The Narcissistic Broken Home – Is It Really “Broken”?

Many people hold the belief that breaking up a marriage and home will cause their children terrible suffering and loss of security.

They believe that they should stay committed to a marriage and make it work no matter what so that their children have that model to base their lives on.

I was once one of those believers. I thought that keeping the family together was the best option. After all, marriage is meant to be forever.

But answering the question, “Should I stay or should I leave?” reflects an even deeper dilemma if you’re married to a narcissist. The best option for your children is not always clear.

In my latest Thriver TV episode, I explore the vital points to consider especially when you are being given advice, suggestions, and counselling to stay in the abusive marriage for the sake of your kids. I discuss both options – what you’re teaching your children when you stay and what they learn from you if you leave.

Please watch today’s video or read the transcript to learn what is truly best for your children and to access many powerful free resources that will help you heal for real from this heartbreaking dilemma.

 

 

Video Transcript

Today, I want to speak to the topic of broken homes. Many people, of course, don’t want their children to grow up in a broken home, meaning the separation of their parents. It’s understandable to think that children are going to suffer a loss of security.

People think it’s not going to be good for children’s family values to come from a broken home, and that maybe they should be learning compassion and love and longevity and making a marriage work instead.

So, a lot of people, for so many reasons, want to stay committed to a marriage and make it work, and really, to have that as a fundamental model for their children, thinking it’s best for them.

But does this apply to narcissistic relationships? Are children better off if you stay or if you leave? That’s what I want to help you explore today.

Now, if you are in this dilemma of, “Should I stay or should I leave?” or what to do, I want you to have a pen and paper at the ready so that you can take some notes that are going to be vital for you. Also, I’m going to point you towards some other resources that I want you to look up, that I know can really help you with this dilemma.

And, if you’re new to my channel, I really want to help you out with one of my very powerful, free resources, which is my free 16-day course. It grants you two comprehensive eBooks that are going to help you with a lot clarity and solutions in your journey going forward, as well as many other powerful, free resources to help you heal for real from this.

 

Is Keeping The Family Together Good For Your Kids?

Let’s look at this question – is keeping the family together good for your kids? It’s a really important question.

As a parent, of course you want to do the best for your children. You want to set them up with the value, the security, and the resources for them to be successful in life. However, life, as we know in this community, sometimes does not go as planned.

You may have had children with a narcissist, or maybe you and your children in a future relationship ended up living in a household with a stepparent who’s a narcissist.

Traditionally, and regarding many people in your life who don’t understand the dynamics of narcissism, (and how can they unless they’ve been through it, because it’s mental and it’s not normal) these people, they will conclude that you should stay and you should make the relationship work.

A lot of them will see the narcissistic partner being on their best behaviour and being charming, and have no idea what you’re going through. Maybe, because you are really struggling to hang in there and make things work, you’re going to counselling. You might be doing that on your own, or maybe you’re doing marriage therapy, and perhaps you’re in a church, which is also enforcing this view that you need to make your marriage work. They may be giving you advice and suggestions and counseling as well.

Of course, there are also our own personal beliefs. It used to be massive for me, the belief that when I get married, marriage will be forever. We can have the belief of, “I have to stay for the kids,” and these are very, very powerful belief systems. They’re overlays.

So, we could theorize about all of these beliefs and these overlays for hours, but really, I just want to help you out by getting down to powerful Quantum truths about this. So, I want to start off with talking to you about when parents choose to stay.

 

 

When Parents Stay

You need to understand this – our children don’t learn from what we lecture and prescribe to them. They learn from what we do, from the example we set by our actions. I don’t know how I can put it more simply. It’s not about what you say to them. It’s what they see you do that is going to impact them and program them.

If they see you staying with an abuser, they learn high tolerance for inappropriate behaviour. If they see you getting angry and retaliating, they learn to try to force incapable people who are not compassionate, people who are disordered, to try to look after their needs rather than learning to pull away, to look after and create lives for themselves.

If they see you being submissive, they learn to walk on broken glass around another’s wounds rather than setting healthy boundaries. If they see you acquiesce to try to get safety, care, and peace, they learn to hand more and more pieces of themselves away to try to stop being abused, even though the abuse and the control is escalating.

They learn to cover up in life for other people. They learn to apply cognitive dissonance, which is making excuses for bad behaviour and to justify staying rather than honouring their own Souls.

How important is the status of not having a broken family and making sure the kids still have their resources and stuff when our children move forward into their own relationships and families still battling these issues because their own personal values, power, and rights were never modelled to them?

As a healer, I know the deepest of wounds that I’ve worked on with people have come from families where the mother and the father stayed together for a long amount of time ­– often it’s years. Abuse was normalized as was a lack of boundaries, and there were also lies and untruths to try to create a normality that wasn’t healthy. Messages like, “I’m fine. There’s nothing wrong,” to try to protect the children.

I was a culprit of that myself. When my son, Zac, used to come up to me and say, “What’s going on?” I’d say, “Everything’s fine. Nothing’s wrong.” I was lying.

And the child, just like my son, knows within their own powerful intuition that something is dreadfully wrong, but because their parent, “their God”, their only true reference point tells them another truth, a different version, they decide, “I must be wrong. I can’t trust my own intuition.” Our children disconnect from their own inner knowing and start relying on false sources outside of themselves for their vital life information.

It’s one of the most damaging things we can do – try to cover up the truth. Then there’s the fear of CRAP, which is the terror of being criticized, rejected, abandoned, or punished for being oneself, which means speaking up and saying no. And, if we’re all carrying the fear of CRAP and passing it on to our children, and they don’t speak up, they go along to get along, it’s diabolical for children progressing forward into adults trying to generate healthy relationships. It sabotages this ability.

Additionally, I can’t tell you how many adults in their own families going forward put practicalities first at the sake of their own Soul destruction because they saw the abused parent do it. And what is that message? Other things are more important than my Soul or than my Being.

Many of us were brought up that way. Many people don’t know what it is to honour their Soul and live an authentic life and model that for their children. I didn’t know it when I was parenting back then in narcissistic abuse. Absolutely I didn’t know it.

Of course, these ways of selling out our Souls can be deeply wrapped up in why we don’t want to break up the family, as well as these feelings and these thoughts and these beliefs that you’re going to be judged by others. Maybe your family might judge you for your decision because it’s “wrong”, or your church community might judge you.

Here is a powerful truth, regardless of supposed consequences, if we don’t live a life of truth for our own Soul and our children, we pay a heavy price. We know that in narcissistic abuse, when we went against our Inner Being and our Souls to try to hang onto the bricks and the mortar and the practicalities, we paid a shocking price.

I’ll tell you what a huge price is, which I discovered, which was probably worse than all of those things that I was trying to hang onto and I lost them anyway – one of the most devastating results is that your children don’t respect you.

I know this is really hard, but let me unpack this for you a bit more because not only will they lose respect for you because you’re not respecting yourself, you’re also very much at risk of having them alienated from you by the narcissist.

Of course, you wish they understood your sacrifice. You wish that your children had compassion for what went down and what you had to endure and what you did and the sacrifices and the abuse you went through because of them, but the simple truth is they can’t respect you when you haven’t respected yourself.

I know it’s a terribly hard pill to swallow and it doesn’t seem fair, but this is the thing about humanity, humanity really aligns with Souls, not stuff. Thank goodness it does, but we need to catch up with that. They also won’t respect you because you didn’t model to them Soul strength, self-power, and truth, which is really what your children want from you.

They also suffered because they heard and saw the abuse. They saw your powerlessness and they have experienced one parent figure being unpredictable and emotionally dangerous because of their narcissism and another parent being unavailable, anxious and distressed because of being abused. You were not taking care of yourself, let alone emotionally taking care of them no matter what you tried to do.

In my own personal self-healing and that with others, I found there is just as much trauma to release and reverse regarding the parent who stayed as there is with the one who was abusive. In my own journey from narcissistic abuse, while I was staying, I was unable to help and protect my son or help him heal until I fully took responsibility to honour my Soul, leave and heal my own self, regardless of practical consequences.

It was only then that he and I had any sort of loving, authentic and healthy connection. He was literally repulsed by me and turned away and blamed me for so much until I started honouring myself because I wasn’t leading the way.

There were times before this that I’d thought my son was a narcissist. And the truth of many children in the narcissistic codependent household is they’re either going to take on the role of being abused in the future, or they’re going to be the types that go along to get along and keep handing away their power, trying to be loved and approved of and given security and survival.

It’s the program of, “To be loved and safe I have to people please.” Or, to be loved and safe, they will take on more of the narcissistic program which is, “I have to control and dominate.” All of these malfunctions, these disorders come from unsafe family environments that are not about self-health, self-empowerment, healthy boundaries and living a life with Soul truths.

As a parent, it comes back to the airplane analogy – the oxygen mask. You do it first for yourself and then you hand them out to your children because if you’re gasping for air, you’re going to do more harm than good.

 

When Parents Leave

Let’s talk about when parents leave. Leaving a narcissist is a gruelling experience. It’s not easy and there’s a lot that’s involved regarding doing it in the most empowered, safest and most direct way possible. I cannot emphasize enough that if you’re thinking of leaving a narcissist, whether you have children or not, have a look at the links that I’m going to put in the description, because I’m going to put up two very powerful resources that can help get you started with how to do this in the most effective way.

5 Steps To Breaking Up With A Narcissist Without Being Destroyed

Preparing To Leave A Narcissist – 7 Things You Must Know

What I will say about this is if, as a parent, you start honouring your Soul, taking your power back, healing on the inside, which is where NARP comes in as a hugely powerful resource to get your courage and your power back, and if you’re determined to set boundaries and generate your own life rather than being victimized and abused, yes, absolutely, you’re in for a scary road ahead of you. I’m not going to minimize it for you. It’s a very big deal. Yet, you are on the right track for setting up templates for truth and a healthy, successful life for you and your children going forward.

There are many fears that you will have to face and release, including and not limited to, people disagreeing with you. Your whole community might turn their back on you. The narcissist may try to demonize and smear you to all and sundry, including your children. And your church or community may side with the narcissist. Then there’s also the fallout of property, resources, upcoming co-parenting battles, covert and overt attacks by the narcissist and their minions and abuse by proxy as a result of leaving. This is why you need support with this, and that’s what our community specializes in doing, especially our NARP community and the NARP forum.

But here’s the deal. By honouring your Soul, you may lose bricks and mortar and resources and connections and stuff, but you will win your Soul back and that’s everything. You will start to learn how important that is. Of course, it is terrifying having to navigate this journey, and it makes people stay. Yet going through this – the only way out is through it. It’s the only way for you and your children to evolve out of abuse patterns. It comes from you leading the way by example.

Now here’s a beautiful truth, a divine truth – the truth always wins if you stand in it. It brings health, love and success because it represents your Soul and Source and your higher power working together for love, divinity and wellbeing, which are the most powerful forces on this planet.

It can take time. It takes lots of self-work healing from the inside out. It takes alignment and the anchoring into the radical personal responsibility to be the change from the inside out to change your being so as to create the life that you want for you and your children and their future generations.

It takes deciding to take the stand, “The buck stops with me. I’m going to be the change I want to see.” This starts with saying NO to what is unhealthy for you.

Before I share some real-life stories from my community to demonstrate how we can lead our children by honouring themselves, I want to also share another powerful tip with you.

It’s about getting your head around parallel parenting. After leaving a narcissist, you need to know what you are going to put into place to have the healthiest co-parenting plans possible – it’s so important and it’s completely possible.

I want to share with you a story about a beautiful Thriver who was in a relationship with the terrible narcissist. A very, very nasty human being. Her child was very young. He was only about two when she separated. Her child was experiencing many anxiety disorders and physical disorders that were coming from the stress and the anxiety and the abuse. As a very young boy, he was prescribed medication to deal with it.

The narcissist, while she was with him, threatened her with terrible consequences, as well as going for full custody if she tried to leave him. The story gets worse for her, because back then, her narcissistic mother was also ganging up against her with the narcissist husband planning to take over full custody of her child. This incredibly brave woman realized that if she stayed, she was going to be completely destroyed. Her son was getting sicker. She needed to do something. She needed to stand up.

So she worked with NARP, the Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program, and she left with her son and she kept working diligently on everything that was triggered within her – all the shocking traumas and triggers and fears that came up. She stood in Quantum truth. That was her goal, which was to honour her Soul, stand bravely in truth, and just keep releasing everything that was coming up. She was doing her healings sometimes at two and three and four in the morning.

What she started to experience, which we all do when we’re dedicated, is Source had her back. The intimidation tactics that the narcissists were using were starting to fall over. They were going nowhere. They weren’t frightening her anymore. And his attempts in court were failing. What happened was he did get 50/50 access. He didn’t get full access and he didn’t rip her life to shreds and he didn’t get all the property as he tried to do, but he did get 50/50 access, which is quite common.

And our incredible Thriver, then of course, she had to do a ton of work on her inner fears about her son being present with the narcissist without her. It was hugely triggering and scary for her, but she did the healings on herself and she also did proxy healings through her body with NARP on her son, so that both of them could be in the healthiest, most empowered space to get through this parallel parenting with a narcissist.

Now we’re several years down the track and her son is an incredibly balanced, healthy young boy. I think he’s about six or seven now. Through her, he has learned to trust himself rather than coming to her place after the father’s and being a mess that she had to put back together each time, he falls in with her parenting really easily.

He can even discuss his dad in a disconnected way. “Oh, that’s just dad. And that’s what he does. But this is how I feel about me and my life.” He’s unaffected. He has boundaries. He’s incredibly perceptive.

She and her son are having a happy, loving, liberated life experience despite the ex narcissist being in their lives. Her son also does his own Quantum Freedom Healings, which he organically just started doing as a result of his mother doing them on herself. Her son is off all medication. He has been for a long time and he’s excelling at school and in sport.

So her son, this is the important piece, her son learned via her example, her lived example of, “I’m free to be myself regardless of what others are or aren’t doing.” He learned that at an incredibly young age, and this is what personal power and health is. I hope that can inspire you.

Then there is a wonderful Thriver gentleman in our community. He’d been married for 25 years. He had four teenage to young adult children and his children in the marriage, because he stayed and stayed and stayed and the mother played the victim, blamed him for everything and so turned all of the kids against him.

Now he had stayed for the children. He’d self-sacrificed. There were still two teenagers living at home and he learned humbly through this Thriver community, he learned that him staying was destroying him and it actually wasn’t good for them either. So he did leave despite his ex-wife turning everybody that she could against him.

She was an altruistic narcissist. So she was quite revered in the community as a giver. She was that real street angel. Everybody loved her in the church community. But when she shut the door at home, she was the home devil. I’m sure many of you know this story.

Now, his children, when he left, initially wanted nothing to do with him, all four of them. He went through a painful time with settlement. It was a battle, yet he got through it. Then he kept working on himself with NARP healings regarding releasing his trauma and rebuilding his own Soul, his self confidence, his self-respect and his self-love. That was when the shift occurred. His children started to seek him out and he no longer felt the need to explain things to them or defend himself.

He just started sharing who he was. A conscious, healing, great to be around being. He no longer felt like a victim. Both teenagers gravitated to him even more, and then decided to move in with him. They organically saw and felt that he was healthier to be around than their mother. He then saw a huge shift in their emotional and mental health. They followed where he went vibrationally, emotionally, energetically.

His children stopped their substance abuse and their life improved. One of his married children sought him out for advice and left his abusive wife that was so like the mother. His oldest daughter was a narcissist like the mother. And there’s only so much he could do, but what he did is he created solid boundaries with her to stop her abuse and exploitation of him. Within two years, this lovely man met a lovely lady, completely different from his wife who his children accepted into their lives.

So, this man lost 70% of his life earnings in court to her. However, that doesn’t matter. He’s so happy now with the saving of his Soul. And he’s never felt richer and freer to be himself – which is everything.

Now, mind you, many people, despite the tumultuous losses regain even more in every area of their life, certainly their Soul, their health that’s a given, but many people even rebuilt financially as well. I can’t tell you how many people I know who lost everything, often come back in greater ways of prosperity than they could have ever imagined. Such is the case when you honour your Soul, your Source – which is connected to your Soul – honours you always also.

 

The Truth Of Quantum Law

So, the truth of Quantum Law just to wrap this up, is to align with the absolute truth of things and to cut out all the white noise. The absolute truth is if you honour your Soul, you honour the entire field in honourable ways. You get healthier. You stop enabling abusers.
People who do have the resources to honour themselves, others and life, follow your example. It generates a love, truth, authenticity, and health that can only be accessed by doing what you know is true to your Soul.

Our greatest job as parents is to keep our children safe, to protect them, but we were doing it in the wrong way. I certainly was doing it the wrong way through self-sacrifice. Rather, the best way we do that is to lead by example which is to teach them to honour their Soul by honouring our own.

Otherwise, we teach them to sell their Soul, to disconnect from Source and truth, and pay a terrible price. But we can turn it all around. We have the power to do that. We can come home to our Soul and Source and generate that powerfully for ourselves, for them and for the future generations.

This is one of the things I am most proud about regarding my own son. Through my example, he has a voice. He honours his truth. He doesn’t just go along to get along and he’s determined to honour his Soul and truth no matter what.

His life is incredibly authentic and successful because of this. And in no way is that narcissistic or selfish, rather he’s free to assist humanity and causes because of being true to himself. This is why I’m so passionate about leading the way for our children because where we go they follow, creating an abuse free world of health and integrity to stop these cycles of narcissistic abuse.

I hope that this has spoken to you today. As I said, this journey is really scary. What I want to suggest to you, is that it’s so doable so absolutely get onto my 16 day free program, which will really help unravel and give you some power back.

But if you are ready to go, if you’ve had enough of this and you know that what I’m saying is the only way through, I cannot suggest to you NARP enough. Plus you get to connect to a community of global people who have already done this journey, who can help hold your hand and help you through this every step of the way. So check out those resources.