Originally Recorded 1/7/22

Tony talks about the connection between Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) and Narcissism. He refers to the website Highly Sensitive Person (http://hsperson.com), and he discusses an excellent article, “Do Highly Sensitive People Attract Narcissists?” By Andre Solo from https://highlysensitiverefuge.com/highly-sensitive-people-attract-narcissists/

With the continuing "sheltering" rules spreading across the country, PLEASE do not think you can't continue or begin therapy now. http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch can put you quickly in touch with licensed mental health professionals who can meet through text, email, or videoconference often as soon as 24-48 hours. And if you use the link http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch, you will receive 10% off your first month of services. Please make your mental health a priority, http://betterhelp.com/virtualcouch offers affordable counseling, and they even have sliding scale options if your budget is tight.

You can learn more about Tony's pornography recovery program, The Path Back, by visiting http://pathbackrecovery.com And visit http://tonyoverbay.com and sign up to receive updates on upcoming programs and podcasts.

Tony mentioned a product that he used to take out all of the "uh's" and "um's" that, in his words, "must be created by wizards and magic!" because it's that good! To learn more about Descript, click here https://descript.com?lmref=v95myQ

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[00:00:08] Hey, everybody, welcome to episode 18 of Waking Up to Narcissism. I'm your host, Tony Overbay. I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist host of the Virtual Couch podcast, and let's get right to today's show. Today is one that I already can tell you is going to go on a lot of different directions because I have so many tabs open. I have so many emails open in front of me. I had a direction that I was anticipating going and then as I was going to find a couple of emails to read at the beginning of the show because I get more feedback around people shared experiences that I wanted to maybe start every show with, with an email that I received. And then as I started reading the one of the emails, I thought, Oh my gosh, I need to talk about this and I need to talk about this. So, so buckle up and enjoy the ride. Let's start with this email, and I'm going to change a little bit of the information so that it is not not identifying of sorts, but I have to tell you, if I read an email, it is most likely I've gotten several that are of a similar nature. This one says I don't usually do this, which, by the way, I'm so honored when people write for the first time, I get a lot of those. They said, I don't usually do this, but they felt like they had to send a message and personally, thank me for helping them feel validated and known.

[00:01:17] They said that they grew up in a home with a narcissistic parent. They had dealt with narcissistic companions. They had served a service mission for their church, for their faith, and they had recently moved out of family members home where the family member and their spouse both displayed narcissistic tendencies. And I love the fact that this person is using that phrase also correctly, those narcissistic traits, those narcissistic tendencies and not meaning to go in a different direction halfway through the first email. But I want to tell you, I hope you can feel the significance of it was several episodes back where I really tried to make sense of the narcissistic personality. Disorder is a pretty small group of individuals, but that we all have these narcissistic traits and tendencies because they really are just showing up emotionally immature until we learn that that's what we're doing. And then we seek some help. We learn how to differentiate, we learn how to find ourselves our voice. And there's there does need to be a lot of acceptance and a lot...