I want to share this article with you because I want to grant you some more awareness of the bonds that happen between narcissists and co-dependents – and why they happen.
This is very important because it allows us to realise that connections and relationships between people are not a random event – they are in fact vibrational.
By understanding how matches between different personalities work, we can understand how by changing our vibration we can in fact change our relationship experiences.
The good news is there is a way to embrace our self-awareness, and the nurturing and the healing of our inner self in order to gravitate to completely different life and love experiences.
During my time of study of what creates relationships with narcissists I found that a strong common denominator is people who are addictive in nature. These are individuals who have come from past histories of substance addiction, or who have compulsive obsessive natures.
Let’s look at this firstly from a deeper spiritual perspective.
An addiction prone or obsessive nature makes it very difficult for an individual to have and maintain a connection to their inner being.
In fact when any of us are not at one with our inner being – this creates a painful and empty void. Emotionally this pain registers as anxiety. The ‘normal’ human tendency is to seek something on the outside to fill ‘the gap’ of this painful inner void.
Some thing, activity or focus.
The irony is that a painful empty void is a painful empty void – nothing from the outside can be used as a substitute to fill it. The only remedy is to have a healthy connection with our inner being. Which fundamentally means to create, nurture and maintain a healthy self-loving and self-valuing relationship with ourself.
What Are Addictions?
Let’s discuss what addictions really are.
I certainly do not want to step on anyone’s toes regarding the theory of addiction. I am aware of the chemical and physiological manifestations – but I would like to put forth that I believe the addiction (including the physiological manifestations) is a symptom of the issues – rather than the issue itself.
I believe the addiction is simply what the person reaches for in order to try and burn off the pain (the anxiety) of having a void in their inner self. It is an attempt to relieve the pain of not being at one with one’s self.
If the addiction could be an actual substitute for the inner void that might be okay, but it never can. In fact by engaging in addictive or obsessive behaviours what occurs is self-avoidance. Self-avoidance creates an inability to look at what is causing the obsessive compulsion – and healing the real issue – which prevents a healthy connection to the inner self being established.
Of course this self-avoidance may not be conscious. In fact it is likely not to be. The truth is bit by bit from early childhood we were disconnected from ourself, and we became more and more used to self-avoiding.
Many of us have been in denial with our compulsions or even addictions and had wonderful excuses for them. If the compulsion is caretaking others this means we are empaths with big hearts. If it is workaholism we are doing a wonderful job providing for our family. If it is sex this may be rationalised as being a physical sensual person. If it is alcohol it may be passed off as ‘I deserve a drink after working so hard’ and so on and so forth.
The truth is unless we were brought up through childhood with the regular messages “You are worthy. You are lovable. I believe in you…” we did not grow up with a solid inner self. The older we got the more we disconnected from loving and accepting ourself, the more challenges and disappointments we faced, and the more we tried to use stuff on the outside to fill our inner void as a substitute to try to feel loved, whole and worthy.
Hence what caused and exasperated obsessive and addictive behaviours.
Like most victims of narcissistic abuse, I had some severe obsessive behaviours. When I was younger it was extreme drinking binges. As I got older, even though the alcoholic binges stopped, smoking and workaholism persisted.
These habits were very unconscious for me, even though they were obvious. Like most addictions I had all sorts of excuses. The obsessive pulls and urges would come up when I was suffering the most anxious times. In these times when my inner void was at its worst, rather than attending to the real issues, I would use smoking or work to self-avoid instead.
All I was doing was shoving my inner pain back down. As a temporary measure I would feel relief in those choices – but the underlying anxiety and pain was never dealt with and was always continuing to re-surface. During my narcissistic relationships there was an enormous amount of escaping into work or smoking – these were my ‘pacifiers’ that keep me avoiding my real inner wounds that were of course being horrifically activated.
The more and more disconnected from my inner self the more delusional and powerless my life became.
I hope you can relate – and know that if you are honest with yourself there is every chance you can. Your addictions may not be as obvious as mine were, or maybe they are more extreme. These addictions could be any obsessive act such as eating, being on the internet, shopping, having to see people constantly etc. etc.
The Link Between Co-Dependency and Self-Avoidance
Co-dependents are famous for self-avoidance which I believe is just another term for ‘addiction’ – the trying to burn off the pain of having an inner void with the use of a compulsive act.
The reason co-dependents are so famous for it is because they have integrity and are responsible.
Co-dependents are brilliant at ‘carrying on’ despite their pain – which means ‘getting on with things’, which means fulfilling their duties, looking after other people, not letting people down, and making sure the messes don’t get any worse, or can be avoided.
The truth is co-dependents are famous for looking to the outside and being disconnected from their true inner power. The co-dependent’s motto is “If everything on the outside of me can be controlled and be okay, then maybe I can start to feel better on the inside”.
Until the co-dependent does the inner healing journey and works out that life always begins from the inside this is a self-defeated quest.
How Does This Relate To Narcissistic Abuse
So what has all of this to do with attracting a narcissist and being susceptible to narcissistic abuse?
Frighteningly an enormous amount.
We live in a physical Universe of like attracts like.
Because you attracted and sustained narcissistic abuse does not literally mean that you are a conscienceless ‘bad’ person. What it does mean is that vibrationally you had enough ‘of yourself’ which matched the narcissist’s vibration to create the union.
Truly there is not greater model of self-avoidance and addiction than a narcissist – and this is a powerful ‘match’ with what you may have had going on.
The narcissist also has a void in his or her inner self, and it is a very painful one. Everyone’s inner void they are trying to fill is painful to varying degrees. The narcissist’s inner void is intensely painful because it is self-annihilating.
The co-dependents inner void is full of unworthiness and feelings of being unlovable and not acceptable. The inner beliefs that the narcissist holds for him or herself are so intensely self-loathing and self-persecuting that the narcissist decided to completely divorce his or her inner self and create a False Self in its place. The inner self effectively withered up and died as a result.
Because the narcissist has no inner self an extreme disconnection and anxiety occurs. In fact in this place of ‘inner no-where land’ the narcissist has become completely reliant on getting energy (narcissistic supply) from the outside to maintain any sense of existence, self-anchor or ‘peace’.
The narcissist has no ability to connect to his or her Soul - the ‘gateway’ being through the inner self. There is no ability to feel ‘oneness’, bliss, reverence or genuine love, worthiness and connection to self and life. The narcissist has no ability to see himself or other individuals as Source (God) sees people – which is through the eyes of love.
It’s a horrible position to be in and creates the intense need for narcissistic supply. The narcissist is driven by the inner anxiety of self-loathing, powerlessness and unworthiness to try to create a different version as per his or her impact with other people and outer conditions.
The narcissist is as addiction driven for narcissistic supply as a hardened drug addict is for heroin.
The problem is – as a result of submerging the inner self and creating a False Self in it’s place, the narcissist now has no inner resources to meet the self-annihilating inner void. There is nothing there to create self-love, self-acceptance or self- belief in order to face and heal the onslaught. The narcissist is doomed to operate through his or her False Self (which can never be real or connected to Source / God) in order to keep self-avoiding emotional annihilation. The False Self is the survival mechanism.
The narcissist is completely non-accountable. He or she never takes genuine responsibility or ownership for his or her inner void or the behaviour that erupts from the torture of having no inner self. The False Self is not real. It is a pathological construction, and this creates the ‘buffer’ of zero accountability. How can a ‘mirage’ have actually done something wrong?
It doesn’t matter how painful your inner void has become, and having taken on a great deal of the narcissist’s projections the chances are yours has become pretty intense. Please rest assured if you have not sold your soul – if you have not become a malicious pathological liar who is completely focused on using people as objects to gain narcissistic supply – you are safe – you still have an inner self to work with.
If you have reverence for life and others, if you have a conscience you are not a narcissist, and you can come home to yourself.
How I Healed My Self-Avoidance and Addictions
When I truly realised the correlation as to why my life was falling into the pattern of narcissistic partners, I had to look at my own levels of addictions and self-avoidance. Then one day the penny fully dropped.
That day I did a lot of Quanta Freedom Healing on it. This was the day when I smoked my last cigarette – totally knowing that I would never avoid feeling my emotions or dealing with what I needed to heal at an inner level ever again. I also knew I would never run to a work project when anxiety hit. It was time to deal with my inner self squarely once and for all.
What followed was more intense Quanta Freedom sessions with releases and inner transformations every day. I promise you in these sessions it had very, very, little to do with the narcissistic partners, it was all to do with myself . All the pain, insecurities and fears and wounds that I had covered up for decades – covered up with drinking, smoking and working.
This was the first time in my life that I was totally willing to face everything about the inner me I needed to without any distractions. There was no way I was going to continue self-avoiding and be in a relationship with a narcissist ever again.
FINALLY I had had enough!
I knew what a relationship with a healthy man looked like. This was someone who wasn’t self-avoiding, who was not addicted to getting energy outside of himself to feel better. This is a person who is solid in his own energy and emotionally healthy and whole.
This is a person with a connection to his inner self.
In order to have a person like this in my love life I needed to firmly be the embodiment of this myself. My vibration needed to match.
With this new found commitment to face and heal my inner wounds an incredible thing happened – the urge for addictions left completely. I had struggled off and on with cigarettes my entire teenage and adult life, yet from that very day when I finally realised what the price of self-avoidance had been causing in my life – I never, ever again wanted a cigarette. I could NEVER imagine ever wanting one again – I simply would not do it to myself.
To me it was NOT the horror of the health risks – it was the horror of continuing to engage in emotional self–avoidance.
My work life changed incredibly with the commitment to heal and fill my inner void healthily. I chose yoga and exercise every morning, organic food, and a healing self-commitment of gratitude lists, journaling exercises and Quanta Freedom Healing to release the wounds, fill myself and come home to ‘my inner’.
I found that in times of stress I was going to my inner self commitments and working so much less – yet still achieving everything I wanted to.
The total goal was to no longer be a vibrational match for a narcissist and become the vibrational match and true creator of the life I wanted to live and love in.
What happened is the pain, anxiety, and all the usual tendencies that I had (which truly had become my level of ‘normal’) all started to melt away, and what was replaced was incredible feelings of self-love, wholeness and authentic joy.
The first day I could look in the mirror deeply into my own eyes and say “Melanie I truly adore you, love you and believe in your worthiness” and feel it in my Soul I cried tears of joy and relief for about an hour afterwards. This was an incredibly special breakthrough moment.
Thinking About Your levels of Self-Avoidance
A very powerful exercise that you can do with yourself is sit with a journal and really feel in and answer these following questions.
How willing am I to feel and be with my pain?
When I start hurting, doubting myself or feeling unsafe what do I usually do?
Is what I am doing (if I am really honest with myself) a way of avoiding what is really going on within me?
Have I taken the time to be with my inner wounds and really ‘be’ with them, nurture myself and deal with them head on in order to heal them?
The problem is if we keep self-avoiding the cycle continues. The inner void calls out painfully – we feel the discomfort – we distract ourself with an activity outside of ourself to try to get relief – and then the inner void calls out again and gets louder and louder.
The truth of the matter is the longer we keep self-avoiding the more unhealthy we become, and the more we become disconnected from our ability to be healthy self-love, self-worth and self-value and we don’t evolve beyond our inner wounds to become a complete and whole human being.
And frighteningly we are a match for narcissists.
I hope this article has provided you with food for thought – and maybe has even smacked you between the eyes.
Realising the price of self-avoidance TOTALLY did that to me!
Please let me know in the comments.
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