Love Life with Matthew Hussey - (Rewind): Don't Do THIS If You're In A Relationship With A Narcissist...

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

It's hard enough dealing with a toxic relationship, but it's even worse if you don't have a strong sense of boundaries to put up when you see behaviour you shouldn't tolerate. In this clip, Matthew, Stephen, Audrey, and Jameson discuss how to implement self-care to protect yourself when you have the tendency to sacrifice your needs for others. Follow Matt @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen @stephenhhussey --- ►► Stop Waiting and Start Creating the Happiness You Deserve NOW - Claim your spot on my Virtual Retreat, June 2 - 4, 2023 → MHVirtualRetreat.com

It can be quite easy for someone who's manipulative to use their past as a way to mobilize your empathy. Welcome everybody to the Love Life Podcast. I am Matthew Hussey, and this is a clip from the archives that I think is really going to help you today. Check it out, and I'll speak to you at the end of the episode. Let's talk about that for a moment. When does empathy go too far? Empathy extended outwards is a beautiful thing, but I think it becomes dangerous when you can't extend it back to yourself. Explain what you mean by that for a moment, just so that everyone, I really want people to get that message. Like what, what do you mean by that? Well, I just so that everyone, I really want people to get that message. Like, what, what do you mean by that? you know it's quite a common thing that you hear but in order to be there for other people your own cup has to be full and your priority in life should always be to make sure that you're okay

now that doesn't mean that you have to put yourself first in every single situation and in fact you shouldn't it's really important to put other people first sometimes and to put those you love before you when they need you more than you need them in that moment but ultimately your empathy towards other people cannot come at the detriment of actually making sure you're okay that's when you're you have to suspect yourself I think as to whether or not is it really empathy or are you just caught in a toxic cycle where it's serving some kind of need for you? You know, whether it be that you like the identity of coming to the rescue of other people or you feel safe in that position because then you never have to look at yourself

and you never have to look at the ways in which you're not really taking care of yourself and it's much easier to put for some people it's much easier to put other people's needs before their own because there's a lot of shame and guilt around having needs and sometimes people who feel that way can gravitate or can be a magnet for people who are narcissistically inclined because ultimately they're just people who have a hell of a lot of love to give right and that's not i'm by no means blaming you know in in in the instance of an actual true relationship with a true narcissist i'm no by no means blaming um you know the person who finds themselves in that situation a victim in that situation but i do think that in general sometimes we if we are wildly empathetic we can sort of um we can almost wear that as a badge of honor and use that as our identity and it can get us into

trouble because we end up having no boundaries with how far we let someone exploit that. Well, I think that that's exactly right. And we, what happens is because we're so close to this person, we've heard all of their stories. And people who are really good at mobilizing your empathy get very good at telling stories that make them sympathetic. Yes, I have this awful trait. Yes, I am not good at this. Yes, I struggle in this way, but this is what happened to me growing up. This is what my mom was like. This is what my father was

like. This is the stuff that I've been through in my life. And by the way, we all have things that we've been through in our lives that could have made us worse people or better people, right? Everyone has things, but there are certain people who are really good at taking their past and constructing a narrative that creates excuses for really bad behavior in the present. Now there's a difference between contextualizing who you are in the present by talking about the past, but also saying, you know, that has been part of why I've struggled. However, I own it and I'm going to fix it. And then showing that you're doing that. There's a difference between that and repeating the same damage to a person over and over and over again, always citing your past as an excuse, a way to abdicate responsibility for that. And if you're somebody who is truly

empathetic and you're prone to feeling sad for people or seeing people as sympathetic, then it can be quite easy for someone who's manipulative to use their past as a way to mobilize your empathy. And it could also happen in reverse, by the way, if, if they know that you pride yourself on being generous, being kind, being empathetic, and then you start calling them out on their behavior and having more boundaries, they can then attack you for that and say, oh, and you're supposed to be, you see yourself as this empathetic person well right now you've got absolutely no care for what i've been through and what i the ways that i'm struggling

and you're always playing this empathetic character and yet right now you're just abandoning me you know that now they can weaponize it in the other direction and get you feeling guilty that you haven't been empathetic enough and it's so interesting right because you it has no it knows no limit in terms of if you want to extend a sympathetic or a compassionate or kind of understanding lens towards a person you can do that with a serial killer you can say it's not their fault they're born this way they went through these different things in their childhood that's why they ended up being aggressive and killing people and or even just they're a psychopath they don't feel

empathy they're not it's not their fault they're not born with that you can actually have compassion towards anyone for anything and the kind of what's really interesting is the duality between this over-compassion you might extend towards somebody who treats you badly, but this total lack of compassion you extend towards yourself as you put yourself repeatedly in harm's way of that person. And for some reason, your well-being and the way that you feel isn't being prioritized by you in the same way that you're prioritizing being understanding towards them. Yeah, I think Jack Kornfield said something along the lines of your compassion for people is incomplete if it doesn't extend to yourself. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it's so easy to get stuck in roles

that you play over and over again in relationships and especially with people you know well i think you can adopt a role really easily where you've got used to being a bit like you you have a masochistic relationship with that where you you give in to their needs or their difficulty or their drama or their like selfishness and then you like um chastise yourself and oh i've got to do this now and now i've got to do this because of their problem or they screwed up and now i've got to fix it and i think it takes a lot of stepping back to get out of that and to actually take control again and say like what i do think there's a big difference between giving love to someone and having love for them

and sacrificing yourself sacrificing your needs and i think a lot of people just conflate them together like if i love this person i will sacrifice my happiness to just fulfill whatever their thing is or help them because they're whatever a narcissist an addict a different whatever but i do i think there's a real difference between loving them and sacrifice sacrificing yourself, your happiness, your wellbeing. And I think some people get addicted to that role a bit. Absolutely. The thing that scares me about empathy in the context of a relationship like this is it can really, if that empathy becomes a proactive kind of forgiveness for that person and a forgiveness that leads to you constantly letting them back into your life, not a distant forgiveness where you say, I forgive you, but I can't have you near me. There really is no limit to how far you can fall in that relationship.

As you say, Audrey, if you excuse them on every level, they're like, well, it's their past. Well, even if it's not their past, it's their genes. They can't help it. It's just the way they're built. You can always find a justification. And by the way, those things are true. They're actually true. But the danger of saying that's true therefore i should forgive this person and be involved with them romantically that's the that's the non-sequitur and the danger of that is that if you continue to use your empathy as a as an excuse for forgiving someone and letting them back in there is no limit to the level of destruction that someone can impose on your life. You're letting them into the house where they can wreak havoc. And you have to at a certain point

say, I cannot trust you. I cannot trust you with my heart. I cannot trust you with my time. I cannot trust you with my energy. I cannot trust you with my time. I cannot trust you with my energy. I cannot trust you with my future. And therefore, I can't let you in the house. Because if I let you in my house, so to speak, you will predictably wreak havoc. So I can have a distant compassion for you, but I cannot have a kind of proactive, close degree empathy where I constantly let you back in because you will destroy my life. Thanks for listening, everybody. And before you go, I'd love you to consider coming to the virtual retreat in June. It's from the 2nd to the 4th. We do three days of immersion coaching together with me live. And it is one of the most powerful ways I know to start a fresh chapter in your life. It gives you amazing tools, amazing insight, and a blueprint for how to change things going forward.

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