Overcoming Narcissistic Abuse and Healing From Trauma | with Raven Scott

Michael: Hey! What's up, Unbroken Nation! Hope that you're doing well wherever you are in the world today. Very excited to be back with you with another episode with my guest, Raven Scott, who is the author of Empath and the Narcissist. Raven, my friend. How are you today? What is happening in your world?

Raven: I am very well today. Thank you. I've been recording an audio version actually, of the book you just said, so my voice may be a little bit in and out, I've been taking lozenges trying to get through recording and reading the entire book, it's like 288 pages, so.

Michael: Yep. Been there, little insider trade secret now having done it three times apple juice, believe it or not, just seems to help for some reason I have no idea why, it just does. Maybe old wives tell, maybe it's placebo effect, but it helps me so, you know, maybe give that a try. I'm very excited for this conversation, especially because we're going to dive into some really interesting things around not only narcissistic abuse, but about healing about mirror neurons, which I'm a big fan of and about like rewiring your brain. And so, before we dive in, tell everybody a little bit about you and how you got to where you are today.

Raven: Yes. What a journey, what an onion to peel, to be honest, that I'm still peeling back layers. I grew up a very comfortable, yet also extremely sheltered, I grew up in a very extreme religious household. The school I went to was so tiny, my graduating and high school was like 40 kids, which is insane. I actually met a friend in our neighborhood and he's like, Oh, I know that school. And I was like, yeah, it was kind of like a cult, right? He's like, yeah. So, I won't say that I was in a cult, but I certainly was just on the tippy doe border and I was very sheltered and every decision that I made in my life was to please that religion, to please God, to please my parents and it really just set me up to be in another manipulative relationship. And unfortunately, that was with a narcissist. I even met him in the church I was going to, I was heavily involved. I was a worship leader, I was a small group leader in my school and my church. And I even volunteered at a summer camp and that's where he met and he was my first boyfriend and I really was very ignorant. I just didn't realize how blind I was to like life, how to live the world. I had no analytical skills to see that this person was setting me up to pull me away from my family, and I then became isolated. He said, why are we even believing all this anyway? And I switched my savior from God to him because he was like, Oh, well, he taught me all about the stars and evolution, which I wasn't taught in my school. I was taught creationism, which is a huge crux really for any human being to believe but I digress. And it was like, it just set me up for like switching my worship from one God to another. And everything he said was smarter than what I grew up with. I was angry that I was so sheltered. I was angry at my parents for having me be in such a situation that I was like being lied to, right. I felt like I was being lied to everyone in my life. And so, I relied on him, and honestly was easy for him to isolate me because I was so mad and I relied on him for everything. How to live advice, how to look like he even formed me into like how a real woman should look, which was creepily just like his mother. And so, I kind of shredded around, you know, like arm candy on his arm looking almost identical to his mother and just this strange, codependent relationship formed. And I was with him for 10 years and I tried to leave multiple times. And then where I am today was just, I found the place, I found there was an aha moment, you know, combined with timing, it started to get physically abusive and that was my hard boundary, for some reason, emotional abuse, which I've heard more often than not is easily overlooked and people take that over the physical abuse. And so, once the physical abuse, I said, Nope, Uhuh not go in there, I'm removing myself and we're gonna go to therapy and work on our relationship. And that was derailed by him trying to cheat on me with my sister and I was like, oh, another boundary you just crossed not going to therapy. And it started my question, the biggest question I had was, why did this happen? How did this happen to me? I felt like my life was perfect. I had loving parents and as I peeled away the onion and was writing my book, healing myself, going through different holidays with my family, I realized I was used to that type of manipulative abuse in my childhood. And it felt normal to be controlled in my thoughts, to be controlled and to please him ‘cuz I was always pleasing others in my childhood. So, it was a really, really painful eye-opening moment that is continually still peeling away that, you know what? This is something that I was used to and this emotional manipulation was easily accepted because it was not foreign to me.

Michael: Yeah. And you know, that's so true for many people. I've said many times on this show, like in my late twenties, I was finally starting to figure out like the secret to healing. And that's doing what you want because you want to, and not doing what you don't want to do because you don't want to, and not because you're trying to appease and placate other people. Like I really feel like that's truth about what it means to go through this healing process, because in that, you're crafting, you're creating your identity, you're discovering who you are and it's hard, like it's super fucking hard. And I think about that all the time, and especially when you grow up in a religious background, especially if one is cultish, you know, and as listeners of this show know, and I've dove into many times, I grew up Mormon. And so, growing up, being Mormon in the hood, as a homeless kid is a very weird experience, let me tell you. And it took a lot of questioning and a lot of asking why, and a lot of like looking at scripture and being like, eh, something here doesn't add up. But you know, what's really interesting is when you start to combine not only experiences in religion, and again, I'm not being defamatory towards religion, like, you know, do your thing, but what I am saying is that between religious sex, between school and between the way that society raises us, you know, through TV, through media, through all these things, it's you kind of predicated your entire life on being told what to do. And you know, it's really interesting because that is waved at with like a hand of defiance and people are like, how dare you freely think or have a critical thought? And so, what I'm curious about, like, you know, I think a lot of people will have difficulty creating a pathway on a timeline to understand causation and correlation when you were younger and you're growing up in this environment, did it feel a skew to you? Did anything feel off, or do you think you'd just been so indoctrinated that you were like, well, I guess it's just life?

Raven: For the most part, it felt very normal, it really did feel normal except for a few instances, and typically it involved around circumstances or friends that were either outside of the religion or outside of my color skin, to be 100% honest. It was the first signs where I was like, well, that's wrong. You know, like, that's not okay, but I got, I have to please my parent, I have to do the right thing to God. So, I guess I can't, you know, be in a relationship with this boy because he's got darker skin than me just because the Bible said, and this is exactly what was told to me to help me make my quote unquote decision, was the Bible says that, you know, you cannot be unequally yolk. And I felt so wrong to me, but at the same time I was so desperate to make sure I wasn't kicked out of the tribe and I write about this in my book, my sister kicked out of our family because she got pregnant before she was married. And that was a big thing, right in the Bible again, that was a huge sin. So, it was just trauma within me to make sure that I was people pleasing, that I was making sure that I was following the rules. And it was traumatizing really, because emotionally I was enmeshed everything even if it felt wrong in that moment, I was like, well, but I can't make them mad because they're telling me that this is the right thing to do. So, for the most part, it was indoctrination with the exception of some of those instances where I was like, hold up, wait a minute, this doesn't feel right, you know.

Michael: Yeah. And I think it requires that, and you know, it's fascinating to me when I kind of look back on my journey growing up and looking at this idea of like, this is who you're supposed to be no matter what through the scope in the eyes of God, or you're going to hell forever. I was like, are you sure? Like I was the kid who always got kicked outta Sunday class because Sunday school class, because I'd be like, why? Somebody explained, and again, I'm not being defamatory, but like explain to me how a dude lived in a well for three years, can anybody? Please help me for this or it might have been three days, whatever it was?

Raven: You had that analytical mind skill that I just didn't have the courage to have. I would be the child who just sat there was like uhu, okay. And then I would repeat exactly what they said to make sure that I didn't get kicked outta class.

Michael: So, for me it wasn't courage because trust me, I had to suffer for a lot of those indignations, I had to know. And I think that that genuine curiosity is the very thing that has led me to where I am in my life. So, what I think is interesting about your story and your journey is, so you're in this position where your kind of measuring life and I'm gonna put words in your mouth, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but you're looking at life, you're saying, okay, this is reasonable, for lack of a better way to phrase it. This is who I am, this is what it's supposed to be, blah, blah, blah. But this is the thing, I won't allowed, right? The physical abuse, the wanting to cheat with your sister, and you're like, okay, so this is where the line is crossed. A lot of people who have experienced that level of, I'm gonna call it brainwashing cuz it is what it is, they don't know that that still is not okay. And so, when you're looking at this, like what are the traits, what are the things that people can be looking for in this aspect or these kinds of relationships even like whether it's church or school or work or intimate relationships like what are some of these traits that people should be keeping their eye open for because I have a feeling somebody's probably in a relationship like this right now and has no freaking idea.

Raven: Yeah, I mean, number one is autonomy. Do you have autonomy to literally do anything you want or eat anything you want within reason that is your freedom, right? I think within the Narcissist Personality Disorder, they need control, and there's no autonomy, they may trick you into thinking you have autonomy, but you better look like this, you better wear high heels, you better eat salads and make sure you don't get fat because that not okay with them. They have to make sure that everything looks perfect on the outside and they don't really care if that harms you. So, other things I can see also, even with parents and children, and they don't really intend to, but they do this anyways, is, oh, you know, eat this watermelon and the child's like, I don't wanna, and they're like, Oh, well just, you know, do I have to eat all of it? Yes, you have to eat all of it. Well, right there, that's already controlling like, what does the child really want? Is it an apple instead of a watermelon? And then you get into this, like, then the parent will start to try and convince the child why watermelon is so delicious and nutritious versus allowing the freedom to choose between two fruits, right? That right there is a very tiny insidious way of not allowing anybody with autonomy, and it starts to condition you as a child to think that that's okay because a parent's convincing you that watermelon is better than Apple, where that could scientific not even be true, right? So, it's just the behaviors that we start to accept as children.

Michael: Let's go into that, cause I wanna look at some other traits here too. But the thing about autonomy, it makes a lot of sense, but one of the things that I'm curious about, when you started recognizing that you didn't have freedom of choice, but you're still kind of in this place of being brainwashed, how did you like reconcile that to be able to get to the place where you actually understood what was happening?

Raven: Yeah, that took me so many years, to be honest. It started with rebelling, right? Just like the little child says, I don't want to, it was like, I'm moving out and getting my own place, I'm not following by your rules anymore. And you know, I moved out without them there, it was almost like, you know, rebellious, I didn't want any conflict. It's some of those different rebellious things that teenagers are so known for doing, but it's just them trying to fight back for their autonomy, because when they bring it up, they're not gonna be listened to they're gonna have this perpetual lecture about how this is the way life is and this should be. And guiding your child children with information is great, but when you are receiving a lecture that is one-sided with no listening, which I received a lot in my whole life, really, but also in that romantic relationship, it was like, oh, well you should, you know, allow me to sleep and treat me better and then it would an hour and a half, two-hour long lecture of why that idea was not actually correct and right. And then he'd flip my brain upside down and convince me that he was doing it for my own good and it's just this brain gymnastics. So, the first step is rebellion, and then the next step is just peeling away the layers, removing yourself from being like interacting with them ‘cuz you can really get linked into acting like a little child again when you're interacting with them versus as an adult or a teenager. And when you remove yourself and youdo have to do some analyzing think back into your past about certain circumstances, well, what were their motivations for saying that? Did they really have my best interest? When they told me that this is the way, or you know, treated me like this, no, probably not. So, you have to go back into the memory bank. What was the motivation? And typically, you'll find, especially with a narcissist, that it's self-centered, it is for controlling, it is for their own self-serving good. And when you start to see that and pulling yourself out of the situation, that's when you start to get resolved, that's when you start to really separate yourself for, cuz you typically, you are extremely enmeshed, you know, your identity is intertwined with them and their love and acceptance for you. So, it takes time, a lot of analyzing, a lot of time apart from them, a lot of healing, a lot of therapy.

Michael: Yeah. And a lot of honesty too, and I think that's the thing people don't hold on to. You know, I look at my experience with my mother was without question a megalomaniac and a hyper narcissistic human being, but also, I go, well, how did she get there? Well, fuck, have you met my grandma? You know what I mean? And it's like, that's the whole thing about this journey, it's so intergenerational and you have to understand the reality that often you are groomed and enmeshed because the people before you were groomed and enmeshed and I would be shocked if you know this person who was in your life, if they didn't have that experience with their parents. I don't think people normally just kind of come out that way, right. And so, it's interesting because we live in an odd time, I think specifically around the word narcissist, where everyone immediately goes, everyone who has an opinion, has a narcissist and I'm like, no, that's not really true, right? What it is that person trying to binge you so that you placate yourself for their needs, their wants, their interests, are you losing your identity? Are you in this place where you're brainwashed, right? And effectively they're creating the life for you because, and I've said this on the show before I go look at relationships I was in my early twenties, they were very reminiscent of what you would call a narcissistic relationship because of the way that I was raised, I just thought that's how you treated people, right? And then I was like, Oh, well that's really fucking stupid, maybe there's a different way to do this. And there's a weird conversation rounded as a whole, but I'm looking for more of these ultra-red flags where people should be like, Oh, fuck, I need to get outta here now. But I think Raven, that people even will see these big red flags, they will in this conversation maybe here and recognize, Oh, I don't have the ability to be myself. I don't have the ability to make decisions and choices and show up on my own and this person texts me at work 37 times a day and shows up at the job and doesn't leave me alone for more than eight seconds like that to me is fucking crazy red flag shit. And what I'm wondering though is being in that, looking at that, having that experience and trying to balance a world that says everybody's a narcissist, but also knowing like that's not true. How do you know if it's like, this is where I need to leave? Because I don't know that people are able to really identify that until it's too late and then sometimes that too late is really dark.

Raven: Yeah. Everyone has their own unique journey, and it goes back to what you said about honesty. You have to be honest with yourself because essentially the reason why you're staying is because you've created this fantasy in your head, you're holding onto the hope of what it was at the very beginning when they were reeling you in and love bombing you, and pretending they actually cared for you and had empathy, and they wined and dined you, and you're holding on literally to a thin thread of hope that that will comeback, and it never will. I mean, unless you leave, like I leave seven times before I finally moved out on my eighth, you know, and I even wasn't strong enough to resolve, to stay away until he was crawling in his hand and knees. I felt guilty for getting so mad that I packed up and left. But then there would be like, oh, well I'll buy you flowers now like they'll do tiny little love bombings to make sure you stay. So that's also something to watch out for, but you need to be honest with yourself. Does this person have empathy for me? Meaning when I'm really hurting and when I'm sad, do they hold me and hold space for that or be really sad for me? Or do they say, why are you crying? You should toughen up. Stop that. There's a red flag. So, you need to be honest with yourself and don't justify what they're doing to you and holding onto hope that they'll change and be who they were at the beginning, cuz they never will, that's just the facade.

Michael: Do you think that it's true that they never will? Because I would have to push back on that just from my own personal experience of, again, looking at my relationships in my early twenties, I would be a proponent of saying like, people can heal and recognize causation and correlation and be able to live a different life. And I'm not saying it's easy and I'm not saying it's gonna happen for everybody but my relationships with humans as a whole are totally different. And I also have done my 10,000 hours and probably dropped a quarter million dollars on my healing journey but like I think about that a lot like I'm gonna only push back cuz I don't know that it's true only from her firsthand experience, but I will agree that I would say the vast majority of people, that's probably not going to be the case.

Raven: Yeah. And of course, typically those who do transform and heal have had really strong boundaries or really, you know, bad breakups that have happened. So, maybe someone strong said, you know what? No more you are being abusive to me emotionally, you know, I can't be with you any longer and maybe like for instance, that was you or someone else and he said, wow, something's gotta change in my life. That's good. That means that more than likely you had narcissistic traits, but you didn't have the obsessive-compulsive NPD disorder. So, yeah, you're right, there's some unique instances and even I have a friend who's a coach and she is married still to her. She calls her narcissist and he goes to therapy all the time. You know, so there's different, there's unique circumstances and yes, people can change, but you can't give also the people stuck in these abusive relationships false hope. You know, you have to draw hard boundaries and say, Hey, you need to go to therapy, or I'm leaving you and actually stay so then they can transform on their own and do their own work ‘cuz you can't fix them. I think that's the danger there.

Michael: Yeah, a hundred percent. And I think as someone, like, even if you're on my side and you're looking at your relationship, you're like, okay, maybe I've been a little controlling or maybe I'm gonna ask ‘cause for me growing up, it was literally beat out of me that you are not allowed to cry. And so, coming through that traumatic experience, when people would cry around me, oh my God, my reaction would always be like, you need to toughen up. Stop being a little bitch, like you need to not ever cry ever. And then through therapy, like there's a commercial that comes on this running commercial that Adidas made at in tears, like bawling my fucking face off, right? And so, there is space for that but I think one of the things that held true for me is I read this book and it's called The Truth by Neil Straus. And he said in his experience, he was like, I'm dating someone who is my mother, and I was like, Oh my God, every relationship I'm in is my mother. And it was this really a – it fucking sucked like that's a really hard recognition to have in your life. But the other side was like, Oh, now that I know that I can do something about that, and I think that's what a big part of this is, but in order to do something about it, like you really, for me, what it was like, truth be told, is I realized that I had to build my confidence, I had to build my self-love. I had to become an empathetic person for me first which arguably a nightmare because the first three and a half to four years of this journey, when I got serious over a decade ago, like sucked, hard because it was like I never learned how to love myself I don't know how to be this. And that's what so many people have to understand like when we tie our self-worth and our independence and our values into another human being, and then we come to realize, wait a second, what if I can have that for me? Like it's a fucking uphill battle. And so, I'd love to talk for you to talk about your own healing journey, the things that you did that have helped you progress forward and what some other people who are listening may be able to do as well.

Raven: Yeah. And you're talking about deep conditioning, right? That's different than the NPD disorder, you know, you started to fixate on it, right? So, then I think we all have narcissistic traits to our ego uses to protect ourselves. So, the important part, is to work on you know, when you were talking to me about your story, I immediately just kept hearing inner child and I talk about it all the time on my show. The Inner Child Work and meditation and being your parent for your own self. We all have our little child still in us and most all of us have been taught to stamp it down and to grow up and to be mature and you know, oh that's so embarrassing that you would even go out and play or roller skater scooter as an adult like, we don't do that, but that's what you need to heal. So, that was one of the biggest things that helped me heal was really asking my inner child, what do you need? And I had this guided meditation on my YouTube channel, Raven Scott Show where you go through and you hold and you recognize all of the expectations and the abuse and the pain and hurt that your parents put on you and your grandparents, this ancestral heavy burden. And you release it and your adult self brings your little child out into a magical garden and you heal and then you get to connect with yourself and say, hey, what do you need today? And then do it, that's the challenging part, right? Do you wanna go build a Lego set? Go do it. Do you wanna go do cartwheels and dance barefoot in the grass? Go do it. And that was a big part of my healing journey ‘cuz I felt like I had never could be myself, I never could freely express myself and be adventurous because I always had to hold it to make sure I didn't disappoint my family. So that was one of the biggest things I did.

Michael: And I'm curious if this was true for you as well, being able to step into, I don't love you were used the word play because it was a lot of freedom that I'm would imagine you discovered, that for me was incredibly discombobulating because growing up and coming through traumatic background, one of the things that you discover when you kind of like start to do this work is that, this is my opinion alone, that the real truth of trauma is that it's the theft of your identity. And so, going out into the world, creating that, discovering who you are, like it's hard, with the word empath, obviously being in the title of your book, like where did empathy come into this? Like what role did that play for you and also for like the people in your life at that time?

Raven: Yeah. It was really hard because for me, empath kind of takes someone who takes more responsibility than they should for life, for other people's emotions, for bad circumstances. I remember just accidents happening and going, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry’, you know, you're always apologizing for things that aren't even your fault. And that's something that I really had to break free of it. And myself-worth was down in the gutter when I thought that I was really confident cause I was involved with the church so heavily when I met my ex. But it was really down in the gutter. The reason I was so involved is, you said, I didn't have a self-identity, I had no confidence to know that I was powerful, that I had a voice, that I could ask for what I wanted, I didn't even think I was beautiful. You know, I couldn't even embrace myself without makeup and that whole concoction of being an empath and having low self-esteem, it made me a magnet for the narcissist and a yes, please give me more kind of a, you know, give me more emotional abuse ‘cuz I was already, you know, in my negative head, abusing myself. So, I was like, yeah, bring it on. I absolutely agree. Now, how can I fix myself? And a danger for me was those people would give me advice, either my family or my ex like, oh, well you just need to go to church more or you need to dress up and wear high heels like I was getting conflicting information, but all of them were their ideas versus what I really needed to do. So, finding myself in the inner child work, journaling out everything, you know, journaling, different desires and dreams that I had that I never really thought about, helped kind of guide me so I wasn't just wanderlust.

Michael: I love that. When you were journaling and you were getting into that, were you being honest with yourself?

Raven: Good question. I would say half and half how whatever my ego would allow me to go as deep as I could. Yes. But even still, just this last Christmas and, you know, recently I had to really be even more honest with myself about relationships that are still in my life that I didn't wanna let go, right. I didn't wanna admit that they were really toxic and I had to put up certain boundaries. So, yeah, it's a process, I think every time you can be, you know, one layer, honest with yourself at a time, you be gentle.

Michael: Yeah, and that's one of the things that's really interesting I've found for myself is like that inherent reflection, like getting really unabashedly truthful with myself and trying to understand not only behavioral patterns, but why I do things, why I act certain ways, why all the things because ultimately, I think really truly the key to evolution is like know thy self. And one of the things that I think is tricky in stepping into know thyself is if you've spent 27 years, 32 years, 41 years being everything that everyone else told you to always be, know that I self is really hard and know that I self is like this thing where I remember like I was like 30 or 31, it was like I was in this back and forth in a constant confusion about whether or not I certainly or did not with uncertainty believe a thing that really impacted my life a lot. And it was like, until I just started executing against what I thought was true, did I discover whether or not it was true. And that's one of the hard things is, you know, you do have to step into the unknown. One of the things I know you talk about that I want to go into, because I think it's important and it was a beautiful modality for me, while simultaneously incredibly uncomfortable speaking of honesty is like looking and stepping into mirror work and affirmations, and I would love for you to talk about your own experience with that.

Raven: Absolutely. And before I dive into that, I wanted to just piggyback on what you said about how do you know thy self? And it goes back to your main theme of breaking ancestral pattern is knowing who your parents really, truly are without that kind of glow of pedestal, you might have put them up on who are they really as human beings? What are their faults? And that's another exercise I went through is being able to connect with a healed an ancestor. But in doing so, I had to shine the light on all of the negative patterns in both of my lineages to say this lineage is really self-serving, this lineage has a big temper, like all of the really icky, shadowy stuff. And then to see, wow, like that's me, I do tend to have a bad temper when I'm just completely high stressed like wow, that's me, where I wanna force my idea on somebody else. And I had to really take a step back and listen, take a step back and just breathe. So, I didn't have those ancestral patterns coming out. And essentially for me it was important not to harm my children, I wanted to break the patterns and I actually, my therapist told me outright, she said, you are the one in the family that's gonna break the ancestral patterns and doing so this mirror work helped me; helped me raise esteem by really recognizing who I was, right. You are beautiful. If that's really uncomfortable and you think you're ugly, especially with magazines and filters all over social media, we're always using filters to make ourselves more beautiful ‘cuz we can't accept ourselves in the mirror. You know, for me, even my nose, I hated my nose. And now I accept it, I embrace it, it's big, it's very British, but it is what it is, right? And so, I had to stay in the mirror. I love my nose. My nose is beautiful. My nose functions, my nose is complete, all the things so that when I could pass by the mirror, eventually I'd be like, Oh, okay, cool. Instead of, oh, that's disgusting. I hate my nose, right? I want a nose job, all of these things that we're doing, you know, in society to correct our faces or our bodies physically, it's just because you haven't done that inner work of really truly accepting the body you chose and you came to this earth.

Michael: Yeah, and unfortunately, its false confidence, right? When people put filters and I think that social media can be very, very dangerous. Like obviously for the way that I've been able to leverage social media with Think Unbroken and give people tools and have conversations like this, it's really beautiful, but it's also super dangerous, especially if you don't have confidence or self-esteem, because you're gonna be like, oh, I've gotta put the filter on and do the eyebrow thing and fix my lips, and I'm like whoa, you really need to pause and ask yourself why you're putting that filter on, because that's not who you are and that's scary. And again, then people go, well, what about makeup or the clothes that you wear? I'm like, sure, yeah, I get it, right. And so again, no thy self because ultimately that's what it is, it's like really being able to get into that. And when I went through doing mirror work and I didn't even really know what I was doing, I'd never heard the phrase before. I would just stand in the mirror and force myself to say, I love you. And it sucked like a lot because it was so uncomfortable because what I realized is I just didn't, I hated myself. I hated the world. I mean, you don't end up 350 pounds, smoking two packs a day and drinking yourself to sleep cuz you love yourself. I promise you don't, right? And so, like the process was like, go through that and ultimately what I discovered, especially in the mirror aspect of this healing journey it's a beautiful way to give yourself what you should have been given, and that is, it's partly reparenting, right? It's partly healing the inner child, but I would call it fully, it's about integration and getting clarity about your value and your worth because you choose to have value and worth and that it's not tied to other people. And, you know, it's a challenge. It sucks, like it really does. I don't think anyone who's gone through a significant healing journey's ever gonna sit here and be like, oh, it was great. It was the best time of my life.

Raven: It's never sunshine and roses. It's always a roller coaster, so always to go upside down and to go down that really scary hill where your stomach, you know, comes up to your throat, that means you actually are transforming when it's really difficult, right. Just like a workout. You don't transform your muscles if there's no pain and there's no tearing of the muscles, it's uncomfortable.

Michael: And I think that's a perfect segue because those tearing of the muscles is a reconnection, it's a rewiring, it's a transformation. I would love for you to go in and talk about mirror neurons and let's talk about rewiring and really transforming your life from a neuro chemical perspective.

Raven: Yes. This is really powerful when I learned it. So, mirror neurons, according to American Psychological Association it's a type of neuron that's in your brain and it helps you explain like how we mimic things like it starts when it fires off in our brains as babies it then we see somebody do something, it fires off and then we do it. So, it's essential for a survival, right, to be able to eat, drink, crawl, walk, all of these things. However, then we also are applying them to how people treat each other, how people act, how people carry themselves. So just talking about self-worth, it's linking to how we start to value ourselves and seeing how our parents and adults around us are valuing themselves, that's why a lot of times a narcissist is bred by another narcissist, that's why a low self-esteem child or teenager or whoever is bred by someone who thinks very low about themselves, it's within the fabric of our psyche. And even though we may constantly say with words to a child, you know, you are beautiful, you're strong and confident, you got this. If you yourself are not acting that and are recoiling and always looking down or not taking compliments, then that's also confusing the child, and that actually is more powerful and is picked up by the child than the words. The words you could say all day in one ear out the other, it's how we act, that is what we pick up on is the mirror neuron.

Michael: Yeah, and that's such an important thing to take into consideration because in the same way you can understand how that impacts and creates behaviors, it's the same way if you go look at someone who's just ahead of where you want to be and you mimic model and master what they do, you are in effect training and retraining your mirror neurons. And that's one of the things that I found in my own personal life, it wasn't like therapy for me played a beautiful role like there's no question about it I mean, you name the modality, I've done it, right. But it was really coaching that changed my life forever because I was able to look at somebody who had done it and be like, Oh, that actually makes a lot of sense. Do that thing, create that behavioral change, challenge yourself in this aspect. And you know, I think that's one of the most beautiful parts about the fact that we now have access to information and the ability to come together and just see like, oh, if they did it, I can too. And that's one of the big things that I'm always thinking about. But I still think that there's always gonna be that place of limiting belief of that fixed mindset of that stuckness, but until you're willing to face it and until you're willing to be like, all right, I'm gonna step onto the battle field. Let's see what happens. You know, nothing's gonna be different in your life. For those who are in place and they're like, this all makes sense to me, I wanna go into what's next, but I don't really truly know where to start and you just gave me 97 things to think about like, what's step one?

Raven: Step one is going inward. So, if you've already done inner child work, then start with the mirror work. But step one is really cutting out all the noise, you know, everything to cutting out all the noise, what everyone's telling you outside of yourself, because that's not you, that's them focusing on who you are, what you want, and maybe what are your fears, you know. And when you recognize those, then you can be like, okay, what's the worst that can happen? Like, let's start tackling that but you can't, until you really stop focusing outside of yourself, gotta focus in.

Michael: Yeah. And I think your fears can actually be one of the really beautiful tools that you can leverage for moving forward because if it's a healthy fear, i.e., I wanna be in a relationship where I don't get screamed at every day. Like, maybe there's a fucking sign there, you know what I mean? And that's true. That's me having a really internal dialogue right now and looking at relationships of the past and going, oh, we always yelled at each other again i.e I'm dating my mom or wait, why do I put this food in my body? Oh, because I am hurting myself in the way that they hurt me. So, when you think about like, oh, my fear is I want to eat healthy so that I can be down four sizes so I can feel good about the reflection in the mirror because of the effort that I'm putting in and not the actual reflection, then that really comes down to facing a fear and it's hard and it's difficult. But I'm gonna ask you a really weird question right now, maybe it's not weird, maybe it's the right question to ask you. Like, is it worth it with all the shit you've had to go through, all the stuff that you've had to do, all of the work, who God knows the amount of therapy and money spent? Like, is it worth it and why has it been worth it?

Raven: It absolutely has been worth it. If it was just easy breezy and going through life, I mean, there would be no evolution, I truly believe and my soul would not have learned anything. We all have certain adversities in our life that we need to experience so that we can be molded, right? Just like the coal that gets molded into the diamond, it's hot, it's uncomfortable, and then it's bright and shiny and it may take a long time. So, it absolutely was worth it just because I know my eyes are open, right? The ancestral stuff going on way, way, way, way back, that I've discovered beyond any, you know, genealogy can track, there was some major trauma and major pain and narcissism and racism and all of that would've continued to perpetuate if I had not woken up, if I had not been in this horribly toxic, you know, romantic relationship with the narcissist ‘cause I would've not really woken up if it was just my parents, to be honest ‘cause eh, they're more covert, they aren't that bad, they're just kind of super annoying and super neglectful most of the time. It's not like, you know, banging it in my head like him where I was like neglecting and locking me out in the rain and taking away vacations like all of that was really tumultuous. And if I had not been awakened by that situation, I would not be able to give my daughters the emotional intelligence and chance for a better future to break those patterns.

Michael: So, yeah, that's really beautiful. And when I hear people say things like that, I just go, you have a personal responsibility to change your life and nobody's gonna do it for you, there ain't no Disney moments and nobody's coming to save you. Like you have to be willing to step been into this and know like, Hey, if somebody else has done it, you can do it too. You have the power, you have the ability, you have to be willing to take that first step. Raven, my friend, this has been amazing conversation, before I ask you my last question, where can everyone find you?

Raven: Yeah, they can find me my website is ravenscott.show. I'm on Instagram, Raven Scott Show and my podcast, Empath and the Narcissist. And my book is the same title on Amazon Empath and the Narcissist.

Michael: Of course, we'll put the links in the show notes for the audience. My last question for you, my friend, what does it mean to you to be unbroken?

Raven: A pure, bright light. I always say at the end of my podcast, keep your unique light shining that means that you're just a little bit more unbroken, you're not broken anymore, you're not being held by whatever system, by whatever belief or whatever someone's saying outside in your sphere, you are shining and you're rising above. So absolutely your unbroken this is your beautifulness, it's your pure light and pure soul.

Michael: Brilliantly said, my friend. Thank you so much for being here, Unbroken Nation. Thank you so much for listening.

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