it.

I have to do something.

And like cancer,

Sometimes you have to take drastic measures and you have to cut it out.

You have to cut the malignancy out.

And in my situation,

That's the way I saw my first marriage because he was not willing to work with me and all he wanted to do was to pretend that nothing was wrong.

And whatever was wrong was me.

So I had to change and I just could not change anymore.

I just couldn't.

And I knew it and so something had to get done.

And it took me a really long time to put the pieces of the puzzle together because since I was a little,

Little girl,

I was told that I was crazy,

That I didn't have a right to feel what I felt.

And so,

Yes,

As I opened my mouth during my marriage and I said,

I think we need to fix this.

And the response was,

Well,

You're crazy.

There's something wrong with you.

No one thinks like you.

You're the only person that thinks like you.

Why aren't you happy?

Who do you think you are not to be happy?

There's nothing wrong with me.

I am happy.

If you're unhappy,

It has to be you.

And I would look and I would think,

Well,

Everyone loves him.

He's so charismatic with the neighbors and the strangers and the kids on the block love him and my family loves him.

It must be me.

I didn't understand I was being gaslit to question my own reality,

To question my own thought process.

It was so sad when I think back and I think about the young mom I was,

So confused,

So so so terribly confused,

So depressed.

More and more anxiety was building up in my body and I just felt so lost.

And I didn't understand that behind my back,

There was this triangulation going on where I was being spoken about in a way that I was defective.

And he was posturing himself as a hero and was trying to turn my family against me.

And he did.

He did.

He was able to turn my family against me.

And so when I finally started to really peel back and understand what was going on,

I understood that this was coming from a place of needing to see himself as a victim.

And when you posture yourself as a victim,

Then you're able to justify your actions.

So when you're dealing with a narcissist who is turning people against you,

In my opinion,

Oftentimes it's rooted in,

Well,

I'm the victim here.

And if I'm the victim,

Then my actions are justified.

I can say and do whatever I want to do if I'm the victim.

And if I'm the victim,

Then I gather all these people against my target.

When I'm done with my target,

Then I will have this group of people to go to and they will support me.

And it's really ridiculous when you think about what a narcissist's agenda is,

Because when they discard you,

They just don't want to discard you.

They want to,

In lots of cases,

Annihilate you.

They want to destroy your business.

They want to turn your kids against you.

They aren't happy until your neighbors are talking about you.

They aren't happy until they embarrass you on social media.

They aren't happy until you lose your job.

They aren't happy until you're groveling.

They aren't happy unless you are absolutely sick to your stomach,

Struggling to get another job,

Anxious,

On medication,

Unable to think straight,

Unable to date,

Unable to move forward.

Chaos in your life makes them feel emotionally regulated.

And so disconnecting you and isolating you from your friends and from your family is all part of their agenda to remain dominant and in control over you,

But not just over you,

But over the people that you love the most.

So a narcissist,

When they start to discard you,

It's almost like,

Well,

If they can't have you and you can't be happy with them,

Then no one can have you and you can't have anyone,

Right?

So if they don't want you,

Well,

No one else should want you.

And if you don't want them,

You're not allowed to want anyone else.

And if you're not happy with them,

Then you're just not allowed to be happy,

Right?

Because how dare you be happy in spite of them.

If you're happy in spite of them,

Then the narcissist has to consider like,

You know,

How is she happy without me?

If she was the problem,

Then she should still be unhappy,

Right?

And so a narcissist will struggle.

A narcissist needs to see and believe that their target is the dysfunctional one.

You'll go into therapy with the narcissist because the narcissist wants the therapist to affirm what they believe about you.

And it's not uncommon for someone with high narcissistic traits to enter into therapy with the intention of turning the therapist against the target.

And if the therapist is not really careful,

The narcissist can sway in some situations the therapist.

Think about a highly codependent person going into therapy.

Think about the anxiety,

Maybe even the anger,

The frustration,

The bewilderment,

The disillusionment,

The inability to think straight,

Right?

Because they're in survival mode.

And the narcissist who is not in survival mode walks into a therapy session pretty calm.

Look at my wife or look at my husband,

Look at the mess that they're in,

Look at the way they're reactive,

Right?

Well,

The target's in survival mode,

Which is a reactive mode.

And the narcissist,

As long as they're able to maintain control over their target,

Will appear pretty emotionally regulated.

I've gone through this myself.

Going into therapy,

Feeling like my knees are scraping against the floor,

Completely spent thinking I'm losing my mind,

Trying to explain myself to a therapist,

And feeling really,

Really raw and vulnerable and wanting to get to the bottom of our stuff.

And dealing with someone who is as cool as a cucumber going,

Look at her,

She's a mess,

Right?

Well,

I was a mess because of what I was dealing with.

I was a mess because you were passive aggressive or you were stonewalling me because you were one way in front of my family and another way behind closed doors,

And that's badening.

And I'm calling it out and you're telling me that I'm crazy,

That I have no right to feel the way I feel.

And when I come to you and I want to talk to you about what's really going on between the two of us,

You treat me with indifference.

You huff,

You puff,

You turn your head and I can feel the disdain or the aggravation you feel for me wanting to connect with you and wanting to resolve this issue.

When you're dealing with a narcissist,

You have to understand it's a one up game,

Right?

A narcissist has to stay ahead of you and that's why a narcissist will need to turn people against you.

They need to turn people against you so that in all situations,

You're at a dinner party,

The narcissist has already spent time away from you,

Talking to your friends about you,

Setting the stage,

Telling your friends that there's something up with you,

That you're not sleeping or that you are starving yourself.

Or they make up stories,

Right?

To make them look good,

Make them look like the hero or the heroine in the story and you are the defective one.

So they're setting the stage,

Oh my poor wife,

Oh my poor husband,

Right?

And so in this situation,

They're already setting the stage that they are the victim of you,

Right?

So now when you're out and about,

You don't know that the narcissist has gone out and spoken to your mother and your sister and your brother and your father and your coworkers,

Your best friend,

Right?

You don't know why.

In my situation,

One day my mom called me,

God rest her soul,

And she said,

Are you okay?

And I said,

Yeah,

Fine,

Why?

And she never told me why.

And it was like a year later that she said,

Oh,

That was the day someone so called me and told me that you said you were going to hurt yourself.

And I was like,

Ma,

Not for nothing.

Like when you called me and you said,

Are you okay?

Why didn't you tell me that?

Because we could have cleared this up then,

Whatever,

Whatever,

Whatever it is.

But when a narcissist is creating a flying monkey out of your family,

It is so difficult.

And if you are someone like me who spent your life trying to look like everything was perfect because you were taught that God forbid you complained,

You know,

You were conditioned to think that if you complain,

You're a drama queen.

Or in my situation,

After two years,

I went home and I said,

Mom,

I think I made a mistake after I got married.

She said,

Go home.

You made your bed,

Go lie in it.

I had got zero support.

She didn't even ask me why I felt the way I felt.

Right.

So this idea of constantly being shut down,

Like your feelings do not matter.

And when you are taught from the outside that your feelings do not matter,

You don't know how to process your feelings.

You go,

You go and you deny them,

You suppress them and you do your best to pretend that you really don't feel the way you feel,

But you do.

There's this ocean of emotion within you and you pretending that you're not angry just makes things worse.

You get more depressed,

You get more anxious,

You become more reactive.

My base emotional set point was one of pure,

Absolute frustration.

And my body was revolting.

My poor body was revolting.

I felt so stuck.

I was doing everything wrong.

I was suppressing what I felt.

I was denying what I felt.

I wasn't paying attention to what I felt.

I was looking outside of me,

Trying to be perfect,

Trying to pretend I didn't feel this way,

Seeking my mother's validation,

Trying to be good enough,

Trying to be quiet enough,

Trying to tone myself down,

Trying to take care of people in my ex-husband's family,

Trying to anticipate his needs,

Trying to run a business with him,

Trying not to act like I needed anything.

And all it did was destroy me.

And I realized that I was invalidating myself.

And I had no idea that behind the veil,

He was talking to the neighbors about me.

He was talking to my family about me.

He was talking to his family about me.

He was talking to our customers about me.

I had no clue.

And there I was,

Shutting my mouth,

Trying so hard not to be a difficult person.

I was so afraid of being seen as difficult because I had been programmed to become afraid of being viewed as difficult.

So I didn't even realize that from childhood I was brainwashed to fear opening my mouth because I had been conditioned,

Pavlovian conditioning,

I had been conditioned to fear someone saying,

Wow,

You know what?

You're a little difficult,

Aren't you?

I heard it my whole life.

My father and I,

God rest his soul,

He recently just passed away as well.

But my father let me know in many different ways that I was difficult.

And anyone that challenged my father on any level was seen as difficult.

And my sister,

In my opinion,

Learned to be agreeable with him because she didn't want to lose his validation.

I was lucky compared to her because very early on,

I ended up breaking away from the family.

And when they actually moved out of state,

I was able to recognize that this was my need.

I needed to start focusing on myself,

Which is the time in my life where I finished riding the road back to me.

And I decided that I need to get a divorce.

This is going to be the most difficult thing in the world for me to do,

But I'm going for it.

I'm absolutely going to get a divorce and take care of myself.

When you're involved with a narcissist,

They must triangulate you.

They must try to turn people against you.

Unfortunately,

When you're dealing with a narcissist,

They don't want to leave any stone unturned.

So if you're part of a Facebook community,

If you're part of a church community,

If you're part of a business,

Then behind your back,

Little by little,

The narcissist is going to try to create flying monkeys.

They will distort the truth to make it fit their narrative.

If you were in a relationship with a narcissist,

Most of the times it started off while you were on a pedestal,

So they idealized you.

And in the idealizing of you,

They felt good about themselves.

But the minute,

Because again,

Because they can't see people as good and bad and understand that everybody has good and everybody has bad,

And they can't see it within themselves,

They see themselves as perfect and they see themselves as the perfect victim.

So in other words,

They are the perfect victim and you're going to take care of them and you're going to validate them.

You're going to praise them.

You're going to hold their hand.

You're going to feel sorry for them.

You're going to make sure you're going to idealize them.

You're going to take care of every single one of their needs.

You're going to anticipate their needs.

And the moment you say something or the moment you do something that triggers them,

You're out,

You're done.

And you will pay for all of the unresolved stuff that's within them and they will not understand what they're doing.

They will absolutely believe it's all your fault because they postured themselves as a victim.

And so they will turn people against you to perpetuate that narrative,

To protect their false image,

To protect this idea that they're a victim and you victimize them.

Something comes into their head about this idea that has them recognizing that they're being vindictive or they're hurting you or they're twisting the story.

It won't enter their minds.

And that's why it's better off to just shutty shutty when it comes to a narcissist.

You're wasting your breath.

You're talking about someone who has a false self,

Who has a cognitive bias against who you are.

They have a personal narrative,

They're the victim and you victimize them.

They don't understand that they are wounded within themselves because people who are integrated don't react this way.

People who don't have these severe traumas from the past are not going to lay them at your feet and persecute you and want to bring you down.

They're people who are wounded and they're trying to work on their wounds and they recognize that the people in their experience did not wound them,

These new people.

They recognize that,

Wow,

This is coming from either my marriage or my childhood or both.

And I'm not going to react to people,

Strangers and whatever the case may be because of these wounds.

I'm going to work on these wounds.

I'm not going to blame my children because of these wounds.

I'm not going to persecute my children because of these wounds.

I'm really going to work on myself so that I don't project this onto other people and reinforce this trauma into the future with my children.

Really going to work on my stuff.

But when you're dealing with a narcissist,

That's not the case.

A narcissist gets triggered.

They feel this pain.

You're standing right next to them.

So it's your fault and you will suffer the consequences.

And so the need to pull people into this drama has to do with them needing to perpetuate this idea that they're a victim and they also need to stay in control and dominance over all of their relationships.

They need to stay in control over what you see in them.

They need to stay in control over your emotions.

They need to dominate you,

Right?

So in the relationship they will dominate you and outside of the relationship they dominate you by pulling people into a triangulating other people against you so that when they're out and about,

You bring them to the office,

An office Christmas party,

They're feeling pretty in control because they're sipping on their martini and they know that Mary thinks you're out of your mind.

And they look over at Harry and they know that Harry thinks,

Well,

Poor Josh hanging out with Susie Q.

Like,

Wow,

How you doing,

Josh?

Josh,

What a hero.

I heard Susie Q's got all these emotional problems and look at Josh supporting his woman,

Right?

This is what they do.

So they're in control.

They go to the bank and they they've already manipulated what the bank person thinks about you,

Right?

I mean,

It just goes on forever.

And when you end up getting kicked out of this narcissistic relationship and you go to your friends and you go to your family for support,

You're often completely blindsided by this idea that they're defending the narcissist,

Which is just so cruel.

But again,

We're understanding that this is a game of dominance.

This is a game of power and this is a game of control.

It's very difficult in the moment to wrap your mind around this idea that the people that should have loved you,

Your family,

Your friends,

Your coworkers,

People that you've known for a long time,

It's really hard in the moment to recognize that they've been manipulated too.

If you find yourself in this situation,

Try to do everything that you can to take care of yourself.

Find a therapist,

Find a support group.

Find someone that believes in you.

Find someone that can validate your experiences.

I find it very,

Very helpful to write a timeline of events so that this can help you feel solid.

Like you get a timeline of events so that you know that these things actually did happen.

Because when you're dealing with someone who has high narcissistic traits,

They tell you that didn't happen.

I don't know where you get that from.

I don't know why you're telling that story.

I don't know why you tell yourself that.

I don't know why you believe that that's not the way it happened.

And you can really,

Really begin to doubt yourself.

So never go to someone who has already minimized you looking for validation of their abuse because it doesn't happen.

They are the victim.

So when you go to them and say,

Don't you know how cruel that was?

They're not going to validate you and that's going to invalidate you even further.

So try to get in the habit of acknowledging how you feel,

Staying in your body,

Grounding yourself to time and space.

Try to pick up meditation.

Meditation is a great way to slow down the mental field.

Do what you can to maybe even pull yourself away from flying monkeys.

Don't pick up the phone when it's people on the other end that you think are seeking information for the narcissist.

If you have to shut down your Facebook account and shut down your Instagram account for a while so that you could cocoon yourself from this type of abuse,

Then do it.

But remember that you're going to need support and you're going to need knowledge.

You're going to need to figure out what happened to you so you can make sense of how you feel.

All of the confusion and all of the bewilderment is normal considering what you went through.

Narcissists are tremendous liars.

They're tremendous at distorting the truth and they're tremendous at coming off like the victim.

You could give the narcissist your heart,

Your soul,

Your life.

It still won't be enough.

They'll still feel like you victimized them.

And if you're not careful,

You can fall for this.

If you're not careful,

You'll end up feeling bad because you weren't able to make the narcissist feel better,

Look better and be better.

Be very,

Very careful when you figure out the narcissist has begun to turn people against you.

Reviews

Yes yes yes. Healing from a life time of narc abuse. These informations are so important. Wish I'd understood much earlier...

Wow, I really relate to everything said here, and it helps me understand everything the narcissist is doing. Thank you.

Truly amazing verbatim what I went through and am in the tail end of going through❤️

🙏🏼 thank you

Thank you for sharing this uplifting inspirational message

That was so relatable for me!
This is one of the most devastating thing about the abuse i went trough.
It's so cowardly and evil.

My brother was the narcissist in my life. He turned my whole family against me. He's since passed on but I still can't seem to get back in with my extended family. Narcissists really can ruin things for you. Thank you!

Thank you

Wonderful reminder and tools to take in your recovery. I have so much to learn. Thank you Lisa for another great podcast!🙏🧚‍♀️👍