Sick Codependent Narcissist Dance That Keeps You Enslaved

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.

Hello everybody.

Today we're going to be talking about codependency as a trap and how narcissism can keep you enslaved to a relationship system that is built for one.

So why would it be important to raise our awareness about this relationship issue called codependency?

And why would it be important to recognize that codependency is a trap and how the dynamic between someone who is codependent or someone who has a loss of selfhood can find themselves entangled in a relationship with someone who is highly narcissistic and discover that they live their entire lives below the veil of consciousness,

Living in a state of survival,

Creating risks,

Avoiding childhood fears,

Seeking approval,

And not even realize it.

A person can go an entire lifetime and give up their sense of self for the sake of someone else and not even be aware of it.

So imagine you're a little girl born to a codependent mother and a narcissistic father.

Imagine that your mother is the adult child of an alcoholic who has experienced tremendous abandonment trauma,

Who has never felt safe,

And who has learned through observing her mother that if she anticipates the needs of her alcoholic father and she can make herself small then she can stay safe.

Imagine growing up in a home with a mother who has never felt safe for her entire childhood and who is simply repeating the patterns that she learned in childhood.

What are codependent patterns?

The thing that boggles my mind the most is that codependency is like living underwater and you don't even know it.

There's an entire world above the water.

It's sort of like Ariel in The Little Mermaid.

She lives under the sea but she wants to walk on the land.

She wants to understand what it feels like to have the sun touch her back.

She wants to know what it's like to touch a tree and to walk on grass and to play on land.

When you're codependent you don't even know that you're Ariel.

You don't even know that you're living underwater.

You don't even know that you have these issues and that you're trying to avoid additional pain.

You don't know that you are basically recreating your childhood patterns and your childhood programs.

You have no clue.

I think that is just so sad that someone can go their entire lifetime acquiescing,

People pleasing,

Subjugating their needs for the sake of others,

Reacting,

Trying to control everything and everyone,

Feeling easily insulted when someone dislikes them,

Feeling completely crippled by not being able to make another human being happy,

Living on planet Earth believing without even awareness that their entire reason for existing is to fix someone else.

It is to make sure that they are happy.

It is to make sure that their bills are paid.

It is to make sure that they eat well.

It is to make sure that they feel good about themselves.

It is to make sure they don't slip into depression.

It is to make sure they don't get angry.

It is to make sure they don't get upset with the kids.

It's basically living your life as an extension to someone else,

Thinking and believing,

But you don't know that you think and believe this,

That your responsibility in the world is to manage this other person's life.

This manifests when you marry someone who has an addiction.

This manifests when you marry someone who has anger issues.

This manifests when you marry someone who is a gambler.

This manifests in a relationship when you marry someone who is highly narcissistic.

So codependency in and of itself is a matrix.

It is a place where codependents who have felt abandoned and rejected in childhood play.

Think of it as the subconscious playing ground for people who are wounded in childhood.

And it's like this plane of existence or this plane of consciousness where codependents exist and they attract other people who are living below the veil of consciousness.

And it's extremes.

So we have a codependent who is other focused and they need someone to play in this playground who is self-focused.

You ever notice the dynamic between if you watch like a high school program and it's about it's like a movie and you see the high school bully and who is by their side.

Generally speaking,

A codependent who lives to fawn after the high school bully.

Why is this person,

The codependent,

Acquiescing to the bully?

In acquiescing to the bully,

The codependent feels safe.

The codependent feels protected.

My guess is that the codependent has a bully for a mother or a bully for a father or a bully for a sibling.

And the codependent,

The high school codependent recognizes that if I stay close to this bully,

This bully won't eat me.

This bully will protect me.

And codependents live their lives like this,

Living below the veil of consciousness,

Unaware that they're trying to avoid painful experiences,

Unaware they're living underwater,

Unaware they're living with and tending to people who are just as unconscious.

A narcissist is not self-aware.

They know that they have a self,

But I'm talking about the type of self-awareness that is tied to empathy,

Meaning that I have the ability to understand and recognize how what I say affects other people.

And I also have,

There's an emotional component.

I also feel terrible that someone else might have taken a comment that I made in a negative way.

Or maybe I actually had a narcissistic moment.

I was irritated.

I was upset.

And I said something snarky.

If I'm healthy,

After my amygdala calms down and my limbic system calms down,

I recognize,

Wow,

I hurt someone's feelings.

And I actually have an emotional reaction.

And if I'm super healthy,

Right?

So if I'm like in college,

If I'm a sophomore in college,

Then I recognize I need to apologize.

If I'm a senior and I'm graduating from college psychologically,

Then I recognize that I need to change my behavior.

So there's some humility.

Narcissists don't have that level of self-awareness.

And so we have to recognize that people who have lower levels of self-awareness tend to stick with people who also have a lower level of self-awareness.

So a codependent can have self-awareness and can even be aware of the narcissist and can be aware that their feelings may have some impact on the narcissist.

But a codependent is not self-aware of self-recognizing,

Like I said,

Like PhD level of psychology.

So you graduated from psychology in college and you're a master at emotional intelligence.

A codependent doesn't have that level of emotional intelligence where they recognize they're actually in a matrix,

That they're actually stuck recreating childhood patterns.

And the reason for it,

The emotional reason for it is all subconscious,

Very Freudian,

And it's due to what happened in childhood.

So a codependent never felt safe in childhood and has learned along the way that if I live outside of myself,

If I cater,

If I anticipate the needs of others,

Then I develop some sense of safety and a semblance in my world.

My world makes sense.

My world feels safer when I'm not worrying about myself.

My world feels safer when I am in fact worried about my mom,

Worried about my dad,

Worried about my ex-husband or worried about my husband or worried about my children,

Worried about the world.

My world feels safer because that is my normal state.

Codependents as children worried.

We are shame-based.

We never felt good enough.

We're not crazy because we're chasing this connection to mommy.

We're not crazy because we're craving a connection to daddy.

We're not crazy because we cling.

We're not crazy because we don't know what we think.

We don't know what we feel.

We don't know what we need.

We don't know how to express what we feel.

We don't know how to express what we need.

We don't know how to need.

We don't know how to look within.

When we look within,

All we feel is terror.

We don't know how.

Why is this true?

Because in order for you and myself as an adult to do anything,

It had to be mirrored to us first.

I only know how to tie my shoes because I observed my mother and my father tie their shoes and they took the time to teach me.

If I don't get taught as a child how to look within,

I don't have that data.

If I don't know how to access what I need,

That was never given to me.

No one said,

Lisa,

What do you need?

How do you feel?

I don't know how to look within.

There's an entire universe going on in my being and I don't know how to access it when I'm codependent and I get stuck there.

That is why I'm so passionate about the work that I do because we are living subconscious lives and we have an opportunity to live out loud.

We have an opportunity to break free of this matrix that keeps so many of us stuck,

But we need to first recognize that we are in a matrix,

That codependency is a matrix.

It's not some silly term you hear used on YouTube.

It's not just a term you throw around loosely.

I hear people say it all the time,

Oh,

Well,

I'm codependent.

Almost like,

Oh,

Well,

It's no big deal.

You know,

Oh,

I had a cavity.

I went to the dentist and I got it fixed.

No,

Codependency affects every ounce of your being.

It's about your past.

It's about the way you interface with yourself in the 3D world and represent yourself in a conscious universe that can only mirror back to you what you've got going on.

So if you live in fear of abandonment,

That's what you're going to attract.

If you live in fear of criticism,

That's what you're going to attract.

If you live in fear,

Then you will stay stuck in a matrix of fear and you will sense a pseudo sense of safety through your coping skills,

Which is fawning,

Acquiescing,

Subjugating,

Getting angry,

Playing the victim.

In other words,

There's a lot of safety when you as a codependent believe you've done everything right.

You've done everything right,

But your husband doesn't listen.

And how does that make you feel?

It makes you feel powerless.

Well,

Didn't you feel powerless as a child?

Didn't you feel unheard as a child?

So how do you feel in the moment when you get angry?

You feel safer.

You feel stronger.

How do you feel when you blame the person outside of you for your sense of disempowerment?

You feel safer.

You feel stronger.

It's a mask that you place over the inner child that feels absolutely powerless in this universe.

And unless we awaken,

Unless we recognize how codependency is literally causing us to suffocate inside a world that is not real,

It's a replica for the past.

And this is why so many of us who are codependent end up in relationships that are painful,

That can be abusive,

That are narcissistic,

Because we feel the most safe and the most comfortable in catering to others.

A person who is highly narcissistic when they love bomb us,

What are we falling in love with?

Not them.

We're falling in love with feeling seen,

Just the way we were supposed to feel when we looked into the eyes of our mother when we were infants,

When we were newborns.

Infants and newborns are in love with,

They're one with their mothers,

They're one with their fathers.

They fall in love with the people who are reflecting love back,

An infant falls in love with the way this person makes them feel,

I feel alive,

I feel seen,

This feels good.

A codependent is not falling in love with a narcissist.

A codependent falls in love with anybody who reflects back to them,

I see you and you are good.

And if that person has a strong personality,

It matters.

This person becomes an authority,

This person is a replacement for mommy,

This person is a replacement for daddy.

They love me,

Therefore I am.

They love me,

Therefore I exist.

They think I'm good,

Therefore I am good.

So now there's a sense of identity and it's positive.

So what has happened is they've activated a sense of narcissism in ourselves that should have been activated when we were newborns,

When we were two,

When we were three,

When we were four,

When we were five,

When it was a time in our life when we should have been developing this narcissistic boundary or an ego boundary that says this is who I am and in this container,

Imagine healthy narcissism or an ego boundary representing a container or a boundary line like a circle around you.

Imagine your aura and inside this aura,

You hear things like this is who I am,

This is what I think,

This is what I feel,

This is what I need,

This is what I will not tolerate,

These are my desires,

These are my dreams,

But that space is empty when you come from a narcissistic home or an alcoholic home or a home where your parents were completely oblivious.

They fought all the time.

They tried to pin the kids against one another,

They tried to triangulate the children against the other spouse.

You can't develop that aura of healthy narcissism,

This is what I think and this is what I feel.

In fact,

That boundary doesn't even exist.

So you become a child that enmeshes with authority figures.

You become a child who lives in fear of criticism.

You are still that infant looking for that sense of self to be mirrored back to you as a child.

How sad is that,

That so many of us get dressed and think,

I hope he likes it,

I hope he likes my dinner,

I hope he likes the way I speak and you look for clues on dates for whether or not this person is enjoying you and you're not even wondering,

Am I enjoying him?

Do I like the way he spoke to the waitress?

Oh,

Flip it,

This happens with men too.

I hope she likes me,

I hope she likes my car,

I hope she thinks I'm going to be a good dad,

I hope she thinks I make enough money,

Not even wondering,

Do I like the way this woman speaks to me?

Can she hear me?

Does she have empathy?

Is she all self-absorbed?

Does she pay more attention to her phone than she does our conversation?

When you are a codependent and you're living below the veil of consciousness,

All of that very important critical thinking gets knocked out the window.

You don't do it.

You're focused on one thing,

Getting that person to love you.

Why?

Because you never felt loved.

Because your whole life you're looking to feel loved.

How sad is that when there is an entire world within you that is lovable,

That is worthy?

And the truth is,

If this resonates with you,

Awareness is just the scratching of the surface.

You've got to learn how to go within a world that you don't know,

A world that you don't understand,

A world of me,

Myself and I.

You don't understand that world.

It's terrifying.

And that's why a support system,

You know,

I have an online program that helps people do this,

But support systems,

Groups like CODA,

Even going to Al-Anon,

Learning about narcissism,

Getting a psychologist or a therapist that understands codependency,

CPTSD,

In and out because codependency,

In my opinion,

Is a trauma response.

I don't know how to navigate the internal world.

I don't know how to embrace my inner child.

I don't know how to integrate.

I don't know how to merge with my inner child.

I don't know how to sustain the shame that I find when I look within.

How do I navigate that world?

And by default,

My brain wants me to run.

The brain is designed to run away from forest fires.

So looking within,

Turning away from this fishbowl experience,

Turning away and saying,

No,

I want to know what's going on in the universe inside myself.

You need help doing that because you don't have the life skills.

You don't know what to do when you are confronted with a painful memory or a shame memory that creates a shame spiral that triggers the amygdala that sends you into a trigger.

You don't know what to do.

So what do you naturally do?

Knee jerk is to fawn,

Is to let go and to worry about someone else or to clean or to cook or to take on some cause.

When you do that,

You're fleeing the internal reality and the only way to come out of this matrix and to stop attracting narcissistic people who will keep you enslaved.

They will put you down.

They will make you feel bad.

They will trigger you.

They will abandon you.

They will devalue you.

They will discourage you.

You will feel like you're losing air,

Like you're losing breath.

That's the whole point.

They want you addicted to them.

But narcissists exist on this plane of non-reality or this plane of the past.

It's an unconscious plane.

And narcissists may never escape that plane in their lifetime.

Who knows,

Maybe they have to come back many lifetimes to awaken.

I don't know.

Or maybe narcissists never awaken.

And the spiritual reason for them would be to cause those who can awaken to awaken.

Because if you really have lived with and loved a narcissist,

You get to a point where you realize that this is soul crushing.

You're lucky if you get to that point where you say,

Whoa,

Where have I been?

I've been on some underwater ride.

I went off.

That's what happened to me.

And sadly,

It happened as a result of my body becoming so physically ill.

I was afraid I was going to die with asthma.

I was developing all these autoimmune diseases.

And I just felt within every ounce of my being that if I don't get out of this matrix,

I will die.

I will leave my children to this dynamic.

And as far as I could tell,

As far as I could see with my ex-husband's family and my family,

Everybody was asleep at the wheel.

And I thought,

If I don't get out,

There's no way my children are going to get out.

And I can tell you that it was the most difficult challenge of my life to look within,

To step into a universe that was my universe,

That was unknown to me,

And to do the work necessary to stick at it,

To question my thoughts,

To recognize a codependent thought versus a non-codependent thought and to choose the non-codependent thought.

What it meant losing friends,

What it meant peeling myself off the wall,

What it meant saying no to bullies,

What it meant saying no to the way my ex-husband used to try to control me with money.

I walked out of my marriage with no alimony.

I walked out of my marriage with no health care.

I walked out of my marriage with no access to his pension or Social Security.

I walked out of it.

I walked out of that matrix and I believed in myself.

And I can tell you that if you're on this journey with so many of us who are awakening,

I support you.

I wish you well on your journey.

You are changing the world.

The world is now controlled by fear.

Anyone who wants to make you afraid of anything is trying to manipulate you.

There's always the flip side.

There's always the hope factor.

And when we are so far away from the middle,

Then I think that's something that we need to really awaken from so that we can find the middle way.

The middle way is the right way.

And so you don't need to acquiesce.

You don't need to subjugate.

You need to be yourself.

But in order to be yourself,

You need to navigate a terrain and a universe that is unknown to you.

And it is the scariest thing in the world to look within and know it's your universe and to know nothing about it.

But that is the joy of life.

That is your right.

And I really hope that you take this journey.

That is the road least traveled,

The road within,

The road back to the self.

And I really hope that this resonates with you.

And I hope that you know that you are enough.

And if you stay on the inner path long enough,

You will find everything that you've been looking for.

Love,

Peace,

Contentment,

Joy.

Break the chains that come with codependency.

Break the chains to the past.

Break the chains to narcissists in your life.

Break the chains to fear.

And your life shall be abundant in more ways than you can ever imagine.

Namaste,

Dear ones.

Until next time.