The Addicted Mind Podcast

On today’s episode of The Addicted Mind Podcast, Duane talks to author and counselor Rabbi Simon Jacobson about making meaning out of suffering, and understanding your own purpose.Calming The Addicted Mind - 6 Day Mindfulness Email Seriestheaddictedmind.com/mindfulnessRabbi Jacobson talks about how surrendering to a higher power, and relinquishing control over your circumstances gives you an edge on dealing with pain. Unfortunately, we don’t have an answer to injustices writ large, but we can have some hope in giving up control. This change in power can give you the strength to make positive action as a result of suffering.Duane shares a bit from his past to illustrate how you oftentimes need to let go of the desire to understand why loss happens, because you ultimately will not find the reason. Letting go of that need for a reason can help you to heal and move forward.Join The Addicted Mind Podcast Facebook Group>>>There is a healthy way to channel pain from loss and trauma. You can reinvest your time into healing and supporting other people going through the same thing. At the end of this, it will not be in vain if you are able to help others walk through their darkest moments.Toward the end, Rabbi Jacobson talks about his academic life and his background as a writer. Interested by the seeming homogeneity across people’s concerns for their lives, Rabbi Jacobson conducted some research into how to actually make your life meaningful. Perhaps, with the right effort, we could achieve a higher state of human consciousness that values meaning over meaninglessness and places high values on human life.Episode Linktheaddictedmind.com/98Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-addicted-mind-podcast/donations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On today’s episode of The Addicted Mind Podcast, Duane sits down with author Robert Imbeault to talk about his book Before I Leave You. Robert also speaks to his own battle with addiction, his suicide attempts, and his eventual recovery. Calming The Addicted Mind - 6 Day Mindfulness Email Seriestheaddictedmind.com/mindfulnessBased in Ottawa, Canada, Rob shares his story of how experiencing a memory of being raped as an eight-year-old turned his life upside-down as he became a shell of himself fueled by drugs and alcohol as a result. After hitting many rock-bottoms, he attempted suicide a few times. But in recovery, he reminds us that despite how dark the story can be, there is hope on the other side.Join The Addicted Mind Podcast Facebook Group>>>Unable to find authentic happiness, Rob pushed further into his work obsession at the sacrifice of his personal relationships. When a memory of his childhood assault comes crashing back, Rob is left catatonic and unable to fully confront his trauma. He let his marriage deteriorate during his spiraling. On a trip to Las Vegas, Rob discovered how alive he felt on ecstasy and cocaine. He believes, too, that these mistakes ultimately empowered him. He’d become all but non-functional at home and at work. The duality between his personal destruction and business success continued to escalate and tear at him. His then-girlfriend’s decision to make him confront his drug addiction more or less made him wake up.Episode Linktheaddictedmind.com/97After visiting Walden, Rob knew that he wanted to live. But before this, his awakening to the notion that he was not a good human in any sense made the idea of suicide tempting to him. Ultimately, Rob felt it would free him of all of his burdens. What actually helped turn all of this around for Rob was the decision to write out his rationalizations. He calls them “secret goodbyes,” and Rob credits his writing with freeing him from the bonds of his mental place. It was his “solace” to write. He then started meditating and became a practicing Buddhist. Rob and his wife became pregnant, which enforced their “zero-tolerance” policy. They’ve both been clean ever since.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-addicted-mind-podcast/donations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On today’s episode of The Addicted Mind Podcast, Duane speaks to Tyler Farnham about his skydiving accident and his subsequent journey through addiction and recovery.Tyler says that having goals and making active decisions about who is in your circle can change your life.Originally from Cocoa Beach, Tyler now lives in Bali. Even before his accident, Tyler had already dabbled a little with pain pills in the form of 20mg Percocets.After becoming somewhat dependent on them, Tyler found it harder and harder to get off of them. In a leadership position as a lifeguard, he felt the call to give up the pain pills. It was around this time that Tyler realized that the company he kept mattered.Calming The Addicted Mind - 6 Day Mindfulness Email Seriestheaddictedmind.com/mindfulnessWhen he was 18, Tyler started jumping out of airplanes. He jokes about being addicted to it, but in some ways, he feels he really was addicted to the rush, anyway. In the crash, he shattered his right femur and they almost had to amputate.His left femur broke. He shattered his jaw, fractured his skull, and lost nine teeth. He was placed in a five-day medically-induced coma, and he woke up on his 26th birthday.On a morphine drip and in excruciating pain, Tyler was confined to a wheelchair and even had to attend speech therapy during his recovery. He had to have his mouth wired shut.Join The Addicted Mind Podcast Facebook Group>>>Depression set in and it started to feel impossible to see the hope in his situation. Tyler started to journal as a means of keeping up hope. It helped him to track his progress and feel some sort of hope and motivation.Having something to do that’s physically active helped Tyler to overcome the dependency. The natural endorphins you encounter can boost your positivity. He encourages others to find the same.Episode Linktheaddictedmind.com/96Tyler shares a story about how his inability to refill a script affected his mood so severely that he felt he couldn't even do his job. Because he didn't want to hurt people, he decided to try to find a solution. This is when he decided to seek treatment.Put on Suboxone initially, Tyler started to work toward changing his life. Tyler’s message to someone struggling with addiction now: reach out to someone. And write things down.The importance of this cannot be overstated. These are small promises to yourself. Keeping them can give you the motivation to keep moving forward.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-addicted-mind-podcast/donations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On today’s episode of The Addicted Mind Podcast, Duane speaks to sex coach and educator Stacie Ysidro about addiction and healing your sexuality during the recovery process. Stacie has studied virtually every corner of addictive sexuality and has focused her career on helping people navigate sober sexuality once they’ve recovered. She has something of a passion for sexology and the relationship between sexuality and spirituality. She realized that people need coaching around their sexuality in recovery.Calming The Addicted Mind - 6 Day Mindfulness Email Seriestheaddictedmind.com/mindfulnessStacie discusses how sex is typically seen through the lens of people-pleasing and not through an honoring one. When not using a substance to escape, you have to more or less face your real sexual self. And yet it’s hard to honor yourself after trauma. Because sexuality is so vulnerable, it gives you access to every other part of yourself.Join The Addicted Mind Podcast Facebook Group>>>Duane and Stacie talk about the link between vulnerability and sex with regard to treatment programs, our relationships, and the broader culture. Part of this process deals in releasing ourselves from shame and forgiving ourselves. Stacie uses something called a Sexual Values System to help assess where people are. The system has people scrutinize their own values, beliefs, and even definitions surrounding their own sexuality, including desires and expectations. Doing this work in a shame-free environment allows people to find new words, change their understanding, and set and realize goals.Episode Linktheaddictedmind.com/95Stacie’s work helps people to see their own worth. She encourages people that are curious about healing their sexuality to start asking questions about their own sex lives to try to better understand their attitudes about sex. To come into presence with your body is the only way to authentically step into pleasure, free from judgment. And to do this is to ultimately unite our spirits with our sexuality. As Stacie says, “pleasure is our divine right.”Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-addicted-mind-podcast/donations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On today’s episode of The Addicted Mind Podcast, Duane speaks with author Carder Stout about his book, Lost in Ghost Town, the story of his addiction and recovery. Duane also addresses the difficulty of the ongoing COVID-19 situation by starting a campaign of stories trying to spread hope in a time of darkness.Join The Addicted Mind Podcast Facebook Group>>>Carder grew up in Georgetown, where his father constantly worked and his mother was an alcoholic. From an early age, he had feelings of disillusionment and worthlessness. By the time he was 11, his parents had divorced, securing the disarray in his home. By twenty, he’d already gone through eating disorders and was living on cocaine in New York. He thought that moving to Los Angeles would help him distance himself from the people he knew and his addiction, but in Venice, the epicenter of crack at the time, Carder’s addiction spiraled. Carder meets a drug dealer in Venice named Flynn, who, with his grandmother Beatrice, actually showed Carder the familial love that he never received from his actual family. Calming The Addicted Mind - 6 Day Mindfulness Email Seriestheaddictedmind.com/mindfulnessAs a child, Carder experimented with drugs and alcohol as early as age 7. By age ten, he was regularly smoking weed, bein altogether unsupervised. He talks about receiving visions, for lack of a better term, from his grandmother, as frightening as that is. His grandmother, who was a clairvoyant in her life, ultimately became something of a spirit guide for him while he was high. While in the midst of dealing drugs, Carder talks specifically about being surrounded by guns in the culture. In the middle of a lot of psychological pain, he says that he could not stop the “loop” of obsession and compulsion, the things that kept his addiction rolling. In a lot of ways, Flynn became the person that loved him through the cycle of addiction. In Santa Fe, Carder is accepted into a psychology school after getting out of in-patient care. He worked 2 or 3 jobs for almost ten years working on his degree. Now, he’s a practicing psychologist in Los Angeles. Part of his platform is pushing the idea that developing a sense of purpose is one of the first steps people can take toward a successful recovery program. Forgiveness also plays a vital role in recovery. Carder talks about forgiving his family and forgiving himself, and how that opens the door to freedom.Episode Linktheaddictedmind.com/94Carder carved out 4 hours a day, three days a week and set a goal to write. He found some hope in the writing process, which allowed him to tell his story and materialize healing. A publisher under Simon & Schuster picked up his book and he was able to do a reading before an audience before the COVID-19 outbreak. In his sobriety, he married and had two children, and he points to his life as living proof that addicts can recover. There is hope for those who actively seek support.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-addicted-mind-podcast/donations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today's guest is Dr. Don Wood, from the Inspired Performance Institute, and he will be talking to us about trauma and how to heal from it. Don helps people reprocess their trauma so that they're no longer in a state of hyper-vigilance and responding to their past trauma in the present moment.Our traumas can either take us down or inspire us. Don believes that every individual who is dealing with addiction has had trauma. He has been very successful in treating addiction as well as trauma. In the past, he used to find that people were finding ways to live with trauma by learning how to manage it and cope with its effects. Trauma, however, creates glitches and error messages in the way that our minds work and so Don has subsequently discovered that it is possible to eliminate trauma so that we no longer need to deal with any of its effects. Our subconscious mind operates in the present, so ninety-five percent of our brain is always present, just like the mind of an animal is always present. But because our minds experience trauma on a looping basis, we can't shut off the loop of information, and so we continue to re-experience the past trauma in the present moment. Our traumatic events and experiences are recorded in our memories differently from our regular experiences. Experiences that are neither threatening nor disturbing are recorded and stored in memory as fairly low-resolution files. Threatening or disturbing experiences, however, are recorded and stored differently by the mind. Our senses are heightened and intensified with those experiences, so they are stored in our minds in high definition. And this is where the glitch comes in.If our mind goes back into memory, and it sees the stored images of those traumatic events, it perceives those events to be happening right now, in the present moment. So although there is nothing threatening happening in the present moment, the mind still creates a response to the memory of the threat. Your mind will do anything to try to protect you and avoid pain. So at the Inspired Performance Institute, they start with the premise that there's nothing wrong with anybody, or with anybody's mind. They understand that our minds are being affected by events and experiences throughout our lifetime. And this is constantly activating our nervous systems. So, if you have high-resolution data stored, and your mind is activating it, you will create a response. And the response could be to take a drink or to use a drug. There can be both high-level and low-level traumas. To fix things, the mind needs to stop looping. At the Inspired Performance Institute, they have developed a series of techniques to reduce and eliminate PTSD, panic attacks, and anxiety attacks in a four-hour session. They do this by providing a counter-frequency for the memory. Then, the mind takes on the new frequency and changes it to the lower state. After that, the mind stops responding to the previously traumatic memory. People are often shocked at how fast the trauma has been eliminated!The mind and body are designed to heal. All you need are the tools to do it with.Links and resources:If you need help or some support, reach out to us at www.theaddictedmind.com/helpThe Inspired Performance Institute - https://www.inspiredperformanceinstitute.com/To get the first chapter of Don's book, You Must Be Out of Your Mind, or to contact Don, go to https://www.inspiredperformanceinstitute.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Due to the worldwide situation with the Coronavirus pandemic, and everything else that goes along with that, we're bringing you a special episode today. The current situation has left most of us with very intense emotions that can be quite difficult to cope with.So Suzie Wolfer, who was our guest on a previous episode of The Addicted Mind podcast, (Episode 53) decided to join us today, to share some of her insight about emotion regulation, distress tolerance, and somatic experiencing, to help us cope with the feelings that this pandemic has brought up. Episode link>>>>www.theaddictedmind.com/special-episodeSuzie Wolfer, LCSW, SEP, is a therapist specializing in Somatic Experiencing®, a powerful system for healing trauma and addiction at their core, and for completing trauma so that it lets go of you.Suzie has noticed recently that almost all her clients are experiencing the signs of freeze, and often, they are experiencing anxiety along with that too. She points out that we all have within our bodies certain superpowers, that have come to us through millions of years of evolution, that will allow us to move easily through this very frightening time. So today, she will be talking about those superpowers, and she will explain how to use them to move through this difficult time with a little more ease and, hopefully, a lot less freeze. Freeze makes our bodies go rigid, feel numb, and get ready to bolt. Suzie always used to experience this at the thought of going to see the dentist. What she realized, after getting some training in Somatic Experiencing, was that she had the superpowers of fight, flight, and freeze. So, the next time that she had to visit the dentist, she tried using these things, rather than letting them control her. She began to practice noticing, welcoming and allowing the feelings of freeze, rather than fighting them off and letting them frighten her. She became aware that the feelings that she was experiencing were like a wild animal's response to a threat, so she imagined what she would do to the animal attacking her if her body was that of a wild animal. The image that came to her mind was that she would punch the attacking animal in the face with her super-powerful fist and then she would run away to a safe place, where she would relax. While imaging the wild animal scenario, she became aware of her body shaking. She allowed the shaking, which was coming from her autonomic nervous system, to continue, and then things started calming down. After getting up from the dentist's chair, and walking to her car, she noticed that it had been the first time that she had ever been able to function normally after a dental appointment. She realized that this is something that we need to complete, and completing something is very different from managing anxiety and freeze.We call freeze a superpower because it allows us to become invisible by holding ourselves very still. Predators detect their prey from the carbon dioxide in their exhalation, so holding very still, breathing very shallowly, and keeping ourselves hunched over with our eyes down are the same things that wild animals do to keep themselves safe from threat. But people do tend to become scared when their bodies do these things without them realizing what is happening.Currently, we are all experiencing an existential, invisible threat. We can't fight it or outrun it, but we can freeze. Our physical biology can invoke the very smart superpower to hunker down. However, along with that comes fear, so we also need to do something to overcome that and develop within ourselves an ease for readiness. There are some techniques that we can use, with our friends and our children, to enable us to respond in a manageable way to our current, frightening situation. Firstly, tune into your body and become aware of where you are holding tension right now.  Notice, and welcome whatever is going on in your body.  Don't try to make your feelings go away. Simply notice them with curiosity. Taking a deep breath naturally, is a sign that your autonomic nervous system has hit the reset button. It means that you're present and that things are returning to normal in your body. Let your eyes go wherever they want to, in the outer world. Notice what they are looking at. This will bring yourself into the present moment, through your senses. Notice how your body is responding to whatever it is looking at. Remember that even a one percent shift towards ease is the beginning of a process. Ask yourself four questions: 1) Are you safe right now? (Yes or no?) If the answer is "no", ask yourself if you truly are not safe, or if you just don't feel safe. The reality is that most of us are safe.2) Using your five senses, affirm that your body truly is safe right now. As mammals, we often take safety cues from one another, so looking into someone else's eyes can help us to feel safe.3) Bring your attention back inside yourself and notice how your body responds when your attention is aligned with your mind and body around the idea of being safe. 4) Take a moment to savor the shift that you have experienced, and know that it is possible to return to this state whenever you need to.This process can be repeated over and over, whenever necessary.Links and resources:To contact Suzie: https://www.oregonsomatictherapy.com/https://traumahealing.org/ Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-addicted-mind-podcast/donations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, Rebecca Williams joins us. Rebecca is a licensed psychologist, who lived and worked in beautiful San Diego, California for twenty-five years. She recently relocated to Savannah, Georgia to be close to the wildlife and the natural beauty of the area. Rebecca's path into addiction opened up through her family's struggles with addiction. Especially those of her late mother.Episode link>>>>www.theaddictedmind.com/92Growing up in this way, Rebecca wanted to learn as much as she could about addiction so she got her Master's degree in Counseling Psychology, followed by her Ph.D. at the University of California, Santa Barbara. One of Rebecca's specialties is mindfulness. She has been working on it for the last twenty years and she has found it paramount to her self-healing and also to her capabilities as a psychologist. She discovered mindfulness through yoga when she started teaching it in the eighties before mindfulness became cool.Mindfulness helped Rebecca to quieten her anxious mind. It's also a tool that has been very helpful to her, in her profession, to help a lot of other people with anxiety, depression, and other issues relating to mental health.Mindfulness, as a practice, is a way through anxiety. Jon Kabat-Zinn described mindfulness as being in the present moment, on purpose, and without judgment. Being in the present moment is a challenge, and doing it on purpose takes work. Letting go of judgment can be difficult, but like everything, with practice, it gets easier.Although it can take a lot to rid yourself of judgment, Rebecca explains that when you get used to not judging anymore, your brain starts to re-calibrate itself. And new, smoother neural pathways start opening up. Rebecca believes that it all starts with the simple step of finding a quiet place where you won't be disturbed for a while. Then close your eyes for five minutes, and focus something like a sound or your breathing. If you do this every single day, you will become calmer and more focused over time.There's no right way to meditate. It's just about permitting yourself to take the time to do it. Rebecca tends to struggle with her mind jumping around, so she concentrates on her breathing to help still her mind. She advises people to keep it uncomplicated, and as simple and as possible. Rebecca also suggests doing a walking meditation. To do that, you can simply count the colors of green that you see while you're out walking. Or, if you're in the city, you can count all the different shades of grey you come across. The main thing is to permit yourself to be okay with any anxious thoughts that may arise because they are normal. And remember that the mind is designed to think so you can simply be grateful for that and keep going. Links and resources:Rebecca's website: www.mindfulnessworkbook.comBooks mentioned: Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-ZinnGift of Recovery: 52 Mindful Ways To Live Joyfully Beyond Addiction by Rebecca Williams and Julie S KraftThe Mindfulness Workbook for Addiction: A Guide to Coping with the Grief, Stress and Anger that Trigger Addictive Behaviors by Rebecca Williams and Julie S Kraft Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Anita Abdul-Karim is our guest for today. Anita is a registered dietician and she has written a book called Bad Bitches Don't Diet. Today, she will be sharing her journey and talking to us about her book. Anita is from the Middle East. She struggled to fit in while growing up because there weren't many other Middle Eastern people at her school. She was also chubby, and not the smartest kid in the class, so, although her parents did the best they could under the circumstances, all of that added to the social pressure that Anita was experiencing.Anita was overweight, and that impacted on her socially, and also within her family. So she tried to take matters into her own hands while growing up. Having a scientific mind, she gravitated towards any available information about diets and nutrition. Episode link>>>>www.theaddictedmind.com/91Anita lost a lot of weight in the seventh and eighth grades. However, in her senior year of high school, a lot was going on, and she gained thirty pounds in one month. It was a very dramatic situation.Although Anita's weight fluctuated a lot, she was always aware of being overweight. And although she binged from time to time, she still knew that she wanted to become a dietician, and study nutrition.Anita has always wanted to understand and move towards the truth. So she enrolled in an excellent program and learned about the science of nutrition. Then she came across a book called Intuitive Eating, written by two dieticians, Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole, and that took a huge weight off her shoulders and changed her entire life.The philosophy behind eating intuitively is all about learning to trust your body to tell you what it needs. Unfortunately, however, most people grow up being taught not to trust themselves. This can cause a lot of misery and even lead people towards addictions because the further you push away from yourself, the more miserable you become.Anita continued to suffer a lot of social pressure while she was studying because she was still overweight and people often made nasty comments about her being large and studying nutrition. So although she was still suffering the misery of trying to figure out her body, she started learning how to come back to herself and block the opinions of others. She soon learned how to be completely still and surrender to the point of being okay with herself and with everything happening in the present moment. She realized that any deviation from that kind of thinking could lead her towards an addiction.Coming from a background as a health educator, Anita found that asking her patients questions inevitably led to better outcomes for their lives. That is because asking people questions empowers them and informs them subconsciously that they have the answers to most of their ailments. Many people don't consider food to be their medicine. Nor do they consider food to be something that can cause them to feel something immediately like medication does. Links and resources:Anita’s InstagramBooks mentioned: Bad Bitches Don't Diet: A True Philosophy About Food by Anita Abdul-Karim Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Program That Works by Elyse Resch and Evelyn Tribole Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today, our guest is Julie Hall. Julie is the author of The Narcissist In Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free, which was released in December 2019. In today's episode, she will be talking to us about what narcissism is and what it's like growing up with a narcissistic parent or parents.Julie comes from a narcissistic family, so she describes herself as a survivor. She is an educational writer, poet, and journalist. While working on her memoirs, she came to realize that narcissism had been a major theme throughout her life, so she shifted gears and began to write specifically about narcissism. This became part of Julie's healing process.Episode link>>>>www.theaddictedmind.com/90Julie has a popular blog called The Narcissist Family Files, and you can find the articles that she writes regularly in Psychology Today. She also has articles in The HuffPost and various other places on the internet. Narcissism is a personality disorder and there has been a lot of talk about it recently. Julie's book is about narcissistic personality disorder and how it affects the people close to the person with the disorder. Everyone has a level of healthy narcissism, in that we all see things through our lens to some degree. The narcissist, however, has pathological levels of self-involvement and he or she experiences fundamental developmental deficits, early on in life.In a family in which one or both of the parents are narcissistic, the family is structured in such a way that the needs of the children are secondary to the needs of the parents.With narcissists, there's an underlying sense of profound vulnerability, shame, inferiority, and worthlessness. Narcissism is a defensive coping structure and children who develop this kind of coping structure tend to repress their feelings of vulnerability and shame and they build an exterior persona to mask their overwhelming feelings. They develop a false grandiose and superior personality, often becoming domineering and competitive. They are out of touch with their inner, emotional world and so they don't actively engage with people on an emotional level. The narcissistic personality avoids self-reflection at all costs and it learns to mimic certain behaviors that look like intimacy. Narcissists tend to see themselves and others as either worthless or wonderful. When they see themselves (or others) as perfect, they need to stay that way in order not to feel worthless. They seem to be in a state that is disconnected from other people.A major loss could sometime cause narcissists to look for help. This can be difficult for them and their process of recovery takes a long time, possibly seven to ten years.It's devastating to be around a narcissist regularly. Especially for children, who suffer from a lot of pain, confusion, and complex trauma as a result.Addiction is a part of the narcissistic family system. As well as a pattern of depression, anger, confusion, family rifts, and alienation, with no awareness of what the core issue is, or naming the personality disorder that is driving the dysfunction within the family system. Denial is a big obstacle for the children of narcissists to overcome. They tend to move through all the stages of grief for a very long time. The therapists who can best help the children of narcissists have usually gone through the same kind of experience themselves, like children. Becoming educated about narcissism is very important for people who grew up with narcissistic parents. It's very easy to do today because there is so much information available.Links and Resources:Julie's website and blog: www.narcissistfamilyfiles.com Books Mentioned: The Narcissist In Your Life, Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free by Julie HallThe Narcissistic Family:Diagnosis and Treatment by Robert M. Pressman and Stephanie Donaldson-PressmanSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-addicted-mind-podcast/donations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.