From Golden Child to Scapegoat: Surviving Narcissistic Family Dynamics

Heather Leigh Strom dives into the difficult but powerful topic of narcissistic parents and partners. In Howling at the Moon podcast episode #15, "Surviving Narcissism | Healing + Energetic Shielding", she shares her personal story, explains the golden child/scapegoat dynamic, and explores why some people are incapable of giving unconditional love.

You’ll learn two ways to respond and discover how the K9 Spirit Guides offer support, clarity, and healing to help you reclaim your power and find peace.

Perfect for anyone ready to stop internalizing blame, break the cycle, and step into a new chapter of self-love and spiritual freedom.

🐾Access the "⁠Shield of Sovereignty: Anthea’s Narcissism Blocker" energetic download mentioned in this episode by subscribing to my Substack ⁠ here⁠: HeatherLeighStrom.Substack.com

📚 Get your copy of the book: ⁠K9 Spirit Guides: The Healing Power of Man’s Best Friend ⁠available at heatherleighstrom.com

Watch this episode on ⁠YouTube⁠!

🔗 Connect with Heather Leigh Strom:

• Website: ⁠HeatherLeighStrom.com⁠
• Substack: ⁠HeatherLeighStrom.Substack.com⁠
• More infor @ the K9 Guides:🌐⁠ ⁠⁠k9spiritguides.com⁠⁠⁠🐾 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

🔗Connect with Randi Fine: www.randifine.com

Recorded live October 2024

Takeaways:

• Narcissism can manifest in parent-child relationships, affecting emotional support and love.
• Understanding narcissistic behavior is crucial for personal healing and moving forward in life.
• Recognizing your own worth is vital when dealing with narcissistic individuals in your life.
• The K9 spirit guides offer insights into navigating challenging relationships and finding healing.

Narcissism can feel like a whirlwind, and today, we’re diving into what it really is and how it affects our lives, especially when it comes to family dynamics. I’m Heather Leigh Strom, and I’ve got some personal tales to share that might just resonate with you if you’ve ever felt like you were living in the shadow of a narcissistic parent or loved one. We’ll explore how these relationships twist our perceptions of love and support, and I’ll share some insights I learned from my chat with expert Randy Fine, who specializes in navigating the murky waters of narcissism. So, whether you’re dealing with a golden child or a scapegoat situation, we’ll arm you with some handy tools to help you understand and protect your energy. Get ready for a fun, yet enlightening ride with the K9 spirit guides, as we sift through the chaos and find clarity together!

Exploring narcissism is like peeling an onion—layers upon layers of complexity and sometimes, a few tears! In my journey, I’ve come to realize that understanding narcissism isn’t just about labeling someone as toxic; it’s about recognizing how their behavior has shaped our own lives. As we chat, I’ll share my personal stories and those of others who have navigated the choppy waters of narcissistic relationships. I’ve had...

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We're going to be talkingabout narcissism.
What is it?
How does it affect you andwhat do you do about it?
Hold that thought.
Welcome to Howling at theMoon, where the mystical meets the
practical and the caninespirit guides lead the way.

(00:22):
I'm your host, Heather lee Strom.
In 2022, I experienced asudden, life changing spiritual awakening
after a lifetime of strugglingwith who am I and why am I here?
For five decades, the worldfelt cold and confusing.

(00:45):
Now I see the patterns, thepurpose, and the bigger magical picture.
My mission?
To help you find your waythrough your own awakening journey.
Here you'll discover limitlesspossibilities for spiritual growth,
powerful healing frequenciesand extraordinary energetic professionals,

(01:09):
each designed to guide youinto deeper healing and remembrance.
Some episodes featureenlightening wisdom from spiritually
evolved guest healers,visionaries and authors.
Others are led by themultidimensional canine spirit guides,
themselves sharing theirunique intergalactic wisdom and frequency.

(01:34):
If you've been craving deepertruth, multidimensional healing,
and a little cosmic magic,you've just found your pack.
Listen and watch on Spotify orYouTube and bring the magic back
into your life.
So narcissism, what is it?

(01:58):
Well, I've always known thatI've had at least one narcissistic
parent.
And the reason this topic isimportant to me is if you've read
my book, you might havefigured that out.
It was important to me not toplace any labels on my story, on
anybody in my story when Iwrote it, because my story is just

(02:23):
that, it's my story.
But sometimes it's helpful tounderstand the players in your story
a little bit more thoroughly.
And I had an interview withRandy Fine recently and she is an

(02:44):
expert on survivingnarcissistic parents.
And when I looked at herpodcast and her information that
she has available, she'swritten a book that I have not read
but I'm sure would be quiterevealing, answer a lot of questions
for me.

(03:05):
She taught me some things andshe basically justified how I had
felt my entire life.
I'm not one to really investin labels.

(03:27):
That seems to empower the dysfunction.
So I never wanted to label thequality or the type of relationship
I had with my parents.
I just knew it wasn't verypositive, it wasn't very supportive,

(03:48):
wasn't very helpful.
And if you've read my book,you know that that's okay because
that helped me become who Iwas meant to be.
But not everybody is capableof seeing the big, big picture like
that.
So let's talk about narcissismwhat is it?
For me, narcissism was someonewho could not see past themselves,

(04:11):
who could not see past theirown selfish needs, who could not
put themselves aside and loveor care for anyone else.
Now, that might sound odd,thinking that a parent is narcissistic.

(04:32):
How can a parent be narcissistic?
Right.
Because their sole purpose isto take care of their children.
Well, this isn't true for everybody.
Not everybody is a naturalparent, I came to discover for myself.
And narcissistic parents tendto distance themselves from their

(04:53):
children, which is whathappened to me, and they tend to
not really show genuineinterest in their own children.
Now, this is kind of trickybecause on the outside, to someone
looking in on this picture,that's not apparent, that's not obvious,

(05:17):
because these individuals arevery skilled at showing people what
they want to see at sort ofperforming for the general public.
So my father, I didn't go intotoo much detail about him, but I
think one of the reasons hewas a preacher was because when he

(05:39):
got up on that stage and hehad a dedicated audience that was
willing to listen to him, he performed.
And that made him feel good,that validated him, that empowered
him in a way that he himselfhad never felt empowered, because
he did not have the bestchildhood either.

(06:00):
So that fulfilled him, andthat was how he compensated for his
disorder, his dysfunction.
Dysfunction, his disease,whatever you want to consider it,
unfortunately, because henever overcame his own narcissism
because of his father, he thenengaged with me from that space.

(06:26):
So these parents are not veryfun for their children.
And there's two types ofchildren that they.
From what I've learned from.
From the work of Randy Fine,there's two type types of children.
There's the golden child thatcan do no wrong, and there's the
scapegoat that no matter whatthe scapegoat does, they can't do

(06:47):
it right.
And that's where I was.
Because my disadvantage wasthat I could see what was happening.
I could see how my parentswere behaving.
And for some reason, I knew better.
Somehow, deep inside, I knew better.

(07:07):
So I didn't buy it.
I didn't fall for it, and Istood my ground.
So because of this, I wasshunned, so to speak, because I could
see through the.
The illusion.
I could see through the veil.
I could understand what theywere doing.
Not necessarily cognitively,subconsciously, I knew to protect

(07:29):
myself against it.
But this sets up a dynamic inthe relationship between parents
and children, because theparents don't ever.
These narcissistic parentsdon't ever give their children their
full attention.

(07:50):
And as Randy Fine taught me,they aren't really capable of loving.
She has an excellent podcaston this topic that answered so many
of my questions and explainedso much about what I experienced
as a child.
But these individuals are sowrapped into their own facade that

(08:17):
they don't even know who theythemselves are.
And when you don't know whoyourself is, you can't love yourself,
which is one of the thingsthat Anthea taught me.
One of the reasons I struggledto love myself for so long was because
I had no idea who I was.

(08:40):
And once I received thehealing from Anthea and I connected
to my soul, which was whatOregon did for me, I finally understood
who I was, and I was finallyfreed from that.
Only then could I begin tolove myself.

(09:01):
Only then am I capable ofloving other people.
Just because you're a parentdoesn't mean you're actually capable
of unconditional love.
You may tell yourself that.
You may assume that you are, but.
But you're really.
If you're narcissistic, thereis no way that you can.

(09:24):
So what does this mean for you?
If you're in a relationshipwith your.
With anyone, doesn't have tobe your parents.
It could be a spouse, it couldbe a sibling, it could be a friend.
You're never going to be thepriority in their life, or at least

(09:44):
you feel that way.
And you feel like you'reconstantly beating your head against
a wall because the more yousay to them, hey, you can't treat
me like this, the more theyjust push back, the more they tell
you you're crazy, the morethey tell you you're the problem.
These individuals can't see themselves.
They have such a veil aroundthem that they literally cannot see

(10:08):
themselves.
So it.
There's really no way to getthrough to them until they have such
a catastrophic event in theirlife that they're willing to finally
look.
That's the only hope for themin my experience, because I tried

(10:30):
everything with my father.
So the reason I felt this wasimportant was because we get to the
part now, what do you do about it?
What can you do about it?
Can you do anything about it?

(10:51):
Are you stuck?
What happens if someone inyour life that's very important to
you, critical to you, isnarcissistic and will never love
you?
What do you do?
And this.
This story's in my book.
I made that choice.
I made the decision to lookafter me, to put myself first.

(11:17):
And because of that, I was ablack sheep of the family.
I walked out because I had standards.
I did not want to be treatedthat way.
I knew I didn't deserve to betreated that way.
I could feel that it wasexpected for me to act the same way

(11:38):
they did.
And that wasn't okay with me.
So I decided to walk away.
Now, not everybody can.
It's hard.
It's really hard.
You have to have a very stiffupper lip.
And that's in my book too.
It's a cute little story.
You have to be willing to dowhat's hard.

(11:59):
And that's a whole nother conversation.
The strength to do what'shard, even though you know it's going
to be hard and you don't wantto do it.
But that's one option, andthat's the option I took.
The other option is tocontinue to engage in the relationship
and just understand what it is.
If you're honest with yourselfand you know the rules going in,

(12:23):
then you can do certain thingsto armor yourself against the relationship,
to armor yourself against theother person.
If you feel like you want tostay in that situation, I can't imagine
that this is just me.
Like, I just can't imaginestaying in that situation in that

(12:46):
toxicity and all thatnegativity and.
And not feeling loved and notfeeling supported.
I would rather be alone.
And that's what I did.
I walked alone for themajority of my life.
But if you choose not to dothat, you really do have to armor

(13:07):
yourself against the other person.
And there are many reasons whysomeone would choose to not walk
away.
It's.
You're dependent on thisperson for survival.
You can't walk away if yourlife is in danger.
If you break thisrelationship, you can't walk away.

(13:27):
Right.
So there are times when weneed to take care of ourselves even
though we can't leave the situation.
And I think this is somethingthe Guides want to offer you.

(13:51):
Yeah, they're.
They're sending in a messagenow because I wasn't sure why I was
going to talk about this, butthey want to offer you a shielding
if you should happen to findyourself in this situation where
you're engaging with anotherperson who's very confrontational,

(14:15):
demeaning, negative energy.
You just can't do anything right.
Or maybe you're beingmanipulated and you know it, but
you don't know what to doabout it.
These are not lovingrelationships, no matter what they

(14:37):
tell you.
So if you find that you haveto stay even though you know the
Guides wish to offer you aShielding for this very difficult
place that you have chosen to stand.

(14:58):
So one thing that helped me tounderstand exactly what this was
all about, because part ofwhat I do is to look at things from
the big picture.
So for me, it's not just aboutassigning a label to these type of
people in my life.
That's not the first thing Ido now because of my healing experience

(15:22):
with the canine spirit guides.
The first thing I do is say,hello, what is this all about?
What do I need to know about this?
Why am I experiencing this?
Why am I seeing this?
Hearing this, feeling this?
Tell me what I need to knowabout this.
Because commonly, once weunderstand the message, then we're

(15:42):
not going to be seeing thesemessages anymore.
That's part of the challengein life, is understanding why we
are experiencing what we are experiencing.
And in my book, this isactually a very surprising epiphany
that I had, and it onlyoccurred while I was writing the

(16:06):
book.
I did not know this was goingto happen.
I did not know that so much ofmy father was going to be ingrained
in that book.
I had no idea because I didn't know.
Even though he's passed now, he's.
He.
He died.
I. I don't know.
Somewhere around 2015, 2014, Idon't know.

(16:28):
But even though he has passed,I didn't know that I still carried
around that energy of therelationship, even though consciously
I thought I had forgiven him.
So this was all a surprise to me.
But what I learned, as I dugin deeper to my depth, I learned

(16:48):
the true reason why he wasthat way in my life.
And that's what's so criticalfor us to understand.
And this is.
This is even another pointthat Anthea brought up in the very
beginning of the book.
It's not about how people aretreating you.
It's about how you're treating yourself.

(17:10):
And other people arereflecting that back to you.
So even though this otherperson might be narcissistic, what
is it about you that you needto know in this situation?
To me, that's the epiphany.
To me, that's how I finallyhealed in this situation, was I got

(17:36):
it.
I finally saw why I was inthis relationship, this very awful,
negative, condescendingrelationship with my father that
had absolutely no love in it whatsoever.
I finally understood why andhow, where and when it all started,

(17:58):
and, you know, why, where itwas coming from, what the purpose
of it was.
And it was trying to get my attention.
It was giving me anopportunity to clear an energetic
tie, an ancestral tie that Ihad agreed to take on.

(18:20):
So if we look deeper intothese situations, taking the teaching
of the Canine Spirit Guidesfrom my book, and we don't just settle
for, well, that person's just narcissistic.
That person is just a jerk.
I had the worst parents ever,and aren't they terrible?

(18:42):
If we don't settle for thatand we really want to get into the
why, then that's what theCanine Guides help us do.
That's what I help my clients do.
That's what I received when Iwas going through my healing with
the Canine Guides.
And you can apply this toanything in your life.

(19:03):
It's not just about other people.
Why are you sick?
Why do you have a disease?
Why do you keep having accidents?
Why do you keep hurting yourself?
Why do you seem to have bad luck?
All of these are messages.
All of these are calling toyou to discover them, understand

(19:23):
them, unravel them, and heal them.
And once you get it, once youreally dig in there and get into
the depth of it, you don'teven have to fully understand it.
But like the guides say, justbe willing to open it up and let

(19:45):
it go.
The Canine Guides are going tooffer my members two things here
regarding this topic.
So if you wish to receive theEnergetic Upgrade or the healing
portion that goes with thistopic, you'll want to join my membership
program.
I'll put the link in the detail.

(20:07):
My members will be receivingthe Energetic Upgrade or the Energetic
Healing that goes with thistopic today if you wish to receive
the Canine Guides gift thatwill help you in this very situation.
Number one, help you see andaccess what you need to know about

(20:29):
this very situation and alsogive you a clear armoring to protect
you in this type of scenarioin case you cannot leave.
So they're going to offer twodifferent upgrades, Energetic shifts,

(20:50):
maybe even some shielding.
I don't know until we startit, but for my members, they will
be receiving that for this call.
If you wish to receive it,just join my membership and you'll
be able to receive all of theEnergetic upgrades that the Canine
Guides have to offer for allof my podcasts.
Thank you for joining me today.

(21:11):
The healing session for thisepisode with the Canine Spirit Guides
is now available exclusively,exclusively through my subscriber
portal on Substack.
These Energetic downloads aresacred transmissions, and by moving
them to a dedicated space.
I can connect moreintentionally with those.
Of you who feel called toreceive them.

(21:33):
It also helps me get to knowyou a little better so that I can
more effectively serve andsupport this growing community.
If you'd like to access thehealing frequency frequencies of
this episode's Canine SpiritGuide and future transmissions, just
head over to [e-mail] and

(21:53):
become a subscriber.
Whether you join us there orsimply tune in here, the Canine Spirit
Guides and I are so gratefulto share.
This path with you.
And be sure to stay putbecause there might be more coming
on this podcast.
Look in the chat for the linkto Randy Finds website and book so

(22:15):
you can check out moreinformation on narcissistic parents
if you'd like for yourself.
Thank you for watching.
Love you.