Narcissism or Extreme Takers
How does the term Narcissism fit into your attempts to better understand what you’re experiencing in someone else or yourself?
Although I prefer the term Extreme Taker, the origin story behind Narcissism explains a lot about the phenomenon. It also provides perspective on how much courage it takes to come to terms with the dynamics around extreme takers and extreme givers. For to heal, you will need to look deeply within yourself to begin to identify not just the pain and fears that have driven you, poorly, for far too long, but the core beliefs you’ve been taught about yourself that keep you entrenched in patterns that are undermining your happiness, sense of self, and your inner peace.
A Context for Narcissism
When it comes to pop psychology terms, you’ll hear plenty such as:
Love-bombing
Generational trauma
People-pleaser
Simp
Gaslighting
Triggered
Toxic
Co-dependent
Parental alienation
Trauma bonding
But none – not one – of them is more tired, overused, and bled of meaning than, of course, ‘narcissist.’ Everyone’s a narcissist, or narc, nowadays. “My ex is a total narcissist,” “My parents are such narcs,” “My adult kid has such narcissistic tendencies and it’s killing me,” “How do I know if I’m a narcissist,” and on go the statements in the narcissism obsession. Seemingly everyone is convinced they know what a narcissist is because they read it on the Mayo Clinic website or read a bunch of Googled articles. (Never mind that people who spend their adult lives and years of training, and who often write those very articles can misdiagnose diseases such as this, all the time because this and similar diseases are extraordinarily complex.)
But here’s the thing, as many folks know, there is the clinical definition of it that psychologists and psychiatrists study and diagnose.
Then there is the more garden variety usage of ‘narcissist’ that is used by people trying to find a language for their experience. That has become a popular term precisely because it does this – it helps people better understand what they’re experiencing in someone else or themselves.
As you may or may not know about me, I am not a psychologist or mental health professional of any sort, whatsoever. I have a soul counseling practice and am a former clergyman. I deal in belief systems, healing pain, and helping people go from surviving to thriving. Thus, the only thing I know about narcissism, or even much care about narcissism is its origin, because I studied the ancient languages of Greek, Hebrew, and Latin at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and am quite fluent in the belief systems within the cultures using those languages.
What is the Origin of Narcissism?
Psychology, a science that has been around for 200 years, give or take, did not invent the notion of narcissism or even narcissistic tendencies. Rather, it co-opted it from the poet-theologians of Ancient Greece.
The story of Narcissus was of a mortal son of a god and a nymph. Basically, this young man was a handsome fella, and one day saw his reflection in a pond. He immediately fell in love and frittered away his days fawning over himself in that pool of water, eventually dying there of unrequited love – the broken heart of loving someone, in this case, himself, who does not love you back, as it was only his reflection. His own self-obsession killed him.
But here’s the thing. This story, written by the Greek poet, Ovid, was more than his attempt to describe a type of personality that already existed around him, which the stories of the gods and their progeny often were. The story would’ve been interesting enough with simply that personality description and the life lesson it offers, Self-absorption can kill ya’.
But, that is the effect. Death by narcissistic tendencies, as Narcissus clearly exhibited (because, well, he’s Narcissus!), doesn’t tell the real story of why. Why did he die that way? Where did the narc tendencies come from for Narcissus? What caused all of this?
And this is where many of the clinical folks and most laypersons bandying about the term, ‘narcissist,’ often completely miss the boat. Because, told as such, the story is about an isolated individual, who is in love with himself and dies. But, who cares if some mortal son of a god dies? Big deal. Why should I, as a reader or hearer of the story, have any pathos for or against Narcissus?
The most compelling part of the story isn’t the Narcissus part of the story any more than any hero or villain story is about the hero or the villain. Instead, it’s really about the impact of the hero/villain life on others. And, to fully understand this, we must go into the origin of what caused Narcissus to become this way and what the impact was.
What caused it is that there was a mountain nymph, who fell in love with Narcissus. But this nymph had, herself, been cursed by a goddess. The curse? Her own agency had been removed from her voice. In other words, she could not speak her own mind or thoughts, ideas, or wants. She could only repeat back the last few words of whatever someone else spoke first. When she followed the young man she had fallen in love with, she could only repeat back his words of love for himself. His voice became her voice. So, of course, as they conversed, he fell in love with her treatment of him, always making him and his words the only thing out of her mouth.
What did Ovid name this beautiful Nymph?
Echo.
Narcissus was initially attracted to her when he could only hear her, but once she showed herself, he grew annoyed by her strange speaking style, wherein she could only repeat back his voice and words. Because of his annoyance and boredom with her lack of originality, he rejected her, time and again. The more he rejected her, the more obsessed she became with him. Eventually, she retreated to the mountains where she withered and died.
The goddess, Nemesis, heard about this tragedy and was pissed. So, she cursed Narcissus, saying that he would never be able to be loved by the one he loved.
Fast forward, he dies of never getting his own self-adoration and love returned to him.
The lynchpin of the story, when Narcissus goes from just being a young man who is in love with himself to being a man with a death sentence of a different stripe, is his treatment of the nymph who loved him. What makes the reader of the story feel justified in disliking the narcissist of the story is his treatment of someone who loves him. Without that, he’s just a kid in love with himself, not hurting anyone but himself. If he wants to fawn over himself, let him. He ain’t botherin’ anyone.
But, instead, it’s at the moment of mistreating and rejecting Echo, the one person absorbed with him who had no voice of her own, only his, that he becomes loathed. What makes it a story – a story with passion, guts, and blood – is how he treats others. That is when he pisses off a goddess and his fate is sealed. His fate is not just ‘death by self-obsession.’ No, more accurately, it’s basically that he never gets love back – his own love cup never gets filled.
What makes us sometimes hate the narcissists in our lives is not that they’re self-absorbed, per se. It’s the effects of that self-absorption on others. It’s what they do with it, how they treat those around them, especially the one, or ones, who love them most. That’s the juicy, ugly part of the story.
But there’s still one more piece in there that it would be easy to miss. Let’s not forget what gives Narcissus the very power to hurt Echo is that she has lost her voice, except to repeat back what he says, as all echoes do. Long before she met Narcissus, she lost her agency and her sense of self. That’s the setup for the painful rejection from Narcissus. If she had had her own voice and self, he would not have this power over her. In the story, one depends on the other. What makes us love the narcissist to such a state of full absorption is the beauty we see in them, but also that we don’t have our own voice or self.
Whether she believes it or not, whether she likes it or not, Echo was susceptible to a Narcissus long before Narcissus came around. Reading the story backward, it’s very easy to see that she was set up to eat crap from a dude like Narcissus because she was dealt a lethal blow – her own sense of self was ripped from her by an angry goddess (Hera). It could be argued the real crime, or originating crime, had already been committed against Echo, long before Narcissus came onto the stage. The real story is the prequel.
Now are you starting to connect the dots?
Narcissus has, in effect, taken Echo’s voice from her. Or so it feels. Technically, the gods/goddesses in Echo’s life took her voice. Narcissus is the guy who sucks her life energy, who is happy to take her voice/echo and life for as long as they meet his needs, then when it no longer suits him he pushes her away, quite harshly.
Extreme Takers and Extreme Givers
And this is where the story becomes most useful, at least when it comes to healing.
Narcissus’ crime, for which Nemesis punishes him, is that in hyperfocus on filling himself up with love, he took what was not his to take without giving back; he took the voice, love, and life of another. In his mind, she couldn’t give him enough love to fill his cup, so he took what he could from her and moved on.
This is why I don’t use the term, narcissist. I think that name is not just overused, but it doesn’t really say anything while it also says a million different things. I like a clearer term – Extreme Taker. Because the story is really about the extreme taking of love and life from another, and that’s not good, for two reasons.
One, just as Narcissus sucks Echo’s life, extreme taking destroys the people around the extreme taker.
But also, the extreme taker, despite all they take, never fills with love. Deep inside, extreme takers are miserable, because they cannot receive enough love from where they want it most. They want love back from themselves and never get it, and die empty, somewhere deep inside.
The story is about the extreme giving of love and life to another. This, too, is not good. For, it is extreme, too much. It is done to the utter loss of self and voice. Extreme giving, where your voice is nothing more than their voice, is the curse from the gods. Let us not forget that.
If you follow my work, you know that I don’t use the term ‘narcissist’ when working with my clients or doing videos or speaking. It’s a clinical term used by the field of psychology and a damn slippery term at that. I use ‘Extreme Takers’ and, conversely, ‘Extreme Givers.’ As with Narcissus, the story is not about who that person is or even what personality traits they have. It’s about the interaction of that person with someone else, especially someone who loves them. That’s the primary reason the story has value; it describes how these folks interact with those around them. Self-obsession is how they act with themselves; and who cares about that, if it doesn’t affect me? It’s only when that self-obsession interacts with someone else that it becomes this sort of toxic chemical to another. And, what is the hallmark characteristic of the narcissist when interacting with others? Extreme taking (of voice, love, and life).
What hurts so damn much really isn’t that extreme takers are self-absorbed, but the impact of that absorption on me – i.e., how they treat me. They take and I give. They extreme take and I extreme give. And, it gets worse and worse until I have nothing left and, bored and annoyed, they’ve moved on to their next victim because there’s no blood left to suck here.
But do Extreme Takers always end up with Extreme Givers?
The quick answer to whether Extreme Takers always end up with Extreme Givers is ‘no.’
Extreme Takers are happy to take from Moderate Givers or even Small Givers. It’s just that those relationships don’t last nearly as long, because someone who gives only moderately, small amounts, or only when it’s reciprocated back to them will walk away from someone who is only interested in taking. Furthermore, the Extreme Taker will grow bored and annoyed sooner by someone who only has a small or moderate amount of love to give in return, unless that Extreme Taker uses that moderate giver as a supplement to her or his Extreme Giver.
Extreme Takers are indiscriminate. Whoever is giving, they’re happy to take from. The only person they won’t take from is the person who won’t give to them. They also won’t take from someone who somehow has power over them, such as a boss, a dominating parent, or someone who has something the Extreme Taker wants (a paycheck, approval, a roll in the hay, etc).
An Extreme Taker can even end up with another Extreme Taker, but their taking areas often overlap in such a way that each is taking in different forms and sectors of life. But remember, an Extreme Taker will only stay as long as some need is being met, and it may not be the need that seems to present on the surface. Very often, it goes much deeper.
What is the deeper problem with the Extreme Taker?
The real, underlying problem with the Extreme Taker is really no different from the real, underlying problem of the Extreme Giver. Think about it, what is the curse that each of them was given by the gods in their lives before Narcissus and Echo met each other?
Narcissus’s curse from the god in his life was that he could never receive the love he sought. He could look at himself and see his real self, but no matter how much love he got in return, it was never enough. Echo was trying to love him, but it wasn’t enough. His reflection in the pond clearly gave no love back. It felt good to look at himself and obsess over himself, but the metaphor of that pond reflection is that it’s never enough. So, it wasn’t so much that he couldn’t receive love, but that no amount could fill him up and make him feel satiated in love.
Echo’s curse was that she was stripped of her ability to speak her own mind or express her own sense of self, originality, wants, and/or feelings. In other words, she had been stripped of her identity. She could still feel her own feelings inside, sense her own wants, and know the words she wanted to say. But, because of her curse, she could not express herself. The inability to express herself is really what kills her in the end because that is precisely why Narcissus rejects his Echo – her lack of originality becomes boring and annoying. So, even if she had met someone far nicer than the dickhead, Narcissus, she still wouldn’t be able to be loved for who she really was, because she could never show, or express, who she really was. That longing to be seen and accepted for who she really was, which is what love really is, could not ever happen because she had been robbed of her ability to show who she really was.
So, neither Narcissus nor Echo can ever feel truly satiated in love, but for two different reasons. Narcissus’ fatal flaw was that he had a hole in the bottom of his love cup, such that even though he could express his true self and be seen for his real self, no matter how much love he got in return, it would never be enough to fill him up. Echo’s fatal flaw was not that she was unable to fill with love, but that she was unable to be loved for who she really was because she could never show who she really was. She had lost her ability to express her authentic self.
So, they both wither and die from the lack of a filling of the love cup inside them. Same curse, different forms, same result.
The deeper reason that the Extreme Taker takes and the cheater cheats is that he cannot receive love. Extreme Takers have been taught that their authentic self doesn’t matter, only their image. The Extreme Taker in your life was either taught that they’re dog shit and that their real self doesn’t matter; or they were taught that they’re the Golden Child and that the only way they get Scooby snacks or love (in the form of praise) is by performance – i.e., what they DO to make mom or dad happy or proud. In other words, there was no room in childhood for them to be their authentic self. They had to perform all their lives as someone else, a persona, so as to get any positive attention.
The gods in your Extreme Taker’s life – i.e., mom and dad, or whoever raised your Extreme Taker – taught her or him that their real self doesn’t matter…and THAT is how the hole gets drilled into the bottom of their love cup. The Extreme Taker cannot be loved for who she really is, because she lacks the ability to ever fill with love.
The gods in your Extreme Giver’s life – i.e., mom and dad, or whoever raised your Extreme Giver – taught him or her their real self doesn’t matter or is no good, or not good enough. By doing so, the child is taught the insignificance of his real self. So, he hides that away, no longer able to express his real self without it bringing a hail of pain showered down upon him. The Extreme Giver is conditioned at a very young age to fear self-expression, because it only brings pain. Thus, that muscle of self-expression atrophies. Just like anyone, the Extreme Giver longs to be seen for and loved for who he really is. But, he can never be loved for who he really is, because he has been robbed (by a lifetime of fear) of his ability to ever show who he really is.
Will a Narcissistic Extreme Taker ever change?
This is a question I get a lot.
There are people who will swear, up and down, that an Extreme Taker will never change. But, that has not been my experience.
Before I get to that, though, it’s worth noting that, generally speaking, someone asking whether or not an Extreme Taker will ever change indicates someone hoping they do. In all likelihood, you’re not asking the ‘will they change’ question, unless you’ve been Echo, or still are. You’re so longing for the day your favorite Narcissus changes out of his or her self-absorption and finally sees you and values you, right? So, really the question is, ‘How much longer do I have to wait; how much more do I have to endure?’ That is the real question being asked here. Should I keep going, keep investing; or is the possibility of change so low that I’m now just throwing good money after bad? It’s an exercise in cost analysis, profit, and loss.
So, if you’re asking that question, you might want to ask yourself, instead, Is it possible I’m an Extreme Giver, who has lost her/his own voice if I ever even had it? Is it possible that, at some point, the real solution to your life and getting your own life healed is NOT getting love from someone else (and those “someone else’s” never seem to give it, or never give enough)?
But the real path to healing and happiness is to begin the process of reclaiming your voice, by going back to the origins of where and when you lost it in the first place. This is the reason I wrote my book, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup, to literally walk you through this exact process. Remember, if Echo has her voice, she ceases to be a repeat of what the beloved says. She finally has her life back and can speak and live her truth. She can begin to fill her own love cup, not just be completely dependent upon the Extreme Taker.
back to the question of whether an Extreme Taker will ever change.
It has been my experience that, more often than not, Extreme Takers are constantly changing unless they have an extremely limited circle of interactions with others or none at all.
I guarantee, 99% of the time, if the Extreme Taker has a job where they work for someone or some company they are not treating their boss the way they treat you. Why? They’d get fired if they did.
Or, maybe there are certain co-workers they don’t treat with extreme taking, in no small part because they’d get reported to HR.
Or, maybe the Extreme Taker in your life owns the company they work at, so they have no boss. Yes, they do have a boss and the boss is the customer. I guarantee you, your Extreme Taker is not treating their customers the way they treat you. If they did, they’d very quickly have no customers.
Or, does that business owner treat their banker or mortgage company persons the way they treat you? I doubt it.
Does your Extreme Taker treat her mother and father they way she treats you? What about a certain sibling(s)?
The question you have to ask is, Who has power over the Extreme Taker?
Who has something the Extreme Taker wants, or even needs? For, once someone has something I want, they now have power over me – the power to withhold it and, thereby, make me miserable. Believing that she absolutely must get that thing she wants, even an Extreme Taker will defer or even back down or morph into someone they normally never are. So, if they’re not deferring to you, sucking up to you, or being kind to you (except when you walk away), it means you have nothing they want; or it means they know they have the power to get it from you without putting in any effort (because somewhere in them they sense that you’ve lost your power or sense of agency/self…your voice).
So, Extreme Takers are constantly changing, constantly toggling between taking and giving, if it means them getting more of what they think they cannot live without – more love and attention, in one form or another, from someone else.
But, that still doesn’t get to the heart of the question of whether they’ll ever change for you, because, again, you’re doing that cost analysis. You’re waiting and hoping they’ll change for you and you can finally be happy together. So, you’re wondering if it’s worth your time and energy, and very lifeblood, to continue to eat their meanness or indifference and endure it. Right? Of course.
And the simple answer is, yes, sometimes they do change.
But, change only comes from the pain of being a certain way bringing such a high price that it’s no longer worth it. And, it’s been my experience that Extreme Takers only experience unbearable pain that breaks them wide open and causes change when they’ve lost someone or something so very dear to them that they think they cannot take one more step. That is the inflection point. That is when the possibility for change happens.
But, sadly, often the person they lose isn’t the person who most wants them to change. It may not be the loss of you or the fear of losing you, that causes them to one day change. And, that is just brutally heartbreaking to discover that.
Very often, though not always, the person whose loss sears them most is the loss of the child, or adult-child, if for no other reason than children seem to have this infinite amount of love to give, precisely as the Extreme Taker needs.
Or, the loss that grips them most is that person they’ve been cheating with or the person they went on to after you. And that just hurts. There’s no two ways about it. It just hurts to know that I wasn’t enough to get my Extreme Taker to change. And, after we grieve over that, for as long as it takes, we discover life goes on; and it’s time to get serious about changing myself, the Extreme Giver.
Will an Extreme Giver ever change?
The short answer is that yes, they can. It’s not inevitable, but it happens a lot. A good chunk of self-help is, quite unwittingly, geared toward helping extreme givers – people who’ve lost their own sense of self or their ability to express authentic self – become more balanced in giving and receiving (and even taking).
But, as with all things in life, the harsh reality is that change only comes from pain, of some sort. Change will not occur until the pain gets bad enough. And, until the gruesome cost of being a forever giver goes well beyond the Extreme Giver’s extreme strength to endure all manner of vile shit, the Extreme Giver will never change.
See, the other curse of the Extreme Giver is that he or she has gone his entire life never getting filled with love for his authentic self. So, his ability to just endure life this way is extremely high. And, if change only comes from the pain of life getting bad enough, then the Extreme Giver’s strength is, in fact, his other great curse. He can always take more pain. However, once the pain gets too bad, he finally finds his ‘NO!’ and takes action to shut the pain down. But, as long as he is strong, the Extreme Giver will just keep being crapped on…and keep giving.
So, the question to the Extreme Giver is always, Has your pain gotten bad enough yet, or can you endure more? Further, even if you can endure more, why would you?
What if I’M the Extreme Taker? Can I change?
Oh sure, you can change, if you’re the Extreme Taker. But the question is, Why are you changing? Is the change real, or is it just temporary to keep yourself from losing someone? The former is good; the latter is repulsive because it’s manipulative and likely won’t last.
Who have you lost?
Or, has the ugliness of always being the villain in everyone’s story become tiresome?
Or, has the sense of inner self-loathing that you feel waaaaay down deep inside, that self-loathing that only hits you in the wee hours of the night or in some other vulnerable time (perhaps when drunk or fatigued) finally just exhausted you to the point where you’re just sick of yourself?
Whichever the reason, if your pain has driven you to the point of genuine lust for changing yourself, then the question becomes whether you have the courage to go into the origin stories of who you are, what you were taught to believe about yourself, and how the stories of villains and heroes in your past may not be the way you’ve always told it or thought about it. That is, until you’re hungry enough to explore the dirty depths of your past, you ain’t ready to change from being the A-hole Extreme Taker you’ve always been. And, if you are ready, then you need to get my book, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup, which is written precisely for this. The process is very doable, but it requires motivation, courage, and the willingness to do the ugly, scary tasks of rethinking and rewriting the past.
how do you know if someone is a Narcissist/Extreme Taker?
This is another question I get all the time. If this is your question, you’re asking the wrong damn question.
Why?
Because you’re basically saying that the enemies are outside the gate, and you need to learn how to identify the enemy.
What I am saying is that the real enemy is inside the gate. And, until you slay the enemy inside you, it doesn’t matter who is outside or who is let in.
See, as we discovered in the Greek myth at the beginning of this article, Echo’s enemy isn’t Narcissus. Her real enemy was the goddess, Hera, who cursed her by stealing her voice, stealing her ability to tell and show the world who she really was. That is what she carried into the scenes where she meets and interacts with Narcissus. If she didn’t have that original wounding, she would’ve been fine with the narc, or at least fared much better.
So, the challenge for the person fearful of narcs is to go inside and discern what the voices are inside of you that are causing you to not believe in, speak, or stand up for who you really are. And this is where the whole conversation about Red Flags comes in.
Relationship Red Flags
Very often, in dating as in friendships and family relationships, we want to know what Red Flags to be on the lookout for, to avoid future problems in the relationship. But, real Red Flags aren’t what another person is doing or saying, per se. Red Flags are not something you identify in another. Red Flags are a feeling inside myself. A Red Flag is anything that causes me to feel bad or even slightly off inside me. A Red Flag is a siren going off inside of me. Call it intuition or gut, or just something feeling, well, off. That’s what a Red Flag is. That’s how you identify an Extreme Taker.
It's when someone says or does something that doesn’t feel good to me, or just feels off. If I feel that off-ness, I then have to choose whether to act on it by standing up for myself or let it slide.
But, if I don’t have a connection with my authentic self inside, my intuition, my gut, I’ll never know when something feels off to me. In other words, the question is not whether this or that person is a narcissist. The question is, am I tuned into myself and how things really feel to me well enough that I can feel when someone has hurt me or offended me? And, is my sense of self strong enough that I also stand up for myself and not back down? See, the real issue is not this other person. The real issue is whether I’m listening to my own inner voice if I even have the ability to, and acting on it.
But, if my voice has been so stolen from me, or if my belief in my own value has been sucked out of me, decades ago in childhood, then even if I can feel when something is off, I won’t act on it, because I don’t believe I’m worth it. I’ll fear standing up for myself, because “What if they don’t like it and leave me or get mad at me?”
So again, it is the beliefs I’ve been taught about myself that cause me to either hear and heed my own inner voice and thereby never allow someone to treat me in a narcissistic way; or to not hear or not act on how I am being treated by someone else. And, if I’m not hearing and acting on it when someone hurts me, then I am basically giving that person permission to keep hurting me. And, recognizing that small things become big things if I allow someone to mistreat me or offend me once, I’m tacitly giving permission to do it again…and again…and worse. Enter the narcissist.
Spotting the Narcissist is Not the Problem
So, you see, spotting the narcissist is not the problem. The real problem is whether you have the ability to feel what feels crappy to you and whether you have the sense of self-value enough to courageously act when someone does treat you in a crappy manner.
So, offensive as this may initially sound, the question is not, Can you spot a narcissist? The real question is, Can you spot a narcissist-allower? Is it you? And, do you have the courage to do the real, ugly, nasty, scary work of going inside yourself and identifying the origins of this extreme allowing?
The reason I ask these questions is because one of the patterns I’ve seen most frequently in situations where there is an Extreme Taker and an Extreme Giver is that there is another dynamic at play. The Extreme Taker becomes an Extreme Inflictor, causing all manner of damage to the ones around him or her. But far more importantly, the Extreme Giver also becomes even more fully the Extreme Allower.
The Extreme Giver, by virtue of the fact that they were conditioned as children to only give and not have boundaries or expect equal treatment, in return, they were also conditioned to allow themselves to be treated poorly because the most important thing is giving to the other and tolerating all manner of BS. So, the very thing the Extreme Giver has the most of – the strength to endure the receiving of very little love and the strength to endure really poor treatment – is the very thing working against the Extreme Giver most. It’s that ability to endure and the desire to win a bit of love from the Extreme Taker that causes the individual to become an Extreme Allower, who just takes it and takes it and takes it, just destroying their own soul and sense of self.
So, you see, the real issue is not about identifying whether or not you have an Extreme Taker/Narcissist in your life.
The real issue is whether or not you’re able to identify when something, especially small and medium things, doesn’t feel good to you; and then whether you’re able and willing to stand up for yourself and not back down. Because that and that alone is all the knowledge and strength you need for dealing with not only an Extreme Taker but anyone in your life.
How Well Do You Know Yourself?
It is to know yourself and what your own self does not like or what feels crummy to yourself, and it is to not allow it in your life. If you were to strive to learn and do that one thing, and if you were to strive to remove from inside of you all of the core beliefs that keep you from doing that, your relationships would change dramatically, because you would no longer be allowing treatment from anyone that feels bad to you. Imagine the impact on your happiness by eliminating that one thing – stuff that doesn’t feel good to you! It would be huge.
But that requires the courage to go inside yourself and begin to identify not just the pain and fears that have driven you, poorly, for far too long, but the core beliefs you’ve been taught about yourself that keep you entrenched in patterns that are undermining your happiness, sense of self, and your inner peace.
This is why I wrote the bestseller, There’s a Hole in My Love Cup, and have created 1000+ free videos on social media as well as this free newsletter article on a different subject every month; several DIY video courses on the website; a free podcast, The Badass Counseling Show; a free Badass Counseling Group on Facebook; and am coming out with Community+ (PLUS) at Badass Counseling for those who long for a greater sense of supportive, challenging soul community and more resources for healing.
All of these tools exist to help you do the work of healing your inner child so that you can finally create relationships wherein both people are respected, treated well, and encouraged to become their fullest and most authentic selves. For these and more, explore the links on the Badass Counseling website.
>> See Why and How to Heal Your Inner Child
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-- Sven Erlandson, MDiv, Is The Author Of Seven Books, Including 'Badass Jesus: The Serious Athlete And A Life Of Noble Purpose' And 'I Steal Wives: A Serial Adulterer Reveals The REAL Reasons More And More Happily Married Women Are Cheating.' He Has Been Called The Father Of The Spiritual But Not Religious Movement After His Seminal Book 'Spiritual But Not Religious' Came Out 15 Years Ago, Long Before The Phrase Became Part Of Common Parlance And Even Longer Before The Movement Hit Critical Mass. He Is Former Military, Clergy, And NCAA Head Coach For Strength And Conditioning; And Has A Global Counseling/Consulting Practice with offices In NYC, NJ, And Stamford, CT: BadassCounseling.com
