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.
We're going to be talking about why it's important to get angry at your narcissistic parent.
We have to understand that anger and getting in touch with anger is a very important part of the healing process.
If you were raised by a narcissistic parent,
You know that it's almost impossible to be permitted to feel what you feel.
And when you were traumatized by being raised by a narcissistic parent,
And I also want to say that anyone that has not been raised by a narcissist may not be able to relate to this video,
That people who have actually been raised by a narcissistic mother or a narcissistic father and who know what it's like,
You know,
If you're the daughter of a narcissistic mother,
You know what it's like to feel like your mother has disdain for you.
You know what it feels like to feel like your mother is jealous of you.
You know what it feels like if you're the son of a narcissistic father to feel like your father is in competition with you,
And he's highly critical of you,
And he wants you to do what he wants you to do,
And he cannot validate you unless you absolutely bend over backwards to fit his version of you.
You know what it feels like to go to school and to feel like there's something wrong with you when you hear about your classmates talking about what they did with their moms or the dads over their weekend or the family.
You know what it feels like to grow up craving love like you crave air.
I mean,
It is a feeling of suffocation,
Like you're being suffocated of air.
Like love is right in front of you.
There's your mom,
There's your dad,
And you can't touch it.
It can't get to you,
And it makes you feel like you're suffocating.
And then as you grow up,
You begin to believe,
I believe it's the cognitive dissonance and the backwards rationalization that our minds naturally go through that cause us to come to the conclusion that it must be us.
There's something eternally flawed about me that makes it impossible for my mother or father to love me.
And we carry this wound around us like the scarlet letter.
And it's Mother's Day,
It's Father's Day,
It's their birthday,
It's our birthday,
You know,
And there are family gatherings and you feel like a fish outside of the aquarium.
And nobody understands what your perspective is all about.
Nobody can appreciate the perspective of the inner child or the child who was born to and raised by a narcissistic parent.
It is so mind boggling and I get it now,
But you know,
When you're young and you're being raised by somebody who completely lacks self-awareness,
There is no accountability,
They're always wrong and their agenda is to make you their child wrong,
Right?
They're getting narcissistic supply from the criticism,
From embarrassing you,
From putting you down,
From making you feel like nothing you ever do is good enough,
To making you feel like a complete obligation,
That it's all your fault that your mother or your father has to work so hard and they had all these opportunities that they had to give up on because you were born and aren't they these wonderful people that rolled around the sack with somebody and happened to get pregnant and had you?
It's all your fault,
It's all your fault,
Don't you understand?
This is what a narcissistic parent does.
They create you and then they berate you,
Right?
They create you and then they demoralize you,
They criticize you,
Humiliate you,
Discard you,
Devalue you.
You will never be good enough,
You will be compared to your cousins and your sister or you know,
You will suffer their internal projections.
In other words,
Like everything that your mother is guilty of,
She'll vomit it all over you.
Everything that your father wasn't able to achieve,
He'll put that on you and he'll feel like you owe it to him to achieve this dream that he was never able to achieve and you will be accused of being selfish,
You know,
Ungrateful for not doing what these people wanted you to do.
Nothing you do will ever be good enough,
Ever,
Ever.
They will make fun of you on your wedding day.
If you go to them and you tell them that you're in pain,
They'll call you a drama queen.
If you go to them after being in some toxic relationship,
They'll suggest that you were just too selfish or that you're too much and you can't get along with anybody.
This is the type of consistent gaslighting that children who are raised by narcissistic parents endure day in and day out from the moment they're born.
Now a big problem is that when you are this person and you have this dysfunctional relationship with your mother and your father and I think a lot more of us have these types of relationship than we're actually aware of.
I think that a narcissistic parent can annihilate a human being's ability to hold on to themselves and to be objective,
You know,
To the point where,
You know,
You're just so beaten down,
You don't even try to like,
It's learned helplessness.
You don't even try to fight back anymore.
You are,
You know,
Your complex PTSD is so off the charts that you're not fighting.
You're not fawning,
You know,
You're freezing.
You're fleeing.
You're using escapism.
You know that any interaction with your mother and or your father is going to be extremely painful.
So I try,
You know,
That as a child,
No matter how many A's you got or B's you got,
Or no matter how hard you try to please them,
It was never enough.
The criticism was always there.
They discarded you.
They devalued you.
You know that no matter how hard you try to get a trophy,
It was never good enough.
And so you know that going to them when you're wounded and when you're hurt,
You're just going to be more hurt.
They're going to blame you for why you're hurt.
You know that.
And so you get to a point where you are just not even going to try anymore.
Or you can get stuck fighting with your parents,
Like,
You know,
Just all out fighting and angry and that's the only thing that you can,
That's the only way to communicate.
Or you can end up fawning the rest of your life.
That's the problem.
When you come from a traumatic background where emotional neglect is the norm,
Psychological abuse is the norm.
I'm not even talking about overt physical abuse.
I'm talking about the onslaught of psychological abuse,
The constant invalidation,
The constant guilt,
The constant shame.
It's maddening.
It's absolutely maddening.
You know,
Going to your mother or your father for comfort and being,
You know,
Like taught that,
You know,
You don't deserve their compassion.
You know,
I had one client tell me that she said to her mother,
Like,
I just always thought that one day you'd be proud of me.
And she said,
Well,
As of yet,
You've never done anything that I could actually say that I'm proud of you for.
You know,
This is somebody who achieved great success in her career and it was not enough for her narcissistic mother.
So it's like they're always moving the goalpost,
Right?
Like,
I'll never be able to please you.
And yet this is air.
This is love.
This is the person who is supposed to show you that you are worthy,
That you are enough.
Right.
When you look into the eyes of your mother,
Into the eyes of your father,
What should be coming back is you are enough and I love you.
That allows you to find your eye,
Your identity.
You know,
The who I am is enough because this person who I think is absolutely amazing and represents God to me says that I am enough now because you said it.
There is a witness.
Right.
My mother has said it.
My father has said it.
There's a witness to my work.
Now I know that I am.
Now I know I exist and I know that whatever I am is worthy.
Now,
If you come from a home like that and that's been your experience,
Then you know,
You're able to set boundaries.
You're able to say,
Hey,
Knock it off.
That hurts.
Right.
So when you have to fight or push back,
You do.
Right.
You're not someone who's going to go into rescuing and enabling and fixing.
Right.
That's what co-dependence do.
And that's why narcissists and co-dependence,
They're like hands in a glove because,
You know,
I,
You know,
I believe that narcissists are,
Well,
I think it's fair to say we all understand this by now that a narcissist is self-focused.
Right.
And a co-dependent is other focus.
So it's two people in one relationship,
Two people focused on the one person.
And this is whether you're in an intimate relationship or you're in a relationship with a narcissistic mother or a narcissistic father,
You are in a relationship with two people and both people are worried about the one person.
Worried about what?
What they think,
What they feel,
What they want,
What they,
What they say about you,
What they don't say about you,
What they do,
What they don't do.
I mean,
If you're in a narcissistic relationship,
The two people are concerned about the one person.
So the narcissist concerned about what I think about my daughter that continues to disappoint me,
You know,
And it's so selfish,
You know,
And wishes she was me.
You know,
If I'm the narcissistic mother,
Then I'm thinking about what I think about my daughter.
And if I'm the co-dependent daughter,
The wounded daughter stuck in some CPTSD response,
Then I might be obsessed,
Which I was,
I was that daughter that was obsessed.
It was a constant loop in my head.
What is my mother going to think?
What does my mother going to think?
You know,
Is this going to please her?
Is this going to make her angry?
Unbelievable,
Unbelievable.
You know,
Until I was about 36 years old and I had,
You know,
An okay corral moment with my mother where I pointed my finger in her head and well in her face and said,
You're not the boss of me anymore.
And I'm not 12 years old anymore and you don't get to treat me like this.
Thank goodness I was in therapy at the time with a psychotherapist that understood co-dependency.
And you know,
He was helping me understand that I had no eye that being raised in this home had taught me that I didn't have a right to my own Buddha self,
My own inner self.
I had my own inner child.
I had no right to protect my inner child.
I had no right to say,
Hey,
Knock it off.
I was in escapism mode.
I was in OCD mode.
I was in love addiction mode.
I was anywhere but here dealing with how I felt about this grown ass person.
My mother treating me in such a cruel way and lacking the awareness as to how she was affecting me.
My mother had no awareness that she was the adult child of two drunks.
Yes,
Two drunk alcoholics or alcoholics,
But my grandparents were drunks passed out on the couch drunk.
No clean clothes,
No food in the refrigerator,
Mice,
Rats,
Cockroaches.
That's how my mom grew up.
So all of that stuff is unresolved.
And who does she project it on?
She has me at 19 years old.
She was an angry person.
So very,
Very strange.
But my mother,
In my opinion,
Would take her anger out on me.
All of her resentment,
All of her frustration,
She took it out on me.
And I was an innocent little baby that just wanted my mommy.
I have no concept that my mother is 19 years old.
I have no concept that her father died five months before I was born.
I have no concept that my father is high on the narcissistic spectrum and she's frustrated.
I have no concept of what it means to be the adult child of an alcoholic.
I'm an innocent baby born to this crazy situation.
And my experience was hostile.
My mother didn't know the ability to nurture me.
I don't blame her anymore.
But I'm just saying it like it was.
And so very strange.
Mom was passive aggressive with me and verbally abusive with me,
Physically abusive,
Psychologically abusive.
And I could see her be passive aggressive with my dad.
But holy Hannah,
She was so codependent on that man.
She stuffed all her emotions and she toned herself down to make him happy.
But when there was no one around,
There was hell to pay because that one was on a rampage and she was a rageaholic.
Now the problem we have as adult children of narcissistic parents is that we were annihilated day in and day out.
We love these people.
We were dependent upon these people that we knew we needed for our survival.
So if I get cast out of this tribe,
I don't eat.
I have nowhere to sleep.
That is terrifying to know that the person that you love can hurt you and is hurting you.
And it's a double whammy when the other parent,
In my case,
My dad,
My dad knew that me and my mom had some stuff going on.
And you know what he did?
He told me to worry about her.
So now if you think about that,
There's a trinity of people,
Mom,
Dad,
Child,
Me,
And mom's worried about mom.
Mom's worried about dad,
Right?
Dad's worried about mom.
Dad's worried about dad.
No one's worrying about the child and how the child is is perceiving this situation.
And we want to know why we end up as love addicts and drug addicts and have eating disorders,
Suffer with abandonment trauma or terrified of rejection,
Are afraid to,
We give up our careers,
You know,
We're afraid to surpass any level that our mother was at or any level that our father was at.
We tone ourselves down.
You know,
We create this pecking order while they create the pecking order.
And we never quite get to the point where we feel like we're equals to our parents.
And God forbid we surpass them.
This is crazy making.
You know,
Another level of this is when you grow up in this type of a home and the neighbors don't see it.
The teachers don't see it.
The pediatrician doesn't see it.
Everybody sees Tuesday sunshine that goes to church every Sunday.
It reads the Bible,
Listens to Christian music.
Hallelujah.
Praise the Lord.
That's what everybody else sees.
No one sees the reality of the inner child or the child that is born to people who have serious emotional mental health issues.
Nobody sees that.
And so here you are,
This little person born to planet earth in a very abrasive experience and your heart space.
This is how I think it goes down.
Okay.
This is just my theory because I believe everything at the end of the day is vibrational.
Right.
So you've got a little baby that is innocent,
Innocent,
Divine and pure is blooped,
Flopped into this external 3D experience and the energy of the home is thick and abusive and toxic and cold.
It's nothing but it's not nurturing.
Right.
And mom's full of stuff and dad's full of stuff,
All this emotional baggage and this baby's inner being and brain has to figure out very quickly what the heck is going on.
And so I believe that when a child is born to a toxic environment,
Their heart space perceives this information and this information is relayed to the brain and the brain goes to work,
You know,
Wiring this brain for stress or,
You know,
Security,
Relaxation and growth and healthy brain development.
That's not your fault.
If you are now,
You know,
Easily frightened,
If you are somebody who struggles with eating disorders or if you're somebody who keeps attracting narcissistic people,
If you're somebody who escapes all the time through addiction or alcohol or sex addiction or whatever,
That's not your fault.
You know,
If you are a people pleaser or if you are a head bobber,
You know,
If you see yourself as the quicker pick picker-upper,
You know,
You're the mop,
You're the broom,
You're the paper towel,
You're,
You know,
You're the bleach,
You know,
You're everything in your family.
You are the person in your family that has no need.
Right.
You are there for everybody else.
Who are you going to attract?
You're going to attract somebody that takes and takes and takes.
That's what you're going to attract.
That is not your fault.
You know,
You might be somebody who is stuck in reactivity.
Again,
Not your fault.
If you're born as an innocent child to a situation or a home that makes you feel like your life is in jeopardy,
Well,
Think about the survival.
You know,
We have to figure out fight or flight,
You know,
And when you're born to people that you depend on,
You can't run away from them.
You are stuck,
Dear one,
You are stuck.
So codependency,
Depression,
Anxiety,
In my own,
In my humble opinion,
Is the result of being born in these situations.
We need to be looking under the hood of our subconscious mind and looking into the subconscious mind and going back in time and figuring out why,
Why am I codependent?
Why do I keep attracting narcissists?
Why do I fawn?
Why do I hang on to relationships when it is blatantly obvious to everybody else but me that the person is not interested in me?
I've attracted a love avoidant.
Why do I keep trying?
Why do I keep throwing myself up against the door?
And don't think that just women do this.
Men do this too.
Codependent men from dysfunctional homes where they were raised by a narcissistic mother or a narcissistic father end up in lots of situations being codependent men that chase more narcissistic women,
You know,
Or they get involved with women who can't receive the love that they want to offer them,
Right?
And so this happens across the board.
Now the reason it's important that we get in touch with anger is because anger allows us to feel me,
The I that I am.
When you are a child and you're born to dysfunctional people,
That ability is annihilated.
You get mad at your parent because they left you in the rain.
They were supposed to pick you up at three o'clock and they went out to the gym or they went out to play tennis or they went to go do whatever the hell dysfunctional parents do and they didn't care to pick you up and they thought,
Oh,
Well,
You know,
She could walk home.
It's not that far.
Meanwhile,
It's 27 blocks.
Then there's a thunderstorm out,
Right?
You're just getting over the flu.
Mom doesn't care.
If mom's a narcissist,
She's able to rationalize.
Well,
I cooked a breakfast.
She's got clothes on her back.
She doesn't pay rent.
You're eight years old.
You're eight years old.
Hello.
This is crazy town,
But this is what happens,
Right?
God forbid you walk home and you say to your mom,
Mom,
You were supposed to pick me up at three o'clock.
God forbid you have that I am moment.
I exist and this is who I am and this is anger and this is good and this is real,
You know,
Is healthy people or they feel anger.
Healthy people can process anger.
They recognize anger is valid.
It means that something happened in my experience that I am not in alignment with that is completely unfair and I need a boundary here.
Can I get an A?
So that's what healthy anger is,
Right?
So if you're eight years old and you say to your narcissistic mother,
Hey,
Where were you?
Were you out drinking again or did you go out your boyfriend again?
You know,
Are you out playing tennis again or whatever it is,
Right?
You know what your narcissistic mother is going to do?
Forget about it.
She's going to annihilate you.
She's going to stomp on your head.
She's going to make you feel like you had no right in the world to question her or to get angry at her.
There is no fairness when it comes to a narcissistic mother.
A narcissistic mother is always right.
Even when it is blatantly obvious to the entire world that you left your daughter in the rain at three o'clock to go play tennis with your new boyfriend.
Okay?
Not going to see it.
She's going to turn it around.
She's going to try to make you feel guilty.
She's going to talk about the fact that you had dinner last night and two weeks ago how she did show up to pick you up.
The fact that she did not show up for you now and you had to walk home 27 blocks in a thunderstorm doesn't matter dear one when you have a narcissistic mother.
Irrelevant.
Irrelevant.
When you are that child,
Guess what?
You have been consistently taught and conditioned and what I say is psychologically programmed.
You have these default settings in your brain associated with setting a boundary with mom or talking about how you feel.
So now what happens when you talk about how you feel,
Which is what you're supposed to be doing and expressing yourself is what you're supposed to be doing.
That's how you develop your boundaries as a person.
That's how you say,
This is who I am by acknowledging this anger.
When you do that and it's annihilated consistently,
You know what happens in your brain?
Your brain learns to associate more pain with standing up for yourself and shutting up.
So guess what?
Rather than avoid more pain and harassment,
Now mommy's not talking to me for a month and now mommy's on the phone talking to her boyfriend about what a nasty little selfish little girl,
Ungrateful little girl I am,
Rather than my mom now not letting me go see my dad,
I shut up.
Right?
I shut up.
It is not worth talking to this woman.
It is not worth talking to a narcissistic father about how he embarrassed you at the baseball field.
It's not worth it.
He's going to smack you in the back of the head in the truck as soon as no one's around.
Right?
This is what's going to happen.
So children from these homes learn to cut themselves off.
So their heart space,
You want to talk about chakras,
Your heart space is constricted.
You walk around feeling like there's an elephant on your chest and you can't tell anybody because the people that you know,
That know your parents,
Don't see what they're doing to you.
Narcissism,
In most cases,
I think,
Happens behind closed doors.
This is Dr.
Jekyll and Mr.
Hyde thing kind of thing going on where,
You know,
And if you're a real narcissist,
Like mom or dad,
If they're a real narcissist,
They go to work bragging about,
You know,
How proud they are of you.
And when they come home,
They're talking smack about you.
They're putting you down and you're like,
Holy Hannah,
What is happening?
Quick story.
When I was about 12 or 13 years old,
I remember my mom asked me and any of you out there who have had a narcissistic mother or father or a mom or dad that's at least on the spectrum,
Let's just say not very good at nurturing you and validating you,
Understanding you.
Let's just say that you'll get this story.
So I'm about,
I don't know,
I guess between the ages of 12 and 14,
Maybe.
And my mom says,
So what do you want for Christmas?
So I remember feeling like,
Should I tell her what I want?
You know,
She's asking me,
But,
You know,
I'm kind of afraid because my mother had always infused me with this idea that I was selfish,
That I was ungrateful,
That I was the worst person.
I remember feeling that I am bad.
Like,
I can't do good things because I'm bad.
My mother would call me a bad girl.
Sorry,
She's passed on.
You know,
The angel over my shoulder,
That's my,
That represents my mom to me.
I know that when she crossed over,
She learned all the things that she could have done better.
I get it now.
But in the moment,
This is what she and I went through.
It was a very toxic,
Unfair,
Abusive relationship,
In my humble opinion.
And so anyway,
I'm,
You know,
This is what I grew up with.
So when my mom asked me,
Like,
What do you want?
I was afraid.
I was like,
I don't know how to answer that.
You're going to shoot me if I tell you what I really want?
You're like,
You know,
You're going to call your friends and tell them like how selfish I am,
But you,
But you're asking me what I want.
So I'm so confused.
When you have a narcissistic mom or narcissistic dad,
Seriously,
Dear one,
You are damned if you do and damned if you don't.
So you know,
If I whatever.
So anyway,
She tells me,
She asked me,
Come on,
Tell me what you want.
I said,
Well,
You know,
A lot of my friends have these nameplate rings or these these initial rings.
So back in the day,
I was born in the 60s.
And by the time I was sometime in the 70s or I guess late 70s,
Early 80s,
Back in the day,
At least in Queens,
New York,
A big deal was like these lettering.
So it'd be this tiny little initial with these little tiny diamonds in it.
Right.
I didn't care if it was real or not real.
I just,
Well,
You know,
I'd like an L ring.
And she looked at me,
She said,
Hmm,
What makes you think you deserve that?
I can feel it happening all over again.
My entire from my throat down to my root chakra gets just gets here.
It just gets tightened up when I remember her doing that to me.
And that was the norm.
Right.
That was the norm.
So it was almost like she asked me to stick my neck out and go.
But you asked me what I wanted and I honestly told you and now you're shooting me down and suggesting I don't deserve what I asked for.
It felt like acid in my brain.
And yet at the same time,
I can't fight her.
I can't I need her.
And at the same time,
Like there's nothing that I can do in that moment besides freeze.
Right.
Besides freeze.
And I felt so much shame.
Right.
And then what do I do?
Then I go to school the next day and I try to win an art ribbon.
Or I try to,
You know,
Get a really good grade because I don't want my mom to think that I'm not worthy.
So I try to fawn.
Right.
Oh,
It's so maddening.
So anyway,
Christmas comes and I lo and behold,
There's this little box and I open up the box and it's the L ring.
So I look at the box and I look at her and I'm speechless.
I don't again.
Damn.
If you do,
I don't know what to do.
And so I looked at her and she looked at me and she said,
What?
You're not going to say anything?
And I was like,
I don't know what to say.
And she says,
You're so ungrateful.
So nothing I ever do for you is good enough.
I was so frozen on Christmas morning thinking.
And you know,
This is happening in front of my sister,
My brother,
My father.
No one says anything.
No one says anything.
That's another thing.
When you live with these types of experiences,
Other people are watching it,
But no one says anything.
Right.
And so you feel so alone and so helpless in the world.
And there is who are you going to go to?
You're going to go to the school teacher.
You're going to go to the school counselor.
What are they going to do?
They're going to send your butt home.
And now you've got to deal with that.
Right.
There is no one there to protect you.
When you come from a home like this,
You feel so unsafe and you feel so unprotected.
And your mind is doing everything that it possibly can to avoid further pain.
That is not your fault.
No,
It's not easy to make friends when you live in this type of environment.
No,
It's not easy to trust people.
You can't trust the people that are supposed to take care of you.
So no,
It's not going to be easy to trust people.
No,
It's not going to be easy to be vulnerable.
No,
You might not really push yourself to go out for the job you really want.
It's scary to stick your neck out.
And that's what happens when you come from this type of a home.
You've been taught that if you stick your neck out,
You're going to pay a high price.
And you've been taught that really getting in touch with your vulnerable self comes with the cost.
So you've been taught that toning yourself down,
Holding yourself back is safer than putting yourself out there.
And that's how you run your life until,
In lots of cases,
Bam,
You end up in a romantic relationship.
And then,
My Lord,
All of your abandonment trauma,
Your attachment trauma,
All of your fear of rejection surfaces,
And you're either going to be love addicted,
Codependent,
Or love avoidant,
Or disorganized.
You're going to have a very difficult time securely attaching in a healthy way.
And that's not your fault.
The good news is that if you can figure this stuff out,
And if you can self diagnose yourself,
Because let's face it,
Codependency is not in the DSM.
And in terms of narcissistic abuse,
You walk into,
A lot of therapists don't want you saying,
My husband's a narcissist,
Or my mother's a narcissist.
They don't want you saying that.
And so it can be really,
Really difficult.
I do believe that therapy with the right therapist,
Especially a trauma informed therapist,
Is the way to go.
And definitely interviewing a therapist and asking them,
Do you understand narcissistic abuse and codependency?
Because I think that's what I've been experiencing.
And I'd like to come and explore what I think is happening to me.
This is the information and the knowledge that I've gained.
And I'd really like someone to help me through this.
I think I've experienced this complex PTSD thing.
I think that my childhood impacted me.
And I really need to talk to a therapist that is willing to explore these ideas.
I think that's a really healthy route to go.
I was definitely,
Definitely,
My entire world shifted when I sat inside a psychotherapist office who understood codependency and who specifically understood what it meant to be raised by two unrecovered adult children of alcoholics that were raised by pretty much narcissistic people.
And it took me a while on the path to understand that narcissistic parents suffered narcissistic abuse.
And I didn't want to hear that in the beginning of my journey.
It was too much for me to.
.
.
I can't worry about you.
My whole life I'm worried about you.
I got to worry about me.
I got to find my inner child.
And that,
Oh yes,
Oh yes,
That is healthy narcissism,
My friend.
Because if you don't have healthy narcissism,
You don't have an eye and you can't bite people back if they're pushing you around.
And until you learn that you have teeth,
Until you learn that you can bite back,
Until you learn that you can be aware of your own codependency and you can put a narcissist in their place and you can end a narcissistic relationship and you can stop giving to somebody who does not want you to give to them and you can stop giving to somebody who pushes you away.
You can stop giving to someone who never considers you.
Until you learn that you can end that cycle,
You're going to keep attracting these cycles.
So it is absolutely imperative that you develop this ability to hold onto yourself and to hold onto anger.
I'm not saying that you go and you knock the door down of your narcissistic parents' home.
I'm not saying that you go complete no-contact or all.
I do believe that in most cases,
If you're dealing with narcissistic,
Toxic,
Malignant narcissistic parents,
No contact is the way to go.
Because you can have one conversation with a narcissistic parent and they can pull you down the rabbit hole.
It was a couple of years ago that I finally said to my kids,
Because part of what I always struggled with as a mom is my children have absolutely no contact with their dad.
And I always kind of struggle with that.
And I wanted to make sure that my children made that decision on their own.
And it wasn't because I interfered in their perception of him or their experience of him.
Right?
And it was,
If you have a narcissistic spouse and you're trying to deal with co-parenting,
Is like trying to co-parent with King Kong or Godzilla.
It's like,
Come on,
Dude,
You're like,
Just give me a break once in a while.
Like give it up.
You know,
Like let it go.
No,
They don't let it go.
They persecute you.
They punish you.
They have to avenge you.
You know,
They didn't do anything wrong.
It was all you and they will use your children against you.
Okay.
It's crazy town.
And I finally got to a point where I was just like,
I have to let this,
Whatever my kids decide,
They decide.
But it was,
You know,
My kids were doing really,
Really well.
And I remember the moment that my daughter had each child,
Well actually all three children.
I remember the moment in each of their lives when they had the conversation with their dad and I knew,
Uh-oh,
He's dangerous to their mental health.
No accountability,
Complete projection,
Never says I'm sorry.
And if he does say he's sorry,
He's lying.
And next week he's telling you,
I would have said anything to get you off my back.
Right?
You know,
The discard,
You know,
And got involved with the woman.
He had warned me years before and he said,
When I get a woman,
You know,
I'm not going to have anything to do with our kids,
Lisa.
Is that what you want?
If you want to get a divorce,
This is what's going to happen.
I'm not going to have anything to do with our children,
Lisa.
That's my fault.
If we get divorced and you don't have anything to do with your children.
I mean,
He was a prophet back then.
He told me that when he got involved with the woman,
He would discard his children.
And that's exactly what he did.
And I remember the moment in each of my children's lives when it became apparent that he was detrimental to their mental health.
They wanted to love him.
They wanted to get along with him.
They wanted to meet him halfway.
They wanted to understand his relationship with his new girlfriend and eventual new wife.
They wanted to,
But there was just no giving on his side.
It was just you're wrong and I'm right.
You know,
And let me tell you something.
When you live with somebody who thinks they're Moses or thinks they are as good as Jesus,
Because once in a while they read a Bible verse while they're sitting on the toilet bowl,
Oh Lord,
It's nonsensical.
It is just insanity.
It is crazy making.
And then people like this,
What they like to do is they like to say,
That's not very Christian of you,
Lisa.
I never said that you should,
That I was a model Christian.
I never said,
Why are you using that against me?
You know,
Like they will throw everything at you and the kitchen sink to try to make you feel guilty,
To try to annihilate you,
To try to gaslight you,
To get you doubt your reality and for you to feel responsible for their faulty perception of you.
And this is crazy making because if you don't know what you're dealing with,
You stay on this cycle.
You stay in this loop.
That's why I think understanding your childhood is such a big,
Big piece of healing from narcissistic abuse.
Absolutely.
And getting in touch with your anger allows you to get in touch with your eye,
Right?
So I'm not saying that you have to go no contact with your parents,
Although I think that that's a good thing to do,
Especially if they are a malignant narcissist.
And every time you talk to them,
They have the ability to pull you into a rabbit hole,
Right?
That's not such a bad idea,
Going no contact,
Right?
You know,
I'm not saying that you go on social media and you say,
I figured it out.
My mother is a narcissist and you shame her through social media.
That's not what I'm saying because that's really not going to solve anything at all.
I'm not saying that you,
You know,
You know,
Send fire off,
You know,
Emails to your parents saying I figured this out.
You're this and you're that.
That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is acknowledge within yourself the anger that you are entitled to feel because you were robbed and cheated of a right to connect to love,
Right?
Because your parents were so messed up,
Right?
This is not your fault.
Your parents are so messed up that they weren't connected to their own love and heart space,
Right?
They weren't connected to love.
They were disconnected from love.
And in their head,
For whatever reason,
They became narcissistic.
They began to project onto you and you paid the price of what happened to them.
So this is the karmic wheel that spins.
The Bible actually says that the sins of the father and the mother fall on the children.
I think this is what happens.
We just pass the torch as parents unless we freaking wake up.
So the whole journey to healing from co-dependency and narcissistic abuse is to wake up.
You can't fix a hole in the wall you cannot see.
You want to see what was wrong.
Once you become the observer and the witness of what was wrong,
Then you can change what's happening in the now.
So getting in touch with your anger helps you find yourself.
It helps you say,
Wait a minute,
Where is my inner child that went through all of this chaos and went through all of this abuse?
Where is this little mind in my head that has created these faulty perceptions of myself?
Where is this little person that's living in survival mode and who has been annihilated of their right to feel connected to the love that they are?
Where is this person?
Be allowing yourself to be anger leads to your ability to develop self-compassion.
Once you develop compassion for this little person that experienced this type of reality all by herself or himself,
You are on the road to recovery.
Now it is not easy,
Especially when we live in a society that says honor your mother and father,
Right?
Or your mother or your father has already had those sidebar conversations with your future husband or wife and set the tone that you're crazy and that you were a troubled child and you always gave them trouble,
Right?
So just in case you tell your future spouse,
Girlfriend or boyfriend,
Whatever about your mother or father,
The road has already been tainted.
Your spouse already thinks you are the problem.
I know that happened because it happened to me,
Right?
My mother and father went out of their way to tell the men that I dated and my husband that I was crazy,
That there was something wrong with me,
Right?
That I was just too much.
Did I know that I was going to eventually marry my mother?
Hell no,
I didn't know that.
I was repeating the past.
My mother withheld her love for me.
My mother was passive aggressive.
My mother was very critical of me.
My mother could not connect to me,
Didn't want to.
And when I wanted to,
Her response was,
You're too selfish,
Right?
You are ungrateful.
Nothing ever do for you is ever good enough,
Lisa.
You know,
Exhausting.
And that is the same energy being that I married until I allowed myself to get angry.
I allowed myself to get angry at even myself because I was the common denominator.
You know,
I was angry that I didn't know,
But this anger that I tapped into,
Like this unfairness,
You know,
That I had lived this way unconsciously,
This anger allowed me to eventually find a way to like get myself out of the rabbit hole.
And the reality is there is no rescue boat coming,
Right?
When you are understanding all of this stuff,
My experience at least was I felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff and I just fell backwards and there was no floor.
I knew emotionally that there was no floor and I was just free falling.
And I would reach for a branch and there was no branch and I would reach to hold on to something and nothing was there and I was just free falling,
Right?
Complete severed,
Completely severed from all of the attachments that I had,
Even though that they weren't enough from my mother,
From my father,
From my sister,
From my brother,
From my ex-husband,
All of these primary attachments that I had been engaged in a codependent way with seeking approval,
You know,
Seeking validation,
Caretaking,
Fawning,
People pleasing,
Toning myself down,
Afraid of,
You know,
Being discarded.
All of it happened all at one time for me,
You know,
And I was,
I believe that I suffered some type of a mental breakdown,
Absolutely,
Because who I was during that period of my time was not me.
I was a reactive mess,
You know,
I suffered from severe abandonment and I was not in my right mind and it took me quite a bit of time to,
Um,
And embarrassing moments and just humiliating myself and like the men that I clung to were just,
Oh Lord,
It's taken me a while to get past all that,
You know,
But all of it taught me,
You know,
That the power was within me and that being born to such a dysfunctional experience really pushed me off the path to my own inner light.
And eventually I was able to forgive my parents and recognize that they were subject to the law of karma and they were just as unconscious as anybody else and they were victims of narcissistic abuse as well,
But that didn't come until I finally allowed myself to get in touch with anger.
And so if you have a narcissistic parent,
Like I said,
I must reiterate,
When I started to get in touch with anger,
There was this one moment where I said to my mother,
You are not the boss of me.
I am not 12 anymore.
You don't get to treat me this way.
If ever a girl needed a mother,
It is now.
Get out of my way.
I am leaving.
And then there was another moment in time with my father,
Who my father was always,
I found it more difficult to confront him.
You know,
He was a strong Marine,
Very macho,
Scary guy when he got angry,
You know,
And that's how he ruled the house.
You know,
He didn't like what was going on.
He just raged,
You know,
You know,
So we were terrified of my father and my mother was afraid of him.
So I was afraid of him.
But you know,
There was a time where I was going through something with my ex-husband,
You know,
And I just looked at my father and was basically like,
How dare you not take my side right now?
How dare you know that he is doing what he is doing and you are saying nothing.
You are inviting him to dinner.
And I was just like,
I am freaking done here.
We're done.
So this is what it's like to grow up with parents who don't get it and who actually go out of their way to project,
Triangulate and,
You know,
Punish you for the stuff that's going on inside of them.
They are so not aware,
You know,
Of themselves and their actions and they never take accountability.
And this is a situation like this with both my mother and my father.
They never said they were sorry.
They never took accountability for it.
So you know,
It is so important to get in touch with your anger so that you can say,
Here,
I'm going to pin the tail on the donkey.
That's what they did.
That's what she said.
That's why I feel this way.
And you don't take this information and beat people over the head with it.
That's not the reason for this information.
The reason for this information is that you can go no contact.
So you don't have to have to go to that Sunday meal.
So you can say no.
So you can walk out during a conversation.
So you can honor yourself so that you can honor yourself.
However,
You know,
If you are healthy,
You're able to touch anger and express yourself.
And then you return back to a state of homeostasis.
If you're stuck in anger,
That's not good.
You know,
If you are stuck in a state of fight or flight,
That's not good.
But to never be able to get in touch with anger and to be angry over what happened to you as a child keeps you stuck.
It keeps you codependent.
It keeps you fawning.
It keeps you escaping.
Right.
It keeps you reactive.
But none of that is healthy.
So getting in touch with your anger can help you.
If you especially if you've never gotten in touch with your anger,
Learn to find your eye.
If you are stuck in anger,
That's not good.
Right.
What you need is self compassion.
So rather than get stuck in anger,
What you need to work on is why am I angry?
And what is this anger really about?
In most cases,
I think most people would agree that anger is about loss.
You know,
Getting in touch with this loss,
You know,
We don't want to it's too painful and anger is like a mask for it.
Right.
And those of us who are stuck fawning,
Right,
This is what are we really afraid of?
We're afraid of grief and the loss of not having these connections to our parents.
And so we fawn and we people please.
Right.
And we don't get angry.
We don't set boundaries.
Neither experience is healthy.
But if we can accept our anger and we can embrace our anger,
If we can understand that that our inner child had these experience and we can infuse self compassion into these experiences when we think about them,
When we journal about them,
Then we're able to set healthy boundaries.
Then we come out of survival mode and we are we are affected less in the now by narcissistic parents.
