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.
In today's session,
We will discuss how to tell the difference between someone who is love-avoidant and someone who is actually a narcissist.
This can be confusing because both love-avoidant and narcissist often share similar childhood wounds of abandonment and inconsistent maternal warmth.
When love is unpredictable and erratic,
It is impossible to develop trust as an adult in others and in one's sense of worth when it comes to believing one's self is worthy of being loved.
So here are some things to consider when you are trying to decipher if someone is a love-avoidant or a covert narcissist.
First let's get a little bit clearer about what being love-avoidant means.
A person who is love-avoidant has a fear of getting too close to others emotionally.
They may push away people or avoid intimacy because they are afraid of getting hurt.
Love-avoidant individuals may struggle to trust others and have difficulty expressing their feelings.
This does not mean that they do not have feelings.
It just means that they are afraid to express themselves.
They fear that if you knew how they felt,
You would use that against them or perhaps find a reason to leave them.
A love-avoidant may prioritize their independence and have a difficult time committing to a long-term relationship.
Getting too close for too long a period of time causes them to feel smothered.
When we are dealing with a narcissistic person,
On the other hand,
We are dealing with someone who we may not be able to connect to emotionally as well.
However,
That will be because they need to remain in control over the relationship.
Not acknowledging your needs or meeting you in the middle is their way of maintaining power and dominance.
Ignoring you is done to control you or to cause you to become worried about what they think about you.
Whereas someone who is love-avoidant is not trying to control you by avoiding or distancing from you.
They are instead trying to control the anxiety they feel when someone gets too close to them.
A narcissist has an inflated sense of self-importance and lacks empathy for others.
And that's not the case with a love-avoidant.
A narcissist often seeks admiration and intention from others to boost their ego and will gain that supply by resorting to exerting emotional,
Physical,
Financial,
Or psychological power over others.
Narcissists have a sense of entitlement and believe they deserve special treatment.
Avoiding you,
Dismissing you,
Or devaluing you is something they feel entitled to do.
They will manipulate others through triangulation,
Emotional extortion,
Or lying to get what they want and struggle to see things from other people's perspectives.
In fact,
They can't.
Here are some telltale signs of narcissism.
Number one,
There's an excessive need for attention and admiration.
Narcissists constantly seek attention and admiration from others to boost their fragile egos.
Here's an example,
John is always talking about his accomplishments and expects everyone to praise him for his achievement.
He will even lie and exaggerate those achievements to manipulate how he thinks you view him.
Number two,
Narcissists lack empathy for others.
An example is Sarah,
Who never apologizes when she hurts someone's feelings and dismisses others' emotions as unimportant.
Her rationalizations for hurting others seems rational to her,
And anyone who challenges her will be discarded,
Devalued,
And dehumanized.
Number three,
A sense of entitlement.
A narcissistic person believes they deserve special treatment and expects others to cater to their needs regardless of how irrational,
Unfair,
Or unjust.
Here's an example,
Mike always expects to have his parents give him money when he expects it,
Regardless of putting his parents into financial ruin.
Mike won't care that he is a gambler and has an addiction.
In his mind,
He is entitled to being supported by his aging parents.
Number four,
Intimacy impossibility.
Narcissists are incapable of honest and mature intimacy.
Due to their sense of entitlement and lack of empathy,
Although emotions within relationships with a narcissist might be intense,
A narcissist cannot see you because you are merely an object within their mind.
Therefore,
Intimacy is impossible.
For example,
Sharon tells Tom that she loves him,
But when Tom neglects to tell her how beautiful she is,
Sharon takes on an enraged demeanor and begins to assault Tom verbally.
Tom cannot speak to Sharon about how her words and actions made him feel because Sharon is a narcissist,
And so true intimacy and vulnerability is impossible.
Tom will continue to walk on eggshells and Sharon will continue to try to train Tom to become her consistent source of narcissistic supply.
In comparison,
Here are signs of love avoidance.
Number one,
The fear of intimacy.
A love avoided person will struggle to open up emotionally and may avoid getting too close to you,
But this won't be because the person is trying to get you to worry about what they think about you,
Which is what a narcissist will do.
For example,
Emily finds expressing her feelings to her partner hard and often distances herself when things get too serious,
And this is because of an internal struggle Emily is having and not because she needs to control her partner.
Number two,
Difficulty trusting others.
A love avoided individual has trust issues and finds it challenging to rely on others for emotional support.
Rather than using others via a sob story or through manipulation or coercion,
A love avoided would rather struggle on their own than use anyone else.
Here's an example,
Alex hesitates to share personal information with friends and keeps people at arm's length to protect themselves from getting hurt.
He won't ask for help because he does not want to feel indebted to others.
Doing it alone makes him feel safer than trusting others.
Number three,
Avoidance of commitment.
A love avoided person may resist committing to a long-term relationship or even shy away from making plans with their partner because the idea of not being able to escape causes them to feel unsafe and unsure.
Remember that love avoidance have been conditioned to distrust that others will be there for them,
So committing to a long-term relationship is terrifying.
Here's an example,
Jessica is reluctant to discuss moving in with her boyfriend and avoids conversations about their future.
This is not her wanting to control her boyfriend or play mind games.
It is a genuine fear of getting too close and Jessica not having the life skills to navigate those fears.
So while both narcissists and love avoidant individuals might exhibit behaviors that impact the relationship dynamics,
The key differences lie in their underlying motivations and responses to emotional intimacy.
Narcissists seek power and control and domination,
While love avoidance may fear getting too close and avoid emotional vulnerability because they experience tremendous cognitive dissonance in regard to trusting someone they love enough to let them into their inner world and their hearts.
So it's important that we recognize that someone who is love avoidant is not someone who's seeking to dominate,
Who is seeking to control,
And who's seeking to exploit whatever they can and extract whatever they can from the relationship.
Someone who is love avoidant is truly struggling with their internal emotional landscape.
A love avoidant is not someone who doesn't want to be loved.
A love avoidant wants to be loved,
But when you're in a relationship with a love avoidant,
It will feel like a cat and mouse game.
And so it really is up to us.
I mean,
There are so many terms,
So many labels,
So many categories that we are learning about today in this age with social media and Google and what is available to us,
I mean,
Literally at our fingertips,
That it really does help us to decipher and to educate ourselves about these terms.
So you might be in a relationship with someone who's really struggling to trust that they can trust you,
But it really is their internal battle.
So they have to learn to trust themselves.
When you have healed love avoidance,
Then you have moved beyond the worry that other people are going to reject you.
True healing,
A true sign of emotional resiliency and true codependent recovery,
If you will,
And even someone who is love avoidant,
Someone who struggles with being able to connect with someone for longer periods of time emotionally without needing to run away and have everything cool off,
Which is really frustrating if you're in a relationship with that person because it could feel like hot and cold,
Hot and cold,
Hot and cold.
And it really is up to us to figure out if you're in that type of relationship.
If you're in that type of relationship with someone who is hot and cold,
It's up to you to figure out how long you want to invest in this relationship.
You can love this person who has all of these trust issues and intimacy issues.
And you can even see the person who's struggling behind this pane of glass that wants so much to be able to let you in and let their heart out.
But you really have to figure out how long you want to play that game because it's up to the person who's struggling with love avoidance to heal the pain,
To heal the trauma,
To heal the abandonment wounds that are responsible for the psychological processes and for these survival mechanisms that exist at the subconscious level.
And I truly believe that with an elevation of consciousness,
With the right tools in your toolbox,
That you can overcome this,
But not without raising your consciousness.
Without raising your consciousness,
Your mind and your brain,
Your ego,
Your personality self,
You're just going to keep doing what was done.
So if you are the love avoidant and people are kind of like they hang on for a while,
They see the good in you,
But after a while they get kind of frustrated and exasperated that they end up breaking off the relationship with you.
If this is something that frustrates you and you want to put an end to it,
It's up to you to look within and finally heal those beliefs,
Those faulty beliefs,
Heal those survival mechanisms,
Move beyond the story and the narrative of the trauma,
Which is valid,
That was created in your childhood so that you can begin to connect with people on an intimate level without allowing fear to run your ship.
So as someone who has had to face those issues,
What I learned to do was I learned to face my abandonment fears.
I learned to heal my inner child.
I learned to understand and really unearth the codependent belief systems that were keeping me stuck,
Repeating these improper patterns in my life.
And ultimately what I was afraid of was being abandoned,
Being rejected.
So when I faced that head on and I realized that I had that fear,
Then I took it all the way to the end.
And I actually learned to reprogram my subconscious mind to accept that people have a right to come or to leave,
Right?
You have a right to stay in my life or exit my life.
And guess what?
Guess what,
Dear one?
I have the same exact rights.
So I have the right to be in a relationship or to decide that I want out of that relationship.
This is adulting.
This is what mature people do.
This is what healthy,
Rational people come to acknowledge.
Now when we're unhealthy,
We don't do a very good job of appreciating that.
So we are either in fear of someone leaving us.
And so we want to be loved,
But we play this little cat and mouse game.
We push and we get that person to love us.
And then when it gets a little too complicated for us,
We pull back.
And now this person is going to pursue us.
And once they pursue us and we start to feel a little smothered again,
We get cold and then that person backs off.
And before you know it,
We don't like the way that feels.
So we start to pursue them again.
It's a complete dysfunctional immature cat and mouse game that none of us have to participate in as long as we're willing to put the work in to heal our lives and make sure that we're doing all the personal development work that we need to do to overcome this.
Because if we don't,
We die in this pattern and that's just ridiculous.
We don't have to do that in this day and age.
Now someone who is narcissistic,
If you're involved with a narcissist,
You might feel the hot and the cold.
But what you'll acknowledge is the hot and the cold is used intentionally to cause you to fear,
To cause you to feel trepidation.
It is a form of what I consider is Pavlovian conditioning.
In other words,
Like I'm going to ring the bell,
I'm going to feed you a treat,
And then I'm going to ring the bell and not give you a treat.
So you're like,
What's up?
Where's the treat?
And what that will do is that will intensify your desire to figure out how to get that treat.
Now,
Keep in mind that a narcissistic person is going to play the cat and mouse game intentionally to dominate you,
To have power over you,
And to cause you to want them more.
So think about the psychological warfare that happens when you're involved with a narcissist.
They must maintain dominance and power over you.
That's not what a love avoidant is doing.
A love avoidant is so upset internally with this cognitive dissonance around love.
They want love,
But they're afraid of love.
Whereas a narcissist doesn't have that struggle.
A narcissist wants to control the narrative and the energy of the relationship.
It's about dominance and control.
So I hope this information gives you a little bit more to chew on,
A little bit more information to really think about.
In either situation,
What we're trying to do is gain this ability to gain objectivity,
To be able to make sure that we're perceiving whatever it is that we're going through through a rational lens,
That we're holding on to the self,
That we have this steel spine that I always talk about,
Where we're not looking at this situation through the eyes of our wounded child.
We're looking at this situation through the eyes of a rational,
Logical human being that has a right to be respected and to receive in response whatever they give.
So in other words,
If you're willing to show up and to love and to be nurturing and to be considerate and understanding,
To be loyal,
To be respectful,
For you to spend your time with this person,
You could spend your time on earth with any person you choose.
So choosing to spend your time with a specific individual is a tremendous thing.
Time is your greatest commodity.
Well,
So is your focus.
But my point is that you could spend time with anybody.
So this idea that you're spending your time,
Which is limited on God's green earth,
With this individual person,
You need to know that you deserve the same level of respect in return.
And not that you berate this person for not being the person you want them to be.
It's up to you to clearly discern who is this person,
And am I willing to invest any more time in this relationship?
Certainly someone who is love avoidant and who is willing to acknowledge that they're love avoidant and to acknowledge that they have trouble with intimacy and vulnerability and sharing themselves and sticking it out for the long term.
If that person is willing to work on those issues,
You have a chance.
But research suggests that narcissists,
People who are highly narcissistic,
Without them curtailing their behavior and really trying to develop the life skills to consider someone else's feelings and to really take stock of how their actions and their words are affecting someone else,
Without backwards rationalization,
Without ego justification,
Without rationalization,
Remember that one of the greatest things that triggers a narcissist is when you challenge them,
When they get the feeling that you see something in them that is negative and goes against their narrative,
Which is they're superior and they're right and everybody else is a peon.
And so when you challenge that train of thought inside a narcissist's mind,
They're coming for you.
So these are the types of things that you want to think about.
So in essence,
Someone who is highly narcissistic,
You're going to have a much less chance of them acknowledging it and going to therapy and really,
Really working hard on changing their behavior.
But it is possible.
But it's up to you as the individual who's dealing with one of these personalities or possibly two.
People are complex.
And so you might have a friend who's a love avoidant and a friend who's actually narcissistic or a child that's a love avoidant and a child that's narcissistic or whatever,
In any scenario.
But it's up to you to figure out what it is that you're dealing with in your relationship so that you can make a conscious decision about moving your life forward.
