Energy Vampires: Impact on Our Health

Christiane Northrup, MD

Oh, it is my pleasure to be here. And I love this topic because for years and years, I would see all these patients and we would do all the holistic stuff, diet change everything, and they would not get better or they’d get better for like two months. So let’s start back, shall we? In the early eighties 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 is all in women’s heads. But this article in Family Circle named The Problem, and suddenly, because once it is articulated, you go, oh my God, that is 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 is in the literature, now you will see how I suffered with you. You know what women tell their daughters when they are in labor. We do not 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 is been kind of an anti-female situation going on on the planet for a while. Anyway,  I began to do all the research with Ghee Abraham and all of these people who were doing wonderful work with PMS. And what you found is if you use magnesium and B6 and meditation and all of that stuff, and then later natural progesterone, they would always they would get better for about three months. And then they could not sustain those changes because they were constantly really just pushing. It was a symptom for a larger problem. You had to actually name the problem. And in every case and this is I was learning about recovery, adult children of alcoholics. And then I realized because I would keep my charts, ACOA, 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 did not have anything to say about the menstrual cycle. We had all this holistic medicine, but it left out the menstrual cycle menopause, breastfeeding, labor, birth, all of my area. Like you’d go to the holistic literature, right on menstrual cycle or the cervix and it would say, see Kundalini. Are you kidding? I’m seeing an awful lot of works before we get to Kundalini here. So I finally realized and then I had a designation in my chart, ACOA Void. It was like they weren’t an adult child of an alcoholic, but they acted like it. And then we got to the ACE 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 18, 19. 

Overweight is overlooked and that is 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 Felitti 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 are fat and ugly, that kind of thing. And so I began with the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. Now they studied something like over 300 middle class. Maybe it was more way more than that. Middle class, middle income Americans in this study that that Felitti did. 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 is the elephant in the room. And I knew it way, way back. So I would begin to talk to people about what is going on in your life, what is going on in your marriage. And almost every person, especially the ones with really severe PMS, yes, they needed progesterone because there is something that happened with the Delta. You know, people would say, well, I want my hormones tested. What is that? And almost never tells you anything, by the way, I do not know if you have noticed that, but what tells you something is what is going on in their environment, in their mind, in their body that is 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 Anne Wilson Schaef 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 is no recovery without transformation. So here you and I are, and we’ve worked in the E.R. and all of the rest of it, and people are coming in and their life has finally gotten to the place where it is an emergency. 

There is even studies done, I think, at New England Rehab, where they show that even accidents are not really accidents. They are associated with a kind of anger and rage and whatever. And then we get into the law of attraction, which is each of us has a frequency. And, you know, and I know when you are feeling really good and you go out in the world and everything is great, you have better experiences when you go out waiting for the hammer to hit you. It’ll be at the fact that there is a lot of hammers hitting all of us at this particular time, so I do not want to minimize that. That is a whole other conversation. But anyhow, I finally then begin and I wanted to just show you this because then I was refining my thoughts about this. 

And I finally realized that I had to learn about the thing called narcissism. I did not even know what narcissism was in the nineties. I 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 is a narcissist? 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 is the well, there is three, there is the empath who have congenital blindness to evil into darkness. Then there are the people who can see darkness and they have good judgment for 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 with 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 are not skid row. They are none of that. They run companies, they are lawyers, they are doctors, they are CEOs. And they keep going for the wrong man. Why? Because they have super traits. She named this super traits. Super traits of can do loyalty, hard work, work ethic, seeing the best in everyone. And it works great. If you are running a company, it may kill you if it is a relationship that you are talking about. So I learned about those women. I also learned, by the way, back in the eighties that basically everybody on some level is codependent or has an it isn’t adult children of alcoholic or something unless you are a narcissist. And that is one in five. And there is 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 is the autism spectrum disorder. Well, it is the same with personality disorder. And the way the reason they call them a personality disorder is it is not organic. They just think wrong. I had a psychiatrist say to me about the people whose relatives do not come to visit them in the psych ward on Christmas. He goes, This is why they call it mental illness. No one wants to be around them. So that is histrionic, schizotypal, borderline, narcissistic, and that is one in five people. But it can get to an actual psychopath who has no empathy. That is about one in a hundred people. And right now on the planet, we’re all learning has been run by just a bunch of psychopaths at the top of the food chain. Anyway, it is 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 is the healer types, nurses, doctors, whatever, we’re 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 we’re worthy. 

And the personality disorder people are born with a superior ego. You can not do right by them. So what I tell men when you are looking for somebody to go out with, do not 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 five or six marriages. I know those people. I could name them and I will bet everyone listening has a couple that they can name. They always come out of it butter side up no matter what. And so what I did and finally 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 are they are often larger than life. They are charismatic, they are better looking, the life of the party. And you wonder, oh, wow, why did he choose me? Just little old me. 

You know what? Well, I will tell you why. For what is called narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is your attention, it is your love, it is your caring, it is your sexuality, it is your money. That is what narcissistic supply is. And I want to make it real for people. This 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 is 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. So then it was fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, Lyme disease. And here is what always happens, though. You can count on it the minute the drug companies by the way, I heard an ad and you would not 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. Now, people when you are 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 is diagnostic that you are an empath because no narcissist ever thinks they are a narcissist. They always think they are 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 is what they do. They are, they have what I call malignant intuition. They know where the next thing is that they are going to milk. So I wrote a book back then called Dodging Energy Vampires: An Empath’s Guide to Evading Relationships That Drain You and Restoring Your Health and Power. Great! So you have got it there. I did not 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 will do, inevitably, you will find the one person who says, I could not, I can not live without you. You can not 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? Then now you are 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 in. Ever. They never say, Oh, you know, it was on my heart to call you.

How are you doing? No, they never do that. It is 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 is also about timing. And when do you say it? When should you say it? Whatever. And a lot of people with a thyroid problem have not felt that they had permission to speak. And so they or they blurted out at the wrong time or whatever. And they are trying to be nice always. Then of course, in your, 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 and 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 every body needs a good source of iodine, but you can not do it too quickly. And you more than anyone know, because, as you said, you have had this situation. Would you like to talk about what you learned about it?

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

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 are in their twenties, their thirties. And it takes it could take a decade for an autoimmune disorder to occur. So I look back at what happened with me and I got diagnosed with thyroid problems when I was in high school. So, you know, I always wonder like, what was that event? Was it my family situation or something at school? And then 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.

Christiane Northrup, MD

I would say most up, nobody’s open.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

It is uncomfortable. It is very uncomfortable. So a lot of people might be like, yeah, I’m going to skip the summit talk, but you should not 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 not speak because they can not speak their mind because they have someone that is not letting them or they are in a relationship. Or I have 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 not ignore this emotional side. And that is 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 back. And I like what you said, Dr. Northrup, about weight gain, too, and feeling safe at that weight, because no one is going to hurt you or look at you or listen to you. And it is very, very emotional for people. This runs very deep and it is very uncomfortable to talk about. And I love that you share your personal experiences also with us.

Christiane Northrup, MD

Well, what 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 could not possibly happen to anyone else. My family is unique, 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 would not overhear. So this is diagnostic. If you have to go in the closet to talk to somebody, then you know you are in trouble. The other things she would do, she would call me on Sundays and what are you doing? Well, I’m cutting up fruit for church with my family. 

Why? Because that is what we do. I mean, that is what we do. What you spend 2 hours before church cutting up fruit for all the church members. Do you want to do this? No, I’m visiting. This isn’t what I want to do at all. But 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. There’ll be something that happens to drag you back into the pattern. 

So you have to have somebody in your life who you trust, who has your best interests at heart, especially if you are 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 is an amazing show about a psychopath. It is 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 is 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 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 say what he had done. And she went right into now 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 legacies where you will find, like in my practice, I remember women who said, well, you know, I’m 50, so it is now my time to have a hysterectomy. 

Everyone in my family has had a hysterectomy. It is like, okay, why do not you find out if there is any black sheep? It 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 is called an ep histogram. Big word for 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 end 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 have seen this our endocrine system, central nervous system, immune system, is run by an unhealed childhood part of us. 

It is 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 does not mean taking a teddy bear to work with you. That is just dumb. That happened in the eighties. I just have to point that out. It is like I’m taking my inner child to work. No, the inner child thing is, there is a precious part of us that has been abused, slammed, shut down in childhood. And so your job is to reach in and repair that child. I can take you through a very quick exercise. It is called the Magic Garden, an exercise taught to me by Dr. Dorothy Cohen. And so she says, you just close your eyes and take a couple breaths and pick a number between one and ten, and you take another deep breath and let it out longer that engages your parasympathetic rest and restore nervous system. And then you see a stop sign in front of you. Stop, you are doing it again. 

And then you just 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 is just wonderful. And there you see yourself at the age of that number you picked between one and ten, 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 will 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 does not, 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. Do not worry, I will be back. 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 are 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 are back in time and space in this time and space. If you go back and do that little exercise for 40 days, kind of a magic number in the Bible, 40 days, 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 have been there for yourself in a way that your own parents could not be.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

That is really deep. I did the exercise while you were doing that, and I will probably continue it. I remember reading about it in your book, so when we might and people might be like, That is not me, but really I, I was reading parenting books about things. And even if you look at a kid’s artwork and say, okay, or you are not giving them their full attention and appear dismissive, even though you are 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.

Christiane Northrup, MD

So absolutely. Because the kid does not know how to interpret it. They may mix things up. My daughter told me that she did not join the Girl Scouts because she thought her father and I would not pay for the uniform. I do not know where she got that. I do not know where the other daughter was clear. The uniform is ugly. I do not want to be a Girl 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.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Yeah, it scares me as a parent of four because I’m like, what am I doing that is kind of like affect them later. But everyone can heal. And there are some people out there that think everyone has trauma. It is because in my questionnaire for new patients, I have emotional trauma. You know, I have Lyme, mold, and all of that.

Christiane Northrup, MD

Yeah.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Root 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 leave it in there because it gets people thinking. And even if they write no, I ask them. And sometimes it would not come out until the second or third appointment until they are more comfortable. So this is not easy stuff we’re talking about. 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 are an empath or not? You’ve kind of touched on if you are narcissistic, you are going to be oblivious. You are not even going to think anything applies to you. But but there is different spectrums of empaths as well. 

Christiane Northrup, MD

Absolutely. So there are those who you walk into a room and suddenly you are sad. But you weren’t sad when you walked in because you are 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 of stuff. She said now when she walks into a room, she will sometimes leave and go home and cry. Not because it is her sadness, it is 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 is enormous grief and sadness and what empaths tend to do is carry that as excess weight, carry it as excess emotion. And so 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 are an empath. You really are good and 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 are feeling like a wreck. Pay attention when you are around somebody. In the book, I talked about two experiences I had where I’m with a narcissist. I do not even know it, but I suddenly feel like I have got to lie down on the rug and go to sleep. It literally will drain your energy so that in the moment I will 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 came up with everything I could think of. I just wanted to go to sleep. It is like the Poppy’s in The Wizard of Oz, honest to heaven. And so that is a sign if you get tired around somebody you will know, and so you would not even notice it until someone has told you, Oh, no, that is what happens. Or, 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 is 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 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 is great! 

And you are talking about your brothers and your sisters and what you cook 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 is how, you know, she has reached her tolerance level for milligrams of love. I learned from Dr. 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 not you stay longer? You are never here for me. They do all the stuff, you know, drag a leg. No, you got to have strict front. And the first thing you are going to do, this is important, you are 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 is if we believe that it is our job to fix someone else. And believe me, nurses and doctors, I mean, this is in our DNA. Otherwise we would not be bothered. But we really, really care. You really want people to get better. But this part I’m talking about is an inner job. You can not wake someone up to this until they are ready. Same with, battered women. 

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. You write it down right now while it is fresh in your mind. How horrible 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 is how you judge your progress. You might have a 24 year marriage like I did, and then you will have a 12 year best friend, not having the same problem and then you will 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 is just been, some podcasters, they love bomb you at first, like, oh, my God, you are the best thing that was ever born. And any time someone does that, an alarm bells should go off. They are making you feel special, the love bombing and all of the rest of it, because inevitably they will turn on you basically takes about two years if it is 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 do not want to have anything to do with them. They are going to have to really prove themselves like they are just a normal person or I would not go near it. I have been burned too many times, so that is how you know. And but no like feelings. 

You are the person they come to in the office and everyone comes around you and they feel so much better because you have given them all their narcissistic supply and then you are drained. There is a couple techniques I want you to know about. One is gray rock, just literally pretend you are 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 is my job to uplift everybody and that is 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 is your job to feed everyone, it is your job to love everybody, it is your job to bring them whatever. And so once we find out how not to do that, you are going to find people respect you more. 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 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 are trying to find it through another person, through activities, whatever, it is not there. It is always here. And I know that because people have said to me in the past, what is it like to be famous? It is like famous does not exist. It does not exist. You got it. You go home, you are either alone or you have friends who you can really trust. But this other thing, fame, is the most ridiculous thing on the planet.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Oh, I love all that. 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 sometimes. Yeah, I mean, 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 not guard my energy when in that luteal phase that progesteron is high. So for me, I’m wiped out after my office day yesterday and but I’m getting better and I think that is 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 should not have happened. As a doctor, I knew it should not 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 are like, you are taking on the energy of your E.R. patients, and, I mean because I put a hand on them and I’m like, I’m sorry you are going through this, and I feel with them. But at some time, we can still be empathetic, but protect yourself and your energy. So for me, that is my maybe that is why I ended up with thyroid problems because I’m sure I was like that as 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 will even tell my husband he’s like, Want to hang out with this couple? And I’m like, I just do not get good energy from them and I just leave it at that. And it is just I’m like, my time is important. I want to hang out with people that I have good energy. I mean, you are like so good at this because like you said, when you are your fame brings in probably all the narcissistic personalities. And because you are an empath, they take advantage of that. Well, because most so I should not say most celebrities, but like the narcissistic personality, things fall into their lap. You worked hard.

Christiane Northrup, MD

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Third, you are an empath that worked hard and became so I feel like you are different than other people out there with fame. Does that make sense?

Christiane Northrup, MD

I can tell you I have spent time in the Hamptons. It makes total sense. It is so interesting. Everything is given to them. Designer clothes are given to them. Everything’s given to them. And we as a society put them on a pedestal. Hopefully after COVID, that is going to go away because that is there is no there 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 have 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 is nobody home.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

What is your biggest tip? I guess to give those listening that feel in a similar state that you were in?

Christiane Northrup, MD

Remember one of the things that was done to us was this six foot social distancing thing. So what I want to say is where health is this is the opposite, which is we need community. Community equals immunity. So you need at least one other person who understands you, who gets it. About the narcissistic empath thing, there is a TV show right now. I watched all the seasons. It is called Firefly Lane. It is 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 well because each has what the other one needs. So neither one is an outright psychopath. It is not that destructive, but it is to watch that dance is quite important. So I would say you need somebody who understands what you are 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 a massive change in frequency. 

An example of that is 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 confess 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 is 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 are moved to tears by something that is kind of the holy and empaths were brought here, you need to understand your value so you have devalued yourself. You value is you keep the lights on. You are the air purifier. One empath can clear the emotional energy in a room as long as you are taking care of yourself and not getting drained. So do not let them. It is like an unclamped 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 is a couple tips I want to give you. Okay. Someone calls you, they want you to do something, you have already got plans, but you feel guilty. Okay, you say I will get back to you. Okay? Do not do the knee-jerk yes. You want to say yes every time I do the knee jerk, I will 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 not. That is the PhD level. No excuses. I simply can not. I simply can not. You do not owe them an excuse, an apology, anything. I simply can not. But for the beginner, it is let me get back to you. But so that is what I would say is the tip, you know, and that includes your brothers, your sisters, your adult children, everybody. Because if you are an endless font of food and love and abundance and freshly baked bread, everyone will be coming to get that. And you have got to have something left for yourself. And then you can give abundantly from a very full tank.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Absolutely. I think that it is great advice, especially so you can heal. This is about healing too.

Christiane Northrup, MD

Oh, yeah.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

This is so important. Such good tips, such great conversation. Thank you. Dr. Northrup. How can everyone find you and get a hold of you via social media and all that?

Christiane Northrup, MD

First of all, I want to know, there is a lot you can do. I created two courses to help people rid cells of energy vampires. So if you go to my website drnorthrup.com and check on Ecourses at the top because I take you right through it. And this is something that you learn over time. Just like I learned about the adult children of alcoholics. So those are right there at my website, drnorthrup.com Ecourses. And then also I’m on truth Social a little bit Twitter all the time now that they are 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 kind of ministry is my podcast, True North. So that is where you can find me.

Jen Pfleghaar, DO, FACEP

Awesome. Thank you so much. It is such a pleasure talking to you.

Christiane Northrup, MD

Thank you. Pleasure talking to you. Thank you.