Why You Love Narcissists: Unveiling The Invisible Attraction

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 today I wanted to address all those out there who continually find themselves in unhealthy,

Toxic,

And oftentimes one-way narcissistic relationships.

I wanted to demystify why those who grew up in toxic homes,

Who often grew up feeling invisible,

Who have been taught that they are not acceptable unless they're pleasing someone,

And how this inner programming sets you up to feel very attracted at the heart level to someone who is highly narcissistic.

So when you break it down,

People always ask me,

So oftentimes ask me,

I'm not a narcissist.

Why am I attracting narcissists?

If I am codependent,

If I am empathic,

If I am a people pleaser,

I mean,

My wife is not a people pleaser.

My wife is demonstrative.

My wife is aggressive.

My wife only thinks about herself.

My wife is annoyed when the baby cries.

My wife is annoyed when my four-year-old asks for a bag of pirate booty.

My wife is annoyed when the teachers at school suggest that the kid's hair isn't clean and something has to be done.

And so when we're dealing with somebody who is highly narcissistic,

They're very thin-skinned and they're not in emotional control.

They're emotionally dysregulated.

And their sense of control comes from being aggressive,

From being grandiose,

From playing the pity party within their own consciousness.

Their anger is your fault.

Their aggression is your fault.

Nobody understands them.

Their life is really hard.

How could you ask this of me?

How dare you ask this of me?

And they get really resentful really quick when there's any hint from anybody in the family or in the community or at work that suggests that they need to look at something,

That they need to do more than what they're doing.

And this speaks to the idea that a narcissist is holding it together through a false identity,

Through an illusion,

Through this idea that they're better,

That they really are wonderful,

Altruistic people.

And you,

How dare you,

For not seeing it,

For suggesting that there's something more in my own life,

My first marriage.

My ex was really under the illusion and delusion that he was awesome.

And no matter how I tried to point things out,

Little things,

It was a huge issue because from his perspective,

I had no right to ask for more.

And it baffled me for years because I thought,

Should I feel indebted to him?

Is it normal for a wife to say,

Can we sit down and can we talk about maybe when you come home from dinner and I've made you dinner and it's time for the baths with three children?

Is it realistic to maybe ask you to clean off the table so I can get that done?

Is it realistic for me to ask you when you're coming home,

When you're going to be home from work so that I can have dinner on the table?

Is that realistic?

Is it realistic for me to question,

You said you're going to be right back,

It's three hours later,

Am I wrong?

And so when you're dealing with someone who has this idea in their head that they're awesome,

That they're amazing,

And you see this a lot with people who are religious because they go to church or because they tithe,

Because they sing hallelujah,

Because they have the radio stations in their car set to all Christian or whatever your denomination is,

Right?

Like Christian radio and they're singing Christian rock songs.

You got to be careful about people who identify with a higher power sometimes because in their understanding of the higher power,

They can become super righteous,

Super self-righteous,

And that is not love.

Condemning someone who doesn't think like you is not love.

And so we've got to really be careful when we're dealing with particular people in our lives who really have this idea because they have a master's degree in psychology or because they're a leader of some group.

They're so much smarter than you.

I can't tell you how many times I have worked with clients who have come from very well-known ashrams,

Have worked with very well-known gurus,

Who have worked with very well-known life coaches,

And who were shamed in those communities because they dared to question the leader's stance on an issue.

And I think a healthy leader is someone who says,

I've never thought about that.

You know,

That's a great question.

I'm so happy that you're part of this group because in that question,

I get to expand too.

But someone who is doing what they're doing because of ego will be challenged by anyone who has a larger thought or a more expansive thought than them.

And so when we're thinking about the people in our lives that have narcissistic traits,

It's super helpful to recognize these personality traits,

Number one,

Because now I can start managing my expectations of this person.

I've learned that I'm not going to be heard and that if this person calls me and all they do is complain,

They really don't want my feedback.

They just want to be able to vent.

And if that's going to affect my day,

Maybe it's better that I not be so available.

So identifying people with narcissistic traits is super helpful.

It's not about you becoming self-righteous and saying they're a narcissist and talking about them on social media.

And it's none of that because that's the negative end of the stick,

Right?

And whatever vibration you emit is what you're inviting into your life.

So I never suggest that we take that route.

I do suggest walking away.

I do suggest setting boundaries.

But even in the setting of the boundaries,

When the anger is done and the reality sets in,

We should be,

In my opinion,

This is what I do.

This is what I teach.

We should be moving towards more of a relief where we're not stuck in our ego identity anymore.

And because when I'm stuck in my ego,

In terms of the map of consciousness,

I'm at the lower end of the stick.

I don't want the lower end of the stick stuff in life manifesting in my life.

I want the stuff that's on the vibration of love and compassion and letting go.

That's what I want.

But that's an inside job.

That's me mastering myself.

That's me mastering my consciousness.

That's me saying,

Yeah,

This happened in my life.

I was born to these people.

I was verbally,

Emotionally,

Sometimes physically abused.

Yeah,

I did have that experience.

Yeah,

That was hurtful,

But it's not keeping me stuck.

I refuse to allow the energy of those experiences and the language patterns that were created during that time to keep me stuck.

I am a creator.

And so when you're waking up and you're realizing that you've been in narcissistic relationships,

Which is what I was going through,

And the last relationship just brought me to my knees,

I was like,

Okay,

What am I still doing wrong?

For me,

That aha moment was my body saying,

Basically higher self saying,

I sent you the red flags and you ignored them.

When he told you that he didn't have a house phone,

He only had one phone and you heard the house phone ring one day when you were talking to him on his cell phone.

I sent you that signal and you ignored it.

When he said he was speaking to his brother and you could see on his phone,

He was talking to a woman,

It was a woman's name on the phone.

That was a red flag that I sent you and you ignored it.

I was like,

Okay,

I'm not ignoring red flags anymore.

The reason I think that so many of us who struggle with self-worth,

Who have been conditioned and programmed to look outside of ourselves for feelings of love,

Romance,

Connection,

Worthiness,

The reason we find narcissists so attractive,

Alluring,

And why it feels so familiar is because we're used to that narcissistic person's base emotional set point.

That emotion that this narcissist emits is familiar.

At the subatomic level,

My body says,

Ooh,

I know what that is.

My brain then interprets that familiarity as attraction.

It is attraction because like attracts like.

The narcissistic man that I was attracted to was an incredible mixed bag of mom and dad.

Both had narcissistic traits,

Although I would probably define,

In my own humble opinion,

My father as the narcissist in the relationship between the two of them.

But my mom was super passive aggressive,

Emotionally dysregulated.

You had to walk around eggshells around her.

She was very disapproving of you.

She made you beg her for love and then chastised you for needing her love.

Then you felt like a burden.

So in my life,

Love was something that I had to chase.

It wasn't something that it was given.

It was something I had to prove myself worthy for.

And that's the energy of a narcissist.

If you spend enough time with a narcissist,

The message you get is you're never right.

You're wrong again.

If you love me,

You would do this.

If you really understood me,

You would have never asked me that.

If you weren't so insecure,

You would have behaved this way.

And that is very familiar for a codependent who has felt abandoned and rejected.

And has learned to fawn to seek approval and to gain a sense of control.

When we are fawning,

What we're trying to do is avoid the detachment from the person of our affection,

The person that we are focusing on or obsessed with.

And we're trying to avoid them from having a cause or a reason to find displeasure with us.

So fawning is our way of controlling our inner anxiety.

However,

It's a pattern,

It's a program,

And it keeps us stuck.

What I teach is let's recognize whether or not you are codependent.

Let's take some time and break that down.

Let's do some family history work.

Let's figure out what your baseline programming is because that's not your fault.

And if it's programming,

We can deprogram you or you can reprogram you.

And so recognizing what went wrong is super,

Super important.

Otherwise,

We just stay in the matrix.

We don't escape it.

So that's really important,

Figuring out whether or not you have codependency traits,

Whether or not your childhood has caused you to develop this base programming.

How this inner language now,

By default,

It's neurological,

It's habitual thinking.

How is this shaping your world through the thought field?

Remember,

We recently spoke about the word spelling.

What does the word spell mean?

You're under a spell.

You are under a spell of your inner language.

Can you break that spell if you don't know what that language is?

It's about elevating your consciousness.

That's step one.

Becoming aware is step one.

Once you become aware,

Oh,

Wow,

This is the dynamic I find myself in.

At that level,

We start breaking those patterns.

And that is where the rubber meets the road.

And it could be as long as a year-long journey where you are devoting yourself to absolutely understanding what's happening at the subconscious level,

Which means that you have to awaken and observe your patterns and programs.

And you have to commit yourself to observing them.

Why?

So you can change them.

So codependents find narcissists super attractive at the subconscious level because they represent our understanding of love.

They represent our role model for love.

I'm not good enough.

You don't think I'm good enough because you think you are the bomb.

You are it.

You know,

You are the razzle and the dazzle.

I'm just here to serve you.

And so we,

At the subconscious level,

Resonate with people who make us feel less than,

Even though,

In the beginning,

They hooked us through flattery.

You got to be careful of flattery,

Dear one.

Even the Bible says,

Be careful of flattery.

Be careful of the man who says to you,

Does your husband know how beautiful you are?

Be careful of the woman who leans into you at work and says to you as a man,

Does your wife know how lucky she is?

You are so attractive.

You are so this.

Be careful.

Fish never see the hook.

They only see the lure.

And so,

Yes,

Narcissists generally use flattery as a way to get us to trust them.

And what that flattery is speaking to is the little girl or the little boy inside of you who finally feels seen,

Who finally feels like someone can respect you.

But it's all,

It's just a hook,

Dear one.

And so if you see yourself falling into these patterns,

If this is happening to you over and over,

This is why.

But the good news is,

Because that's what it's all about.

It's about the good news.

The good news is that you can reprogram your subconscious mind if you can awaken and if you can devote yourself to living a conscious life above the veil of consciousness.

Dear one,

I so hope that this has been helpful.

Please know that you were born enough.

You were born enough.

Namaste.

Until next time.