E080 - The REAL Reason Narcissists Deceive You & Why It Cuts So Deep

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[00:00:00] In this episode, you will discover why narcissists use deception and why it cuts so deep.

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Speaker: Welcome to Heartbreak to Wholeness, the podcast helping you heal from the mindfuck of narcissistic relationships and move towards the secure, peaceful woman you want to become. I am your host, Bre Wolta, Relationship Clarity Coach and EFT Certified Practitioner. Let's dive in.

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Well, welcome back to the episode. Today we are diving into the heart of narcissistic manipulation and why it leaves wounds that go so far beyond the breakup. So in this episode, we are unpacking why and how narcissists use deception, how tactics such as gaslighting, rewrite your entire reality

and disorient you from yourself and why it's so damn hard to accept the person that they actually are, even when you can finally see them as unhealthy.

So be sure to stick around for all of that [00:01:00] information all the way to the end where I will pull an Oracle card that will offer you a specific message that you can use this week to stay more conscious in your healing.

Okay, so let's start with the number one question that I get from clients. Why do narcissists deceive? Why do they manipulate? Why are they not a trustworthy, faithful person? And I wanna give you this metaphor because. When I first heard this, it really just solidified this fully for me, and I hope it does the same for you.

So if we think about a, a narcissist as a parasite, a parasite needs a host in order to survive, right? A parasite attaches onto a host and sucks out their blood or whatever. Parasites suck out from hosts.

So if you think about a narcissist, a narcissist will attach itself to a host, to a. Woman in this case, and it will suck out. Validation. A narcissist needs external validation in order to survive. They cannot [00:02:00] give themselves the validation that feels sustainable, so they need it from external sources.

Now the way that they continue to get validation is by manipulating everybody in their world to continue to believe that they are the most amazing person, that they are all powerful, that they are in control, whatever they are manipulating you to believe

they are manipulating you to believe these things in order for you to continue to give them validation so they can continue to live. So a narcissist has to have a host. They have to attach themselves to somebody in order to suck out that validation. They lie, they deceive, they gaslight, they manipulate, they do all the things in order to keep you giving them that validation.

We've heard this described as the narcissistic supply when we are giving validation to a narcissist. So it's really for their survival, which is very sad and [00:03:00] very sick, and I don't want to use that as a justification because it's not. But it's helpful to understand that their motives, their motivations, their behavior is coming from a deeply, deeply wounded, dark, sad place.

So if we know why they do it, the next question is, why does it hurt so bad? Why does being deceived by a narcissist cut so deep? And I wanna go through three reasons why. So, the first reason it hurts so bad is because deception decimate trust. We want to trust our partner in a relationship, and we wanna trust ourselves in a relationship.

So when your partner deceives you. They decimate the trust that you had in them, and you start to second guess everything that they've ever done, everything that they've ever said, and that puts you in a really fucked up place mentally because you don't know what was real anymore. And addition to second guessing them [00:04:00] and everything they've ever done,

you are second guessing yourself also, and you're not trusting your own self anymore. Saying things like, how did I not see this coming? Who am I? If none of this was real? Why didn't I leave? When I saw the red flags

the deception decimated the trust that you had in yourself as well.

Oftentimes this deception is somehow wrapped around the tactic of gaslighting and gaslighting is such a powerful thing because it denies your reality. It completely changes your perception of what you think is real. It leaves you doubting your own experiences, emotions, and feelings and memories,

which makes it hard to trust your judgment even after leaving the relationship. So if you think about being in the fog, this is a term that's used a lot of the time with narcissistic relationships. You're in this place where nothing makes sense. You can't really see very far. You feel sort of spun up.

You feel kind of scared because you don't know [00:05:00] what's coming next, and it's all intentional. The gaslighting is intentional. It's an intentional tactic to keep you confused and doubting your reality so that the parasite can remain attached to you making you actually believe that you need them, when in reality they need you.

They are the parasite. Remember, they're getting that validation in order to survive, but they've spun you around so much to believe that you need them. So when they decimate that trust, you are left with like, oh my God, what am I gonna do without this person?

I've been led to believe that I need them in order to survive. So it hurts because you start second guessing everything about them and yourself. The second reason that it hurts so bad is because these types of relationships steal your sense of self.

I want you to think about this as like you are on an island. You're on the island of you, and on this island you have all of your favorite activities, all of [00:06:00] your friends, all of your favorite foods, all of your hobbies, and you are just merrily skipping around your island, doing everything that you love to do.

And then this boat approaches, and this man is on this boat and he's standing there with one leg up, like Captain Morgan, I think is the alcohol of whatever. The guy's standing there just posed on the front of his boat and he's promising you everything, right? He's, he's approaching your island and he is like, Hey girl, if you come with me, I'm gonna show you a better island.

I'm gonna have all these. Bigger things and better things, and you are so amazing. You deserve so much more. Trust me. Come on my boat. This is gonna be an amazing adventure. I'm gonna take you out to sea and we're gonna see the world and we're gonna set up our entire life on this beautiful new island that you are going to love so much more than where you are, are right now.

It's gonna be so much better than where you are right now. And you wanting to believe that this person is not full of shit, gets on the boat, right? You see, you [00:07:00] wanna believe what they're saying., you wanna believe the person that they are portraying themselves to be.

You get into their boat and you start sailing away and as you are sailing, you find yourself farther and farther away from that island of you, which leaves you feeling unmoored to the thing that was really grounding you to your sense of self.

And as you find out, as these relationships end, there was no other island. So you are just left on this boat. Oftentimes, after the narcissist has abandoned ship in the middle of the ocean, you're just left there by yourself not knowing where you're going anymore, not having any sort of attachment to who you were before, because you're so far away from that island

and you feel really lost. They have stolen your entire sense of self. So when they leave, you are left with nothing. You're not just left with the absence of them, but you're left with the absence of you. And that cuts so deep. The [00:08:00] third reason that it hurts is because you got a glimpse of what they could be and that hope that they're gonna get back to that person makes it really, really hard to accept who they are.

It's like, you know that they're capable of becoming that person. You've seen it, you've experienced it, and so when they're not returning to that original Prince Charming, that was love bombing you into this relationship, it's really hard to understand why.

We get into this internal tug of war. There's a concept called cognitive dissonance

which is the discomfort that we experience when we believe one thing and experience another. So we believe our partner to care about us and respect us, but we are experiencing them lie to us and cheat on us. It's really hard to understand how those things happened when we were so led to believe that they were who they said they were in the beginning.

So this leads to a lot of rationalizations and justifications for [00:09:00] behavior and behavior. Typically will, will escalate. It doesn't always go from being amazing to then you finding out that you've been cheated on. Although sometimes that happens. Most of the time it goes from being amazing and slowly starts going downhill, and as you're going downhill, you're throwing out all of these justifications because otherwise it doesn't make sense.

An example of this is let's say your partner is starting to criticize you

and you may actually convince yourself that those criticisms are your fault or are constructive and meant to help benefit you because in your mind, you have already created the belief around this person that they love you and that they're trying to help you. And if you hold that belief, you're going to try to make the external circumstance match the belief.

So I'm gonna try to spin whatever's happening to make it seem like, oh, they're doing this because they love me. Because it's just too hard to accept. Otherwise,

a term that I like to use for this phenomenon is called [00:10:00] potential land. And potential land is that fantasy place where if we're living in the fantasy of them being the person that they were in the beginning, or the person that they promised they would be. If I'm living in that place,

then that delays the truth. That allows me to not have to see what's actually going on in my, in my here and now until I'm ready to see the here and now. And what happens when we come out of potential land and we finally come out of the fog and we finally see this person as not Prince charming, but actually the villain of the story is we start to berate ourselves for staying so long in potential land,

for living so long with this cognitive dissidence where we were trying to make excuses and trying to rationalize the behavior.

So it hurts. It hurts when we finally come out of potential land. It hurts when we finally acknowledge that they're never gonna be that person that we saw them to be in the beginning. Having that glimpse, having that hope is so powerful. So when you finally let go of that, [00:11:00] it is so, so, so painful.

There are so many layers. There are so many reasons why these relationships hurt and these are just three of the reasons why it hurts so bad. I say that because I want you to understand that if you are trying to make sense of this, mind, fuck, if you are in the middle of this coming to awareness process or trying to make sense of what just happened to you and you can't, that you are not alone.

You are not alone in that experience. There's nothing about a narcissist that makes sense to somebody who is not a narcissist. And so trying to understand them is kind of like trying to understand someone from another planet. So be gentle with yourself.

Be compassionate with yourself as you are learning about narcissists. This is very important to have that intake of information, the education around. What this is, so you can kind of start to orient yourself around your experience and then taking the next step [00:12:00] to process your experience deeper, your specific experience.

Sometimes we get caught up in just learning about narcissists, when really we need to process how it felt to be with them and the pain that we specifically feel. So having that safe person, that safe space is so important to be able to dive deep so that these relationships do not continue to linger and cause you pain long term,

which is really why I do what I do, which is why I've created this whole business around supporting women to do just that as we end this episode today, I wanna pull an Oracle card so that you can have a gift of a message. Oh my gosh, it already came out. I just started to shuffle.

Um, what I do is I shuffle the deck and usually a card pulls out. This card came flying out. This, the message today is shrink, so I'm gonna find this message for you and read to you what shrink means. Shrink [00:13:00] appears as a warning that your perspective is tightening narrow or small. Shrink shows you your fate if you stay on the path of narrow-mindedness, blame or vengeance.

If you find yourself stuck in a situation that feels impossible, know that shrink is here to tell you that you are limiting yourself. Your fear-based thoughts or anger are squeezing out possibility. It's time to refocus, expand, open your mind to possibility and see the opportunity right in front of you.

This may need to happen in the form of viewing someone you're angry with through the lens of compassion versus criticism, or maybe it's seeking reconciliation. Over retaliation. Shrink brings a sense of mental expansion, thoughtfulness, openness, and care, even when you are feeling slighted. Drink water, find flow, reconstitute the part of you that can think, feel, and act your way through with love and compassion.

And I would add to this, the love and compassion for yourself. First and foremost is how you heal from these types of relationships. You have to start there. [00:14:00] You have to drop the judgment. You have to be able to see the hindsight of everything that you can see as information that you didn't have when you were making decisions Then.

And so meeting yourself with compassion over and over.

And before we go for today, let's just recap a few of the most important things from this episode. Now you know why and how narcissists use deception. You know the tactics such as gaslighting that they use to rewrite your entire reality and disorient you from yourself, from the island of you.

And you know why it's so hard to accept the person that they actually are, even when you can finally see them as unhealthy. If you enjoy this episode, I'm gonna point you towards episode 60, , which is called Why Narcissists Manipulate, and How to Protect Yourself from Getting Trapped. That is gonna go even deeper into the narcissistic psychology and why they do what they do.

and as always, you are not alone. I am here for you and I'll see you in the next [00:15:00] episode.