Heather Leigh Strom dives into the difficult but powerful topic of narcissistic parents and partners. In Howling at the Moon podcast episode #15, "Surviving Narcissism | Healing + Energetic Shielding", she shares her personal story, explains the golden child/scapegoat dynamic, and explores why some people are incapable of giving unconditional love.

You’ll learn two ways to respond and discover how the K9 Spirit Guides offer support, clarity, and healing to help you reclaim your power and find peace.

Perfect for anyone ready to stop internalizing blame, break the cycle, and step into a new chapter of self-love and spiritual freedom.

🐾Access the "⁠Shield of Sovereignty: Anthea’s Narcissism Blocker" energetic download mentioned in this episode by subscribing to my Substack ⁠ here⁠: HeatherLeighStrom.Substack.com

📚 Get your copy of the book: ⁠K9 Spirit Guides: The Healing Power of Man’s Best Friend ⁠available at heatherleighstrom.com

Watch this episode on ⁠YouTube⁠!

🔗 Connect with Heather Leigh Strom:

• Website: ⁠HeatherLeighStrom.com⁠
• Substack: ⁠HeatherLeighStrom.Substack.com⁠
• More infor @ the K9 Guides:🌐⁠ ⁠⁠k9spiritguides.com⁠⁠⁠🐾 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

🔗Connect with Randi Fine: www.randifine.com

Recorded live October 2024

Takeaways:

• Narcissism can manifest in parent-child relationships, affecting emotional support and love.
• Understanding narcissistic behavior is crucial for personal healing and moving forward in life.
• Recognizing your own worth is vital when dealing with narcissistic individuals in your life.
• The K9 spirit guides offer insights into navigating challenging relationships and finding healing.

Narcissism can feel like a whirlwind, and today, we’re diving into what it really is and how it affects our lives, especially when it comes to family dynamics. I’m Heather Leigh Strom, and I’ve got some personal tales to share that might just resonate with you if you’ve ever felt like you were living in the shadow of a narcissistic parent or loved one. We’ll explore how these relationships twist our perceptions of love and support, and I’ll share some insights I learned from my chat with expert Randy Fine, who specializes in navigating the murky waters of narcissism. So, whether you’re dealing with a golden child or a scapegoat situation, we’ll arm you with some handy tools to help you understand and protect your energy. Get ready for a fun, yet enlightening ride with the K9 spirit guides, as we sift through the chaos and find clarity together!

Exploring narcissism is like peeling an onion—layers upon layers of complexity and sometimes, a few tears! In my journey, I’ve come to realize that understanding narcissism isn’t just about labeling someone as toxic; it’s about recognizing how their behavior has shaped our own lives. As we chat, I’ll share my personal stories and those of others who have navigated the choppy waters of narcissistic relationships. I’ve had the honor of learning from experts like Randy Fine, whose insights have illuminated my path. We’ll discuss how narcissistic individuals often lack the ability to truly love others, and how their actions can leave us feeling like we’re running in circles, trying to get validation that will never come. This episode isn’t just about the struggle, though! I’m excited to share practical tools and insights on setting boundaries and prioritizing self-love. Whether you’re in a relationship with a narcissist or just want to understand this phenomenon better, we’re here to support each other on the journey of healing. So, let’s embrace the lessons and find that silver lining together!

We're going to be talking about narcissism.

What is it?

How does it affect you and what do you do about it?

Hold that thought.

Welcome to Howling at the Moon, where the mystical meets the practical and the canine spirit guides lead the way.

I'm your host, Heather lee Strom.

For five decades, the world felt cold and confusing.

Now I see the patterns, the purpose, and the bigger magical picture.

My mission?

To help you find your way through your own awakening journey.

Here you'll discover limitless possibilities for spiritual growth, powerful healing frequencies and extraordinary energetic professionals, each designed to guide you into deeper healing and remembrance.

Some episodes feature enlightening wisdom from spiritually evolved guest healers, visionaries and authors.

Others are led by the multidimensional canine spirit guides, themselves sharing their unique intergalactic wisdom and frequency.

If you've been craving deeper truth, multidimensional healing, and a little cosmic magic, you've just found your pack.

Listen and watch on Spotify or YouTube and bring the magic back into your life.

So narcissism, what is it?

Well, I've always known that I've had at least one narcissistic parent.

And the reason this topic is important to me is if you've read my book, you might have figured that out.

It was important to me not to place any labels on my story, on anybody in my story when I wrote it, because my story is just that, it's my story.

But sometimes it's helpful to understand the players in your story a little bit more thoroughly.

And I had an interview with Randy Fine recently and she is an expert on surviving narcissistic parents.

And when I looked at her podcast and her information that she has available, she's written a book that I have not read but I'm sure would be quite revealing, answer a lot of questions for me.

She taught me some things and she basically justified how I had felt my entire life.

I'm not one to really invest in labels.

That seems to empower the dysfunction.

So I never wanted to label the quality or the type of relationship I had with my parents.

I just knew it wasn't very positive, it wasn't very supportive, wasn't very helpful.

And if you've read my book, you know that that's okay because that helped me become who I was meant to be.

But not everybody is capable of seeing the big, big picture like that.

So let's talk about narcissism what is it?

For me, narcissism was someone who could not see past themselves, who could not see past their own selfish needs, who could not put themselves aside and love or care for anyone else.

Now, that might sound odd, thinking that a parent is narcissistic.

How can a parent be narcissistic?

Right.

Because their sole purpose is to take care of their children.

Well, this isn't true for everybody.

Not everybody is a natural parent, I came to discover for myself.

And narcissistic parents tend to distance themselves from their children, which is what happened to me, and they tend to not really show genuine interest in their own children.

Now, this is kind of tricky because on the outside, to someone looking in on this picture, that's not apparent, that's not obvious, because these individuals are very skilled at showing people what they want to see at sort of performing for the general public.

So my father, I didn't go into too much detail about him, but I think one of the reasons he was a preacher was because when he got up on that stage and he had a dedicated audience that was willing to listen to him, he performed.

And that made him feel good, that validated him, that empowered him in a way that he himself had never felt empowered, because he did not have the best childhood either.

So that fulfilled him, and that was how he compensated for his disorder, his dysfunction.

Dysfunction, his disease, whatever you want to consider it, unfortunately, because he never overcame his own narcissism because of his father, he then engaged with me from that space.

So these parents are not very fun for their children.

And there's two types of children that they.

From what I've learned from.

From the work of Randy Fine, there's two type types of children.

There's the golden child that can do no wrong, and there's the scapegoat that no matter what the scapegoat does, they can't do it right.

And that's where I was.

Because my disadvantage was that I could see what was happening.

I could see how my parents were behaving.

And for some reason, I knew better.

Somehow, deep inside, I knew better.

So I didn't buy it.

I didn't fall for it, and I stood my ground.

So because of this, I was shunned, so to speak, because I could see through the.

The illusion.

I could see through the veil.

I could understand what they were doing.

Not necessarily cognitively, subconsciously, I knew to protect myself against it.

But this sets up a dynamic in the relationship between parents and children, because the parents don't ever.

These narcissistic parents don't ever give their children their full attention.

And as Randy Fine taught me, they aren't really capable of loving.

She has an excellent podcast on this topic that answered so many of my questions and explained so much about what I experienced as a child.

But these individuals are so wrapped into their own facade that they don't even know who they themselves are.

And when you don't know who yourself is, you can't love yourself, which is one of the things that Anthea taught me.

One of the reasons I struggled to love myself for so long was because I had no idea who I was.

And once I received the healing from Anthea and I connected to my soul, which was what Oregon did for me, I finally understood who I was, and I was finally freed from that.

Only then could I begin to love myself.

Only then am I capable of loving other people.

Just because you're a parent doesn't mean you're actually capable of unconditional love.

You may tell yourself that.

You may assume that you are, but.

But you're really.

If you're narcissistic, there is no way that you can.

So what does this mean for you?

If you're in a relationship with your.

With anyone, doesn't have to be your parents.

It could be a spouse, it could be a sibling, it could be a friend.

You're never going to be the priority in their life, or at least you feel that way.

And you feel like you're constantly beating your head against a wall because the more you say to them, hey, you can't treat me like this, the more they just push back, the more they tell you you're crazy, the more they tell you you're the problem.

These individuals can't see themselves.

They have such a veil around them that they literally cannot see themselves.

So it.

There's really no way to get through to them until they have such a catastrophic event in their life that they're willing to finally look.

That's the only hope for them in my experience, because I tried everything with my father.

So the reason I felt this was important was because we get to the part now, what do you do about it?

What can you do about it?

Can you do anything about it?

Are you stuck?

What happens if someone in your life that's very important to you, critical to you, is narcissistic and will never love you?

What do you do?

And this.

This story's in my book.

I made that choice.

I made the decision to look after me, to put myself first.

And because of that, I was a black sheep of the family.

I walked out because I had standards.

I did not want to be treated that way.

I knew I didn't deserve to be treated that way.

I could feel that it was expected for me to act the same way they did.

And that wasn't okay with me.

So I decided to walk away.

Now, not everybody can.

It's hard.

It's really hard.

You have to have a very stiff upper lip.

And that's in my book too.

It's a cute little story.

You have to be willing to do what's hard.

And that's a whole nother conversation.

The strength to do what's hard, even though you know it's going to be hard and you don't want to do it.

But that's one option, and that's the option I took.

The other option is to continue to engage in the relationship and just understand what it is.

If you're honest with yourself and you know the rules going in, then you can do certain things to armor yourself against the relationship, to armor yourself against the other person.

If you feel like you want to stay in that situation, I can't imagine that this is just me.

Like, I just can't imagine staying in that situation in that toxicity and all that negativity and.

And not feeling loved and not feeling supported.

I would rather be alone.

And that's what I did.

I walked alone for the majority of my life.

But if you choose not to do that, you really do have to armor yourself against the other person.

And there are many reasons why someone would choose to not walk away.

It's.

You're dependent on this person for survival.

You can't walk away if your life is in danger.

If you break this relationship, you can't walk away.

Right.

So there are times when we need to take care of ourselves even though we can't leave the situation.

And I think this is something the Guides want to offer you.

Yeah, they're.

They're sending in a message now because I wasn't sure why I was going to talk about this, but they want to offer you a shielding if you should happen to find yourself in this situation where you're engaging with another person who's very confrontational, demeaning, negative energy.

You just can't do anything right.

Or maybe you're being manipulated and you know it, but you don't know what to do about it.

These are not loving relationships, no matter what they tell you.

So if you find that you have to stay even though you know the Guides wish to offer you a Shielding for this very difficult place that you have chosen to stand.

So one thing that helped me to understand exactly what this was all about, because part of what I do is to look at things from the big picture.

So for me, it's not just about assigning a label to these type of people in my life.

That's not the first thing I do now because of my healing experience with the canine spirit guides.

The first thing I do is say, hello, what is this all about?

What do I need to know about this?

Why am I experiencing this?

Why am I seeing this?

Hearing this, feeling this?

Tell me what I need to know about this.

Because commonly, once we understand the message, then we're not going to be seeing these messages anymore.

That's part of the challenge in life, is understanding why we are experiencing what we are experiencing.

And in my book, this is actually a very surprising epiphany that I had, and it only occurred while I was writing the book.

I did not know this was going to happen.

I did not know that so much of my father was going to be ingrained in that book.

I had no idea because I didn't know.

Even though he's passed now, he's.

He.

He died.

I. I don't know.

But even though he has passed, I didn't know that I still carried around that energy of the relationship, even though consciously I thought I had forgiven him.

So this was all a surprise to me.

But what I learned, as I dug in deeper to my depth, I learned the true reason why he was that way in my life.

And that's what's so critical for us to understand.

And this is.

This is even another point that Anthea brought up in the very beginning of the book.

It's not about how people are treating you.

It's about how you're treating yourself.

And other people are reflecting that back to you.

So even though this other person might be narcissistic, what is it about you that you need to know in this situation?

To me, that's the epiphany.

To me, that's how I finally healed in this situation, was I got it.

I finally saw why I was in this relationship, this very awful, negative, condescending relationship with my father that had absolutely no love in it whatsoever.

I finally understood why and how, where and when it all started, and, you know, why, where it was coming from, what the purpose of it was.

And it was trying to get my attention.

It was giving me an opportunity to clear an energetic tie, an ancestral tie that I had agreed to take on.

So if we look deeper into these situations, taking the teaching of the Canine Spirit Guides from my book, and we don't just settle for, well, that person's just narcissistic.

That person is just a jerk.

I had the worst parents ever, and aren't they terrible?

If we don't settle for that and we really want to get into the why, then that's what the Canine Guides help us do.

That's what I help my clients do.

That's what I received when I was going through my healing with the Canine Guides.

And you can apply this to anything in your life.

It's not just about other people.

Why are you sick?

Why do you have a disease?

Why do you keep having accidents?

Why do you keep hurting yourself?

Why do you seem to have bad luck?

All of these are messages.

All of these are calling to you to discover them, understand them, unravel them, and heal them.

And once you get it, once you really dig in there and get into the depth of it, you don't even have to fully understand it.

But like the guides say, just be willing to open it up and let it go.

The Canine Guides are going to offer my members two things here regarding this topic.

So if you wish to receive the Energetic Upgrade or the healing portion that goes with this topic, you'll want to join my membership program.

I'll put the link in the detail.

My members will be receiving the Energetic Upgrade or the Energetic Healing that goes with this topic today if you wish to receive the Canine Guides gift that will help you in this very situation.

Number one, help you see and access what you need to know about this very situation and also give you a clear armoring to protect you in this type of scenario in case you cannot leave.

So they're going to offer two different upgrades, Energetic shifts, maybe even some shielding.

I don't know until we start it, but for my members, they will be receiving that for this call.

If you wish to receive it, just join my membership and you'll be able to receive all of the Energetic upgrades that the Canine Guides have to offer for all of my podcasts.

Thank you for joining me today.

The healing session for this episode with the Canine Spirit Guides is now available exclusively, exclusively through my subscriber portal on Substack.

These Energetic downloads are sacred transmissions, and by moving them to a dedicated space.

I can connect more intentionally with those.

Of you who feel called to receive them.

It also helps me get to know you a little better so that I can more effectively serve and support this growing community.

If you'd like to access the healing frequency frequencies of this episode's Canine Spirit Guide and future transmissions, just head over to my substack@heatherleestrom.substack.com and become a subscriber.

Whether you join us there or simply tune in here, the Canine Spirit Guides and I are so grateful to share.

This path with you.

And be sure to stay put because there might be more coming on this podcast.

Look in the chat for the link to Randy Finds website and book so you can check out more information on narcissistic parents if you'd like for yourself.

Thank you for watching.

Love you.