Have you heard of a twin flame? To little complex, So bear with me as I explain it. The idea of a twin flame is a spiritual concept that one soul can incarnate into two separate bodies. The belief is that every person has a mirror soul who is their perfect romantic match. Those who say they have found their twin flame describe these relationships as intense, intoxicating, and oftentimes
downright toxic. From a psychological perspective, what sounds like something out of a fairy tale can actually be a breeding ground for abuse. Over the past few years, several twin flame online communities have ignited controversy, claiming to help those seeking romantic guidance while actually encouraging unhealthy and often abusive relationships.
On In this episode of Navigating Narcissism, I'm joined by Candace Moon, who got involved in the twin flame community only to realize they were peddling, as she says, glamorize narcissistic abuse. Candace was urged to stay in an abusive relationship rather than risk losing per twin flame from Red Table Talk Podcasts and iHeartMedia. I'm Doctor Rominy and this is Navigating narcissism. This podcast should not be used as
a substitute for medical or mental health advice. Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse, which may be triggering
to some people. Use and opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. Candice, you have an amazing story. Let's just start at the topic of twin flames. Can you teach our listeners what a twin flame relationship is?
Yes, So, the main belief of a twin flame is that you have this intense soulmate connection with this one person that literally is the other half of your soul. So the dogma, the belief is that before you incarnate into this life, your one soul and then that soul splits into a masculine and a feminine not necessarily a male physical body because there's LGBT people that are in the twin flame community. As well, but it's like an energy of life, the masculine aspect and the feminine aspect.
So the soul just kind of splits in half and they incarnate down into the earth and you live your life separately through many different lifetimes, but you always have like this longing to find that perfect person, that other half of your soul. So you're basically living an incomplete life until you meet this person.
My first question is, is only one person then that qualify as a twin flame?
Yes, yes, you have that one special person and literally they're you. You literally share one soul that's split off and incarnated and is been going around in your human life lost and confused looking for that other half of you to complete you. And when you finally do meet them, you have this intense connection of a spiritual connection, like you feel like you've come home or you have is
knowing and longing and you're with this person. But then it gets into once you've met the person, then things start going wrong in your life. All of your insecurities
and everything are triggered. And this is where we get into where which I know we'll talk about where it's actually kind of the narcissism in the relationship, the toxicity starts to come out, and you bounce back and forth between what we call a narcissistic abuse, the love bombing, and the devaluation, whereas in the twin Flame they call it the love bubble and then the triggering or the mirroring, and they bounce back and forth through that a lot.
But it's all under the guise of it's your soulmate, it's your soul connection, and it's a spiritual connection, all these things that you're going through, But the basics of it is your one soul and split off. You're not your own person, and you're searching for this other person to complete you so your soul can come back together.
Candice, people who hold belief systems, do they believe this to be true of all people or that only there's certain chosen people who have this twin flame experience that they are going to find.
Well, it depends on who you ask. There's many people that are in the twin Flame community that believe it's only a special people, and they'll take that number one hundred and forty four thousand out of the Book of Revelation in the Biblical text. They'll say that, oh, there's only one hundred and forty four thousand. Then there's those that will say, well, everybody has a twin flame, so it's kind of like in the entire twin flame community.
People will have different perceptions of it and beliefs of it. But yes, you'd say most of them, there's only special chosen people that have a twin flame.
So many follow up questions right now, No, it's not even that confusing. Actually, I'll tell you, as you were talking, I got a chill for how frightening this would be. And from a narcissistic relationship perspective, I want to go backwards for a second. I'm just going to put on my straight up statistician hat on this one. There are seven billion people on the planet, okay, and one of them, only one is our twin flame. So that's a one
in seven billion shot. If you don't hold to the one hundred and forty four thousand, then it's seven billion, one in seven billion, right, those odds are already troubling, But we live spread all over the planet. In this model, is a conceivable that a person who lives in Los Angeles that her twin flame could be on Mauritius or Madagascar.
And it's funny that you bring this up, because the majority of people that claim they found their twin flame a lot of times have never met them in person. They've met them online, and they're living in another country or another state. So most of the time it'll be someone that you haven't even met in person. And there's even those that believe that their twin flame is out there and they've connected with them on a spiritual level. But yes, that happens a lot.
Actually, because that means Candae that this entire model of twin flame something that feels so primal that even hearkens back to the Book of Revelations. One would imagine that twin flames always existed, but the internet did not, nor did phones, So you know, that would mean that there were times when it seems like that everyone was walking around without a twin flame. So it kind of doesn't sort of hold the smell test, you know, in terms of it's certainly a very convenient modern model, but it
doesn't work backwards. Another question, given that under this model most people will never meet their twin flame, is the assumption then that everybody else in the world who doesn't meet their twin flame is walking around in a less than ideal relationship.
A lot of times they'll just say that those people just aren't awakened, because what it does, it's almost very cult like when you're in the community where it's I mean, it's not kind of it is really, if I'm being honest, it is very cult like where you are the special chosen people and all the other people they just don't understand, not that they they're not a twin flame, so they're not sharing their soul with anyone. So for them, they can just be with each other and it's not this
intense soulmate connection. Does that make sense? It doesn't just a regular person. You're not special like we.
Are, right, So there's that specialness piece, which you're right. It really gets into dangerous territory. Here's where I'm concerned. Is this idea that there's only one so whenever that person comes, there's an assumption that there'll be some level of recognition you have I have found this person. They've built into the model of twin flames that you're actually going to be really kind of chaotic and almost uncomfortable and insecure and unsettled at that time, and your insecurities,
like you said, are going to get triggered. So what concerns me is that a person may meet someone somehow they've convinced themselves that this is my twin flame. They're told that you're supposed to be uncomfortable, but if you this is your only person once in a lifetime, you may actually endure some really really terrible things in a relationship. And in essence, what they're doing is packaging toxicity in a way that people might stick it out. That really concerns me.
That's exactly what happens. It's glamorized narcissistic abuse because most of the people that come upon the twin flame are either in a toxic relationship already, and the twin flame is very intoxicating because it helps you to rationalize why you're getting bread crumbed.
Candice, just use the term breadcrumbing, which is a common experience in narcissistically abusive relationships. Basically, you learn to get by on less and less. Thus the little breadcrumbs that they toss you, you can justify those bread crumbs as being enough. This is a slow process of indoctrination and the segue from love bombing and exc of attention to you getting excited about tiny little things like them remembering to say happy birthday, that starts feeling like a big
deal when you are breadcrumbed. It's so gradual that you start to lose sight of what actually is a healthy relationship and how you learn to get by on so little support, compassion, respect, and basic decency in a relationship.
Why you're getting discarded, why your partner keeps cheating and doing drugs and you keep wanting to be with them because you don't really understand what a trauma.
Bond is as a reminder, because you can never learn this too much. Trauma bonding is the dysfunctional relationship cycle that forms from the alternation between idealization and invalidation. The good days keep you locked in, and you find yourself
justifying the bad behavior in the relationship. This is a particularly dastardly play on the trauma bond because even the bad parts are being upheld as great because they are a sign that you're doing it right, when in fact they should be assigned to pay attention, protect yourself, or get out. Commandeering the trauma bonded cycle and painting it as good is a terrible precedent, and.
It sounds more glamorous to say, oh, this is my soulmate, my twin flame. You don't want to say, oh well, I'm trauma bonded and I'm in the cycle of abuse. You want to say, oh, well, it's this intoxicating spiritual
connection and we're special. So it's very, very dangerous because in my personal opinion and my experience with the twin Flame, I would say ninety percent are in some sort of toxic relationship that this twin Flame teachings and dogma is helping this person to stay in a codependent, toxic, abusive relationship. It helps them to justify it because in the stages of it, oh well, you're gonna be triggered and it's your responsibility. I mean, we can get into this too.
As the divine feminine, because most of the people in the twin Flame are women. There's men, but it's the
majority women that they call it the divine feminine. You're responsible for all the healing in the relationship because the divine feminine is the one that does all the healing, all the divine mask going can go off and cheat and do drugs and do all these things and you're supposed to do these healing, you're supposed to hold space for them, So it can get into some very dangerous victim blaming as well.
Did a dude write this model because it seems to work real well for them?
Yeah?
Right, it's you know what this feels like. This feels like locking down on the trauma bond and throwing away the combination, like there's no breaking breaking out of that because what you've now done is as it is. We come up with so many personal justifications for trauma bonded and toxic relationships, but now this is a justification almost being handed down from a system saying oh, this feels uncomfortable and you're upset and sad and triggered. Keep going,
you're doing this just right? Yes, okay, yes, yes for you personally, Candice, what did you find compelling about the idea of a twin flame?
I was married for fifteen years to a non recovered alcoholic, and towards the end of our marriage, I mean, I love my husband, but he just could not and did not want to get treatment for his alcohol addiction. And towards the end of our marriage, I started really going to alan on focusing on me and so starting a spiritual journey of healing and working on myself. And I was searching. I was one of those people that was searching.
And I am a cult survivor, so I am vulnerable to that, and especially back then, I was very, very vulnerable. So already being kind of traumabized, having lots of different trauma bonds from my childhood, it was easy for me to get sucked into this glamorized, toxic spiritual thing. And I can say that now, but when you're in it, no, you think it's just the most wonderful thing. And I read some blogs and I read about it, and I'm like, oh, this is me. I'm a twin flame. I'm going to
find my twin flame. And so I would do what a lot of people do. I would get.
Tarot card readings, I would get psychic readings, healings and different meditations to manifest my twin flame, to call your twin flame in like you're sending a message and praying to the universe to send you your twin flame.
And so then after I separated from my husband, I met this other man who I decided was my twin flame. I did not realize that he was a covert narcissist because I was being love bombed like I had never been loved bombed before. I never had experienced that. And of course he was everything that I have, very attractive, love bombed me based he loved bombed me, and I fell in love with this person, and I kept getting
bread crumbed. But the twin flame thing was there to justify for me why I kept getting bread crumbed, why he would just out of nowhere, just discard me to go date another woman, why he would treat me like a friend with benefits. And like I said, I didn't know what a narcissist was, and I didn't know the cycle of narcissistic abuse, and that I was trauma bonded
to this person. And I kept accepting the breadcrumbs, and I kept accepting like he would have a narcissistic rage and send me text messages and get his rage, and then he'd be done and then we'd go back to our little love bubble. So it was like continually the cycle and the twin flame stages were identical. They are identical to the cycles of narcissistic abuse. And I didn't know that until fast forward later healing and my healing
journey I looked back. I'm like, oh my goodness, I was in an abusive relationship with the covert narcissist and I did end up after a couple of years of that push and pull, that constant cycle. And then also because I was in the twin Flame community, told that well, you're doing the work for your divine masculine. You need to do all these meditations. I even created for myself a private Facebook group for those of us because we met online. There was a community of women just like
me in the twin Flame. So I created a private Facebook group where we would all get together to do meditations to heal our divine masculine. And this went on for a couple of years, and then there was a point, and I don't remember the exact moment, but I remember there was that cognitive dissonance going on. Every now and then I would get a reality like something would come in my brain and be like, Candas, this isn't love,
you don't deserve this, this isn't right. But then the twin Flame thing was there to pull me back in. But no, it's spiritual. You have to stick this out. It's spiritual.
Cognitive dissonance is the tension or discomfort we feel when things that matter to us are in consistent. I love him, he's mean to me, So we do something to break through that tension. He just had a bad day at work, that's why he was grumpy, and maintain the outcome that we want, which is keep loving the person and believing that they are a decent person. Cognitive dissonance underlies how the trauma bond gets formed, because we may want the
relationship to work, but it's very inconsistent and hurtful. So that's what drives the justification that allows the trauma bonded cycles to persist.
And finally, I don't know how, but I just decided I wanted to stop seeing this man. But it was really hard to let go of the twin flame teaching because it was so ingrained in me, and I wanted to hold on to that belief that it was real. So I had let go of the actual man, but held onto the belief. And then I started saying, well, maybe I was wrong, maybe he's not my twin fling,
maybe there's someone else. It's so incredibly toxic, and you know, a lot of people in the twin flame community get really angry when you talk about it, but their anger is just coming from their cognitive dissonance. They want to stay in that because it makes him feel better.
So let me ask you this. When you met this man and you thought he was your twin flame, were you already in the twin flame community before you met him, or was there something about him that made you think he was a twin flame. I'm just trying to understand sort of how you came to this idea that this man was your twin flame.
Started reading about the twin flame community and what it was, so I had it in my mind that I was looking for that twin flame. So when I met him, and I had met other people, but this guy was just very He was very compelling. I was very attracted to this person. And he said all the right things. And that's what narcissists do, and they love bomb you.
They study you, and they say all the right So he was saying all the right things, so I thought, oh, it's him, it has to be so yes, I had started in the twin flame community already, and then I felt like I had manifested him and called in my twin flame.
So That's the piece I'm trying to understand. So it sounds like after your divorce you got into the twin Flame community. You hadn't met this guy yet, but after your divorce, what drew you to even be interested in this concept of twin flame? I see that it wasn't attached to a person, but what even drew you to that after your divorce.
That feeling of wanting love and acceptance and being part of something that was bigger than you? And like I said, I believe it's because I was a cult survivor already, So I feel like I was primed for being sucked into another cult and it was very easy for me to fall into that. I was searching for a special love,
and everybody searches for that. I understand that. But I wanted a deep connection because I I had been married to an alcoholic for so long, you know, my youth, like two decades of my life, and I wanted something special because after all of that, I wanted a special relationship where I was loved and nurtured. And I believe that the twin Flame thing was where it was.
And you know, Candice, that is such a human want to want a special love story, especially after, like you said, having spent two decades in something where your partner really wasn't present. That's what alcoholic relationships are, as a person who's just simply not there. And so it's a human like a human drive to want to be loved and want it to be special. And so it completely makes sense to me why something like a twin flame concept
that there could be a special love story. You said that the person you met you thought was your twin flame was a covert narcissist. What were the patterns that this partner was showing that led you to think that that's what this person was.
Because he was never overtly abusive. Everything was like if he was mad, he was very passive aggressive. So if I said or did something that he didn't like and I didn't know about it, what would happen was then he would get a narcissistic injury and I didn't know what I did. He would rage, but his rages were not screaming at me. His rages were texting. He would get his phone out in text and like dump all of his narcissistic rage on me through a text. And as soon as he dumped all that in a text.
He was better. He was like, Oh, everything's fine, I love you. Why don't you come spend the weekend? So it was that, and he also refused to have a commitment with me, but he wanted me around when we were out in public, it was like we were boyfriend and girlfriend. But he was always like, but we're just friends, remember, But he wanted all the benefits of a sexual romantic relationship with no commitment, and everything was very passive. He never called me names, but he would rage in his
text messages. But when we were together, it was always constant love bombing.
And what did that look like? What does a love bombing look like?
That was constant like telling me how amazing that I was, how we were just so good together. I was his best friend and he just values me so much, and he would puff me up and put me up on a pedestal and tell me how beautiful I was and how I would do my makeup the way he wanted me to do my makeup. He would tell me how he liked his makeup, how I liked my hair, and if I did my hair and everything the way he liked. He would just puff me up like it was this
wonderful thing. But then if there was something that if he just felt like he would just randomly discard me and say, you know, since we're not together in a relationship, I met this girl that I'm going to go date, and he would just discard me, and then I would be devastated. And then all of a sudden, when that didn't work out, he would come right back to me. And I didn't understand the trauma bond or the breadcrumbing
or any of that, but that's when I later. I didn't know it at the time, but I looked back later and I say covert because I've been with overt abusive sociopaths and I know kind of the difference. And maybe he wasn't covert, but I felt like he was because he was so charming and so sweet most of the time. I think the average person would meet a covert narcissist and think they're a wonderful person because they are. They're good at hiding it, right.
So the terminology here gets so muddy. That's the reason I'm rushing the question because it it becomes a really important teaching point too, is that you know, with narcissistic folks, because this guy sort of sounded grandiose, charming, charismatic, controlling, rageful, triangulating. He almost sounds a little bit like a grandiose narcissist. Okay, who you know, you're probably right, right, that's what he
sounds like. And the reason I say that is we often talk about vulnerable narcissists, right, and the vulnerable narcissist is kind of the upside down of the grandiose. These are the folks that are more resentful, sullen, and titled, hold a lot of grievances. They're passive, aggressive, they're angry at the world, and they're often not charming or charismatic. In fact, sometimes people feel so sorry for them they
want to rescue them. And the reason I'm asking these questions is I want to paint a picture so people understand, you know, what was the draw and that charm, that charisma. Somebody being really into you, any human being is going to be drawn to that. And I think that that's why, you know, and I can understand how that would fit a sort of twin flame kind of a concept because it feels special. It feels very special, And that just as a final teaching point, when we use a covert
overt distinction. One thing that happens is that covert, we're usually covert narcissism is like the thoughts and feelings, the things we can't see. It's almost like their motivations, a little tape that's playing in their head. And the overt stuff is the aren't I great angry angry text? It's the stuff we can see, the behavior we can see.
And finally, a final point with you, and this is really important, is that it sounds like you were in relationships with people who are far far more malignant and abusive than this guy. And so then when if you've had a continuum of narcissists in your life, sometimes we think that, oh, this isn't as bad as that other one, so maybe this is a little bit more hidden. And so thank you for sharing that, because I think it gives us a real jumping off point to clarify some stuff.
My conversation will continue after this break.
I appreciate that the covert and the over it does get confusing when we try to pinpoint and put a label on because you're exactly a thousand percent correct. This narcissist was so mild compared to the people that I had been around, so I thought, oh, god, so he's a covert narcissist and I just didn't know it. But what you when you explained it like to me, and like that makes a lot of sense, because he really wasn't like, like you said, the vulnerable. And I've known
people like the vulnerable narcissists too. They're constantly victims and everyone but them is the problem and poor me. This, yeah, the grandiose make it makes a lot of sense. I just felt like he was so much better.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And granted he's a better narcissist. And I have to say, grandiose narcissists often are the better narcissists because on their good days, they can be a lot of fun, really charming.
That's what that relationship. It hurt me worse than even being with the sociopath, because what the sociopath I knew. But with this guy, it hurt me so bad because there were so many happy memories of when he was good. Yeah yeah, And that's the part that gets you screwed up.
Those happy memories are what really make the glue of the trauma bond, because you really are justifying the bad days in the hopes of creating the good days and blaming yourself thinking, well, if there was a good day, maybe I'm doing something wrong and that's why today is a bad day. What you said, though, raised something so interesting to me is that so you're in the twin flame world, you're reading, you're learning, you meet this guy, it feels so special. He feels like you're twin flame.
You end it when you ended it, Candice, was it because you thought he because it wasn't good for you. I hear that it wasn't working anymore. But from a twin Flames model, does it mean that sometimes people get it wrong and they think someone is their twin flame and they're not, or are they believed to have failed at twin flaming.
I had these two thoughts, like in my head, had the I deserve better, I'm unhappy, But then the but it's your spiritual soulmate, it's your other half. Because they literally, and I forgot to mention this in the beginning about the twin they literally will teach you that you have an energetic cord connected to your heart and that person's heart that can never be broken. That is one of the teachings that there's an energy connection that can never
be broken. So your conditioned to believe that, and you kind of do create it, because we can create energy connections with people, and we literally create that energy cord tying you energetically to that person. So it is very difficult to break away from it. And for me, I did go through both. I believe that. Towards the end, I'm like, well, maybe I got it wrong, and there's someone else that's better that is my actual twin flame,
and maybe this person wasn't it. And you find ways to justify it, like this is part of your spiritual journey and you've got to go on, and there's probably your real twin flame, and even if this person is your twin flame, you just keep going and doing all the healing work and they're gonna heal eventually and come back to you. It's like the carrot is always dangling in front of you, and you never get.
The carrot correct. It's the carrot being dangled in the goalpost moving, which is sort of a really lethal combination. How does a twin Flames universe model account for domestic violence physical abuse in a relationship depends on the person.
You're the guru, because there's self appointed gurus. It depends on who you're asking. Will say, oh, no, that's terrible. You know there, you're still your twin flame, but you can't be with them. And then there's the ones that'll be like, well, it's still your twin flame, and so you need to self reflect on maybe this is a past life thing that you guys are working out together. They'll come up with some toxic spiritual nonsense to help
you justify why. And I remember sitting and watching certain YouTubers and just like wanting justifications, like searching, like it was like an addiction. I wanted my fix to be told that this is okay, this is spiritual. So so, yeah, they don't handle it well, I wouldn't say they do it in the right way.
No, So you talked about this idea of gurus, and you're saying it in the plural. This isn't just one program. What I'm hearing is that there's many people out there that are spewing out this whole twin Flames thing. It's sort of like it's like a twin Flames universe out there that.
Multiple It is one of them that's called well, yeah, there is one group and now I don't know them. They're from Michigan, the ones that have been written about in Vanity Fair. They're a couple. I call them just couples. They're just couples that are, in my opinion, exploiting these people's pain because they get the pain point, so then
you're in pain. So you're searching for them. They've got the answers, Oh, you've got to sign up for this class, or you've got to join this group, You've got to do this, and then you're always being told to work on yourself. And they'll say, but you're not doing this work to get the twin flame. But you know, damn well, they're only coming to you because they want the twin flame. So you can say that all that you want, but
you know why they're coming to you. But yes, there's if you go on YouTube and put twin flame, you'll find hundreds and hundreds and there's even more since I have left the twin flame community, and they're selling their services to help you manifest your twin flame, to help you heal that. There's all kinds of stuff. So they that's why I said earlier, it's like a twin flame machine. It's like this machine that keeps going. It's this big giant business. There's people that make a lot of money
off of pain. And there's no pretty way to say it. They're making a lot of money off your pain because they're not really helping you to get out of a toxic relationship. They're encouraging you to stay in one because it's your twin flame. And when I started talking about this, I got a lot of hate for it, Like people were really angry people in the twin flame world. But it's the truth.
Well, I think it sounds like it is a money making machine, and I think the challenge is is that it doesn't sound like this is cheap. That people might be charging people a lot of money, and this is such a vulnerable group of people, people who really might be lonely, might be searching for love, maybe coming out of a breakup or a devastating end of a relationship. These are vulnerable people and when we are that vulnerable, we will pay any amount of money to make that
pain go away. Absolutely, you had had a private Facebook right where you said that that's how you were sort of connecting with people in this world. That culture, Like, what would the culture be of a Facebook group of people who were in that shared twin flame culture.
It's interesting because Okay, so it was mostly women and we all got really close. And the funny thing is the women that are attracted to these twin flame stuff are the same women that end up with narcissists. They're not stupid. They're intelligent women, creative women, and have a
lot going for them. But in the twin flame because I also have a private Facebook group now for survivors, and it's interesting that you asked me that, because it's a very similar dynamic, except in the twin flame it's all spiritual. So what would happen is like, let's say there's a couple of women in the group that are dealing with their twin flame who's a drug addict, or they're dealing with their twin flame who's married to somebody else.
It's some type of toxic dynamic, and we're talking about it and supporting each other, but it's all under the guise of well, let's do this meditation healing and we can send healing energy to him to help him get off of drugs, or we can send this healing energy to her so she can stop cheating and let's look inside of ourselves and figure out, well, why are they cheating? Well, you're the same person, you share the same soul, so
what inside of you is being dishonest? So that victim blaming thing, but you don't even know you're doing it. You think you're supporting each other. And it's not helpful because nobody's encouraged to like get a safety plan, talk to a therapist. Like, no one's thinking of it as abuse. I guess that's what my point is. It's never talked about that it's.
Abuse, nor does it sound like it's ever being framed from other points of view, like trauma or anything like that, the things that could potentially make a person vulnerable, or a history of trauma, bonded relationships. It sounds like like you called it glamorized narcissistic use, which I have to say that absolutely, you're absolutely it's it's beautifully packaged twin flames. That sounds a lot more glamorous than you know, really
really abusive, you know, emotionally abusive relationships. So it sounds like it was a really tricky universe where in some ways people were they were enabling this idea of staying in a toxic relationship, so you had all these people
around you. Because I think about it, Candice, you know, I think of how when because I've worked with, you know, hundreds and hundreds of clients on this and talk to lots of people, and that they'll say, you know, when you're going through a tricky time in your relationship, you want to talk with friends who will say no, no, no, it's going to work out, like they're really into you. Don't go to the friend who says run away, right,
because that's not the good feeling. And it sounds like in some ways these Facebook groups were a lot of people saying no, no, no, no, it's going to work out, And so that would almost keep people trying and staying and self blaming in these unhealthy relationships, because this entire conversation about twin flames seems to be really embedded in false hope.
Exactly, the false hope, and that's the dangerous part. I mean, that's the dangerous part in any abusive relationship. But we were all lifting each other up and giving each other hope to stay in something toxic, and nobody was really saying well, because if you did say it, you weren't part of the group. You wouldn't been accepted if you did say I think these are abusive relationships because they'll say, oh, no,
your twin flin can't abuse you. It's not abuse, it's you're working these things out because there's something inside of you too. And the women, we were always the female aspect of the twin was always given like the biggest responsibility for fixing everything, and we just we didn't do it. But it goes back to what you just said. We were giving each other hope and lifting each other up.
But this is your twin and you could, you know, encouraging each other to take care of yourself, but you're never in courage to get in the relationship because you have this energetic tie where you're always going to be connected no matter what. There was never a healthy like, maybe this person isn't the one for you, maybe you know you ought to think about talking to somebody or just getting help or getting out. It was never anything like that.
I'm going to pick up on something you brought up. You were talking about how the majority of people in this community were women. I understand that. I understand that culturally, I understand that from oppressive frameworks. I understand from every framework you could imagine, but it sounds like, and again I'm using the binary here, but it seems like some men did come into it. Were the men looking for love just like the women were? Was there something different about them?
No, they were looking for the same thing. There just wasn't as many of them. So but yeah, it was the same thing. They were in toxic relationships with abusive partners, on available part partners that were married, and they were really looking for the same thing. But the twin flame thing seems to attract more women than men. I mean, it could be different now, but when I was part of it, it was mostly women and like maybe one or two men.
Wow, that's a bit like you have a group of.
Like twenty people and then a couple of them were men and eighteen of them were women.
Okay, so very disproportionate, And that might be, you know, what you'll often see in terms of people's interests. At some point in this, especially in this Facebook community and online communities, you were talking about twin flames. At what point did things start to go sour? Because it sounds like you were starting to see it and they were not, So how did that play out?
Well, what happened was I was believing in the twin flame, but I was starting to feel like, okay, So I didn't want to let go of the idea of the twin flame yet, but I wanted to let go of the toxic, abusive behaviors that I knew like I could not tolerate anymore in my life. But I wanted to hold onto the twin flame. So I started opening up conversations with people like, you know, what if it's wrong that all this time we've been saying that you're supposed
to feel all this insecurity is being triggered. It's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to be you know, terrible because you're working out your insecurities and your stuff. And I would bring up, maybe that's not what a twin flame is. Maybe it should feel good. Because what happened was I had started seeing a therapist and she looked at me and she says, love doesn't hurt. And I
know it sounds like that's a simple statement. I should have already known that, but with the way my therapist said it to me, she said, Candace, love doesn't hurt, and that gave me like this big light bulb. And so then, like I said, I didn't want to give up the twin flame thing, so I started opening up dialogues. Well, maybe these stages are wrong, Maybe it's wrong, maybe we got this wrong. Maybe you meet your twin flame when you're whole and healthy and everything is great and in
a healthy relationship. And people were pushing back time with that. Well, I'm with my twin flame and we went through all of these horrible things and we're still together. Like, people got very defensive when I started trying to change the dialogue. I try to open up a different dialogue too, because I because I could no longer reconcile and accept the abusive behaviors as something spiritual, but I wanted to still believe and the twin flame thing was real.
So it's interesting that you were still trying to hold on to that belief that there would be this one incredible, special love story. But you were thinking, it doesn't need to be painful. It could be abusive, right, And because it sounds like what wasn't happening in these communities was
a consistent discussion of what constitutes a healthy relationship. That was not It was that if this person comes around and near twin flame and by definition, by definition, the twin flame relationships were chaotic and confusing and inconsistence and brought out insecurity. So, like you said, it wasn't just glamorized narcissistic abuse. It was sanctioning the idea that from the beginning, you should choose somebody who makes you feel uncomfortable.
Yes, the whole premise is holding on to the chaos. Wow, And that's part of the relationship that you have to accept. And that's the part where I was like, I can't do that anymore. I just can't. Like I've been working on myself, I had a therapist. I can't hold on to thinking that this is okay. That if it's a divine relationship, and if you believe that your relationship is sacred and divine, why would God or the god of your understanding send you this horrible person to abuse you
if you believe that it's a spiritual connection. And I was starting to open that stuff up, and that still was upsetting people too, because the brainwashing of it is so deep, and the human brain is able to be brainwashed, and that when you're in that community and everybody's telling you that no this is how it's supposed to be.
It's supposed to be hard, it's supposed to hurt. A twin flame relationship is exhausting, and it's gonna you know, you're going to have a dark knight of the soul and all this stuff that it's supposed to be that way.
So everything you're saying is that it's a way to contextualize every red flag, every healthy experience and take it and repurpose it in essence to say you're in something special, that all these bad things mean you're in something special. I mean, it's really probably one of the most twisted
sales jobs I've ever heard in my life. So because these are people's hearts and that phenomenon of defensiveness you were talking about, you know, you're talking about things like victim shaming, and then you were actually trying and it sounds like, in a gentle way saying could we think of this differently? That defensiveness that people would have when they were deep in it's a real issue that even
therapist struggle with all the time. Right, this is why we can't walk up to someone and say, yo, you need to stop using drugs, or hey, you need to leave that unhealthy relationship, therapy, substance use treatment, all of that is about finding the back door, right, So it's
the because otherwise people will always defend their position. My relationship's fine, you know, just that relationships have stumbling blocks, like I don't drink that much, you know, And so that defensiveness really speaks to how it's when a person is still very much in denial about what is happening to them. So as you're bringing this up, people are pushing back. You're hearing more victim shaming, You're hearing this toxic spirituality. How did you manage this? How did you feel?
And what did you do?
It took actually it took a couple of years for me to completely and I got to a point where I just I didn't completely close the Facebook group, and well one of them I did, and then I just stopped going in it. I stopped I basically they went no content with the twin Flame thing because I had to.
But it took a process. And during this process, I had a friend and he and I would talk about stuff, and I started to realize, I'm like, wait a minute, I can really have a good time with this person and have a relationship or build a relationship and not have that twin flame. It was like a relief that I didn't have the twin flame stuff in there where I was constantly looking. So it was a combination of me no longer being able to reconcile with the abusive
behaviors that were being justified, the people pushing back. I wasn't emotionally really in a place where I could handle that. It became very The hate and anger from people was bothering me. So that made it easier for me to just kind of like, Okay, I'm not doing the twin flame thing anymore. I'm just gonna like not do it
at all. And I had this friend and we would talk, and I realized like how much nicer it was that I felt, how I felt that I could feel good and be with somebody and it didn't have to be like, oh, but it's not because you're not having chaos. It's okay to say, oh, well this is you know, because at first you're like, well this is kind of boring, but
I was used to the chaos. So as I was in this other relationship with this person, I realized the peacefulness of not having all of that not being abused and not having this toxic spiritual stuff telling me that you know, if you want this special person, you have to suffer to get it. So it was a at least two year process of really letting it go.
It took you two years what is really And I hope you do think of this strength because it takes a lot of strength to hold your ground on saying this doesn't feel healthy when everyone else had so much anger and were so stuck in their conviction. Right, It's really hard to because you for a long time you kind of agreed with what they were saying. It's not like you were coming in with disagreement. From the beginning,
you agreed with them. You started having an awakening around this doesn't seem great, and then you come up against their anger and conviction. It's really hard to not cave What helped you, what gave you that strength that stopped you from caving in and sort of going back into what they still believed.
When I started learning what narcissistic abuse was, when I started watching your YouTube channel, doctor Les Carter, and there was some other people when I started watching you guys on YouTube, and I finally I was like, I felt heard, I'm like, oh my goodness, this is what was happening to me. And that was a huge component for me to be able to see the twin Flame thing for what it was. And it still took me some time because I went and dissected. I have to analyze everything,
and so I had to dissect all of this. Why did I do this? Why this, and why that? But when I learned about what narcissistic abuse was, it's just like, Oh, this is what's happening. This isn't spiritual. I was being abused. There was nothing spiritual about it. And I actually got a little angry. So I probably pissed some people off because I was like, no, this is abuse. You guys are putting up with abuse. And I was angry kind of myself. Of course, that's what you go through when
you're healing. You're like, why did I think this, Why did I believe this? Why did I let myself get sucked into it? And learning to just be like, give myself some compassion.
When Candice became aware of the abusive dynamics of these twin Flames relationships, she became angry, and part of that anger was directed at herself. While this is a very common dynamic for survivors. It can also be problematic because even during the process of recovery and healing, this self blame process can be firmly entrenched, and letting this go becomes a big part of.
Healing, instead of trying to give all these abuse use of people, hope and compassion, giving it to myself. But that was the biggest thing, learning that I was being abused. And that's a hard thing to say, that I was being abused and I didn't realize it.
I find that for many survivors, that moment of when you say I was being abused. A lot of people don't even think the word abuse applies to their situation. So that moment when you say, yeah, I know this is this word fits, it's a big moment. Did you herd right? It's very very hard and you did. And that anger anger is you know, anger is one of those emotions that kind of gets a bad rap because I think if people express it in a bad way,
it could be used in a bad way. But anger is a very motivating emotion, you know, and harness the right way, it can really help people make some change. You said that learning about narcissistic abuse was really sort of catalyst for you to see this clearity and saying, hey, we're all being abused. Did you ever attempt Did you ever attempt to share that content video information and have that conversation about narcissistic abuse with people in your twin Flames community?
I did with one person, and she bothered me the most because I thought her and I were closer than it was. She's the one that got the most angry when I was talking about it, and she you know, of course, as I was talking to her, I'm thinking, well, maybe she's kind of a narcissist too, Like she really attacked me, and I did. I tried, and then, like
I said, the attacks were too much for me. I was still trying to heal and understand that I had been being abused, and so that was just too much, and I thought, well, maybe this is not my mission. And that's when I started moving into wards, like I know what I'm supposed to be doing now, working with survivors and helping them. And I still try to bring in the twin flame thing, and I'll probably start doing
it more because it doesn't trigger me as much. I'm far enough away from it that the anger and stuff. I'm like, that's fine, but at the time it really really bothered me a lot, so I just had to like cut it off. But I tried to share that, but it was not received well.
I think that what you experienced in that twin Flame community is what a lot of survivors, even outside a sort of a space like twin Flames, you know, even in their families, friend groups, church groups, anything that they'll often put a lot of energy and trying to teach and awaken people to say, you know, this isn't unhealthy and really try to teach them about narcissistic abuse, and they'll get a lot of pushback and that can be quite heartbreaking, but it's almost the wrong target to chase
that the real work is done on yourself. And also, like you said, reaching out to people who will benefit from your empathy, because the people who can't, who aren't denial, who can't see it. I find in my work too. I mean, every so often person will say I knew something was wrong, but now I have a name, thank you. But somebody who is zealously committed to this concept in this case twin Flames, there's no turning that around, so
you're sort of switch to talking to survivors. It's like the people who say I just can't talk with the people and my family anymore, they're not willing to get it, and they're actually willing to let me stay in a really toxic relationship to keep their vision of the world. It's a really hard moment, whether it's family or a community. It's painful when you recognize that people care more about the idea.
Yeah, you said it perfectly. Because when I left that then I started just creating my podcast originally just so I could talk like I needed to talk. I wasn't expecting anybody to even like just my close friends and people that knew I was doing it just to talk. And it was so much easier than people that were going to come to me they wanted to hear from me. I didn't have to convince them like, oh, you're in
an abusive relationship or you're in this. They would just come to me and just want to talk about it. And I'm like, oh, okay, this is so much better and trying to convince someone they already know and they already related. But it was a long and I'm we're still healing. I'm still a work in progress, but it was. It's crazy to look back on that and how our culture and society kind of actually feeds into this, that special Disney relationship and that you need to be kissed
to be woken up. And you know, snow White can't wake herself up, she needs him to come kiss her and wake her up, and you know all that that's a big ingrained thing in our society. I think. So that's why it's so easy, like to find the twin flame and then oh, I'm special, I've got this special relationship.
Yeah. Yeah, it is a bit almost childlike right to want that kind of you know, instead of doing the hard work of shared values, orienting to growth, compassion, respect, reciprocity, the stuff that makes an adult relationship. This idea that I'm going to be sleeping and someone is non consensually, by the way, going to kiss me and that's going to wake me up and everything's going to be fine. It is a very passive and childlike conception. We will
be right back with this conversation. So you've been talking a bit about toxic spirituality. I would like to unpack that for a minute, because I think that really really dovetails with narcissism. Can you talk a little bit about toxic spirituality and how it showed up here?
Yes, And I even see it in the survivor community when they blend it with a spirituality. For me, one of the biggest things I see is the manifestation thing. Now, I do believe that what we put out we get back to us. Yes, that that's the law of our universe. But then they'll take this manifestation thing to another level and tell you, well, you manifested that narcissist. I hate hearing that so much. I just cannot stand it. You manifested that relationship because there was something inside of you
that needed healing. That's a big one. I hear a lot, and it drives me absolutely. I hate it. I hate hearing it and it triggers me, and I'm like, no, no one manifests abuse. They're looking for love. You think that this narcissist is love bombing you. They're tricking you like I didn't allow this or manifest this. And that's one of the big things. And in the twin flame thing, the toxic thing is, well, there's something inside of you
basically causing your divine masculine to go do drugs. There's something inside of you and it's your job to heal it. I mean, that's the twin flame thing. If we're just talking in general toxic spirituality, one of the biggest is that manifestation thing that you manifested everything that's happening to you. And for a survivor, that is a horrible thing to say to them, but they do. They say it, or that, oh, you're an impath and that means that you know, you're
a walking trauma response. I mean, no, being an impath is everybody has empathy. Every human being has empathy, and some just have more heightened empathy than others. It is being a human being, a healthy human And to say that that means that it's a trauma response. No, it's not a trauma response. You're talking about like codependency trauma. Not every single impath has an abusive relationship. There's many people that identify as impaths that are in healthy relationships
and they're empowered. That has nothing to do with it. But then I guess it's like putting a lot of labels on things and blaming you for why these things are happening. With under the guise of like, oh, well, you manifested this, so there's something in your past life maybe that you're working out, or there's some type of karma, just something.
The twisting of what the complex notions of karma are. Because here's what you know interesting. I actually don't believe people do get back what they put out because I've seen too many people who are angels among us who continue to get hammered by life. And I also see people who are absolutely horrible people and many, many good
things come their way. So I actually think that there's absolutely no sense in any of this in terms of just sort of the events that happen that very good people, even when they keep getting hit with bad things, they will often have a remarkable capacity to just have really broad shoulders, cope up under it, find meaning and purpose
of some kind in it. They'll do that. And this idea of manifestation again, that's almost a whole another episode, because it's the it is an a, the ultimate ultimate ultimate and victim blaming and something you said here that it is something in you needed healing. I it is just me. I mean, you can watch my hands just turn into fists. And I've never touched a human being in my life, But it is how could you, how
could you sort of harness this process? Because one thing we know statistically in the research, people who have had histories of trauma are more likely to experience future trauma. But there's a whole host of reasons for why that happened, because you may know, it's.
A lot of times you stay with what you know, it feels familiar and you think and it's it. I don't know, but it's not. You didn't manifest.
Nobody manifest No, And so what they're doing is they're blaming people for what is a probabilistic process, which is retraumatization. And we know this is so complicated that they are traumatogenic environments, there are cultural issues, we know that people are smaller, are more likely to experience trauma. All of those things happen, and that then you might literally be blaming entire classes of people for not manifesting properly. And hell no, that's not happening when they're in.
A situation where if it's systemic racism or any type of thing where they're in that and that's not their fault. No, But and you're telling them, well, you manage if a child is killed, or it's like, what do you mean this child man? That doesn't make any sense, but it's all. And I always say in a lot of my social media and like new age spirituality is full of narcissism, abuse and this toxic spirituality thing. And that's another thing. People get triggered when you talk about it. I'm like, no,
you didn't. And I'll even hear people actually say and take on the responsibility. A lot of gurus and teachers and coaches will say, well, I manifested the abusive relationships and I'm owning that. And I said to a girl one time, I go, you did not manifest your abuse. She got mad at me for saying that I was letting her off the hook, like you did not manifest that abuse. Like you're responsible for your healing journey and going to get help, but you are not responsible for
the abuser and that person coming into your life. And that is almost to me, even worse than the twin flame thing is when you're making and there's tons and tons and tons of these people talking about it and I do, I get really triggered and it doesn't makes me am or like you said, you're making fists. I get really fired up.
I'm like, no, like, no, I'm curious, Candice, other than the narcissistic dynamics we've been talking about, which really I'm hearing now that twin flames relationships are literally a system that normalizes and even validates relationships that feel unhealthy from the beginning, and also upholds the idea that a person should stay in something that is unhealthy or abusive because it is their twin flame and this is supposed to
be difficult. I hear all of that. Is there anything like sort of when people come together as twin flames? Is there kind of a consistent thing you see? This is what I'm trying. I'm trying to get at, Like, is it older men in younger women or older women in younger men, or is there anything we see in these relationships that allow other sort of dominating dynamics to also maintain.
Yes, And many times there's a huge age difference. There will be culture differences, but the big age difference is a big thing where the man will usually be a lot twenty some years older, and they say, well that's normal, that's when you incarnate it on the planet. And they'll make a justification for that, but many types of connections for that. Yes, but a lot of older men and younger women type dynamic where they've got the power and the control.
That's interesting. And again, you also talked about this idea of masculine feminine divine masculine divine feminine, and it seems like the way the Twin Flames model is constructing this masculine idea is of dominance power, and femininity is about caregiving and yielding. Am I hearing that right?
Yes? Yes, the female is supposed to be the most spiritually awakened and she's got the biggest responsibility for the connection, whereas the masculine he gets off the hook because he's not awakened yet, so it's okay for him to be doing all these things that are not good for our relationship. And that's okay. You're justifying it because you're the awakened one,
so you have to carry him. But yes, they'll talk about it in the healthy way of what it is, but the words and the talking never match the actions of the relationship that you're in, if that makes sense, Like they'll like, I could buy a webinar and someone's talking about masculine and feminine energy, and they're saying all these great things, but then okay, but I'm with this person that's addicted to crack, Like how is that gonna work?
And that's never addressed. It's like, well, you've got to keep doing the healing.
I want to ask you a question though, because you know masculine feminine. Obviously you're saying it's energetic, but it does feel heteronormative to me. How does this play out in queer relationships?
Well, and that's a good question too, because in the beginning, when twin Flames started, there was people that say it's only can be a natural born male and a natural born female. And so they've evolved because they know they have to evolve and accept other.
People, so trying to make money that works, yes, exactly.
So they had to go of that dogma and evolve and accept everybody. So the way they did that is through energy. Like you could be a lesbian couple and one in the pair feels more in touch with her masculine energy and the other one feels more in touch with her feminine So then the one that feels more in touch with her masculine energy is the masculine twin, and then the other one is the feminine twin, and they'll do it vice versa. However, you know, and any type of.
Relationship same with two men, one is the more, Okay? And is there any place for a non binary or trans people in the Twin Flames world?
Okay, I'm not sure about the trand but I'm sure that they do. I'm sure that they do because they un start when I was in it. They want to tell you what you want to hear. Yeah, that's really what it is.
Yeah, yeah, And I can see that. It's sort of like they're building the airplane in the sky to be able to keep interest. So you continue to talk to people, you're no longer in the Twin Flames world, you continue to talk to people. Do you continue to work with people are trying to get out of the twin Flames world? Can you talk to us a little bit about how you're working with survivor.
I have a couple of women that I would say I have really good friendships with them, and they've been on their own kind of journey of I'll let them tell me on their own. Oh, I'm done with the twin flame thing. I'm not gonna you know, I don't press because I know what it's like, so I don't press them. I just like to I like to just be there for them to listen. But yes, there are some women that I will talk to and we talk about it together, and I just let them be where
they're at. I have one really close friend who's wonderful and she's very much believes you know, she was in a toxic relationship with a narcissist and she's very spiritually minded and she really believes he was her twin flame. I'm just I guess I've learned to approach it in a more delicate way, like you said, come in the back door, instead of just being like, now, you know, there's no such thing as twin flames, because she's not
going to listen to me. So I'm just there for her and I give her information when she needs to be. But yes, I do delicately. Now have some women that I'm close to that I can talk to them because they know where I stand. So I just try to make a safe space for them so that they can come to me, like in the future when they realize that they have their own realization that oh yeah, yeah, you were right.
It's interesting. One thing that twin Flames builds on is this idea of scarcity, right, if something is scarce. I'm going to give you a very simple example. If something's on sale and there's only one of it left and you don't need it, you might buy it because there's only one of it left. This idea of that there's only this one person, that's what creates buy in And even in non twin Flame narcissistic relationships, pressures around things like age and I'm getting too old to have a child,
I'm getting too old to date. I'm not going to find anyone. Whatever it is, whatever is happening in their mindset, it creates that same kind of scarcity. And I think that part of the reason this twin Flames model has so much power and it's keeping people so stuck and so subjugated in something that's hurting them, is that it's built around scarcity specialness. Is twin Flame still a very robust community out there? Are there still lots of people getting pulled into it?
Oh yeah, and a lot of younger people too, So it's it's even bigger than it was when I was part of it.
It's like even bigger wow, and it's all over the world. Okay, So I want to ask you this because we're coming towards the end here. First of all, how are you doing now after all you've been through? How has having gone through what you've gone through from cultic systems in childhood, a long term, difficult marriage with somebody who was an unrecovered alcoholic twin flames? How are you doing now? And how has all of this together affected your perspective on love and on relationships.
I feel like I'm finally at a place where I can be like honest about like everything that I went through, Like I don't have to be embarrassed to tell people that I was raised in a cult or that I
got stuck into the twin flame thing. And then it's given me this wisdom where I can relate better to other survivors and to be like, you know, I understand, and I understand where you're coming from where you've been, And it's just a wisdom that I have had that I from every hardship and all of this craziness, there's like this wisdom that I have that I feel blessed almost in a weird way, that I went through all of this, because now I can understand when someone's like
embarrassed to talk about like I got sucked into this thing and I'm embarrassed, or I stayed in this relationship and I'm embarrassed. I'm like, there's nothing to be embarrassed about, because you know, you're human, you went through this experience, and I can be there to hold that space for them, to help them feel safe to talk about it, to
know that they're not alone. And that's really the biggest thing that I've learned to be able to give back to other people and say you're not alone, because if I survive that, so can you. But I feel like in my life, I finally know what I'm supposed to be doing and what you know, a happy relationship isn't it supposed to be Like everything that's twin Flame said like, oh, you're supposed to suffer, it's supposed to hurt, it's supposed to feel like this. I'm like, no, that's not true.
And learning Actually the biggest thing is learning that it's okay to have standards. It's okay to have standards and boundaries, and that was like a foreign concepts and you know, what do you mean, it's okay to have standards. You can have a standard, and your standard doesn't have to be the same as someone else's and you don't have to apologize for it either, because it's who you are
and you deserve that. Even if you never meet the person that's going to meet that standard, you know that's your standard and to have that, that's what everyone needs to learn to have, Like, you're allowed to have a standard. You're allowed to have that, and to give yourself permission to be like, no, I'm not going to budge on this because I've been you know, coerced and told that, oh,
you shouldn't have that, you shouldn't have that standard. You shouldn't have that boundary because I was really comfortable when you didn't have it. You know.
Do you still believe in love?
Yeah? Yeah, but not in the way that I did. I do, but in a way that I don't think the fairy tale like Disney Princess Hollywood thing is real. I don't think any of that is real. But yes, I still do believe in love, but it's none of that where you feel like there has to be adrenaline rush all the time and there has to be all this passion and anger at this and that to me, no, I don't believe it.
It should feel like that at all, And do good my mascus, and you don't have to answer it and we don't have to put it on. Is are you in a relationship now?
Yes? You are?
And does it feel healthy and good?
Yes? Yes, And that's why I can say that all that like Hollywood stuff like that's just a fantasy, like that everybody's fantasy that's guiding your life to be in this fantasy. That that's not what it really is, that's not what love is.
Right.
Well, well, they're in the business of selling fantasies, which is all very entertaining. But I'm not so sure that we should build in entertainment when we're making some of the more important decisions in our life, like who we want to be in a committed relationship with. So I think that that's very wise. Tell us this, Candice, where can people find you? Because I know you work with survivors, So where can people find you and hear more about you?
Yes? On my website Unlivingthelie dot com. And I have a podcast It's on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and then I also write for a publication online called medium. I write about narcissistic abuse, and it's all on my website. All the tabs are there that they can find. I'm on Instagram, but it's Unliving the Lie. I came up with that for my podcast because really, that's what you're doing when you're getting out of abuse and all of this. You're
unliving the lie that you are living. So yeah, that's my website, just Unlivingthelie dot com.
And again, your podcast is also called Unliving the Lie.
Right, Yes, it's on Spotify and Apple podcasts, those are the big popular ones.
Yes. Great, well, I'm so glad you're putting your experience out there because I think the more that we can shed light on the humanity of the people who go through these stories, that these are situations of people who just wanted very very basic, normal things, and to lift the shame and blame from these stories, so people can say, you know what, I understand how this could happen, but also could understand the dangers, especially when we try to
romanticize this idea of chaos and people keep staying in these situations. So again, like you said, glamorizing narcissistic abuse is something we never that's something we never ever want to dress up, you know. And even your point about that divine masculine and divine feminine, I think people gravitate to those concepts. But you're basically telling me the divine feminine's awake, the divine masculines asleep, and now the divine feminine is supposed to be sort of the spiritual alarm
clock for the divine masculine. No thanks, say figure it out yourself, my friends. So thank you again. That concludes our session. I can't thank you enough for coming on sharing your story with us on navigating narcissism. Here are my takeaways from my conversation with Candace. First, the nature of the twin Flames belief systems that there is just one person out there, who is this person sharing one soul or experiencing an intense connection is designed to leave
people doubting red flags and other unsettling patterns. After all, if it's uncomfortable, the twin Flames dogma says, that means you're doing it right. Candice describes the early days of these relationships as a love bubble, and they come with a cheering squad of folks who are celebrating your twin flame connection and reminding you that it is supposed to be unsettling. This is a perfect setup for an un
unhealthy and even toxic relationship. The real danger of any model like this is that it gives a person who may already be sliding into a trauma bonded cycle a sort of guidebook and system of rationalization for uncomfortable and unacceptable behavior within a relationship. When a person is being told that confusion and insecurity mean that it is working, the enabling offered by these kinds of belief systems can
keep people stuck in bad situations. In my next takeaway, organized teachings that rationalize unhealthy behavior in a relationship as a good thing and that capitalize on and exploit the basic human desire for a close, loving relationship are simply
unkind and unhealthy. The organizers of systems that spout toxic spirituality benefit financially, while folks who may be lonely, isolated, frustrated, or coming out of recent relationship losses and breakups can be a ripe target for financial manipulation and the blaming dialogue such as maybe you're alone because you aren't manifesting
hard enough. If you ever feel shamed or blamed when you are experiencing uncomfortable behavior in a relationship, Please stop and take a hard look at the shamers and blamers,
because that is not okay. For my next takeaway, when a person has had prior narcissistic relationships, as Candace says she did, it can be a process of indoctrination, whereby she may have not taken note of milder, antagonistic and invalidating patterns in new relationships or been accepting of them because they weren't as bad as patterns from the past,
but they're still unhealthy. For this reason, after a narcissistic relationship ends, particularly an intimate relationship, it is important that you consider giving your self a minute, cool your heels, and work on your healing and get centered within yourself.
One of the most vulnerable times is when a person is coming out of a narcissistic relationship, and these are the times when folks may be susceptible to mystical promises about finding that one true love, which can distract you from the much more important work of getting comfortable within yourself. And in our last takeaway, Candice reminds us that it is so easy to minimize a person who explores this idea of twin Flames, as though people who are interested
in this are just lost souls or weak. That is an unkind and frankly dangerous assumption. People are getting saturated by all kinds of content on how to find love, but in some ways, the mystical hopes and promises offered by a framework like twin Flames are appealing to anyone who is trying to find deep and real love. Who are simply curious and open, but who are also strong and solid in their lives may also be drawn to this.
All of us are at some level susceptible to simple promises about finding love, And perhaps the greater lesson is that within all of us are the pieces of our soul, but they often got so chopped up because we were so busy trying to be what other people want us to be. Perhaps that other half of your soul is simply the part of yourself that you quieted because other people invalidated it. Instead of looking outside of us for the answers, a story like this reminds us to look within