Waking Up In A Narcissistic Family

Welcome to Breakdown to Breakthrough,

The podcast that empowers you to transform your life by awakening to your true,

Authentic self.

I'm Lisa A.

Romano,

Your host.

As an award-winning author and certified life coach,

I've dedicated my life to helping others understand the incredible power of an organized mind.

I believe that true empowerment begins with awakening to our false self.

My mission is to support you on your journey toward mental and emotional regeneration through conscious and deliberate awakening.

In this podcast,

I'll share insights,

Tools,

And transformative stories that illuminate the path to healing and self-discovery.

So I want to try to break down for everybody,

In as simplistic terms as possible,

What happens when you are dealing with a narcissistic family,

And you are the child in the family that is starting to wake up.

You are the child in the family that's saying,

Whoa,

Wait a minute,

Like,

Maybe things weren't so great.

You are the child in the family who is taking more control over the way that you process information.

It's important that we recognize that every one of us is programmed from childhood,

That our brain is a prediction machine.

And what we predict happening in the future is the culmination,

Or basically,

Whatever's been dumped into the subconscious mind through our childhood experiences.

So if my mom was a narcissist,

Or my dad was a narcissist,

And they use fear,

Obligation,

And guilt to win every argument,

It's safe to presume that I probably do some of that myself.

I'm not aware of it,

But what separates me from my malignant family is that I don't want to do that.

That makes you different.

That's one of the ways that we start to awaken when our partners,

Or we notice it in ourselves,

Or someone we care about says,

I don't like the way you're talking to me.

And if we're not narcissistic,

Or depending on how narcissistic we are,

Because everybody is asleep,

Everybody's ego is running the ship.

We are only 5% conscious,

And I think most of us are far less self-aware than we actually think we are.

And studies prove this,

That the people who think they are the most self-aware are actually the least self-aware.

Very interesting.

And that does help as someone who's very curious about human behavior,

About consciousness,

About how family members treat one another,

It fascinated me when I started to analyze my own self and analyze the way I thought and processed the world,

Especially as a codependent with abandonment trauma,

Never felt good enough.

Always a pane of glass between me and my mom,

Always felt the shame like it must be my fault.

How can I reach her?

No matter what I did,

It wasn't enough to reach her.

And you start to feel defeated after a while,

Like you start to give up.

And I think in the giving up,

It's so the opposite of love that we start running from ourselves.

We start addictions,

We start drinking,

We start seeking to numb ourselves in various relationships and the childhood stuff inevitably comes up and we get a divorce or that relationship collapses.

As someone who has been able to figure this out in my own world through self-reflection,

Self-inquiry and the tons of consciousness work that I've done,

I'm now able to see in others at like hyperspeed.

It's a pattern.

And what someone who is waking up is going to go through is very predictable.

The sibling who wakes up is essentially a rogue cell.

Think about a malignant family as a malignant cell.

And all of the things,

The mitochondria,

The lysomes,

You know,

All of the things that are inside that cell are family members,

Ideology,

Belief systems,

Communication systems like fog,

Obligation and guilt,

Passive aggressiveness,

Self-righteousness,

I'm right,

You're wrong,

That type of stuff.

It's all inside this malignant cell.

But you as the truth teller used to be in that cell.

You want out.

You're waking up inside the cell like,

What the hell is going on here?

And you don't like it.

And so you're trying to get out of the cell.

So let's say you're lucky enough.

And I don't think it doesn't really sometimes I guess it can happen where you're just like spontaneous.

I'm outside the cell.

But most of us are like,

Oh,

My God,

Like I'm inside the cell.

How do I get out?

That was my experience.

It was the waking up was like,

OK.

And then I started to talk to my sister and my brother and my mom or my dad or nobody was getting it.

I was alone in that cell and it was so scary.

And then life happens.

And I get a divorce and my family sides with him.

And what was interesting for me was I had a reason to to bust through that cell to break through that cell,

My kids,

Because once I saw the malignancy,

The narcissism,

The twisting of the story to fit the narcissist narrative at any cost.

At a cost to family relationships,

At a cost to my mental health,

At any cost,

Someone from a narcissistic system at any cost has to twist the story so it fits their false ego identity,

The mask.

You start waking up.

I,

As the narcissistic mother,

I have to do something about that.

You're threatening the cell.

So.

If you,

As the truth teller,

Hold strong outside the cell and you collect information,

You collect data,

What you want to understand is that your predictive model in your brain is changing.

You're getting a new code for what your family is.

Oh,

This isn't great.

Mom wasn't great.

Dad wasn't great.

My sibling relationships aren't great.

Where the hell was I?

You were below the veil because you were afraid.

You didn't want to go up against your family.

Your brain was programmed to associate fear with that.

So there's a code.

Don't do that.

Don't speak.

Don't speak.

It's safer to not speak.

That's not your fault.

But something happened.

You're awakening.

You met someone in your life.

You heard a podcast.

You saw a social media meme.

Doesn't matter.

Something awakens you.

So now you wake up,

You're looking around,

Things aren't so great.

And you decide that you're going to pack your bag and push outside that cell membrane.

What will happen in the family relationship is very predictable.

If the system inside is not going to change to your system,

Then everybody within that system has got to try to destroy the system that you're trying to elevate to.

You are a threat to this cancerous cell.

You're a threat.

The truth teller is a threat.

You're a threat to the system.

This is why throughout history,

They've murdered truth tellers because the truth teller is a threat to the system.

You can see this on a global scale and you could see it in a family system.

You can see it even closer in one relationship where the person who is more highly narcissistic cannot handle your upgrade.

With me and my ex-husband,

We were one.

And then as I started to see that we were sick and we were dysfunctional,

I saw two.

And I didn't want to be part of this one sick system.

I didn't want to raise my children in a sick system.

And so I had to collapse the paradigm that I had prior.

And I had to upgrade to a new paradigm.

That is a system upgrade.

That's a true brain upgrade.

Your consciousness might want that,

But you have to give your body and your mind time to upgrade with you.

And that's when you're the most vulnerable is when you're finally waking up and you're starting to move the sick malignant system.

And if you're not careful and you don't stabilize yourself there,

Things are going to happen within that system that wipe you out at your knees.

You have to be really strong.

So what will happen is your siblings will start gaslighting you.

You're crazy.

That never happened.

It's the fog principle,

Fear,

Obligation,

And guilt.

What they're doing at that point is they're testing your new upgrade.

How strong is this kid's upgrade?

How committed are they to their new reality of our sick system?

They're testing you.

And what will happen in that if you're not careful and you,

You are,

You succumb to the emotional manipulation and gaslighting,

You might falter back to like,

Oh,

Maybe it was me.

Maybe I'm being too hard on my mom who,

You know,

Bounced me around from house to house and was drinking and exposed me to like really dysfunctional situations and then acted like nothing was wrong and like suck it up buttercup,

Like a complete invalidation of my experience of your drama and your breakdown.

Now,

This does not mean that moms who are wounded or evil people,

They're below the veil.

But we,

As the people who are trying to extricate ourselves from the sick malignant family,

We have to psychologically be able to identify what is happening and language helps.

Labels help.

So a mom who is highly narcissistic is very wounded.

Yes.

And a very immature and has not learned the tools.

She hasn't had a brain upgrade.

She hasn't,

Doesn't have the tools to withstand the emotional cost to her child.

And so what does she do?

She obliterates the child's story and she goes into victimhood and other people had it worse than you.

You had a great childhood.

What's wrong with you?

Your sisters and your brothers don't see it this way.

It's only you.

It's only you.

That's what I heard.

So you want to be careful as a truth teller.

Your siblings are going to come at you.

Number one.

So you might have one sibling that gaslights you and you have another sibling just ignores you,

Starts icing you out,

Stonewalling you.

You are,

You're now being punished because you are threatening the system,

The malignant system.

And so eventually if you hold onto yourself,

What will happen in the malignant system is the members of your family will cut you off,

Cut you off.

And then what will happen is now you're outside this cell membrane.

You've completely excommunicated yourself and they help perhaps.

But now instead of being one sick cell and you being part of that cell,

You're the little cell outside this big cell.

Effin amen.

Amen.

Get a ukulele,

Sing around the campfire and thank the gods that you are no longer part of that sick system.

You're out,

But you have to prepare yourself because when you're out,

That sick system has to make it okay that you're out.

And how do they do that?

A smear campaign,

Flying monkeys.

You don't get invited to family parties anymore,

Or if you do,

Everybody's giving you the cold shoulder.

You are out,

Dude.

So you're going to hear things like,

Oh,

She read a self help book or,

Oh,

She got a therapist and they turned her against the family.

Oh,

It's her new boyfriend or,

Oh,

It's her husband or,

Oh,

It's his wife.

Oh,

It's her family.

Oh,

It's this.

Oh,

It's that.

So what happens is the malignant system,

Because they're so stuck and they refuse to upgrade and that's the way everybody's brain works because the brain associates good and safety with familiar,

Even if it's malignant,

The brain associates safety and good with familiar,

Even if it's narcissism,

That's where the brain works,

That's why emotional intelligence and consciousness must be a part of every equation,

Every conversation,

Whether we're in psychoanalysis and we're in psychotherapy or we're going for another prescription of antidepressants.

We need to have conversations about neuropsychology or this idea that neurology matters.

My brain is a prediction machine.

Anything that threatens what I think is familiar,

I have to eliminate.

It's not good for me.

So as a truth teller in the family,

You have to understand that your,

Your ability to awaken is a true neurological systemic nervous system threat to your mom,

To your dad,

To your siblings,

To every one of your family members that are drinking a Kool-Aid.

Try not to take it personally.

Their brains associate pleasure with familiar,

Pleasure with narcissism,

Pleasure with smear campaigns.

It's their system actually associates pleasure with that.

And you can't mess with that.

You can't change that.

All you can do is accept it.

They're going to see your desire to change and to grow and to challenge their ideology or their malignancy as a truth threat.

Their brain,

Cognitive dissonance,

Backwards rationalization goes into how do I eliminate this threat?

If I can't eliminate you because you're so strong now and you have another support system,

If I can't eliminate you,

Then I have to make you wrong and I have to punish you because doing so gets you out of the system and it eliminates my cognitive dissonance as a member of this narcissistic malignant cell that will not grow and will just produce another malignant cell into another generation.

Mostly because there's a narcissistic mother or a narcissistic father that refuses to grow and will not hold themselves accountable.

They can't have empathy for their children.

They can't face what they've done.

So they try to hide it,

Mask it and they want that,

You know,

They flutter around the world acting like they're the best people in the world.

And of course they go to church on Sunday,

You know,

Or they go to synagogue,

You know,

Or,

You know,

They wear their red little bracelets.

Of course they do all that stuff,

Right?

Of course they buy the kids over the top gifts.

Of course,

Right?

It's all,

It's all that smoke and mirrors is to confuse you in the now because they can't face who they were in the past.

And that's essentially the way narcissists roll.

Lots of narcissistic injuries,

Lots of pain,

Lots of ego defense mechanisms,

Lots of just reactivity because they have not yet been able to and have no desire to touch that pain.

That is the most difficult pain for a human being to touch the,

I am not enough stuff,

The,

I am unworthy,

The,

I don't even have the right to live.

There's nothing valuable in me.

If there was something valuable and innately worthy with me,

Then I,

My mother wouldn't have abused me.

My father wouldn't have abused me.

Life wouldn't be so hard.

It must be me.

It's the most difficult pain that a human being can face,

But those that break through,

Those that face their pain,

I had to face that pain and recovery is not pretty because it requires accountability.

And if you were raised by a narcissistic mother or a narcissistic father,

It's very likely you have some narcissistic tendencies,

Some blind spots.

Remember that narcissism and codependency,

They exist on the same scale and there is overlap and someone who is highly codependent can be also narcissistic.

I do everything for you.

What do you do for me?

I take care of all your needs and now you didn't anticipate my needs,

Even though I didn't,

I don't know what my needs are.

Now I'm just going to stop talking to you or I'm just going to stop picking up your dry cleaning.

It's passive aggressive,

Immature BS that codependence do,

But outside of conscious awareness,

You can't fix it.

So I didn't want this to be too long of a session because I think it's super heavy.

And more than likely,

If you're the truth teller in a family,

You're going to have to listen to something like this over and over and over again to get the dynamics because I'm telling you it's,

It's pattern like you as the truth teller,

You're extricating yourself from a very sick cell,

A malignant cell,

And everybody's drinking the same Kool-Aid.

And generally there's a mom or dad that everybody's trying to protect.

There's a,

There is an authoritarian that is enabling the other members of the family or maybe they're afraid of that authoritarian in that malignant family cell and you are a threat to the entire system.

If you break through and you get to the other,

Other family members,

It's sort of like a star losing all of its energy and becoming a black hole,

Which I think that is what human consciousness actually is.

It is the,

The collapsing of brain function that is dysfunctional.

It is the collapsing of paradigms that are completely ego-identified,

Narcissistic identified.

How else are we going to create more conscious,

Forward thinking,

Empathic,

Accountable human beings that can actually help one another in this world?

We can't.

And so it's going to be people like you and people like me and so many other people out there in all different walks of life that are willing to be the truth teller and the cycle breaker.

You will cry the tears your family members have denied.

You will feel the pain and expunge and process the energies that they refuse to face.

You will.

And that's a really hard journey.

You'll get acne.

You'll start to smell differently.

You'll feel depressed.

You may even retch and vomit.

Yeah,

You are eliminating the disease that is narcissism that plagues our society and plagued families for since the beginning of time and now has just manifested into other malignant systems,

Whether it's various corporations or bloodlines,

Whatever.

This,

This goes really,

Really big,

But I'm concerned about you.

I'm concerned about me.

I'm concerned about the family.

I'm concerned about the truth teller.

I'm concerned about the adult child of the alcoholic or the narcissistic mother or father.

I'm concerned about the one that is done living this malignant life and being infiltrated and bombarded psychically by the narcissistic brother who's enabled by the mom and who would prefer that I feel guilty,

Guilty that I have these feelings about my mom,

Then listen to me,

Who's so threatened by me escaping the system that he's going to pull me down.

Why?

Because he's narcissistic.

Mom enables him and I'm a threat to that dynamic.

Narcissism.

So when you have a narcissistic mother who enables a sibling,

You have this,

Think about the unity symbol.

You have one narcissist who's enabled by the mom and you have the narcissistic mom who in the enabling of the son or the daughter gets narcissistic supply has a,

Has a built-in flying monkey,

Right?

And as long as I supply the child that I'm enabling with what they want,

That they don't want to achieve for themselves.

Then I have someone who is willing to go up against a sibling.

I know this pattern because I've lived through this pattern and you can't escape.

It's not easy.

And that's why I create these sessions for people who need to understand what's happening.

So you're a threat.

You are going to be ignored.

You're going to be gas lit,

Or you are going to be pushed outside the membrane of that circle.

And that process is going to be painful because they are going to tell people they're going to make up stories about you.

They're going to accuse the emotional recovery work that you're doing as the reason that you don't want to be part of the system or you're thinking differently.

Your spouse will be attacked.

Maybe your kids will be attacked.

You're going to be attacked.

There's going to be a smear campaign.

My suggestion to you is like,

If this is your,

If your family system is like this,

This blob to the left and it's really big.

Imagine like an eight inch circle to represent like a sick family system.

And you're like the size of a quarter outside that system.

I promise you that as you move further and further away from that system,

And how do you do that?

Through acceptance.

Through grace.

Namaste.

Walk away.

Shati shati.

Accept what you can control.

Release what you can't control.

Surrender,

Surrender,

Surrender,

Accept,

Accept,

Accept.

You will become a much greater force than that malignant cell.

You just got to keep going.

Namaste everybody.

Until next time as a bow to the love and light that is absolutely in you.

Until next time.

Bye for now.