The Narcissist Will Sabotage Your Life

Hi there everyone, I'm Petra. I'm a life coach and an advocate for survivors of narcissistic and emotional abuse. Thank you all again for watching. It's been a while, I've been on a three-week break and initially we were supposed to go away on holiday but we decided to renovate our bathroom and I had very much underestimated the amount of work that goes into renovating a bathroom. Now my husband was very much aware of the amount of work but I said oh no worries we'll get it done within seven days. Well nothing is further from the truth, we've just completed it yesterday or I shouldn't say we, I should say my husband because he worked like a trojan. We had gotten up some friends to come and help us out so we've had a lot of help and the result is beautiful. It really is a beautiful bathroom and in the process I learned a new skill because I've now learned how to tile a bathroom which is something that I've never ever done in my life so I just take that on as a new learning skill and I don't think I'll do it a second time. I think next time we'll hire someone to do it but it was just a great experience you know breaking down the old bathroom and rebuilding the new bathroom that we poured our heart and soul into and it has become a bathroom that really fits our personalities and anyway it's beautiful. I digress. So yeah welcome back, it's great to be back. I've missed making videos and connecting with all of you so it's great to be back again and to start up work again. I know summer's not over yet but just enjoying the summer days that are left and getting back to work is something that I just love doing. So today I wanted to speak on how the narcissist sabotages your life and narcissism you know the disorder is all a very distorted, a very twisted expression of the ego. Now we are all born with narcissistic traits. We all have these ego-driven traits that allow us to function in society, allow us to get those grades, allow us get the jobs, allow us to show up a certain way in the world. So we all do need those ego-driven traits but the difference with a narcissist is that they use these ego-driven traits to destroy the other person. That is the difference. That is when the behaviour becomes malignant to the people that they are abusing and that is when you speak of the disorder. So again we all have narcissistic traits but when it turns into malignant traits that is when there is a problem. So this just to clarify where very many of you that I've spoken to and also that there's certain you know there's certain forums that I go on to and and where people are talking about narcissism and the question that often comes up is am I the narcissist? You know this is the question we all targets or most targets ask themselves. Am I the narcissist? And this is because we recognize certain traits that the narcissist is portraying. We recognize them within ourselves but again the difference is that we do not go about abusing. We do not go about destroying lives as opposed to the narcissist. So the very fact that you are self-reflecting on that and asking yourself, questioning yourself about whether you are displaying very malignant traits that is a good thing because a narcissist, a malignant narcissist will never question themselves, never question their behaviour. They will never take the steps that are needed in order to correct their behaviour and apologize to the people that they are abusing. So that is where that difference comes in. But the way the narcissist goes about sabotaging your life and that it shows up in very many different ways and for those of you who have been raised by a narcissistic parent it starts literally from the womb where they strip you of your character. They try and take down your personality. They set very unhealthy boundaries. They do not love you unconditionally. All these illnesses that filter through their behaviour and are portrayed onto you, projected onto you. This is devastating for a child growing up in a narcissistic home and this is why when you have broken away, when you have cut off that loyalty to your narcissistic parent, you literally spend the rest of your life recovering from the abuse, questioning your sanity, trying to find or get that sense of having a grip on life. This is all part of the recovery and yes, it is a lifelong thing. So that is one degree of it and the other degrees of course come in the form of co-workers, friendships with narcissists where I have noticed not only with myself but also those of you whom I have coached who have come out of narcissistic friendships is that we tend to recover quickly because the damage was done within a very secluded portion of our lives, a couple of months or a couple of years. Whereas with the adult child of a narcissistic abuser parent, this has started from the womb and it has carried on through most of their lives up until the time where you break no contact or you leave the family home. But the impact of that abuse is absolutely devastating and this is what the narcissist does. Their whole intention in life is to sabotage the other, is to take the other person down, is to strip the other person of their sanity, of their mental health, of their emotional health. They are life saboteurs if you will. So whatever you do, whatever good qualities you have, whatever accomplishments you are set about making or achieving in your life, this is something that the narcissist loathes. They do not like to see others successful. They don't like to see you happy and joyful. They will take down every single aspect of that because they want you to feel just as empty as they do. And it can range from the simple things to the very major things in life. The simple things being, I think if I could just use myself as an example with one of the narcissistic abusers in my life, I wanted to further on my practice. I wanted to get extra, learn extra coaching skills. There were certain courses that I wanted to add to my experience as a coach. And every time I brought this up with this abuser in my life, they would take it down. They would minimize it. And there came a point where I thought I'm sick of this because of course it eroded my self-confidence. It eroded my outlook on life. And I thought I'm just going to go ahead and sign up for this course that I wanted to do for a very long time. And I went about doing it and I completed the course successfully. And this abuser in my life went about taking credit for the fact that I had accomplished this course on my own and I had done it successfully. So she went about saying or sort of very subtly making comments which made others believe that she had had a great part in my success, that she was allowed to take credit for a lot of the success that I had accomplished. So it makes me smile now. It's so childish and it's just so silly for lack of a better word. When I look back on it now, I can laugh about it. But the feeling that it gave me at that time was just one of total confusion. And I thought why? Why would someone go about trying to take credit for the success of someone else? It just didn't make any sense. And it still doesn't make sense to me. Well, now I realize where it's coming from is that that is also ego driven. And this is where it was coming from. But this is what the narcissist will do. They will minimize your accomplishments. They will say you're not good enough. You're not intelligent enough. You're not intellectual enough. You can never accomplish that. So they will minimize every single aspect. And when you go about accomplishing something, they will either take it down or they will take credit for it. So this keeps you in a state of negativity when you are in the relationship with the narcissist because they will sabotage your happiness, your joy, your zest for life, your opinions, your thoughts, everything. They will go about sabotaging because they will not be happy until they have completely destroyed your life. This is what a narcissist represents. He or she is a destroyer of lives. And of course, that starts with your mental state because what they do, there are two things they do and they will switch between these two things. They will switch between seducing you and then sabotaging you. And when they have sabotaged, they will go back into seducing mode. And when they have reeled you back in, they will fall back into sabotage. So this is the whole game. This is part of the mind game that they play. A narcissist will try to sabotage that your authenticity shines brighter than their chameleon facade. A narcissist always has to put on, you know, change their colours to fit their surroundings, just like a chameleon would do. As I said in one of my videos from about a year ago, I think it was, is that when they're out in public, they will have a different colour. When they are with you behind closed doors, they will have a different colour. When they're with your family, they will have a different colour. So they are continuously changing their colours and their masks. And this is what, this is why a narcissist has a pathological envy. They are envious of your good traits. They are envious of the fact that your authenticity shines brighter than their chameleon facade. I think I said that twice. That was not my intention. But this is the absolute truth. I cannot harp on that fact enough, is that this is what they are trying to do. They are trying to make you also become the chameleon, so that you show up one way and then show up another way behind closed doors. So this is another reason why, this is something that I've also heard so often, is that in the aftermath of abuse, very many targets will say, I feel as if I have taken on certain traits. I feel as if I cannot show up as myself, as my authentic self. And this is because, you know, whatever, we have a saying in Dutch, whatever you hang around is what you are going to become. And this is true for very many of us, where I myself, I realised when coming out of this last narcissistic friendship, is that I had taken on certain traits. I had even started to speak like this person. And when I came to the realisation, it shocked me. Because when you have been brewing in that malignant energy for so long, you start to take on the traits. It's like an automatic response to the abuse. And I think in some cases, it's even to sort of side with the narcissist. When you are portraying to them what they are like, it sort of puts you on the same level. And it is really subconsciously to gain, maybe to even gain more confidence from them, a certain twisted form of respect from the abuser. This is what we tend to do. I'm not saying all targets do this, but it happens very often. And when you question yourself about why do I take on these traits? Why do I sometimes have on a different face in public than I do at home? This has all got to do with it, from brewing in malignancy. So when you become aware of that, that is a good thing. Because that is when you can go about changing it. You need to change that energy. It has become so part of you. And the good news in that is that you can learn how to break that chain of energy and then restore your own energy and show up as your authentic self. Show up the way you were before you got involved with them and let your authenticity start to shine again. The narcissist evokes fear and guilt and shame and obligation. This is what they evoke all the time. It can be, again, from the tiniest detail, something that is really not that important to something that is important in your life. So whatever important situation there may be, say that you have a very important meeting on a Monday morning. You have to give a presentation at work. And you have put a lot of time and effort into preparing this presentation. And everything will sort of be hunky-dory. And then Sunday evening, the evening before the very big event that you have been preparing for, the narcissist will say or do something that totally rocks your world. It shifts your focus from what you are supposed to be focused on to their shitty behavior. This is something that they do very deliberately because they do not want to see you being successful with that presentation or having that successful day or whatever it is that is very important to you. They will use a tactic to take that down so that you are not focused on this very important event. That is another way they sabotage. They rock your self-esteem or they will pretend to go along with you, pretend to wish you well. And then at the last moment, they will cancel, whether it is an appointment, whether it is that they were going to go somewhere with you, somewhere important, whether they had promised to pick up your children together at 4 o'clock. And then at the last minute, they cancel and they say, I can only make it at 8. Whatever it is, stuff that we have put time and effort into is what they will tear down. So a very destructive behavior, a very malignant behavior. And evoking the fear and the guilt and the shame in you is another one of their card tricks because they will use all of this because they realize that you have very good traits. And because there is also a certain level of lesser confidence within yourself, it is very easy for the narcissist to go in and invoke this fear and guilt in you and the shame. And they will make you feel a certain loyalty, a certain obligation towards them. And if you don't meet their needs, then they will belittle that. They will minimize that. And this will again send you into a state of feeling the shame and feeling the guilt. But just know this is part of their sick game. This has nothing to do with you. You know, this is the very thing that also gets me very irritable when people go about shaming the victim and saying, well, you need to have more understanding for the abuser in your life. And are you seeing things correctly? Do you really believe they are abusing you? Maybe you need to patch things up with them. This really gets me irritated because it is not about you. It is about them. They are the ones who have malnourished you throughout the relationship or friendship. So when you come out of that, there is no sense in self-sabotage. Because this is another thing the narcissist teaches us. And we are not very aware of this when we are in the middle of it. But when you step away from the relationship and you start to analyze it, this is when you realize that the narcissist has also taught you or strengthened in you those traits that you yourself use to self-sabotage. So you will talk yourself out of certain things. You will also minimize your own healing. You know, this is how it all plays into it. You will find that you are in the middle of your healing and then you'll suddenly wake up one morning or you will be in the middle of something and then you will start berating yourself for not healing quicker. So instead of looking at where you are now, you will look to see but I've still got such a long way to go in my healing. So again, this is self-sabotaging. Because you think that you still have a very long way to completely heal, you will self-sabotage and you will stop your healing, sabotage your healing. And this is another trait that has been either strengthened by the narcissist in you, where you may have had this before, or this is something that is new to your person. I know it was new to me where I really didn't procrastinate a lot. If I wanted something done, I would set about doing it. Sometimes I would take a day or two to start doing a job or a project that I had decided on for myself. But I was not into procrastination. I would start in a fairly short amount of time. But coming out of these abusive relationships or being in the abusive relationships, I realised that I started procrastinating even more. And it got to the point where I just sort of put my everything on hold for I think it was about two or three years in the last narcissistic friendship that I was in. And this all has to do with the fact that they are sabotaging your life, your work, your motherhood, your fatherhood, you being a daughter, you being a spouse, whatever it may be. And you will tend to take on those traits. So if anything, when the narcissist has malnourished you in the relationship, and this is something they will definitely do because sabotaging you is also malnourishing you, when you have left that relationship, it is imperative that you start to nourish your own body, your mind, your spirit. This is how you're going to heal. Because if you can see yourself as a young child, as a baby, a baby needs to be nourished in every single definition of that word. It needs to be nourished in order to grow, in order to expand, in order to learn, in order to strengthen emotional intelligence. Whatever it is, this is what a baby needs. And this is the way you can view yourself as well, is that you need to nourish yourself, be compassionate and loving towards yourself, the same way you would towards the baby. So this is how the narcissist goes about sabotaging you. And when you become aware of it, then you really do have the obligation to break contact, to leave that relationship. Because I do not believe in healing in the same place where you were hurt. It is impossible. You cannot do it. You need to break away and start to focus on yourself. And also look at where they will very subtly still try to sabotage you, even though the relationship has been ended, where they still try and hoover you, still try and come back and say to you, if it is a romantic relationship that you had with the abuser in your life, they will even say to you, you are not good enough. You are not relationship material. You will never find someone who can love you the way I loved you. And that is true, because their love was fake. So you will never find someone who gives you that fake love. If anything, when you start to have that love for yourself, you will then not allow or not tolerate toxicity in your life anymore. And that is when you will find true and authentic love. So this is the way that they try and sabotage you by making you believe, even after the relationship has ended, that you are not worthy of new love, that you are not worthy of a relationship, that you are not worthy of getting the dream job, that you are not worthy of travel, that you are not worthy of healing. This is how they will try and still sabotage you after the relationship. Be aware of that and observe that fact. Do not get involved in that fact. Do not engage them as well. Stay away, keep yourself safe and also realise where you have also started to self-sabotage. When you become aware, that is when you can change your thought pattern and that is when you can proceed to stop the self-sabotage. You know, berating yourself is also a form of self-sabotage and this is something that very many targets do. Stop doing that, it is not helpful, it is not moving you on on your journey of recovery and healing. So when you realise that you are self-sabotaging as well, write that down, become aware of it and then choose a different thought or a different action to replace the self-sabotaging action. So stop buying into their chameleon facade. If you are still in the throes of this relationship, stop buying into them, observe them and leaving a very destructive relationship is of course a process in itself. Do everything that you need to do in order to take those steps to start to free yourself from the clutches of evil. Take care of yourself and I look forward to reconnecting with you all very soon. Have a great Sunday to all of you wherever you are around the globe and love yourself. Stop tolerating toxic behaviour. Bye for now.