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.
So today we're going to be talking about what you can do when a narcissist or a manipulative person turns everyone against you.
When we are dealing with people who tend to have narcissistic traits,
We don't always know it.
And if you are someone who,
For instance,
Has married someone who is narcissistic,
You may be just discovering the consequences of such a personality.
And when and if you decide to leave that toxic relationship,
You are often met with tactics that are mind-bending and can even leave you feeling emotionally paralyzed.
When you are dealing with someone whose agenda it is to be vengeful,
Whose agenda it is to destroy you because you don't want to be with them anymore,
The more narcissistic someone is,
The more right they think they are,
The more self-righteous they are,
The more entitled they are,
The less empathy that they have for you,
And they are more manipulative.
They're even people who will absolutely step on the heads of other people to get where they want.
So it's like no matter what it takes for me to get what I want,
I'm going to do and say what I need to do in order for me to achieve my goal.
Healthier people,
On the other hand,
Are able to take into consideration other people's feelings,
Other people's goals,
And other people's agendas.
And so the more unhealthy someone is,
The more they are centered upon the eye,
The more they look to impress people through the things that they do or the way that they look.
They're really focusing on gaining something from the external world.
So you might have a job that they want,
And they will do what they can to sabotage you in your career so they can swoop in and get the position that you hold.
In a family situation,
Maybe you are getting way too much attention,
And so someone who is highly narcissistic will maybe start a smear campaign against you or may actually lie about you to gain more attention from the people of the family.
Or maybe they will do something so bizarre that the family is forced to focus on them than you.
So healthier people are more of the we,
And we understand how a family is going to be affected by our actions,
And we are able to take those ideas into consideration.
And the more unhealthy someone is,
The less they are taking into consideration how other people are affected by what they say,
What they don't say,
What they do,
And they don't do.
And I think one of the most complicated aspects of narcissism is when we're dealing with someone who believes that they are a good person and believes that he or she is a family person,
And they are actually acting in opposition to the family.
So you have someone in a family system who is all about me but presents themselves,
The world,
As,
No,
It's about my family.
But yet if you were inside the family,
You would know that this person is only interested in themselves.
And that's troubling in and of itself because being a member of that family,
And I know I'm digressing,
But being a member of that family presents with very unique circumstances because on the outside world,
Many people don't see what you see,
And you're left scratching your head and wondering,
Is my reality truthful or not?
And this ends up becoming a boundary that crosses into the cognitive realm where,
Let's say,
Children or spouses of a narcissist are actually questioning their reality and their perception of this person.
And it takes so much spiritual,
Emotional,
And mental strength to be able to acknowledge what you feel and what you think when other people are telling you that you don't have a right to your own reality.
And then to forge a way forward on your own,
Holding onto your perceptions and working through the traumatic experiences that you've been affected by so that you can come out the other end of it and eventually attract people who are more in alignment with your vibration and what you feel.
And there are consequences,
Right?
There's trauma as a result of that.
Sometimes you have to leave people behind that you love who are absolutely hurting you along your self-discovery journey.
And so there are a couple of things that we want to be careful of when we're talking about narcissists who turn people against you.
I've noticed in my coaching career when I'm dealing with people one to one who are coming out of the fog of cognitive dissonance or trying to,
One of the sticking points that they get caught up in is the narcissist one.
The narcissist never paid attention to my children when we were married.
The narcissist never had any interest in my sister's life or my father's life when we were married.
But now that we're divorced,
The narcissist is more charming than ever.
The narcissist is showing up at my son's football games.
The narcissist is suddenly interested in my daughter's life.
But up until the divorce,
This person in my life had very little interest in our children.
They were cheating on me.
And there were things that I hid from my family and things that I hid from my children to protect them.
And then when the fallout comes,
When you or someone is like,
I can't take it anymore,
And you step out in truth,
It can be very lonely because when you do that,
You often lose people who don't see things quite the way you see them.
And a part of that is because when we were in the thick of it,
We didn't know what we were dealing with.
And especially if we come from traumatic backgrounds as children,
We come into relationships giving,
We come into relationships catering,
We come into relationships eager to please the other person with rose colored glasses on,
We come into the experience without a sense of self,
We come into the experience needing validation,
Seeking out validation,
Or we come into the experience needing to be needed.
And this is known as codependency.
So we come into experiences without a lack of selfhood.
So we're in this relationship.
And we're not even aware that we're unaware that we don't have a healthy sense of self,
That we're following this person's emotional lead,
Like a hungry horse would follow a carrot.
So we're in the corn maze,
I call it level one consciousness,
And we don't even know we're at level one consciousness.
And then somewhere along the line,
Maybe we hear a podcast,
We watch a video,
We speak to a friend,
We read a book,
But something triggers our conscious awareness.
And suddenly that we're aware that something's off.
That's level two consciousness where I'm above the corn maze now and I can see what the patterns are.
I can see that this is narcissism.
I can see the love bombing.
I can see the future faking.
I can even see my lack of selfhood.
I can even see my need to please.
I can even see my fear of setting boundaries.
I can see how my own anxiety about people becoming angry and feeling like I'm going to lose control because I don't know what's going to happen next,
Which is tied to childhood trauma.
I can see how that all fit like a hand in a glove in this relationship.
But now I'm at level two consciousness and I can see what's happening.
Level three consciousness is when you are pretty much free of the relationship and you're in a state of reprogramming or you're still in the relationship,
But you're bucking the rules.
You're bucking the old paradigm.
You're learning to set boundaries.
You're saying no.
You're dealing with your own codependency.
You're getting back in touch with your inner child.
You're on the personal healing journey.
You're understanding that maybe you were in a state of unconsciousness and now it's your choice.
You want to have a more of a success mindset.
You want to go from not knowing how to take care of yourself to taking care of yourself and becoming super responsible and accountable for your life.
And so you're learning to navigate.
You're developing money EQ,
Emotional intelligence.
You're really working on yourself.
So you're reprogramming yourself level three.
Level four consciousness is where you experience serendipity.
Level four is where you experience synchronicity.
Your life is really changing.
You've created enough momentum in the opposite direction of where you were,
Which is the first part of your life that you created unconsciously.
And you've created enough momentum now going in the opposite direction,
Which is up and you're spiritually evolving,
You're emotionally evolving.
You're taking more responsibility for how you feel.
You're setting healthier boundaries.
And now miracles,
Well,
They're really not miracles.
This is the way life is supposed to happen.
We're supposed to be in alignment with that which we desire.
And the better we get at cultivating the mindset that is congruent,
What we want to desire,
The easier it is for those things that we love to show up.
Now if that's the path that you're on,
I want you to be aware of a couple of sticking points.
You can become stuck when you have the mindset that sounds like,
But the narcissist won.
I'm free.
I'm divorced.
I've created this new career,
But my children believe him or my children believe her.
I've lost my kids.
My kids don't call me the way they used to or my children have sided with the narcissist and I don't see my children that often or my sister doesn't believe me.
My sister believes the narcissist.
You're looking in the rear view mirror and you're not looking forward,
Right?
So if you want to drive from point A to point B,
You've got to keep your eyes on the road.
And that matters in the 3D world as well as the spiritual world and the emotional world,
The mental world and the business world.
You can't let go of this steering wheel,
Dear one.
You have to keep moving forward.
You have to define the road before you.
You have to decide and define what you're going to pay attention to.
And you have to be very,
Very clear about what you can't control.
And so be careful of the sticking point that has you looking in the rear view mirror,
Feeling like a victim,
Feeling persecuted,
And really you are in a place exactly where someone who has high narcissistic traits wants you to be.
They want you to feel lack.
They want you to grieve.
They want you to feel sad.
They want you to feel the loss of what they're doing,
Their manipulation.
So you want to be really careful about going down that rabbit hole trying to control something that you can't control.
When you leave a narcissist and when things go south between you and a narcissist in a relationship,
Oftentimes they're going to try to turn people against you.
And when this happens,
It is up to you to decide what you can control versus what you can't control.
And especially as it comes to strong interpersonal relationships like it is with children,
Depending on their age,
Obviously,
But certainly children who are older,
Children who are in their 20s,
You don't want to get caught up feeling like this is some type of a competition between you and their father,
Between you and their mother,
You and your spouse or ex-spouse.
You want to refrain from stepping into that space.
That's like stepping into a boxing ring with Muhammad Ali.
You're probably not going to win,
Dear one.
And so you want to back off as much as you can.
You want to go into a state of allowing and surrender.
Another thing that you might find helpful,
At least I know that it helped me,
Was when you're coming out of these types of relationships,
Cognitive dissonance is huge.
You are in a brain fog.
You question everything.
You wonder if you're the person who's wrong.
You've heard the word selfish and you're crazy so often that you wonder if you are.
And you end up feeling very dazed and it's difficult to get out of bed sometimes and to get your thoughts straight.
But you want to remember that your body goes where your mind goes.
So you gaining control over your mind is absolutely crucial.
That's why I love to teach mental toughness.
And so one of the things that I learned to do was I began to segment my life.
And so I looked before my life as a single mom going through this and I had to be very,
Very careful about understanding what was wrong.
And so I checked off boxes.
So my physical health,
I was overwhelmed.
I was coming out of asthma,
Migraine headaches,
And I knew that my immune system was really highly activated in the negative way.
It was suppressed.
And so I knew I had to get my immune system back online.
So that was one box.
Then it was finances.
I had a lot of worry about finances.
So I made that another box.
Then there was a relationship with my children.
That was another box.
And what I had to do with the relationship with my children was to recognize that my son was in his teenage years,
He was very much influenced by my ex and I had to accept that.
And my middle daughter,
She was also a young teenager and she was struggling a little bit and I had to accept that.
She wanted to be daddy's little girl and I had to accept that.
But my little one was about three or four at the time and very much connected to mom and didn't want to spend a whole lot of time with her dad.
So I had to deal with these three children differently.
But that was one box.
Another box was my home,
What it took me to keep up my home,
What it took me to mow the lawn,
To do the weed whacker and to do all of the house cleaning because that was also physically exhausting.
And then it was my faith,
My spirituality.
Was I putting enough effort into keeping myself up to par?
And then there was self care.
So there were all of these boxes.
There were six boxes at the time and every morning I would wake up and I would decide what I could take off my plate and what I could add.
In other words,
When it came to my physical health,
Was I drinking enough water?
Was I eating enough green leafy vegetables?
Was I taking my fish oil?
Was I taking my B vitamins,
Which was important to me?
Was I eating enough blueberries and enough walnuts and so on?
These were all very powerful brain foods that would help my brain feel enriched and powerful.
Was I paying enough attention to my finances?
Was I spending too much?
Was I not saving enough?
Was I spending enough time with my children?
Was I doing enough meditation?
Was I going to the doctor the way I should?
Was I taking care of myself?
Was I taking bubble baths?
Was I making sure that I had enough time with friends?
So these were things that I would think about every day and they really did help me compartmentalize my thoughts and prevented me from going down unnecessary rabbit holes.
So if you are in the middle of coming out of a narcissistic relationship and you have cognitive dissonance all over the place and you're really struggling to figure out where to flow your thoughts,
I really hope that this idea about segmenting your day and deciding where you're going to flow your energy is helpful.
I know that it helped me change my life.
I know that it helped me course correct.
I know that it helped me gain my power back from narcissistic relationships and it also helped me redirect the entire course of my life.
And eventually if you put enough effort in,
If you pay enough attention to these types of ideas,
One day you will get to a level four consciousness and you will experience serendipity.
You will experience synchronicity and you will attract people who really love you for who you are.
And remember,
A narcissist wants you to prove your worth.
And if you are struggling with codependency,
You might be by default seeking validation from the external world.
And I'm here to tell you that the only person's validation that you need and affirmation that you need is on the inside.
And once that really clicks in your head,
There is no one that will be able to control you ever.
I really hope this has been helpful.
Namaste.
Until next time.
Good luck dear ones.
