E090 - Why You Can’t Fix Him: The Painful Truth About Loving a Narcissist With Shavaun Scott
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[00:00:00] If you have been trying to fix or save or change your narcissistic partner in this episode, you're going to finally understand why it isn't working.
Speaker: Welcome to Heartbreak to Wholeness, the podcast helping you heal from the mindfuck of narcissistic relationships and move towards the secure, peaceful woman you want to become. I am your host, Bre Wolta, Relationship Clarity Coach and EFT Certified Practitioner. Let's dive in.
Welcome back to the pod. If you have found yourself taking on a many fixer upper partners or attracted to people that you think you can fix or save, yet, the more that you try to fix or save, the more defeated and guilty and hopeless you feel This episode is for you.
You will discover the mindset shift that will free you from trying to fix him. You're gonna understand how to tell if a narcissistic person is using therapy language and trauma narratives to manipulate you. And you're gonna understand the emotional [00:01:00] truth about how good-hearted women like you get trapped and how narcissists use your vulnerabilities against you.
In the episode today, I am speaking with a beautiful soul named Shavuan Scott, and
she's also the author of a memoir called Night Bird that she wrote about her life and her experience with a narcissistic partner. Today we're talking about some really hard truths, and Shavuan is sharing her devastating story of narcissistic abuse and her experience in trying to love someone she felt so desperately responsible to fix.
Part of Shavuan's story that you're going to hear is her survival of one of the most horrendous forms of abuse, and this is when somebody suicides as the ultimate form of control. Like so many women in abusive relationships, Shavuan really believed that she could change or save her husband.
That love and patience would really heal his wounds and help him see how capable he was [00:02:00] or live up to his potential. But today we are really exploring through her story, this dangerous misconception and the emotional toll that it takes. So there is a trigger warning in this episode where Shavuan goes into detail about the suicide and the reasoning behind the suicide.
If suicide is triggering for you. If you aren't in a place today where you wanna hear something of that magnitude, I encourage you to really take care of yourself.
When you get to minute 15. I would pause and skip ahead to about 17 and a half minutes or 18 minutes.
whEre you can just avoid that piece of the story and rejoin us on the other side where she talks about her healing and how she really came through that experience and learned how she can stop. Trying to fix and save people and how she let go of the guilt around that.
and at the end like always, we will pull an Oracle card that will offer you a message that you can use this week to stay more conscious in your healing.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Welcome to the podcast, [00:03:00] Shavuan. I'm so happy you're here.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Thank you so much for having me.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: you are here to talk about a tough topic, and I want everybody right now to pin that they need to go by the Night Bird Memoir, because this is a book that you wrote about your story, and we're gonna get into all of, not maybe not all of the details of your story, but a good overview of what you went through.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Mm-hmm.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: The one thing that I was so called to when I read about the the different things that we could talk about today was this saving him illusion. And I have had this illusion, so many of my clients have had this illusion where we stay for months or years. Well after we know that we shouldn't be there anymore.
Well after our mind is checked out on some degree. With the, with the hope that if we love them harder or if we show them another self-help book, or if we find them a therapist, that they're gonna change [00:04:00] that it's going to get better.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: So
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: the above. Yes. Mm-hmm.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah. Tell me, tell me about what the illusion looked like for you and how you came up with that, that term.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I, I think as little girls, at least in this culture, and probably in, in most cultures, if not everywhere, are taught to be caretakers, to take care of other people's feelings, and if we grow up in families where our needs are not prioritized as kids. We're concerned about maybe walking on eggshells to please our parents,
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: we know about pathological men, narcissistic psychopathic men, they have a keen radar for women who are compassionate, empathetic, and naturally like to help people. And so it, it's sort of like we are a [00:05:00] magnet for them.
They're drawn to us and they know how to appeal. To that part of us that wants to help and wants to be supportive. So I think that empathy is a virtue. But it's weaponized against us. I think in my case, I was also raised in a strict fundamentalist religious faith where I was taught that it was on my shoulders to save the world. And that was, you know, witnessing for Jesus and going door to door, trying to convert people. But I really, really had an intense sense of, it's up to me to make people better and
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Wow.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: gonna be a magical formula. And even though in my late teens I grew out of that faith, which I think was a very healthy thing for me, into therapy, but I became fascinated with psychology and that became my map of the world. And then I sort of translated that magical thinking from religion. wealth [00:06:00] therapy can fix everyone.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Mm-hmm.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I saw that as this incredibly powerful tool and became a therapist. And of course I've been a therapist for over 30 years now, so I, I believe in it. I think it's really important, but it is not magic and we cannot have the power to change other people.
All we can do. Is act as guides and act as a support for somebody's journey. And if they are not on a journey for personal growth and
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Hmm.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: and as we know, these kind of men are not, um, therapy doesn't do anything, but I, I certainly was a believer in religion in a magical way, and then a believer in therapy in a magical way. And I took it very serious. And put my own needs last, which I was also taught to do in my family of origin, and I was taught to do in my religion. It wasn't okay to pay attention to my own feelings, and I prioritized healing him above all else.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: I just have so much compassion [00:07:00] for you and me and every woman listening who's like, oh God, me too. Because we assume that everybody has that value of wanting to do the work and better themselves
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: yes.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: as the, the empathetic person who values self-growth. We can't understand. Not just somebody who doesn't value self-growth, but somebody who manipulates our vulnerabilities to use against us, who says that they want to do therapy and then will just string us along long enough that, you know, that, um, kind of quiets us down until we bring it up again.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: 100%.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: We don't, we don't act that way, we don't think in that manipulative way. What did that feel like for you? What did it look like for you and your relationship when he was using sort of the, the manipulation to, to keep you, to keep you believing that you could change him or to keep his control over you?
What did that look like?
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: was so good [00:08:00] at psychobabble because he had a bachelor's degree in psychology and he knew how to work the trauma story. He was very manipulative. People loved him. He was witty, entertaining, intelligent. he would pull out his, I had such a rough childhood story and that always melted my heart. Well, I had a rough childhood too. he grew up in Beverly Hills and was the son of a doctor, and I doubt that he was optimally parented, but he, he didn't. Have the kind of abuse that would justify the cruelty and the psychopathic behavior that I saw from him. But I bought the abuse story and, and whenever he could sense that I was pulling away or I was fed up, he could go into pathetic mode. And, oh, I've had such a hard life and my mother was so mean to me, and I, I swallowed it and I [00:09:00] would find another therapist for him, which of course I paid for because he did not contribute much financially because of his problems. Right. Which were, he had no problem going out and smoking weed and hanging out at the record store.
But as far as showing up for his lawn mowing job, which, you know, as a 30 5-year-old man who mowed
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Hmm.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: we can say he was definitely under functioning, but he partied and he had the life of an irresponsible teenage boy because he was parasitic, which is another psychopathic behavior. So. If I'm being convoluted, maybe direct me back, but, but he would always be really good at pulling out that victim narrative when he could tell that I was getting fed up with him.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah, yeah. Because that, that is something that he knows, pulls right at the heart string.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Pulls
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: know. Yeah. And for the woman listening, if you have had that, that recurring sort of. [00:10:00] Experience where you try to bring something up or you try to confront them with something and then oh, he, he falls into that victim place.
That victim mindset that is, that is just what that is. That's them using their, their story, and sometimes it's not even true.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I found out after his death and I connected with his family, that much of what he talked about never happened,
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: it sounded
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: and it worked, and he was a master if he knew I was really. At a place of being done, he could turn on the tears
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: oh my, a man who was shedding tears really melted my heart until I saw him do that with other people in other settings. Um, be tearful in, in the phone call and I describe an incident. With that in the book where he just turned it on and it was an acting job. He hung up the phone and he started laughing, and that was a blood run cold moment for me because
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: wow, who could do that? [00:11:00] Who could do that? I mean, it was just the strangest thing to witness. So for me, it took a long time for me to come into my awareness. Of number one, I didn't deserve to be mistreated, and number two, that there was very intentional manipulation going on because I just did not see it for years.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: To go back to what you said, the, that he had the therapy babble, like the psycho babble, like down.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Mm-hmm.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: I also had that experience where my ex was in the mental health addiction world and knew all the language, he knew all the trauma stuff, you know, how to present his trauma.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Yep.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: So how, how can we help listeners be able to identify, you know, if somebody's full of shit around that or if they actually value therapy or understand, are using it in terms of their self-growth and not a manipulation.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: It all goes back to how do they behave? Are they changing their behavior? And if [00:12:00] they're not. You know, whatever the, the reason they're in therapy for my husband, it was the anger outbursts were the real problem because when he wasn't angry, he was delightful and he nurtured me and he was compassionate, but that was just a veneer. And there was this seething rage that he would use me as a. vent periodically when things were wrong in his life, and then he would walk away and feel better after having done that.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: so I look back now and I can look at times, he would go to therapy. He always charmed the therapist because he had the lingo down and he would say what they wanted to hear. He never talked about his rage episodes and they never changed. They never abated. And so then it was always, well, he maybe needs a different therapist or he needs a, as you mentioned, self-help book. Here's a book. I decided at
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: points because I was looking for the fixes. Oh, he must have a DH. D. [00:13:00] must have bipolar disorder. Turned out he eventually had psychological testing. He had none of those things. He had cluster B personality traits, narcissism, psychopathy, borderline personality, histrionic personality. I kind of break those down in the book. He had quite the cluster
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: when I saw the evidence right in front of me in black and white, it fit.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Hmm.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: and it had not been something that I had ever. Realized even though I knew what those things were, I loved him so much with that deep pathological attachment that we call love,
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I was simply blind to it. I call that the negative hallucination. You just don't see what's right in front of you.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah. Well, there's too much at stake when we see it,
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Yeah.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: right? If we see it, then we have to acknowledge how we got there. We have to acknowledge what we're doing about it. And we're just not ready. Sometimes we're, well, we're just not ready until we're ready to see it.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Yeah.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: once you [00:14:00] see it, you can't unsee it.
Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: unsee it. It was, it was glaring. Yeah. And I had to, I think also, in addition to coming to that awareness of what was going on with him, I had to have a personal enough personal growth under my belt. To really feel strong and empowered and whole, and that I did not need this man, and he, once I became aware of who he was, then it became much easier to say, okay, I'm done.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yes, yes. We have to have that sense of self as our, like true north, because these relationships will spin us around in the fog. And if we don't have that grounding center, if we don't know who we are, what we stand for, what we, what we will take, what we won't take. That gets to be a very complicated, tangled place to, to be in.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Mm-hmm.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: part of part of your journey was him using the threat of suicide as, [00:15:00] again, this control technique. Tell us a little bit about what that looked like in, in your fights or just how he would, how he would bring that into the picture.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times guys do the threats. In my case, it was very interesting because he never threatened, and I honestly never thought he would hurt himself. I had asked him. Early on in the relationship, have you ever thought about suicide? Would you ever do that? Oh, no, I wouldn't off myself. But interestingly, his father had committed suicide at age 47, so the day that he had had another outburst, and I really was prepared and ready and had a plan on how I was gonna exit the marriage. And this was after 17 long years of marriage. So I gave it a lot of time, but I was really done and I got up in the morning and said, I am done. And I had a plan for this is how we can divide 50 50 everything. And I wish you well, [00:16:00] but I am not gonna be your wife anymore. he was calm and he said, okay. He went to work. I went to work and then I came home at eight o'clock that night and found this poster sized door, uh, sign on the front door that said, I'm waiting for you in the dining room. And I went into the house and found everything was dark and there was a spotlight shining on his hanging body.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Oh my gosh.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: it was literally out of a horror movie, um, and something I never would've imagined I would see,
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Wow.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I see that now. I took a deep dive into research on suicide and the different types of suicide and the meaning behind suicide, and that was an extension of the abuse. It was a desire to punish. It was rage induced because we so often think of suicide as based in depression, and most of the time it is. But there's also a category of suicide that's based [00:17:00] in rage. And these are the guys that will pull out the gun in the middle of the argument and shoot themselves right in front of her. And I talk
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: those stories in my book because I've run into them in my work as a therapist, or in the worst cases, they shoot the kids. shoot her and shoot themselves. And that's what's behind that. It's not depression, it's anger. And you usually find these incidents when the woman is trying to leave the relationship or has just left.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Wow. I just wanna take a, a moment to pause and like, let the listeners take a breath. Just acknowledge you in, in. Experiencing that because that is out of a horror film and that is something that you should not have had to see or endure or have to have made understanding around in the first place.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: It
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: is in,
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: yeah, it broke my brain for a while.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: yes.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: definitely threw my thinking brain offline. I was stuck in fight [00:18:00] or flight for weeks and took a tremendous amount of help and support to, to get myself back, but I hope the book is ultimately not about my brokenness, although that is in there. Because there are things that will break you, and that was one that broke me. But there's healing just as, as there's being broken. And life is good now, and it didn't take that long. I would say I had a bad few months, but because of the help and support and the tools and the good therapy I was given, um, I was able to, to find myself again and come back stronger than ever.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: absolutely. When we can, when we can make understanding and meaning of our experience, we can then use it as from a place of strength
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Yeah.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: and. For, for women listening. I, I, in my experience with my ex, I had the threats of, of him hurting himself
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Mm-hmm.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: they weren't always threats of, I'm gonna kill myself, but they were, they were threatening enough that I didn't feel comfortable [00:19:00] leaving and then therefore being responsible.
That was the thought process that I had.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: of course.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: What would you offer the listener who maybe is in that experience of, she's hearing these things from her partner, that, that don't feel good about him wanting to hurt himself or hurt somebody else, or, you know, end his life. What, what advice would you give her and moving through?
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: yeah, I would frame that, and I do hear that from other women 'cause I work a lot still with women in domestic violence relationships. I, I frame that as the ultimate form of abuse. That kind of emotional blackmail is so incredibly cruel that's definitely the sign that this is a person you need to get away from. And I wanna give them all the support that I can to have the strength and the resources. To make the plan to get away because no one who loves you, legitimately loves you, would ever treat you like that, would ever say those kinds of things. [00:20:00] And I go back to the, the Cs, you didn't cause it. You can't fix it and you are not responsible for the choices that this person makes.
And that's what I had to, had to really come to embrace in my own healing after my husband's suicide was that. His life was his own. And all the time I thought I could cure him the times I thought I caused him to have the blowup and behave in his abusive way. None of that was true. I never had the power to fix him.
If so, I would've done it before 17 years. Right? Um, it would've worked right away if there was something that would do it, but, but that was just a myth. That I had bought into. And so I really wanna help women separate themselves from that idea, that enmeshment, that his journey is my journey, or I have influence over his journey. and it was interesting because he was 47 when he did it. understand so much more about these pathological [00:21:00] personalities now, and it's. Often there's a lot of biology involved. I think he was very much like his father and he suicide at the same age as his father did.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Oh wow.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: no control over his choices
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: No,
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: it was not my obligation, uh, in my life to stay with this man just to sacrifice, to try to keep him alive.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: that's a lot of energy. Esp. I mean, we don't, we don't realize while we're in it, how much energy we're expending on.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Right.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: the other person in managing their life and making sure they don't do this and they don't do that, and they do this a different way. And when you throw in the threat of them ending their life, that becomes the ultimate energy suck from you.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Yes.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: And so I wanna reiterate what you just said in, in a different terms probably, but for the listener to hear that if somebody is, if, if you, somebody who says they love you, no less is saying that they are going to hurt [00:22:00] themselves because of you. Or that you have done something and therefore that this validates their thinking around wanting to hurt themselves.
That's not what somebody who loves you will say,
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: No.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: and they definitely will not get pleasure out of saying that. The other thing that I want to, to just like anchor into for the listener is. As an adult person, you are responsible for your choices and your actions. And that applies to also doing the work around whatever traumas he went through in your childhood that are causing you to have reactions in your adult world.
So whatever happened to him to cause this rage was his to to handle.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Yep.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: You can support somebody, you can love somebody, but you cannot force them to do it. You cannot do it for them. And you, like you said in the beginning, you can only be the guide to the resources. You cannot create the intrinsic motivation that's needed for somebody to, to [00:23:00] do this type of work, to heal.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Mm-hmm.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: And that gets to be the responsibility that you shed, that you drop.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Mm-hmm.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: You can walk alongside somebody, you can hold their hand, you can, you can be there as support, but you cannot step in their shoes and do it for them. And I know for me that that lesson, that understanding like, had to sink into my bones.
It's like something I knew cognitively, but like until I, until I embodied it. Nothing was gonna change in my dynamic with my ex. I was still, I was still spinning my wheels trying to get him to do the therapy and read the books and all the things.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: said. It took me the longest time to have it sink into my bones, but once I was able to do that, was so freeing and so wonderful.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yes, what was that, that moment for you where you. Let it sink in. Were you in your own therapy? Did somebody say something that really resonated? What was sort of the, the change point for [00:24:00] you?
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I, I think there were a couple different times. Um, interestingly, when we talk about bones, had started, um, well one day I was walking downtown and there was a yoga studio in my little community, and I heard drumming. Coming out of the yoga studio and it was this incredible, powerful African drumming.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Mm-hmm.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: And I was drawn to it and I went in to see what was going on.
And it was an African dance class, and it was a new group with this wonderful woman from Africa who was so passionate and enthusiastic and just strong. I went in and she. Beckoned me over to join the class, and I had never done anything like that before, I felt a shift internally. And so I'm a big believer in the mind body power and the connection, and as you say, we know things cognitively, but things shifted in me and I talk in the book about how that shifted physically for me,
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: [00:25:00] Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: That African dance class. And of course I signed up and kept going and it was just so empowering.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Mm-hmm.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: to this day, it's about 30 years ago, I still love dance. I'm not doing African anymore 'cause it's a little bit too athletic for my aging body. But I do all kinds of other dance and it's just been so good for me. So I think that's an example of that. That, um, you know, bottom up healing experience, finding something that just brings us a sense of competency and strength and power. then I, I backtracked after his suicide, or I backslid and because I was so traumatized by his death, completely bought into what he wanted me to buy into, which was I caused this. this, and when people were coming around to try to comfort me after his death in the days and weeks after that, I would tell everybody, it's my fault he died. I did this, which I knew I wasn't supposed to think,
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: was [00:26:00] thinking. And so I eventually found it. Took a couple therapists who didn't really understand suicide very well, but I eventually found one that specialized in it because he had had so many suicides in his family. And he really shared with me how this kind of suicide, where the person kills themselves in a way that's, you know, the body is gonna be discovered by the spouse in this horrendous way. He said this was an act of aggression and that really helped me see, wow. Okay. Was not something I caused. This was his choice.
And it was just an extension of another tantrum, another rage episode. And that also helped me feel like I could disconnect from that false narrative of, oh, I had responsibility for him somehow, or had responsibility for his choice. So I think it was just a combination of things and probably layers of other things [00:27:00] that I was, I was at that point able to feel anger at. The mistreatment, the 17 years of mistreatment
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: the mistreatment in the way that he chose to end his life. And I saw very clearly this was his choice. No one scripted this path for him. This was his decision. And, sometimes you can be so angry and, and again, I think for a person like you or or me, it's impossible to imagine being so angry at someone that you would destroy yourself.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: But it happens. And I studied with a researcher from Harvard about suicide and the different types, and it actually happens a lot, but it's something that's not talked about because I think so often it's usually the man who does it, and women end up feeling so much shame guilt and trauma about it.
They don't talk about it, which was one of the things that. Made me wanna write the book because I hope that this brings it out so that people [00:28:00] can, can move on from it when it happens to them.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah, it, it is powerful. It's a powerful story. It's a powerful experience, and I'm so glad that you found your way through that, that darkness that. That thing that could have sucked you very well down into despair that was, you know, that you couldn't get back out of.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Yeah, I had a very dark period of time and I
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: it in the book. In the early part, I didn't wanna die, but I didn't know how to live
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Mm-hmm.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I needed the support of some incredibly wonderful people. Fortunately, I have a lot of friends who are therapists,
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah. Yes.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: best friends were an older couple that were both psychologists, and they actually took me into their home and basically created a little treatment.
Program for me, um,
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Oh
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: 7 for three weeks, I stayed with them.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: wow.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I talk
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yes.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: how those healing connections can bring you back when you're very broken, and I will be forever grateful that, that he didn't [00:29:00] kill me,
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: and that I've had a, a wonderful 20, 21 years since this happened I'm gonna enjoy every day of my life.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah. So good. Shalon, thank you. Thank you for sharing your story. Is there any last words of wisdom that you wanna leave the listener that's resonating with us today?
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I, I think just to continue the focus that, you know, relationships are, aren't meant to be a test of how much mistreatment our nervous systems can tolerate,
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah,
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: so many of us. You know, we're strong. We can tolerate a lot. Um, it may be that our childhoods forced us to be strong and tolerate a lot, but that's not love.
And that's the message I hear you saying over and over, and I'm 100% right there with you.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yes. If it's pain, it's not love.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Yeah.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Uh, okay. Well, to end the episode, I would love your help pulling an Oracle card for the listener.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Okay.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: So the way that I have the, the guest help me do this is just by [00:30:00] closing their eyes. So go ahead and bring your eyes to a close. We're just gonna tune in and ask what is the message that wants to come through For the listener today, and whenever you feel like the shuffle's complete, I want you to tell me when to stop.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Stop.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Okay, we gotta lay it down, which is a picture of a bug. It looks like laying down. It looks like a big piece of poop, but it's probably not that. Okay, lay it down. You have been carrying your shit for too long. It's time to lay it down. What started as a simple, generous act of carrying someone else's load has snowballed into the boulder that weighs you down.
Maybe you are so used to it that you think you love it or that it connects you to your identity, or that it was always yours to hold. Allow yourself to remember that the burden you bear is no longer serving you. Lay it down, let it roll away. You might even miss it initially, or look around for it. Lay it down.
Feel the relief as you step forward in the lightness and [00:31:00] freedom, knowing that you only need to carry what you are willing to hold.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Wow, that is perfect.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Yeah, they're always perfect. It's amazing.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: I love it.
bre_1_06-20-2025_154719: Thank you again, Shavuan. It was such a pleasure to get to, to chat with you and get to hear your story.
shavaun-scott--she-her-_1_06-20-2025_144719: Thank you. It's been wonderful to be here.
As always, I wanna do a little recap here just so you can remember what it is that Siobhan and I talked about that you can take with you from this episode. So in the episode today, you discovered that mindset shift that you can start to implement to free yourself from feeling like you have to fix him. You learned how to tell if a narcissistic partner is using therapy language in order to manipulate you. Angie learned the emotional truth about how good-hearted women like you get trapped and have their vulnerabilities used against them in these narcissistic relationships.
If you have heard your story or parts of your story that resonate with what Siobhan was talking about in this saving [00:32:00] him illusion, and you're really sort of looking for that next step to help you shift away from those patterns where you no longer attract people where you have to fix or save or change them, and you can heal from the relationships where that was the main.
Sort of role that you took in that relationship. Please click through the show notes. I have a link to a free call we can get on and talk about where you are and how I can help you get to where you want to go, because I know that becoming the best version of yourself is so important to you. And showing up healthfully in relationships of all kinds is so important to you.
And this is a huge, huge piece of accountability that you can take to shift the way that you show up in relationships forever. As always, you are not alone. I'm here with you and I'll see you in the next episode..