Over the years I had noticed many narcissistic traits in my good friend, but at the time I was not aware of the term “narcissism”. I could only take comfort in the confused notion that I was being punished for the sins of my youth, and that in suffering, we will all mature and become wise adults. My friend has a wonderful and charming public persona and is extremely sociable. She organises many events and likes to go out regularly. People who do not know my friend very well usually have great admiration and think how lucky I am to know such a wonderful person. Within some time, she then developed a habit of having episodes of seemingly uncontrollable rage, and I had still not fully understood what triggered these attacks. The doctor prescribed the cause as a lack of estrogen, but the irrational episodes did not subside and from what I hear, continues to this day. She started more and more to scream at only those close to her, often for very minor misdemeanours. She began forever complaining of feeling exhausted and ‘stressed out’. I really do think that the narcissist is the principal sufferer but it has to be said that it is definitely not pleasant living with one. These people are toxic. All in all I am tempted to say that narcissists deserve to stew in their own rancour but I have to remind myself that they themselves are often suffering, and are trying to cover up their low self-esteem. Having read a little about narcissism I realised that there are many people in my predicament. There is a saying that a problem shared is a problem solved but, like me, there are very few people that they can share this particular problem with others. It has taken a long long time, but I have learnt that the only way to win with a toxic person, is not to play. And until you accept that fact, you’re anybody’s sucker. All it will take is one bloated accusation, one lie, or one insinuation about you, and you’ll forever be the toxic person’s most treasured source of satisfying fun and games. If you don’t know how to leave the bait alone and find another, quieter, more indirect route back toward being left alone, you never will be. Abusive people know that as long as they can set and keep their hooks in you, you are stuck being there for them to use and abuse – to feed on. When they want to, abusive people will say and do whatever it takes to keep you glued painfully to them and their world, because if you are stuck to them, they will always have you handy for whatever emotionally abusive purpose they want. You may need to cut contact altogether if you are in an entrenched personal relationship, and if so, you may get hoovered and manipulated into staying connected. This is often easily done by deliberately upsetting you so much that the urge to call or contact them just to have your say will be intense, because the lies or other distortions being propagated are so hurtful. Don’t fall for it. Just ignore the whole thing, walk away and wipe your hands. There is no winning such battles. The greatest reward is freedom from the toxicity, which only comes with your non-involvement. The sooner you do, the sooner it will start to become quiet, which, given certain toxic types, can take long enough without additional delays being thrown in. Don’t tell yourself you have to reply — learn to recognize your refusal to respond for what it really is — a sign that it will be over as quickly as possible because you knew how to ignore drama-baiting and send the toxic person looking for a better target. So when you find yourself invited into an ugly tug-of-war with a toxic person, simply drop the rope immediately, walk away and LEAVE IT BE FOREVER. Because the simple fact of the matter is, toxic people can’t have a tug-of-war with you if there’s nobody holding on at the other end.

A sizeable portion of this post has been taken from what I have read at other sites. I have changed little as the essence of what I have come to understand has helped me to embrace my understanding of a journey with a previous friend. And this testimonial concentrates on her narcissistic traits. I must point out that she has many good, positive traits which are not relevant to this post and are not discussed here. Therefore, the following passage puts a misleadingly negative light on her; however, I do want the following passage to be a useful illustration of what it is like to live with a narcissist. I thought that my friend had suddenly developed a split personality and that this new unsavoury personality had taken the place of the charming personality which she hitherto had. I didn’t realise at the time that what I was experiencing was her private persona when before then I had only seen the public persona. Another factor which made me think of a split personality was the ‘gaslighting’ whereby she would one day say something quite definite and then a few days later insist on having said no such thing. She seemed sincere and convincing and the only explanation I could think of was a split personality whereby one personality did not know what the other personality had said. There were some subtle signs that might have warned me about the problem. These signs are essentially the tip of a very big iceberg, but could help others to recognise a narcissist. These are: * A tendency to criticise immediate family members a lot, to the extent of making them look foolish or incompetent or thoughtless or inconsiderate, and a tendency to criticise work colleagues and friends. * Gaslighting, or saying something, and then later strongly denying having said it OR, claiming to have said something earlier, qualifying it with something like “you obviously were not listening when I told you” * Frequently wanting to modify other people’s plans. To be continued …

I’ve covered my nutritional diet and now I’m going to touch on the mind, soul and spirits’ involvement with my healing, and this is where it gets a little difficult because I don’t want to convey anything more than my own testament that I believe this had a significant effect for me. Here’s how it went down, I remembered that while I was drifting through the ‘eye of the storm’ (with depression and anxiety weaving it’s ugly tentacles around me), I often had a small window of clarity at times that would allow me to engage in my own meditation session. This was horribly hard and often involved an internal battle with one part of me saying this was utter nonsense, and another part of me begging to have the strength and faith to simply ‘believe’ … simply ‘believe’ … and simply ‘believe’ … in this witchery. I just wanted an ounce of that same belief ‘virus’ that makes the Amish visualise horse and buggies as the only rocket launchers on this planet. Infect me now, godamit, infect me now with that belief bug! Pushing my understanding in science and reasoning to one aside became easier over time and this part of my senses would eventually be over-taken by a blind faith that thinking of something several times would turn that same thought into a belief, and that belief would cause my blood cells to react and behave accordingly to heal … But this only came full on, on a few magic occasions. It was like eating oysters for the first time, and eureka, ‘this is so delicious’! …. But when faced with this same ‘snot of the sea’ at a later time, sitting on a bed of ice, you involuntary shudder at the culinary prospect of sliding these down your throat again. It does get easier. Much much easier, I love oysters, crayfish and mud crabs! The low down; find a quiet place, lie or sit down, make yourself comfortable, close your eye’s, listen and focus on your breathing, then start to imagine images that you can best relate to that show YOU that your body is healing. Breathe in good air, breathe out the poison air, imagine it, imagine and start to BELIEVE that this is happening. Do this at every opportunity you can, doesn’t matter if you drift off, or you momentarily lose focus, but keep at it. By the way, I drive a Jeep not a horse and buggy. My internal anti-virus program is solid.

Here’s the short version of what I was attempting to communicate in my last post. Remember, this was MY diet: BREAKFAST most of the time. o Boiled eggs. o Nuts like cashews, almonds and dried banana chips, eaten straight out of each bag either individually or together. This is washed down with a smoothie, that I make with either milk or water, a handful of frozen fruits, a raw egg, a banana, squeeze of honey, a scoop of protein powder or something like Sustagen, a teaspoon of chia seeds, and a teaspoon of coconut oil. REST OF THE DAY, including snacks, lunch and dinner. o Eat plenty of fruit – Make sure your choice of fruits includes a mixture of different colours, EVERYDAY. – Eat a higher proportion of blueberries and blackberries, than the other fruits. o Drink pure 100% Promegranate Juice. o Drink water. o Eat vegetables, include these colours daily, red, yellow, orange, green and purple. – cans of whole baby beet roots are my favourite, – cans of whole kernel corn was another favourite, no cooking involved, just scoop a spoonful regularly when you can during the day. o Eat plenty of steamed fish, which is so easy with a steamer. Took me the best of 8 mins to steam a raw fillet of fish, and you can flavour it as you please with herbs, or just consume el naturale. o a rice cooker is also a handy piece of apparatus for steamed rice. Don’t forget to exercise within the range of moderate to hard core.

Let’s get the formalities out of the way first, … The information contained on this page is for information purposes only, and may not apply to your situation. I provide no warranty about the content nor make any claims that it will cure anything. Information provided is subjective. If you suffer diarrhoea then drink lots of fluids, use soft rectum wipes, or water soaked anal tissues. If you break out in a rash, then scratch like crazy. Awesome, that felt so official and important like, I deserve a pay rise! I hope no one takes offence at what I’m writing, I sort of think the closest comparison I can make to this, is like when comedians make inappropriate jokes about their ethnic kinship and get away with it … except … I guess, I’m not a comedian, and I’m definitely not making jokes about cancer. Let me see, I remember eating mostly fruit, fish, vegetables, nuts and rice. Rarely, did my oesophagus get to slither anything carved off an animal. In fact, I unknowingly became a vegetarian. Eating fruit, fish and rice didn’t make me an Asian, but I sure adapted to this new tasty culinary choice easily. A single handful of mix of nuts was always included in my daily quota. I did have some fruits I preferred, and these I did NOT eat in moderation at all. In fact, I gorged these at every opportunity, to the extent that my visits to the supermarket comprised of regularly checking the prices and buying these in bulk when they were cheap. These were primarily blueberries, blackberries and pomegranate fruits. Pomegranate are such hard work, and there are easier ways to acquire the red juicy treasure nodules from within the tough membrane. You can YouTube it, … and while you’re there, Google the health benefits of Pomegranite, you’ll be surprised with the wealth of information on these expensive buggers (if you have to google the word ‘bugger’, please be assured I am not referring to ‘sodomite’, which is not edible like ‘vegemite’ and ‘marmite’) . I did have a lot of other fruits, I ate Kiwifruit with the skin left on. Don’t worry, your back end passage is unaffected by the furry skin, I believe the gurgling acids in your tummy make it all mushy and a lot more mobile. I ate all types of fruit, and made every attempt to ensure a rainbow of colours on the palatte would tantalise my palate. Yellow peaches, red watermelon, green apples, red apples, yellow corn, orange oranges, red carrots, purple beetroots (convenient in a can) and plenty, plenty and plenty of blueberries, blackberries and pomegranate. Word of warning with the excess consumption of beetroot, is that your front and rear discharges will be a tad reddish. In relation to my liquid intake, this was either normal or bottled mineral water, and tons of pomegranate juice. The latter should taste slightly tart which is its natural flavour. Don’t succumb to the blends, like 5% pomegranate and the rest made up of apple juice, read the labels. Make sure there are no additives, not sweetened and contains no preservatives, it must be in its original raw virgin squeezed state. If bottled Pomegranate juice is hard to come by, throw about 12 of these into a flax woven basket, add a python snake, … Secure the lid, and I couldn’t emphasize this advice enough but make sure the lid is definitely secure. Watch all the pomegranate juice pour out the bottom and sides of the basket! Cripes, must go and pick up the kids for school … part 2 tomorrow.