Creating a Culture of Accountability in an Ocean of Narcissistic Survival Types

How I Created Flexible Boundaries and Started Holding Others Accountable

The journey to becoming an advocate for myself and my needs has taken decades. Thinking back to a defining moment when I went from “Doormat” to standing up for myself, one memory surfaces as clearly as if it was yesterday…

I’m sitting on the couch in my living room – the one I am writing this article from. I’m talking to my close friend, and she is upset with me. She claims I have done something wrong and cannot be trusted. My whole body turns cold. I feel the urge to do something to diffuse the situation. Apologize. Take all the blame. Make her happy again. I know exactly how to do it. But in my gut, I know I have not done what she accuses me of. And I am not entirely to blame, and her perspective of what happened is very skewed. I breathe. Something new is forming inside my belly and is making its way into my consciousness. It becomes resolve, and then a sentence:

“That’s not what I think happened.”

The voice on the other end goes silent. But it’s a silence that oozes with quiet anger. How. Dare. I.

I know what comes next. It could be the minimizing, the deflecting, the ridicule, the accusations. I brace myself. 

It’s a mix of ridicule and minimizing. “Oh, really? So what do you think happen? (small dismissive chuckle.)”

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Much of my life has been a variation of this type of interactions – but usually they ended in me somehow restoring the “peace.” Because when you have my level of empathy and two emotionally immature parents who groom you to be of service to their needs, you don’t get a strong sense of self, a healthy ego, or awareness of your own needs. 

But you get a very codependent personality that knows about a million ways to appease overt and covert narcissists as well as other types of egotistical and entitled people.

(I’m not writing this to blame my parents. I know they did the best they could with their life experiences. I have chosen to write about this from a personal perspective because I believe that healing this dynamic is one of the most pressing things we can do to advance our society in the direction of Love, and this is how I know to move the needle. I cannot do my part if I cannot speak about my lived reality. So here we are.)

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Embracing Grief and Rage on the Path to Healing

You know, I feel a lot of grief and rage these days. I know. How “unspiritual” of me. But I don’t care about appearing spiritual anymore (I sure did in the past, though!). I care about truth and what I am going through at this exact moment. I want to share it because I know millions of other people feel similar feelings, and if I can help only ONE of them, it would be worth it.

Healing my past trauma and subsequent codependent survival patterns – that became my personality – has been one of the most liberating, humbling, and painful experiences of my life. 

Here are a few things I am grieving:

• The time I spent on people who treated me poorly.

• All the energy I gave to relationships where I did most of the giving and emotional labor.

• Believing lies about myself from people who wanted to harm me.

• Not knowing how to protect myself from predators. 

• The anxiety that I have felt as a result of being in unhealthy relationships.

• Taking shit from people that I didn’t deserve. 

• Spending inordinate amounts of time obsessing about interactions with people who were manipulative, abusive, and mean.

Do any of these places of grieving resonate with you? Is there something you’re grieving right now?

Whatever is coming up for you, know you have my deepest sympathies, and I send you big, warm hugs because facing this shit is HARD.

Listen here, I am not perfect. I understand two people create these types of trauma bonds. People on planet Earth right now are hurtin’ – a person with narcissistic-type survival patterns also has sustained abuse. From my understanding, they are trying to protect themselves from further harm and having to feel their shame, so they attempt to do this by controlling and manipulating others. Like me, a person with self-effacing, savior-complex, and over-extending behaviors tries to minimize further harm through those behaviors. 

The Shift from Blame to Empowerment

So, how do we heal? I know there is no use in assigning blame to others. I have tried this and have come to conclude it doesn’t work. Here are some reasons why:

• Blaming others means I’m not looking at my own part in the problem. Blame just keeps the conflict going instead of fixing it.

• It often worsens things, creating tension and back-and-forth blame instead of calming things down.

• Blaming closes the door to understanding where the other person is coming from. 

• It keeps me stuck in what went wrong before, making it challenging to deal with what's happening now and what comes next.

• It creates a "poor me" attitude, where I might think nothing will change because it's all someone else's fault.

• It oversimplifies messy situations. Conflicts are usually complicated, and just pointing fingers misses the bigger picture that needs to be seen for any real solution.

So, if I can’t blame, how about helping or trying to fix things for others?

One big problem I have come across as someone who has an immense capacity for empathy is that it has kept me suck in unhealthy dynamics. I always knew my parents' traumatic history, and I could feel the pain inside them. Because of their past, I believed it was my job to take the high road and make the situation OK again. And I was damn good at it, so good that for a long time, I actually thought I was helping. 

I remember hundreds of conversations with my father, listening to his problems with his romantic partners. I heard him, empathized, and tried to give nudges in the right direction, but inevitably, the patterns kept repeating themselves. 

It turned out that all that time, I thought I was making a difference; I was just perpetuating a cycle of ancestral and collective trauma. Oh, how I wish this weren’t true. I wish all the thousands of hours I spent trying to help him and others worked. Unfortunately, it kept the people I was “helping” from being accountable for their own actions and inner state. (Did I mention that realizing all this was straight-up hellfire and torture?)

So what do I do if I can’t blame and I cannot fix?

Discovering the Power of Accountability and Boundaries

Drumroll, please…

Enter Accountability and Boundaries!

Yes, boundaries. You’ve probably heard all about them on TikTok or The Holistic Psychologist on IG… 😂

In my experience, trying to be a good, kind, and “spiritual” person has kept me in situations that are not healthy for too long. And I am NOT one to end relationships because they get hard. Just ask my husband of 13 years, with whom I have worked through serious issues, or my friend of 17 years, Katrina – in both these relationships, we have navigated turmoil and hardship. 

Sometimes, we must grow up, and working through challenges can be a part of that maturation process. But that does not apply when the other person in the relationship does not take responsibility for their part of the challenges, and you are the one doing all the work OR when they are abusive to you.

A few years back, I had a business with a friend, which was quite successful. It was so successful it made close to multiple six figures in its second year, and the sky felt like the limit. In the beginning, things felt great and like a true partnership. As we were both growing and changing, something began to feel unhealthy. I was getting the inner guidance to step away from this person and the business to stay true to myself and my healing process. It was hard, and the end of the business felt like a horrible divorce – I wanted to cave in a hundred times, but I stuck with the grueling process because I knew in my heart that it was right for ME. It was the best life and business decision I ever made because now I can live and grow my business on MY terms without asking permission from another person.

The above is an example of when it’s time to set boundaries and see how they are received, or if you have enough evidence that the other person is no longer healthy for you, you get to WALK AWAY. Not from anger or blame. And not because they are bad and you are good. Instead, it's because you love yourself (and others) enough to do so, and you know in your heart that the most loving thing you can do for both of you is that they no longer get access to you.

From Soft to Flexible Boundaries 

This work is the work of my life. Yes, I am a badass Alignment Marketing strategist and teacher. Still, more importantly, I am a kind human who has learned to love myself and others enough to have flexible boundaries. 

I don’t hate anyone who has hurt me. Harboring hate is not in my nature. But I rage and mourn that I accepted abuse in my life and all the years I had to live through hell. I am proud of the person I am today: A woman who has faced some of the darkest parts of humanity and still wakes up each day and chooses love. It’s work. It has required enormous sacrifice and investment. And it has been worth it. I have lived wisdom, and it’s worth more than its weight in gold. I am living proof that Love is the most potent energy in this Universe. And what could be more powerful and valuable than that? Being Elon Musk and owning Tesla and X? Ha! I don’t think so. 

As part of my commitment to spreading what I’ve learned to others and getting fortified by others on this path, I started a membership called The Alignment Sanctuary. We met last week to discuss “How to relate to others from a place of healthy ego.” It was a potent hour, and it helped solidify my belief that this is the time in her-story when the kind, empathetic (dare I say recovering co-dependent people) need to lean into fierceness. Not in an aggressive way, but assertively – and sometimes shakily at first, too – advocating for our own needs or those around us when we feel called to do so. 

In the six months we have been meeting, I can see and feel how we are beginning to “borrow courage,” as one of the members calls it, from each other. Everyone who participates is getting fortified in her commitment to advocating for her needs, wants, and desires from a place of calm inner strength. It’s stunning to experience this and to witness it in others. It’s a high privilege for me to see this form of restoring the balance from power over to power with. 

This is what self-love can look like:

Being able to withstand the discomfort of owning one's worth and advocating for your needs – no matter how others receive it. 

It’s the work of this generation of KIND humans, who also ask for ACCOUNTABILITY.

And we are so much more powerful when we come together, support and learn from each other, and get a warm shoulder to bawl on when it all feels like too much because, sometimes, it sure does. 💔

The Intersection of Empathy and Power

I listened to a Swedish podcast last Tuesday about Tesla doing business in Sweden. The short of it is that Tesla doesn’t want to sign a collective bargaining agreement for the workers. IF Metall, Sweden's biggest manufacturing union, is having none of it. Elon is pissed, saying, “I disagree with the idea of unions. I just don’t like anything which creates a lords and peasants kind of thing.” Oh, really, Elon? – or could it be that you like being the wealthiest man on the planet and don’t want to share with those same “peasants.”

Let’s dive deeper to see the bigger picture via this article in Reuters.

"We don't have any minimum wages or laws for when you can and cannot work in Sweden. We have frameworks and employment protection, but apart from that, it is collective bargaining agreements that regulate the labour market," said Torbjorn Johansson, negotiation secretary at LO, the union umbrella organization.

Around 90% of all employees in Sweden are covered by collective bargaining agreements, which regulate wages, vacation, overtime pay, and other conditions.

Workers alone would have little to no power to organize to take on giant companies, but together, they do. The same thing goes for people who are humans with an energetic signature of kindness who are deeply empathetic.

Alone, we can feel crazy, confused, and scared, but together, we have more leverage, feel sane, and understand that we have a right to be treated with respect and kindness. 

This reflection on Tesla's situation in Sweden mirrors how, in our lives, we, too, can challenge the status quo. Whether in the workplace, our relationships, or ourselves, there's a growing recognition of the need for balance, respect, and mutual understanding. It’s a reminder that each of us has the power to contribute to this change, advocating not just for ourselves but for a more empathetic and equitable world. The kind people must now lean into their inner fierceness and come together to effect change.

Uniting the Kind-Hearted: We Are Stronger Together

Alone, deep feelers with lots of empathy are pretty vulnerable to being taken advantage of by people with narcissistic survival strategies*.

*This is my wording for people with narcissistic tendencies in an attempt to rehumanize the conversation about codependent and narcissistic patterns.

Here’s what I mean by that. 

People with narcissistic survival strategies may use tactics like gaslighting, lying, or emotional manipulation to control others. While kind people aim for honesty in their interactions, narcissists might use others as tools to achieve their goals.

When faced with criticism, narcissists might become defensive and retaliate, sometimes harmfully, whereas a kind person is likely to consider the criticism and respond with openness. Narcissists may also engage in relationships mainly for their benefit rather than mutual affection or connection, contrasting with kind people who value genuine, mutually respectful relationships.

The bottom line is that kind people often cannot fathom that some people would willingly harm others to benefit themselves. We project our own nature onto almost everyone else and often get caught in these unhealthy dynamics. 

If you chose to read this article, my guess is that you have been in the line of fire of someone with a narcissistic survival pattern. It usually gets ugly fast once you begin setting boundaries or trying to extract yourself from this type of relationship dynamic. 

I remember back in 2009 when I was living at my friend’s apartment in NYC. At first, I knew she was kind of volatile, but I was young and inexperienced, so I entered a super intense relationship with her headfirst. She got livid when I finally decided to leave and move in with the guy I was dating (now my husband). As I was gathering my things, she threw things after me out the front door and yelled about what a horrible person I was. I thought I was safe once I left, only to arrive at the airport a month later when I was about to return to Sweden, realizing that she had rebooked my flight (I had used her laptop to book it) and my original flight had left earlier that week. 

The kind woman at the airport saw my distress and helped me rebook the flight without charge. Luckily, I was not dependent on this friend after I left. It’s much worse for the women in my life who are divorcing their narcissistic survival-type husbands to get away from being taken advantage of, only to find themselves in lengthy court battles or being fucked over in every way you can imagine. It’s genuinely terrifying out here. I hear new horror stories every week.

So, with all this in mind, knowing the power of people organizing and supporting one another, I’m starting a “Kind People’s Union”.

If you want to join us, comment below or join the brave women in The Alignment Sanctuary low-cost membership here. 

Take heart if you are in a dysfunctional dynamic with a lover, partner, sibling, parent, friend, or co-worker. There are millions of people standing up at this exact moment to create an accountability culture together. We are many, and they are few. Even though they have the dominant culture behind them, we can change these dynamics with love and self-respect. 

Think about where you can start advocating for yourself in your life, and remember, you're not alone on this journey. I believe in you.

Much love,

Karna 💜

In Guatemala with our KIND PEOPLE travel crew, January 2023.

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