Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.
My name is Lisa A.
Romano.
I am a life coach,
Best-selling 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.
Gaslighting is really designed to perpetuate this idea that you should not be able to trust what you think or to trust what you feel.
And think about it.
How insidious is that for someone to undermine your ability to be confident in your perceptions of the world and perceptions of yourself?
It's pretty malevolent to think that there are people who get off on confusing people to that point,
And they are so empathy impaired that they don't consider the consequences to someone's soul,
To someone's mind,
To their family,
To their sense of being,
To their mental health when they are being so toxic and so manipulative that they go out of their way to gaslight someone so that the person doesn't have the confidence or the sea legs to confront them objectively and to stand in their own power with truth,
With facts,
And or just with,
Hey,
This is how I feel.
So when you're dealing with someone who is toxic,
Their goal is to undermine your ability to say,
This is what I think,
And this is what I feel,
And this is my perspective.
This is my reality.
You have your reality because you're a 3D human being,
As am I.
And this is how you understand this situation between the two of us.
However,
This is how I understand it.
And to be able to stand there in a relationship with someone and truly hold onto yourself is miraculous even because we all,
In relationships,
We're looking to feel connected to the other person,
To feel seen,
To feel heard,
To feel loved,
And to feel nurtured.
And we all,
To a certain degree,
If not all of us,
On some level,
Fear rejection,
Fear not being good enough,
And fear being abandoned.
I think it's a very natural human fear.
It just really depends on how aware you are of that fear,
How conscious you are of that fear,
And how much of your life is controlled by the fear of rejection,
Or the fear of being abandoned,
For instance,
Or the fear of being unliked,
For instance.
So the fear is normal.
A narcissist is going to exploit that fear big time.
And if you didn't walk into the relationship insecure,
It's all but guaranteed that after a few months or after a few years,
Even decades,
You end up feeling extremely insecure,
Extremely vulnerable.
There are cognitive changes in the way that you think.
Your thinking changes.
You feel different.
You may be depressed or have anxiety.
You may have isolated because of this tremendous self-doubt.
And you end up living in a very small world because the narcissist's reactions are so over the top,
So unpredictable,
That you end up worrying about them to extremes.
And in the worrying about this other,
You're being trained like a circus animal.
You're being trained to seek their validation.
You're being trained to make sure that they don't get upset.
So you're being trained to seek what they need so that you can figure out how to become what they need so that you can avoid a negative outcome.
In all of that,
You are ignored.
You don't exist.
And if you think about what narcissism is,
It's this grandiose sense of self,
This idea that they are entitled to exploit other people,
That they have a right to exploit other people,
That their feelings and their perceptions are always going to trump your feelings and your perceptions,
This idea that they are better than you,
More valuable than you,
More worthy than you.
And when I say worthy,
I mean their opinions,
Their emotions,
And their experience and their perceptions of you are the most valid.
You have,
Perhaps this is your second marriage.
You've married someone who is a covert narcissist,
For instance,
And their perception of your relationship with your children in their head should supersede the opinion that you have of your relationship with your children.
A narcissist is going to want to come between you and your children,
Divide and conquer.
They want control over you.
They want you to be their source of narcissistic supply.
They want to control your energy,
Perhaps your money,
Your home,
Even your children,
Even your grandchildren.
So this is what the narcissist is after.
A narcissist is looking to dominate and control.
So it's really about power.
And this doesn't show up in just one relationship.
You will see a pattern of this type of mentality,
Of this adversarial experience with people that just continues to show up over and over and over.
They can be very curt with people,
Unless of course that person has something to offer them.
But the minute that person doesn't fulfill what the narcissist wants and or needs,
The person no longer has any value.
So there is splitting,
There's black and white thinking.
There's no objectivity where we're understanding that some days I win and some days I lose.
And some people like me and some people don't.
And sometimes I'm really kind and sometimes I'm not.
Most of the time I fall somewhere in the middle.
And it's okay if people don't like me.
And not everybody has to say yes to me all the time.
And I respect people that say no.
When you're dealing with someone who has high narcissistic traits,
The no is felt like a threat.
And when they feel threatened,
They have to attack.
They have to persecute.
So this is a very abusive personality to have to live with,
To have to work with.
And so I wanted to preface the video with this little intro about gaslighting and about the agenda of gaslighting,
Which is essentially to cripple you,
To arrest you,
And to get you to a point where the foundation of you,
If you could think about your brain,
Right?
The foundation is cracked now.
And so now whatever you think falls on this faulty foundation,
You can't trust it.
It's like you wouldn't build a house on a cracked foundation because wind comes and the house will fall down.
It's the same type of a concept where if a narcissist can corrupt you from the inside and get inside your head,
It's so much easier to manipulate you.
But in order to get inside your mind where they do the most damage,
They come through your heart space first.
Sometimes they come with gifts and they're love bombing you and it feels great to feel seen and they tell you a little bit about their life.
Lots of times it's a lie or it's highly embellished and they're working off of your empathy.
Your empathy is actually a source of narcissistic supply.
You might give this person a lot of attention and the more you respond to this person's wounds,
The more you give them attention,
The more they feel seen,
The more they're controlling the relationship and actually pulling your strings.
There may or may not be some avenue they're after,
Money,
Physical contact,
Whatever it is,
But that usually flushes itself out over time.
And then you've got people who are more malevolent.
You have people who are narcissistic and they absolutely have an obvious agenda and it could be to completely dominate and control your life,
To lay on your couch for the rest of your life while you go to work and you take care of them and they cheat on you and spend your money and do whatever it is that they do,
And the whole time suggesting that you should be taking care of them,
That you're wrong,
That your perception of them not getting a job is incorrect,
That your perception of them not helping out is false,
That your perception of them being manipulative is not to be trusted,
Your perception of them cheating on you and having other women call and drive past the house or whatever's going on,
It's all in your head.
And so first they'll try to get inside your heart and then that is when they're able to access your mind and over time,
With the help of gaslighting,
They're able to make you doubt your reality.
So I want to also not only share what I think are pretty common gaslighting phrases,
But why they work.
So just this morning I uploaded an Instagram post about these gaslighting phrases.
I got a lot of amazing feedback,
So I feel like people are resonating with the message,
So I wanted to create a session around it.
So the first phrase is,
Stop making everything about you.
So when you dare to express how you feel about a narcissistic person or how they treat you,
One of their go-to gaslighting phrases is,
You always make everything about you.
So it will confuse you and it may even shut you down.
Remember,
Healthy people have empathy and especially when someone else is sharing a vulnerability.
Healthy people want things to be good between you.
Narcissists,
However,
Crave power over you.
So when someone says something to you like,
Stop,
You make everything about you,
That's really a great thing to do is to stop and to pause.
Hit the pause button and then just go over the last five to 10 minutes of your life in conversation with this person and ask yourself,
Is this really a fair statement?
What happened here?
Did I just ask the person about this idea that I heard that they were cheating on me or why did their phone ring five times during dinner and why did they ignore the phone call?
Is it wrong for me or am I being exploited for saying it makes me a little uncomfortable when your phone rings four or five times at dinner and you ignore it when all the other times you answer the phone?
Is that an unreasonable request and how would I answer that question if my partner asked me that question?
Obviously,
If I'm not doing anything wrong,
Then there's a logical explanation.
Or if I am doing something wrong,
I might be frustrated or angry and react and try to throw the person off track,
Which is what narcissists do.
When you confront a narcissist,
They've got to get you off the track.
They think about a dog following a trail,
Right?
So they want to jump in the water.
They want to end the trail that you have found.
And that phone ringing and the conversation or the gossip that you've heard about them possibly cheating on you is a track.
So how do I jump in the water to get you off the track?
Well,
I jump in the water by suggesting that you're making this phone call about you.
I mean,
It doesn't even make sense,
Right?
You're the partner.
You're at dinner.
You're going to cook this person dinner perhaps.
So you're at a beautiful dinner at a restaurant.
The phone's ringing.
This is a conversation between the two of you.
This person has this phone out.
Yeah,
It's about you.
And you're ignoring it.
You've never done that before.
And I'm in a relationship with you.
I think that's a fair question because I would expect you to ask me the same thing.
So you want to make sure that anytime someone uses this phrase on you,
You want to make sure that you are able to think critically rather than emotionally and objectively.
I don't think it's fair to run around and point the finger and try to figure out who's a narcissist amongst us unless we first dealt with ourself and our stuff because I think there's a narcissist in all of us.
We all have pain that we're trying to avoid.
We can all be reactive.
And we all have needs that have gone unmet.
And yes,
The goal is to come here and evolve up the emotional ladder,
To keep climbing that ladder,
And to make sure that we're not ending up in the negative 1,
Negative 2,
Negative 3,
Negative 4 end of life.
And we're at plus 1,
Plus 2,
Plus 3.
And we're continuing up that spectrum.
And if we find ourselves sliding into negative 1,
Negative 2,
Which is more narcissistic behavior,
Then we're accountable enough to check ourselves and bring us back to a place of ground zero where we're like,
OK,
I have to worry about me right now.
Am I being fair?
Do I need boundaries?
Am I judging this person?
Am I persecuting this person?
Am I being unfair?
I think that's a really healthy way to approach relationships is to always check yourself first because that's not what a narcissist is doing.
The narcissist has their focus on you and trying to get their narcissistic supply through you and through other sources as well.
It's not just you.
And so check yourself first.
So when someone says,
Stop,
You make everything about you,
Just be objective and ask yourself,
Did I just turn this conversation around?
Am I being unfair?
And if you feel like you are not being unfair,
And if you feel like this is absolutely a ridiculous thing that just took place,
And it is unfair for my partner or my friend or my daughter or my son or whoever,
My grandmother,
Grandfather,
Whoever,
Narcissists come in all shapes and sizes,
Genders,
Doesn't matter their role in your family,
They exist.
And ask yourself,
Was this just used against me as a way to silence me and get me to feel bad about what I'm feeling?
Because this type of a question has been created to shut you down.
It's been created to make you worry that you are a narcissist.
And narcissists don't worry about being narcissists,
Right?
People who are not narcissists worry that they might be narcissists.
So you're being exploited.
Now standing up against this person is another thing entirely.
Being able to say,
Actually,
I don't really appreciate that phrase.
And if we're in a relationship,
It's not about me,
It's about us.
And I find this to be a red flag.
And I just like to discuss the red flag.
And I don't think it's unreasonable for me to ask you why it is that you just ignored a phone,
The phone call,
Four different times,
When every other time that your phone has rang at dinner,
You've picked it up.
So I just find this to be a red flag.
And all I'm looking to do is have a conversation with my partner.
If that's making this all about me,
Then I find that to be an additional red flag,
Because it doesn't even make sense to me that this is your reality.
The second phrase is,
I know why you said that.
I want to talk about why that's a really red flag of gaslighting.
Because it is insinuating that this other person knows the way that you think,
Is inside your head,
And therefore,
They know why you said what you said,
Which may be a complete contrast to the truth of why you said what you said.
But the insinuation is,
They know better than you,
Which is power over you.
So narcissists project their negative traits onto others as a way to offset their uncomfortableness with characteristics they've yet to resolve within themselves.
One way this is accomplished is by accusing others of what they are guilty of.
Narcissistic people who are jealous,
Insecure,
Or angry might accuse you of such things,
And even suggest that they know why you said what you said.
Be careful.
Only you know why you said what you said.
Don't get lost in conversations with people who refuse to listen,
Who lack empathy,
And blame shift to rationalize their own faulty perceptions.
So most research points in the direction that has us understanding that narcissists are immersed in tremendous shame.
And then there is new evidence,
New research,
That suggests the opposite.
There's actually evidence out there that suggests that people who score high on narcissism tests really don't care that you think that they're a narcissist.
They really do think that they are better than you.
And it doesn't seem to be rooted in some painful trauma from childhood.
It seems like it could be societal,
It could be cultural,
It could be familial,
Where parents are encouraging their children to think that they are better than other children,
That they're special.
They deserve preferential treatment.
And this carries over to this lack of empathy,
This lack of connection to other people in society,
And them feeling like they really are better than you are,
And or more worthy,
And entitled to preferential treatment,
Which is really interesting.
