Why I Started A Meditation Practice
I was ensnared in a manipulative relationship with a malignant narcissist.
I didn’t know how bad it was at the time, but he had me convinced that I was the one who was toxic. It almost cost me my sanity, my practice, my health, my finances, and my life. I felt like an utterly worthless, terrible person--like there was absolutely no way out of the black hole that was me. I knew I couldn’t do it alone, and thankfully I had enough sense to see a therapist.
20 minutes. That’s all it took.
Her: So, why are you here?
Me: I’m toxic and I need you to fix me.
Her: Tell me about this.
I give her a 15 minute overview of my current situation and relationship with my “boyfriend.”
Her: Do you want to stay with this guy?
Me: Crying, Yes. No. Yes. I don’t know. In the beginning he was just so perfect…. Why?
Her: Because you cannot fix him, and he cannot change.
Me: Why? What does he have?
Her: He’s a narcissist.
Me: How can he be? I thought all narcissists come from broken, abusive homes. He has two parents who’ve been married for 58 years and he came from a stable home. He’s quiet and shy.
Her: That’s the worst kind. The most insidious of the lot. He is what’s called a covert somatic narcissist. Here is some material for you to read about narcissism.
The session ends and I’m walking out the door, shaken and in disbelief.
Me: What do I do if he calls?
Her: Don’t answer him!
Easier said than done. The victim of a narcissist becomes addicted, groomed by the narcissist in a psychological role-reversal situation like a pedophile grooms a child: the victim begins to believe that he/she is the narcissist while the true narcissist plays the victim. The true victim begins to feel at fault and takes the blame for everything.
The narcissist weaves a vicious cycle of love-bombing followed by devaluation, creating a bond through trauma, and the victim is addicted to the “love” phases. When the devaluation comes, the victim works to get back to the love. All of it is fake, but no one knows that at the beginning except the narcissist. The narcissist is a crafty, master liar, and getting a person to buy into them and all of their fakeness is part of the game--the game where all of the rules apply to the victim but not to the narcissist. The game is also about getting control of and destroying the victim. As the relationship progresses, the victim does become toxic and in need of help. They need real, nurturing love, compassion, and help.
The ONLY way to break the cycle and calm the brain down is to go full-on with no contact. This is not easy because the narcissist is like a gaseous poison trying to find ways to permeate the victim’s world. In the devaluation phase, they don’t want you unless you try to leave. Then they start the love-bomb phase again in order to bring you back. It’s a sick, twisted cycle and the narcissist makes this a full-time job for both parties. They feed off this, it is their fuel. I could fill a book--three of them.
Being manipulated by a narcissist causes complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD)
and one key way to heal this is through meditation. Another is by healing your HPA that’s been dysregulated (HPA-D). My therapist suggested, strongly, that I start meditating six days a week for 8-10 minutes a day. I downloaded an app called “Insight Timer”
and I was told it would change my life if I gave it two weeks. I didn’t believe my therapist. Sticking to this schedule, being quiet (for 8-10 minutes!), was hard and I hated it.
But I hated feeling like a worthless, messed up piece of shit more, especially now that I knew I wasn’t one. I decided that even if I was addicted to this dumb, son-of-a-bitch, I was going to break this addiction and stronghold he had over me, and I was not going to be a victim. I was going to be a survivor!
For the next year of my life, I put almost everything on hold so that I could study narcissism, who they are, and more importantly why I got involved and stayed. AND I meditated.
And guess what. The meditation--changed me!
It made me stronger and softer. It took my edge off and it also allowed me to find compassion for myself.
I’m writing this because it can change you, too. I recommend it to all my clients because emotional stress is one of the biggest pieces of the health crisis we currently have. Regardless of where the emotional stress comes from, we all have it to some degree, and it’s making us sick(er). This little thing called meditation--being mindful--has a profound power to pull us out. And here’s the best part about it: it’s free. It’s not easy, but it is free.
Meditation and being mindful helped me to get my mojo back, and it can help you, too. Start today. Give it two weeks.
If you or someone you know is involved in domestic abuse or narcissistic abuse relationship and you are not sure where to turn for help, there are resources and people who are here to help you. I am one such person. No judgement. You can also go to the hotline.org
I want you to know that you matter, your life matters and you deserve better.
If you or someone you know is involved in domestic abuse or narcissistic abuse relationship and you are not sure where to turn for help, there are resources and people who are here to help you. I am one such person. No judgement. You can also go to the hotline.org
I want you to know that you matter, your life matters and you deserve better.
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Heidi Toy Functional Medicine Blog
Did you know most people didn’t have refrigerators in their homes until well into the 1900’s? It wasn’t even invented for large scale commercial use until the mid 1800’s [1]. So how did people keep their milk cold and make their food last longer? Fermentation. It sounds like a gross concept, because we often associate fermentation with a bad odor, but foods like cheese, yogurt, sauerkraut and pickles are all fermented foods. And those aren’t gross, are they? Well, some might disagree with me about sauerkraut, but that’s beside the point. Fermented foods are digestive aids. Microscopic living organisms in fermented foods help extend the food’s shelf life, enhance flavor, and help the body absorb minerals. These organisms pre-digest the food, getting rid of harmful components, and create more vitamins and enzymes than the food began with. Enzyme-rich foods have many benefits including [2]: Increase digestibility of food we eat Boost immune system Increase alkalinity; neutralizing pH levels Provide a healthy balance of friendly flora in the gut (Learn more about your microbiome in my other blog posts ) Tone the colon and help with elimination Control cravings for unhealthier foods Eliminate toxins and undigested wastes in the body In the “old days,” people use to ferment all kinds of foods through pickling, canning, pasteurization and added salt. Nowadays, however, large scale fermentation has lost many of its nutritious benefits due to the need for speed to get the product on the shelf as fast as possible and as cheap as possible. The only true fermented foods you will find are sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt and kefir, beans, wine and beer, some meats (such as salami and pastrami), legumes and nuts (such as tofu, soy sauce and miso), sourdough bread, and various kinds of vegetables [3]. Fun facts about sauerkraut: The Germans “stole” it from the Chinese! Sauerkraut (probably not labeled as such for the Chinese, but the same recipe) was one of the main foods for those who built the Great Wall of China. Genghis Khan brought it to Eastern Europe during an invasion. It also contains high levels of vitamin C, and sailors often took it on long journeys to prevent scurvy.
How can we best keep blood sugar stable? Do what our body is designed to do – use fat for energy. Our species did not survive the Ice Age because of vanilla coffee lattes and cheesecake. Throughout most of our history, we ate a diet that was likely 50-70 percent fat. Look at the old family photo albums, specifically pictures of people in the first half of the 1900s, before we had so many processed foods. You won’t see many fat people--in fact, most look darn skinny. If they lived on the farm, they ate lots of eggs, meat, milk, and vegetables out of their own backyards. “Diet foods” were non-existent. Heart disease was almost non-existent. Our metabolism is designed to work much better with fats better than with sugar. Fats provide the slow and steady fuel our body likes to use for energy. Think of fats as a slow-burning log on the fire. One log (i.e. one meal containing fats) lasts for hours. Starchy carbs, on the flip side, are like kindling. You constantly have to throw more twigs (chips, pasta, bagels) to keep the fire burning. The first step is to know your sugars by reading the labels, and then avoid said sugars as much as possible.
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Omega-3 and Omega-6 are considered “essential” fatty acids because they cannot be produced by the body--we get them from the food we eat. They are biologically active upon ingestion, which means the body utilizes them right away and cannot store them up for later. They are essential because they help with both inflammatory and anti-inflammatory responses.
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