And I think that many people have that. We have we have legacies where you'll find, like in my practice, I remember women who said, well, you know, I'm 50, so it's now my time to have a hysterectomy.

Everyone in my family has had a hysterectomy. It's like, okay, why don't you find out if there's any black sheep? And probably chances are good that the only people listening to this, if they have a thyroid problem, the black sheep of the family, they think differently.

And by the way, their genetic reading of their DNA is often very different. They do not get the same diseases. But let's say that thyroid disease runs in their family.

Do what's called a histogram. Big word for it. Just do a family tree and see who had what. Welcome to Doctor Talks, the podcast where every episode leads to a healthier you.

Join us as we navigate the world of optimal health, uncovering groundbreaking strategies to conquer chronic disease. In each episode, we'll bring you the latest insights from leading health experts, medical innovators, and wellness warriors.

If you're seeking to transform your health journey, or if you're looking for answers to burning questions. You've come to the right place. Get ready to unlock the secrets of lifelong health and vitality.

This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. Hi. Welcome back to the Integrative Health Podcast with Doctor Jen.

I'm your host, Doctor Jen Flagger. And today we're diving into a fascinating and often overlooked topic, the hidden impact of energy vampires. And these aren't mythical creatures.

They're toxic relationships that can drain your energy, disrupt your health, and even affect your thyroid. To help us navigate this important conversation, I'm joined by the legendary doctor Christiane Northrup.

Doctor Northrup is a true pioneer in women's health and wellness. Internationally renowned for her empowering approach to Mind-Body healing. She's a multiple time New York Times bestseller author whose groundbreaking books including Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom, and The Wisdom of Menopause have helped millions of women thrive at every stage of life.

Recognized as Oprah Winfrey's Super Soul 100 and name one of the most spiritually influential people in the world, doctor and author inspires people to take control of their health by understanding the unity of their minds, emotions, bodies and spirits.

Today, she's here to reveal how relationships can profoundly impact your health and how to identify and protect yourself from energy vampires that may be lurking in your life.

What's the real cost of these relationships and how to reclaim your power of vitality and well-being? Let's find out. So, Doctor Northrup, welcome. Oh, it's my pleasure to be here.

And I love this topic because for years and years and years and years, I'd see all these patients and we would do all the holistic stuff, diet, change everything, and they wouldn't get better or they'd get better for like two months.

So let's start back, shall we? In the early 80s with PMS, nobody had named PMS ever. And there was an article in Family Circle, I kid you not, in about 1982, 83 and all the doctors were saying, which they always do.

Well, that's all in women's heads. But this article in family, circle named the problem. And suddenly because once it's articulated, you go, oh my God, that's that's me.

So I knew it was a lifestyle disease because I knew that our creator did not create the menstrual cycle so that women could suffer, even though that's in the literature, you know, now you'll see how I suffered with you.

You know what women tell their daughters when, they're in labor. We don't have that so much anymore. We've gotten rid of the nasty stuff. But even Pliny the Elder way back would talk about.

Nothing is so toxic as the monthly flux of women. There's been kind of an anti female situation going on on the planet for a while anyway, so I began to do all the research with, Guy Abraham and all of these people who were doing wonderful work with PMS.

And what you've found is if you use magnesium and B6 and meditation and, and all of that stuff, and then later natural progesterone, they would always they would get better for about three months and then they couldn't sustain those changes because they were constantly really just pushing.

It was a symptom for a larger problem. We had to actually name the problem. And in every case, and this is I was learning about recovery, adult children of alcoholics, and this man, I realized because I'd keep my charts, Aqua, you know, an adult child of an alcoholic.

And by the way, something like 80%, maybe 90% of nurses are adult children of alcoholics. And a very big percentage of doctors are adult children of alcoholics.

So I got very involved in Claudia Black and the recovery movement and all of that. But at the same time, as a board member of the American Holistic Medical Association, I was meeting the people who were on the cutting edge of mind body medicine, but they didn't have anything to say about the menstrual cycle.

We had all this holistic medicine, but it left out the menstrual cycle, menopause, breastfeeding, labored birth. You know, all of my area, like you'd go to the holistic literature right on menstrual cycle or the cervix.

And I would say, si, Kundalini. Are you kidding? I'm seeing an awful lot of words before we get to Kundalini here. So I finally realized and then I had a designation in my chart.

Ackroyd. It was like they weren't an adult child of an alcoholic, but they acted like it. And then we got to the, a study, the Adverse Childhood Experiences study of Vincent Felitti started at UC San Diego in the weight loss clinic when he listened to one woman say overweight.

If she had gained 100 pounds, by the way, and she was only 1819, overweight is overlooked. And that's what I need to be. And she had been raped, and after that she gained 100 pounds.

And what they found in their weight loss clinic is that many people were successfully losing weight. No problem. And then they'd hit this place and they would stop losing weight and begin to gain it again.

And Fellini made the statement, the weight was the solution, not a great solution, but the weight was the solution for a bigger problem. Fear of being raped again. So therefore no one's going to rape you if you're fat and ugly, that kind of thing.

And so I began with the adverse childhood experience, this study, you know, they studied something like over 300 middle class. Maybe it was more it way, way more than that.

Middle class, middle income Americans in this study that, that Felitti did. And they found that over 50% had one or more adverse childhood experiences divorce of a parent, violence in the home, mental illness, chronic illness in a sibling or in a parent.

And this was actually dose dependent. So the more adverse childhood experiences you had, this was a one on one correlation with drug addiction, suicide, hospital visits and prescription medications.

That's the elephant in the room. And I knew it way, way back. So I would begin to talk to people about what's going on in your life, what's going on in your marriage.

And almost every person, especially the ones with really severe PMS. Yes, they needed progesterone because there's something that happened with the, with the Delta.

You could never, you know, people. I say, well, I want my hormones tested. What's that? And almost never tells you anything. By the way, I don't know if you noticed that, but what tells you something is what's going on in their environment, in their mind, in their body that's leading to this as the symptom.

And when I could get to the heart of it and they started to, let's say, go to 12 step meetings or get back into contact with their inner being, with the God in them, with their ability to be well, then they would finally recover.

And and Wilson Schaefer way back, who wrote, women who do too much meditations for women who do too much. And also when society becomes an addict, she would say, there is no transformation without recovery and there's no recovery without transformation.

So here you and I are, and we've worked in the air and all of the rest of it, and people are coming in and their life has finally gotten to the place where it's an emergency, like even there's even studies done, I think, at, New England Rehab, where they show that even accidents are not really accidents.

They're associated with, a kind of a, you know, anger and rage and whatever. And then we get into kind of the law of attraction, which is each of us has a frequency.

And, you know, and I know when you're feeling really good and you go out in the world and everything is is great, you had better experiences when you go out waiting, waiting for the hammer to hit you.

Look at the fact that there's a lot of hammers hitting all of us at this particular time. So I don't want to minimize that. That's a whole other conversation.

But anyhow, I finally then begin and I wanted to just show you this because then I was refining, refining, refining my my thoughts about this. And I finally realized that I had to learn about the thing called narcissism.

I didn't even know what narcissism was in the 90s. So remember, I was going through a divorce and somebody wrote to me and she said, well, it sounds like you were married to a narcissist.

And I thought, what's a narcissist? You know? And then I began to do the research, and then I finally came to the conclusion. There are basically two groups of people on earth.

There's the well, there's three. There's the empaths who have congenital blindness to evil and to darkness. Then there are the people who can see darkness, and they have good judgment.

What we do, the narcissist with the congenital blindness, we go, oh, I'm sure that I can save them. I'm sure that if we're just a little more loving kindness, they could be fine.

So I learned from Sandra Brown women who love psychopaths, that there is a whole group of women they are not battered women. They're not, you know, Skid row.

They're none of that. They run companies, they're lawyers, they're doctors, they're CEOs, and they keep going for the wrong man. Why? Because they have super traits.

She named the super traits super traits of can do loyalty, hard work, work ethic, seeing the best in everyone. And it works great. If you're running a company, it may kill you if it's a relationship that you're talking about.

So I learned about those women. I also learned, by the way, back in the 80s that basically everybody on some level is codependent or has a is an adult children of alcoholic or something, unless you are a narcissist.

And that's 1 in 5. And there's a spectrum just like autism. So you can be a little Asperger, or you can be in adult diapers and banging your head against the wall.

That's the autism spectrum disorder. Well, it's the same with personality disorder. And the way the reason they call them a personality disorder is it's not it's not organic.

They just think wrong. And I had a psychiatrist say to me, you know, about the people whose relatives don't come to visit them in the psych ward on Christmas because this is why they call it mental illness.

No one wants to be around them. So that's histrionic, schizo type, borderline narcissistic. And that's 1 in 5 people. But it can get to, an actual psychopath who has no empathy.

That's about 1 in 100 people. And right now, the planet we're all learning has been run by just a bunch of psychopaths at the top of the food chain. Anyway, it's our job as empaths.

And then this is going to get back to thyroid disease. Our job is to understand that those of us who are empaths and that's the healer types nurses, doctors, whatever, we are often born with a negative ego.

We look for things to improve about ourselves so we can feel better about ourselves. So we keep doing more and more to prove that, that we're worthy. And the personality disorder people are born with a superior ego.

You can't do right by them. So what I tell men, when you're looking for somebody to go out with, don't look at the beautiful woman who looks depressed because a good man will think he can save her, and he'll end up as a dry husk by the side of the road.

And she will go through, 5 or 6 marriages. I know those people. I could name them. And I'll bet everyone listening has a couple that they can name. They always come out of it butter side up no matter what, and so and so what I did and finally, I personally okay, I personally had to work with a lot of these people to realize that it was a pattern in me where I would give these people the benefit of the doubt.

They're very they're often larger than life, they're charismatic, they're better looking, you know, the life of the party. And you wonder, oh, wow, why did he choose me?

Just little old me. You know what? Well, I'll tell you why. For what's called narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is your attention. It's your love.

It's your caring. It's your sexuality, it's your money. That's what narcissistic supply is. And I want to make it real for people. This literally, literally, literally puts an umbilical cord in you that goes to them.

And if you are going to get well from because then I see all these women first was PMS, then we had chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia. And everyone will tell you, oh no, that's Epstein-Barr.

Well come on, everybody's been around Epstein-Barr. And if you live in Maine, everybody's been bit by a tick. But not everyone has Lyme disease, right?

So then it was fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Lyme disease. And here's what always happens though. You can count on it the minute the drug companies. By the way, I heard an ad in you won't believe this that they've come out with a medication for narcissism.

Oh my God. Now the thing about narcissism is they have no insight. No people. When you're listening to me talk, all you empaths are going to go, oh my God, am I a narcissist?

And I want you to know that as a diagnostic that you're an empath because no and no narcissist ever thinks they're a narcissist. They always think they're an empath.

So when this became a topic, when this became sort of something people were talking about, in like 2017, 18, 19, before Covid, what we had is a whole bunch of narcissists suddenly writing about narcissism and making a lot of money off it because that's what they do.

They are they have what I call malignant intuition. They know where the next thing is that they're going to milk. So I wrote a book back then called, Dodging Energy Vampires and Empaths Guide to Evading Relationships that Drain You and Restoring Your Health and Power.

Great. So you've got it there. I didn't know that this was predictive programing for where we would be in Covid. All I was doing with this book was trying to help the women who were in relationship.

And this could be a mother, a father, a son, a daughter, a grandparent, a boss. Because what you'll do, inevitably, inevitably, you'll find the one person who says, I couldn't, I can't live without you.

You can't quit, I need you, and then we need to be needed in that way. And then they put their plug into us and drain us. And so we have to learn things like, who are the friends?

And now you're all going to have names going through your head, who are the friends who only call you when they have a problem, and they need you to do something for them, help them move, drive them to the doctor, whatever they never call just to check it.

Never. They never say, oh, you know, it was on my heart to call you. How are you doing? No, they never do that. It's always. I got something I want you to do for me.

Now, let's talk about the thyroid. This is fifth chakra here. And it is creativity and speaking your truth. And it's also about, timing. When do you say it?

When should you say it? Whatever. And a lot of people with thyroid problems have not felt that they had permission to speak. And so they or they blurted out at the wrong time or whatever.

And they're trying to be nice always. Then, of course, and you're I know you get into this in other parts of your course, but everyone needs more iodine.

I mean, everybody, because T3 and T4, the three in the four refer to iodine molecules, and iodine has been replaced in the periodic table of elements and in the environment by, chlorine and fluoride and bromide.

And that pushes the iodine off the tissue. So everybody needs a good source of iodine. But you can't you can't do it too quickly. And you more than anyone know because as you said, you've had this situation.

Would you like to talk about what you learned? About it? Well, looking back when we talk about, like, energy vampires and everything you said when when women get a lot of their thyroid problems, they're in their 20s, their 30s.

And it takes it could take a decade for an autoimmune disorder to occur. So I always I look back at what happened with me, and I got diagnosed with problems when I was in high school.

So, you know, I always wonder, like, what was that event, you know, was it my family situation or something at school? And, and and then, you know, with staying sick, a lot of people staying sick with thyroid disease, I do speak with my patients.

Sometimes I feel them out to see if they would be open to it, because not everyone is open to talking about all of this. Some of you I would say most nobody is open.

It's uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable. So a lot of people might be like, yeah, I'm going to skip this summit talk, but you should it because this is actually where we'll start to see big improvements.

Especially with thyroid patients. Yes. A lot of them feel like they can't speak because they can't speak their mind because they have someone that is not letting them or they're in a relationship, or I've had patients that have had relapses because they've had trauma with a parent, and then that parent died or had a diagnosis like cancer.

So it sets them back. So when we look at the whole spectrum of health, we can't ignore this emotional side. And that's one thing I would say when we get conventionally trained and become doctors out there, and we're who people come to for their health and their health problems, we're not taught all of this, and this is a missing piece a lot of the times, and you could get stuck.

And, I like what you said, Doctor Northrup, about weight gain, too, and feeling safe at that weight because no one is going to to hurt you or look at you or, you know, listen to you and it's it's very, very emotional for people.

This runs very deep and it's very uncomfortable to talk about. And I love that you share your personal experiences also with us. Well, what do I want people to know is that if you realize that your problem is so common, you know, we always think, oh my God, that it was so awful this couldn't possibly happen to anyone else.

My family is unique. You know, I call it terminal uniqueness. And then you get in a room where people are all telling the truth. Oh my God, that happened to you. Oh yeah, that happened to me.

I have a whole bunch of friends. And for a while what we would do, we would coach each other on, whether I'm going to give you an example. So one of my friends who of course, had thyroid problems would call me during her marriage from the closet.

She'd have to go in the closet before she could talk to me so her husband wouldn't overhear. So this is diagnostic. If you have to go in the closet to talk to somebody, then you know you're in trouble.

The other thing she would do, she would call me on Sundays. And. What are you doing? Well, you know, I'm cutting up fruit for church with my family. Why?

Because that's what we do. I mean, that's what we do. What? You. You spend two hours before church cutting up fruit for all the church members that. Do you want to do this?

No. I'm visiting. This isn't what I want to do at all. But this is. This is the holy obligation. And then what would happen is, every time she would get to the point of saying something in her marriage, the guy would because they have malignant intuition, remember, he would drag a leg, he would get sick, he'd have something happen to get her attention back on him.

So listen to me on this one. The minute you start to break out of it, or the minute you decide to speak your truth, finally wait for it, they'll be something that happens to drag you back in to the pattern.

So you have to have somebody in your life who who you trust, who has your best interests at heart, especially if you're one of the people with the congenital blindness, with the super traits where you literally cannot see what someone else is doing, you cannot see it.

If you want to watch a TV show that lays it out beyond anything you can imagine, watch Dirty John. It's an amazing show about a psychopath. It's a true story.

You can watch it two ways. Or listen to the podcast, which is the direct interviews with these people and the LAPD, the Los Angeles Police Department.

Or you can watch the dramatization, which is, on television, Dirty John. It's, amazing. The acting is impeccable, and you might even see yourself or someone else in that, because the woman is so starved for love.

And like, like many women with super traits, she's very well off. She has an incredible decorating business, and she is very Christian. Meaning we forgive everybody.

We pray for everybody. And her sister had been murdered by her husband, and he came to the house right after he killed the woman's sister. He came to see the mother to see what he had done.

And she went right into. Now, this is this is physiologic. She went right into this endorphin fog of it is my job to forgive. So she sugarcoated all of it.

I'm a Christian. I'm going to forgive you. So she never what she did, her Christianity, her misinterpretation of what Jesus would have done, her misinterpretation led to the fact that her own two daughters, their instinct for self-preservation, was completely wiped out by their conditioning around this mother.

And I think that many people have that we have we have legacies where you'll find, like in my practice, I remember women who said, well, you know, I'm 50, so it's now my time to have a hysterectomy.

Everyone in my family has had a hysterectomy. It's like, okay, why don't you find out if there's any black sheep? Probably. Chances are good that the only people listening to this, if they have a thyroid problem, the black sheep of the family, they think differently.

And by the way, their genetic reading of their DNA is often very different. They do not get the same diseases. But let's say that thyroid disease runs in your family.

Do what's called an pista gram. Big word for it. Just do a family tree and see who had what. And you can do like the Hoffman process, and you find out how that landed on you.

And then where the and you said it best. This is very hard for people, but it is the heart of the healing is right there. The blood of the wound contains the healing.

And so if you can allow yourself to be brutally honest with yourself, then the healing can begin. And many times, by the way, I believe and I'm sure that you've seen this, our endocrine system, central nervous system, immune system is run by an unhealed childhood.

Part of us. It's by, a little kid who never had their say. And now you as the adult in the room, you have to go back and repair it yourself. That doesn't mean taking a teddy bear to work with you.

That's just dumb. That happened in the 80s. I just have to point that out. You know, it's like I'm taking my inner child to work. No, the inner child thing is, there's a precious part of us that has been abused, slammed shut down in childhood.

And so your job is to reach in and repair it. That child, you know, I can take you through a very quick exercise. It's called the magic garden exercise taught to me by Doctor Dorothy Cohen.

And so she says, you just close your eyes and take a couple breaths and pick a number between 1 and 10. And you take another deep breath and let it out a little longer.

That engages your parasympathetic rest and restore nervous system. And then you see a stop sign in front of you. Stop. You're doing it again. And then you just slowly, slowly go down some stairs and you come out into this magic garden, and there are butterflies and beautiful flowers and a body of water.

It's just wonderful. And there you see yourself. At the age of that number, you picked between 1 and 10, because your subconscious will always pick exactly the right thing.

And now see if she will come over to you, see what she's doing. Sometimes she's crying, sometimes she's playing joyfully, chasing butterflies. See if she'll come over to you and get her to sit on your lap.

If she will. She might not. She might still be angry with you for abandoning her. If she does sit on your lap. And even if she doesn't, you give her a hug and you say, honey, I will never abandon you again.

I will be here for you from now on. But right now I have to leave. But I will be back. Don't worry. I will be back. Okay. Then you take another deep breath like this.

And you let it out through your nose. You open your eyes and you say it is wherever you are. You're in Ohio, I'm in Maine, my name is this, and I'm in Maine.

And the date is February. Is it the 23rd, I think today, 23rd, 2023. Boom. Now you're back in time and space in this time and space, if you go back and do that little exercise for 40 days, it's kind of a magic number in the Bible, 40 days and 40 nights wandering 40 years in the desert.

If you do that, you will upgrade your endocrine, immune and central nervous system. You'll bring them into the present moment as an adult because you've been there for yourself in a way that your own parents couldn't be.

That's that's really deep. I did the exercise while you were doing that, and I'll probably continue it. I remember reading about it in your book. So when we might, you know, and people might be like, that's not me, but really, I, I was reading parenting books about things.

And even if you look at a kid's artwork and say, oh, okay, or you're not giving them their full attention and appear dismissive even though you're trying to, like, do the bills or work at home like we all had to do during Covid.

That could be a micro trauma or a little trauma. So absolutely, because the kid doesn't know how to interpret it, right? Mix things up. My daughter told me that she didn't join the Girl Scouts because she thought her father and I would not pay for the uniform.

I don't know where she got that. I don't know where the other daughter was clear. The uniform is ugly. I do not want to be Scout, but the one who wanted to be a Girl Scout apparently she'd heard her father and I discussing money, and so she just got the idea.

I'm not even going to ask. Yeah, that's. You know, it scares me as a parent of four because I'm like, what am I doing? That's kind of like affect them later.

But I everyone can heal. And there are some people out there that think everyone has trauma. It's because in my questionnaire for new patients, I have emotional trauma.

You know, I have Lyme mold. All of that, you know, canals. And then I have emotional trauma. And part of me is like, should I just take that out and assume that?

But I put it in there because it gets people thinking. And even if they right know, I ask them, you know, and sometimes it won't come out until the second or third appointment until they're more comfortable.

So this is not easy stuff for talking about. And and no one did anything wrong. But it is an important part of your healing especially I guess my question is for you.

How can people listening know if they're an empath or not? You've kind of touched on if you're narcissistic, you know you're going to be oblivious. You're not even going to think anything applies to you.

But but there's different spectrums of empaths as well. Absolutely. So so there are those who you walk into a room and suddenly you're sad. But you weren't sad when you walked in because you're picking up someone else's sadness.

You literally are like an air purifier. I have a friend who just told me that when she she's done really well, she was alone during Covid. She said it helped her heal a lot and stuff.

She said now when she walks into a room, she'll sometimes leave and go home and cry. Not because it's her sadness. It's the sadness of everyone in the room.

Because of the Covid measures, many of us have lost people or because of the Covid measures, we've been canceled by family members or whatever it is. So there's enormous grief and sadness and what empaths tend to do is carry that as excess weight, carry it as excess emotion.

And so you you need to keep your own boundaries clean and you need to know what your boundaries are. So the other thing is this are you the person in the office or in the family who everyone comes to with their problems?

Chances are you're you're an empath. You really, really, really are good at helping other people with their problems. The problem is they will hand you a load of their own negativity.

You take it on and they go, oh, I feel so much better. And then they leave and you're feeling like a wreck. Pay attention when you're around somebody.

In the book, I talked about two experiences I had where I'm with, a narcissist. Just. I don't even know it, but I suddenly feel like I have got to lie down on the rug and go to sleep.

I literally will drain your energy so that in the I. I'll never forget it. It was this. Some famous designer. I'm at her house. I'm eating tomato soup.

I'm digging my nails into my palms to stay awake. I, I came up with everything I could think of. I just wanted to go to sleep. It's like the Poppy's in the Wizard of Oz.

Honest to heaven. And so that's a sign. If you get tired around somebody, you know and. And so you won't even notice it until someone has told you. Oh, no, that's what happens.

Or, you know, you just find yourself depressed after being around a certain person. So pay attention to those things. How was I before I came in then?

Here's the other thing that you want to do. Let's say that one of your parents is a narcissist. Very common. Like your mother, let's say, is a borderline.

And you can for those people, actual love. Because the empaths are full of love, real love is a toxin for those people. So you can gauge how much love they can stand by, how long it takes for them to start criticizing you.

So you might have this, like, really great relationship with your mother for the first 15 minutes. Oh it's great. And you're talking about, you know, your brothers and your sisters and what you cooked for dinner.

And then she goes negative. What have you done to your hair? Have you gained a little weight? You know, that kind of thing to put you down. That's how you know she has reached her tolerance level for milligrams of love.

I learned from Doctor Mario Martinez milligrams of love. And then you take your leave now, knowing that or suspecting that you do your social engagements with a set beginning and a set ending time and stick to it, even though, oh, can't you stay longer?

You're never here for me. They do all the stuff, you know, drag a leg. No. You got to have strict bound. And the first thing you're going to do, this is important.

You're going to feel guilty. Because as a little kid, you were taught that you had to make mom and dad happy or Aunt Sophie or whatever. It was your job.

If you talk to a comedian like Jim Carrey, he felt that his whole job was to make his mother laugh. Same with Robin Williams, because they both had horrific fathers, and so they would be the one who saved their mothers and make her laugh.

And that's if we believe that it's our job to fix someone else. And believe me, nurses and doctors, I mean, this is in our DNA. Otherwise we wouldn't be bothered.

But we really, really, really care. You really want people to get better. But this part I'm talking about is an inner job. You can't wake someone up to this until they're ready.

Same with, you know, battered women. You. I have a friend who was battered. Her mother came over from England. The mother had been battered but got over it.

She came in, she got her daughter out of the hospital and she said, now I want you to write down everything you remember about this man. Write it down right now while it's fresh in your mind.

How horrid ill he treated you. Because he will come back and he will get down on his knees, and he will beg you to forgive him. And I'm not going to stop you from going back, but you need to have this to remind you that it was this bad.

Because what empaths do my God, our cork just floats right up and you give everyone the benefit of the doubt. And then when you get rid of one person, the next one comes.

But here's how you judge your progress. You might have a 24 year marriage like I did, and then you'll have a 12 year best friend. Not a same problem. And then you'll have just, then a, sociopath I worked with to launch my product line.

I later found he had four passports that was only like a couple of years. And then recently it's just been, you know, some podcasters, they they love bomb you at first, like, oh, my God, you're the best thing that was ever born.

And anytime someone does that, an alarm bells should go off and alarm bells should go off. You know they're making you feel special. The love bombing and all of the rest of it.

Because inevitably they will turn on you. Basically, it takes about two years if it's a love relationship, till you see who they really are. And, now I can see it coming.

If someone's really good looking and really charismatic, then I normally don't want to have anything to do with them. They're going to have to really prove themselves like they're just a normal person, or I won't go near it.

I've been burned too many times. So that's how you know. And but no, like, say, like you're the person they come to in the office and everyone comes around you and they feel so much better because you've given them all their narcissistic supply and then you're drained. You.

There's a couple techniques I want you to know about. One is gray Rock. Just literally pretend you're a gray rock. You give off no energy whatsoever. I talked to a woman who worked in an office.

People always came in to talk. She said, oh my God, when I do that, I feel so guilty. Like it's my job to uplift everybody. And that's the dilemma, because you want to uplift everybody, but not at the expense of yourself.

And I think women in particular have been sold a bill of goods that it's your job to feed everyone. It's your job to love everybody. It's your job to, you know, bring the whatever.

And so once we find out how not to do that, you're going to find people respect you more. They actually you just find that your self-respect. You have to decide, I'm worth.

I'm worthy. I'm worthy of time. I'm worthy of attention. And and then you have to do another thing. You got to be willing to be with yourself for a while.

Pour love into yourself. Because if you're trying to find it through another person, through activities, whatever, it's not there. It's always here. And I know that because people have said to me in the past, you know, well, what is it like to be famous?

It's like famous is not it does not exist. It does not exist. You've got it. You go home, you're either alone or you have friends who you can really trust.

But this other thing, fame is the most ridiculous thing on the planet. I love all that. I, I really think the whole empathy thing, like you said, nurses, doctors.

I remember on my med school application, you put three weaknesses, three strengths, and I put empathy, down. I think I put it as a weakness because it is sometime, you know.

Yeah, I mean, I, I saw patients yesterday in the office and it was just a very emotional day. I felt like I took on all their energy because I'm I was late luteal phase.

I'm super emotional and I can't guard my energy when I'm in that luteal phase. That drone is high. So for me, I'm wiped out after my office day yesterday and, you know, but I'm getting better.

And I think that's what people need to learn, like you have. So I remember about, I think seven years ago, one of my friends was having had this horrible miscarriage.

It just shouldn't have happened. As a doctor, I knew it shouldn't have happened. And I was so upset about it. I was nauseous. And my husband said to me, he's like, Jenny, stop taking all your friends energy on.

He's like, you have your own family. You we need you to not take on this energy. And I really took that to light. And then I had a Reiki session like a year later, and they're like, you're taking on the energy of your er patients.

And I mean, you know, because I put a hand on them and I'm like, I'm sorry you're going through this and I feel with them. But at some time, you know, we can still be empathetic but protect yourself and your energy.

So for me that's my you know, maybe that's why I ended up with thyroid problems because I'm sure I was like, that is a little kid, too. This isn't something that you can turn on and turn off.

But I will say with age, I have really gotten better at feeling energy around me. And I'll even tell my husband he's like, when I hang out with this. This couple.

And I'm like, I just don't get good energy from them. And I just leave it at that. And it's just, I'm like, my time is important. I want to hang out with people that, you know, I have good energy.

I mean, you are like so good at this because like you said, when your your fame brings in probably all the narcissistic personalities and because you're an empath, they take advantage of that.

Well, because most I shouldn't say most celebrities, but like the narcissistic personality, things fall into their lap. You. Yeah. Oh yeah. I heard you're an empath that worked hard and became.

So I feel like you're different than other people out there with fame. Does that make sense? I can tell you it. I've spent time in the Hamptons. It makes total sense. Total sense.

They. It's so interesting. Everything is given to them. Designer clothes are given to them. Everything's given to them. And we and we as a society put them on a pedestal.

Hopefully after Covid, that's going to go away because, that's, there's, there's no they're there and I have learned that narcissists like that larger than life, if they are no longer the center of attention, they deflate like a balloon.

I've seen it. They have nothing to say. If you stop giving them narcissistic supply, if you stop pumping them up, if you stop treating them special, they just deflate.

There's nobody home. And and that's what I was hoping during the pandemic. I was like, okay, doctors, nurses, you know, they're the heroes. It was weird.

People would just say thank you to me because they knew I was an ER doctor working during Covid. And I was hoping, yeah, all of the glorifying all the celebrities because they really didn't do much for, for any monetary during Covid.

But but we're back. I feel like we're back in, in the thick of things like we were before almost. Yeah. I think people are starting to wake up to what, what was told to us, which was not true.

And really. And I saw it from the beginning. There's a few of us who could see it from the very beginning. And then, you know, we were mercilessly attacked.

And by the way, narcissists will do that the minute you are not going along with their narrative, they will attack you personally. So they're not attacking you on the content or on the facts.

They're attacking you as a person. So, so many of us were called, racist, transphobic, anti-Semitic, I guess QAnon conspirator came in there so they would just choose a whole series and then here's, okay, this is something an empath should know.

You have spent your whole life trying to prove your worth, and suddenly you've done nothing wrong. In fact, you've done stuff right. You're actually saving people's lives and they're attacking you.

And it's so painful. It's so painful because that's that's your your human homework that you have to do to realize you don't need their approval. But we live for their approval.

And so we get to the point where, you see, at this point where I am anyone who sold out during the pandemic in any way, no matter how much of a celebrity they are or were, I've lost all respect for them.

It used to be I would try to be, I would try to be acceptable to them. Now it's the opposite. It's the other way around. Because over, over the years, you you learn how to do this.

And oftentimes, you know, we humans. What is, Alex Collier say? It's so funny. He says with when with wisdom comes experience. And experience comes from poor judgment.

That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think you're right. What I have seen locally is people doubling down, even on bad things, even when the evidence now is showing us that the people that they cast out were actually correct.

They're just doubling down because they because they possibly are narcissistic and they, they can't admit they're wrong. So I think that that is what I've noticed that has been bananas.

But I, I love that you have just shown like you shine and you've grown and it it's reassuring that, you know, as empaths even on that spectrum, that you can protect yourself and grow and succeed.

And like you said, the seeking approval. And then, you know, for a while you just have to say, say no thanks. I guess I was like, your biggest what's your biggest tip?

I guess, I guess to give those listening that feel in a in a similar state that that you were in, you need. Okay. So remember, one of the things that was done to us was this six foot social distancing thing, which, by the way, there's no data on whatsoever.

So what I want to say is where health is is the opposite, which is you. We need community community immunity. So you need at least one other person who understands you who gets it.

About the narcissistic empath thing. There's a TV show right now. I watched all the seasons. It's called, Firefly Lane. It's a beautiful example of a narcissistic person with.

Yeah, she had a rough childhood and an empath. The relationship between these two women is classic, and they fit together very, very well because each has what the other one needs.

So neither one is an outright psychopath. It's it's not that destructive, but it's to watch that dance is is quite important. So I would say you need somebody who understands what you're going through and is not going to try to undermine you.

And the other thing I can say to you is that we're going through on planet Earth right now. Massive change in frequency. An example of that is the revival that broke out in Asbury, Kentucky, at a small Christian college where one young man started to talk about what was on his heart and sort of confessed his sins or whatever.

And then the Holy Spirit moved in. And then millions of people have been there. The niece of one of my friends went, and it's happening all over the United States, probably all over the world, where people are beginning to wake up to who they really are, and I call it Christ consciousness.

So you can call it whatever you want, but you can feel it. So what I would say is, when you're moved to tears by something that's kind of the holy and empaths were we're brought here, you need to understand your value.

So you've devalued yourself. Your value is you keep the lights on. You're the air purifier. One empath can clear the emotional energy in a room. As long as you're taking care of yourself and not getting drained.

So don't let them, you know, it's like an unclaimed umbilical cord. You know how fast the blood rushes out of that? You got to clamp that cord to the wrong people.

Bring in God's love and energy for yourself, find some like minded people. And if that means learning how to say no, oh, here's a couple tips I want to give you.

Okay? Someone calls you, they want you to do something. You've already got plans, but you feel guilty. Okay, you say, I'll get back to you. Okay? Don't do the knee jerk. Yes.

You want to say yes? Every time I do the knee jerk, I'll get back to you so you can think about it for a minute. With time. The PhD level is. I'm so sorry, I simply can't.

That's the PhD level. No excuses, I simply can't, I simply can't. You do not owe them an excuse, an apology or anything, I simply can't. But for the beginner, it's.

Let me get back to you. But so that's what I would say is, is the tip, you know, and that includes your brothers, your sisters, your adult children, everybody.

Because if you're an endless fund of food and love and abundance and freshly baked bread, everyone will be coming to get that, and you've got to have something left for yourself.

And then you can give abundantly from a very full tank. Absolutely. I think that that's great advice, especially so you can heal. This is about healing.

Oh yeah. So this is so important. Such good tips, such great conversation. Thank you, Doctor Northrup. How can everyone find you and get Ahold of you?

You know, via social media and all that? Well, first of all, I want to know there's a lot you can do. I created two courses to help people rid cells of energy vampires.

So if you go to my website, Doctor northrup.com and check on E courses at the top because I take you right through it. And this is something that you learn over time, over time, over time, just like I learned about the adult children of alcoholics.

So those are right there on my website, doctor, north of.com e courses. And then also I'm on, Truth Social, a little bit Twitter all the time now that they're no longer censoring.

So I'm having fun on Twitter. Telegram. We put some stuff on Facebook. Facebook is still very censorship, organized Instagram, doctor of divine biology.

I'm on there, but mostly with snarky memes. I have to say. And so my My Kind of Ministry is my, podcast True North. So that's where you can find me. Awesome.

Thank you so much. I it was such a pleasure talking to you. Thank you. Pleasure talking to you. Thank you. Thanks to Doctor Christine Northrup for shedding light on the impact of energy vampires.

Protecting your energy is critical for your health. If this episode of Resonated with you, subscribe to the Integrative Health podcast with Doctor Jen and share it with someone who needs to hear this information.

Take care and see you next time! Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health.

Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your wellbeing. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website w ww di doctor talks.com.

Stay connected, stay healthy and join us next time on Doctor Talks. Real talks from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most.

Energy Vampires: Reclaim Your Health by Protecting Your Energy

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, ABOIM

Christiane Northrup, MD

Comments