For most of my adult life, I was what you would call a narcissist magnet. Narcissistic people were attracted to me from near and far. I had the special sauce — the thing they craved to keep their false ego inflated. But it did a lot of damage in my life.

The greatest heartbreaks of my life were the result of the narcissists in my life. I could not wrap my mind around how someone could be so cold, so cruel.

Of course, it never started out that way, but it always ended that way. Like flipping a switch, their personality changed from loving and kind to dismissive, hurtful, uncaring, and crazy-making.

The narcissist would never change. They never went back to how they were in the beginning. And I was tired of suffering. So I had to do the hard work of looking at myself. YES, I said that right. I was the real problem — because I kept attracting people who cared nothing for me. And if those people were some kind of mirror for my unhealed wounds, there must have been a part of me that cared nothing for me, too.

I recognized the parts of myself that tried to change the abuser rather than walk away from the abuse. I recognized the parts of myself that didn’t feel worthy of love or care. I recognized the parts of myself that were afraid to speak up and stand up for myself for fear of being abandoned. And those parts of me had to be upgraded into a much higher confidence zone — one where I knew my worth and value and would no longer allow anyone to make me feel I wasn’t enough.

It was also important that I fully understood narcissistic behavior: the gaslighting, the undermining, the subtle put-downs, the projection, and the blame. The more I understood this behavior, the more I could identify it when it was happening. When someone tried to project their own unconscious pain, fear, or insecurity onto me, I would call it out. “You are projecting.”

Of course, narcissists rarely see themselves. It really doesn’t do any good to call them out on their behavior. It usually just makes them angry. But what it did for me was interrupt the pattern. The more I could name it out loud, the less I unconsciously absorbed the projections. The more I could recognize the gaslighting, the more I could bring myself back to a place of sanity.

Eventually, I was just no fun to be around anymore. I no longer had the secret sauce. I wasn’t quietly absorbing the unconscious pain and insecurity of the narcissist. I was no longer a dumping ground. And I would no longer tolerate abuse.

After my last relationship with a narcissist, I was done. DONE! No more. I was very clear that I would never allow anyone to treat me like that again. I knew by then what narcissistic behavior looked like, and I wasn’t having it. And this is where everything changed.

I’d like to say I learned my lesson after my first narcissistic relationship — the one that left me shattered and lost. But the pattern was so deeply entrenched in my psyche that I had to spend decades breaking free from it.

Although understanding narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic behavior is important and necessary for moving beyond it, the real change has to happen within ourselves. We have to find the weaknesses within that allow narcissistic energy to take root in us. We have to address our own core wounds that tell us we are not enough, that we are not lovable or wanted. We have to find ourselves worthy and get behind ourselves.

The biggest thing that helped me overcome my pattern of attracting narcissists was learning to stop needing someone outside of myself to validate my worth and value. That was my job. When I outsourced my validation, I was ripe for the love bombing. When I found ways to validate myself and recognize my own worth, I no longer needed others to do this for me. I was worthy regardless of what anyone else thought of me.

You may have heard that how people treat you says a lot more about them than it does about you. This is so true, and we need to understand it. How others treat us is not about us.

And when we learn to stop taking other people so personally, and begin taking good care of ourselves, we stop unconsciously inviting in the people who need a punching bag or a dumping ground in order to deal with their own demons.

We can break free from narcissistic abuse patterns. But it all starts within ourselves. This is where the real work is. No amount of asking questions about why the narcissist does what he or she does is going to heal us. We have to take responsibility for our own healing. We can move beyond the narcissist, and we can discover the greatest love of all — the one found in the relationship we have with ourselves.