I am grateful to Upjourney for including me in their article “How to know when a narcissist is finished with you” and here is what I shared with them.Often people who are in a relationship with a narcissist are what I call “People Pleasers”. I know because I was a People Pleaser. In his book, Complex PTSD, Pete Walker quoted a client, “Narcissists don’t have relationships, they take prisoners.”
Narcissists are charming bullies who are often motivated by a deep fear of abandonment, something they experienced in childhood. Now they punish the rest of the world for it, especially with their close personal relationships because emotional support was something they were often denied during childhood.
To make it even trickier, their behavior in front of others can be very different than when they are at home with their partner. It can be tough for others to validate that you were being abused by them at all because others experience them as charming and invested. Narcissists tend to attract those they perceive as weaker and they use shame to intimidate, controlling them through anger and disgust.
Their partners are often co-dependent “people pleasers” or those emotionally frozen. They tie their happiness to the happiness of their partner and are willing to self sacrifice for Love. That’s a lot of power to give someone over your own happiness.
Narcissists will take full advantage of the over-giving of their partner while giving back 20%. In my coaching experience, people pleasers and those who are emotionally frozen are the most common types of personalities that are attracted to narcissists.
When are narcissists done with you? Narcissists thrive on validation.
When they show more interest in those outsides of your relationship as they seek validation, your opinion is becoming less valuable to them
They get more critical and demanding because they know your triggers and what will get them the reaction they seek. Nothing fully pleases them and they continuously look for opportunities to criticize and diminish you.
Get ready for a lot of fights, obvious lies, mysterious calls and meetings as they draw further away from you.
Narcissists always look outside of their relationships for validation and can be charming for a short period of time, which is why they are usually quite popular with their friends.
It’s interesting, I’ve had clients whose husbands went out and had an affair because they were competitive and so afraid of abandonment, they convinced themselves that their spouse was the one having an affair when this was the furthest thing from the truth.
For me, the biggest question is why did the narcissist show up in your life? What about you attracted to this?
To heal from a relationship with a narcissist is to first heal your insecurities about being good enough and shifting your attitude about relationships.
It’s the big reason why the attraction to each other happens in the first place – you both resonate with the same low vibrational frequency of low self-esteem. In the world of energy, like attracts like, opposites do not attract. Our relationships are mirrors of how we feel about ourselves.
Often, I see co-dependent people trying to create the love they missed from a parent in childhood by attracting partners that create similar situations to those they experienced in their home life. More times than not, they will attract a similar personality to the parent that denied them, Love.
They often think that “if I couldn’t win the love of my mother/father, then I will with my partner so I know that I am OK.” Hence the continuous over-giving. The challenge is that narcissists lack empathy because they are so self-absorbed. It’s always all about them so any expectation for them to relate to how you are feeling got shut down before they met you. And hey, they love personal slaves, why would they ever ask you to stop hand and footing them? This can become a depressing cycle of unfulfilling relationships for everyone.
What needs to change to attract more loving relationships?
Shift your vibration and your world will shift with it.
How do you shift your vibration? Vibration is affected by the way you think and more importantly how you feel. The biggest lie we tell ourselves is that we are not good enough. The truth is we are enough for anything we want to manifest.
Switch to love-based thinking and let go of fear-based thinking.
One thing an over-giver knows is that nothing changes if you stay the same. Over-giving does not develop a healthy relationship. All healthy relationships are 50/50 and are based on mutual respect and equality in how much each gives to the other.
Happy people decide to be happy, it is not something that just happens. Know that your safety comes from love, not the fear of not being good enough and the incredible energy wasted on trying to prove it to someone who doesn’t want you to be strong and independent.
The narcissist and their partners, the people pleasers and those emotionally frozen have one thing in common that connects them….low self-esteem. The behavior that is born of this limiting belief along with the vibration sent out, magnetically attracts someone with a different version of the same feeling of “I am not good enough” and the cycle begins again. This is the biggest lie we tell ourselves and it gets us into all kinds of messes.
Find new ways to feel safe because trying to change others or accepting bad behavior from them because you are used to it, is not good enough for you. Set the bar high, love yourself more and so will everyone else that deserves your magnificence.
Read the whole article on Upjourney
Catherine Varga is a gifted intuitive and spiritual teacher, a vibrational sound healing expert and inspiring author of The SoulChild Within and lecturer. Wherever she goes, she sets the tone to the vibration of joy. Catherine is creator of Sound Reiki® Energy Healing, creator of the SoulChild™ Alignment Method and Founder of the Sound Reiki Institute. She is committed to your empowerment and positive life changes.
Email Catherine@SoundReiki.com
