The Hidden Pattern Behind Narcissistic Relationships, and How to Break the Cycle
- 13 hours ago
- 8 min read
Written by Lisa Forsberg, Clinical Hypnotherapist
Lisa Forsberg is a Clinical Hypnotherapist and narcissistic abuse recovery specialist who combines deep clinical expertise with her own lived experience of healing from a toxic relationship. Her mission is to help others rediscover a life filled with peace, purpose, and possibility.
If you have ever found yourself in the same painful relationship dynamic and wondered how you got there again, this article is for you. Clinical Hypnotherapist and Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Specialist Lisa Forsberg explains the hidden childhood blueprint behind narcissistic relationships, why understanding alone is rarely enough to break the pattern, and what real recovery actually looks like.
What is narcissistic abuse?
Narcissistic abuse is a form of emotional and psychological manipulation inflicted by someone with narcissistic traits, a partner, parent, friend, or colleague who uses control, gaslighting, intermittent affection, and emotional withdrawal to keep you small and off balance.
The insidious thing about narcissistic abuse is that it often doesn't look like abuse, not from the inside and not from the outside. It often looks like a difficult relationship. A moody partner. A complicated family dynamic. Because it is so hard to name, it is even harder to heal from.
Why narcissistic relationships can feel so strangely familiar
Like so many of my clients, I came to hypnotherapy because I was the one seeking healing.
For over ten years, I was in a relationship with someone I now recognise as a narcissist. A man who was charming and adoring at first, then explosive, unpredictable, and at times violent. Like so many women in these relationships, I stayed far longer than I should have. Not because I was weak, but because, even though I didn't realise this at the time, the pattern felt somewhat familiar. In fact, it felt like home.
That's the piece most people miss when they look at someone in a toxic relationship and ask, "Why don't they just leave?" When you grow up around dysfunctional relationship dynamics, red flags don't look like red flags. They just look like flags.
In my case, I had a mother who would often rage and then go silent for hours, sometimes days. We would wait it out, tiptoeing around the house until it passed, and then everyone would go back to acting like nothing had happened. My nervous system learned that this was simply what relationships looked like: tension, silence, emotional withdrawal, reunion. Repeat.
So, when I met a man in adulthood who adored me, moved in quickly, and then began to explode, disappear, and return with declarations that I was his soulmate, I wasn't at all alarmed. In fact, I was comfortable. My subconscious mind recognised this pattern deeply.
This is what I call the relationship blueprint, the internal map we develop in childhood that tells us what love is supposed to feel like. For many of my clients, that map was drawn in a household where love came with conditions, chaos, or control. It doesn't have to be overtly abusive to leave a mark. Sometimes it's a parent lost in grief, or one who drank but "wasn't violent, so it wasn't a big deal," and yet the children learned to stay quiet, stay small, and not upset anyone. That's the blueprint, right there.
The moment everything shifted
When I began working with a hypnotherapist, the shifts were rapid and profound. The biggest change was in my nervous system. I felt a deep, physiological settling I hadn't experienced before. As I continued the work, the light bulb moments started coming.
It wasn't just my ex-partner. There was the boyfriend before him. The controlling boss. The friendship at university that left me always walking on eggshells. Of course, the penny eventually dropped. The pattern had begun all the way back in early childhood, with my mother. Once I could see it, I couldn't unsee it. I hadn't simply been unlucky in love. I had been unconsciously seeking out what felt familiar, in my body and in my mind.
This is why, when a client now sits across from me and shares her story, I can say with complete honesty, "I know. I've been there too."
Why so many women don't recognise narcissistic abuse
In my clinic, the presenting issue is rarely the real issue.
Many of the women who find their way to me have no idea that a history of dysfunctional relationships has anything to do with why they're there. They book in because they can't stop vaping, or they're drinking more than they'd like, or the anxiety has become unmanageable, or they simply cannot stop biting their nails. These feel like the problem. On the surface, they are.
But as we begin to talk, other things quietly emerge. "My husband? That's a whole other story." "I haven't spoken to my mother in years." Often, within the safety of this very first session, something begins to shift. A dawning awareness that what they came in for may not be the whole story. Not about the vaping or the nail biting, but about the relationships that have been slowly eroding their sense of self, often for decades.
The anxiety, the alcohol, the compulsive habits, these are not the problem. They are the coping mechanisms. Beneath them, almost always, is the long-term impact of narcissistic or emotional abuse.
So why didn't they recognise it sooner? Often, it is because their experience is dismissed. By the relationship itself and by the world around them. The person they are with tells them they are too sensitive, that they are overreacting, that it never happened, or that they are imagining things. When they hear that often enough, they start to believe it.
When they raise concerns with a friend, they are told "nobody's perfect" or "all relationships are hard." When they try to explain what's happening, people say "he had a difficult upbringing" or "but he's so lovely with everyone else." Well-meaning as it often is, the message from every direction is the same: minimise, normalise, move on.
So, over time, they do. They begin to gaslight themselves. They shrink their own experience down to something manageable. They stop trusting what they feel. They carry on.
This is especially true for women, like myself, who grew up with an emotionally unpredictable mother. There is a particular kind of loneliness in that experience because society is deeply uncomfortable with the idea. A difficult father, people can accept that. But a mother? People will say, "You can't feel that way about your mum," or "I've met your mum and she's lovely." So these women learn to doubt themselves from an early age, carrying that self-doubt right into their adult relationships, and often straight toward another narcissist or emotionally unavailable partner.
Of course, not every client who walks through my door has a history of narcissistic abuse. But for those who do, having a space where the dots can finally be connected is often the beginning of everything.
Why hypnotherapy creates lasting recovery from narcissistic abuse
True recovery from narcissistic abuse, or any deeply embedded pattern of unhealthy relationships, isn't linear, and it isn't just about leaving. It's about what comes after. The slow and gentle process of coming back to yourself. This is where so many survivors struggle to move forward.
If you have ever sat in a therapist's office, understood intellectually exactly why you make the choices you make, and then gone home and made those same choices anyway, you are not broken. You are experiencing the gap between the conscious and subconscious mind.
Talk therapy is valuable, and understanding your story matters. But the subconscious mind, the part that holds your relationship blueprint, your trauma responses, and your deep-seated beliefs about what you deserve, doesn't speak in logic. It speaks in feelings, patterns, and physical sensations.
This is why so many survivors of emotional abuse can say, "I know he was bad for me," and still feel the pull to go back, still find themselves drawn to the same toxic dynamic six months later. Knowing something intellectually and truly healing from it at a subconscious level are two very different things.
Hypnotherapy bypasses the critical, analytical part of the mind and speaks directly to the subconscious, where the real programming lives. It's in this deeply relaxed, open state that we can gently access and rewrite the beliefs that were formed before you even had the language to question them, beliefs like "I have to earn love," "if I'm just good enough, he'll change," or "this is just what relationships are like."
In my experience, the most profound shifts happen in a particular order. First, the body has to feel safe before the mind can do anything useful, and hypnotherapy creates that safety quickly and deeply. Then comes understanding, seeing the full picture of your patterns without shame or self-blame. Then the deeper work: rebuilding the belief that you are enough, reclaiming your power, and learning that you get to choose how you respond to the world now.
Somewhere in that process, usually when a client least expects it, she begins to reconnect with the version of herself that existed before the dysfunctional relationship. The one who had opinions, interests, energy, and joy. She didn't disappear. She just went quiet to stay safe.
That is the real destination of this work. Not just healing from what happened, but becoming so deeply in love with who you are that you would never again tolerate anything less than you deserve. When you change the blueprint, the building changes too.
What we need to start teaching
One of the most important conversations I keep coming back to is prevention. We need to do more to teach young people what a healthy relationship actually looks like. There are no school lessons on nervous system regulation, emotional boundaries, or how to recognise manipulative or narcissistic behaviour.
Instead, we grew up on Hollywood movies, the dramatic breakup, the time apart, the passionate reunion at the airport. We genuinely thought that was what love looked like. The push and pull. The intensity. The longing. No wonder so many of us chased toxic relationships that felt like that.
We need to start this conversation in high schools. What does a healthy relationship look like? What does it feel like in your body when something is wrong? How do you recognise the early signs of emotional abuse or narcissistic behaviour? These are not soft skills. They are essential life skills.
Ready to break the pattern?
If any part of this article resonated with you, if you've found yourself in the same type of relationship more than once, or if you've always felt like you were too much or not enough, I want you to know that it is not a character flaw. It is a pattern. Patterns can be changed.
I know this because hypnotherapy changed my life and my relationships in every single way, and I now have the absolute privilege of walking my clients through that same transformation each and every day. If you are ready to understand your blueprint and rewrite it, I would love to hear from you. Reach out to book a discovery call and let's talk about what's possible for you.
Read more from Lisa Forsberg
Lisa Forsberg, Clinical Hypnotherapist
Known as The Healthy Hypnotherapist, Lisa Forsberg is one of Australia's leading specialists in narcissistic abuse recovery. A survivor of narcissistic abuse herself, Lisa brings both lived experience and deep clinical expertise to her work, creating a space where clients feel truly understood, often for the first time. She works with adults, teens, and children across Australia and worldwide, helping them heal from toxic relationships, rebuild their sense of self, and break free from repeating cycles. Lisa also mentors fellow hypnotherapists who want to work confidently in this deeply nuanced field.
