When The Narcissist Texts You: Hacks To Beat Anxiety

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Best-selling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

So today,

We're going to be talking about four ways to counter the anxiety that shows up when a narcissist begins to text you.

When we're talking about someone who is struggling with the anxiety as it relates to knowing someone who's highly narcissistic,

This can be a child,

It could be a spouse,

It could be a sibling,

A parent,

Coworker,

Employer,

It could be a friend,

It could be anyone.

It could be someone who is a member of your church.

It could be a pastor or a rabbi or a priest even.

So narcissism spans the spectrum,

And so it's important for us to move beyond this idea that certain people can't be narcissists just because of their title.

That's just not true.

And so it's possible for us to find ourselves in situations where we are doubting our reality,

We don't trust our emotions,

And sometimes that's us.

Sometimes that's a product of childhood where we have codependency and we have grown up focusing on the needs of other people and on the opinions of other people and on the wants of other people,

On the feelings of other people.

And this was the way that we felt safe.

If we came from a dysfunctional childhood home,

And dysfunctional childhood homes don't always look dysfunctional,

And many adult children are wounded in life and carrying on with relationships and are struggling greatly and have no awareness of how their childhood may have interfered with their ability to feel well-adjusted,

To trust their emotions,

And to feel like they're living a fulfilled,

Empowered life.

Many adult children are just,

They feel negative,

Or they have a lot of anxiety,

Or they're highly pessimistic,

Or they just can't find the right relationship.

Many of us are just bumping into walls and we think it's just us.

Until we really take an objective view of our childhood and we start to process,

Like,

How seen did I feel by my parents,

Both mother and father,

Or both caretakers?

How loved?

How heard?

We're not talking about the mind,

What we think,

We're talking about how we felt.

Remember,

Children are all limbic,

And we're being the most programmed from zero to three,

And certainly zero to seven.

By the time that we're seven,

We have these programs that are operational at the subconscious level,

And we go out into the world with these programs,

And we're not taught to question them,

And so that's really important.

So when we're talking about those of us who have the tendency or propensity to attract unhealthy partners,

Such as narcissists,

We really want to understand that part of our recovery journey and part of moving our lives forward so that we can attract a healthy,

Wonderful,

Beautiful,

Content,

Fulfilling,

Loving,

Mature relationship,

Which we are all deserving of,

Is really doing a deep dive into what is going on with me?

What did I learn as a child?

Because nobody should live their life below the veil of consciousness,

Bumping into walls,

Repeating the same mistakes,

And not understanding the power of their mind and power of consciousness.

So if you were struggling with someone in your life who is highly narcissistic,

Whether you are codependent or not,

More than likely,

When your phone goes off and you get a text,

You might be experiencing some trepidation,

And we don't want that.

What that basically means is that person who's texted you has trained you via the sympathetic nervous system to have a visceral stress response to their communication with you.

In essence,

This person has now been able to exert some level of control over you,

And as conscious,

Authentic beings with the right to live empowered lives,

We want to take that control back.

We need some mental toughness training.

We need some self-awareness training.

We need some emotional assertive training so we understand where the lines are.

Now,

I'm a life coach,

An author,

An expert who believes that it is unworthy of having any conversation about a solution without firstly clearly identifying the problem.

So you have to know,

And you have to be self-aware enough of how your body responds when you get a text from someone who is highly narcissistic or anyone.

How is your body responding because your body is telling you the truth?

If you have a visceral oh no reaction,

Then more than likely,

Your brain has been trained through pain versus pleasure to respond in a negative way to the person who's reaching out to you.

Imagine the 17-year-old boy whose mom is on him,

Like,

Where are you?

You have to come home for dinner.

We have to go over what colleges you plan on going to.

We have to go over your FAFSA forms.

I want to go over what your teacher said about you.

This mom,

She's doing the right thing,

But she represents pain to her 17-year-old son.

So when she pings him a text,

He's going to have a visceral negative response,

Right?

So I say that because it's not always the other person's fault when we have a negative response,

Stimuli response to a text.

Sometimes it's us.

If I'm having an affair on my spouse,

And my spouse is asking me where I am and why I'm late,

I'll have a visceral response because I'm having an affair,

Because I'm being disloyal,

Because I don't want to have this conversation.

So I say that because I don't really like it when experts out there make these blanket black and white statements,

And it's also necessary,

Especially for adult children who come from toxic homes,

Difficult homes,

Alcoholic,

Narcissistic homes,

To understand we just don't have the data for how to look at things appropriately,

And so we tend to do the black and white thinking thing.

And so I add those two examples of how it's possible that it's us when we get a visceral response to a text.

It could be me who's running late,

And I don't like it when my boss holds me accountable.

Well,

That's a me problem,

And I've got to step more into integrity and self-accountability and really align my actions and my thoughts with the type of person I want to be viewed at and the type of person I am.

And that might be just an immaturity issue and a personal growth issue,

But I can work on that.

Today,

We're talking about someone in your life who has trained you to have a negative response to them when they reach out to you.

So I want to offer you four quick tips that I think might really help you the next time this happens,

Because we have to retrain your brain.

We have to,

From a higher state of consciousness,

Help your brain understand that the captain is now in control.

You,

The real you,

The authentic you,

Not the triggered you,

Not the conditioned you,

The real you that doesn't want anything or anyone to control them.

Not the you that is responding to childhood trauma,

That is seeking approval.

That's not the real you.

That's the past.

That's programming.

That's the level of trauma or level of consciousness that you were at in response to the trauma that you experienced as a child.

That's not the real you.

The real you is the higher self you that feels the forward-moving momentum of where you'd like to take your life,

And you're recognizing that this person is hindering it.

Not only this person,

But the way you perceive that person and any unhealthy conditioned responses you have tied to that person.

I really hope you wrote that down,

Because that was really good.

The first thing that you want to do is when you get a text from a narcissist and you notice that visceral response,

Just notice it.

Just observe it and recognize,

Tell your brain,

That's what we're trying to overcome.

Make the intention.

I no longer want this person to be able to trigger this stress response within me,

Because your brain needs a clear,

Identifiable goal.

Your subconscious mind needs a clear,

Identifiable goal.

In the past,

Your subconscious mind might have felt like,

I have to answer this text immediately.

Otherwise,

The narcissist is going to be upset.

That's you trying to control the outcome.

That's you trying to control your anxiety.

We don't want to do that anymore.

We're leveling up the way you're thinking and you're saying to yourself,

To the brain,

To the subconscious mind,

I no longer wish to have this visceral response to this person when this person texts me,

Calls me,

Sends me an email,

Anything.

I want to feel completely calm,

Non-resistant,

And non-reactive to this person.

That's the first thing.

The second thing that we want to do is you want to reprogram your brain further.

You have to make a decision,

And that decision is,

I will not open this text immediately.

I will not allow myself to be programmed by this person.

I will not allow receiving a text by them to pull me into reactive mode.

The second thing is,

I will not open this text immediately.

You are literally reprogramming your brain around this experience.

We take specific desires,

Specific experiences,

And we retrain the brain around each of these issues to help reduce cognitive dissonance and resistance,

And to create forward-moving action in your life.

The third thing that you want to do,

Mindfully,

Is you want to count to 10.

So you get a text,

Boom,

You notice the visceral response.

You remind your subconscious mind,

Oh no,

This is not the reaction we want.

I wish to be calm,

And non-reactive,

And non-resistant to this text.

I don't want anything controlling me.

The second thing you do is,

You rather than react,

You simply count slowly to 10.

One,

Two,

Three,

Four,

And so on.

You're literally training your brain to not react to this text.

Really,

Really important.

The next thing you want to do is to remind yourself not to attach to an outcome.

When you attach to an outcome,

You are out of the now.

You are projecting yourself into the future.

You are in a state of resistance.

You are trying to control a future outcome you really can't control,

And you have completely thrown yourself off balance.

It's akin to drinking a bottle of tequila and trying to drive a huge yacht with 2,

500 people on it.

That would be a really big yacht.

Let's make it a cruise ship.

That would be like you trying to navigate a cruise ship of 2,

500 people.

You can't do it.

But if you were sober,

And there was a storm coming,

And you were aware,

And you were calm,

You can navigate that ship.

When you attach to an outcome,

What is happening is that you are running a program.

You are so afraid of the narcissist reacting to you,

Sending you a nasty text,

Accusing you of things that you're not guilty of that you are now experiencing anticipatory anxiety.

Like I said,

You're not in the now.

Your nervous system has been activated.

You're secreting cortisol.

You can't focus on the kids.

You can't focus on balancing your checkbook.

You can't focus on eating a healthy meal.

You can't focus on making it to that yoga class.

You can't focus because you are now trying to control your anxiety by controlling the outcome.

So the last thing that I'd like to offer you is this idea of minding your mind.

Don't attach to an outcome.

In other words,

Think about what you can control,

What you can't control.

Get out of thinking that,

Or at least approach this idea and recognize that you may have been living your life trying to please your narcissistic mommy or your aloof daddy,

The daddy that you can never get the affection from,

Or the codependent father that never protected you from your narcissistic aggressive mother.

You might still be seeking approval.

You might be seeking the approval of a narcissistic sister who was very withholding,

Who triangulated you,

Who gaslit you,

And who treated you really poorly as a child.

You might still be trying to seek that person's approval.

You might still be looking for validation.

You might still be trying to control a situation because as a child you felt so out of control.

The thing that I would like to leave you with is a little bit of self-understanding,

And this may help you tremendously.

I hope that it does.

I realized on my healing journey from codependency and narcissistic abuse,

Being the adult child of an alcoholic and the grandchild of an alcoholic,

That I was always in my head.

I wasn't in my heart.

I was always in my head.

I spent a life of dissociation trying to figure out in the mental space how to get people to be nice to me because they were so mean to me.

What I learned was that in staying in the mental field,

When I took responsibility for the way that I was treated at school,

I was bullied to the point of almost taking my life.

Bullied at home by my mom,

Who was very,

Very emotionally hindered and repressed.

When this was all happening,

I didn't realize that I took on the responsibility because below the veil of consciousness,

If I broke it,

Maybe I could fix it.

That was a huge cognitive distortion that I had to resolve mentally,

Emotionally,

Vibrationally,

And I had to put it into practice.

Certainly doing tremendous inner child recovery work,

Learning to reparent myself,

As well as offering myself self-love and self-compassion and understanding myself at the level of the inner child,

Definitely paved the way for that.

I'm so grateful for where I am.

My children are on incredible paths.

My husband's children are on incredible paths.

Together,

We have really changed our lives and the lives of our children.

I hope to be inspiring you until I just can't do it anymore.