Sweltering in My Own Sour Breath

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I think of last September, when my professor came up to me and said to my face that there’s something wrong with me. You don’t listen! Your mind is racing! These accusations against me were axiomatic. I thought that my very presence was disruptive and I needed fixing. So, I went to see a psychiatrist.

I then slipped into the deep dark tunnel of antidepressants, prescribed to me by him. The quack doctor had promised me it would thrust a passion for life under my skin. However, all I could feel was nightmares budding and leafing darkly from my nerve endings, swinging and rustling in the black air of my grief.

When I told this to my psychiatrist, he simply laughed the matter off. He proclaimed with sage insight that the medicines would surely fix me up if only I gave them some time.

“But,” I muttered under my breath.

He then knit his brows and assumed a firm tone with me. “You must do as you’re told. I know what is best for you.”

Falling back into his chair, his expression gentled slightly, and the creases on his face smoothed out. And just like that he brushed it all aside: the palpitations, spasms, fears, bad dreams and insomnia — “minor side effects,” he called them. He wrote me a fresh prescription and upped my dosage. I looked at my father in the hope that he might intervene on my behalf. But he just sat there deep in his chair, with a certain air of admiration not for the psychiatrist’s lightning skill, rather for his tact and his methods. I feared my psychiatrist had found a supporter in my father, for both shared in common the vanity that they knew what was best for me.

On our way back from the hospital my father didn’t seem to notice me. I felt as if we inhabited two opposite continents, a vast ocean between us.

***

The next day my father flew back to Bhubaneswar, leaving me behind in my small flat in Hyderabad. Although I lived alone, I had no privacy in my room. The lidless third-eye of the doctor hovered over my head, constantly watching me.

Monthlong, I had to suffer under the suffocating vault of antidepressants, stewing in my own sour breath: the otherwise calm air rushing in and out like some maniac, forming furious eddies inside me. Restlessness burgeoned in me, buffeting me with a sea-fury. Like a series of tidal waves it battered my mind and body, leaving me bruised and forlorn like a shore. Exhausted, I would call my father.

“Stop snivelling,” he would growl at me over the phone, his words descending upon me like the brute sound of thunder. “Just take your medicines.”

I would then clench my teeth and gulp down the rage I didn’t realize I had been harbouring.

I tried reaching the doctor. But he wouldn’t take my calls. So, I tried to get hold of him through his secretary and left a message with her. The doctor didn’t ring me back for two days. And when he finally did, he said my illness was getting worse and he would again have to up my dosage. My mind blanked to an unearthly calm at his words, before breaking away into a thunderclap of defiance. I told him straight up, I would no longer go through with this.

The otherwise amiable doctor assumed a not-so-amiable tone with me. “Do as I tell you,” he said, sounding not quite so kind. “I am the doctor, not you.”

I then hung up on him.

The singeing fury subsided and sank in me like the setting sun.

That evening, a strange feeling of sadness crept into the air. The once-stoic sky groaned and wept, rain welling like tears. I felt desolate as the sudden rain came down hard with a resonant tone, the dull sound seeping into my heart.

Rather glum, I leaned back in my chair and took my tarot deck from the shelf. The deck was well-worn, well-thumbed, the cards frayed and yellow around the edges from frequent handling. I shuffled the cards until two cards fell out: the tower and the hanged man.

The images dropped in me like stones, sending ripples across me as if I were a black lake. The tower is a card of events. A card of mis-happenings. And the hanged man suggested a state of suspension. Together the cards intimated an unanticipated time of crisis. A period of interruption at the soul level.

***

Coming off medication was no child’s play. I felt trapped in a limbo: suspended between sleep and wakefulness, sanity slipping through my fingers like water.

True, the air was calm in comparison, going in and out without making a fuss like an obedient child, and the tidal waves of restlessness that had broken over me gradually receded over the span of a few days. But nothing could drag me out of myself, out of the void of despondency and torpor.

I had not slept for two days in a row. In spite of everything, I managed to take my end-of-semester exams. And with the vacation around the corner, I decided to visit home. Not that I had looked forward to a grand transformative experience, but I expected something, some meaningful gesture from my father to put things right between us.

***

I reached Bhubaneswar at 4 pm. When I emerged from the roar and bustle of the airport, the sky on the horizon was bleeding like a cut. I felt a sharp stinging pain shoot through me at a sudden acute awareness of my own wound.

My father was waiting by the entry gate. Half-expecting to meet his reproachful face, I was confused and surprised to see his mouth set in a grin. I don’t mean a rueful grin, but a grin of downright indifference, as if September had never occurred, as if I hadn’t made those late-night calls in the hope of hearing one kind word from him.

“We will act as if all this were a bad dream,” he said and turned his back on me. And that was that. At that moment, he seemed a colossus and I stood in his shadow. What I registered was his round face. His eyes. His lineaments that matched mine. I was his extension. His progeny. And he was my Creator. I became acutely aware of this fact. No retort came from my mouth. We made our way back home, the ocean of silence still between us.

***

Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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43 COMMENTS

  1. I felt mixed emotions upon reading this story: sorrow over the author’s sufferings, and rage at her both her father and the charlatan who curtly dismissed her severe physical discomfort as “minor effects.”
    A smug authoritarian mindset seems to be ubiquitous in the psychiatric field, judging from the accounts by MIA contributors from every corner of the globe.

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    • It’s my opinion that the majority of psychiatrists are uniquely gifted in the art of psychological warfare. Couple that with prescriptive power and you’ve got a glut of modern-day Rasputins ruining people’s lives in the name of medicine.

      If you find that confusing, just think of folks who thrive on manipulating people’s fears and insecurities, whose aim is having others submit to their illusions of superiority, rather than have them use own powers of discernment to decide what is best for them.

      Key word: POWER

      Here’s the only remedy for anyone stuck in their orbit:

      “Narcissists’ Final Tricks: When a Narcissist Sees You as Too Dangerous to Manipulate, They’ll Try This One Trick | Carl Jung”, a YouTube video from ZeroMind

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  2. At the center of your being
    you have the answer;
    you know who you are
    and you know what you want.
    Lao Tzu.

    Who looks outside, dreams; who looks within, awakens.
    Carl Jung.

    Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the
    birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will
    precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you
    come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you
    who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in
    poverty and it is you who are that poverty.
    Gospel of Thomas, Saying 3.

    A Sioux Story:

    The Creator gathered all of Creation and said :

    “I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it. It is the realization that they create their own reality.”

    The eagle said, “Give it to me, I will take it to the moon.”

    The Creator said, “No. One day they will go there and find it.”

    The salmon said, “I will bury it on the bottom of the ocean.”

    “No. They will go there too.”

    The buffalo said, “I will bury it on the Great Plains.”

    The Creator said, “They will cut into the skin of the Earth and find it even there.”

    Grandmother Mole, who [like “Worm” David!] lives in the breast of Mother Earth, and who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said, “Put it inside of them.”

    And the Creator said, “It is done.”

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  3. “I looked at my father in the hope that he might intervene on my behalf. But he just sat there deep in his chair, with a certain air of admiration not for the psychiatrist’s lightening skill, rather for his tact and his methods. I feared my psychiatrist had found a supporter in my father, for both shared in common the vanity that they knew what was best for me.”

    Vanity seeks its own reflection.

    Sometimes people are seduced by those who mirror them. And gaslighting is contagious when like likes like.

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  4. “Rather glum, I leaned back in my chair and took my tarot card deck from the shelf… I shuffled the cards until two cards fell out: the tower and the hanged man… The images in me dropped like stones, sending ripples across me as if I were a black lake. The tower is a card of events. A card of mis-happenings. And the hanged man suggested a state of suspension. Together the cards intimated an unanticipated time of crisis. A period of interruption at the soul level.”

    I don’t think this happened solely by chance. Tarot cards have been around for centuries for a reason.

    The spirit world has its own way of revealing our inner lives to us.

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  7. 2 Signs God Is Protecting You From a Narcissist | Jordan Peterson Motivational Speech, YouTube from Silent Strength

    NO CONTACT Is Not Enough Do THIS to Crush the Narcissist’s Ego | Jordan Peterson Motivational Speech, YouTube from Silent Strength

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      • Thank you, Birdsong, for the correction.

        What is “narcissism” but ego?

        And who is yet quite devoid of it?

        I don’t know if you share my view that Fear – False Evidence/Expectations Appearing Real – is what some call “the Enemy,” or “Satan” or “the Devil,” but, if you do, you may agree that anyone who uses fear in their rhetoric or to persuade, anyone who fearmongers, is doing “the Devil’s work,” regardless of what they say – POSSibly even if it’s warnings about falling in a pit, or round adn round, or into the sea?!

        “Ignorant of their ignorance, yet wise
        In their own esteem, those deluded men
        Proud of their van learning go round and round
        Like the blind led by the blind.” – The Katha Upanishad 2:5.

        “Ignorant of their ignorance, yet wise
        In their own esteem, those deluded men
        Proud of their van learning go round and round
        Like the blind led by the blind.

        Living in darkness, immature, unaware
        Of any higher good or goal, they fall
        Again and again into the sea.” – The Mundaka Upanishad 1.2.7-1.2.10.

        “Leave them; they are blind guides. If the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.” – Gospel of Matthew 15:14, words attributed to Jesus of Nazareth.

        (I see that Rituparna may mean “leafy season” or “spring” and, in the Mahabharata, was the name of a king of Ayodhya, whereas the female author of the above essay seems to have haplessly been led by two “blind” men who would be kings, or who would, at least, assume the right to lord it over her.

        I don’t see Carl Jung or Eckhart Tolle or Howard Schubiner or “A Course in Miracles” (“Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God”) using or preaching fear, do you?

        How can Fear cast out Fear? Surely, only love can transmute Fear to Love, to Light!?

        Where or how did our notions of human “wickedness”/”evil”/“sinfulness”/shamefulness evolve, and how can we help heal or rescue one another from such pernicious notions?

        When frightened, we humans feel shame, and vice-versa, no?

        Here (along with “Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven [or “fore-given you?”],’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’?” – Gospel of Matthew, 9:5) may be some clues:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qINdA6E14Sk

        Min. 22:56: Min. 24:06:

        “But you know when you think about it…I heard this podcast the other day – it really was interesting to me because they were saying that, you know, basically, that back in the day, you know, like, thousands of years ago, humans survived because they were a clan. Neanderthals were stronger, smarter, faster, better hunters. They didn’t survive. Humans survived – probably because they worked in groups. They connected. They spoke, you know, they used language. They used, they developed fire like; they cooked. You know, they hunted together – whatever. And so, you would be in danger of your life if you got kicked out of the clan. So why would you get kicked out of the clan? Because of emotional issues. You know, you, you beat up somebody, or sleep with somebody’s wife, or whatever – you know, you act bad, and you get kicked out! That’s, that’s…You know, you could die! So, your – our – brains learned, in essence, that physical danger – breaking an ankle – is, is dangerous. And they also learned that emotional danger is dangerous. And pain became one of the ways that our brains activated the message of alarm in both physical injuries and emotional injuries.”

        Min. 37:59 – Min 38:09:

        “I mean, I often say that I’m basically a faith healer: I get people to believe that they’re not broken – I get people to believe they’re not damaged, and then they heal! Faith healing!”

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qINdA6E14Sk

        Comfort and joy, and thank you!

        Tom.

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  13. Birdsong, I cannot believe that Jung would use the term “a narcissist” any more than I can belive that he believed iin “Evil,” as an absolute, rather than as obliviousness/ignorance/forgetfulness/narcissism or ego – something which we must all experience first-hand in order to recognize, analyze and understand in ourselves and so to forgive it first in ourselves and then in others.

    In https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmUCHYHsiXM ,

    following an introduction at Min. 5:55, we hear Alan Watts quoting Carl Jung from Min. 6:07-10:00 as follows:

    “People forget that even doctors have moral scruples, and that certain patients’ confessions are hard even for a doctor to swallow.

    Yet the patient does not feel himself accepted unless the very worst in him is accepted too.

    No one can bring this about by mere words.

    It comes only through reflection, and through the doctor’s attitude towards himself and his own dark side.

    If the doctor wants to guide another, or even accompany him a step of the way, he must feel with that person’s psyche.

    He never feels it when he passes judgement.

    Whether he puts his judgments into words or keeps them to himself makes not the slightest difference.

    To take the opposite position and to agree with the patient off hand is also of no use.

    Feeling comes only through unprejudiced objectivity.

    This sounds almost like a scientific precept, and it could be confused with a purely intellectual, abstract attitude of mind, but what I mean is something quite different.

    It is a human quality, a kind of deep respect for the facts, for the man who suffers from them, and for the riddle of such a man’ s life.

    A truly religious person has this attitude.

    He knows that God has brought all sorts of strange and inconceivable things to pass, and seeks in the most curious ways to enter a man’s heart.

    He therefore senses, in everything, the unseen presence of the Divine Will.

    This is what I mean by “unprejudiced objectivity.”

    It is a moral achievement on the part of the doctor, who ought not to let himself to be repelled by sickness and corruption.

    We cannot change anything unless we accept it.

    Condemnation does not liberate: It oppresses.

    I am the oppressor of the person I condemn, not his friend and fellow-sufferer.

    I do not in the least mean to say that we must never pass judgement when we desire to help and improve, but, if the doctor wishes to help a human being, he must be able to accept him as he is, and he can do this in reality only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is.

    Perhaps this sounds very simple, but simple things are always the most difficult.

    In actual life, it requires the greatest art to be simple, and so acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life.

    That I feed the beggar, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ – all these are undoubtedly great virtues.

    What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ.

    But what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders – yea, the very Fiend, himself – that these are within me, and that I, myself, stand in need of the alms of my own kindness – that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved, what then?

    Then as a rule, the whole Truth of Christianity is reversed.

    There is then no more talk of love and long-suffering.

    We say to the brother within us, ‘RACA!’ and condemn and raid against ourselves.

    We hide him from the world; we deny ever having met this least amongst the lowly in ourselves, and, had it been God, himself, who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied him a thousand times before a single cock had crowed.”

    In that, at least as reported by Watts, I believe Jung surpasses Jesus, or, at least, anything of Jesus reported to us in those Canonical gospels – just as Jesus, himself, in one of them (and that one John’s, itself, no less!) predicted we could and we would:

    “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.” – Gospel of John, 14:12.

    Is there anything that needs healing that cannot be healed through listening with unconditional love and without any desire to do anything more than that?

    Comfort and joy!

    And thank you!

    Tom.

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    • Tom, I dislike the term narcissist, but it’s how these videos are titled.

      I don’t see their purpose as personal condemnation. I think it’s to highlight the need for discernment, to provide illumination and instruction for the uninitiated or uninformed that selfish, manipulative, and intentionally destructive people exist and how to recognize, extricate, and protect oneself from their influence.

      Jung’s concept of The Shadow is included in some of the videos, the purpose being to encourage empaths to ask themselves makes what makes them vulnerable to narcissistic entanglements, i.e. selfish, manipulative people.

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  14. “Why Empaths Who See The Truth Are Unstoppable | Jordan Peterson”, YouTube video from Endless Drive

    “No Contact Won’t Break Them… But This Will Destroy A NARCISIST’S EGO | Jordan Peterson”, YouTube video from Endless Drive

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  16. Aw, Birdsong, I care a LOT, you know!

    I see you try your heart out daily to make this world a better place.

    I see that.

    And I hear so many wonderfully virtuous and altruistic and generous-hearted people speak of good people, I think, if only we…could see that, you know, EVERYONE is bearing a burden, and if I had theirs, would I not be behaving – BEHAVING – like an a**hole, too?

    I like to think we truly are all absolutely equal, and all of us on our way to…you-know-where.

    Thank you very, VERY much for asking!

    Insufferably super-sanctimoniously yours, as ever,

    but sincerely, too,

    Tom

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    • Tom, it sounds like you think I’m being judgmental. If that’s true, maybe ask yourself why.

      What part of you mistakes discernment for condemnation? What part of you feels threatened by seeing things clearly?

      Learning to integrate fantasy with reality is life’s greatest challenge.

      Life’s a lot easier once you stop kidding yourself.

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    • Naming narcissism is not a hateful act but reflexively preaching forgiveness to people on the receiving end of narcissistic abuse is. It cruelly silences people who’ve been wronged.

      I don’t think you’ve listened to any of the videos I’ve suggested.

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  19. Birdsong, I can hardly conceive of a human being not being judgemental, in the sense of forming opinions of people based on previous experiences with people we think resembled them in some way.

    So I do not suggest that you are any more or less judgemental than I am in anyway

    But I think the very reason MIA exists is because Psychiatry has evolved into s business which, for business reasons, has felt forced to categorize and label us human beings.

    To suggest that any person is a depressive or a schizophrenic or a manic-depressive or a narcissist etc., in my opinion, is not the most enlightened approach to helping us all through our life challenges.

    The very fact that folks pretend that there is ever any objectively identifiable line between, say, some “with ADHD” and someone normal or neurotypical etc. strikes me as patent nonsense.

    I believe the same applies to most of not all such labels.

    Is there any “spectrum,” at all, that I am not on? I doubt it.

    I like Tolle’s various definitions as complete identification with form, as “the unobserved mind” – one’s “unobserved thoughts and emotions,” etc.

    Who is always entirely free of ego in that sense?

    Very, very few, iffff any, so far, I suspect….and most if not all of us in this plan very, very soon, I expect!

    Thank you for the chat, Birdsong. I value it greatly.

    All the very, VERY best.

    Tom.

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    • I think “narcissistic” has taken on a more general, non-psychiatric meaning to identify and help people avoid others who engage in certain behavior patterns. Used in this way, I don’t see it as a psych label at all, just a way of describing a certain reality that some people share. It’s not identified as a “disease” nor is any “treatment” recommended, it’s just a way for people with similar experiences to describe them in an efficient way.

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    • Tom, I’m well aware of the purpose of MIA, so please don’t lecture me on that.

      I use “narcissistic” as a descriptive term, not as a label.

      In case you don’t know, narcissism comes from the Greek myth Echo and Narcissus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Its themes are unrequited love, self-absorption, and spiritual fragmentation. It tells of ache that comes from loving someone who cannot see beyond themselves. It’s seen as a blueprint of how victims of narcissistic abuse often lose their sense of self, become reactive, fragmented, and emotionally erased after falling under the spell of a narcissist’s pseudo-love.

      Jung would say that Narcissus is possessed by an unconscious complex, that he’s not evil, but disintegrated. Freud, the one who made narcissism a thing, saw it as a necessary developmental phase and a potential source of pathology when it becomes rigid or inflated.

      Do I wish it hadn’t been hijacked by Freud and turned into a “disorder” by the American Psychiatric Association?

      ABSOFUCKINLUTELY.

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      • Thanks a million, Birdsong.

        I am not aware of Jung’s ever having used either the term “a narcissist” or “an empath,” and would love to know if you are aware of anywhere he might have used either term, even in quotation marks, please?

        Very, VERY best wishes, always.

        Tom.

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    • “Do Narcissists Ever Cry Alone For Destroying The Empath’s Unconditional Love?” | Jordan Peterson, YouTube video from Endless Drive

      “When You Detach Emotionally, The Narcissist Starts to Collapse Internally” | Mel Robbins Motivation, YouTube video from Mindshift Motivation

      “The Narcissist You Walked Away From Is On The Verge Of a MENTAL COLLAPSE” | Mel Robbins Motivation, YouTube video from Mindshift Motivation

      “Stop Being Nice to a Narcissist—Carl Jung Warned Us for a Reason”, YouTube video from ZeroMind

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  21. “Game Over: The Narcissist’s Struggle With True Final Goodbyes” | Jordan Peterson, YouTube video from Endless Drive:

    “The narcissist not only deceives others, they deceive themselves. And that self-deception is where the spiritual rot takes root. Because when you lie to yourself consistently, when you bend reality to protect your ego, you lose the ability to encounter the truth. You cut yourself off from conscience, from humility, from the very possibility of redemption. And at that point, you’re no longer just flawed. You are dangerous because you’ve handed over your moral compass in exchange for control. That’s when narcissism becomes evil, when it hardens into something that knows it’s lying and doesn’t care. And here’s the catch: our culture rewards it. We live in a time where image often matters more than substance. Where charisma is mistaken for character. The narcissist thrives in this soil. Social media, politics, corporate hierarchies. They become arenas for performance rather than service. And so what used to be seen as vice is now rebranded as confidence, self-promotion, personal branding. We’ve normalized the narcissistic template. We’ve made it not just acceptable but admirable.

    And that’s just part of the spiritual blindness of our age. If you read ancient texts, whether it’s biblical scripture, Eastern philosophy, or even the writings of the early church fathers, there’s a consistent warning: Beware of pride. Beware of exalting yourself above others. That’s where the fall begins. That’s where the demons slip in. Pride in its most malignant form is at the heart of narcissism. It says, “I am above correction. I am beyond fault. I am the center of truth. And the moment you believe that, you’re already falling because the soul wasn’t meant to carry that kind of weight… The self becomes a false idol worshipped, defended, and ultimately devoured. This is a psychological and spiritual tragedy that plays out again and again in the lives of narcissistic individuals. And it isn’t simply a case of someone who thinks too highly of themselves. No, it’s much deeper and darker than that. It’s a collapse of the soul inward, the refusal to recognize any authority beyond the self, and the compulsive construction of a hollow throne upon which the ego must constantly sit.

    But this throne is fragile. It’s built on fear, on illusion, on denial. And because it’s not rooted in truth, it must be defended at all costs. What begins as insecurity, often mutates into self-worship. The narcissist often unconsciously constructs a grandiose version of themselves. A persona designed to be admired, envied, even feared. The persona becomes a centerpiece of their internal world. Every interaction, every decision, every relationship is filtered through the question, “How does this make me look? How does this reinforce my superiority?” And any answer that does not serve the idol is rejected, attacked, or twisted until it does. Truth becomes subordinate to image. Reality is bent around the axis of the ego…. The narcissist becomes incapable of seeing the world as it is because everything is viewed through the warped lens of self-importance…

    When a society begins to worship image over substance, power over truth, self-expression over self-discipline, it begins to produce systems that reflect the narcissistic pathology. Leaders who are more concerned with appearing virtuous than being virtuous. Corporations that manufacture identity rather than serve community. Social platforms that reward performance and punish sincerity. The idol grows and we all feed it…The idol eventually demands more than admiration. It demands sacrifice. And in the end, it will consume the very person who built it.

    Each demonic spirit represents a distortion of a fundamental virtue. That’s the unsettling part of all this. Because evil rarely presents itself as monstrous from the outset. It doesn’t come in screaming with a pitchfork. It often begins as something that looks good, even noble. These spirits, these patterns, these corrupting forces, they wear the mask of virtue. They twist what is good into something manipulative, something self-serving, something dark. That’s why they’re so dangerous, because you don’t notice them until they’ve already taken root. And by then you’re dealing with a structure of meaning that has turned in on itself.”

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  22. “Narcissists thrive on control. And one of the most effective ways they maintain it is through withholding validation. They will pretend to not understand what you are saying. They will twist your words, question your motives, and make you feel like you’re the irrational one. This is not because they truly lack understanding. It’s because to acknowledge your truth would mean relinquishing power. So, they act confused, play the victim, or shift blame. And because your emotionally invested, you try harder. You elaborate. You simplify. You repeat yourself in different tones with different words, hoping that if you can just express yourself just the right way, they’ll finally get it and change. But they don’t. Not because you failed to explain yourself, but because understanding you was never the goal. The goal was always control, always dominance, always the maintenance of a dynamic where they are right and you are wrong. They need you to feel misunderstood so they can keep you reaching for their approval. The more you chase understanding, the more you give away your emotional power. And that’s where the slow unraveling of your self-worth begins. When your truth becomes negotiable, and your identity hinges on whether or not they validate it.

    But then something shifts. Maybe it’s exhaustion. Maybe it’s a moment of clarity. Maybe it’s the gentle voice of God whispering in your spirit. You do not need their agreement to know your value. And from that moment forward, you begin to reclaim your voice. Not by raising it louder, but by speaking it for yourself. You start to realize that self-deprecation is not arrogance. It’s survival. It’s healing. It’s freedom.

    You stop needing them to say you’re right. You stop waiting for them to admit what they did. You stop arguing in your head, rehearsing conversations that will never happen the way you want them to. Instead, you begin to anchor yourself in what is true. You know what you experienced. You know how it made you feel. You know your heart, your intentions, your efforts. And that knowing becomes your foundation. That inner certainty begins to replace the shaky need for external confirmation.

    Self-culture doesn’t mean you stop feeling. You still hurt. You still grieve. You still long for closure. But you stop handing those feelings over to someone who never intended to care for them. You begin to sit with them, honor them, tend to them yourself. And in doing so, you develop an inner resilience that no one can manipulate. You stop explaining your boundaries. You start enforcing them. You stop justifying your decisions. You start standing in them. You stop asking if your truth makes sense to someone who has made a lifestyle out of misunderstanding you. God uses this detachment to deepen your sense of identity. Because when the craving to be understood by a narcissist dies, something else is born:

    SELF-RESPECT

    “5 Signs God Is Protecting You From a Narcissist” | Jordan Peterson, video from FearLess Focus

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  23. “Forgiveness becomes the next layer of liberation. But not in the way most people think. The empath does not forgive to excuse or reconcile. They forgive to reclaim their peace.

    Forgiveness becomes an act of self-cleansing, a way to wash away the residue of toxicity that once clouded their spirit. It is the ultimate declaration that the narcissist no longer occupies space within them. True forgiveness is silent. It does not require contact or acknowledgment. It is the whisper of a soul that says, “You no longer define me.” This form of forgiveness is not about the narcissist’s redemption. It is about the empath’s resurrection. As the empath continues to rise, they begin to recognize the profound wisdom that betrayal left behind. They see that pain, though cruel, was the very force that pushed them into self-discovery. Without betrayal, they might never have learned the depth of their resilience, the strength of their intuition, the necessity of boundaries. They realize that what once felt like destruction was in truth a dismantling of illusion. The narcissist’s betrayal stripped away everything false, leaving behind only what was real. From that raw authenticity, the empath begins to rebuild not a version of themselves that others expect, but the truest, most unshakable version of who they are.

    The empath’s liberation is also a spiritual awakening. They start to see how every experience, even the painful ones, was part of their evolution. The betrayal becomes a symbol of awakening. The moment when they shifted from seeking love outside themselves to realizing that love has always existed within. They stop identifying as wounded and begin to embody the awakened. Their energy becomes calm, grounded, and radiant. The same sensitivity that once attracted manipulators now draws in truth, creativity and authenticity. They learn their empathy is not a curse but a gift. When it becomes guided by wisdom, it becomes their greatest strength. In this new state of being, the empath no longer reacts to the narcissist’s chaos. They see it clearly for what is, a reflection of their own inner emptiness. They no longer take it personally, no longer try to fix it, no longer feel the need to engage. Their peace becomes untouchable. The narcissist may attempt to provoke, to re-enter, to test boundaries. But the empath has risen beyond that plane of energy. What once hooked their emotions now meets calm indifference. This is not coldness. It is mastery. The empath has learned that the highest form of strength is serenity…

    They live from a place of truth that cannot be shaken. The narcissist fades into irrelevance, not because they were defeated, but because they no longer matter. The empath’s liberation is not loud or dramatic. It is silent, radiant and eternal. It is the moment they realize they were never broken, only being reshaped into something greater than before. It is the moment they no longer see betrayal as the end of their story, but as the very force that awakened them to who they were always meant to be.”

    “Every Betrayal of a Super Empath Opens the Door to the Narcissist’s Karma” | Jordan Peterson, from Forge Your Future

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