Don't Let Narcissists Hijack Your Happiness

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Bestselling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

So today we're going to be talking about how a narcissist can hijack your ability to be happy.

What I try to accomplish with these sessions is helping people gain a better understanding of where their personal power lies as someone who has spent her life looking outside of herself for validation,

In fear of criticism,

Fearing what other people think about me,

The fear of failure,

And almost paralyzed by the idea of taking any type of a risk,

Getting outside of my comfort zone.

As someone who has spent most of her life that way,

I've learned a few things along my life's path that I think can really help other people shift.

We're all here to evolve our soul and to identify what it is that we're meant to do here while we're still in body on planet Earth.

Each of us has incredible human potential,

But oftentimes we fall short of that potential because of many different factors,

Many of which I do not believe are our fault at all.

For instance,

Our brain can become arrested in a state of fight or flight due to childhood trauma,

Due to emotional neglect and worse.

Our brains can actually become arrested.

Our brains can become subconsciously programmed to seek validation.

It's important that we also recognize that we are not built to experience happiness as much as we are built or our brains are built to avoid pain.

This is a significant distinction to keep in mind when you are on the personal development journey,

When you find yourself in a toxic relationship,

And when you're contemplating yourself at 2 a.

M.

In the morning like,

Why can't I be happy?

No matter what I achieve,

I'm not happy.

If you're in a relationship with someone who is highly toxic,

Narcissistic,

And controlling and manipulative,

Someone who does not take accountability,

Somebody who blame shifts,

Somebody who lives in this fake world,

Somebody who has this grandiose perception of themselves,

Someone who is creating tremendous havoc in their life and in yours and who takes zero accountability for it,

It's easy to see how we can lose our balance and obviously find ourselves feeling unhappy.

Now in order to experience happiness on planet Earth,

There are a couple of things that we need to achieve.

Somehow we have to learn to be nonresistant to what's happening because what we resist persists.

And secondly,

We have to identify goals that are in alignment with who we believe we really are.

When you are in a relationship with someone who is highly toxic,

Your point of focus is controlled.

So therefore,

You really can't be nonresistance.

You can't be in a state of nonresistance.

You are more focused on what this person thinks about you,

What their needs are.

You're more focused on feeling misunderstood.

You're more focused on trying to convince this person that you are not who they think you are and you can get lost there.

When it comes to the first part of this equation for happiness,

If your focus is focused on something that you can't control,

You're not going to be happy because in order to be happy,

We have to learn to become nonresistant to what's happening in the now and to at least learn to accept that we can't control what we can't control.

Some people will say that you can't get to a place of happiness from a place of unhappiness.

You can't get to a state of abundance from a state of lack.

And I agree with that.

If this is an attraction-based world and if everything in this world is vibrational at its core,

Which seems hard to argue considering everything including this desk is made of atoms,

And atoms are energy,

If that's the case,

If I am a being that is made of matter and atoms make up matter,

Then on a quantum level,

I really am energy.

On a quantum level,

The trees that line the streets are energy.

On a quantum level,

Our pets,

Our animals are energy.

Water is energy.

And so if this is an attraction-based universe and if I resist something,

That something that I'm resisting is my point of focus.

If what I focus on tends to get bigger,

Then it's not difficult to understand how if I'm focusing on someone who is toxic,

If I am under the impression or under the guise that has me believing that it's my job to heal this person,

Fix this person,

Or convince this person that I love them,

Then I'm not happy.

I'm fixating on trying to control an outcome I can't control.

And therefore,

How do I get happy from a state of unhappiness?

How do I get to a state of ease from a state of dis-ease?

If you're in a relationship with someone who's highly toxic,

Then you are in a relationship with someone who is in dis-ease.

This is someone who projects outside of themselves.

This is someone who blames everything that's happening around them for why they don't feel good,

For why they're upset,

For why they were fired,

For why they just can't get happy,

For why there is anything negative happening in their life,

They will project these emotions outside of them and blame their children.

They'll blame what's happening in their town.

They'll blame their spouse.

They'll blame their best friend.

They'll blame their boss for firing them because they can't show up at work on time or because they have an alcohol issue and they're really screwing up at work.

And it won't be because this person's on their third DWI and crashed the company van.

No,

It'll be because the boss doesn't understand how difficult this person's life is.

It won't have anything to do with personal accountability and personal growth and taking responsibility for the way someone thinks and perceives the world.

It won't be that.

And when you are in a relationship with someone like this who is full of dis-ease,

What they do is they make you responsible for it.

And if you're not careful,

Then your goal becomes trying to convince them how not to be that way.

Your goal becomes how to convince this person to go into therapy or stop drinking.

Your goal becomes fixated outside of you rather than inside of you.

So to refresh,

In order to be happy,

We need to be non-resistant to the now,

Maybe even become happy in the now.

And part two of that equation is I have to have a goal that is personal,

That is within my control to control it.

And I need to know what it is that I want to experience in the world.

What is my legacy going to be?

Most of us,

Especially if we're codependent and especially if we're highly empathic,

And especially if we tend to attract people in our lives that control our point of focus easily,

Many of us don't realize that we are reacting to life as it shows up.

So rather than get out ahead of what's happening in our lives,

We react to it.

I can attest to this being the most dominant vibration in my life for many,

Many years,

Where if something happened outside of me with a friend or a boyfriend or even eventually my ex-husband or my children,

I sort of felt like things were happening to me.

I was reacting.

I was really,

Really,

Really reacting to what people were saying.

And I felt so out of control because I didn't realize I was still living at level one consciousness.

I was still living below the veil of consciousness and in my case,

Living out all of the theta brainwave patterns I learned as a child.

I wasn't good enough.

I needed approval.

What people thought about me was the most important thing in the world.

I needed people to need me in order for me to feel worthy.

Like I said earlier,

Fearing criticism,

Feeling like if someone criticized me,

That meant that I was worthless and I wasn't trying hard enough and my goal then would be to try to be good enough to gain this person's validation.

And if I couldn't gain someone's validation,

Then it was my job to find a way to be useful.

And if I could find a way to be useful,

Maybe this person would smile upon me and allow me to be in their presence,

Which is super sad when you think about potential every soul has to live out loud and to become unlimited in what it is they would like to achieve in this world.

It is so backwards and so far from the love that we are that it's actually unfathomable that you can incarnate on planet earth and be so far away from your personal light that you are living in the reality of darkness with someone who believes in the reality of darkness and not even know it.

So in order to experience happiness in your life,

You have to somehow get to a point of non-resistance and be happy now,

Which is really difficult when you're dealing with toxic people who manipulate you and who prefer that you either are afraid of them or they find ways to manipulate approval out of them.

There are narcissists in this world that will give a friend group,

For instance,

The impression that you can't hang out with them unless they're one up,

Unless you are adoring them.

And the friends in the group that adore this one more narcissistic friend will have the right to hang out with the narcissistic friend and the friend who refuses to kiss this person's butt and throw bouquets of roses at them will be snubbed.

They will be triangulated against and oftentimes smeared.

They'll be an outward attempt to push this person out of the circle because narcissists need you to adore them and to literally act as if they have the most important thing in your life.

And if you're not willing to do that,

Then a narcissist will then prefer that you feel outed and that you seek their approval,

That you worry about what they're thinking about you.

If that doesn't work,

Then oftentimes narcissists will punish you to the point where you're living in fear of their next move.

If you're living in this type of an experience with a narcissist,

You cannot be happy.

So then we have to become aware of how we are giving our ability to be happy over to someone else.

So asking yourself questions like,

Am I seeking other people's approval?

Do I tend to seek validation?

Do I feel like I have some sense of worthiness when I am taking care of other people?

These are all signs that you are living detached from the self and giving your ability to live in the now in a state of happiness over to something in the future that you can't control.

You're literally giving your happiness over to someone in your life,

Whether they be a narcissist or not.

You're saying,

I'll be happy when?

When you approve of me,

I'll be happy.

When I get that raise,

I'll be happy.

When I get that car,

When I get that house,

When I get that relationship.

And if this is your mindset,

You can't be happy because you unconsciously keep pushing the goalposts.

I've trained enough people in my life to speak with confidence when I tell you that if you live your life that way,

Then you ultimately achieve what the thing is that you want and recognize you're not happy.

Because it was the thinking that when I get this thing,

I'll be happy that pushed you forward and then when you get it,

You're not happy.

Why?

Because you didn't attract it from a point of happy.

The second part of the equation is I have to have realistic goals that I am in control over.

Why?

Because your subconscious mind needs a bullseye.

Now if you're living with a narcissist,

Your point of focus is hijacked and your goals are off center.

You think that the goal is to make this other person happy,

Which is not a realistic goal that you can set for yourself because you can't control anything that happens outside of you and you certainly can't control a narcissist.

So if you want to get back on track,

I highly recommend that you think about these two concepts.

Find a way to become non-resistant to what you can't control.

Find a way to control your focus to the point that you are experiencing some level of non-resistance now in the now,

Which means that you have to let go and surrender to trying to do things like keep other people happy for the sake of your own happiness.

You have to surrender to that.

It doesn't work.

It will keep you wandering in the desert for the rest of your life and we only have a certain amount of sand in the hourglass that is our life.

Life is finite.

It will end for us all and the more particular we get about how we spend our time,

The better we get at managing our time.

Because once you realize that your life is limited here on planet earth,

For me,

The moment a doctor said to me,

If you fell asleep right now,

You'd die.

It's the moment I realized like I can't stay in this marriage.

I'm not going to spend the rest of my life trying to convince this person that I'm not who he thinks I am.

I'm not going to spend the rest of my life trying to be good enough for someone whose agenda it is to make me feel not good enough so I remain this puppy looking for a bone.

Not going to happen.

And so I encourage you to think about this idea seriously.

You just have certain amount of time in your life to get this right.

And the second thing is identify whether or not your goal is something that you can't realistically and logically control.

If your goal has been to seek someone else's validation,

To avoid criticism,

To get this person to love you and to accept you,

These are goals that are not what you can control.

You have come to do so much more than that.

You have come to be a spiritual badass.

You have come to be someone who has the right to have their mission unfold.

You have a calling and while you are in a relationship with a narcissist who is hijacking your now so you can't be happy now because they have you spinning your wheels,

Feeling responsible for things that are not your fault and your focus then becomes making them happy,

The two areas of your life that you need to be happy are completely hijacked.

So do what you can to focus on the now and find ways to be happier in the present moment.

Detach from what this other person thinks.

Let them think whatever they want to think.

It can no longer be your goal to appease someone whose purpose it is to get you to feel responsible for them.

The second thing you need to do is to start focusing on your goals.

They could be personal development goals.

They could be spiritual goals.

They could be goals that are in alignment with what you want to see manifest in the world.

Oftentimes when we look at our own life and we think about our own emotional and spiritual challenges,

Financial challenges,

When we think about what we've overcome,

Oftentimes what we've overcome is what we want to help other people overcome.

And if this resonates with you,

Please know that this is a goal that you can control.

Let no person and no thing come before you and the divine self.

Namaste everybody.

Until next time.

Bye for now.