hey everyone it's dr romini and welcome back to this series on narcissist magnets this series is actually meant to sort of highlight why there are certain styles of people risk factors vulnerabilities people who somehow are more likely to get sucked into and stuck into narcissistic relationships these could be things about your history certain stylistic elements of you that make you more vulnerable and you may not even know it today we're going to take on the topic of why adult children or people who have narcissistic parents who grew up with narcissistic parents and are now adults are more likely to be vulnerable to being narcissist magnets but before we get there please welcome subscribe to this channel if you haven't already join this community i gotta tell you where we are growing all the time and the conversation between people in the comment section is honestly its own form of support group so it's a phenomenal community and again i'm i'm actually um i learn a lot when i get to when i get a chance to look at those and as always if you want to get daily notifications just hit that bell so let's talk about you folks who had narcissistic parents parents growing up and now you're grown up you're adults and how you deal with that legacy now obviously for those of you who've watched my videos this is a point i have already belabored in so many videos but let's just focus on this issue as to why having a narcissistic parent makes you a narcissist magnet now in simple psychological terms we gravitate to that which is familiar but it's a bit more complicated than that yes it is familiar but our family dynamics also shape quite a bit of who we are including our identities in a narcissistic family system the prevailing narratives are that you are not good enough or that you need to earn your love or that you need to be a source of narcissistic supply to your narcissistic parent or parents to keep their love or you are judged on the basis of how you look or what you can do or how good you can make your parents look everything in a narcissistic family is conditional the other things that get learned in a narcissistic family system are that you learn to push down and deny your own needs you learn to enable the narcissistic parent you learn to get accustomed to being gaslighted and manipulated you may become accustomed to the silent treatment and invalidation may feel normal what you do not get as much exposure to you to in a narcissistic family honestly if you get any exposure to it is unconditional love the opportunity to talk about your feelings or encouragement to explore your interests or to even just simply be seen or be heard for who you are so with that back story from your childhood as you get propelled into the world of adult relationships you can see how it becomes a setup for a vulnerability yes we do gravitate to that which is familiar but sadly we also become trained if you're from a narcissistic family a family you get trained to endure toxic patterns such as invalidation gaslighting or manipulation having a narcissistic parent renders you vulnerable at the level of identity behavior expectation and self-esteem and in this way you can be very blinded to the red flags that a new partner or boss or roommate or friend may be waving in front of you because honestly these red flags are all you've ever known the dark side to this especially when it comes to partners is that when you have a narcissistic parent you may be more likely to walk away from a healthy partner if you get one the confusion and triangulation of your childhood mean that you may gravitate to partners only where there is confusion and triangulation and you may write off healthier partners as boring or give the great excuse that i hear from people all the time there was no connection now in many ways in this situation the narcissist is just being the narcissist okay you meet a narcissist or just being a narcissist and you may without awareness float into the pattern of enabling you are so accustomed to enabling to giving second chances and making excuses and creating rationalizations that doing it in an adult relationship becomes second nature you did it as a kid why wouldn't you do it as an adult so what are you supposed to do if you come from a narcissistic family utmost and foremost is to gain knowledge learning about these personality patterns becoming aware of how they work and how they impact other people it becomes absolutely critical because once that light bulb goes off above your head you're going to start seeing all of it more clearly now i've worked with countless people who have said to me you know what's interesting doc i haven't dated or married just one narcissist this has happened over and over again my guess is that part of this cycle for people who keep doing this is that they just didn't understand what these patterns were honestly for all of you once you really know it and get it the cycle may still happen because of trauma bonding and things like that but it's definitely less likely to narcissistic family systems also render you more vulnerable to patterns such as trauma bonding and even codependency as a child you associated these chaotic emotionally abusive and manipulative patterns with love and then in adulthood the same thing and you make excuses for the narcissistic behavior again codependency or any pattern associated with always trying to make it right can be a dynamic that is quite often observed in narcissistic families and can also be reproduced in adult relationships knowledge may be a key pathway to undoing these intergenerational cycles but so too is doing the deeper work of therapy and this may be trauma oriented work or it may also just be the deep dive into your schemas and expectations and your sense of self so you can learn about how you're early relationships affect you now and you can start putting an end to some of that narcissistic magnetism you've got now this can be a difficult cycle to end because there's something so familiar about narcissists that for a lifetime you might feel an almost inexplicable draw to them and not just in your relationships but also in your friendships and in your workplaces and even as other people will say to you why do you let that person treat you that way you may still take a little bit longer to see it than everyone else's again this is why awareness of these kinds of personality patterns and you doing your own work on you become so important now what's fascinating to me is when i have worked with people who have been in long term narcissistic marriages or relationships for example for about 20 years or longer and as we do the work of understanding their relationship we then start talking about their history in most cases the narcissistic patterns manifested by their family of origin was as obvious as the nose on my face but for them our work is the very first time that they are seeing it the blindness they would have to the narcissism of their early life blinded them entirely and rendered them vulnerable to the narcissism that they would endure throughout their adult lives quite frankly and then the floodgates open and they recognize it in selected friendships or even past workplace situations seeing the childhood pattern clearly is critical to avoid being a magnet for relationships that feel comfortable despite not being good for you i have to say that as a therapist what's always been very striking to me is the number of times i'll have a client come in and they'll say you know i just had a i had a good childhood like yeah i think they're person who keeps getting into narcissistic relationships and i had a really good yeah really good childhood like my parents were good they worked really hard they had great work ethic they kept a roof over our head okay and they will then start telling me things that will show the cracks around the edges in very short order i will see that this family of origin where they're like they'll often focus on a single virtue their parents had like my parent worked really hard or despite everything there was always like a new toy at christmas like they'd sort of give me the story like the parent did the best they could but when the parent wasn't doing that one good thing there was a lot of bad stuff and you start to realize that many people from narcissistic families have so created an alternative narrative about how happy their family is that once we do start to puncture it in therapy it's the first time they have that wake-up call of wow yeah no not healthy and as that happens they start realizing that as adults they've been enabling their narcissistic parents over and over and over again and that building that enabling muscle in a way is why they keep getting into narcissistic relationships because they're just so good at enabling in that case the enabling needs to or the disenabling the enable needs the enabling needs to stop with your parents you need to stop doing that and once you stop doing that you may actually be in a better position to detect the narcissistic relationships around you so those of you from narcissistic family systems a lot of the content i put out there's very very is very relevant to you but what you might find is that you know more than just about anyone else having that history very clearly makes you a magnet but it also may have set you up to some of these other patterns like rescuing or forgiving so i hope that gives you a little bit more clarity and you already knew you were magnets bigger questions what do you do with that thanks again though for tuning in if you want to subscribe to this channel you can hit that subscribe button and also if you want notifications each time i put out a new video you can go ahead and hit that bell thank you as always for tuning in