#556 Self-Love Deficit: Why You’re Drawn to Narcissists and How to Finally Break Free
with Ross Rosenberg
Dr. Wendy Myers
Hello everyone. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. We have such a good show today. We have Ross Rosenberg on the show. I’ve had him on before, and he’s such a good guest. I think this is such an important topic. We’re talking about the new codependency. We are also going to be talking about what narcissism is and why these two people, codependents and narcissists, love to get together, why they’re just so magnetically drawn to each other, and we keep making those same choices again and again. So today’s show is the new codependency. Is it love, limerence, or narcissistic magnetism? A really, really interesting show. We’re going to be talking all about what codependency is exactly. Ross terms it self-love deficit, which is so accurate. The only way you’re going to be with a narcissist who doesn’t treat you well, who ignores your needs, who’s a taker while you’re giving love and respect and admiration, et cetera, the only person that’s going to tolerate that is someone with self-love deficit, essentially.
It can be very difficult to identify yourself as a codependent or having self-love deficit. When you are a successful, intelligent person, and you’re generally happy in your life, it can be hard to identify with that and realize there’s an issue in who you’re choosing in your relationships as a result. We’re going to unpack all that, and more importantly, what are the symptoms of having a self-love deficit? We’ll also talk about what you can do about it and Ross’s new book called “The Codependency Cure.” Essentially, we’re just unpacking all the different types of codependency, what they look like, how their behavior traits depend on your personality, and where this codependency and self-love deficit comes from, that is our parental attachments. We’ll unpack all of that as well, what you can do about it and how long it takes to overcome this.
I know in myself and my own relationships and my own journey, I always ended up, for the most part, with people who were narcissists. Not super bad ones, not someone who’s a sociopath or whatnot, but people that just didn’t really treat me very good, and I just couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t find a guy that treated me really, really well. One ex bought me all kinds of gifts and showered me with stuff. I thought he was really nice, but in the end, he treated me really horribly. Another one that would just love bomb me. I’m like, oh my God, I found the love of my life, and then it turned into him treating me really, really poorly. Another one treated me really good, but in the end, just didn’t really like me, but I kept choosing these people who look very different. They were very different people, personalities, packages, and things that they offered to the relationship, yet they still had the same fundamental component. These people really just feed off of you. The love that you give, the respect that you give them, the admiration, the people pleasing, and all this stuff that you want to do. You give, give, give till it hurts and then wonder, why am I not getting what I need in return? You fight for it and then realize it’s just time to go on to the next person, but you choose the same type of person. If any of that resonates with you, listen to this show. It’s really, really good.
Our guest today, Ross Rosenberg, is the CEO of the Self Love Recovery Institute. He’s a primary contributor and his internationally recognized expertise includes pathological narcissism, narcissistic abuse, and attachment trauma. Ross’s Codependency Cure Treatment Program provides innovative and results-oriented treatment and his expert educational and inspirational seminars have earned him international acclaim, as his 21 million views and 230, 000 subscribers on his YouTube channel can testify to. In addition to being featured on national TV and radio, his bestselling book, The Human Magnet Syndrome, has sold over 135, 000 copies and is published in nine languages. Lastly, Ross also provides expert testimony and witness services. He can counsel you as a therapist as well. You can learn more about Ross’s work and work with him one-on-one at selfloverecovery.com. Ross, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Ross Rosenberg
Well, it’s really nice to be here, Wendy. I really enjoyed the last time I was on it, and I’m just excited for some really good questions.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, you have a new book out and you are one of the world’s experts on narcissism, codependency, and what you term self-love deficiency or self-love deficit, which is a fantastic term. I definitely consider myself an ex-codependent and I know there are a lot of people listening, empathic people or sensitive people that may also deal with codependency and relationships that are not so savory, that are abusive or attracted to narcissists. It’s quite common. Why don’t you just spell this out for us, this relationship dynamic that you spelled out in your hugely successful book, the last book, The Magnet Syndrome. Tell us all about that.
Ross Rosenberg
Well, if you don’t mind, let me first say that the two books are The Human Magnet Syndrome, the first and second editions. Although I’m known for my specialty on codependency and narcissism, gaslighting, and trauma, at the core of everything I do is that I’m a psychotherapist. I’m a treatment provider, and I’m in the process of trying to figure out a solution to why codependence or people like that, I replaced the term from codependency to self-love deficit disorder or codependent to self-love deficient. The person with self-love deficit disorder always reflexively, predictably falls in love with a narcissist. I’m not talking about 50 percent of the time or 75 percent of the time, but the inner psychological forces that are unconscious compel our experience of chemistry. It guides us to the type of partner that feels familiar, that feels within our grasp to understand and therefore feels safe.
The human magnet syndrome really is the attraction of opposites. The taker, the narcissist, needs and takes and requires and manipulates like a dancer. If he wants to dance or she wants to dance, the only one that’s going to dance with him or her has to be someone who fits oppositely. That would be the giver, the sacrificer. So that these two dysfunctional individuals come together like a magnetic attraction of opposites in order to feel whole when in fact, they’re not. That was the basis of my two human magnet syndrome books. The first one was written in 2013 and the second one was in 2017. I decided to write the third edition and in the process, I was going to give myself 10 months and I realized the book was never complete. I wanted to talk about codependency as a whole to help people understand that the world does not know what codependency is and I’m not exaggerating. I’ve been in the mental health field for 37 years. They don’t know what the definition is. They don’t know what it looks like and therefore, they cannot treat it. They cannot resolve it. They cannot overcome it. So that is when I came up with this, the title, “The Codependency Revolution. Fixing What Was Always Broken.” It was a four-and-a-half-year journey.
It took me forever to write this book to tell both the layman and the professional world that what you know is wrong, no one’s at fault, and no one made a mistake. It’s just like any part of science, there’s a starting point and sometimes we just get it wrong, to explain why it’s wrong, to explain why what’s wrong has hurt so many people, updates, and solutions. This is the overriding thesis of the book. There are so many parts of the book, but hopefully, that gives you a nice intro into where I am professionally these days.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, it’s so important to talk about this because if you choose the wrong partner, they’re going to make you sick and cause constant stress, which will lead to trouble, which will lead to physical health issues. So it’s really important to get this part of your life right, choose the right partner, and not start with yourself.
Ross Rosenberg
Yeah, but I have another perspective. You said, if you choose the wrong partner, they will make you sick. That is what I call it, and that is a very common point of view that people have. I look at it as a victim mentality. The only way to solve self-love deficit disorder or codependency is to first know what it is, which is why I wrote my book. Two is to understand that it will only stop if we do understand why we, codependents, people who are self-love deficient, make the same mistake. We are the only ones that we can fix.
Dr. Wendy Myers:
Yes.
Ross Rosenberg
And now, of course, for narcissists, there’s no excuse, nor should anyone ever accept the harm that narcissists cause another person. The codependent chooses them.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yes.
Ross Rosenberg
The codependent stays, even if they’re gas lit or manipulated. So my whole point of view is that we are a part of this sick-making process, and we are the only ones that can make us well.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I guess what my point was is that, yes, we choose that person. We continue choosing them, even though there’s all these red flags, like a team of cheerleaders, like, hey, but if you stay in a relationship like that, the stress gets to you. It does get to you eventually.
Ross Rosenberg
When I was 29, I had spinal surgery. I had horrible back problems. They were all biological, physiological. I had the surgery and afterwards, I had tremendous pain. The doctors had no idea where the pain was coming from. They looked at the MRIs. They said, you’re back sealed, and it was debilitating. I went to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. I saw the best of the best, and they had no idea why I was in so much pain. It was through a series of coincidences and accidents that someone introduced this book to me that was written in the eighties by John Sarno, Mind Over Back Pain. He was a pioneer in the field that basically said, relationship, mental health, and emotional problems manifest in the body at its weakest length. They can make us sick. They can cause fibromyalgia. They can cause backaches, ulcers, all the stuff you know so much more than I know, that I don’t even have the words for. So you are absolutely right. SLDD, self love death disorder can make a person sick.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, and you know what, you’re so right that I think a lot of people don’t know about codependency or even like myself. I knew about codependency cause I started therapy when I was 12. We were talking about all this stuff, I mean for years, but I didn’t identify as that. I thought I was really happy and successful in my business. I was helping people and like living my life’s purpose and then this dirt bag came along and just swept me off my feet. I thought, wow, how did this happen to me? So let’s talk about that. Why is it going to take a revolution to educate people about codependency and change these patterns that people are just unconsciously choosing these toxic people?
Ross Rosenberg
Well, before I do the revolution and answer that. I’m sorry, as you were talking, I was going to say, did you know denial is an acronym? I stole this from someone else. Denial is an acronym. Don’t even know I am lying. I could not know the difference between those, but the reason I use that so often and not as a joke is that part of being codependent, part of having self love deficit disorder is we don’t know what we’re doing to ourselves. We don’t know that we’re sabotaging ourselves. We don’t know that we’re making bad decisions. We are not doing this to ourselves and it happens over and over again. That is why codependency or self love deficit disorder is so incredibly difficult to solve because it comes from this unconscious source that if you’re going to solve it, first of all, you have to know what it is, which is going to be the answer to your question in a second. You have to know how to get to it if it’s unconsciously embedded in our brain and three how to resolve it. So the title of my book is The Codependency Revolution. The reason I came up with that, what I think is a pretty bold title, is that everything has to be changed because codependency as a concept was created in the early 1970s, based upon a not very well understood approach to deal with partners. That is where the concept was born from, the co alcoholic, the partner of the alcoholic.
Dr. Wendy Myers
The codependency anonymous, like the alcoholic partners would go to those meetings
Ross Rosenberg
Yeah, and the 80s changed the focus from alcohol treatment and drug treatment, to chemical dependency treatment. So then it went to the partner of the chemically dependent or the co-alcoholic dependent, and so it is born out of this idea that it’s a person who participates in this relationship, who is part of the problem, who is keeping the addict drinking. That is a very accurate concept, but it’s not codependency. That’s a co-addiction, and that’s something you need to think about. I want to deal with it if you’re an addict and you have a partner, but codependency is so far beyond that. And because people got it wrong you don’t really know what you have. There are so many books out there on codependency by really smart people and they all say something different. They all take about three chapters to say what codependency is. If codependency is a mental health disorder, like depression or anxiety or post traumatic stress disorder, it should have a very brief explanation and then there should be symptoms of it. You have to have an order to qualify for it. But what has been done over the last, 30, 40 years, they made it into this personality weakness and it has caused shame and grief. It has made codependency guilt even worse. So my revolution is to once and for all tell people exactly what it is and every part of it, and then give an idea of how to solve it. So, that’s why it’s a revolution, and that’s why we need to relearn something that we tried to get right, but we never did.
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Dr. Wendy Myers
How does one become codependent or develop self love deficit? Let’s maybe start there.
Ross Rosenberg
Self love deficit disorder, codependency, is a problem. If you think of an impairment, the simple way of understanding that is at the very core of it is attachment trauma. You were raised by a parent who had a personality disorder, had a narcissistic personality disorder, was a sociopath, had borderline personality disorder, and during your most vulnerable times of your life, the attachment period, you were hurt because of that person’s narcissism and that is trauma that is deeply embedded from the trauma is core shame. This is a pervasive belief that you are fundamentally bad, unlovable, will never be happy, and from core shame is pathological loneliness. It’s just bone aching, existential pain, searing pain of loneliness that only goes away if you’re in a relationship. Then, going up to the pyramid is the addiction, codependency addiction, is the compulsion and the need to be in a relationship or the pain to go away, and at the very top of it is all of the things that we know about what codependents or SLDs do. The world has mistaken codependency for what people do. They give too much. They control. They’re afraid to share their opinion. They say I’m sorry, and you can’t describe a disorder by behaviors.
So the answer to your question is, where does it come from? It comes from the early formation of an identity and an understanding of your value in the world. If you are born to what I would call normal parents who have problems, who make mistakes, but unconditionally love you and nurture you and during your first six, seven years of life are there for you, you developed a sense of I’m lovable because of who I am. I’m a human being, not a human doing. However, if you are a child to a narcissist and you are the one that the narcissist calls the trophy child, a good child, the responsible child, then that child learns that they’re only lovable and safe by sacrificing their own needs, their own reality, and molding themselves into what the narcissist needs. Because of their adaptation during this attachment phase of their life, they stay safe, whereas their other siblings don’t. And that, as they get older, it coalesces into a relationship template, which is a kind of a subconscious idea of your worth in a relationship.
So fast forward, the kid who was raised by a narcissist who endured and experienced terrible attachment trauma and has a relationship template is I’m only lovable if I listen and don’t talk. I don’t ask for anything. And so they go on a date and there’s a guy who is really nice and always is apologetic and says, no, you talk. Well, the person who’s a codependent is not going to know what to do with that person. It’s going to feel nervous or nerve wracking, or if that person, let’s say, we’ll call them mythically healthy. No one’s perfect. The codependent is going to feel nervous because their template is to sacrifice and take care of someone. And they’re going to be a little bit nervous. But if the person is a narcissist, all they’re going to know is that they’re going to feel comfortable. They’re going to know what to do and how to do it.
Codependents aren’t consciously attracted to narcissists. It is that unconscious vibe, the chemistry, that bold, sexy, confident, funny person or that needs the spotlight and requires someone to sacrifice and the codependent has been doing that their whole life. They feel, they feel it’s familiar and safe. So it comes from attachment trauma, forms your relationship template that informs chemistry and your choice on your romantic relationships.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, that’s so eloquently stated and you know, it’s interesting because even for me when I was dating, I know what a narcissist is. I’ve read books on it. I know what they look like, I know how they act and how they tick and they’re just a little hollow shell. There’s nothing to them except a little outside that they’re barely holding together, and yet I still chose one. I think that is just crazy to me. I’ve had several relationships with narcissists with varying degrees. I guess on a scale of one to 10, there’s really bad ones and not ones that are toxic, but they’re. So tell us what exactly should we be looking for when we want to avoid a narcissist or just to spot them.
Ross Rosenberg
You cannot keep yourself safe just by the act of looking for them, but it’s required to keep yourself safe and let me explain the forces that compel us, that push us, that motivate us to choose a narcissist over someone who’s nice to us. We don’t have access to that. We don’t know what’s going on. It’s happening in the background. It’s part of our unconscious mind, part of our self that’s kind of disconnected or dissociated. So the chemistry thing just happens. We don’t think about it. If there’s a beautiful, gorgeous person who we’re just like got a crush on and we’re just jonesing for, we are just reacting. It is the unconscious forces recognizing that person. So if it’s unconscious, and it’s just happening automatically by keeping vigilance and saying, I’m never going to marry. I’m never going to date another narcissist. I know more than anyone I wrote the books is that it’s not enough. It never is enough because we are talking about something that is embedded in our unconscious mind as trauma. It’s an addiction. Codependency is an addiction and it’s bigger than us. So the only way to stop this is to be in a form of mental health service psychotherapy with someone who understands both the human magnet syndrome, the unconscious aspect and compensating the fact that it really is a trauma disorder and solve it at its root.
That’s why I introduced just a few minutes ago the pyramid that at the bottom is attachment trauma, core shame, loneliness, and addiction. Once you get to that, then the part of you that operates like an automatic pilot, it no longer works against you, it works for you. Then your choices and then your question is relevant. Then you do your checklist and you go over things, then something like that works. But how many codependents do you know that have made terrible choices and married a narcissist and promise I’ll never, ever do that again? A lot still do it. It happens. That’s why codependency needs to be gutted. That’s why we have this. We need this codependency revolution because what the world understands is not accurate. And if it’s not accurate, how the heck can you fix it?
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, and those narcissists, they come in and love bomb you. Then you just soak it right up with just what you’ve been waiting for and craving. I know when I was dating my ex who was definitely a narcissist and I knew, I told him if you lie to me, we’re done. And then he lied to me and I still kept going. Oh, it’s like, oh, I’ll just overlook it. Then I’m like, oh, I know this is bad for me, but I’m just gonna do it for a little while because it feels good. You just keep making excuses and it just keeps snowballing.
Ross Rosenberg
But now if you just for a second think about what you know about her and addiction, whether it’s alcohol, cigarettes, or any drug, that’s what addicts do. I can control this. I’m better than this. One more chance, just a little bit more. But you can’t control something that’s bigger than you, and that is why I created a 10 stage treatment program, which is called the Self Love Recovery Treatment Program, and each stage addresses an important aspect of codependency. I’ve defined codependency in like four sentences, but I’ve explained it in 300 pages. We start off with a simple explanation about a person that gives all, and it’s codependency defined as a person who gives all the love, respect, caring, trust, and protection, wants it to be mutual, tries to make it mutual, and they can’t because they chose a narcissist. A magnate’s in them and they stay in a relationship. That’s it. That’s the definition. Then we have so many different types of codependents. They’re all different sizes and shapes. You got the passive ones that just are martyrs and don’t say anything. You got the active ones that are like fighting back and trying to manipulate. You got the cerebral ones, you got the anorexic ones, and I have a whole chapter on that. If you understand the basic definition of it and understand that personality and all these other attributes are independent,then the psychotherapy or the treatment for it can be focused. If your focus is on, don’t don’t date someone who drinks too much, don’t date someone who talks too much, the focus has to be on the problem. The codependency is giving all of everything and not being able to, leave a relationship despite your loneliness and your emptiness.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Are there any other symptoms you could list about what self love deficit looks like or codependency looks like so people can kind of identify themselves as codependent?
Ross Rosenberg
Absolutely, I’m going to give the symptoms but I want to say it’s so important to not get lost in the symptoms because codependency looks different depending on your personality type. So you have to ask yourself in your important intimate relationships, your important relationships, who gives most of the love, respect, caring, trust, and protection, LRCTP. If you do, and no matter what you do, you don’t get it back and you stay in, that is the most important set of symptoms because that’s the core. That’s the heart of the problem. Now, I can say to you that you say sorry too much. You apologize for other people’s mistakes. You smile when you’re sad. You are always volunteering. You have bad boundaries. I can list so many different symptoms, but the symptoms are more connected to the codependency personality type. For example, the active codependent fights and argue and they can be manipulative. Most people say, well, that sounds narcissistic. No, it’s not because that person stays in a relationship where they give all the L R C T P away and don’t get it.
What about the person who I call a cerebral codependent. They’re reading books, always in therapy. They’re going to workshops and are going to retreats. They always have their mind stimulated and self help. So they’re always feeling like when they come to me, they say, Oh, I’ve done a lot of work and I’ve had good results but yet they’re still in relationships with the narcissist. Consider the anorexic codependent where the pain and the consequences of loss as narcissists can be, I don’t know what the rating is on this podcast, but I’ll pretend it’s a gene. It can be jerks. The consequences are so severe that someone will survive by shutting off, removing, shutting down. They’re needy for intimacy and sex, it’s just shutting down. It’s called dissociation. They all come to me and say, well, you know, I haven’t been in a relationship in three years. I’m not codependent anymore. And I’ll say, is that a decision you made? Oh yeah. I can be in relationships anytime I want, but I want to be healthy. Then I’ll ask questions, I go, so you have shut down your birthright to be intimately connected to someone in order to protect yourself. And then they start to get sad and cry.
What they did was they came up with a solution to avoid all relationships in order to control something and that’s a sacrifice of part of humanity. Those are just three types of 10 personality types that all have different symptoms. So I say to your listeners or viewers, it’s focused on the definition of the disparity between the amount of love, respect, caring, trust, and protection you give versus receive that will always get you to the answer of whether you’re a codependent or not.
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Dr. Wendy Myers
You also mentioned loneliness. Avoiding loneliness is so key because why else would you stay in an abusive relationship or neglectful or someone who won’t talk to you about the problems and is not interested in your well being at all, except for avoiding being alone. Can you talk about that?
Ross Rosenberg
When I came up with the term pathological loneliness, it’s like the world caught on fire because I’ve been talking about this for 13 years and I got a YouTube channel that’s been viewed 28 million times. My self recovery podcast. It’s got a big file, a lot of followers. So, all SLDs, codependents, experience bone aching, painful, pathological loneliness when they’re not in a relationship. If we look at codependency as an addiction, it is then the withdrawal symptom. If the drug is a relationship, the pain of loneliness is so bad. You need the pain to go away and you find a person in a romantic relationship. Codependents are not addicted to narcissists. They’re addicted to relationships so the loneliness goes away. That loneliness is what I call this existential pain and searing pain that you don’t feel alive unless you’re with someone. And because of your broken picker, as my therapist once told me, you’re always going to pick a narcissist and the loneliness goes away. Of course you’re in pain and all the codependency relationship stuff. So this loneliness is a scourge.
Once I created that term, that explanation and tied it into the addiction, all of a sudden people and therapists had an explanation for why their clients will not stop dating narcissists and complain and complain and complain and talk about being so lonely. Then they’ll meet someone. It is like they fall in love with the intensity of like crack cocaine because that loneliness goes away and they’ll rescue from their pain, except eventually, of course, that love cloud dissipates and the narcissist masks come off and, and so goes the happy, happy, happy, loving excitement plays.
Dr. Wendy Myers
You also described it as an addiction, as self love deficit or codependency as an addiction. Can you talk about kind of , the chemicals and cycle of abuse that people can get really wrapped up in, and they’re really addicted to the chemicals as well?
Ross Rosenberg
If we look at addiction, all addictions are represented in our brain. That’s a hard thing to understand because we’re not conscious of the part of our brain, the neurochemistry and hormones. We’re conscious of ourselves, our ego. It’s just human nature. But if you’re a gambling addict, a sex addict, an alcoholic, you are an addict. If you think about alcohol to the alcoholic, the pleasure center of your brain lights up and there’s this intense desire and craving to fulfill that desire. That is energized by a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that takes charge of our pleasure center. It’s the chemical of anticipation. A codependent has withdrawal symptoms of loneliness. A person who’s addicted to cigarettes has withdrawal symptoms of anxiety and constant cravings for a cigarette. An alcoholic shakes because of loneliness. All of a sudden you see someone who can take the loneliness away. It’s like the gambling addict seeing a casino, the alcoholic seeing a bottle of booze, the sex addict seeing a prostitute. That part of the brain just lights up. And it says, well, I want some, I want some, I want some. It commandeers our thought processes. That’s another part of the brain, which is just the way we think. And next thing you know, an alcoholic reaches for a bottle, the codependent says yes to a person that is obviously narcissistic, and then the pain goes away.
You think of the movie where the heroin addict says, I’m not going to use it, I’m not going to use it, I’m not going to use it. And next thing you know, they go and stick the needle. You see them just kind of go back and they’re like unconscious. And then they wake up feeling bad. Well, codependency is like that, except it’s stretched out for a long period of time. You are filled with this immediate sense of euphoria and relaxation and happiness. The consequence of your choice takes root and you realize, oh, no, you did it again. You either continue because you relapse, or you try to stop and you feel really bad. So, that is my best way to explain the chemical nature of how it is. Now, according to what you do, codependency causes stress and anxiety. This is an area that I’m not a specialist in. That reacts with different chemicals and stuff in our bloodstream that affects our balance and the stuff that you talk about. I don’t know that all I know is that anything that causes stress and anxiety releases a cascade of toxic chemicals that aren’t good for us. That’s your specialty.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Going back to what are you talking about with the chemicals, the drug chemicals and whatnot, when you’re in that cycle, the narcissist knows if they withhold their love or withhold their attend January stop talking to you, completely invalidate you or ignoring you for a couple of days, you feel that pain and you just want those breadcrumbs they flick at you.
Ross Rosenberg
I used to smoke cigarettes for 25 years and my mom got cancer and I said, WTF what am I doing here? It’s been 17 years and I haven’t had a cigarette, but there were so many times I would quit and I just have one puff, just one puff, just one puff. Well, I could control one puff, one cigarette. Well, codependency like that, just one time, just a little bit. But those crumbs make you want more crumbs. I made a meme out of this early on. I never was really good at making viral memes, but this one was close to it. Codependents settle for crumbs, but expect a loaf of bread. It was much better than that, but it really hit the mark because all they get is crumbs, but they’re seeking for something more.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I’ve said narcissist so many times. I get so many amazing memes and reels about narcissism. I was like, please stop saying these. I don’t want to see them anymore.
Ross Rosenberg
The problem with that is everyone in their brother and sister is an expert on narcissists. I am a mental health practitioner. I am licensed and certified and blah, blah, blah, blah. You can have those things and still not be that smart. I don’t think education and letters actually always make a person. I say that because I have been trained in a mental health medical model that sees narcissism as a mental health disorder, narcissistic personality disorder. I created codependency in that vein that it has to be this narrowly understood disorder. It can’t be this part of this wide range of personality traits. That’s why I created my Relationship Compatibility Continuum, which I’m going to skip because that’s a whole complicated subject, but I have a whole chapter on that that explains not everyone’s a narcissist, not everyone’s a codependent, pathological narcissism and codependency are real. There’s so much disinformation out there about narcissism and I feel bad because everyone finds those videos as the most enjoyable because it validates the pain, but it doesn’t show them solutions or point to the only solution to this self love deficit disorder thing or this codependency thing. It’s not to know about narcissists, but to know about why you’re attracted to narcissists and why the part of you keeps putting you there. That you can’t seem to stop. That’s the information people need, I believe.
Dr. Wendy Myers
So let’s get to that. Let’s talk about the solution here? So maybe someone listening, you kind of identify that you keep having problematic relationships to multiple relationships, choosing people that seem to care at first and they really don’t at some point in the relationship, won’t talk about it, won’t take any responsibility, it’s all your fault, et cetera, et cetera. That comes in many different forms.
Ross Rosenberg
I cannot emphasize this most strongly to know exactly what it is, why it is, how it happened. You need to know the information because you cannot solve a problem if you don’t know what it is. You’ve got all these old treatments, 100, 200, 300 years old that never worked because science had yet not created an understanding of the problem. So people are trying to solve codependency, and yet they don’t know what codependency is, which is why, and I’m not here saying this to sell my books, but why it’s important to be a part of this revolution, understand what it is, and then find a mental health treatment practitioner that understands the trauma basis of codependency and has the ability to bring a person to that trauma. You can’t do that with normal talk therapy because the trauma is embedded in the part of our mind that is offline. Just like post traumatic stress disorder, the brain takes it offline and puts it somewhere else so it doesn’t have to remember it, but it’s still back there.
I created a 10 stage treatment program I call the self love recovery treatment program. I have a lot of educational videos for both professionals and the general public to understand how this treatment works and what you have to do. Those are available at my website at selfloverecovery.com, but the answer really is to get into treatment. If there is a program similar to mine or someone who can access the disassociated trauma and then integrate that into someone’s conscious mind so that you can help the codependent heal, that’s the solution. That’s why I provide my psychotherapy or treatment and that’s what I do for a living. I’m known as this expert on codependence of narcissists. No. What I do is I help people heal and overcome what most people don’t even know what it is, let alone what to do.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I’m definitely a testament that regular talk therapy doesn’t really work that great for this issue because I was in therapy for 10 years over the course of my life and still was dealing with these relationship issues, even though maybe they can help you navigate certain issues or help you communicate better, figure out what’s going on with you or the house. I read Haber’s side of your family. You’re still not getting to the core of the issue.
Ross Rosenberg
Well, that is why I wrote my book, The Carpenter Revolution. The world has it wrong. It’s not like I’m trying to sell some infomercials and buy this because it’ll peel a potato faster or take wrinkles off your face or make this stuff up. No, people have it wrong. Talk therapy cannot solve a problem if you think the problem is about self esteem or boundaries. Those are symptoms. Remember the pyramid, that’s the top. You got to get to the trauma, the core shame, the loneliness, and the addiction. If you go to an eating disorder clinic, people are trained in eating disorders. They are trained and where does it start? It starts in childhood because you live in a family where everyone controlled you and they had no control. Paradoxically,starving yourself was a form of control. So that’s why a big part is just not dietitian or dietary work. Well, analogous to that is codependency. Now, with my help, we understand what this problem is, and that informs us on how to solve it. Talk therapy doesn’t work. It’s never worked, and there are millions upon millions of people that have died, broken codependents because no one knew the problem and created a treatment program for it.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah, and it’s never too late to work on this stuff. My mom did a lot of work and then at 65, she got married to an amazing man that treats her amazing now. I’m so happy for her. So it’s never too late no matter what age you are to start working on this and find a partner who reciprocates, who gives as much as you give, loves as much as you love.
Ross Rosenberg
George Eliot said this, I think somewhere in the late 1800s, I don’t know, but a long time ago said, it’s never too late to be the person you should have been. One of my all time favorite sayings. I’ve worked with clients in their seventies and I work with clients who are in their twenties, except the twenties doesn’t really fit this thing but just the range. Everyone has an opportunity to solve the deeply embedded and invisible pain and trauma fuels that drives our broken picker, or as my therapist once told me, falling in love, what do you say, Ross, the problem with you is you fall in love with the same woman, but with a different face.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I’m gonna be like, but they seem different. It’s weird because narcissists can come in a lot of shapes and sizes. They can come super generous and buy all kinds of stuff for you, or they can love bomb you and have this unbelievable sex, or they can be super kind and caring or very spiritual and religious and whatnot. It can throw you off because you think, Oh my God, I found this amazing guy. That is what I’ve been looking for, but they come in a lot of different shapes and sizes. It can be hard to identify a narcissist.
Ross Rosenberg
It’s hard to identify them if you’re an SLD or codependent because you’re blind to it.That is why I created the term. I didn’t create the term pathological narcissist. That turns me around. I use that term to explain the type of person codependents fall in love with, and that is either someone with a narcissistic personality disorder, a borderline personality disorder, or antisocial personality disorder.There are subcategories like covert narcissism. That’s narcissistic personality disorder with sociopathic traits. There are different types, but they’re all connected to a specific disorder that we understand in the mental health field.
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Dr. Wendy Myers
So let’s talk about things like, what are some of the first steps? When someone says, maybe they’ve had a little bit of a light bulb moment listening to this podcast and they think, Hmm, maybe I haven’t had any successful relationships and they end badly and so.
Ross Rosenberg
First step again, and I’ll say it until my face turns blue, where did I hear that saying? It’s funny how I say it just came up. It’s out of my childhood. But I’ll say it and always will, you have to know what it is. My books, The Human Magnet Syndrome, and to, for the most part, The Code Pens and Cure, don’t talk about my treatment program. My treatment program is talked about in the educational videos I sell online, but I’ve sold about 175, 000 of these books. People tell me all the time when I save their life, and yet it’s not treatment. It’s because it opened their minds to what they were blind, that they didn’t know. It gave them an idea of how much they were living a nightmare, and they could identify it and try to get out of it and seek help. So the first step is to understand who you are, why you are, and the problem in narcissism, and that is to get my book.
The second step is to get into treatment that addresses the foundational causes, not the symptoms, not the top of the pyramid, but the psychotherapy that can get to the attachment trauma and the core shame. That therapist is going to have to be trauma informed and is going to have to have an addictions background, understand systems theory and have a solid mental health background so that they can solve the problem. The client doesn’t know where it is. So the therapist has to know where it is so they can help the client get to it.
Dr. Wendy Myers
How long does that recovery period take? I’m sure it’s different for everyone, but just ballpark.
Ross Rosenberg
The self love recovery treatment program takes between nine months and a year and a half. We’re not talking about just regular talk therapy. We’re talking about by the third month, people’s lives change. Everything changes. In fact, it is really common for my clients within the first month. They start to change and I’m not saying it’s a cure and it works that fast, but they get hope. They have a picture of a future and it’s very common that the narcissists get really upset that they do. I tell my clients, do not tell your narcissist partner about me and my book because they’re going to read it and they’re going to sabotage it because they’re going to be threatened by it. They all kind of say the same thing that the narcissist either gets worse, nastier, or it gets nicer as they enter the treatment because they get nervous. Narcissists need you to not have hope and feel in constant despair and weakness. Once you have hope, they lose their footing. So for treatment that addresses the foundational causes, just go back to my Pyramid. I actually have a YouTube video.. It’s an animated YouTube video that talks about the Pyramid. If you Google Ross Rosenberg pyramid self love deficit disorder the YouTube video will pop up. It is just about five minutes. It talks about it. Get to that and your life will change.
Dr. Wendy Myers
I think you mentioned that, don’t mention the narcissists. Can you start this when you are in a relationship or is it better to do it when you are out of it? I know some people cannot break those chains until they have a bit of information.
Ross Rosenberg
For those people that are listening to this on a podcast I’m smiling and just said that. If I required someone to be out of a relationship, I would be out of business because that would mean codependents don’t like to be out of relationships long. They tend to jump back into them. Now, most of my clients come to me when they’re in a relationship and they’re like, they wake up one day and realize their life is turned to a piece of coal and to kind of use non inflammatory words, has turned to crap and they’re like depressed and they’re filled with despair. I built my program around this idea. Stage five is preparing to set the boundaries. Stage six is executing the boundaries. So even in the program, it assumes you’re in a relationship and it does not want to the codependent move too quickly, because if they do that before they’ve created a healthy foundation, they’re going to relapse and then fall prey to the next narcissist, the next soulmate turns into a cellmate. That’s my dad’s quote
Dr. Wendy Myers
I love that. A soulmate that turns into a cellmate. It’s so good. Also the narcissist doesn’t want you to leave either. I think it’s difficult, of course not to leave a narcissist. In my last relationship, I had to move, I had to leave without giving notice. I left and it took the person a month to move out. I said, I’m never coming back. So you just have to leave. And I was like, I’m going to be gone until you’re gone. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t have a conversation. This isn’t working for me. I think you need to move out. They have a vested interest in your supply, attention, money, whatever you’re giving them, a place to live, their school that they like, or whatever it is they like that they’re with you for, they’re not leaving. It’s not going to be an easy split. So you have to kind of have a strategy and certainly you’ve helped with that.
Ross Rosenberg
Well, let me add to that. You’re absolutely right. Bingo. Right on. In addition, they have worse pathological loneliness. They have the same addiction. They’re just much better at manipulating people. That is why I created this article. It’s on my blog. This is not the title but it’s the 15 things narcissists do to sabotage a breakup. It’s like a dog that you’ve got table scraps its whole life and the vet says, stop doing it. Well, that dog will do everything and anything and not stop and try to wear you down. The narcissists are going to feel like they’re taking away their oxygen, their life source, and they will do anything, anything, as far as in some cases, attempt suicide, beg, go to therapy, and narcissists don’t like therapy, promise to stop this and or to do that. They will cry and talk about their abuse. That’s why I wrote that article to prepare people for all the different ways they try to break your resolve so that you will take them back.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Yeah. Mine tried everything. He was in pain. Then he was in the hospital and then this and then my son and what am I going to do or where am I going to live and all this stuff? I was like, I did the gray rock thing where I only said one thing, you’d have to move out May 30th. That’s the only response I had. You’re very clear.
Ross Rosenberg
You’re probably using my observe don’t absorb technique and not even know it
Dr. Wendy Myers
But it worked. So, tell us again, what your website is, your book where we can get it.
Ross Rosenberg
Well, it is The Codependency Revolution: Fixing what was always broken. The website is selfloverecovery.com. Write us an email at [email protected]. If you would like some of my educational resources, my inspirational work, or you would like to work with me in psychotherapy or my treatment program, just drop us a line and we’ll do our very best to help you.
Dr. Wendy Myers
Ross, thanks so much for coming on the Myers Detox Podcast. I love having you on because I think it’s so, so important. I know so many of you guys listening are cerebral types like me and always learning and want to learn about your health and improve your health. One of the best things you can do for your health is choose a healthy partner that doesn’t stress you out all the time and make you sick. You gotta get this part right too. We have so many great resources and tools for people to do just that and put them on the right path as quickly as possible because talk therapy is like the long, slow road to China. So, thanks so much for coming on and everyone thanks so much for tuning in every week to the Myers Detox Podcast. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers and just love doing this show for you guys to help, give you all those pieces of the puzzle that you need to feel good because you deserve to feel good. You deserve to have good health. So thanks for tuning in.
Disclaimer
The Myers Detox Podcast is created and hosted by Wendy Myers. This podcast is for information purposes only. Statements and views expressed on this podcast are not medical advice. This podcast, including Wendy Myers and the producers, disclaims responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of the information contained herein. The opinions of guests are their own, and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guests’ qualifications or credibility. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. If you think you have a medical problem, consult a licensed physician.
