#128 Escape Narcissism

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hi, I'm Dr. Donni Wilson and welcome to How Humans Heal. Today I want to dive into the topic of narcissism. This is something that you may have been hearing about more because I definitely have been hearing about it more often on social media and on YouTube and other places. There's more and more understanding about narcissism. So I want to cover it here today because I want to make sure you feel informed about what it is and whether you might be experiencing or interacting with people who may have narcissistic traits or narcissistic personality disorders in your life and how it might be impacting you. So narcissism as an overall concept is this thought of being excessively.

Interested or admiring of oneself. Right. So a classic understanding of narcissism is someone who might be self centered or selfish or only thinking of themselves. And I remember from my childhood we would definitely always be thinking of someone who's selfish or self centered as something you're trying to avoid being. And so I think for many of us like me, I grew up feeling like I wanted to be the opposite of that, always helping others and the opposite of self centered. So I want to be very careful as we talk about narcissism and distinguish it from a healthy sense of self prioritization and self care. Because I talk about self care a lot in my book Master your Stress and in my self care program, it's all about how do we be our own health advocate and take better care of ourselves in terms of our diet and our sleep patterns and our stress recovery and our exercise. Right. How do we set up a self care routine where we prioritize ourselves? And I think that that can be difficult for those of us who grew up being told that we were supposed to not pay attention to ourselves, that we're supposed to put ourselves last on the list, that we're supposed to take care of others and make sure everyone else is happy before we do something to benefit ourselves. And so I think that this may even perpetuated the situation with narcissism because it means that those of us who are very much compassionate of others and empathetic and taking care of others tend to be more susceptible to becoming involved with someone who's narcissistic because someone who's narcissistic is the opposite. Someone who's narcissistic is thinking only of their own interest. And, and really they don't have the ability to have empathy for others, especially if someone who has the extreme version of narcissism. Now narcissism, like most everything else that we experience as humans, is on a spectrum, right? So there's a healthy. I guess we could even call our healthy sense of self care as like a healthy narcissism, right? It's like a healthy version of paying attention to ourselves and prioritizing ourselves and loving ourselves. That's actually necessary, necessary self love. And so that's a healthy version of it. Whereas there's kind of a midway on the spectrum that a person might have maybe less empathy for other people.

More of a need for people to admire them and to. To follow their lead or follow what they want, right? So it's a. It's where that person thinks that they have the right idea and everyone else should follow their idea and everyone el. Else is wrong. And not only that, but in the extreme, more severe state of narcissism, they may even think that other people are inferior, right? Whereas.

Those of us in a more healthy state with ourselves understand that we're all human and we're all equal, no matter age or race or where you grew up or what you do for a living or any of that. It's we're all human, right? And so there's this sense of human connection and equality where for someone who's at the extreme of narcissism, that doesn't even make sense to them. They can't. They don't see it that way and they aren't even thinking about it. They are just the way they see things is that their way is the only way to see it and that they're right and others are wrong or and even others are inferior to them. That's more at the extreme of narcissism. And in the dsm, which is the diagnostic manual for mental health issues, they have actually defined narcissistic traits, meaning maybe someone who has some of these patterns, but it's not what they consider a personality disorder. A personality disorder is more set in a person's personality. And there is a personality disorder called narcissistic personality disorder. And then there's other personality disorders that have some of the traits of narcissism. So someone who maybe is a sociopath has some narcissistic tendencies or symptoms of narcissism, but their personality disorder is separate, right? So narcissism can be. The word, can be used in a lot of different ways. It could be used as someone having traits of narcissism. Maybe some of their behaviors are more narcissistic, Whereas there may be other people who actually have more substantial overarching personality disorder that includes some narcissistic behaviors. And so the way you might know that you're interacting with someone with any of these behaviors is that you might end up feeling like they're. Because this is the thing is, sometimes narcissists are also very charming. So narcissists may not immediately come across like they think you're wrong, or they might not immediately come across like they have no empathy for you, because they're very good at being charming. They know how to pretend like they care. They can pretend like they want to hear what you're saying. They can pretend like they want to work with you and be on your side, but when it comes down to it, they actually don't care, and they don't. They don't want to really work with you. They're just trying to do this behavior in order to get their way, right? So there. There's a manipulation going on behind the scenes. And so if you're in a. If you have a human that you're interacting with in your life where you end up realizing that they. It's not what you think it was you. You thought that this person was on the same page with you, and you're. You're. You're working on a project together, or you're in a relationship together, and you're making decisions even to have a meeting, right? You're like, hey, we're gonna meet at. On this day, at this time, a narcissist might have a hard time with that. They might cancel at the last minute. They might make up a reason why they can't be there and even blame you. They might make it seem like it's your fault that they had to reschedule the meeting. So it's like you start to go, what just happened? And if you're. If you catch yourself going, what just happened in that conversation? Why. Why does it all of a sudden feel like this. Something went awry? Now, of course, things happen normally with humans, right? Sometimes things come up and we have to change our plans. Sometimes things happen unpredictably or we feel stressed, that's normal, right? That's normal. But when it's a pattern where the person is always making more impulsive decisions or canceling or ending up, you're in a conversation and it always ends up that it's was seems like it was supposed to be your fault. Then you start to go, wait a minute, I think I'm dealing with someone with a narcissistic behaviors or traits or something's going on right there, their system the way and it has to do the thinking is this started way back, some degree with genetics, some degree with their childhood exposure. The way the person thinks and the way they experience the world is just different. So they're experiencing things as though.

They need it to go their way and they're willing to do whatever it takes for it to go their way, even if that means making the other person feel like that was the other person's fault and the person is supposed to do it their way. And.

I think all of us have had some interactions with, with this kind of thing. So I'm hoping as I'm describing it that you're like, oh yeah, that sounds familiar. And what can happen is if you're in a romantic relationship with someone who's narcissistic, what can happen is it starts to really make you question yourself because you start to think, was it me? Did I do something? How come I'm in this situation where the person is canceling on me or questioning me and you start to question yourself. And so if you've been in a relationship where you find yourself questioning yourself, wondering if you did it wrong, if you said it wrong, if there's something else you could do better, you're going to try to do it. Of course, we all want to evaluate how we do things and be willing to learn from experiences and do it differently the next time, right? So that's, that's again, this normal human behavior would be, hey, oh, maybe I didn't say that quite the way I wanted to say it. I'm going to try to say it a little differently the next time. That is something that all, all humans do. But when it comes to working with a narcissist, it's going to feel like no matter how many times you try to change the way you say it or do it, that they're still not happy with you and you end up feeling like you're walking on eggshells. You feel like everything you say, everything you do, you're afraid that they're going to either be mad at you and yell at you or they're going to avoid you. This is one of the things that narcissists do is this kind of like a silent treatment where they, then they, if you do something they didn't like, then they don't want to talk to you for a period of time, and then they might come back, and then you, you try again, and then again they, something you say or do makes them upset and they don't want to talk to you again. And so it becomes this, what's called a trauma bond, where you become traumatized by the experience so much so that it pulls you in. Because if you're someone who is empathetic and compassionate, you're worried that you said something or did something, and so you try to do it differently the next time. And it ends up pulling you in to the relationship with a person who's. It's never going to be what they want because it's impossible. It's impossible for it to be what they want. It's like trying to solve something impossible. And you end up only becoming less and less trusting of yourself because you're ending up putting yourself into a harmful situation over and over and over again. And so it's tricky because you end up feeling like you can't get out there. It's, it's. You're so much wanting to and willing to love this other person, even if they're not loving and accepting of you, that you, you, you wouldn't, and you don't want to be the same. So if you walk away, it seems like you're the one who's not listening and not loving and not compassionate. And so you end up being sucked in more and stuck and hooked more into it. And this is the trauma bond. And this is where someone in this kind of relationship will have a huge amount of compassion for the person who's narcissistic because they're leaning into the same pattern. And I am explaining this from having experienced it myself, from having been in narcissistic relationships and narcissistic romantic relationships for many over time. A couple decades of my life, it turns out. And I didn't at first understand it. And even when I did start to understand narcissism, even from my first marriage, still what happens is our nervous system is built for that. Right? So my nervous system was really built from that, from a young age. And so even though I became consciously aware of narcissism, even though I was going to therapists who were telling me about narcissism, and showing me the patterns. I was still choosing into it and ended up choosing another relationship with narcissistic patterns because that was how my system was built. And that's what felt. It felt normal to me. This is the thing is, when we're even when something is stressful for us, if it feels normal or feels good, we will continue choosing it. It's like any addiction, really. If we are addicted, say, caffeine, we drink caffeine every day. So it feels normal to drink caffeine every day. And yet we know that the nervous system is addicted to the caffeine. If you don't drink it one day, you're gonna have withdrawal symptoms, right? You're gonna have withdrawal symptoms from not having that cup of coffee that you normally have. And it's similar with a narcissistic relationship. We become addicted to the pattern so much so that it. You can't even imagine not having a day without. Feels so normal to me. It was like I was existing in a sticker bush. I was exist. It would be like I'm being stuck with thorns unpredictably every day, all the time. And yet that feels normal. I'm like, I wouldn't even imagine. I'm not being in the sticker bush. I wouldn't know how to get out of the sticker bush. It's so normal for my nervous system to be experiencing those feelings and those pains and those experiences. It's so normal that I can't even. I don't even know if someone said to me, oh, but you could get out of the sticker bush. And they did say that to me. And I'd be like, but I don't know how. Like, I literally didn't know how to get out of that sticker bush of being in a narcissistic relationship. And so I also.

I'm not blaming the person who has the narcissistic behaviors because they're being themselves. They are actually being authentically themselves. And I was being myself. It's just that the two would be attracted to each other. A person who's highly empathetic and compassionate like me is going to be attracted to someone who is opposite, not empathetic, and not compassionate. And so then it becomes this tight connection and addiction. And so I had to. I didn't even know for sure that I was trying to get myself out of the sticker bush. But I was just always in pain, emotional pain and physical pain. So I will be seeking solutions. I would be going, how am I going to solve this? I'M going to different kinds of therapists, psychoanalysts.

I'm researching stress. I'm studying cortisol, I'm studying neurotransmitters. I'm studying how to rebalance physiology. I'm trying any kind of injection therapy, you name it, every kind of therapy. I would try cold water therapy, you know, different kinds of diet changes. Some of this makes would help. I would be in less pain. Or if I had a therapist, I would, would be in less emotional pain. I would be helping myself recover from the emotional pain in the process. But I was still in the relationship, so I was still in emotional and physical pain. And so I. I think it was when I. A couple things. I started meditating at much more than the past. I've been meditating for a couple decades, but I trained. I went to specifically.

Meditation retreats with Dr. Joe Dispenza. Because I want to acknowledge that Dr. Joe Dispenza made a big difference in my meditation way, the way I was implementing it. So I even participated as in one of his research of distance healing and meditation. So I'm using meditation at a much different level over the past, really almost two years, where I'm meditating longer periods of time and making sure that I'm getting my brain into gamma brainwave states. So this, because what happens with this level of meditation, first of all, is something called neuroplasticity where we can create new neural pathways. We can actually rebuild our nervous system. So that's happening. But also when we meditate at this level, we're actually shifting our experience in using quantum physics. And I'm not sure if some of you, I could talk more about quantum physics. Quantum physics is where we. Well, if we think about it as our day to day existence is like in 2D, 3D, right? So we're in this physical form of our bodies, physical form of our homes or our offices with walls and windows and right. Like this is our experience in the world and we're dealing with gravity and we're dealing with distance and time and space. Well, quantum physics is a whole field, not just meditation. This is a whole field of science where we're looking at things from a whole different level of energy and vibration and beyond, you know, sort of beyond the speed of light. How can things shift? If you heard of the show called the Secret, right? So if we, if we come to the idea of just having a thought and that thought being able to shift our reality. So this is profound stuff where we're actually learning how to maybe some of you are familiar with the terminology of manifestation. How do we manifest or shift our reality in the physical form? By shifting our reality in the quantum realm or in the energetic realm where everything is going so much faster. It's like being able to access a higher speed of activity. And by shifting things at that higher speed, it influences how things appear in this physical form. So if this is interesting to you, I definitely encourage you to read more about quantum physics. There's some amazing books and videos and information about quantum physics, which I've been learning about way back since I was in Nature Valley Medical School and of course even when I was getting my science degree. So quantum physics is really amazing. And I've started implementing that in my life because I was stuck. I was stuck in a sticker bush in a physical form and I needed to be able to get out of it. I would have to shift things.

From a different realm, from a different level to create that kind of a change in my life. And so I started to use meditation in that way.

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Also decided to travel to Peru, to the Sacred Valley and then to the Amazon and work with a shaman using a psychedelic substance called ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is from the Amazon. It's actually the vine of ayahuasca combined with the leaves of another plant called chacoruna. And there's also a couple other plants usually introduced into this. Basically they take the vine and the leaves and they boil it in water for days and they make this. Basically it's like a tea, but it's in a large quantity in its using the extracts of the herbs and these plants or Herbs.

Contain substances that are really complex. It's not like a single substance or a single effect. It's working on a lot of levels all at once is my experience. It's working on resetting the vagus nerve and our stress response. It's working on stimulating the nervous system throughout the body. I experience stimulating the brain, stimulating every nerve in your body at the same time. It's also. And in that stimulation of the nerves, it's actually healing the nerves. It's like it's going into the nerves and healing every single one of them at the same time. And I've never seen anything else that has that ability to heal our nerves and really shift the way our nervous system is experiencing stress. One of my first, the first things I said after experiencing ayahuasca was, I wish I had had this all the years that I was experiencing migraines, because I was having these painful migraines, which is the nerves in pain, inflammation. And this ayahuasca herb herbal blend actually helps as an anti inflammatory analgesic to heal the nerves. It's used for treating migraines. It's also used for treating anxiety, depression, cancer, PTSD and so much more. So it also has this part where it's helping to you to process emotionally. You don't know necessarily going into it what you're gonna, what emotions are gonna come up, but when you're in the midst of it, it becomes apparent. You just, it just comes to your mind. You're just, it's very gentle. Ayahuasca is really also thought of as a mother in that it's a very nurturing experience. It feels like you have a mothering presence there to gently and compassionately show you emotional processes that maybe haven't been processed, maybe you weren't even aware. Like I had memories come back to me that I hadn't thought of since they happened who knows how long ago in my childhood. So sometimes you might have a memory come up. And I've had a lot of therapy in my life. These memories didn't come up in therapy. They didn't come up with emdr, they didn't come up with other forms of therapy that I've used. It only came up with ayahuasca. It's like the plant helps your nervous system show you what it's been trying to tell you but couldn't. It's like it's the stuff that's right under the surface and then it just reveals it to you and you go, oh, and it's not to me. It Wasn't scary. It was more, wow. I had never looked at it that way. I hadn't realized that was influencing my beliefs or my thinking or the way that I experienced myself in my life. I hadn't realized that before. And now that I realize it, I can shift. I can make different decisions. I can be more compassionate of myself. Right? We're taught from a young age to be compassionate of others, but we're really not taught how to be compassionate to ourselves. And it was through the use of ayahuasca that I really, really grew my ability to be compassionate for myself and my experience and loving of myself and accepting of this is who I am, this is what it is to be Donnie. And I knew some of that before, but it was very clouded with what other people thought. Especially coming from these narcissistic relationships. I was more focused on, does this person like what I look like? And what I said? And I would be worried even on video, is this, what is this person going to think about what I say? What is. I was so focused on external what everybody else thought, meaning I was more compassionate of their experience than I was of my own. And it was through ayahuasca that I started to go, wow, I need to be more compassionate of myself, more gentle with myself, more loving of myself. And I started to choose differently. Now, this is not like an overnight change. What happens is you, you come, you come back to your day to day life and you start to. Things start to just shift very gradually. The way I experience my day, the way I communicate with my daughter, the way I communicate with my patients, the way I experience myself, the choices I make. Am I gonna go to dance class or am I going to go drive and try to help somebody with something? You know, am I going to do something to be beneficial for me, or am I going to do something that's beneficial for someone else? And not to say that of course it's a balance, right? I'm. I'm a practitioner, so I spend most of my day, more than eight hours a day, helping others. That's what I do. I helping patients, I'm writing blogs, I'm doing podcasts. I'm spending most of my day helping others. So then what am I, Am I also taking time in my day to help myself? And how do I prioritize that? How do I create my day schedule so that I'm honoring myself and taking care of myself? And this is really the medicine that is helping me recover from narcissism, because ultimately.

You know, it's not One person. It's not one relationship. It's my experience in my life where I was set up for that situation. I was set up for that interaction that was normal for me. And now it's shifting. Now I can. I'm free of the sticker bush. I have. I realized why I was in the sticker bush. I don't feel angry or resentful for the sticker bush. I honor that experience. And yet I see that I don't have to choose that. I don't have to. I don't want to choose that anymore. I want to choose getting to have loving connections with people who. Where it doesn't have to be painful, not emotionally painful and not physically painful. And yes, sometimes we get come up against things in life that cause us sadness, even sadness. It's even sad to let go of a narcissistic existence. It is. There's grief in that. And I want to acknowledge that for some of you who maybe are either currently in a relationship that's narcissistic, or maybe you are out of a relationship that's narcissistic, but you're feeling sad. Because a lot of times what happens with a narcissistic relationship is it's. It's secretive. Usually there's a lot of hiding. You. You feel like you can't explain it to anyone else because most people won't understand. Most people, they would be like, well, why don't you just leave the relationship if it's that painful? And so you start to be more isolated. You start to not tell anybody what pain you're in or even that this is the experience in the relationship. You feel afraid even to say anything about your experience in the relationship. And this is very common in a narcissistic relationship where you feel isolated, alone and in hiding. And this is why I'm here. Saying this is to say, I hear you, I see you. I know what it's like. I was there. I was in the hidden. I didn't talk about having migraines for the whole time I was having the migraines. I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell anybody I was in a nurse narcissistic relationship except for my therapist. And when the therapist would tell me to leave the relationship, I would leave the therapist and go find a new therapist. So I understand that you may be listening and feeling like you're in the sticker bush and you don't know how to get out. And that's okay. There's no judgment. It's complete acceptance. I'VE been there. I get it. I understand why you're there. And I also understand those of you who may be now out of the narcissistic relationship and feeling sad because that's actually part of it. When you've bonded in a narcissistic relationship and now you're out of it, it can feel. There's a grief process that happens, a normal grief process, right as humans, whenever we're connected with something, even think about it as a pet. When you have a pet and your pet dies, you're going to go through a grief process. Missing that, remembering your experiences together, processing those experiences. That's normal part of grief processing. That also occurs when a person comes out of a narcissistic relationship. And so having compassion for yourself for that too. Have compassion for yourself as you heal and recover and go through the grief process. Have compassion for yourself as you learn how to do life on your own, how to do life without input from this narcissistic presence. How do you. When do you want to wake up? When do you want to take a shower? When do you want to do your dishes or not do your dishes? When do you want to work? What does your day look like separate from this other person? And when you've been completely entangled with a narcissist, it really takes time to learn yourself and your desires and your needs. It takes time and takes practice. But some of the things that have helped me have. And I'll be sharing more of this, especially if some of you are interested and this will be helpful for you. I'm happy to share more. But it comes to what I share in my stress recovery program and protocol, and that is to understand that being a narcissistic relationship is a stress. It's a huge stressful experience. And acknowledging that and saying, hey, I've been in this stressful, toxic relationship, it's going to disrupt things in me. It could disrupt your energy, it could disrupt your cortisol levels, your adrenaline levels, your serotonin levels, your gut bacteria, your immune system, your hormones. Everything can get out of balance just because of this invisible. I say invisible, narcissistic relationship because it feels invisible, because maybe other people in your life don't know about it or you haven't been able to share about it. But I want to acknowledge that it's. Even if it's like been an existence that you haven't been able to talk about, doesn't mean that it's not showing up in your body. It likely is showing up in your body in My body, it created a chronic inflammatory arthritis. And get this is arthritis of my sternum, which is protecting my heart. And what is a narcissistic relationship? It's really hard on your heart chakra, on your, on the ability to love yourself and love others. Really gets hit hard in this narcissistic relationship. And again we become addicted to that. I was totally addicted to harming myself. In some ways it's like a self harm. We're just like a lot of addictions, right? We choose it, but it's ending up harming us. When we're addicted to cigarettes, we're choosing them, but we know they're harming us at the same time. Alcohol, we're choosing it, but we know it's harming us. Sugar, we're choosing it, but we know it's harming us at the same time if we're having too much of it. Same thing with a narcissistic relationship. We're choosing it really, we're choosing it, but it's also harming us at the same time. And so when you're, if you're in a narcissistic relationship or you're out of a narcissistic relationship, either way we need to help you recover from it at the same time. And so that's why I, that's how I developed my stress recovery protocol is by figuring out that I needed to help myself recover. I needed to rebalance my cortisol. My cortisol was super low. I need to help rebuild my cortisol back up and my adrenal function. My serotonin was low. I need to take 5 HTP to build up my serotonin.

My other thing, you know, you can. I had leaky gut, severe leaky gut for a long time. I had to learn how to heal leaky gut. I had imbalanced gut bacteria, I had to get them back on track. I had low thyroid, I've had different. I had ovarian hormones out of balance. I had, you name it, I've had it. Nutrient deficiencies. And so I had to figure out how to solve these things. And it's in solving the biochemistry, right? So this is like our biochemistry, our hormones, our neuro hormones, our nutrients, our digestion, we can heal on that physical physiological level. And that's essential for recovering from narcissism. I want to emphasize that because you're not going to hear that anywhere else. Nowhere else have I seen first of all, any much conversation about recovery from narcissism, let alone rebalancing your Physiology in order to help you recover from narcissism. And then. But what I have seen and I love and we, and I definitely encourage you to implement is any tools that help you increase your self love, self compassion and alignment with yourself. When I say alignment with yourself, I mean knowing who you are and what your passion and purpose is and living into that day to day, each day, teaching your nervous system. And it really does take practice. I still practice every day, all day. I practice choosing to focus on my passion and purpose because it's very easy, still very easy for my nervous system to get distracted into somebody else's passion and purpose because that's how my, my nervous system was trained from a young age to pay attention to somebody else's passion and purpose. And as much as I also pay attention to my patients all day, I love it. It's so rewarding. I love helping people, but I have to really monitor my own nervous system to know when am I working with a patient and when am I now focused on myself and my passion and purpose and being aligned with what my needs, desires and connections are. How do I, how do I practice that? And we can retrain our nervous system. We can, I've experienced it myself, we can retrain our nervous system, but it takes time and it takes some self compassion. And it also means that things may shift in your life as you heal. As you start to heal and recover from this stress exposure, you will no longer be attractive for a narcissist. Because a narcissist needs someone who's going to pay attention to them and sacrifice themselves for the narcissist. That's what a narcissist needs. So if you're no longer sacrificing yourself for this other person, you're not going to be of use to them. They're not going to be interested in you anymore. They're going to be like, why should I pay attention to you? You're not paying attention to the narcissist, right? So just know that as you heal. And I think you inherently know this as you take better care of yourself and honor yourself and love yourself more, the narcissistic relationship is going to go away. It's going to become less part of your life. It's, they're not going to be as interested in spending time with you because you're not serving their needs. And so just know that. But it can be a gradual process. It could be, for me it actually was gradual and then abrupt.

But so sometimes over all of a sudden it becomes clear that this is no longer going to match anymore. And then, you know, then you. You're no longer in contact with that person anymore, and you go through the grief, which is also sad. Sometimes. I remember being in the narcissistic relationship and thinking to myself, I knew it was painful. I knew it was emotionally and physically painful, but I was still choosing that because it was familiar. I was familiar with that pain. I'm like, I'd rather choose this pain than the unknown pain of not doing this. And I would actually tell myself that over and over and over again until eventually I started to say, no, actually, I would rather go through the pain of the grief and see into learning what else is possible than to stay in that pain any longer. And that's when you'll know you're ready to shift. That's when you're. When you start to go from, oh, I'd rather stay with this familiar pain. When you start to go, no, I don't. I do not want that familiar pain anymore. I will do anything and risk anything to experience anything else. Then, you know, you're shifting out of the narcissistic relationship, and you're shifting out of narcissistic patterns, and you're retraining your nervous system, and you're going to be attracting something completely different into your life because it's. No, you're going to be no longer a match for a narcissistic relationship. Whether that's a narcissistic relationship with a romantic partner or a narcissistic relationship with a friend, or a narcissistic relationship with a parent or sibling or a boss. It can be anybody in your life. A narcissism can show up in a lot of different types of relationships. Narcissists can be men. Narcissists can be women. It can. It can show up a lot of different ways. And so once you start to become aware of it and you start to really, it's less about focusing on the narcissist. If you're focusing on the narcissist, you're still in the narcissistic pattern. If you. It's about focusing on yourself. How do you focus on your healing process, your stress recovery, your ability to take better care of yourself? When you focus on you, you actually become a healthy narcissist, right? In that way, you're focused on you and your care, then you're shifting out of that pattern.

That's how you shift out of it. Sometimes these things are like sort of, you know, this paradox, right? You would think it's about, you know, like pushing away from the narcissist. But actually what I find it's less about if you push against a narcissist, you actually drawn back in. So it's this paradox of actually doing the opposite, of doing more, paying more attention to yourself. You then shift away from narcissistic patterns and you shift more toward being loving of yourself. And then you can be attracting people who are loving toward you and loving toward each other. More of a reciprocity. That's what we. That's where the, the, the energy and vibration of a human existence can be reciprocal. It can be love and connection with each other. It can be listening to each other and caring what the other person thinks and choosing together, working together, apologizing and in feeling excited, enthusiastic together and working through things. That's what it can look like. It actually can look that way in this other. Outside of the sticker bush, right. In this other existence. So I hope that's helpful for some of you who maybe have been hearing about narcissism or wondering if you've experienced narcissism, wondering how to navigate it, wondering if it's possible to get out of it and recover from it. What I can tell you is from my experience, it's possible to get out of narcissistic relationships, and it's possible to retrain your nervous system so that you don't find yourself back in a narcissistic relationship again. And it's also possible to help your nervous system and your whole body recover so that you don't have to have your health negatively affected by this narcissistic patterns of your past. Right? We don't, we don't want the narcissistic experience to end up causing autoimmunity or causing cancer or causing inflammation or pain or anything else. Weight gain, it can show up in. Right. Stress shows up in many different ways. But we don't want the stress of the narcissistic existence to cause health issues for you. And if they have, you can recover. I've been able to get rid of the migraines. I don't get the migraines anymore. I've been able to help heal this chronic arthritis. I'm not in pain. I don't have. I don't have to take any medication for this chronic arthritis. I don't have to do, you know, it's healing. And so I can tell you that it's possible to reverse the effects of a narcissistic experience and move on with your life and retrain your nervous system so that you don't have to experience that anymore or any longer. So please, I would love to hear from you. If this is something you'd like to learn more about from me, please email me or contact my office and let me know. Or you can definitely get my book Master your stress, reset your health. You can reach out to me to set up a one on one appointment if you prefer to work with me one on one through this. I have many patients who that's what we do. They, they share with me their experiences with narcissism, whether it's even sometimes in certain cultures, certain religions, there's more narcissism and and so it's a real thing. I also see it by the way, more making HPV more likely. So this is also something I see in women who I'm helping to reverse abnormal pap smears and get HPV to negative. They often have experienced narcissism in their life, in their love relationships and now this HPV is there. Showing them this needs attention. And as we help them heal and recover from the narcissistic experience, the HPV goes away and their cervix heals. So this is what I see is these transformations where.

We can heal cells, we can prevent cancer, we can turn off autoimmunity, we can heal your digestion, we can rebalance your hormones, we can turn off the anxiety and depression and whatever you want to call it. We can do these things by helping you recover and help and it's one of the most rewarding things that I do. And I'm especially so grateful that my life experience with narcissism is allowing me to help you with your experience with narcissism. And that makes helps me feel like my I have purpose and that what I went through was for a reason to help others. And so please reach out if I can help you if this is resonating and let me know if you'd like to learn more about this so I can share more. Thanks so much. See you soon.

Thanks for listening to how humans heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review and for more resources visit drdani.com.