Dealing With A Narcissist & Addict - You MUST Accept This Hard Truth

You cannot heal from a narcissistic relationship, from being with a narcissist. And by the way, of course, this word gets thrown around a lot. The reality is, is that some of you will have been with a narcissist, a real true narcissist, and others of you will have been with people that have narcissistic tendencies. Regardless of whether or not you were with a true legitimate diagnosable narcissist with NPD, narcissistic personality disorder, or you were just with somebody that has pretty high narcissistic narcissistic traits, the following single thing is going to be radically important for you to understand how to move on, how to move forward, whether you're still in the relationship or trying to get over it. So my name is Connor Beaton. This is the ManTalks show. Don't forget to hit like and subscribe. Let's dive straight in. So the reality is that the narcissist has one main, one big, big, big piece that everyday people like yourself, like you and I, don't have, and that is the ability to acknowledge them being wrong. You see, underneath the psyche of the narcissist, if you think about their ego and their identity, underneath that is a very deep, deep, deep insecurity about who they are, about what they are, that they have in many ways disassociated from. So they're not aware of their insecurity. They're not connected to their insecurity. It's not like you and me where, you know, you walk into a party on a Friday night and you're feeling a little insecure about your body or, you know, your receding hairline or whatever it is, right? You don't think about— you think about those things, right? Those insecurities, they pop up into your head. You're talking to a girl, a woman. You're like, I don't really know if she's gonna Is she gonna say yes to me? I don't know if she's gonna take my phone number. I don't know if I'm attractive enough for her, or maybe I'm saying something awkward, or she's not laughing at my jokes. The narcissist doesn't think about that. The real true narcissist is so disconnected from their insecurities, from the shame that lives inside of them about who they are. They're so disassociated from it that they never come into contact with it, which is why with narcissists, the key for you to move on, the key for you to let go, the key for you to heal is to understand that in every situation they are going to play the victim. They are going to pretend— and maybe not even pretend— they are going to take the stance that they are not in the wrong, but they are the one who is being wronged. No matter what the situation is, they'll gaslight you, they'll lie, they'll spin the truth, they'll manipulate, coerce. But at the end of the day, you will always be the person that is in the wrong. There's no convincing them, there's no evidence building, there's no way for you to get them to understand that they did something wrong. There's no way for you to get them to see or admit to causing you hurt. It will always spin back into this place of you being in the wrong, you being wrong, you being in the wrong, and them being the person that was wronged. Right? They cannot get close to any type of admission of being wrong. Why? Because like I said before, they're dissociated from their insecurities. They are disconnected from their deep shame. And so to admit, oh, maybe I was wrong, maybe I did do something wrong, is to come smack dab into contact with, "Hmm, there's some insecurities inside of me." So the key here to letting go of these relationships, the key to moving on into healing, and I know that for some of you, you've been in these types of relationships where you've been used, abused, harmed, and I don't take this lightly. Being with narcissists can be incredibly psychologically damaging, confusing, disorienting. It can be hard to understand what's true and what's not, what's real, what was real. Because the narcissist is always shifting and changing reality to hold onto this disassociation from their own shame and their own insecurities, because they cannot go near it. They cannot come into contact with it. They can't admit it. They can't— they can't allow their psyche to see it. Their mind has created a barrier between how they perceive themselves and their deep insecurities. And so one of the keys to letting go is to understanding that there is no connecting them with those insecurities, with that shame. There is no connecting them to that they were wrong. And that as soon as you let that go, in some ways, being with a narcissist and healing from a narcissist is akin to dealing with an addict. They are very, very similar. There is a quality of powerlessness that you experience when you are with an addict. You are constantly trying to help the addict. You're constantly trying to get the addict to see that they're harming themselves. You're constantly trying to get the addict to go and get support so that they can deal with their addiction. But the addict will not allow it. They create a kind of psychological barrier and always make you into the wrong person. Nothing was wrong with them. They can't admit that, that they have a problem. They, they can't admit that something's going on with them. It's always about you, and nothing changes until you let go entirely. And in many ways, the addict and the narcissist are similar in the sense that you have to release the notion or the hope that you are going to influence them. This is the biggest most frustrating part about being in a dynamic with a narcissist, because the narcissist will loop you in, hook you in, pull you close enough, give you some false illusion that you can influence them. And it is not true. You cannot influence a narcissist, just like you are— that you cannot influence an addict. And it's not that there aren't rare cases, before somebody goes in the comments, oh, I did an intervention with my dad and he was an addict and I got him to go get clean and sober. Okay, maybe there are exceptions to the rules, but by far and large, the rule is you are not going to influence the addict and you are not going to influence the narcissist. The more you try, the more they dig in. The more you try and help them to see that they were in the wrong, that they have an issue, or that they have a problem, or that they're at the core of the dysfunction in the relationship, the more they dig in, because again, their identity is predicated on this disassociation, this big disconnection from their core insecurities and their core shame. And so the more you try and pull them towards it, the stronger the resistance is towards you. And they will begin to, they will see you as the fundamental problem. And so it reinforces the cycle. And so we have to let go entirely. You have to understand that at the core of it, you trying to influence them to see their part, you trying to force them to see their own insecurities, their own dysfunction, their own shame, their own behavior, is contributing to the dynamic, all right? So once you realize this, it's easier to let go. And I'm gonna give you one final example. I grew up with an addict, and at some point I had to have a conversation with that person to say, "I love you, and whatever you choose to do is on you. I won't talk to you when you're drunk. Don't call me," 'cause this person was an alcoholic. I said, "I won't talk to you when you're drunk. Don't call me. If you do call me when you are intoxicated," I'm gonna say, I love you, and I'm gonna hang up now. And that's what I did. So I set very clear boundaries, but what I reinforced was this choice is yours. And the addict and the narcissist both need to understand, they need the mirror, not being forced to look into it and see their behavior, but they need the mirror of I love you,, and if you choose to do this, that's your choice. And so with the person in my life, the family member that was the addict, I would say to them, I love you, and whatever you choose to do is your choice, and I will love you regardless of your choice. If you decide to drink yourself to death, that's on you. I'll still love you. If you decide to get sober, I'll love you. If you decide to— whatever it is, I love you, and I have some structure around how I'm going to engage with you. So if you have a narcissist in your life and you haven't cut them out entirely, or you have an addict in your life, this is the pathway that I encourage you to go. Uh, number one, realize that any attempt, any attempt to turn them towards the understanding that they are part of the problem will not work. It will cause conflict. It will cause them to entrench themselves more fully into the behavior, into the dysfunction. They will not look at it and see it. They will not. So any attempt on your part to influence them in a way like you would anybody else is not going to work. So letting that go entirely is a huge step. And the second step, if it's somebody that is in your life that you haven't cut out or that you don't want to cut out, that you want to keep in your life in a certain capacity, then you have to have boundaries and you have to reinforce choice. And so that dynamic is, I love you if you choose to do X, and I'm not going to interact with you in these ways. So for a narcissist, that's going to be very, very, very confronting, and they're still going to try and victim blame you. They're still going to try and make you wrong. And that's okay. And you can say, you know what, if you choose to be upset with me, that's all right, still love you. And for the narcissist, that helps them to disengage because what they realize is, oh, you're not trying to force me into a behavior. You're not trying to force me into seeing something about myself that I psychologically have an allergy to, an aversion to. And then, Thirdly, what you're saying is, if you choose to do X, Y, and Z, the narcissist wants that choice. They always want that choice because at the core of narcissism is a kind of extreme addiction to control. It's all about control. It's about controlling you, controlling circumstances, controlling themselves. It is all about control. And so when you say, I love you, and if you choose to do that, That's your choice. Here's how I'm choosing to engage. And again, they might try and guilt you. They might try and manipulate. They might try and coerce, but you just hold your boundaries. I understand. I get that you're upset. If you want to be upset with me, that's okay too. Still care about you. This causes a disengagement because for the narcissist, a part of relating, how the narcissist holds relationships together is through control, manipulation, and conflict. So when you engage in this way and you start to say, "I love you, if you choose to do that, that's your choice," and you are saying, "I'm not engaging in this conflict," the tether of how the narcissist normally relates begins to weaken. It begins to break because the narcissist is so used to being in relationship through the tool, through the bridge, through the rope of conflict. That's the main form of relating that the narcissist has. That is the main form. And so the narcissist feels closest to other people when they are in conflict with them. This is the real key. So when we say to the narcissist, "I care about you," 'If you want to engage like that, if you wanna believe that, that is your choice. And here are my boundaries. Here's how I'm willing to engage.' Then the narcissist has nothing to create conflict out of. Now they might try and continue to create conflict, like, 'Oh, you're only gonna engage in that way, and that's so da-da-da-da.' And they may try and guilt trip you, and they might try and manipulate you and gaslight you. And you can say, 'I understand, and it's okay if you're upset, and if you're mad at me or upset with me, That's still your choice. I care about you, and here's how I'm willing to engage with you. And when we do this, we basically say, we— it's kind of like coating the surface with like, oh man, what's that? It's like a lube. I was gonna use the word lubricant. There we go. I don't think I've ever said that on the channel before, but it's kind of like coating the surface with lubricant. It gives them nothing to stick on to. They They can't stick onto us. So practice these tools. Comment below, which one of these has you found to work? What has been your dynamic? If you wanna share a little bit about your story, whether or not you've dated a narcissist or you were raised by one, or you've had interactions with an addict, these tools I have found to be extremely, extremely helpful. They are hard to deploy. They take some practice, but as always, don't forget to man it forward. If you know somebody who could really use this video, please share it with them because these tools, they work. All right, see you next week.