How to Protect Your Peace at All Costs

Take a ride with me in my car for this special episode! I will share some of my current 'navigating toxic situations' and some important reminders about protecting your peace! Let's dive in!

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TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1 (00:03):

Hey Queens, welcome to, but still she thrives. Do you want to stop getting caught up in that wicked web of a creepy crawling narcissist? You find yourself up late at night replaying the abuse you put up with and wondering how you can heal now, do you wake up hoping for healthy relationships and peace only to feel totally exhausted and mind effed? Girl, I see you. I'm Christie. I too had to disconnect from toxic people in my life and I wished I could undo the damage. I felt ashamed, lonely, and kind of lost. But I'm a stubborn Italian and I refuse to give up. I found ways to recalibrate my mind and body more quickly than I thought and can now share them with you. In this podcast, you will find coping tools, healing methods, and confidence boosters so you can trust yourself and find peace and freedom. So shields up ladies, let's go protect our peace.

(01:00)
All right, it's been a while since I have recorded a new episode. I have no idea how long this'll be. Hold on to your bootstraps. I am actually just taking a little drive around the neighborhood. I think I'm going to park. It's a beautiful sunny day out and I think we'll have a little chitty chat. So I was just listening to a podcast myself and in it she was talking about just basically it's her sharing her journey as she goes. And I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. I know a lot of podcasts are very like mine, right? It's definitely to help other people. It's to, yes, share things I've gone through, but it's more like using my experience to give tips and tricks, which is very beneficial. But I thought I should sprinkle in some of how I'm still using to this day, even after I have cut a major narcissist out of my life, but how I'm still using it this day to deal with other people.

(02:10)
Because I'm not saying everyone's a narcissist. I don't like to throw that word around. But I will say that there are a lot of people that do have some narcissistic traits. And if you do come from a unhealthy family background, which sorry, fam I do, there's a lot of unhealthy stuff that went on, which honestly I feel like there's a lot of families that are like that. But maybe I also feel like that because maybe we tend to feel comfortable around other people and other friends that can relate to what we've gone through. So it's kind of like that attracts like situation. So I would say my husband who comes from a very healthy family background tends to have friends that come from pretty healthy family backgrounds too. Not saying there aren't exceptions. And for me, I tend to have especially older friends, friends I've accumulated in my youth before this journey that may have some family Bs in their little arsenal.

(03:18)
But then I also have some people I've met in more recent years that have either healthy families or healthy mindsets where they know how to navigate it and they don't have that drama bond, right? It's like the trauma bond, the drama bond. I dunno, is that a thing that's already out there? I thought I was so clever just now, but I guarantee that's already a thing. Drama bond. So anyway, there's been some drama bonding in my life for sure. If you're listening to this, you probably have drama bonding in your life currently, if you are seeking help or in your past, if you're kind of on this, yeah, I've really worked on myself. I've done the therapy. Now I'm looking to do the somatic healing, which by the way, I will always put the information to sign up. How to contact me by email or sign up for coaching or somatic healing is something I do as well.

(04:11)
That's healing through the body. If you dunno, it's freaking amazing. If you want testimonials, let me know. I will send you them. But it's really awesome. So as I travel through my neighborhood, very exciting. We are going to dive into what's going on in my life right now, how I'm dealing with a narcissist. This person, I actually, I dunno why I said a narcissist. This person for sure has some narcissistic tendencies. I think they have another type of mental disorder. I am not going to nay names. I'm not going to throw shade on anyone specifically. I'm just here to tell you how I navigate it in different facets of my life. So maybe I'll sprinkle in more stories, let me know. Definitely sign up for my Facebook page because that's where we can actually chat more. So sign up on that. The link is always in the description of the podcast and it's a great group of mostly women in there.

(05:13)
I believe it's all women. I don't know if a man snuck in. I usually check each and every thing before I approve it. So it should be all women and it's a safe place. It's a private Facebook group, but we can chat more in there. So recently I've had a situation, and in this situation there's someone that I am somewhat forced to deal with. I say somewhat because usually we're not really forced in less. It is in a lot of cases. And I know a lot of you have that situation where you have shared custody and you are dealing with a narcissist or a toxic ex or father or mother of your child, which can get very tricky. This is almost similar. There is someone I am somewhat forced to. I say somewhat because I have decided at this point, they have said such nasty things to me. They have done a couple really horrible things to me that has impacted my relationship with someone else that has been absolutely heartbreaking. I'm talking, Christie was losing sleep over it. Really, really tough stuff. And I wish I could go into further detail because I know everyone wants the juice. But for privacy sake of the person that I do have a relationship with, I am not going to disclose that.

(06:46)
Yeah, I'll leave that there for now. But the important part is what I realize is there's usually ways around things. So basically this person has been really not kind and made it very difficult to contact this other person that I'm dealing with. So I have made workarounds doing that and I have decided it is more important to me to let that person I have a relationship with know that I love them, I care about them, I want to talk to them directly. And sometimes that's all we can do. We have to protect our peace and our mental health. So there is a time where you have to evaluate for yourself, is this worth my mental anguish? I mean, usually the answer is no for me, but I've taken a while to get here. So I know it's not always overnight and I want to give that grace to you, give you permission to give yourself that grace that you may have setbacks.

(07:54)
I have had setbacks in this particular situation through the years where I have said, oh, I'm not going to let such and such talk to me this way. They're never going to get to talk to me again. That is it. And then because of the complex situation, I have been put in a situation where it's like I felt like I had to and my heartstrings are pulled to the point. I was like, well, I have to and it's worth it. I just got to. And then the cycle happens again. Here's something with, I don't want to say narcissist only toxic people. If they're really toxic and it's a pattern, it's going to keep happening. So you can get your heartstrings pulled and then you get sucked back in. The goal is to not keep getting sucked back in. We're human. I gave myself grace and this time feels, sometimes you will just feel it in your heart.

(08:47)
This time is different. What this person did this particular time in my situation was past the point of return for me. And I feel it in my body. It feels different. It feels like the exhaustion, that mental anguish that I give up feeling. Not I give up in a weak way, but I give up surrendering my peace to this human who is not kind and is not for me and never will be. And if the collateral is a relationship of somebody else, and that's what happens. I hope it's not and I don't think it will be, but I had to determine knowing I'm choosing to not respond to this person at all and all of their crazy antics and texts and calls and whatever I'm choosing. Not that could impact the relationship of me and the other person. But I have come to a point in my life where you guys know my favorite word is peace.

(09:58)
I have a peace bubble around me and my little family. If you don't know, I have a husband that I could not have written up, I could not have created. I didn't know. I always say I did not know they made people this good. I really didn't. And I think, I mean that could be because I grew up in the environment I did and whatever, but I truly am dumbfounded every day that God sent this person to me. I feel, and I'm not one to be like, oh, things are so great, and they're like shit behind closed doors. That's not me. No, I am very real. If you know me in real life, I will spill all the tea even on myself. I just read an old diary, the few diary entry things that were embarrassing as heck on YouTube yesterday. I'm an overshare. And if there's a problem I, I think people need to know, people in the public eye, like me on podcasts and YouTube, whatever, can very much make it a picture of like, oh, this is how things are.

(11:07)
And you can be like this rainbows and butterflies. That's not me. Do I have a lens of rainbows and butterflies? Yes. I choose every day to be positive, to find the best in situations, to see the silver lining, to make life full of joy. I create, I initiate. Does bad shit happen? Yes. Have I had arguments with my husband? Of course. But are they toxic and unhealthy? No. We talk them out. We might disagree. He might go step away. That's his thing. He might go step away for five minutes because I'm the type who wants to fix. Now yesterday, let's get this over with, I just want peace. Let's fix it, fix it. Where he's like, I need to process. So nothing's perfect in life. We have different ways we do things, but they're both healthy ways and we don't yell at each other. We don't scream. We don't curse at each other. So I'm just giving you an idea. I have a very nice husband. My daughter I adopted at birth and she is freaking incredible a gift from God.

(12:12)
I literally, the other day I was a little upset about this whole situation. It's a tough situation. And I let her see me upset. I mean, I don't wallow in it. I'm not a Waller, but I was like, and she goes, I'm really sorry this is happening. She said, I wish there was something I could do. And I said, child, I said, just be you make my life. You make parenting easy. And that is the best thing in the world right now that on top of this thing that's bothering me, I don't have to worry about you. She's like this little self-sufficient organized girl. She writes in her planner, we have a planning party on Sundays. We plan the week ahead. She's more organized than I am. She makes her own lunch every day. She does her laundry. She asks if she can help. She is sweet and kind and funny.

(13:05)
I say all that to say this, I have a very happy life that I will do whatever I need to protect because I didn't have that. And I want to protect her and her peace. I don't want to drag any of the muck outside into my home with her or my husband. And I finally, in my life, and you can relate to this maybe where you used to just, it was kind of what you knew. But now I know I deserve way better than people speaking ugly to me. People talking down to me, people making me feel like I'm not valuable or I grew up, I will say with a sibling that put me down a lot and call me names and stupid. And I think it was beyond sibling stuff. You know how some people know where to jab and they just jab it real hard even in our twenties. And it was stuff that would really hurt.

(14:13)
So I want to protect my family from the muck. I want to protect myself from the muck. I don't deserve it. I never did. And you don't deserve it. So when I find a mucky person in my life, I've learned to tolerate so much because of my upbringing. But now that I'm older, do I tolerate more than someone else would? I may a little, but I reached the point, and that's what I'm saying here. I reached the point where I was like, my body is saying no and I'm going to listen to it. And with somatic healing, you learn so well to listen to your what's right and wrong. Like I said, I had a moment a few years ago where I felt like, well, this is a very tough situation. I got to kind of just take this heat for a minute so I can still maintain this relationship with this other person.

(15:12)
It was important to me. It's still important to me. But when I listen to my body this time, I am like, I don't have anything left. Can you relate? I know you can. I know we've all done it with the actual narcissist situation, but I want you to be able to use the narcissist situation to also take the temperature of your other relationships or just even not relationships, but people that may come into your life in the office, friends that maybe come into your group and it doesn't feel so great. They're not such good people, very self-absorbed or whatever. Listen to your body, listen to yourself. And I am so sick of the word toxic. I feel like I use it because I don't know what else to call it. I'm so sick of the word, but just people that don't make you feel good.

(16:08)
People that don't lift you up and that don't reciprocate. Whatever it is. It doesn't have to be a narcissist, but if someone is hurtful to you and really, you know what energy I'm talking about where you're just like, oh gosh, you don't have to tolerate it. You don't have to. And in my life right now I'm saying this person no more. I just felt it in my body. It was like a zap of lightning was like F this. I cannot do it anymore. I cannot do it. I'm done. I actually did meditation on it to just kind of free up all the muck, get rid of the muck meditation.

(16:52)
And then I prayed. I'm a big God person if you don't know. I prayed and said, God, please help me maintain this relationship with the one person, but I need to be freed of this other one. And please help this be as calm and peaceful to navigate as possible. So I've been praying on that, and that's something you can do. Prayer is huge guys. If you're a God person, not everybody is. I don't judge. It is not for me to decide. I just know what I believe about my God and Jesus. I'm Christian and seen the power of prayer in my life is insane. I could do a whole podcast on the stories in my life where prayer has worked and just miracles have happened. So if you're a God person, pray. Pray. And don't be afraid to say no more in your life without the guilt, without the guilt. And that's the thing, I'm human. I still have this little string there. You think, oh, Christie's a badass. Everyone thinks I'm hardcore healed. Look, I'm human. I've come an insane amount of, I've done an insane amount of healing. I've come very far. I am so proud of where I am. I will be honest. Not to toot toot, but man did I let some muck in that I shouldn't have. And I'm finally past that, right?

(18:25)
But I let this muck in a little and a few years back, but I let the muck back out. But now it came back and I actually didn't open the door. So that's something to be said here. I didn't really open the door to it. It's so hard to explain without telling the story. But there was an accidental portal that let this person into my life, not into my life, but a conversation that shouldn't have even happened did a, not to my, I didn't willingly go there. Okay, we'll say that, but I had to say, okay, how can I avoid that? It will even happen by accident. That's the difference. So I've come far. I want to protect my own mental wellbeing, my peace, my family at all costs. I read this book called The Best. Yes. And it really changed my life. I've probably mentioned it 40 times on my YouTube and everything else.

(19:36)
It's by Lisa and I always forget her last name. LYSI believe you can get on Amazon, I highly recommend it. But if you're a God person especially, but you can also read it and kind of view the God parts as higher self or whatever higher being you believe in. But it is about the best. Yes, what is most important? And it basically your immediate family. Well, God's first always, right? God, your immediate family and yourself. And so it was really helpful in me releasing guilt around putting yourself, your family God first. And that sounds silly, saying it out loud, but when you have all this pressure to be good and be nice and this and that to everybody no matter what, and be even godlike in a way, but God doesn't want us to put up with all that. He doesn't want us to suffer. Yes, help people be there for people, right? Honor your family. Honoring your family does not mean taking abuse. I want to say that again on or ring your family does not mean taking abuse of any kind. Write it down, smoosh it on your mirror. I don't know. Get a tattoo on your forehead. It's serious. Okay, so honoring. I know a lot of us who are Christians look at like, well, it's blood, it's family.

(21:15)
And maybe someone can throw me a supporting verse here. I know I've seen them. I'm so bad at remembering Bible verses. I've read the Bible. I know general ideas of that there are supporting verses, but I don't know offhand. I would love to spit one out at you right now. But all I know is honoring your family is not honoring abuse. So whatever form that comes in, just that's a no from us, that's a no. Okay? So I just want to share what I'm going through to kind of personify how it can be, even if it's not specifically like a narcissist, but there are people narcissistic traits. I mean, so this person, I do feel like they only think inside their own heads, which a lot of people do. And especially if there's a high intense situation going on, a stressful, they're having a stressful time in their lives.

(22:26)
It is normal, I think, or human, maybe not normal, to really just be all about yourself. Which that part I can understand. I can have grace on that. I have grace with a lot of people who have their heads up their own butts, even my own very close friends, and they have big moments of it sometimes. And I'm like, you know what? It's that kind of world. And I love them. And I try to see past that to their good traits. I have friends with a lot of great traits. So it's like, okay, nobody's perfect. I'm not perfect. I'm sure I have my head up my own butt moments. But the difference is if my head's up my own butt or I'm in my own head thinking about what I'm going through, guess what I'm not going to do? I'm not going to yell at someone.

(23:13)
I'm not going to call them names. I'm not going to make them feel like a horrible person. I'm not going to curse, raise my voice any of that. That's not going to happen. Am I perfect? Does that happen? If someone comes at me and I defend myself possibly, it is rare. It is very rare. I can think of only two people in my life that it has gotten to that level where I went to a space of what is unhealthy communication. They came at me loud and cursing, and usually I don't get loud. Usually I'll do more of a, and I don't even know about cursing, but I will almost like a condescending kind of tone. I'm like, okay, yep. How's that feel? Does that feel good? Get that out. Okay. Feels delicious, doesn't it? Stuff like that where I should just maybe hang off the phone, right?

(24:13)
But I'm like, oh yeah, I don't know. That's my reaction. So we're all working on ourselves, but like I said, that is extremely rare. And not to say anyone can make you act a certain way. I was about to say, well, there's only two people that make me act like that. No, no, no. Back it up, sister. I will tell on myself right now, that's a cop out. I control my emotions or I control how I handle situation. So I've learned, okay, so now I have it in my head. Nope. If that person curses and yells at you, which now this person I don't talk to, I am telling you this is the disconnection. But earlier when they did that, then it's like, okay, now if you hear that, you just hang up the phone. Nobody has any right to talk to you that way.

(25:04)
And we tolerated so much because we're used to it. We thought, oh, it's just, that's just, oh, we're Italian or we're this and no man, no. If it feels really bad in your body, I get joking around. I have tough skin, people can pick at me. I have friends that we rag on each other. It's in fun. It's not the same. This is, I'm telling you, someone's being not kind to you on purpose with a purpose to make you feel like crap or it's their own shit and they're just word vomiting because they have to get it out of them. I feel like it's poison sometimes. Some people are like, they're made of poison, right? This person I'm thinking of, they have always been poison. The day I met them, they were poison, right? And so I feel like they just spew out poison and you might be in the wake of it, and you don't have to be, don't put up with poison.

(26:04)
Okay, I'm going to get a little bumper sticker. Don't put up with poison. Don't take the bait. That's another one of the things I say all the time, right? Don't take the bait. I took the bait by even opening my mouth to defend myself. You don't have to defend yourself. You don't have to come back with a sassy comment. You just hang up. You just get out, get out of there. Protect your peace Bubble baby bee. Alright, 25. Dang, this bee can roll at the mouth. Is that a thing? I'm just making stuff up now. Anyway, it's been a lovely little car ride around my neighborhood with you. I hope the audio's okay. I'd love you to join my Facebook page. Tell me if you got any little golden nuggets or just feeling comfort that someone out there is also going through what you're going through.

(27:00)
This was not so much tips and tricks, but just me sharing a little bit because everyone likes to hear a little share. I think I did when that woman who I was listening to just said she was just going to be sharing her journey as she goes through this transition in her life, whatever. I was like, oh, okay. I'm here for it. I hope you guys are having a fabulous week and definitely share this out to anyone you think it could benefit. Just this podcast as a whole. I know this particular podcast episode may not be the most listened I have, but I don't really care about that. But I do care about reaching more people with this narcissistic abuse podcast. I do feel like I want to start getting into some more episodes. I know I did so many. I felt like, what else do I have to say? There's so much information I put out and I'm very proud of this. But now I'm seeing the listens are starting to quadruple on some episodes. So I'm like, man, this is really a needed thing. What else can I do? So also in the Facebook group, any episodes you'd love me to do, let me know. All right, love you guys. See you in the next episode. Don't forget to follow.