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Emotional Badass
Narcissists Count on You Making THESE Emotional Mistakes
00:32:19
Are you stuck in a loop of self-blame and wondering why you can’t heal from narcissistic abuse?
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Hello, welcome to the show. This is Emotional Badass, where moxie meets mindful. I'm your host, Nikki Eisenhower, life coach and psychotherapist. And on today's episode, I'm discussing 10 ways to ensure you never heal from narcissistic abuse. Sometimes hearing something the wrong way helps us find the right way. I hope you get a chuckle out of this list of ways to ensure that you never heal from narcissistic abuse. And I hope that hearing it in a bit of a funny way, but in a bit of a backwards way helps you find the wisdom that you need for you in your life. Number one, to ensure that you never heal from narcissistic abuse, keep thinking that everything is your fault. Make sure you stay in the loop of maybe I'm the narcissist, or if only I had tried harder or explained it better. And you'll never break free from a narcissist narrative. It's been said that no one can manipulate us without our participation. Highly sensitive people often choose the narrative that it must be their own fault. They blame themselves fully. Why? Why wouldn't someone choose this? Why would anyone want to fully blame themselves? Well, for one, the narcissist loves this. This works for them. A narcissist will help you with this, will promote that it's all your fault, reinforcing and directing you again and again into the place of processing. Well, it must be my fault. The personal reason that a highly sensitive person will take blame and fault like this is that sensitive people, without really knowing it, self manipulate the healthy concept or the healthy idea that I really should own my part. Right? We all know this, that it is, it is right and healthy. It is adult for me to own my part. But a highly sensitive person takes this idea, and especially if there's a struggle or two people in conflict, takes this idea of everybody plays a part and I should own mine and over owns it in an attempt to model, hey, if I own my part, you other person, narcissist in this dynamic, you will then own yours. I'll model that for you, right? Then we can come together and fix this and walk forward with more harmony. What happens in this dynamic is what I call over ownership. For that hsp. Over ownership is just as sick as under ownership. It's as if some part of a highly sensitive person decides that, hey, it's kind of better if it's all my fault. Not that they consciously think this, but this is the subconscious psychology at play. It's the subconscious belief system that runs our processes as we relate to ourselves and everybody else in this world. So the HSP in over ownership has a belief system that says, wow, if it's all my fault, that makes the dilemma workable because I can do something about it. As opposed to the powerless idea that a relationship may be unreasonably dysfunctional and incompatible if one person is unwilling to own their part. Sensitive people sometimes completely dismiss the possibility that sometimes, sometimes y', all, it's not me. A highly sensitive person will often stay in denial, as if over owning their own stuff creates a path for the other person to own theirs with someone else who's not personality disordered. This very well may work. Highly sensitive people like the control that self blame gets us. So we wind up over owning and blaming ourselves to stay in it and to keep working on it instead of dealing with what very well may be an unworkable incompatibility. So if you resonate with this and you want to self blame, here it is, I'll go ahead and I'll give it to you. You want to blame. Here's what you can blame yourself for. For not knowing how to let another person be in ownership of their own crap. Blame yourself for not knowing how to properly distribute ownership, likely because you had one or multiple parents who didn't know how to properly own their stuff. So own your stuff, but don't over own your stuff if you want to heal or continue over owning to ensure that you never heal and grow past narcissistic abuse. And I assure you that you can trust that if you over own, you will keep aligning with people in your life who under ownership. And this will keep you in the pattern of narcissistic abuse, chaos, confusion and anti peace if you're lucky for a lifetime. Number two, stay in contact with a narcissist just to be polite. This will ensure that you don't heal, especially if you ignore every red flag and gut instinct so that you can keep up appearances while destroying your own peace and sanity with politeness. If politeness trumps self preservation, you might have been raised in the south because it's our culture to be polite at all costs. I mean all costs. Or you may have been raised to present a very pretty picture while sweeping conflict and all dysfunction under a rug to keep up those appearances. In some ways, this might have been the ultimate principle, the ultimate priority, the ultimate importance in certain dysfunctional family systems like me. You may have been raised in southern culture and maybe you got a double whammy like I did of southern culture. Plus Immature, inadequate parenting, which gave a huge double whammy of politeness and hiding directives to me consciously and subconsciously. Highly sensitive people who continue to value politeness and public preservation over self preservation and authenticity will not heal from narcissistic abuse. They will continue struggling within these upsetting and disruptive relationships all the days of their lives. Highly sensitive people often know immediately. It's true, y', all, you might not want to admit it, but highly sensitive people often know immediately if a relationship is destined to be a drain, destined to be chaos and confusion. A highly sensitive person often knows immediately if immaturity is ruling the roost of a relationship. And they know when a relationship becomes dead in the water too. But here's what happens and I'll use I statements for clarity. The gut can tell any of us very clearly we have this gut response, but we often don't like what the gut says because it means getting brave and it means having to make some changes. So we will choose denial. We will choose to ignore our own gut. And right there in that moment when we dismiss what our gut read of a situation or a person or a dynamic, right in that moment, we dismiss ourselves. We really disrespect ourselves and we start the work of over functioning, sweeping things under that dysfunctional rug and over blaming ourselves. If I do this, it means I care more about being perceived as plight while being wildly rude to myself, which is manipulative to the outside world and to ourselves. If you do this, you might as well sit yourself down and give yourself a lecture that doubles down on politeness being so much more important than you, than your peace, than your joy. Prioritizing what other people think and other people's comfort over your own compromises your authenticity, your relationship with yourself in this one precious life that each of us are given. When politeness is prioritized to the detriment of your one precious life, I can guarantee that you will not transcend the impacts of narcissistic abuse. You get to decide what's more important, what the priority is, the truth in dealing with it, or politeness and public perception. Number three, you will not heal from narcissistic abuse if you downplay and minimize what happened and what continues to happen. Keep calling it just a difficult season or my trauma instead of naming the abuse as abuse. The low empathy is low empathy. The gaslighting is gaslighting and the immaturity is immaturity and the gameplay as gameplay. And you'll never be able to move forward. In truth, you won't be able to grieve or grow. Here's the nuance. We are conditioned to accept wrong behavior. If we grew up in chaos, neglect or abuse, or under emotionally mature people or inept parenting, we're conditioned into accepting craziness, y'. All. Basically, we wind up overreacting to some things and underreacting to other things because our reactions and responses are were exactly what that trauma and chaos meddled with. That's what unsafety and confusion in a childhood so consistently day in and day out does with our own compass for navigating life. You've done the best you can to try to discern the confusing directives that we should let go of certain things, right? We know this wisdom. We should pick our battles. We should let go. We also know the wisdom that we should easily forgive our loved ones and extend empathy to others. And it's often wise and pays off to avoid more conflict. It's confusing to figure out healing is unconfusing this very thing that I'm trying to name right now. Trauma confuses and meddles with our reactions. Healing reasonably recalibrates our understanding and our reactions so that we can learn to respond. And in healthiness, instead of the chaos and confusion that we were taught and soaked up as children, we don't want to keep responding through what childhood dysfunction warped, which is our reactions, our responses, our ability to trust that gut response. See, we have to bury it. I had to bury my own gut response that would say, oh, mom is here, you're in danger, something's wrong, something's bad. I couldn't deal with that as a child. I had to sweep it out of the rug. I had to pretend and play along to try to keep her rage from finding me. It's not a fun thought. And a lot of times therapists like to pussyfoot around this because we don't wanna the phrases blame the victim, right? But the hard truth, and I find that we heal faster, better, with more ease and speed when we deal with the real truth, is that our childhood trauma warps how we receive healthiness and dysfunction. And healing is writing that healing is recalibrating and adjusting so that we're calibrated to healthiness and reasonableness, self respect, instead of eating it and sweeping things under the rug. Practicing denial playing, which really is a form of manipulating. But that's what we have to do to survive sometimes. But to get out of survival, we have to get out of survival to be able to thrive. If you keep minimizing these common narcissistic abuse realities like narcs having low to no empathy for you, me, or anybody. Like narcs not learning from emotional pain, y'. All, that's part of what a personality disorder is. People without these traits. Pain is our greatest teacher. That discomfort of, oh my gosh, I think I hurt somebody, makes me want to change my behavior. That's what's missing for someone who is on a narcissistic spectrum. So if you keep minimizing these common abuse realities, the games that narcs play, how will you ever deal with the truth of things? You will stay in the same confusion and chaos that was normalized to you as a child. Big empathy. People do learn because when we get it wrong, it hurts. And that hurt is what motivates difference and change. So if you have something going on in your personality or maybe even in your neurology, that doesn't hurt when you hurt another human being that doesn't empathize that way, do you see how that's its own trap for the narcissist? And I can have a lot of empathy for that, but I need to understand it if I am to not be in denial. For me, see, it doesn't hurt a narcissist. Like you're hurt when you hurt somebody, when you're upset because you cause somebody pain. That's your moral compass. That's your empathy.
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That pain is inviting you to be different and to learn the absence of that is quite the thing to consider in this human condition. Keep minimizing the importance of honest ownership in a relationship. There is no true narcissist out there that can look anybody in the face and own the games that they play. The way they don't feel and maybe the way that they do, that's part of the game, is a dishonesty in that department. People can only be as honest with you as they can be with themselves. Part of narcissism is drinking their own Kool Aid about how awesome and perfect they are. Why would they change anything about themselves? If you keep minimizing, you will ensure that you never entertain healthy boundaries so that you can heal or grow past the effects of narcissistic abuse. We are very grateful to have Air Doctor sponsor this episode, y'. All. I love my Air Doctor Air purifiers. We have one in the bedroom that we run every single night. I cannot express to you how much you can actually walk into the room and feel that the air is clean. Air Doctor is the award winning air purifier that eliminates 99.99% of dangerous contaminan like allergens, viruses, smoke, gases, mold spores and more. Head to airdoctorpro.com and use code badass to get up to $300 off today. Air Doctor comes with a 30 day money back guarantee plus a three year warranty. That's an $84 value for free. So if you try it and you don't like it, you can send it back. Air Doctor makes it easy. Get this exclusive podcast only offer now at airdoctorpro.com a I r-o c t o r p r o.com using promo code Badass I love my Factor meals. Their convenience, their ease, their tastiness. And I think you're going to love them too. As my husband travels back and forth to another state to help his mom, I'm ordering boxes of Factor to help me stay on task and not be stressed out with having to come up with meals for one while I handle everything else in our house. So not only is Factor tasty and nutritious and helpful and offer chef prepped meals that are dietitian approved and delivered right to my door now it's actually really helping me stay grounded and give myself proper nutrition and ease while we're managing the real life things that happen when we are grieving and we've lost someone. So eat smart@factormeals.com Emotional 50 off and use code EMOTIONAL50OFF to get 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for a year. Y' all. Do you hear that? That's code EMOTIONAL50OFF@FactorMeals.com for 50% off your first box plus free breakfast for one year. Get delicious ready to eat meals delivered with Factor. This offer is only valid for new Factor customers with the code and qualifying Auto renewing Subscription Purchase purchase Thank you for supporting the sponsors that support us. Number four to ensure never ever ever healing. Make sure you avoid feeling your emotions at all costs. Modern life really helps us here. We can stay just as busy as we want to be. We can ride a frazzled wave to the grave. We can numb out. We can intellectualize everything. We can read another study. We can listen to another podcast. We can read another book. We can get lost in information land. Whatever you do, don't actually feel the pain. Gamble, shop, drink alcohol. Do whatever you can do to feel to not feel the pain. Make sure that you tell yourself that you can't handle your feelings to reinforce the intelligence of this avoidance. You can even hide behind intellectualizing or higher education or more training. I see Therapists do this all the time. More training and more training and more training and more training and more training. Instead of living from the hard earned knowledge already earned, there are infinite ways that we can mask with knowledge. It's very high brow and we can miss over a lifetime the hard earned wisdom of our own experiences and what humanity is teaching us every day of our lives. Cultivating avoidance of the truth. Cultivating avoidance of the process of feeling through will have you avoiding you, avoiding the situation, avoiding reality, avoiding healing, avoiding growth, avoiding transcendence, avoiding peace. So whatever you do, stuff, block, numb out and trust that modern life will will always be right there to help you with this. Phone screen, gambling, shopping, scrolling drugs, alcohol only fans, social media, another prescription pad, another pill. Modern life is more than ready to help you avoid yourself. It'll hold your hand to help you avoid yourself and help you avoid your true emotions where the truth of those emotions would ultimately set you free. Make sure you never let yourself sit and allow yourself to feel the truth of whatever situation, whatever feelings you are currently in and you will never heal from narcissistic abuse. Nothing in your life will change. Number five, Surround yourself with people who don't get it. Make sure you go out of your way to lean on those very people who say things like just get over it or but that's your mom. If you lean on these people, you get to ensure maximum confusion inside of yourself, maximum invalidation which will keep you buried deeply in the confusion of narcissistic abuse where you don't have to change a thing. Keep sharing yourself, your wins, your pain, your life, your vulnerabilities with people who aren't wired like you, who don't think like you, who don't feel like you, and who live lives that would not make you happy. One of the biggest arguments I had with one of my sisters before going no contact for the final time a few years ago was that she was taking advice from one of our aunts who her own child would describe as one of the most miserable people on the planet. Bitter, angry, miserable. I asked my sister, why are you taking advice from this person? She's not happy, she's not satisfied. Why are you taking her advice? The answer she couldn't give me was to stay in the sameness of all the things that have always been known to us. Remember that these people that you go to who don't support you may very well express a love for you. And if you stay confused about love and support, you'll definitely stay confused about narcissism. Definitely keep going to people who don't understand and don't want to understand or are disinterested entirely and genuinely getting to know you in a deeper way. This will keep you feeling raw, weird, alien, wrong, blamed, ashamed, confused, down, dark, depressed, without energy, alone. And you will ensure you never get psychological or physical distance from the narcissist in your life that knows how to play your heartstrings like a fiddle, treating you like an object instead of a person. So don't have any boundaries. Dysfunctional people hate that you have boundaries, right? Those boundaries are such a drag for dysfunctional people. Make sure that you keep spending time with with and befriending people who you can be a friend to, but who can't really reciprocate friendship or support to you. This is a surefire way to ensure never healing from narcissistic abuse or getting out from under its dark cloud. Number six. Keep trying to get closure from the narcissist until you finally get it. Continue to chase a conversation they'll never give you, hoping one day they'll finally admit their own part and how they've hurt you. Pretend they don't have a personality disorder and that they should be able to give you what you want like a healthy whole person with healthy empathy could and would definitely. Keep giving the power of the closure that you want to the very person failing you right now. Keep demanding to them that they give you closure because you deserve it. Right? Keep demanding it, keep rooting around for it like a pig looking for truffles until you make that narcissist give you closure because you've had so much success making the narcissist show up and give you healthy things. Right? I mean, that's why you're here listening to this because you've been so successful getting the narcissist in your life to give you what you want and need so far. Right? They'll definitely give you closure. Definitely. Pour all of your energy into making your narcissist give you that closure. It will work wonders beyond your wildest dreams to ensure that you never ever heal and stay stuck. Number seven. Make sure that if you get away from a narcissist, you repeat the pattern in new relationships really quickly. Jump into another connection with without reflection, growth work. Time to get to know yourself because familiar pain always feels safer than the unknown. Get swept up by love bombing and make sure that you ignore all the familiar red flags. Staying the same has never been easier, y'. All. Number eight, Ignore your gut instincts. Keep overriding Your intuition. Talk yourself out of it. Make sure that you prioritize making other people feel comfortable even when everything inside you is screaming no healed. Highly sensitive people, they honor their gut instincts. They don't dismiss themselves anymore and they work to fine tune their relationship with their intuition. They fine tune their interpretations, always open to being wrong and learning and growing. And they accept that they will be fine tuning their interpretations of their intuition all of their lives. As a gift, as an honor. Growing in trust and understanding year after year after year is what a highly sensitive person gets to do when they learn what it is to honor the truth of who they are and use the gift of their intuition. If you never want to heal or change or grow, you ignoring your intuitive gut is a fabulous way you will get what you want if you continue to talk yourself out of your gut. Response number nine Avoid therapy. Especially with therapists that call you out. Make sure you go to one of those therapists who only ask you to talk and talk and talk and validate you. Avoid good therapy or any really true inner deep work. Who needs boundaries anyway, y'? All? Nobody really needs healing tools or support. You could white knuckle it forever. Why would you get help when you could white knuckle it? Overwhelming confusion can sort of feel like old drinking buddies, can't they? Kind of hollow and spiritually empty but always available for a drink, a session. Overwhelm and confusion are amazingly always available for you to hang out with. They could be your very best friends. They could hang out with you more than any other aspect. Who needs real friends and connections anyway when you could stay in chaos? I mean, who needs peace and calm and clarity when overwhelming confusion are so dramatic and interesting and entertaining? Therapy would ruin your relationship with your best buds of overwhelming confusion. So do your best to steer clear of any depth, any awareness or work that might have you changing. Beware. And number 10, settle for the daydream and ignore reality. It really is possible to wait a lifetime to see if somebody else's potential will actualize. And while you're doing that, what do you think happens to your own potential? Many childhood survivors fall in love again and again and again and again with the fairy tale of someone's potential. And they refuse to deal with the truth of the narcissist standing in front of them that they are who they are and will not be different than how they have presented in this lifetime. To ensure you never move beyond narcissistic abuse dynamics, make sure you stay very, very loyal and generous to the narcissist. In your life. Keep sweeping that truth under the rug. Make your own dreams center around the narc changing and getting it one day. Make sure that your own dreams take a back seat in your one precious life and let chaos stay in that driver's seat. If you try hard enough and stay very committed to dysfunction, you, any of us, we could stay miserable and exhausted all of the days of our lives. When we worship the power of denial, we can keep generational trauma and emotional neglect going. We don't even need someone else to show up and neglect us. We will show up and neglect ourselves like good little dysfunctional soldiers. So cheers to never ever changing, y'. All. Because it's hard work to change. Who needs that? I hope today's sarcastic episode gave you a laugh, along with some very important insights. If you want to be a part of the discussion about this episode or any other, or you want to check out content that is only released behind a paywall that is for my communities. Come support the show and my work continuing to get out all across the world and come support your own honest growth and development. Come hang out with me at the patreon patreon.com emotional badass. This will be out after I record this, but as I record this tonight, I'm doing a live stream in there that I do once a month. Tonight's topic is is on forgiveness as a tool after betrayal. Peace is available if you want it and you're willing to work for it. I genuinely want you to have just as much peace as you will allow yourself to have. And I want you to know, in all seriousness and no sarcasm, that you are the only person on this entire planet, you, who can decide to give peace to yourself, who can decide to deal with the actual non emotional truth of things and strategize your life away from dysfunction and towards groundedness, towards thriving. Remember, it's a hard truth, but when we embrace the truth, it does set us free. No matter what happened to us as kids and no matter what is happening in our personal or larger worlds right now, in this very moment, in the end, it does boil down to what we allow and what we don't, what we're willing to learn and change and what we're not. Are we willing to keep the status quo just to keep it, just because we see most people keeping the status quo? Or will we bravely step up for ourselves, own what we need to own, and give ourselves great permission to change? Change towards the light, change towards more peace, change towards more satisfaction and fulfillment? If you want to do some group coaching with me. Come to emotionalbadass.com peace. You can check out the Breakthrough Peace Program if you want a smaller bite that you can sort of sample my work and how I work and this episode resonated with you. You're welcome to check out my workshop that you can work on on your own in your own time called Mapping your recovery from narcissistic abuse. That's a great way to sort of bite off a little bite of what I offer and see how that feels to you. See if I'm a right person for you to learn with and invest in and grow with. I am an emotional badass, you are an emotional badass and together we are where Moxie meets mindful Light and Love. And I will see you right here next time for a brand new episode. Till then, take care light and love. Bye bye.
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