Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Stop Accidentally Attracting Narcissists

Episode Date: May 3, 2023

Ever wonder why you are always drawn to partners who have the same personality traits? Some people call it having a type, I call it being a frequency match for a certain kind of character or quality. Depending on the type, this can be a good thing, a bad thing or a very bad thing. In this Language of Love Session, I talk with a listener named Kim. She has been in a toxic narcissistic-codependent relationship for 4 years and she’s seeking guidance on whether or not she should throw in the towel.  In this episode you’ll learn: How to reach the calm and presence necessary for an honest conversation  The two tipping points of pain that ultimately allow us to leave a toxic relationship  How much narcissists and codependents actually have in common (hint: codependents can be gaslighters too!) A roadmap for healing successfully with action items Visit my website and check out my books on love, sex and relationships. Be sure to tune in regularly to The Language of Love for great discussions and thought-provoking conversations with accomplished individuals and experts offering invaluable advice on how to love and be loved better. 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 learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is.

It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Kim, welcome. What's on your mind? How can I help? Thank you, Dr. Berman. So... with added B vitamins like coffee plus B12 to help support immune function and coffee plus B6 to keep your day moving or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight our new double espresso

with ginseng extract whatever lies ahead don't change your morning let your morning change you discover coffee plus on espresso.com I've been in a relationship for the past three and a half almost four years now with a guy and we're at a point where we hit like a really rocky road like almost where you can't drive on it anymore and it's broken me open where I feel I feel like this is the point where I need to do my internal work which I've heard you talk a lot about. And so I've been doing EMDR and doing my talk therapy and wanted to start your somatic course when it comes out, but I wanted to get your take on some things that are really odd and they're just kind of lingering questions. And also I would just love your

personal your your professional opinion about things just some time all right so before we even start and i will dig into all of this we just i don't always do this but i can feel it in you let's just ground for a second okay like so i just want you to take some really deep breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth and whenever you're ready on the in breath i want you to imagine any light, any color, any color light flowing in through your crown, through the top of your head as you breathe in, breathe in super slow, and then let it unhold the breath for a second while it fills every cell of your body. And then on the out breath through your mouth, I want you to imagine it shooting out your tailbone, the light deep, deep, deep into the

earth grounding their rooting their anchoring you to the earth so just take a two more breaths like that because i can feel how not in your body you are and the way that i can be most of service to you is if we're both here so take a few breaths i'm gonna do it with you because i can always use more grounding hold it for a second and out the tailbone deep into the earth one more deep breath in comes the light filling every cell and then shooting out our tailbone anchoring us okay oh it feels so much better okay good all right so now tell me what it is i i heard the gist right that you're at a crossroads It's, you know, it's time to do your own internal work.

Your relationship feels like it's super rocky. What is the question or the concerns that you want to talk about? I think that he's a covert narcissist. He's not been diagnosed. I've, you know, Google diagnosed him, but I'm not really so much concerned about what he is or what he isn't. I just know that the relationship is toxic. and the two big things that I wanted to ask you about are that one we've never had sex before

and how long have you been together almost four years wow have you are you sexual at all or not at all no at all I mean in the beginning there was a little bit of like not intercourse but then that went to the wayside so we and are you and do you want have you wanted to have sex and he's not available for it or have neither one of you wanted to or has it been you that didn't want i wanted to at a point now i don't because of you know the emotional yeah yeah roller coaster okay but he hasn't ever i don't know that he has want he hasn't wanted to he said that it's because of his blood pressure medication and he said he's got erectile dysfunction yeah that does happen that does happen and then they avoid sex altogether because they don't want to fail

yeah okay and so unfortunately and this is really typical in men who have difficulty and heart medication blood pressure medication will cause erectile dysfunction it's not uncommon and so unfortunately for so many men the majority of the men i find that if they're having trouble sexually responding then they avoid sex because they don't want to face that failure the problem is when they avoid sex intercourse yeah they avoid everything that may wrap around intercourse everything from hand holding to making out kissing cuddling touching because to them it's all in the same bucket and it's going to lead to sex and then they'll fail so they just avoid it oh okay so that's probably what's going on i mean i'm sure there are other things too but that alone is

enough to make a guy avoid it, which is unfortunate because there are things you can do to address it. And there are certainly ways to stay intimate and connected emotionally and physically without intercourse. Often men need some help and guidance getting there. Okay, but let's just put a pin in that for a minute. That's a larger, I don't think that's the main issue here though, my sense is, right? No, it's not. The other big issue I wanted to run by you is he is really, really concerned with public image and he takes it to the extreme so we were visiting his brother up north last year and I came back early because of a lot of family drama and we were going to visit his friend in a nearby city when we were up there but we didn't get to go because of the drama that had

happened and rather than telling his friend just a simple I'm sorry we couldn't make it we'd love to see you again next time. He made up a huge story. He said, our house got broken into, the person stole our computers, all of my jewelry, stole some things off of our cars. And then he took that further and told another one of his friends that's closer by that it was actually coming to our house. And then he told that friend not to talk to me about it because I was very sensitive and still sad about it. And his parents were visiting us at that time. And he also gave them very strict instructions along with me to not talk to his friends about it. That's a lot of convoluted stuff going on there. Yeah. Does he make up a lot of stories ever? I

mean, that sounded like it was a story that was created as a excuse so that he didn't look like a flake flaking out on his friend, at least from the way the context you put it in. But does he make up stories not just to make himself look not flaky, but to engender sympathy? Does he make up a lot of stories to make people feel like he's a good guy that bad things happen to? Is there a lot of that in his life or not so much? This was just a one-time story in that category. He's made up a story a couple of times where he gave me instructions like, you should tell them this. And I'm like, no, I'm going to tell them the truth. I don't mind, you know, it's easier for me just to say the truth and not have to figure out what

lie I told. Right. But there are a lot of occasions and it feels almost like his life is built around victimhood. That's what I'm feeling. Yeah. New from Nespresso, blend wellness into your coffee routine with the Coffee Plus range, infused with functional benefits. Choose the coffee you love with added B vitamins, like coffee plus b12 to help support immune function and coffee plus b6 to keep your day moving or go with the flow and choose ginseng delight our new double espresso with ginseng extract whatever lies ahead don't change your morning let your morning change you discover coffee plus on espresso.com so the family he grew up in not that none of this is an excuse

it's an explanation and i feel like that's part of what you're looking for is an explanation in part because you want to know what the hell's going on with this guy, but also because you've been internalizing this as being as you deserving it, which not. Okay. That's just your own wounds operating, right? So you grew up, like many of us, being taught overtly and covertly that all the bad things that were happening to you were your fault, that you were too much of something, too little of something, not good enough. And so you've just carried that forward including being in a relationship with someone who won't have sex with you and doesn't treat you well right and sustaining through that and blaming yourself for that rather

than being like screw this i don't deserve this but you finally arrive to right and that's what happens is sometimes the pain of being in the situation has to be greater than our wounds or our fears of getting out of it and that's the tipping point you're at which is great now you're getting help now you're starting to take action and you're also seeking to understand in part in service to you not like understanding that this is really not personal the only part of it that's personal is that you're the one he's doing it to and you're the one willing to stick around this long to have it done too right but and i'm not saying he doesn't love you right it's like he loves you with his fullest cup probably but his cup is the size of a thimble his own wounds

so it's not that he's not loving you as best he can he just sucks at loving because he's so damaged yeah that has nothing to do with you you could be j-lo or whoever you know pick your ideal gorgeous perfect woman or perfect for him or had all the qualities that he could ever imagine wanting in a human being and he still would be behaving this way because it has nothing to do with you you may catalyze it you may be a catalyst for some of it you may be a trigger for some of it just by existing and being a human being much less wanting to be an integrity when he isn't Right. But that's still not you causing his behavior. So his behavior is rooted in never feeling like he was seen or valued or understood.

Oh, my gosh. You I mean, you are so right. Like he complains about not being seen like this. And so what he learned is that if I am the one who just got robbed or whose house just burned down or whose dog just got shot. I'm just thinking of these horrible, you know. Then he looks around the world. He looks on social media. He looks around his community and the people that are getting empathy.

He didn't get enough empathy. The people that are getting empathy, the people that are getting care, the people who are like, oh, let me give you attention. Let me give you care are the victims, right? So he learned super early in life. And that was probably the only way

he could get anyone's attention is when he was really sick or something really bad happened. then he could get his caretaker's attention. Is that your understanding? Oh, right. I mean, you couldn't be more right. Like he, he told like his brother, the reason that I left early from our trip, he's, he's a narcissist and there's no mistaking him. He, you can see him from a mile away. He's, this is so bad. And my partner said, you know, I feel like I grew up like a weed because my parents were so focused on him and I got none

of the attention. And then he's recently told me that he's learning that he actually has needs. Listen, regardless of your sexual orientation or your gender or your relationship status, every single one of us has struggled at one point or another with a lackluster or disconnected sex life or difficulty finding the partner that we most desire. So I have designed an amazing program for you. Seven days to better sex. Each day, you're going to get a video and an information packet all designed to help you jumpstart your love life. Just go to www.drlauraberman.com. Yeah. Well, that's the problem is that, and that's the reason he's been so unconscious is that this is the only way that he knows. So when someone doesn't feel like they matter

at all to anyone and hasn't grown up with a sense of empathy and understanding and compassion being offered to them doesn't feel seen, right? They have to find ways to be seen. And the child's mind, and this is really kind of tricky because there's a part of us when we're wounded in childhood, there are parts of us that stay in that child's mentality, even though the rest of us is a grownup, you know, and often those little child parts are the ones driving the bus. And they typically are the ones driving the bus when we're triggered or in our higher stakes relationship. So his little child self learned that the only way I can be seen is if I'm in crisis and that I need to manipulate people in order to give me attention or be seen. And if I show up, I'm invisible. Right. So and if I show up with my true, authentic self, I can't afford to disappoint anyone. Right. Because I'm too easily discardable.

So I would rather make up a whole story about why I didn't call you back, which is not a big crime, right? Rather than tell you, sorry, I got distracted. I never called you back. Sorry about that. Right. Like he didn't have the experience as a child of having that be OK. That's what this is about for him. And I don't know whether we could get into what his diagnosis is, if he's a narcissist or not.

But he's certainly not emotionally healed enough or emotionally mature enough to have a loving, mutual, authentic relationship. And the key to any relationship being a really good one or even a decent one is authenticity and integrity, right? And if you can't trust what he says and that he's going to do what he says he's going to do, that he's going to be where he says he's going to be, that he's going to be honest about what's really happening, then the foundation is sand. yeah right so then you're going to feel insecure and then it becomes a relationship issue when you want to be in integrity and he doesn't you have to join him in the manipulations and lies that are rooted in dysfunction or it risks the relationship and then all your codependence kicks in right because you're i'm assuming i maybe tell you for the first time but i'm guessing you already know that you're dependent, right? Yeah. I'm like the biggest one. Yeah. I'm working on it

though. That's good. That's what you, that's honestly the key, right? So the things I want you to really understand out of this conversation is one, there's nothing you did or didn't do to, to deserve his bad treatment, which is so easy to internalize. Like when someone's not having sex with you and someone's mistreating you, you know, of course you're going to start, And he's a good manipulator and a good gaslighter, which makes it probably why partly why you think he's a narcissist. Codependence can be good gaslighters, too. I'm one of the best as a recovering codependent. I have to really squelch it.

I gaslight in a different way. New from Nespresso. Blend wellness into your coffee routine with the Coffee Plus range. Infused with functional benefits. Choose the coffee you love with added B vitamins. Like Coffee Plus B12 to help support immune function. and Coffee Plus B6 to keep your day moving. Or go with the flow and choose Ginseng Delight,

our new double espresso with ginseng extract. Whatever lies ahead, don't change your morning. Let your morning change you. Discover Coffee Plus on Nespresso.com. The narcissist will gaslight you into thinking you're crazy for being upset. The codependent will gaslight you into feeling guilty you're upset.

Okay, I can see myself doing that. I've done that a lot. Like by the end of an argument, when I was really in my prime of codependence and I would be dating someone and I did something wrong, by the end of the argument, they were convinced that it was totally justified that I either made myself the victim of someone else or something else that explained it, or they were apologizing to me. You know, it was that kind of gaslight versus like what you saw, you didn't really see. What you think, you didn't really think.

Like that's what most narcissists will do. But narcissists and codependents are super close cousins. We like to think as codependents because we're so sweet and so empathetic that we're on the opposite end of the spectrum from narcissists. We're really on the opposite side of the coin. Oh, well, right. So it's all about manipulate. It's all rooted in something unbelievably sweet and painful, which is not having your needs met at all as a child, not feeling safe at all as a child, not being seen, although in different ways. It's really just about the strategies you developed as a child in order to survive and

get your needs met. But they're both sides of the same coin, right? So the same compassion we have for the codependent, we have to have for the narcissist. That doesn't excuse their behavior or their mistreatment, right? But the reason I'm saying all this to you is because I want you to understand that this really has nothing to do with you except for the fact that you signed up for this, right? Which is fine. It's been a learning experience, right? And it's what was needed to push your comfort levels far enough away from comfort to discomfort so that you'd be

willing to do the work you need to do now to heal finally, right? Yeah. And it feels so good. I mean, I wish I would have done it before now, but the healing just feels so amazing. yeah and it won't continuously feel amazing it will feel amazing but in order to really heal you're gonna also have to feel shitty yeah not like to go into the belt not as a place to stay but to go into those dark places yeah that's be willing to do that i am doing it really feels bad i feel it in my body like when i'm doing emdr when i go way down deep into the inner child like I feel my stomach hurting or like at some points I'll get shaky and I mean there's some days where I just don't want to get out of bed I feel depressed you know I'm like feel like I'm

just dragging myself through the mud yeah but then I also am feeling a lot of relief yes from the work and I'm getting clarity and I'm being able to draw a parallel between how my mom treated me who she was a narcissist and my current relationship and how just the smallest things like me feeling responsible for her moods. And I also feel at some point I felt responsible for his moods. Of course you did. That's part of the reason he was so attracted to you because you're such a codependent. He always felt seen. He always felt like he mattered because you were willing to bend yourself into a pretzel to make him okay, right? I mean, I've been, I had a really narcissistic father and I had relationship after relationship after relationship with narcissists. That's what

we do, right? That's natural. That's normal. That's nothing to beat yourself up over. It's about recognizing it. And you will keep, whether you leave this one or not, you will keep being attracted to or attracting in narcissists until you stop being a frequency match to them. And you stop being a frequency match to them when you do your own healing, which you've already started, which is probably why it's getting harder and harder to stay in this relationship. But that's normal. And I think one of two things happen in a situation like this. I don't know whether you've decided to leave or not, but one of two things happen either as you really commit to your own healing, either you continue healing and he either through the way you've modeled it

or out of necessity, he faces his own stuff and starts to get his own help in order to keep you or just by matching you, or he can't. And it just becomes intolerable enough that there is a tipping point. The first tipping point you've already passed, which is the pain of not facing how toxic this relationship is, is greater than my fear of facing it, right? So you've already past that threshold. The next threshold is I find staying in this exchange and in this mutual frequency just intolerable. Like I just can't anymore. And it's such an easy, it's not easy in operationalizing it and actually doing it, but the decision is so easy. It's so clear. It comes to a point where it's just so clear. And I don't know if you're there yet. I am. I've come to the

point of almost moving out, like I was looking at places and looking at buying a place, you know, which would be a lot more like final than just renting something. And it is getting a lot more intolerable because I like that behavior just seems a lot more foreign to me than it used to be. And I'm like, why would I? It just doesn't seem right. And also, as you not only does that not feel an integrity or an alignment, but as you and the biggest, biggest, big kahuna for every codependent is boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, boundaries, right? So as you heal more and commit to yourself more, you are also committing to boundaries. So he says, lie about this. And you say, I'm really sorry. It's not, I don't feel an integrity lying. I have to tell the truth. I don't

need to give him a million reasons or excuses. This is just who I am, right? Or it's not okay to talk to me that way, or I don't want to be treated that way. No, I'm not going to go to this place because you're insisting we go. I don't feel good about going right. Like as you start to set those limits and set those boundaries, it's going to get harder and harder to keep the peace, right? Because the peace has been kept by you bending yourself into a pretzel. Yeah, it has. You're so right about that. It's getting harder and harder because I see that things aren't healthy and I'm getting healthier. And like you said, our frequency match. And I've actually noticed myself being drawn more towards nicer people.

Yeah. Well, that's a good sign. Like my dentist. I know it's a big shocker when you realize you've always been drawn to assholes. Yeah. Well, that's what you were used to. That's what you also felt you deserved. And you mentioned somatic experiencing, and I am doing some courses that are coming up, but I am not by no means a somatic experiencing expert. And I do think that now, especially and in service to your own healing, not only so you can break free of whatever this happening now is, but so that you can really set yourself up for success moving forward. Well, two things. First of all, I don't want you to get into any relationship for at least a year and really,

really focus on yourself and your own healing. That doesn't mean you can't have friends or even go on a few dates, but nothing serious, nothing committed, and to start doing now somatic experiencing. And you can go to traumahealing.org, I think it is, traumahealing.org. You can find a somatic experiencing therapist near you because you have a lot of, you have, I mean, I can feel it in my throat and in my belly that you have a lot of trauma. A lot. Yeah.

And so EMDR is a great reset, sort of, but it stays in your body. So the reason that you're shaking or that these physical symptoms are coming up is really normal because you're going, you're cognitively kind of going back to that moment. That's the nature of EMDR and you're soothing the charge of that moment with EMDR, but you aren't releasing the trauma from the body with EMDR. Do you understand what I'm saying? I do. So when you do somatic experiencing, I mean, I don't mean to minimize EMDR.

I love it. So this isn't intended to be a minimum, you know, like discarding it as a great modality, but it is sort of like a band-aid approach. Okay. A little bit more than a band-aid approach because it does discharge a little bit the charge of that memory, but the memory is still held in your system. I'm not saying that when you release it, you forget the memory, but it doesn't have a place. It's not being held in your body anymore. Got it. There is a physical and emotional release that happens when you release

these long-held emotions. They get held in our fascia. They get held in our bodies in places that we don't even know. Like our body literally keeps the score. It's a famous book, but it does. So as you release that, you will feel so much clearer and lighter and you won't have to like manage. Like right now you have to kind of convince, you know, walk yourself through processes to like, you got to talk to yourself a lot. You got to navigate yourself a lot. You got to negotiate with yourself a lot, which you still have to do as a recovering codependent for a while. But if you add in the somatic experiencing, the charge out of it all is so much less that you're so much less likely to get triggered to fear and anxiety, which is where you get

triggered to. You're so much less likely to get triggered there. Okay. I'll check the website. I've heard you mention it before, so I'll check that traumahealing.org. Okay. And we'll put that in the show notes too so for listening they can see where the link is okay sounds good well thank you for your breakdown of everything i mean i i knew that you would you would get i mean because you're so good anyway but just the fact that you have that like that feeling of things where i didn't even have to tell you anything and you knew everything so crazy but thank you for you know helping me through it because there's so much muck and we have tried to do couples therapy and he mucked it up even more and he came out of it. He will not be good until he decides to really

face his demons. He will be a nightmare in therapy because he'll just lie to the therapist the whole time. That's felt, it felt like a lot of manipulation. And I, you know, I told him that the only way that our relationship would continue is if he got help for him, if he started working on himself, that's a requirement now. And if he doesn't want to, that's okay because that's his own journey. But I'm just going to be here and let's see if this is what he wants to do. And if not, then you'll just have to go our separate ways. Yeah. And just make sure, because I feel like he'll manipulate with that too. If he really thinks you're leaving, he will say he's going to therapy and he may even go, but he'll either manipulate the therapist or not go and say he's

going. So just be wary of that. Like you're basically dealing with a five-year-old who doesn't yet know how to tell the truth emotionally. I'm not saying that all aspects of him are like a little five-year-old, but that's kind of what he's not really trustworthy. So I like what you're saying. Like you don't want to fully throw in the towel if he's willing to really get the help he needs but like he needs to be going to a therapist once a week and like really showing up and then meeting with you and the therapist intermittently so you can make sure that the therapist knows your perspective on what's been going on and what the issues are because especially if you send someone to therapy whose idea it was who didn't have the idea that they wanted to go to therapy but they're

doing it for someone else they don't often engage fully right and then if you add to that someone who doesn't ever want to look bad doesn't want to really be authentic doesn't have that muscle built at all he's totally atrophied his muscles for authenticity you know so it's very likely that he's even if he goes to therapy that he may not fully use it okay so just keep that in your back pocket too that is in my mind and also i didn't know as much about the somatic work until you know, you just talked to me about it, but for his birthday, I offered to pay for your somatic course for both of us, really for half of it, depending on what the cost would be. But, you know, so, and he also said he'd be willing to start EMDR. So I don't know.

I don't know. I feel like he, he definitely, yeah, I don't think doing talk there, he's too manipulative to do talk therapy it'll just talk circles around the therapist yep but i would see and does he have acknowledged trauma in his history like oh yeah he has trauma with like i said his parents and with his brother obviously because he's and any like any i'm just thinking about insurance does he have health insurance he does but he has had bad experiences before with therapy. And so he doesn't want to think it's a waste of time, but I think that's also an excuse and a waste of money. So what I was thinking is that if you can justify trauma, a history of trauma or post-traumatic stress, right, then often insurance will pay for a somatic experiencing.

So, so check out, I would rather him honestly do five sessions of somatic experiencing with a therapist near you and he's not going to be able to talk his way around it yes then doing an emdr thing or something like that which he can fake you know i mean you can really well you can kind of okay maybe not get so deep into it yeah yeah or go through the motions i mean they can't really tell it's all by your report right i mean they're following your feedback so whatever his feedback is that's where they're going so like i remember when i took my now 27 year old to emdr he had some medical trauma and he must have been in like ninth or tenth grade and the emdr therapist who i really respected thought he was doing great but when i talked to him he's like no i'm just

like i'm not you know i'm thinking about homework i'm just kind of oh no used to hear oh yeah so yeah because it's so self-directed even though the emdr therapist is working with you yeah it's through your self-direction right like what you're reporting what you're saying you remember what you so same thing like i don't really trust that for him but the body doesn't lie okay i think that yeah i think somatic would be good for him i'm not putting a lot of weight in it because i'm not really focused on that right now i'm focused on myself yeah but i will take your advice and let him know, because he is really focused on body work in terms of like other things. Like he's really into, like he has a hyperbaric oxygen chamber and he has like a

infrared sauna. So he really is into like, he's like, I'm going to heal myself through these things. And I'm like, well, why don't you try somatic work? Yeah. Well, so then that's perfect. Then he should respond to this because the health of his body, a lot of chronic diseases and inflammatory diseases are cured through somatic experiencing because those inflammatory diseases are the body responding to holding the trauma and the stress. So, I mean, Gabor Mate talks about that all the time with illness. I don't know if you heard the episode I did with him, but that's a great example. So if that's a way to get him in there, then that's great. Okay. And frankly, if he can afford hyperbaric oxygen chamber and infrared sauna, he can afford

therapy. If he wants it, he can afford it. Absolutely. Really good point. Yes. I'll keep all of that in my arsenal as an argument. And in the end, you can only lead the horse to water, right? So you're absolutely right. Just focus on your own healing and either he will come along for the ride or he won't. And then it will become abundantly clear at a certain point what your decision is. The main thing is to be fully in your truth and to throw away the pretzel mold so that you can really and see what happens as you really continue to set those boundaries because either he is going to rise with you or he's not. And that's the only way you're going to know. Okay. Well, thank you. I'm breaking out of the pretzel mold starting today. I'm breaking out

a little bit, but I'll give myself the permission. Amen. Nothing's more important than you being in alignment with your truth right now. Always. But yeah, that's your mantra. Okay. We'll do it. It's my commitment to myself. Thank you so much. Good. Keep us posted on how you're doing. All right. I will. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I went to the doctor Said I'm crazy for your love Wrote me a prescription But there's no cure for crying