Video Transcript: Codependency & Pathological Loneliness: Why We Stay w/ Narcissists

if a child has a narcissistic parent, and by the way, I've explained this in detail in many of my other YouTube videos. But if a child has a narcissistic parent, they cannot be loved unconditionally. A child who learns to survive or cope with this difficult environment learns to be the nice child, the pleasing child, the trophy child.

This trophy child figures out a way to get or stimulate their narcissistic parent to love them. So early on, they become a human doing versus a human being. Or in other words, they learn to get love or to be worthy of love, you have to listen carefully and watch and scan one's environment to figure out what you need to do to make someone else happy. This child who learns to make the narcissist happy and there's many ways to do this gets what he or she needs to survive their childhood. But what they don't get is a feeling of self worth or self love. And early on, they experience a sense or a feeling of deep loneliness.

At the very core of this codependent is a sense of loneliness, a sense of loneliness that is deeply painful, it burns with pain, and the only way that the codependent can solve or get rid of this loneliness is to find someone that will take it away. And since they are geared towards falling in love with a narcissist as described in the human magnet syndrome, they find that that relationship with a narcissist takes away that feeling of loneliness and makes them feel comfortable in their own skin.

So when in a relationship with a narcissist, the codependent feels complete. As I've discussed in other videos, and in a Huffington Post article, called relationship matte. This is really a relationship comprised of two underdeveloped people, what I  I refer to as half person. So if we think about it, a half person or a codependent who has suffered attachment trauma is going to be attracted to a narcissist and the narcissist, as we talked aboutin other videos, suffered even more intense attachment trauma. So these two people that never were fully developed come together in a relationship as one person. And what I mean by one person is they need each other to feel good.

This is why the codependent-narcissist relationship starts off so quickly, so intensely and often sexually, in order to feel complete and whole in the world in which they live. They need to connect to another person. So this half person and another half person equal one and one, this is my relationship math. One person equals a half a relationship.

Because in healthy relationships, we have two individuated people doesn't necessarily have to be perfectly healthy or normal because I don't really think anyone is perfectly normal or health healthy. I think that's the human condition. But two individuated people come together and they create one relationship based on two individuals.

Talk to any codependent or perhaps yourself, that outside of a relationship there's a feeling of intense loneliness, painful loneliness. Now this loneliness can be traced back to attachment trauma.

But the codependent, to avoid the loneliness, finds themselves attracted the narcissist, and when they're in that relationship, yes, it's dysfunctional, but the loneliness is held at bay.

Take that away, be outside of the relationship, break up with a relationship or break up with a narcissist. The codependent feels or gets in touch with a core shame that is connected to the core trauma, and that evokes the intense pathological levels of loneliness. So if you're an alcoholic, or for that matter, a heroin addict and you would stop your drug of choice, you would go into intense withdrawal symptoms, and the codependent experiences the same.

Mainly loneliness. Much like I would say to my clients who are alcoholics, you had to prepare for DTS, or withdrawal symptoms, and they last for seven days to 14 days. Unfortunately, codependency addiction is much worse. The pathological or toxic levels of loneliness lasts for upwards to three months when in therapy.

Now, it's important to say, when in therapy, and I have seen without a doubt, over and over again, my codependent clients go beyond this loneliness. So back to the point of this video, I'm here to tell you about your number one enemy in codependency recovery.

Because of that fact, there is so much that you should do first, have a therapist that understands codependency and understands the withdrawal symptoms of codependency, mainly loneliness. Have a therapist that can connect the loneliness to trauma and understand that this is really a reiteration of childhood trauma that you probably have never thought about or faced because that is the key and getting better. Third, connection, loneliness is the antithesis of connection.

Loneliness can be solved through connection

And that is either through a codependency support group, a codependency 12 Step group, church, synagogue, mosque, there's so many ways that one can connect the problem with loneliness, the loneliness as a withdrawal symptom from codependency. It messes with your thought processes. It only tells you that loneliness goes away. If you go back to the narcissist, well don't listen to it. Loneliness goes away when you connect with other people. And you solve the primary problem of codependency.

All codependency therapy and recovery is really about learning how to love oneself, or healing those wounds that prevent ourselves to love others or to be loved.

And once we figure this out, and once we master it, it is it is then we start to feel good about ourselves. We start to love ourselves, the loneliness goes away. So in closing, I want to thank you for watching this video. Thank you and find some self love in your heart.