Reading this book is like having a long chat with a very well informed confidante rather than a medical or psychology book. I feel like a I have a strong sense of what the author is trying to achieve -- and she has a lot of good advice in this book, illustrated with stories from her life and her friends lives. Yes, it's true - there's some woo-woo new age stuff in here but for the most part: nothing in this book will cause harm or injury to anyone who practices her advice. You might slightly alienate some of your friends and family if you start talking about violet flames and such -- those people can be just as annoying as the narcissists they are trying to avoid.
The latter half of the book focuses more on self-care and offers a ton of practical advice. I really like the advice about morning meditation and picturing all the things that can go right, and evening meditation to think about what you can learn throughout the day. Her description of the benefits of deep breathing through the nose and the way that it stimulates the vagus nerve and shuts down negative self talk generated by your reptile brain is effective at a lay person's level.
Christiane Northrup is a well educated and well intentioned writer and educator -- but she's also a very big business. She has a ton of books and videos on her website, but she doesn't self promote herself as a consultant or reference her own books in this book. Instead, she refers to a lot of other authors -- crediting them for their original ideas. I found it charming that she referred to the person I most associate with horoscopes in the free local weekly newspaper as a "philosopher" (Rob Brezsny authors "Free Will Astrology" and a book called "Pronoia").
Most notably - she's wholeheartedly embraced quite a lot of pseudoscience, generally. This book comprises a lot of hokum (ie "vampires") but has some good tips buried in what should essentially be a blog post.
The book boils down to the following: defining and teaching the reader to identify psychic vampires (or narcissists); learning how to create healthy boundaries and distance from those people, and how to avoid them in the future. Next, she discusses how to find support among people who are not narcissists and how to rebuild one's self-esteem and establish routines for self-care, including focusing on positive news and other inputs (ie, avoid violent/negative films). All in all - good messages.
REVIEW: Dodging Energy Vampires: An Empath’s Guide to Evading Relationships That Drain You and Restoring Your Health and Power by Christiane Northrup
RATING: 3-stars
© Jennifer R Clark. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You may share and adapt this content with proper attribution.
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