Spiritual Consequences Of Living With A Narcissist

So today we're going to be talking about the spiritual consequences of living with a narcissist.

Thank you so much for supporting this work and being interested in personal development,

How you can take control of your life even though you may have been raised by or loved a narcissist.

Narcissists are people amongst us that have a predator type personality.

Generally speaking,

These are people who lack empathy.

They feel entitled to exploit other people emotionally,

Financially,

Spiritually,

Physically,

And even sexually.

We don't learn about narcissism to beat someone over the head with it and to point our finger at them and tell them what a horrible person they are.

We learn about narcissism just like we would learn about why we should look both ways before we cross the street because they exist.

We aren't routinely taught in our society about the dangers of particular personality traits.

We aren't even taught to look at ourselves and to figure out,

Well,

What kind of personality traits do I carry,

What aspects of my personality should I be paying attention to and looking to fix or to change?

What about me is preventing my emotional,

Physical,

Financial,

And spiritual growth?

I hope that what you take away from the work that I do is this ability to be more self-objective,

More self-aware,

More cognitive,

And more able to recognize in yourself things that you need to change so that you can live an empowered life.

Even if you're living with a narcissist,

You're never going to be able to change them.

If your child is a narcissist,

You won't be able to change them.

If your spouse is a narcissist,

You will not be able to change them.

If you think about someone who has an addiction of any type,

Anyone who is struggling with an addiction first has to be willing to end the addiction.

So someone,

For instance,

Who has an eating disorder,

This is someone who has to be willing to look at the eating disorder and be willing to at least not participate in the eating disorder to the best of their ability.

So if I have bulimia or anorexia or I'm a binge eater,

I have to want to end that behavior.

And without wanting to end that behavior,

Then I won't be able to change that behavior.

So the want comes before the life skills.

And the same thing with narcissism.

For someone who is struggling with narcissism or who has high narcissistic traits has to first identify that they have high narcissistic traits.

And then they have to be willing to understand the consequences their traits have on others as well as themselves.

And they have to want to change.

By definition,

Narcissists really don't see any problem with the way that they are.

And if they think or if they have an inkling that what they're doing is wrong,

Well,

It's quickly dismissed by entitlement,

By a lack of empathy and by really feeling like people that they speak to in a condescending way deserved it because they're less than them.

Narcissists don't see people as equal.

We are pawns on their chessboard.

They are people who they feel are entitled to move people around on this chessboard and to get what they want.

So your experience of the narcissist is really not all that important.

So you will be dismissed.

Even if it's obvious they've done something wrong,

You will be dismissed.

They will ignore you.

They won't talk to you.

They will play the one up game.

And when you do talk to them,

They'll pull the victim card or they'll say,

Oh,

You're judging me.

That's why we're having this conversation.

And basically,

You know,

Just eradicate any opportunity to have a clear,

Fair conversation with them about something that they've done.

So it doesn't work.

Someone who is codependent.

Unfortunately,

We are people who,

At least I've in my line of work,

Both personally and professionally,

Codependents are people who once they see it,

They are devastated and they want to change it because they see that their childhoods have affected them and they understand the consequences that has on them.

And they don't want to continue this with their children.

They do everything they can to change.

So Bravo to anybody out there who is recognizing unhealthy traits in themselves and is doing everything they can to break the cycle of codependency in their life.

Today we're talking about the spiritual consequences of living with a narcissist and they are many.

If you live with a narcissist,

Then you start to feel like there is no hope.

You are detached from your inner child.

You feel like it makes no sense to even try.

You've been taught through blame shifting and gaslighting that complaining doesn't work.

And so if you are thinking about the spiritual consequences of living with a narcissist,

Your spirit gets squashed.

Your spirit is your joy.

Your spirit is your dream.

Your spirit is your desire.

Your spirit is your life force.

It is you.

It is your I am essence.

And when you live with a narcissist who is domineering,

Who is controlling,

Who is scrambling your brain,

If you're living with a narcissist who gaslights you and convinces you that what is happening really isn't happening or what happened didn't happen at all,

You see a text message on your boyfriend's phone and it's from his ex-girlfriend,

But he tells you you didn't see the text.

Or you go out with your girlfriend who you think has high narcissistic traits and you see that she's flirting with the waiter behind the bar and she tells you she doesn't know what you're talking about,

That she doesn't know this person,

That it's all in your head.

You're just too sensitive.

You're too insecure.

If you were a real man,

Then your girlfriend walking to the bar to get a couple of beers wouldn't make you feel so insecure.

So everything that you've noticed,

The exchanging of the numbers,

The little kiss on the cheek,

She tells you it didn't happen.

It's all in your head.

And it can go into even deeper extremes where you have a narcissist who forges your signature on some paperwork and suddenly you're the owner of some property and you're responsible for that property and you don't know how this happened.

You start getting tax bills or liens on your house.

And when you confront the narcissist and you say the only person that could have done this is you,

They deny it.

So you're left feeling crazy like did I do this?

Did I take out this loan?

Like what's happening?

It's just a ball of confusion.

So healthy relationships don't roll this way.

When you're in a healthy relationship,

You feel seen,

You feel heard.

Your partner wants your spirit to feel fulfilled.

Imagine that,

Dear ones.

Imagine living with someone who is your friend when things go wrong and they're your friends when things go right.

I mean,

That is the essence of what it means to like be truly loved.

When you are with someone who is a high conflict personality or someone who lacks empathy,

When your boo-boos or your failures are exploited,

They're hung over your head.

When you succeeded something,

Well,

They don't like that you succeed because you might not need them.

And you might get full of yourself and realize that you don't need them and leave them.

So the narcissist has to poo-poo your successes too.

So they'll diminish your successes.

It's your birthday,

You've planned a great party for yourself.

Well,

Narcissist is going to ruin that too.

Maybe they'll cause a fight with you or maybe they'll say something rude to one of your friends or maybe they'll come home drunk so you can't have the party at your house.

Narcissist is going to dim your light and dim your spirit and make it super difficult for you to be who you really are.

When you are dealing with a narcissist and we're talking about the spiritual consequences,

It's really difficult to believe in a higher power because the narcissist is concerned about becoming your higher power.

The narcissist doesn't want you to believe in a force greater than yourself.

A narcissist doesn't want you to believe in your I am essence.

The narcissist doesn't want you to get connected to your inner self,

Your inner light.

That's the last thing a narcissist wants to do.

And so the spiritual consequences are that you forget who you really are.

You forget that you have this divine mind.

You forget that you can think.

You forget that this thing called metacognition is the ability for you to think about the way that you think.

Imagine being someone who is so far below the veil of consciousness due to narcissistic trauma that the narcissist has convinced you that you're nothing,

That everything is your fault.

Imagine being someone who has so much abandonment trauma that the narcissist exploits it.

The narcissist lures you in,

Makes you feel good about yourself,

Makes you feel seen,

Convinces you that they have this attachment towards you and then boom,

Out of nowhere,

They start to insult you.

They start to devalue you.

They start to make you think that maybe they don't love you like they said.

And of course,

It's all your fault.

So you get caught up thinking that it's your fault.

If you lose this relationship,

It's your fault.

So what do you do?

You subjugate,

You fawn,

You give them all your money,

You take care of every need that they have,

You give them everything that you own,

Right?

Why?

Because they've taught you to want their attention.

They get you addicted to their attention and they start to pull away.

And it's just like with puppies,

The more loyal a puppy,

The more the puppy has been denied a treat.

So if you're training a puppy and you want to get the puppy to obey,

Give them a treat,

Give them another treat and then withhold the treat.

And eventually you will have a loyal puppy who is always looking for that treat.

Now with narcissists,

What ends up happening and we don't even realize it's happening is that we are not paying attention to ourselves anymore.

We're not paying attention to the eye.

What do I think?

What do I feel?

What do I need?

We are completely enmeshed with the narcissistic personality and it makes sense,

Right?

So if you're like a kind person,

An empathic person,

And you're living with someone who's got this rage issue,

Living with someone who's always complaining,

Living with someone who's blaming you for everything,

Then sure,

You're going to be hypervigilant.

You're going to be looking outside of yourself.

You're going to be looking through the eyes of trauma,

Not through the eyes of source,

Not through the eyes of spirit.

And this happens because we're human beings,

Because we have an amygdala and we have a hippocampus and we have memories associated to being treated this way as children.

We're trying to control our anxiety by staying hyper focused.

We're trying to avoid the next shoe from falling.

And so if you're in a narcissistic relationship,

You have to detach from the self because you have to pay attention to what's happening outside of you.

At least that's what you think,

Because it's all below the veil of consciousness.

You're coming at this from trauma.

So you think that the goal is to pay attention to what this narcissist is doing.

Why?

Pain versus pleasure.

Well,

I don't want this person to get mad.

Why?

Because when this person gets mad,

He or she gets super abusive.

Why is that bad?

Because that's going to hurt my feelings.

They might leave me.

They might judge me.

They might tell me that I'm wrong.

They might put me down.

I don't want to be criticized like this.

And so your brain is trying to avoid all this pain and all this fear.

What you don't realize,

Dear one,

Is that spiritually healthy people are really looking for pleasure.

Pleasure by way of joy.

Pleasure by way of love.

Pleasure by way of succeeding in life.

Pleasure by way of feeling fulfilled in life,

By being creative,

By creating businesses in their life,

By creating opportunities for themselves,

By breaking old patterns for their children.

What happens when you're living with a narcissist,

The pain versus pleasure principle?

It becomes arrested.

So your source of pleasure is just avoiding pain.

That's not the same as seeking joy and seeking love.

That's a true spiritual consequence.

When we are in alignment with our true self,

When we are allowing our true spirit to come through,

We are in a creative mode.

We find the flow often.

We feel comfortable in our own skin.

We know that we're not perfect,

But we're working on ourselves.

We know that we're a work in progress,

But we don't shame ourselves.

We are our own best friend.

We tend to gravitate towards people who are kind to us,

Not people who put us down,

People who are genuinely happy for us,

People who we know feel for us and who have our best interest at heart.

So our spirit is expanding even through our friendships,

Even through our business relationships.

And it's just beautiful.

We create mission-based businesses.

We get involved with people who have the same type of an agenda that we do.

We surround ourselves with love.

We are in love.

We're able to flow love.

But when you're in a narcissistic relationship,

Your spirits wings are basically bound.

It's spiritual bondage because you associate pleasure with just keeping the narcissist calm.

So it's sort of like you associate pleasure with throwing the live alligator that you're stuck in a room with a T-bone steak.

So as long as you have T-bone steaks,

You're not going to get eaten up by the alligator.

But is that pleasure really or is that just avoiding pain?

So true spiritual consequence of living with a narcissist is that you are no longer looking for pleasure.

You are no longer seeking love.

You're just trying to survive and your spirit has come to soar.

If you're in a relationship with a narcissist,

They are spiritually bound as well,

But they don't know it because they're trading spirituality for ego.

They're attached to the ego world.

They have ego attachments.

They're attached to the ego defense mechanisms.

They're not attached to the spirit.

They have no clue what their spirit is.

And so they're bound and they need to play with people who are also bound.

You might not have been spiritually bound or in spiritual bondage when you met the narcissist or maybe you were.

If you stay in a relationship long enough with a narcissist,

You will undoubtedly experience spiritual bondage.

You have to,

Because the only way to survive and avoid pain is to pay attention to what this big mouth,

This giant two year old,

This rageaholic,

This control freak,

This domineering person,

The only way to stay safe is to figure out what they want and what they need and then to give it to them so you can avoid their wrath.

But that's not spiritual growth.

So my hope is that once you see the hole in the wall,

Then maybe you can fix it.

When I realized in my life that I was in a spiritually bonded relationship and codependency is spiritual bondage,

Being in a relationship with a narcissist is spiritual bondage.

Being in a trauma bond is bondage.

What is bondage?

It's the inability to move.

It's the inability to leave.

It's like the crazy glue of relationships.

It's like gorilla glue.

We're not so easy to leave.

We don't know how to leave.

We don't have the life skills to leave.

We don't have the self esteem to leave.

We don't have the boundary ability to leave.

We don't know what a boundary is.

We are been completely enmeshed,

Psychologically enmeshed,

Physically,

Financially enmeshed.

It's not easy to leave.

And so I think it's important that if we're going to heal from these relationships with narcissists,

We first have to identify what the heck is wrong.

Perhaps when you hear this message of spiritual bondage,

It might resonate with you.

You might realize,

Wow,

I really have lost myself.

I do only focus on what he wants or what she wants.

My mind races with what he is going to say or what she's going to say.

My mind races with what upsets him or what upsets her or what I think he needs or what I think she needs.

If you listen to yourself objectively,

Dear one,

What you will notice is there's no I.

What do I think?

What do I feel?

What do I need?

And without seeing that,

You can't fix it.

One of my favorite sayings is you can't fix a hole in the wall that you don't see.

A big part of healing from codependency is understanding the hole in the wall.

A big part of escaping a narcissistic relationship is getting a clear idea of what's wrong.

And I just hope that this idea of spiritual bondage is resonating with somebody out there who might need to hear that message.

Your spirit is not free if you are in a relationship with a narcissist.

You will have to give up your higher self.

You will have to detach and turn away from the door no man can shut.

You will turn away from that door.

You will turn away from the source within you.

You will end up living in the dark with someone who has a very dark shadow-based personality,

And you will eventually become afraid of the light.

And you won't reach towards that light because every time you do,

The narcissist comes down on you.

But I'm here to tell you that the journey is worth it.

It's worth looking within.

It's worth the tears.

It's worth losing friends.

It's worth losing family.

It's worth losing finances.

You can always recoup money.

You can always recoup a house.

These are material things.

But recouping the self,

It's not so easy.

And the only person that can do that is you.

And it costs nothing to begin recouping the self.

It costs nothing to figure this out.

It costs nothing to meditate.

It costs nothing to listen to experiences like this.

It costs nothing to join a support group.

It costs nothing to pay attention to what's happening in your life and applying new life skills to that.

It costs nothing to personally develop yourself.

It costs nothing to work on your own spirituality.

I just recently had a conversation with my husband Anthony and I said to him,

You know,

The things that we take for granted are the most priceless.

The ability to think,

Our brain.

I didn't have to pay for my brain.

Did you have to pay for your brain?

I don't know anybody who paid for their brain.

I don't know anybody who had to pay for their voice.

I don't know anybody who had to pay for their spirit.

I don't know anybody who had to pay for the ability to think.

I don't know anybody.

And yet those are priceless.

These things separate us from animals that have no choice.

They really have no choice.

They're subject to their instincts.

But unlike a tree,

You can get up and you can move and you can plant your roots someplace else.

Now,

As someone who's done it,

I'm not saying it's easy,

But I can tell you that most of the work that I did,

I did on my own.

I looked within.

I allowed myself to feel.

I faced the dragons within myself.

Throughout my life,

I've created content.

I've created books.

I've created YouTube videos.

I create podcasts and I create guided meditations.

I do what I can to make sure I'm a part of every social media platform there is with the hopes that someone out there that needs this information is going to hear it,

That you'll be attracted to this information,

That you'll begin to believe in yourself,

That you'll begin to understand what the problem is.

As a very logical thinker,

I recognized that I couldn't solve a problem until I identified it.

You cannot solve a problem until you first identify it.

Action steps don't come first.

They come after.

So I hope that this session resonates with someone out there who's struggling inside an unhealthy,

Toxic,

Dysfunctional relationship with someone who has high narcissistic traits,

Who needs to berate them,

Who needs to control them,

Who needs to dominate them,

Who needs to turn their children against them,

Who needs to turn their family against them,

Who's playing for it all.

In other words,

When you're dealing with a narcissist,

They're not happy unless they're obliterating you on every level.

They go after you financially.

They go after you spiritually.

So if you're in a church,

Expect a narcissist to triangulate and talk some crap about you.

To convince the church goers that you're mentally ill or that you have an issue and that they feel sorry for you and they're worried about you.

It happens.

And expect sometimes that even in a church situation or a synagogue situation,

People that you thought were your partners in life,

They turn on you.

The people that you love don't always recognize that they're dealing with a narcissist.

And if you're a true narcissistic survivor,

If you're a true codependent,

Oftentimes you don't talk about your partner.

You're embarrassed to,

Or you don't want to hurt their feelings,

Or you think it's you so you don't air your dirty laundry.

But a narcissist does.

Narcissists is hedging their bets.

In case you ever smarten up,

In case you ever find your true self,

In case you ever get in touch with your spirit and you get the confidence and the clarity and ownership over your life to say,

Hey,

I know what's up and I'm out of here,

They're hedging their bets.

That's why they triangulate.

That's why they talk poorly about you.

But I'm here to tell you that you have to believe in yourself.

If you have codependency,

If your children have watched you suffer inside a narcissistic relationship,

Please understand that they have been modeled poor behavior.

Please understand this is generational.

Please understand this gets worse over time.

Sure,

We might be afraid to rock the boat so we don't,

But our children are watching and they're absorbing these dynamics.

Sure,

We might be afraid to like tell a narcissist off or end the relationship and we might be terrified that we're making a mistake.

We might be terrified about what people think about us.

Maybe we are wrong,

Like the narcissist taught us that we're wrong.

Maybe people will tell us that we are crazy and we are selfish.

Maybe we aren't sure about what we're doing.

That happens when you're struggling within a relationship with a narcissist.

That's exactly what they want.

They want you to feel like you're wrong and you will struggle when you consider ending that relationship.

But I want you to consider the consequences of staying and I'm not telling anybody they have to leave.

I'm just raising the question,

Can you please consider what happens if you don't leave?

If you have children,

They're watching you and they're being downloaded to do what you do.

I was downloaded to stay.

My mother was a passive,

Emotionally unavailable person.

She was not present for me whatsoever and I learned to stay.

I learned to tone myself down.

I felt stuck.

My mother taught me that things don't ever get resolved,

So why bother?

Just deal with it.

Just try to figure out what the man wants and become that.

That's what I was downloaded to do and that's why I stayed for 12 years,

When I knew I should have left.

I was downloaded to believe this.

I was downloaded to think like a codependent woman.

Like all codependent moms,

What did I do?

I modeled codependency for the first 12 years of my son's life.

What did he do?

As a young man,

He married a narcissist.

That's what he did.

And thankfully,

Which I'm very proud of,

He was able to end the relationship.

When I was going through my divorce process,

I told myself that I had to give my children the tools to leave,

The strength to leave,

The courage to leave.

And I did.

And so when my son finally came out from below the veil,

When the fantasy started to disintegrate,

When he realized what he was dealing with,

He also had the ability to set boundaries,

To set a course,

And to get a divorce.

And for that,

I'm very thankful.

And so I'm here to tell you as a recovering codependent mother,

That what you don't heal in your lifetime,

You will pass down to your children.

And it doesn't have to be that way.

Namaste everybody,

Until next time.

And please remember,

You are enough.

In fact,

Dear one,

You were born enough and you've got nothing to prove.

Who knew?

Namaste,

Until next time.

Bye for now.