Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Perception Isn’t Always Reality

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

There’s this long-held and much belief that all narcissists are evil people bent on destruction who take pleasure in delivering pain. And that pain is often delivered to vulnerable and meek codependents who are viewed as meek, sweet souls whose sole purpose in life is to please others. But what if I told you that while on the surface, they seem totally different, operating from completely opposite ends of the spectrum narcissists and codependents are actually opposite sides of the same coin?  On this episode of Language of Love Bites, we’ll discuss the similarities between narcissists and codependents and how they originate from the same place. Chances are we’ve all dealt with one at some point in our lives and understanding why they behave in a certain way could help us, help them, and in the process, help our relationships. There’s a lot to unpack here including some of the myths out there about codependents and narcissists! Resources and Links Dr. Laura Berman Language of Love Podcast Laura Berman Instagram – Dr Laura Berman Facebook – Dr Laura Berman Youtube.com – Dr Laura Berman  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman. And for the last 30 years, I've been helping people just like you learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Bites, where I tackle your most asked questions and requested topics. These episodes are designed to be fun, quick and to the point. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. I'm excited for this episode because I'm diving into a topic that I think is really misunderstood.

The similarities, and there are many of them, between narcissists and codependents. We tend to see narcissists as all evil and bad and codependents as these beautiful, sweet, wonderful victims. They are a lot more similar than you might think. And at the end of this episode, I'm going to share with you one of the most significant myths people have about narcissists. I think you may be surprised. There's all of this stuff and content on social media and on the Internet about the evil narcissists. And listen, they can be evil, right?

And many of us have been in relationship with toxic narcissists and suffered from abuse and gaslighting and all the other things that can totally demean our self-worth, diminish us, and basically create an emotionally abusive environment. But I think it's really important to understand because mostly what you hear about is this idea that narcissists are evil, right? They're evil. And that the people who tend to be in relationship with narcissists are codependents. And I can certainly speak to that as a recovering codependent who was raised by an extreme narcissist and also has loved many, many narcissists in my life. And certainly when you heal your codependency, you definitely find it harder to be

in a relationship with a narcissist and the narcissist finds it harder to be in a relationship with you because the recovering codependent or a person with healthy boundaries will know how to set them, right? One of the key issues with a codependent is that we don't know how to set boundaries. And even if we do, we're scared to death to do that, right? And we can easily be manipulated into apologizing or giving away our own truth, right? But here's what I want you to understand is that narcissists are not all evil. They are wounded. And yes, sometimes they do evil things and destructive things. But codependents are not perfect little angels, right? We like to see the, and I'm speaking as a codependent or recovering codependent.

Codependence can be pretty manipulative. So what's interesting to me is that what I find is that narcissists and codependents are extremely close cousins. Instead of being on opposite ends of a continuum, they are different sides of the same coin. They are operating on many of the same principles it just expresses very very differently and the codependents will express their issues more socially acceptably more in ways that society celebrates so to speak while narcissists will in relationship at least will express their issues in ways that feel painful and are painful and abusive but the truth is it all comes from core childhood wounds, right? So first of all, let's just talk about the narcissist, their core

childhood wounds come from nobody protecting them or having an extremely abusive environment growing up. So they never felt safe and they couldn't trust. And so what they had to do is they felt so horrible about themselves and were so scared. And so at the effect of the grownups surround them who weren't able or willing or wanting to take care of them in the way they needed, that they decided that they would take care of themselves, that they knew better than anyone else, that they were all they needed, and that they were amazing, right? That's where the grandiosity of a narcissist comes from, right? Or the conceitedness, as people say. It really is a mask for a little boy, little girl, little child self who feels like crap about themself.

It is rooted in a wound that is so deep and profound and painful that I, for one, hold tremendous compassion that does not excuse any toxic or abusive behavior the narcissist engages in. But I feel like it's really important to have a certain degree of human compassion for the wound underneath it. Now with the codependence, we usually were raised by narcissists or addicts, typically, where we had to be the caretakers in order to be safe. So if we had a narcissist parent, like I did, then you had to learn to accommodate, bend yourself into a pretzel, take on their truth in order to stay safe and in order to stay in good graces, which for a child and a child's mind staying in your parents good graces means surviving because you're depending

on them for survival right so you do not want to be rejected or abandoned by them and so children when they're young will do whatever they can not to be right so that's where we learn from that way and certainly if you have an addict for a parent who is checked out or shut down or unable to care once again the child kind of takes on that parentified role covers for the parent takes care of the parent, makes excuses for the parent in order to keep themselves safe. So it's really common if you were raised by a narcissist or an addict, once again, that really painful underpinning of these issues that we have. So both narcissism and codependence is founded in pain of rejection and abandonment, emotional or literal. It's just different flavors. And even the grandiosity of a

narcissist, right? A narcissist will exclaim and express how amazing they are at the tangible things, their wealth, their accomplishments, their looks, right? Those kind of more superficial and external things. The codependent has a certain degree of grandiosity as well, but it's quiet It's grandiosity, right? We really invest in and take pride in being caring and loving and kind. And that's like a huge part of our persona and the way we need to be seen. And we're really invested, strongly invested. It's a huge part of our self-worth to see ourselves that way.

I'm such a good person. I'm so kind. I'm so giving, right? We do that for two reasons. One, because that's where we've sourced our self-worth. And that's also where society has given us a lot of kudos. So we've learned that if I do more of that, I will get the approval of the world and the people around me. As most of you know, for the past several years, I've been on a pretty intense grief journey. And it's been a path of healing. I've shared lots of that healing with you and lots of the healing resources that I found.

And I am so thrilled to announce that I am doing my first ever retreat for grieving mamas. So if you or someone you love is a mama who has lost a child in any way, at any stage, at any age, I would love for you to come join me at 1440 Multiversity in the Redwoods near Santa Cruz, California for four amazing days of beautiful, uplifting community and healing. We've got David Kessler. We've got Paul Selig. We've got Catherine Woodward Thomas. We've got me. We've got body work. We've got organic food, beautiful rooms.

Go to 1440.org. Check it out. It's right there on the homepage. I really hope you can join us. But also, because it allows us to a certain extent to stay in the victim place, I don't deserve this because I'm such a wonderful, kind, beautiful human being. and by the way you know I'm not saying you're not quite frankly I think we all are that regardless of our behavior underneath it all we're all beautiful wonderful purely lovable beings right

but I think it's important to say that codependents have a little bit of grandiosity as well it's just not as conscious and it's not as out there the other thing is narcissists obviously can be very manipulative that's where we get into gaslighting right gaslighting is where when someone is upset with you about something or you've done something to them and they're angry about it or hurt by it and you basically manipulate them into thinking it was their fault or they imagined it or they're crazy right and it's crazy making gaslighting and we talk about narcissists gaslighting narcissism and gaslighting. They go hand in hand. In every video you're going to see about narcissism, they'll mention gaslighting. Guess what? Codependents gaslight too. We just do it in a

very different way and for very different reasons. The codependent gaslights because we can't tolerate other people's disapproval of us because that means rejection and abandonment in our minds and hearts. That's our history. That's been our experience from childhood. That's our wound. So it's really scary for us when we disappoint someone or when we hurt someone, right? And of course, it's not intentional that we're doing those things. But when someone's upset with us, we will gaslight them unconsciously, right? We'll make excuses. We won't necessarily tell that person they're crazy and that they imagined it, but we'll

kind of create excuses or explanations or obfuscations, right? Ways to kind of justify what we did or victimize ourselves to explain something to make us seem a little more forgivable, a little less or very much less worthy of anger or contempt, because that's what drives us is other people's approval, especially the people we care about. So we manipulate as well. And it took me a really long time to own that, right? But I started seeing that when I was in relationships, especially close high stakes relationships, and someone was mad at me, I was very good at by the end of the conversation, having them either forgive me or apologize to me, even when it was my fault. And it took me a really long time to be able to acknowledge

that I was significantly more manipulative and had the capacity to be significantly more manipulative. Once again, coming from a very tender, sweet place, but I was doing that, right? And I think we have to own that codependence and narcissists both do that for different reasons. And here's the final thing that I want to say that is one of the most common myths about narcissists.

And that is that they don't have empathy. They have tremendous amounts of empathy. They just are scared of it. They bury it. They don't want to feel it because they learned from a very early age that it wasn't going to be returned. It wasn't going to be held. And they weren't given any empathy, right? That's why they became narcissists. But narcissists aren't incapable of empathy. Those who are incapable of empathy, are sociopaths, right? Like you hear that a lot about serial killers. And by empathy, I mean, you don't have the ability to at least put yourself in someone's shoes, feel what they're feeling, right? So on one end of the spectrum is an empath who feels everything that everyone else

is feeling. And on the other end is a sociopath, right? Those are the little kids that like torture animals and murder people and do horrific acts. I mean, we have many people in high levels of government and corporations who are sociopaths, who have no empathy for human beings or for the common man or human, right? Those are sociopaths. And yes, sociopaths can be narcissists and narcissists can be sociopaths for sure. But just because you are a narcissist does not mean you're a sociopath, does not mean you lack empathy. So please don't make that mistake. All of this is to say that all of us are wounded and all of us are doing the best we can. Does that mean that you stay in an abusive relationship with a narcissist who is unwilling to get help or

change or resolve some of the wounds that are causing them to behave this way. No, you don't stay. You don't use this information as a reason to stay in an abusive relationship. But I just want to speak as a woman who loves many beautiful hearted, wonderful people who tend toward narcissism, that it's a lot more complicated and not all narcissists are created equal and not all Co-dependence are sweetness and light, and we have a lot more in common than you might otherwise think. If you want to learn more about this or any other topic, you know that I'm always here for you, helping you learn to love and be loved better.

Thanks for watching!