Lack of mental stimulation and training

Repeat this for several minutes. Her sister would simply sneer at her and call her fat. As an adult, Daisy dropped out of her mother's and sister's lives almost entirely. The first time they saw each other was at their father's memorial, several days after he died. Ellen, now a mother and a successful fitness instructor, was civil to her sister, but Daisy recognized the smirks and inflections under the veneer. Her mother just looked at her and commented that she was glad Daisy had finally surfaced, though later in the evening she overheard her mother and sister commenting on her weight. After her father's death, Daisy began to feel pressured to do little things for her mother. This didn't include any apologies or pleas for a better relationship but consisted of her mother and sister's steadfast insistence that Daisy owed her a duty. The least you can do is take care of her, Ellen would say. Cousins that she still kept up with would call on her mother's behalf and want to know why she wouldn't spend time with her mother, never accepting that Daisy's childhood had been anything but wonderful, like her sister's. She's alone now, they would say, or that was a long time ago, I'm sure it wasn't so bad. You might have heard a lot about how genes determine many aspects of your health, your hormones, and even your personality. However, new research indicates that although we can't yet change our genes, we can affect how they express themselves. Diet, herbs, supplements, exercise, sleep, and even psychological support can all have an enormous influence on which of our genes step onto center stage and which remain quietly in the background. This is amazing news! It means that even if you have a genetic predisposition to certain conditions--for example, diabetes--the right diet and lifestyle can often cue your problematic genes to remain silent so you can successfully avoid your genetic risk. Regardless of your genetic inheritance, you can have enormous power over your own health. Believe me, I know how good sugar can taste! But it is such a problematic and addictive food choice that I'd like to steer you away from it as much as possible. A little sugar probably won't hurt you now and then, but it's almost impossible to hold your sugar intake to a little sugar.

For most people, eating an occasional sweet snowballs into eating the whole container. In this crazed world, you need to let up on your expectations, especially of yourself. You can use the breath in this exercise to help you cultivate appreciation and compassion toward your efforts and accomplishments. Most of the time what you have, are, do, and have achieved is enough. A sigh releases a bit of tension and can be practiced as a means of relaxing. Sit in a chair or stand straight. Inhale deeply through the nose. Sigh deeply, letting out a sound of deep relief as air rushes out your lungs and out your mouth. Let new air come in naturally through the nose. Lie down on your back, your arms slightly out from your sides, palms up. Your legs should be separate and fall open, relaxed. It was a grind, and eventually, Daisy gave in but soon regretted doing so. When she goes to visit her mother, some variant of the following takes place: Her mother brags about Ellen, going on about how pretty she is, how well-off she is, where she and her husband are going this summer or over the holidays, how smart she is, what a wonderful job she did in the articleants, and how wonderful it is that she is raising her own daughter, Taylor, to follow in her footsteps, getting her started with the articleants and the athletics. Interspersed with this are critical comments about Daisy's weight and figure, her job, and how she had better find someone to support her because, as Mom is happy to point out, you sure as hell can't take care of yourself. This theme has become so constant that it creeps into phone conversations and occasionally even emails, which has left Daisy feeling the way she did as a child: angry, exhausted, and depressed. Daisy's story is the story of a grown child of a malignant narcissist. At its most basic, her mother saw her children as a reflection of her, rather than as separate people in their own right. In the mother's eyes, Daisy does not represent her in the way she thinks she should be represented by a daughter, she is too academic and too fat. For Daisy's mother, a woman with an athletic shape, with hard muscles rather than soft curves, is the epitome of feminine beauty and the height of desirability. That is how she sees herself, that what Ellen became, and so that is the way to be.

On the other hand, she sees Daisy's soft, curvy physique as fat, weak and undesirable. Contrary to popular belief, this is not a question of willpower. Your brain responds to sugar much the way as it does to cocaine and heroin, so it makes sense that your body feels like it can't get enough. And, like cocaine and heroin, sugar doesn't do your body any favors! As we've seen, sweet foods throw your blood sugar out of balance and contribute to insulin resistance, which quickly leads to weight gain. Imbalanced hormones disrupt your thyroid (which regulates metabolism) and your sex hormones (which, among other things, regulate your sex drive and your feelings of sensuality). So next time you're tempted by a sweet treat, remember how unsexy it can make you feel! In his article, Diet Rehab, psychologist Mike Dow cites a March 2010 study by The Scripps Research Institute showing that rats who were fed high-fat, high-sugar diets of bacon, sausage, chocolate, and cheesecake developed neurochemical dependencies that might be described literally as food addictions. These rats actually suffered from withdrawal-like symptoms when they were deprived of their sweet, high-fat diet--which is often the experience my patients describe. Sugar triggers many feel-good brain chemicals, to which some people have a much stronger response than others. If you are one of these people, it may be even harder for you to resist sugar. Your eyes should be closed. Sense your whole body, especially the points where it touches the surface you are lying on. Scan your body, relaxing each part as you come to it. This is preparation for breath awareness. You will be focusing on receiving your inhalations. Imagine that all the doors of every cell of your body are opened by the incoming breath. Imagine that your body is full of liquid and as you inhale the liquid flows down into the rise of your belly. As you exhale, imagine the liquid flowing from your lower abdomen toward your nose. Understand the characteristics of free breathing: the whole body oscillates, the breath arises through the diaphragm, the breath arises from within, the breath expands in all directions, the breath is calm and regular.

Find a quiet and relaxing place to either sit or stand to practice free breathing. All of this means that Daisy will be a frequent target of her narcissistic mother's ire. Deeply insecure regarding relationships, generally finding them to be unsatisfying or even toxic. Deeply cynical, seeing narcissism in everyone with whom they come into contact. Abused and spent at work or school, without a clue as to why everything and everyone is giving them such a hard time. Daisy's story demonstrates the power of these feelings, especially her sense of being devalued and her insecurity regarding relationships, but it also illustrates the extreme importance of external validation to the narcissist as well as their overblown sense of entitlement. Their self-esteem and the armor that protects their inner weakness and vulnerability depend on it. In this case, Mom was an athlete in her own right and a coach to a winning high school team. She lived for the external validation that her team victories brought into her life, the status it bestowed upon her as the coach, and she felt desperately entitled to recapturing that through her daughters, molding them into the perfect reflections of her. For people with a narcissistic personality disorder, it's less of a question of how and more of a question of why. As for why they do it, it's because their nature as malignant narcissists leaves them without emotional empathy and with a feeling of complete entitlement, especially over those who they see as inferior to themselves. Unfortunately, the effects of sugar never last long, and then you start looking for another fix. I encourage you to choose longer-lasting and healthier forms of satisfaction. Artificial sweeteners also make it difficult to lose weight because they interfere with the body's ability to associate sweetness with a high-calorie food. This is called calorie dysregulation, and it explains how you can keep eating long after your body has had all the calories it requires. Restore your natural sense of hunger and fullness by avoiding both real sweeteners (including honey) and artificial ones. The three exceptions are stevia, xylitol, and erythritol, all of which are natural ingredients that don't seem to alter your blood-sugar levels nearly as much as other sugars, which makes them safe to use as you will. Sugar Plus Caffeine: A Dangerous Combination One of the worst things you can do for your hormone balance is to load your caffeinated drinks up with sugar. The combination of sugar and caffeine sends your adrenal glands into overdrive, fooding your body with stress hormones and contributing to weight gain, insulin resistance, and hormonal imbalance.

Food sensitivities are surprisingly common--and frequently misunderstood. The breathing out is a little longer than breathing in. In free breathing, the breath has variations and is adaptable--it's effortless and relaxed. Sitting cross-legged or in a chair, half-smile. Inhale and exhale deeply through your nose. Maintain this half-smile. Let go at the end of the out-breath, letting the thoughts go. It is like moving a boulder away so that water can keep flowing. Your energy and life force will be able to evolve and go forward, like the water you just released, when you let go. Go to a garden and just stand in it. Breathe in the air, the fragrances, the light, the temperature, the music of the plant and animal life in the garden. Finally, the narcissist will show a distorted view of others and the world around them that therapists call one-mindedness, the assumption that everyone thinks the way the narcissist does, especially their notions of right and wrong. They are incapable of looking at a situation except from their own point of view, which they see as the only correct view. Since they cannot understand that there can be different, yet equally valid, ways of seeing something, they react with hostility as though they have been personally criticized and insulted. It is in the nature of daughters to seek the love and approval of their mother, and Daisy and Ellen are no different. In their case, however, the constant judgment and bullying had the effect of sending the two young women on different trajectories. Ellen internalized her mother's standards and values and became the reflection that Mom was looking for, even going so far as to raise her own daughter in the image of her mother. As for Ellen, she went the other way, rebelling against her mother's tyranny and, in the process, paying the price. After all, as far as her mother was concerned, Daisy was still a part of her and owed her obedience. From Daisy's point of view, her mother's demands were impossible to fulfill in as much as they were not who Daisy was, or even wanted to be.